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Thinking about tiny houses always prompts the question of whether I myself could live in a tiny house. Part of me thinks I could, because I love the idea of minimal living, getting by on the essentials, and spending more time outdoors. But another part of me thinks I couldn't, because my home is my sanctuary and I want that sanctuary to have certain things in it, including personal space and lots of storage!
One of the basic ways to maximize space in small spaces when you can't expand out is to go up. If you want a bookshelf but can't seem to find a place for it, build a shelf or a ledge higher up on the wall. If there are items that you are having difficulty finding storage for, like guitars or bags, consider hanging them on hooks. If you want your home to include fruit baskets or plants, there are ways to hang these from the wall or ceiling. If you are frustrated by the lack of cabinet space for your pans, consider a rack to hang them on. Even something as simple as a roll of paper towels can be hung up high and save you that extra bit of counter space. Additionally, having things up on the walls brings the eye higher and makes the space seem larger.
Open shelves are controversial in the kitchen because of the grease buildup and and having less-aesthetically pleasing pieces out in the open, but consider it for other rooms in your house. You can add a shelf in your bathroom to hold some of your most used items, or in your kids' room as a home to all the stuffed animals that roll around the room. Whether it be in the kitchen or any other room, having a few open shelves or an open pantry will give you ease of assess to what items you really love and use, and you can get rid of the rest. Plus, having your items out in the open instead of behind cabinet doors will encourage you to keep them organized.
One of the most commonly used spaces that I've seen tiny housers take advantage of is the space below the stairs. Almost all tiny houses have a loft situation where the bed is, and if there are stairs or a ladder with any bit of extra space underneath them, they are used to store books or clothes. If you have stairs in your home, start thinking about whether you can convert some of that space into storage. You know that bit of space below your kitchen cabinets? Those can be used as storage spaces, too, by creating an extra drawer for your miscellaneous items.
A piece of furniture that can do more than the one thing is invaluable in a small home. Whether it be benches with extra storage inside, a drawer that pulls out into a cutting board, a table that can also be used as a desk and coffee table, or a sofa that can be converted into an extra bed, living in a small space means thinking long and hard about the furniture that you choose. If something looks like it can provide extra storage or a space solution, it should.
Take a look at the storage space you do have, and think of how you can better use that space. If you do have shelves in your kitchen, multiply the utility by adding hooks to hang towels, pot holders or bigger utensils. Use the inside of cabinet doors to hang up cleaning supplies or plastic gloves. If you have drawers in your kitchen, consider expandable racks or slide out entries that can offer more space than the usual drawer. Take stock of your closet and use every bit of vertical space; hang clothes on the rack and maximize the space at the top or bottom by using storage boxes.
One of the main lessons that I come away with from tiny houses is that it's worth taking a moment to assess what you really need. After you do this, the next crucial step is to have a designated place for all of the items that you have deemed worthy to keep around. In a small space, you don't have the luxury of clutter, which means each thing must have its place. When organizing your home, take this lesson from tiny house residents and make sure to find a place for each of your items; this will save you time and future headaches about keeping your home neat and organized.
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0.998449 |
Do you always make pancake with white flour and top them off with butter and maple syrup? Why don't consider making some special and healthier version of pancake for your breakfast or brunch?
Oatmeal pancake is one of the best for a healthier flapjack. Oatmeal earned its reputation as a health smart food with its soluble fiber, which helps reduce bad cholesterol in the body. Adding the oats into this pancake recipe provides an extended source of energy.
Take a few minutes to try out any of these oatmeal pancake recipes. They are absolutely delicious.
Heat milk and stir in oatmeal. Let sit for 15 minutes, so that oatmeal absorbs the liquid.
In a small bowl, beat eggs into stiff foam and reserve.
In a large bowl, combine all the remaining ingredients. Stir in oatmeal/milk mixture and fold in egg. Mix with a whisk until thoroughly mixed.
Heat a griddle or large pan over medium high heat. Oil the pan with either a tablespoon of butter (or cooking oil).
Pour 1/4 of the batter onto hot pan for one pancake. Cook until bubbles form on the surface. Flip when edges starts to dry. Cook pancake until golden browned both sides. Repeat for the remaining oatmeal pancakes.
This heart-healthy version uses oatmeal flour instead of white flour which produces insulin spike. To make oatmeal flour, just put a cup or two of oatmeal into a food processor and blend it on high. Whir until the flakes turn into the consistency of flour.
Mix all the ingredients in a large bowl and whisk until thoroughly mixed.
Buttermilk is more easily digestible than whole milk and has less fat. Using buttermilk in this oatmeal pancake recipe provides light, fluffy, and flavorful pancakes.
Mix oats and buttermilk in a large bowl and let sit for at least 30 mins.
Mix in the remaining ingredients and whisk thoroughly.
Cook pancakes until browned on both sides.
Stir the dry ingredients all together in a large bowl to combine.
Add in milk and oil; stir to mix well.
Cook pancakes on a hot griddle or pan until browned on both sides.
Combine all ingredients and whisk thoroughly to form batter. Let the batter sit for 15 minutes.
Heat cooking pan and cook pancakes until both side browned.
You can have your own toppings for oatmeal pancake. Some suggestions including: maple syrups, sliced bananas, berries, or peanut butter.
Pancakes taste best right after they are made. So serve immediately once pancakes are cooked. Else, oatmeal pancakes can be kept warm in a preheated 200F degree oven.
If you've let the oats sit for long, you may need to add a little extra water to the batter to thin it out.
For high protein oatmeal pancakes: Add 1-2 scoops vanilla protein to batter, increase water.
For whole grain oatmeal pancakes: Replace quick oats with hot multigrain cereal. Prepare as directed.
For oatmeal pancake with berries: Add 1/4 cup blueberries to any oatmeal pancake recipe and omit cinnamon (if any).
For oatmeal pancake with nuts: Add 1 tablespoon diced pecans, walnuts, or almonds to any oatmeal pancake recipe.
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(CNN) - Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein called Russian interference in the 2016 US election "one tree in a growing forest" of malign cyber activity when he unveiled the Justice Department's Cyber-Digital Task Force report in his speech at the Aspen Security Forum on Thursday in Colorado.
Rosenstein made no mention in the speech of President Donald Trump's meeting Monday with Russian President Vladimir Putin and his subsequent flip-flopping on Russia's involvement in the 2016 election, but he did take aim at Russia's influence and strategies to protect against "malign foreign influence operations" and other cyber threats.
The Russian effort to influence the 2016 presidential election is "just one tree in a growing forest," Rosenstein said.
"Russian intelligence officers did not stumble onto the ideas of hacking American computers and posting misleading messages because they had a free afternoon," he added. "It is what they do every day."
He warned of a continued threat and the report highlighted five types of operations the government must counter: cyberattacks on election infrastructure such as voter registration databases and voting machines; targeted attacks on political organizations, campaigns and public officials; covert operations to help or hurt campaigns; the spread of disinformation on social media; and the use of lobbyists, foreign media and other organizations to influence lawmakers and the public.
"Russia's intelligence services conducted cyber operations against both major US political parties in 2016, and the recent indictment of Russian intelligence officers alleges a systematic effort to leak stolen campaign information," Rosenstein said.
"Do not underestimate the long arm of American law -- or the persistence of American law enforcement," Rosenstein said, pausing for applause. "People who thought they were safe under the protection of foreign governments when they committed crimes against America sometimes later find themselves in federal prisons."
"Foreign governments should not be secret participants, covertly spreading propaganda and fanning the flames of division," Rosenstein said.
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0.972711 |
George Herbert Walker Bush (June 12, 1924 - November 30, 2018) was an American statesman and Republican Party politician who served as the 41st President of the United States from 1989 to 1993; he earlier served as the 43rd Vice President of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He had also been a congressman, ambassador, and Director of Central Intelligence. During his career in public service, he was known simply as George Bush, but he was referred to as "George H. W. Bush", "Bush 41", or "George Bush Sr." after his son George W. Bush became the 43rd president in 2001.
Bush postponed his university studies after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, enlisted in the Navy on his 18th birthday, and became one of its youngest aviators. He served until September 1945, and then attended Yale University, graduating in 1948. He moved his family to West Texas where he entered the oil business and became a millionaire by the age of 40 in 1964. After founding his own oil company, Bush was defeated in his first run for the United States Senate in 1964, but won election to the House of Representatives from Texas's 7th congressional district in 1966. He was reelected in 1968 but was defeated for election to the Senate in 1970. In 1971, President Richard Nixon appointed Bush as ambassador to the United Nations, and he became Chairman of the Republican National Committee in 1973. The following year, President Gerald Ford appointed him Chief of the Liaison Office in China and later made him the director of Central Intelligence. Bush ran for president in 1980, was defeated in the Republican primary by Ronald Reagan, then as his running mate became vice-president after the ticket's election. During his eight-year tenure as vice president, Bush headed task forces on deregulation and the war on drugs.
Bush in 1988 defeated Democratic opponent Michael Dukakis, becoming the first incumbent vice president to be elected president in 152 years. Foreign policy drove the Bush presidency; military operations were conducted in Panama and the Persian Gulf, the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, and the Soviet Union dissolved two years later. Bush also signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which created a trade bloc consisting of the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Domestically, Bush reneged on a 1988 campaign promise and signed a bill to increase taxes. He lost the 1992 presidential election to Democrat Bill Clinton following an economic recession and the decreased importance of foreign policy in a post-Cold War political climate.
After leaving office in 1993, Bush was active in humanitarian activities, often alongside Clinton, his former opponent. With George W. Bush's victory in the 2000 presidential election, Bush and his son became the second father-son pair to serve as President, following John Adams and John Quincy Adams. Bush died on November 30, 2018, aged 94 years, 171 days, making him the longest-lived president in U.S. history.
[S17] Ancestry Family Trees, (Name: Name: Name: Name: Name: Name: Name: Name: Name: Name: Name: Onlinepublication - Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com. Original data: FamilyTree files submitted by Ancestry members.;;;;;;;;;;;), Ancestry Family Trees.
[S80] Ancestry Family Trees, (Name: Name: Online publication - Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com. Originaldata: Family Tree files submitted by Ancestry members.;;), Ancestry Family Trees.
[S80] Ancestry Family Trees, (Name: Name: Online publication - Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com. Originaldata: Family Tree files submitted by Ancestry members.;;), Database online.
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0.999865 |
Why would you want to optimize your collaboration with other divisions, functions, or companies?
Because it will feel good, reduce your workload, and give you leverage for the future!
Much of what is called teams in workplaces are merely groups. Groups whose behavior seems quite arbitrary and whose members don’t necessarily have any allegiance to each other. With lack of allegiance comes siloed thinking, the politics of power rather than the politics of accountability, and an underwhelming pace and quality of work.
But teams are different. A team is a collection of people who are mutually committed to the team itself and to achieving the team’s goals. Additionally, teams have a sense of mutual accountability, something groups usually don’t have.
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0.999998 |
Do you want to know more about cycling clothing accessories?
Accessories can become a key piece in a cyclist's kit and prevent possible injuries. They help complete the kit and the rest of the clothing and are used for different functions.
Among these accessories we find leg warmers, knee pads, arm sleeves and wrist guards, which help to reduce possible injuries that may be caused in the joints of the arms and knees or accelerate recovery if there is already discomfort. Earmuffs are also important to protect the ears from the cold and keep them insulated from the wind and other elements, such as grit or dust.
Helmets are one of the most important pieces of a cyclist's kit, but can end up being uncomfortable. That is why they can be worn with a seamless, breathable or thermal cap, to avoid direct contact with the head and also absorb sweat quickly.
Accessories make the practice of any of kind of cycling more comfortable and pleasant.
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0.999998 |
To Huck or not to Huck?
I play a lot of Ultimate Frisbee, a game akin to football in that there are end zones, but akin to soccer in that there is constant action until someone scores. In Ultimate, you can only advance by throwing the disc (so-called because we generally do not generally use Wham-O branded discs, which are called Frisbees). An incomplete pass or a pass out of bounds is a turnover, as is a "stall," where the offense holds the disc without throwing for more than 10 seconds.
In other words, in order for the offense to score, you need to complete passes until someone catches the disc in the end zone. The accepted method of doing this is to complete shorter, high-percentage passes. On a non-windy day, it seems fairly simple for at least one of your six teammates to get open and thus you can march down the field. Of course, one long pass, or "huck," can shortcut the process and give your team the quick score. Much like football, the huck is not typically done except in desperation (game almost over due to time or thrower almost stalled).
However, I am not at all sure this logic makes sense. Suppose you need six short passes to advance to a score. If your team completes short passes with a probability of 90%, you will score about 53% of the time (90% to the sixth power gives the chances of completing six passes in a row). In other words, as long as the chance of completing the huck is more than 53%, you would have a better chance of scoring with a huck.
Thus, the relative chances of scoring via the two methods depends on three things: 1) chance of completing a short pass, 2) chance of completing a huck, and 3) number of short passes needed for a score. The graph below shows the threshold huck completion rate (the rate at which it makes more sense to huck) for different short pass completion rates and always assuming 6 short passes is enough for a score and one huck is enough for a score.
In case it is difficult to see, at a 95% short pass completion rate, your huck percentage needs to be 74% in order for it to be better to huck. If your short pass completion rate is 50%, huck away unless your huck completion rate is less than 2%.
Of course, this simple analysis assumes 6 throws equals a score, and it also leaves out a number of other factors. For example, an incomplete huck confers a field advantage to the hucking team because the opposing team has to begin from the point of in-completion (as long as it was in-bounds). On the other hand, it may not take long for the opposing team to figure out the hucking strategy and play a zone style defense that will lower the hucking chances considerably.
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0.997766 |
Lets get cracking Install the Client In order to be able to use subversion, you need to install the client on your machine. SAMBA is particularly difficult in this respect.
Write an orbital diagram for sulfur Attempt to write a readonly database svn revert I assumed that apache would authenticate against that file first before passing the request onto modsvn to check the per-directory authentication. Is my working copy corrupt?
TertiaryFGData; Summary The reason I like to talk about talking about things like piecemeal restores, is that it gives us really good insight into how things work. If an invalid transaction ID is provided, a ProgrammingError will be raised.
If you're using http: The file should eventually be updated, to make it current with the public revision. If Subversion determines that the file is binary, the file receives an svn: You can download the code for this demo here: Not all network file sharing protocols support the locking that Subversion requires.
Doing so enables you to benefit from the latest still unreleased changes, help with testing and even development. That is a new transaction will be absolutely consistent. The best way to prevent this is to get your repository permissions and ownership set up correctly.
This is the most perilous part of the process, as it is here that changes you have made, might impact other people using the same repository.
The xid may be either an object returned by the xid method or a plain string: Two-Phase Commit protocol support for an introductory explanation of these methods. Also, users of the file: Open the database read-only: In fact, if you try to invoke it from the start menu, you will get: Make absolutely sure you disable all access to the repository before doing this by shutting down Apache, removing executable permissions from 'svn'.
When you attempt to perform an operation in subversion, the program tries to dynamically load a plugin based on the URL scheme.What operating systems does Subversion run on? ¶ All modern flavors of Unix, Windows, BeOS, OS/2, macOS.
Subversion is written in ANSI C and uses APR, the Apache Portable Runtime library, as a portability layer. The Subversion client will run anywhere APR runs, which is most places.
What is log4net? log4net is a tool to help the programmer output log statements to a variety of output targets.
In case of problems with an application, it is helpful to. babeltrace(1) - Convert or process one or more traces, and more babeltrace-convert(1) - Convert one or more traces babeltrace-help(1) - Get help for a Babeltrace plugin or component class babeltrace-list-plugins(1) - List Babeltrace plugins and their properties babeltrace-log(1) - Convert a Linux kernel ring buffer to a CTF trace babeltrace-query(1) - Query object from a component class.
When you import a repository at the command line, it changes the ownership and permissions of several files (including bistroriviere.com) so that. babeltrace(1) - Convert or process one or more traces, and more babeltrace-convert(1) - Convert one or more traces babeltrace-help(1) - Get help for a Babeltrace plugin or component class babeltrace-list-plugins(1) - List Babeltrace plugins and their properties babeltrace-log(1) - Convert a Linux kernel ring buffer to a CTF trace babeltrace-query(1) - Query object from a component class.
Why do I get sqlite error, “unable to open database file”? it gave me this error: attempt to write a readonly database. Which made sense.
So I edited the permissions on the file, so that the Apache process had write permissions. However, instead of it being able to write, I get this cryptic error: SVN Checkin Failure(sqlite[S5.
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0.999984 |
The essay is an in depth analysis of legalization of drugs and its negative consequences in the city of Philadelphia. Historically, the United States of America has found it self between a hard rock and a stone when it comes to the issues of drugs especially the illegal ones. There are those who strongly argue for legalization of such drugs but on the other hand, groups of individual stongly refute legalization of drugs. Both sides are worth noting have very strong supporting arguments. It is worth noting from the onset that the issue to legalize drugs in various American states has a long history (Kallen, 2005). However, due to the serious negative consequences of doing so are clear, there is need to bring them in light for all stakeholders to be aware of.
Globally, only ten countries do allow usage of such drug as marijuana but in limited amounts, similarly several countries including the United States (fourteen states), Canada, and Australia among others have allowed consumption of marijuana for medical purposes. Drug consumption is associated with curbing stress; this creates problems and more solution which in turns generate more problems to human race.
There are a myriad of negative impacts that will be generated as a result of legalizing drugs in the City of Philadelphia and can be broadly classified into socially, economically, politically and partly environmentally. It is worth remembering the fact that drug kingpins will definitely continue to gain a lot of cash from the insatiable appetite of Americans for illicit drugs if such drugs are legalized. Going by what is happening in other countries for instance Mexico and Colombia, then the evil empires built by the emerging multinational criminal consortiums seem to threaten the existing authority of government, if legalize, then Philadelphia authority and the USA government at large risk losing authority over its subjects.
Although it is argued that a lot of revenue will be generated when drugs such as marijuana are legalized, the fact speaks for them since as at 2009, there were about 102 million American who used marijuana (Husak & De Marneffe, 2005). Legalizing it then will see to it that there is an upsurge in number of Americans who use the drug especially from Philadelphia city. This coupled with the health complications associated with such drugs will make citizen who use them to seek medical attention, the increased number will insert a lot of pressure on the existing healthcare facilities this thus means less resources per individual hence poor medical services to Americans.
It has also been brought forth that legalization of illicit drugs such as marijuana will see to it that more American consumes the drug making them addicted to it. Medicine has shown as that such addiction in most cases make the human body to yearn for more harder drugs and this will mean that American will indulge themselves in consumption of such drugs as heroine, cocaine, hashish among others which usually have very serious health complications to human health.
Taking the case of California to support the negative implication of legalizing drugs, it came to the notice of the city municipalities that mature marijuana do produce an odor smell that make citizens uncomfortable. Additionally, growing of such plant will bring about criminal activities such as theft among others. Due to availability of market, individual will engage in stealing the product from firms.
On the same note, it is worth noting that at present, most crime associated with drug use such as heroin, cocaine and marijuana for instance murder and kidnapping are confine at the border between United States of America and Mexico. This will change immediately such drugs are legalized especially in a city like Philadelphia (Kallen, 2005). Legalization thus means that various criminal acts and social evils experiences at the border will definitely flow into the heart of the country.
There is also another problem that is linked with legalization of illicit drugs. Since it is very clear that the business is a multi-billion business, an extensive and intensive campaign to reach as many as possible consumers will completely spoilt the whole city and probably the country as it will try to justify that marijuana consumption is not bad. This will generate a society that is fully negatively impacted health wise, politically, socially and economically.
Numerous studies have been done concerning the effects of marijuana to student's performance. The finding is very clear that those student who consume drugs especially marijuana perform poorly as compared to their counterpart who do not use drugs. The rationale behind this is that the drug impact negatively in the cognitive behavior which influences learning, short-term memory (Husak & De Marneffe, 2005). Additionally, there will be a lot of problems in trying to harmonize state laws and federal laws as the later is very clear on drugs.
Similarly, studies have shown that individual who consumes drugs such as marijuana in most cases tends to become relaxed and lazy. This implies that, if legalized, then most of the city's population will not be active in contributing to our economy. Additionally, sitting back pose a health hazard as there are chances of the victims being obese which is accompanied by serious heart disease that are fatal.
From the review of the concept of legalizing drug in Philadelphia, although there are medical grounds on doing the same, the serious negative implication it will bring to the society such as increase drug use, increased crime, and poor academic performance among others makes one to things twice before even supporting legalization of illicit drugs.
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Prevailing scholarly opinion holds that modern science began with the great achievements of the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Modern science should not, however, be identified with any particular set of scientific achievements. Rather, modern science should be identified with a particular way of approaching the study of nature, and many important elements of this approach were already in place and articulated as early as the fourteenth century. Jean Buridan, a prominent fourteenth-century Parisian scholar, argued that science is predicated on the assumption of the “common course of nature” This profound assumption represented a major shift in scholarly focus from the theological investigation of the uncommon or miraculous to the attempted explanation of the regular structure and operation of the world in purely rational and secular terms. Buridan also advocated the application of Occam’s razor, the principle that science should seek the simplest possible explanation that fits the evidence. The one important ingredient of modern science that was missing prior to the sixteenth century was the widespread use of experiments, and the scientific revolution of the sixteenth century began when scientists started to use experiments to discover new answers to questions that had already been pondered for several centuries.
Could you explain me the answer choice of question 1 that is A . I marked answer choice C and would like to know that why is it wrong ?
Prevailing scholarly opinion holds that modern science began with the great achievements of the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
That is the "scholarly viewpoint". The author does not entirely agree with this--in other word, he "qualifies" it. In effect, he says, "It's true in this respect, but not in that respect."
Much of the argument does "delineate the historical events," but the author is not doing this to to demonstrate what lead to a change in that view. Quite the opposite, that scholarly view is already well-established and presented as a fait accompli at the beginning. The list of historical event is part of this authors attempt, not refute the scholarly view, but to "qualify" it.
Choice (A) involves a very tricky secondary meaning of the verb "to qualify." In this sense, it means "to limit or modify the truth, power, or meaning of"
Suppose someone says, "Candidate J is the best candidate ever! He will save the world!" That's whole-hearted support. This first speaker is 100% behind candidate J.
Suppose someone else say, "Candidate J is overall a good candidate. He is strong on issues A, B, and C, but weaker on issues X, Y, and Z." This is qualified support. This second speaker is still behind Candidate J, but less than 100%.
Suppose someone make an argument: "X always leads to Y." This first speaker presents the argument as 100% true.
If someone else shows the argument is 100% false, he has refuted the argument. That's hard to do.
If yet someone else demonstrates that the argument is usually true, say 85% of the time, but that sometimes it's not true under certain conditions, then this person has qualified the argument.
To refute an argument is extreme: that is to go from white to black.
To qualify an argument is to introduce nuance--to offset the white with shades of gray.
Major shift from the previous theological position, not from the "prevailing scholarly opinion".
"Prevailing scholarly opinion holds that modern science began with the great achievements of the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries."
"Modern science should not, however, be identified with any particular set of scientific achievements."
See the shift, in the first paragraph we talk about when the scientific revolution BEGAN, not HOW IT WAS IDENTIFIED.
The author is not contradicting the "Prevailing scholarly opinion", simply adding something he/she, for some reason, wants to say about how it.
"Modern science should be identified with a particular way of approaching the study of nature, and many important elements of this approach were already in place and articulated as early as the fourteenth century. ...".
He is not in any way contradicting that modern science begun in the 16-17th century, is simply saying "look remember how you got there".
The one important ingredient of modern science that was missing prior to the sixteenth century was the widespread use of experiments, and the scientific revolution of the sixteenth century began when scientists started to use experiments to discover new answers to questions that had already been pondered for several centuries.
You can see how throughout the argument he's not saying that there had been any kind of change in the opinion of scholars, and not even that there should be. The author is simply stating that we shouldn't forget how the scientists from the 16th and 17th century were able to start experimenting, leading the way for modern science.
Can someone explain how to choose. What exactly does option A mean ?
Between A & C the point is simply that there's no change involved, the author simply qualifies (or better defines) a position, but has no interest in changing it.
DensetsuNo Can you help eliminate option B here? I would also like to understand what "qualify" means in the correct answer A. What I know is that on the GMAT land in CR questions, "qualify" means "to restrict something". Is it used synonymously here?
No, Qualify here means to strengthen what the Prevailing scholarly opinion is.
The passage starts with their opinion and then tries to condemn it by saying revolution should be linked with way of approaching the study of nature which happened in the 14th century. Then using Buridan's theory it suggests that revolution began when scientists started to use experiments to discover new answers to questions that had already been pondered for several centuries. Hence, Strengthening what the Prevailing scholarly opinion is. Hence, I can also say it qualifies their opinion. Hence, A.
Keats, you can understand that the author isn't just summarizing from this sentence: "Modern science should not, however, be", you can see how he is not just making a summary but he's trying to convey some sort of opinion, some sort of "the way things should be considered".
Prevailing scholarly opinion holds that modern science began with the great achievements of the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Modern science should not, however, be identified with any particular set of scientific achievements. Rather, modern science should be identified with a particular way of approaching the study of nature, and many important elements of this approach were already in place and articulated as early as the fourteenth century. Jean Buridan, a prominent fourteenth-century Parisian scholar, argued that science is predicted on the assumption of the “common course of nature” This profound assumption represented a major shift in scholarly focus from the theological investigation of the uncommon or miraculous to the attempted explanation of the regular structure and operation of the world in purely rational and secular terms. Buridan also advocated the application of Occam’s razor, the principle that science should seek the simplest possible explanation that fits the evidence. The one important ingredient of modern science that was missing prior to the sixteenth century was the widespread use of experiments, and the scientific revolution of the sixteenth century began when scientists started to use experiments to discover new answers to questions that had already been pondered for several centuries.
The author in the passage states that "Modern science should not, however, be identified with any particular set of scientific achievements. Rather, modern science should be identified with a particular way of approaching the study of nature, and many important elements of this approach were already in place and articulated as early as the fourteenth century." Isn't he implying that the prevailing opinion that holds that modern science began with the great achievements of the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is not entirely correct? How can A be the answer? Please clarify this..
"Jean Buridan, a prominent fourteenth-century Parisian scholar, argued that science is predicted on the assumption of the “common course of nature” This profound assumption represented a major shift in scholarly focus from the theological investigation of the uncommon or miraculous to the attempted explanation of the regular structure and operation of the world in purely rational and secular terms."
It says that there was a change in the view from theoretical investigation to the practical one. And after these lines, the author is strengthening the same. So, A is correct.
3) It can be inferred from the passage that the author would be most likely to agree with which of the following statements concerning modem science?
A) The use of experiments is the crucial factor enabling scientists to engage in what can properly be described as modem science.
B) A certain set of scientific achievements had to be accomplished before scientists could engage in modem science.
C) The scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries marks the beginning of what should be considered modem science.
D) The origins of modern science can be traced back to the articulation of a particular approach to the study of nature.
While I got this wrong in my CAT (i marked A), i am convinced that option D is the correct answer.
Option A is a great trap - if you skim thru the option as "the use of experiments is the crucial factor enabling scientists...described as modern science", you will most certainly go ahead with it as it draws parallel from the passage "The one important ingredient of modern science was the widespread use of experiments,..."
Option C clearly is the correct answer. Read from the passage "Rather, modern science should be identified with a particular way of approaching the study of nature, and many important elements of this approach were already in place and articulated as early as the 14th century."
Important lesson learnt - give enough time to each question; don't just rush thru it! No skimming the passage / No skimming the answer choices!
DensetsuNo, Can you explain why A is wrong? Yes, the passage mentions: "The one important ingredient of modern science was the widespread use of experiments..." Which part of A is not right?
According to DensetsuNo previous explanation, the author agrees that the prevailing scholarly opinion that modern science began with the great achievements of ... . He further explains how modern science should be identified. The author's explanation on how modern science should be identified is an addition (restrict form) to the prevailing scholarly opinion.
OA is D, but I chose A.
In the passage, it says: The one important ingredient of modern science that was missing prior to the sixteenth century was the widespread use of experiments, and the scientific revolution of the sixteenth century began when scientists started to use experiments to discover new answers to questions that had already been pondered for several centuries.
Seems like A would be pretty straight-forward?
Choice (A) is a brilliant trap answer and choice (D) is correct.
The wording of (A) is tricky. If (A) had been, "The use of experiments is crucial in modern science as we now understand it," then that would be slam-dunk correct, although a little outside of the content of the passage. The passage is about when the worldview known as modern science can into being. The author begins by saying, "Prevailing scholarly opinion holds that modern science began with the great achievements of the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries." In the very next sentence, though, we get "however," a big logical shift. The author things modern scientific thought began earlier, and he cites Jean Buridan (1295-1363) as an example of someone who understood an important part of modern scientific thought. The author make clear that the emphasis on experiments came a few centuries later, so Buridan was an example of someone who was able, at least to some extent, to "engage in what can properly be described as modem science" without the experimental perspective. Thus, the author actually would disagree with (A)--it contradicts the main argument he makes in the passage!
"The origins of modern science can be traced back to the articulation of a particular approach to the study of nature."
Thus, (A) is a tempting trap, but (D) is the best answer.
Please add this question to the passage.
Many thanks for your exhaustive explanation to the inference problem. However, I feel more confused when I combine this question with the main idea problem.
I know what "qualify" means, ie. partially but not completely accept a point of view. But I simply can't see even any sign that the author should agree on the "scholarly opinion", which is "modern science began with the great achievements of the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. "
second, modern science began in "fourteenth century" rather than "sixteenth and seventeenth centuries"
So neither the subject nor the time coincides with author's view. And plus, as you previously mentioned the sentence "Modern science should not, however, be identified with..." suggests a "qualify", but I seem to have seen such tune in a lot of passages and the "should not" seems more likely to imply a diametric opposition, doesn't it?
Would you please help to further explain what on earth the author "partially accept" ? Thanks for your time !
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0.999986 |
There have been major changes in the way doctors check for breast cancers. A breast examination is considered to do more harm than good, as women have lumpy breasts at the best of times – so too many unecessary biopsies and Xrays are undertaken. The same results from women doing a self examination, which also no longer recommended by the experts.
This is no longer recommended by any of the reputable medical organizations. This is because women’s breasts tend to be lumpy, and so women will often find lumps. This leads to unnecessary investigations, Xrays, Biopsies and anxiety and stress, until women know whether it is benign or not.
Breast cancer is a common cause of cancer morbidity and mortality in women. Breast self-examination (examination of the breasts by the individual) or clinical breast examination (examination of the breasts by a doctor or a nurse) have been promoted for many years as screening methods to diagnose breast cancer at an early stage, in order to decrease the risk of dying from breast cancer. This review searched for well-designed trials that assessed these methods and found two large population-based studies involving 388,535 women who compared breast self-examination with no intervention. The review of data from these trials did not find a beneficial effect of screening in terms of improvement in breast cancer mortality. The trials showed that women who were randomised to breast self-examination were almost twice as likely to undergo a biopsy of the breast, with 3406 biopsies performed in the screening group compared to 1856 biopsies in the control group. The only large population-based trial of clinical breast examination combined with breast self-examination that was identified was discontinued. This was because of poor compliance with follow up and no conclusions can be drawn from the study.
Some women will continue with breast self-examination or will wish to be taught the technique. We suggest that the lack of supporting evidence from the two major studies should be discussed with these women to enable them to make an informed decision. Women should, however, be aware of any breast changes. It is possible that increased breast awareness may have contributed to the decrease in mortality from breast cancer that has been noted in some countries. Women should, therefore, be encouraged to seek medical advice if they detect any change in their breasts that may be breast cancer.
Screening for breast cancer: an update for the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. 2009.
Mammography screening reduces breast cancer mortality for women aged 39 to 69 years; data are insufficient for older women. False-positive mammography results and additional imaging are common. No benefit has been shown for clinical breast examination or breast self-examination.
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0.999997 |
Create new coffee ideas that enable coffee to fit into people’s life in a meaningful way in 2030!
Give a one-page presentation including text and images to present your idea. Please indicate the trends you have chosen in your description.
Historically, coffee is one of the oldest and most popular beverages on Earth. Since its origins in the 15th century to today’s Millennials, people have been drinking coffee. The world of coffee spans an incredibly rich variety of crops, cultivation, preparation, service formats and consumption.
NESTLÉ loves coffee, and it works tirelessly to delight people with a large variety of coffee products across its brands: NESPRESSO, NESCAFÉ Classic, NESCAFÉ Gold, NESCAFÉ 3-in1 mixes, NESCAFÉ Azera, NESCAFÉ Dolce-Gusto, Blue Bottle Coffee, and Chameleon cold brew coffee.
These brands have innovated in their own ways, to continuously please consumers more and more. Coffee has evolved & adapted to the times, across generations & cultures, but now NESTLÉ wants to explode the depth, rate and meaningfulness of innovation as it looks towards 2030. NESTLÉ wants to harness your creativity to help them imagine what the future of coffee is in 2030?
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0.945504 |
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, and so forth. A notational symbol that represents a number is called a numeral. In addition to their use in counting and measuring, numerals are often used for labels (as with telephone numbers), for ordering (as with serial numbers), and for codes (as with ISBNs). In common usage, number may refer to a symbol, a word, or a mathematical abstraction.
In mathematics, the notion of number has been extended over the centuries to include 0, negative numbers, rational numbers such as 1/2 and -2/3, real numbers such as √2 and π, and complex numbers, which extend the real numbers by adding a square root of −1. Calculations with numbers are done with arithmetical operations, the most familiar being addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and exponentiation. Their study or usage is called arithmetic. The same term may also refer to number theory, the study of the properties of numbers.
Besides their practical uses, numbers have cultural significance throughout the world. For example, in Western society the number 13 is regarded as unlucky, and "a million" may signify "a lot." Though it is now regarded as pseudoscience, numerology, the belief in a mystical significance of numbers, permeated ancient and medieval thought. Numerology heavily influenced the development of Greek mathematics, stimulating the investigation of many problems in number theory which are still of interest today.
Numbers should be distinguished from numerals, the symbols used to represent numbers. Boyer showed that Egyptians created the first ciphered numeral system. Greeks followed by mapping their counting numbers onto Ionian and Doric alphabets. The number five can be represented by digit "5" or by the Roman numeral "Ⅴ". Notations used to represent numbers are discussed in the article numeral systems. An important development in the history of numerals was the development of a positional system, like modern decimals, which have many advantages, such as representing large numbers with only a few symbols. The Roman numerals require extra symbols for larger numbers.
Different types of numbers have many different uses. Numbers can be classified into sets, called number systems, such as the natural numbers and the real numbers. The same number can be written in many different ways. For different methods of expressing numbers with symbols, such as the Roman numerals, see numeral systems.
The negative of a positive integer is defined as a number that produces 0 when it is added to the corresponding positive integer. Negative numbers are usually written with a negative sign (a minus sign). As an example, the negative of 7 is written −7, and 7 + (−7) = 0. When the set of negative numbers is combined with the set of natural numbers (including 0), the result is defined as the set of integers, Z also written . Here the letter Z comes from German Zahl, meaning "number". The set of integers forms a ring with the operations addition and multiplication.
The real numbers include all the measuring numbers. The symbol for the real numbers is R, also written as . Real numbers are usually represented by using decimal numerals, in which a decimal point is placed to the right of the digit with place value 1. Each digit to the right of the decimal point has a place value one-tenth of the place value of the digit to its left. For example, 123.456 represents 123456/1000, or, in words, one hundred, two tens, three ones, four tenths, five hundredths, and six thousandths. A finite decimal representation allows us to represent exactly only the integers and those rational numbers whose denominators have only prime factors which are factors of ten. Thus one half is 0.5, one fifth is 0.2, one tenth is 0.1, and one fiftieth is 0.02. To represent the rest of the real numbers requires an infinite sequence of digits after the decimal point. Since it is impossible to write infinitely many digits, real numbers are commonly represented by rounding or truncating this sequence, or by establishing a pattern, such as 0.333..., with an ellipsis to indicate that the pattern continues. Thus 123.456 is an approximation of any real number between 1234555/10000 and 1234565/10000 (rounding) or any real number between 123456/1000 and 123457/1000 (truncation). Negative real numbers are written with a preceding minus sign: -123.456.
(the square root of 2, that is, the positive number whose square is 2).
Just as the same fraction can be written in more than one way, the same decimal may have more than one representation. 1.0 and 0.999... are two different decimal numerals representing the natural number 1. There are infinitely many other ways of representing the number 1, for example 1.00, 1.000, and so on.
Every real number is either rational or irrational. Every real number corresponds to a point on the number line. The real numbers also have an important but highly technical property called the least upper bound property.
When a real number represents a measurement, there is always a margin of error. This gives rise to rounding or truncating a decimal, so that digits that suggest a greater accuracy than the measurement itself can grant are removed. The remaining digits are called significant digits. For example, measurements with a ruler can seldom be made without a margin of error of at least 0.001 meters. If the sides of a rectangle are measured as 1.23 meters and 4.56 meters, then multiplication gives an area for the rectangle between 5.614591 square meters and 5.603011 square meters. Since not even the second digit after the decimal place is preserved, the following digits are fully insignificant. Therefore, sensibly, the result is usually rounded to 5.61.
It can be shown that any ordered field, which is also complete, is isomorphic to the real numbers. The real numbers are not, however, an algebraically closed field, because they do not include a solution (often addressed as the square root of minus one) to the algebraic equation .
In abstract algebra, the complex numbers are an example of an algebraically closed field, meaning that every polynomial with complex coefficients can be factored into linear factors. Like the real number system, the complex number system is a field and is complete, but unlike the real numbers, it is not ordered. That is, there is no consistent meaning assignable to saying that i is greater than 1, nor is there any meaning in saying that i is less than 1. In technical terms, the complex numbers lack of a total order that is compatible with field operations.
A prime number is an integer greater than 1 that is not the product of two smaller positive integers. The first few prime numbers are 2, 3, 5, 7, and 11. The prime numbers have been widely studied for more than 2000 years and have led to many questions, only some of which have been answered. The study of these questions is called number theory. An example of a question that is still unanswered is whether every even number is the sum of two primes. This is called Goldbach's conjecture.
Some number systems that are not included in the complex numbers may be constructed from the real numbers in a way that generalize the construction of the complex numbers. They are sometimes called hypercomplex numbers. They include the quaternions H, introduced by Sir William Rowan Hamilton, in which multiplication is not commutative, and the octonions, in which multiplication is not associative.
The use of 0 as a number should be distinguished from its use as a placeholder numeral in place-value systems. Many ancient texts used 0. Babylonian (Modern Iraq) and Egyptian texts used it. Egyptians used the word nfr to denote zero balance in double entry accounting entries. Indian texts used a Sanskrit word Shunye or shunya to refer to the concept of void. In mathematics texts this word often refers to the number zero.
The late Olmec people of south-central Mexico began to use a true zero (a shell glyph) in the New World possibly by the 4th century BC but certainly by 40 BC, which became an integral part of Maya numerals and the Maya calendar. Mayan arithmetic used base 4 and base 5 written as base 20. Sanchez in 1961 reported a base 4, base 5 "finger" abacus.
An early documented use of the zero by Brahmagupta (in the Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta) dates to 628. He treated 0 as a number and discussed operations involving it, including division. By this time (the 7th century) the concept had clearly reached Cambodia as Khmer numerals, and documentation shows the idea later spreading to China and the Islamic world.
The earliest known use of irrational numbers was in the Indian Sulba Sutras composed between 800 and 500 BC. The first existence proofs of irrational numbers is usually attributed to Pythagoras, more specifically to the Pythagorean Hippasus of Metapontum, who produced a (most likely geometrical) proof of the irrationality of the square root of 2. The story goes that Hippasus discovered irrational numbers when trying to represent the square root of 2 as a fraction. However Pythagoras believed in the absoluteness of numbers, and could not accept the existence of irrational numbers. He could not disprove their existence through logic, but he could not accept irrational numbers, so he sentenced Hippasus to death by drowning.
The 16th century brought final European acceptance of negative integral and fractional numbers. By the 17th century, mathematicians generally used decimal fractions with modern notation. It was not, however, until the 19th century that mathematicians separated irrationals into algebraic and transcendental parts, and once more undertook scientific study of irrationals. It had remained almost dormant since Euclid. In 1872, the publication of the theories of Karl Weierstrass (by his pupil Kossak), Heine (Crelle, 74), Georg Cantor (Annalen, 5), and Richard Dedekind was brought about. In 1869, Méray had taken the same point of departure as Heine, but the theory is generally referred to the year 1872. Weierstrass's method was completely set forth by Salvatore Pincherle (1880), and Dedekind's has received additional prominence through the author's later work (1888) and endorsement by Paul Tannery (1894). Weierstrass, Cantor, and Heine base their theories on infinite series, while Dedekind founds his on the idea of a cut (Schnitt) in the system of real numbers, separating all rational numbers into two groups having certain characteristic properties. The subject has received later contributions at the hands of Weierstrass, Kronecker (Crelle, 101), and Méray.
↑ "Historia Matematica Mailing List Archive: Re: [HM] The Zero Story: a question". Sunsite.utk.edu. 1999-04-26. Retrieved 2012-01-30.
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0.998722 |
Building as a property investment option: 5 reasons why building is a better real estate investment option.
There are a number of advantages when building a new home, as opposed to renovating. Demolishing and rebuilding is often more cost-effective than renovating an old home, which, in turn, will give you a greater return on investment.
Before you make any sort of decision, it’s important to consider a number of factors that will impact how much money you can save and make from your property in the long run.
Budget blow-outs are synonymous with renovating, particularly if the house is old or the renovations are extensive. More often than not, you’ll be faced with hidden issues and unknowns, as renovating generally involves working around the existing structure. For example, you may have to implement more structural steel in the roof or footings, or upgrade the footings to take certain loads, especially if you’re considering a second-storey.
Renovating can also mean signing up to a cost-plus contract, by which you agree to pay the contractor the actual cost of the work, plus a fee (the fee may be a lump sum or a percentage of the cost of the work). This presents uncertainty because the final cost cannot be easily determined until the renovations are finished.
On the contrary, building a new home involves fixed-price contracts, so you have a much better idea of what you’re up for. Building a home from scratch is much more cost-efficient than renovating; there are less upfront costs, and less time and effort you need to devote to unforseen maintenance issues.
Renovating as an investment option presents a unique set of problems, especially if you decide to continue living in your home. It can be disruptive and inconvenient, particularly if you work full-time and/or raising a family. Sidestepping mud, dealing with missing walls and open-roof structures after you come home from a long day at work is never fun.
Building a house from scratch helps avoid the stress and toll renovations can have on your family, long after the dust has settled.
Matching up new and old materials to renovate a house can prove to be incredibly difficult. There is an enormous disparity between newer materials available in the current market and older resources that may or may not be in production any longer. This means you may end up compromising with inferior materials, leading to a sub-standard renovation.
An example that springs to mind is a two-storey renovation. If your existing house has footings which don’t cater for a double brick construction, then you’re forced to opt for a lightweight build. This results in a framed construction which means you won’t be able to add bricks to the top floor. The compromise is using boarding or sheeting instead, which often doesn’t match the rest of the home.
When you’re building a new home, you can be guaranteed that it’s more energy efficient and structurally safer than its old or renovated counterparts.
All new homes abide by standards and codes, and carry a 6 star energy efficiency rating. If we were to run an efficiency checklist through established properties, we’d find that most of them wouldn’t comply.
Compared to renovated homes, the ongoing running costs are much less for a new build. They are not only less susceptible to termites, but easier to maintain and much more energy efficient.
5. What’s old is new again. Or is it?
When it comes to deciding whether to build or renovate, the million dollar question invariably involves the battle between cost of renovating and the improved value of the property.
Renovations have long been considered a ‘bandaid’ solution – trying to adapt an older existing structure to a newer facade doesn’t always work. By renovating, you don’t cater for the wider market nor do you get the full value out of it when you’re merely adding to an older dwelling.
In the case of return on investment, the sense of a lived-in home can attract fewer buyers – some of whom are not always willing to pay the market price. On the other hand, a new home has far more appeal to a ripe market, many of whom are after a modern build and functional design layout. Building from scratch guarantees you a newer structure that keeps up with current trends and, more often than not, promises greater equity value.
It’s important to note that building and renovating have their own place. Building a new home can prove to be a more profitable decision in the long-term for developers and investors. On the contrary, renovating is often a lifestyle choice that enables you to hang onto a property worth its weight in sentimental value, or allow you to stay in your suburb of choice. However, it’s important to note that turning something old into ‘new’ does not always guarantee a return on the value of what you spent on the project.
Ventura Developments and Multi Living Developments offer a free consultation service so you can see if developing is an option for you. Call (08) 9241 1600.
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0.938966 |
Bill Henderson was born in 1947 in Dallas, Texas, and was raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He enlisted in the U.S. Air Force Reserve on April 23, 1969, and entered Officer Training School at Lackland AFB, Texas, on July 3, 1969. Henderson was commissioned a 2nd Lt on September 29, 1969, and then attended Undergraduate Pilot Training at Vance AFB, Oklahoma, where he was awarded his pilot wings in December 1970. Lt Henderson first completed F-100 Super Sabre Combat Crew Training at Luke AFB, Arizona, and then went through OV-10 Bronco training before deploying to Southeast Asia in October 1971. He served with the 23rd Tactical Air Support Squadron at Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai AFB, Thailand, from October 1971 until he was forced to eject over South Vietnam during a rescue mission and was taken as a Prisoner of War on April 3, 1972. After spending 359 days in captivity, Capt Henderson was released during Operation Homecoming on March 27, 1973. He was briefly hospitalized to recover from his injuries at Wright Patterson AFB, Ohio, and he left active duty on December 18, 1973. Capt Henderson left the Air Force Reserve on April 22, 1975.
For the period July 1972 to March 1973: This officer distinguished himself by outstanding achievement in a position of leadership while detained as a Prisoner of War in North Vietnam during the above period. This officer performed duties dealing in highly classified material while under constant surveillance of the enemy. He generated new ideas and improvised new techniques which greatly enhanced covert operations. His outstanding performance and dedication to duty reflected great credit upon himself and the United States Air Force.
Lt Henderson with his OV-10 Bronco during the Vietnam War.
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0.958511 |
The Virginia Cavaliers are fresh off their first-ever ?national championship victory, having taken down Texas Tech in overtime. Many expected the Cavs to lose some key players to the NBA Draft during the offseason, but that may not be the case after all.
Point guard Ty Jerome posted a video to Instagram, showing highlights of the team's championship campaign. The interesting part comes in the comment section, where teammate DeAndre Hunter expressed interest in returning to Virginia for his senior season. Jerome responded saying, "@drehunter_ I'm doing whatever you do big bro."
Could both of Virginia's stars be back to wreak havoc in the ACC for one more season? Hunter and Jerome were two of Virginia's best players and their return to the program would likely make the Cavs' favorites to win the NCAA Tournament once more.
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0.999813 |
Are there large lingering European emissions of the important ozone-depleting gas methyl chloroform (1,1,1-trichloroethane)?
Long term data from Mace Head (Ireland) and Jungfraujoch (Switzerland) show that annual European emissions of methyl chloroform did not exceed 3,400 tons between 2000 and 2003, as published in Nature on February 3, 2005. Methyl chloroform is one of the ozone depleting substances phased out under the Montreal Protocol. The data in this manuscript revise published European emission estimates of more than 20,000 tons per year from two short-term campaigns, which had raised questions about the implementation of the Montreal protocol and under-reporting of emissions by the EU member states. Although present emissions are still high for a compound forbidden beginning a decade ago, they can be explained by small-scale illegal usage from storage and potential emissions from waste dumping sites.
Accurate estimation of methyl chloroform emissions is not only important in relation to ozone decline, but also is used for the estimation of the hydroxyl-radical (OH) in the atmosphere, whose average global concentrations cannot be determined by direct measurements. The revised estimated European emissions of methyl chloroform are compatible with fluctuating OH radical concentrations in recent decades but no significant long-term trend.
Article: Low European methyl chloroform emissions inferred from long-term atmospheric measurements. Reimann, S., A.J. Manning, P.G. Simmonds, D.M. Cunnold, R.H.J. Wang, J. Li, A. McCulloch, R.G. Prinn, J. Huang, R.F. Weiss, P.F. Fraser, S. O'Doherty, B.R. Greally, K. Stemmler, M. Hill, and D. Folini, (2005), Nature 433: 506-508 (doi:10.1038/nature03220).
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0.984742 |
After liftoff, while climbing to a height of 10 feet, the left engine misfired. The airplane banked left, causing the left wing to struck the ground. Upon impact, six feet of the left wing were sheared off. The pilot-in-command continued to climb, completed a downwind circuit and made an uneventful landing. There were no injuries but the aircraft was considered as damaged beyond repair.
The left engine misfired on takeoff due to the presence of water in the fuel lines.
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0.998498 |
Luxury tourism, what do travellers expect?
The luxury travel is not just a set of high-level material benefits but it is increasing becoming a unique and personal experience in which the tourist is the only protagonist and every desire prepares to come true.
These travellers mainly belong to the X generation, they are couples between the ages of 36 and 55 who usually book two or three trips a year (in many cases even 4) that last from 7 to 10 days.
Those who choose a luxury trip are averagely able to spend from 5 thousand up to 15 thousand euros and choose their destination based on the destination. The favourite accommodations are among exclusive boutique hotels and hotels belonging to large international chains.
The luxury traveller is well informed but very often organizes the journey offline and uses the network only to gather information on places and facilities. Really attentive to the budget, the luxury traveller is attentive to value for money and to added value and is also attracted by everything that is eco-sustainable.
On holiday, he seeks comfort and relaxation, he loves exploring the places he arrives in but he prefers private tours and culinary experiences.
Uniqueness, exclusivity and customization are the three words that best describe what has become the luxury journey in recent years, a tailor-made experience that follows dreams and desires.
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0.999996 |
Kim Hollis: The Hangover, a Warner Bros. comedy starring absolutely no one famous (except maybe Mike Tyson), opened to a remarkable $45.0 million. How do you explain this breakout success?
Josh Spiegel: I think that there are a few things that pushed The Hangover to such a great weekend. First of all, the marketing team at Warner Bros. deserves a collective pat on the back. Despite the fact that the film doesn't star any major celebrities (though most people may easily recognize the faces of Bradley Cooper and Ed Helms), there have been scads of TV ads, trailers, and posters all over the country. Also, the critical response was generally pretty good for the film; maybe not as strong as it was for Star Trek or Up, but still, the overall consensus was that, for a raunchy time at the movies, The Hangover is best. Moreover, the ads teased some of the better gags and reinforced the mystery that drives the plot. Though it's too early to tell how good this film's legs will be, this is a flat-out success all around.
Scott Lumley: There was a really positive vibe coming off this film for a while now, and marketing for this was EVERYWHERE. I think this may have been the most advertised film I've seen in a while with the exception of the Dark Knight last year. I think the studio recognized that this film was even better than they hoped, really cheaply produced and decided to put some major muscle behind it in the marketing department.
Pete Kilmer: The marketing and advertising on this was perfect for this type of film. Plus having the money shot of Tyson knocking the guy out showed that this was going to be a crazy movie.
Max Braden: Twenty-five years ago this would have been called Bachelor Party, which was a favorite then, so it's not surprising that The Hangover would do well, but it did about twice what I was expecting. What's even more impressive is that this is the type of movie Will Ferrell and Danny McBride might have been cast in, and yet they get beaten in the same weekend. Thinking back to Paul Blart's success, appealing to guys with sloppy guy humor seems to be the trick.
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0.988348 |
I've got this ominous feeling that 2018 could be the year that everything changes dramatically. The incredible breakthroughs we saw in 2017 for deep learning will carry over in a very powerful way in 2018. A lot of work coming from the 2017s research will migrate into everyday software applications.
As I did last year, I've compiled a list of predictions for where deep learning will go in 2018.
Many deep learning hardware startup ventures will begin to finally deliver their silicon in 2018. These will all be mostly busts because they will forget to deliver good software to support their new solutions. These firms have hardware as their DNA. Unfortunately, in the DL space, software is just as important. Most of these startups don't understand software and don't understand the cost of developing software. These firms may deliver silicon, but nothing will ever run on them.
The low-hanging fruit that employs systolic array solutions has already been taken, so we won't have the massive 10x performance upgrade that we found in 2017. Researchers will start using these tensor cores not only for inference but also to speed up training.
Intel's solution will continue to be delayed and will likely disappoint. The record shows Intel was unable to deliver on a mid-2017 release, and it's anybody's guess when the company will ever deliver. It's late, and it's going to be a dud.
In my opinion, this is an unsolvable problem. What will happen instead is machines will become very good at "faking explanations." In short, the objective of explainable machines is to understand the kinds of explanations a human will be comfortable with or can understand at an intuitive level. However, a complete explanation will be inaccessible to humans in the majority of cases.
We will have to make progress in explainability in deep learning by creating "fake explanations."
The problem is worsened in this space because the theoretical frameworks are all works in progress. To make progress in the theoretical space, we need to seek out more advanced mathematics that can give us better insight. This is going to be a slog simply because most deep learning researchers don't have the right mathematical background to understand the complexity of these kinds of systems. Deep learning needs researchers coming from complexity theory, but there are very few of these kinds of researchers.
Expect to see more conversation about ethics in the coming year. However, don't expect new regulations. Policy makers are still years behind the curve in understanding the impact of AI on society. I don't expect them to stop playing politics and start addressing the real problems of society. The U.S. population has fallen victim to numerous security breaches, yet we've seen no new legislation or initiatives to address this serious problem. So don't hold your breath that our leaders will suddenly discover wisdom.
That's all I have for now. 2018 will be a major year, and we all better buckle our seatbelts and prepare for impact.
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0.999999 |
Which American Viticultural Area (AVA) is located in two states?
The Walla Walla AVA, known for cabernet sauvignon and merlot, is located in both Washington State and Oregon. Incidentally, the Columbia Valley also straddles the border between these two states.
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0.999989 |
From left to right: Dress with sheer inserts by ALEXANDER WANG, leather fringe heels by DIESEL BLACK GOLD, and vintage Chanel earrings available exclusively at DEPUIS1924.COM. Printed dress by ALCIE AND OLIVIA available at Bloomingdales, heels by BOUTIQUE 9. Socks by Hue, and pineapple earrings by H&M.
It’s a rare condition, in this day and age, to read any good news on the newspaper page; they sang it then, as Carl Winslow was settling into his La-Z Boy, and they’ll sing it now.
Thank heavens for Lady. Theirs is the sound of the best we were, to get over times like these, a beehive of big hair in a haze of Aqua Net that blocks the view of cable news cycling the worst that we’ve become. And when Atlanta’s Nicole Wray and England’s Terri Walker stare long into the pastel-flecked harmony where contemporary hip-hop, sixties doo wop, soul, and R&B lives, the sound stares back.
Colt Kraft Band: What did you have for breakfast? Nicole: I had two fried eggs, turkey bacon, grits, and OJ for breakfast.
Terri: My breakfast today consisted of two full yawns, a full body stretch in which I stubbed my toe on the bedside so that I screamed like a ranting lunatic until my neighbors came knocking on the door alarmed that I had been attacked by an intruder, which of course wasn’t the case. Then after all the excitement had calmed down, I prepared myself a boring bowl of Weetabix cereal! The end!
Write us a rap about pizza. Nicole: Give me that cheese cheese/with a little bit of cream cream cream/I need that sauce sauce sauce/to drip down my mouth mouth mouth/pepperoni please/that’s all I need/hot and melted yes/I want it New York style/makes me smile/give me that cheese cheese cheese with a little bit of cream cream cream/I need that sauce sauce sauce/to drip down my mouth mouth mouth!
Terri: I believe Nicole already got this. I’m blank!
Terri: Oh say can you see that little monkey sitting on a tree trying to flirt with me, but wait ain’t that Diddy?
What is the biggest risk you have taken musically? Did it pay off? Nicole: The biggest risk I think I had to take musically was walking away from my first record deal after recording a second album that was never gonna be released. I think it did pay off in a way, and it made me struggle also as an artist to find my own way. It helped me write more about my life and what I was going through and seeing as a young adult. I appreciate life more, performing more, loving more, hurting and laughing and getting older, taking my time meeting new people, traveling, and—the most important—rebuilding my relationship with my mother and father.
Terri: Trying to do pop music and no, it didn’t pay off. I still cringe about it now!
Photographer: Brooke Nipar for Artmixcreative.com. Stylist: Julie Matos for Cloutierremix.com. Hair: Johnny Stuntz for Crosbycartermgmt.com. Makeup: Denika Bedrossian for Crosbycartermgmt.com. Photography Assistant: Anthonie Gonzalez. Styling Assistant: Amanda Marmer.
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Not only should Museu Geologic del Seminari de Barcelona be visited, but also La. Mediterranean and Spanish cuisines under the direction of the great chef are gorgeous at this place. Many visitors come here to enjoy mouthwatering fish tapas, grilled squid and fried fish. You can order good baked custard, parfait and bread pudding.
The wine list is extensive, every guest can find something that satisfies their taste. When visiting this restaurant, it's a must to try great cortado, white tea or lemonade. A number of people think that the staff is efficient here. Fabulous service is something clients agree upon here. You may be surprised by fair prices at La. The divine decor and nice atmosphere let clients feel relaxed here. The TripAdvisor score for this place is 4.5.
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We're building a Computer Based Training (CBT) system, and I need an authoring tool for our instructors.
1. We should be able to add, edit, delete a lesson and specify some properties for it, such as a title, a description, and an intro video.
2. We should be able to populate a lesson with a series of questions (or edit and remove questions). Questions have properties, too, including the text of the question, answers, a web-based layout, and any multimedia elements that are referenced.
3. We should be able to add, edit, delete answers for a question and specify properties for each answer. Properties include text and/or multimedia elements, whether the answer is correct or incorrect, and the next question to ask.
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You can choose to analyze your source video for people when you import it into iMovie from your video camera. The topics about importing video in the Import section of iMovie Help explain how: Import video from a USB camcorder or camera and Import video from a tape-based (FireWire-equipped) camcorder.
You can choose to have iMovie analyze your Events (source video) for people at any time after you import the video.
In the Event Library, click to select the Event you want to analyze.
Choose File > Analyze Video > People.
The File menu appears in a light gray bar across the top of your computer screen.
Choose “Stabilization and People” if you also want to analyze the Event for stabilization.
If the Event you selected is long, analyzing it can be time consuming; you might want to do it while you’re going to be away from your computer.
When analysis is complete, a People button appears below the Event browser to indicate that the Event has been analyzed for people.
Click the People button to see just the frames in the Event that include images of people.
You can also perform a more fine-tuned search for footage containing people using the Keyword Filtering pane.
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Rain is rain, right? It's wet and falls from the sky. Actually, it's not quite so simple, because snow and hail are also types of rain, and a summer shower is not the same as a frontal thunderstorm or a monsoon. Scientists recognize four different kinds of raindrops as well as four different types of rainfall.
Temperature gradients and air moisture content are the main determinants of the characteristics of the raindrops that fall at a particular time and place. On the other hand, wind patterns and topography govern rainfall. These factors can combine to produce a light drizzle, a torrential rainfall, a snowstorm and every other variation of precipitation that occurs around the globe.
You've probably encountered each of the four different types of raindrops, unless you live in a specialized climactic area, such as a desert. Condensation occurs in clouds that form when moisture-laden warm air interacts with cold air, and the condensation falls out of the clouds as precipitation. The form that precipitation takes when it reaches the ground depends on the temperature in the clouds, the temperature on the ground and temperature in between.
Rain: This is the wet stuff that nourishes plants and for which umbrellas were invented. It occurs when both the cloud temperature and ground temperature are above freezing, and it can take three forms. It's known simply as rain when the drops are about 0.5 mm (0.02 in) in diameter, drizzle when the drops are smaller than that and virga when the drops are so small they don't reach the ground.
Snow: When both the temperature in the clouds and that on the ground are below the freezing point of water, 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit), condensed water droplets become ice crystals and fall to the ground as snow.
Sleet: Sleet occurs when the temperature in the clouds is warmer than that on the ground. Condensation falls as rain and partially freezes, and the precipitation that reaches the ground is a mixture of snow and water.
Hail: Sometimes rain encounters a layer of freezing air on its way to the ground and solidifies into raindrop-sized – or larger – ice pellets known as hailstones. They can pelt the ground even if the ground temperature is above freezing. Hail is a common feature of severe summer thunderstorms.
The movement of hot and cold air masses relative to each other is primarily responsible for the different rainfall patterns that occur around the world. Some of these air movements are localized, some due to ground topography and some due to seasonal planetary winds.
Conventional rainfall: Air naturally rises when it heats up, and it cools when it reaches higher elevations. Cool air can't hold as much moisture as warm air, so the moisture condenses into clouds known as cumulus clouds. Eventually, the clouds become so laden with moisture that rain starts to fall. This can happen over land or water as long as moisture is present. When it happens over tropical oceans, where the air is saturated with water, intense heat can cause strong upward convention currents. The combination of wind and moisture can create a tropical storm or hurricane.
Orographic rainfall: When moisture-laden air encounters a mountain range, the air is forced to rise. It cools off at the higher elevation, and this condenses water out of the air and creates rainfall. If the temperature is cold enough, the precipitation falls as snow.
Frontal rainfall: The meeting of a large mass of cold air and a large mass of warm air is called a front. The meeting creates turbulence. A frontal rain diagram can illustrate how the warm air rises over the cold air and forms large clouds when it cools, and moisture condenses. Thunderstorms, complete with lightning, usually result, and they can last anywhere from a few minutes to an hour or more.
Monsoonal rainfall: The combination of the sun's heat and the Earth's rotation creates a band of easterly winds at 30 degrees north and south latitude. These winds blow all year, but they change direction with the seasons. This seasonal shift is responsible for monsoon rains that fall in India, Southeast Asia and other places.
Deziel, Chris. "Four Types of Rain." Sciencing, https://sciencing.com/four-types-rain-8158409.html. 05 November 2018.
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What are the advantages of internet marketing for small businesses?
Internet marketing is a reliable technology - The Internet is the reliable technology that adds advantage to hosting your business online. It is easy to deliver your intended message to the desired destinations instantly. There is no delay unlike traditional marketing and the technologies are getting better every day.
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Durkheim distinguished between two forms of social facts, the pathological and the normal. He states that science never makes moral judgments instead they deal with facts. So, then how is he able to distinguish between normal and abnormal? Durkheim claims that science is able to differentiate between health and sickness, and therefore, social science should be able to do the same. In order to do this objectively one must remain loyal to science and avoid subjective involvement when placing social phenomena within these categories. A normal phenomenon is present when that phenomenon is present through culture, time, and place essentially unchanged and almost everywhere. While is it pathological if it is rare, there variations are present within very narrow limits, and they usually do not last for an extensive amount of time. The normal phenomenon is contingent on the development of the society, in order for to be unanimous. A normal phenomenon is an integral part of a healthy society, and it is impossible for the society to be free of it. By understanding the health of the phenomenon, one is able to understand the role that, that particular fact plays within that particular society of species.
Durkheim's distinction between the normal and pathological is his basis for asserting his value judgments (Lukes, 1972, pp.28). The man who is trying to objective by using scientific models is making subjective inferences and categories. Durkheim tries to re-labels the categories to give it scientific legitimacy. The labels of normality, healthy and pathological have social context of their own that humans cannot detach themselves from. The more investment one has in the categories, the more familiar one is with the categories, the hard objectivity becomes (Huer, 1990, pp.66). This is because we are unable to make presuppositionaless claims in regards to categories that have value relevance to humans (Keat, 1975, pp.198). As a result, of the lack of objectivity its lacks the logistics that is crucial to the truth that science claims. The general or statistically significant is not a set criterion for understanding normalcy. How and are we able to define this conception of rarity, is it 60- 40, or perhaps 30-70 the conception of rarity is very context specific and is hard to apply in reality. At what point to we say something is statistically rare and we are able to have a definite answer. Is that not in its self-very context specific and at points a value judgment itself? Therefore, sociology is not about constricting people further by creating categories with moral attached to them. It needs to negate this idea of the scientific model as the solution to the problem of subjectivity, because socialization processes have ingrained ideas within us that even science cannot resolve. By eliminating science as the solution to value judgment, relevant sociological knowledge is available for discovery in new ways.
Durkheim is not the only sociologist confined to the idea of positivism, and empiricism. Weber is also limits himself by placing such heavy emphasis on the production of laws, and objectivity, but combines it with interpretive thinking when removed from the scientific model they have great possibility in expanding sociology. Weber developed the idea of ideal types, which has its underlying principles in formulating generalizations and laws. For Weber the ideal type is the basis for the construction of the comparison. The ideal type has no connection to behavior, which is perfect. It has its basis within the idea that it is consistent within different societies. According to Weber, Ideal types must have either of two properties, they must be diminished to actions or the possibility of actions by the individual, or they can be made into rules or laws, or the meaning of the rules are apparent through the external. The purpose of ideal types within sociology, according to Weber is that social phenomena is lacking in its conception within reality, so sociology offers meaning. Meaning is only available through the rational concepts and laws. Rationality is only present within this construction if it is, absolute or the appropriate means to an end (Weber, 1978, pp.23). Weber's concept of the ideal types may seem ambiguous, but it is in his attempt to find meaning through science that this concept is problematic.
Weber and his construction of the ideal type are important because once the need for objectivity is eliminated, the concepts surface, the comparative purpose of socially becomes apparent. By trying to be interpretive and objective creates great problems within the method itself, as both are contradictory to one another. The point of being interpretive is to find meaning behind social phenomenon, but objective meaning seems problematic because meaning is specific to the individual and the ways in which they grapple with the material. Even the choice of the subject matter is in itself subjective and has some form of meaning for why you have chosen that particular subject, so how can you be objective? Weber makes it clear that role of ideal types is for predictability. However, this can be problematic because, social phenomenon that is predictable is already known by common knowledge. Many, so called forecasts are nothing but trends that are widely acknowledged. Therefore, if there is no predictability purpose for ideal types then is just a summary of common knowledge no new information is being brought forth rather then common knowledge, which in itself is problematic. By trying to enforce the scientific method to ideal types subjectivity and common sense are just reinforced, rather then making knowledge, which is exclusive to sociology.
Weber's concept of ideal types does not lack in one critical way. It allows for meaning and to demonstrate the complexity of social phenomena by the way in which it humans internalize. By creating an ideal type in the sense of something present to all societies, just like Durkheim's concept of social facts, it becomes the criteria for comparing. Rather then being a construction of the individual it should be part of reality, therefore existent, and then a historical or temporal comparative is available for analysis. As long as each social system is, independently valid and authentic a society learns about itself only through other social systems (Huer, 1990, pp.126). Therefore, transcending the spatial and temporal pivot experienced by Durkheim's social facts the concepts become logically comparable. By creating ideal types of phenomenon, new forms of meaning can explore and their effects on certain social facts within different societies. By creating a comparative method for sociology, sociology widens its scope of knowledge unique to its own, and breaking the limitations set out by science and its application to the social.
However, Weber states that in order to be able to comprehend the ideal types one must find the meaning, which develops within his concept of understanding. According to, Weber there is two types of understanding within sociology. There is the understanding of observation, which understands something by merely looking at it. An example of this would be facial expressions and context of peoples' emotions when they display these expressions. The second type of understanding is explanatory understanding. This type of understanding to Weber is one when you know the motives behind the action through understanding the rational behind the motivation, meaning you place the action in a more isolated context of meaning. Meaning also has two forms. The first is that is the solid case within a given example. Alternatively, according to Weber you can use the idea hypothetical meaning of ideal types and apply them to actors. Understanding is also available through the rational, which means that you grasp the experience of the actor including a contextual understanding. Understanding is crucial within sociology because of the fact that this is the only new insight that sociology has to social phenomena, as it is available to the everyday.
Weber does a wonderful job in outlining the understanding and meaning, and how to maintain integrity to the practice of sociology while creating meaning. The problem within his method is that allows for too much subjectivity. People carry their social contexts where-ever they go and in studying a person and putting yourself in their position by studying them that creates an issues of bias, in the sense of the meanings being made by your own experience with you self placement. By being aware of your biases prior to approaching the field of study, one is able to avoid complications. Weber develops a method that may allow for a better understanding of social phenomena by being able to understand the context of the individual instead on analyzing and in a sense creating empirical fallacies. By approaching social phenomena in the distinct ways that Weber described, both the need for some form of awareness plus meaning, which gives new insight into social problems expanding sociology.
By comparing and contrasting the ways in which both Durkheim and Weber's approach to social methods one continues to see the need for new perspectives of study exclusive of science. For Weber “sociology was a consumer rather then a producer of laws”, because it looks for “general regularities of what takes place” (Anderson, 1987, pp.163). Weber claimed that laws were pre-existing and it is the role of a sociologist to find the laws rather then create them. Unlike, Dukheim who believed that studying social facts empirically would create laws between them, Weber wanted to discover meaning and understanding in order to reveal the laws that were inaccessible to humans within different contexts. Weber's lack of extremist views on empiricism created more potential for sociology as a meaningful practice rather then a constrictive science. In terms of the ways in which they explored their concepts' Durkheim and Weber were in conflict. Durkheim believed, “That historian were overtly concerned with specific events, a concern which never yielded scientific laws” (Mestrovic,1888 , pp.90) This too allows for a more meaningful and insightful perspective into the ways in which sociological practice should be. It should not be inclusive of the individual rather then institutional facts within society. According to Mestrovic, “Durkheim placed far more emphasis on collective representations than on personal events” (Mestrovic,1888 , pp.35). By doing this, he feels that laws will be able to be formulated within an objective framework, which is incorrect because the institutions are internalized by humans and therefore, become a part of the comprehensive and interesting science.
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Both the Republicans and the Democrats have recently released their party platforms. Here’s a look at what each platform has to say about energy and environmental issues in general, and on nuclear specifically.
The Republican party platform favors an “all-of-the-above” energy strategy that involves responsible development of all our energy resources, and results in a domestic, secure energy supply that is stable, reliable, and affordable. Other general goals of the strategy include the creation of jobs, spurring economic growth, lower energy prices, and a strengthened domestic energy industry. The platform states that it does not support, however, policies that “pick winners and losers” through government intervention in the energy industry.
With respect to environmental regulations, the platform is generally opposed to federal environmental regulations and the Environmental Protection Agency, preferring regulation by the states as well as an approach to achieving environmental goals that is more cooperative (vs. punitive) with industry.
With respect to coal, the platform support the development of new “environmentally responsible” coal plants, as well as research and development into clean coal technology and technologies to convert coal into liquid fuel or gas (that can be cleanly burned). The platform states that it is opposed to President Obama’s “war on coal”, since there is no economic replacement for coal (the largest electricity source) and reductions in coal use will result in the loss of large amounts of jobs in that sector. It states that the GOP is opposed to any type of carbon dioxide–limiting legislation such as cap-and-trade. It also opposes the EPA’s regulation of greenhouse gases, and supports legislation that specifically bars the EPA from doing so. It also appears to be generally opposed to stricter limits on other coal pollutants as well.
With respect to oil and gas, the platform claims that the use of imported oil is undesirable in that some of the money sent overseas may wind up in the hands of nations, or other groups, that want to harm the United States. The main response, favored in the platform, is the opening up of offshore areas, federal lands, and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas development. In addition to reducing oil imports and increasing energy security, the platform states that the resulting domestic oil and gas development will result in large numbers of new jobs. It also explicitly states its support for the Keystone XL oil pipeline (from Canada to refineries in the United States) for similar reasons, and it criticized Obama for opposing the pipeline. It also expressed support for natural gas fracking and opposed new federal regulations on the practice, saying that state regulations are sufficient.
The Democratic party platform does not have a section on energy per se. Its policies related to energy can be found in the section on the environment. The discussion on energy is shorter in general than it is in the Republican platform, and it generally does not discuss specific energy sources.
The platform states that protecting the environment is a top priority for the party, and touts Obama’s investments in clean energy and the administration’s efforts to protect the environment. It states that Obama has made the most significant strides in decades to cut pollution, citing the increase in the fuel efficiency standard for vehicles as an example. It specifically talks about many of the pollutants that primarily arise from coal-fired power plants and states that they are a significant threat to health. It states that clean energy development will be a significant source of domestic jobs. It also highlights Obama’s (first time ever) proposed limits on CO2 for new power plants.
Much of the platform’s discussion relates to climate change (global warming). It affirms the party’s belief that global warming is a problem, calling it “one of the biggest threats of this generation–an economic, environmental and national security catastrophe in the making”. It says that the administration (and party) will combat global warming by exercising leadership on the issue abroad, while using “market and regulatory solutions” to reduce emissions at home. It argues that domestic reductions are necessary to show leadership on the issue, which is essential to getting a global agreement to reduce emissions.
Specifically, the platform states that the administration will continue diplomatic efforts to work toward an international agreement to limit/reduce emissions. At home, Obama and the Democrats will continue to invest in clean energy, and will take steps (both legislative and regulatory) to reduce domestic emissions. Regulatory measures include the (already passed) vehicle gas mileage standard and the (proposed) EPA regulations that limit CO2 from new power plants (effectively requiring CO2 sequestration for any new coal plant). Possible legislative efforts would include cap-and-trade, some kind of CO2 tax, or the proposed Clean Energy Standard for getting ~80 percent of electricity from “clean” sources by 2035. None of these legislative options are specifically mentioned in the platform, however, with discussion of specific CO2 limiting policies such as cap-and-trade being conspicuously absent.
In another section of the platform, it states that global warming also represents a “real, urgent and severe” national security risk, arguing that it will result in increased geopolitical conflicts over resources (e.g., water) and refugees, will result in suffering from drought and famine (creating potential instability in various regions), and increased frequency and severity of natural disasters.
Finally, the platform criticizes the Republican party (and candidate), stating that the GOP doubts the science of climate change and wants to roll back regulations protecting our air and water. It also states that the Republicans do not recognize the benefits of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, and do not recognize the jobs created by clean energy development.
In a relatively brief (two paragraph) discussion, the Republican platform expresses support for nuclear energy, saying that it “must be expanded”. It calls for timely review of new reactor license applications by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It also raises the waste issue, stating that federal government’s failure to address storage and disposal of spent fuel has cost “the States and taxpayers” a lot of money. It calls for a “more proactive” approach for managing spent fuel, which includes the development of advanced reprocessing technologies. Mention of Yucca Mountain is conspicuously absent.
The Democratic platform is completely silent on nuclear energy. Although the platform generally does not mention specific energy sources (as I said earlier), it also does not touch on any policies or proposals that would affect nuclear in any way.
While the Republicans have generally had kinder words for nuclear than the Democrats, it’s less clear whether or not Republican policies would be more helpful to the industry. In general, it appears that while Republicans may be more helpful in the area of waste, Democratic policies such as CO2 limits (and stricter limits on fossil fuel pollution in general) would do more to make nuclear more economically competitive with fossil fuels.
In the area of waste, it would be hard to do worse than the Obama administration, with the shameful termination of the Yucca Mountain licensing process, and the (political) suppression of the results of the NRC staff’s essentially finished licensing review (which virtually everyone knows was about to approve the repository). The administration also appointed not one but two NRC chairmen whose opposition to Yucca Mountain was clearly the primary basis for their selection. On the other hand, would the Republicans be much better? Given that Yucca is not mentioned at all in their platform, it appears that they are not willing to stand up for the repository (or the completion of the licensing process, at least) either.
My view is that the waste issue does not impact nuclear’s competitiveness, since the cost of storing the waste, even over a long time period, is very small—on the order of 0.1 cents/kW-hr. The primary impact of the continued delay in resolving the waste issue is that it strengthens and extends the false notion, held by much of the public, that nuclear waste disposal is an intractable problem with no technical solution. This, in turn, results in increased opposition to the construction or continued operation of nuclear plants. For this reason, I’ve advocated the completion of Yucca’s licensing process, even if the project itself is not continued, since it will show the public that we had a technically sound solution. I personally doubt that alternative solutions—such as the reprocessing discussed by the Republicans, which involves going back to the drawing board and pushing resolution of the issue decades into the future—will have much positive impact.
All that said, it’s not clear that public opposition to nuclear over the waste issue is all that big a factor, in the grand scheme of things. It has not led to much increased opposition to specific projects, especially in the Southeast, where most new plants are proposed. The biggest obstacle to new nuclear plants is clearly economic competitiveness (with fossil fuels, especially gas).
On the other hand, policies that would significantly reign in fossil fuels’ privilege of just dumping massive amounts of pollution (including CO2) into the environment, for free, would significantly increase nuclear’s competitiveness in the future. I’ve always believed that nuclear will never stand much of a chance if it is required to completely contain all of its wastes/toxins (with even the small possibility of release being something that has to be avoided, almost regardless of cost), while its competitors have nowhere near the same requirements.
Policies that would aid nuclear’s competitiveness (in addition to being the right thing to do) would be taxing or limiting CO2 emissions, reducing allowable emissions levels for other toxic pollutants (e.g., particulates, mercury, etc.), classifying coal ash/sludge as a hazardous material, and doing something to more adequately regulate gas fracking, which currently enjoys an exemption from the Clean Water and Safe Drinking Water Acts (I believe).
The EPA’s proposed policy that effectively bans new coal plants that don’t employ CO2 sequestration would have a huge impact over the long term. Although it would mainly result in the replacement of coal with gas over the shorter term, it would greatly help nuclear over the long term, since it would increase gas demand (leading to higher natural gas prices). I (and many others) also believe that the current gas glut will not last forever, and that renewables will never be capable of providing most (let alone all) of our power generation.
It’s clear which party would be better in this regard. Many in the Republican party are actually calling for pollution regulations to be rolled back, let alone be improved. The GOP platform clearly states that it will block any attempts to tax or limit CO2, prevent or reverse the EPA’s proposed policy on new coal plants, and oppose any regulations on gas fracking. With fossil fuels getting such a (continued) free ride, and the regulatory playing field remaining so unlevel and unfair, it is hard to see nuclear being competitive in the future.
Some may argue that global warming policies will not happen anyway, so having more reasonable treatment of nuclear in the waste area, as well as (perhaps) better NRC appointments, would make the Republicans better for nuclear, over the next presidential term. My personal view is that the EPA’s new coal plant rule alone, not to mention not having air pollution regulations rolled back, is more than enough to offset those benefits, in terms of the overall climate for nuclear.
My general view is that the Republicans primarily support fossil fuels while the Democrats primarily support renewables. Both are now supporting gas, to some degree. Neither party supports nuclear to any significant degree.
This is due to a profound lack of influence in Washington by the nuclear industry, compared to other energy industries. Recently, some have tried to suggest that the industry (Exelon Corp., specifically) has had significant influence with Obama, due to campaign contributions and its presence in Illinois. This view is absurd. Here’s a question: What is the ONLY major energy source that was NOT mentioned at all in Obama’s Democratic convention speech? He (the Democratic candidate) even made brief mention of “clean coal”, but didn’t mention nuclear at all.
Due in large part to this lack of influence, the current regulatory playing field is heavily slanted against nuclear, with nuclear’s requirements being orders of magnitude more strict than those applied to fossil fuels (as measured by dollars spent per unit of public health and safety benefit, etc.). Five years ago, it seemed like things were finally moving in a more fair, balanced direction, with the prospect of CO2 limits, etc., but now things seem set to get even worse.
We have the NRC considering adding even more regulation, and arguing that current regulations are insufficient since the Fukushima event inflicted significant economic costs, even though the public health impacts have been very small—much smaller than what NRC had always assumed the consequences of a severe meltdown would be (i.e, current regulations were always based on the assumption that such an event would be vastly more harmful). Meanwhile, we hear calls from the right side of the political spectrum, to reign in or even eliminate the EPA, with no similar calls for the NRC. Humble proposals to merely reduce the ~20,000 annual deaths, in the United States alone, from fossil plant pollution are loudly decried, while nuclear requirements are being increased even further, in a quest to reduce even the chance of the release of pollution to even more negligible levels, without any fanfare or political resistance (even from the industry itself).
Nuclear’s complete lack of political influence, and the overly powerful influence of other sources such as coal, is starting to be examined in some quarters—a recent article by William Tucker being one example.
If our industry does not find a voice, its future does not look bright. We will continue to have policies such as Renewable Portfolio Standards (that mandate the use of large amounts of renewable energy, regardless of cost or practically) on one side, while continuing to allow fossil fuel plants to freely pollute on the other. The tremendously unlevel regulatory playing field between nuclear and fossil sources will remain, or get even worse.
This entry was posted in American Nuclear Society, DC Perspective, Fukushima, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Yucca Mountain by ansnuclearcafe. Bookmark the permalink.
Jim: Great opinion. I appreciate you pointing out that the main platforms the parties do elicidate may have the opposite effect on their unstated opinions about nuclear.
Any policy which makes something “competitive” by driving up the costs of its alternatives is an unwise policy that destroys rather than creates wealth.
Any policy which allows an industry to pollute at will, causing harm to people outside the industry without compensation, is an unwise policy that destroys rather than creates wealth.
The biggest obstacle to new nuclear plants is clearly economic competitiveness (with fossil fuels, especially gas).
And that is likely to change in a hurry. The current crop of shale-gas companies are selling for far below their cost of drilling and production; they require upwards of $7/mmBTU to break even, and they’re getting less than $3. The shakeout in the industry will take a bunch of gas off the market and raise prices.
The other wildcard is trucking. Trucks run almost exclusively on ultra-low sulfur diesel (ULSD), which goes for nearly $30/mmBTU at the pump. Liquid natural gas (LNG) is a steal at current prices, and LNG dispensers (including liquefaction? not sure) are starting to go in at several different chains of truck stops. Even if you raise the price of NG to $15/mmBTU, it is still about half the price of ULSD. The addition of a large part of the trucking industry to the list of NG consumers will evaporate the glut like spilled water in Death Valley in July.
One topic not mentioned: policies onexported nuclear technology. Also little about financing domestically, or in conjunction with exports.
Nit: Using the world “chairpersons” rather than “chairmen” is more usual.
Brilliantly explained, thank you for this article!
This says it all and is the rock-bottom crux of the problem of nuclear energy’s public perception and tepid acceptance. The industry’s gotta knock their heads together and get on out there heavy promoting and PSA’ing themselves and educating the unwashed and FIGHTING FUD-mongers, and I don’t mean by Tupperware parties.
One nuclear waste solution is getting pretty close to being approved in Sweden now, see http://www.skb.se (english button available).
Well, we should remember that several states have moratoriums on nuclear power until the waste issue is “solved.” That solution doesn’t have to be a repository, but a repository would certainly fit the bill.
It’s hard to compete if you’re prohibited by law from building anything.
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(CNN) -- Passengers fled from a smoking plane after an emergency landing at the Kansas City International Airport Monday, officials from the Federal Aviation Administration, local fire department and airport told CNN.
All passengers escaped safely through the plane's emergency chute, although there were four minor injuries, airport spokesman Joe McBride said.
Republic Flight 1903 was en route from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to the airport at Kansas City, Missouri, when the plane made an emergency landing after reports of smoke in the cockpit, said FAA spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Corey. The plane landed at 3:27 p.m., she said.
There was minimal smoke in the cockpit when the fire department arrived, Kansas City Fire Department Public Information Officer Joe Vitale told CNN.
One female passenger injured her ankle while evacuating the aircraft and was taken to a local hospital, Vitale said. The other three injuries were treated at the scene, he said. Buses transported the passengers to the terminal, McBride said.
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How functions are evaluated by rewriting expressions.
Pure aims to provide you with a seamless blend of general term rewriting and important concepts and techniques from the functional programming world. Programs are simply collections of equations which are used to rewrite expressions in a symbolic fashion. This process is repeated until a "normal form" is reached which cannot be reduced any further by applying equations.
Note that rewriting rules like the above aren't possible in Haskell or ML, because they violate the "constructor discipline", which only allows pure constructors in the argument patterns. In contrast, Pure doesn't really distinguish between "constructors" and "defined functions". Any function symbol can act as a constructor if there are no equations which apply to a given term, and a pure constructor is just a function symbol without any defining equations, so that applications of this symbol are always in normal form.
This is possible because rewriting rules aren't subject to the constructor discipline in Pure. Note that as the above definition is at global scope, it will apply to all lists in your program, which might not be what you want. As a remedy, Pure also supports local rewriting rules, as explained in the following section.
Match the subject expression against the left-hand sides of equations. If more than one equation matches, they are tried in the order in which they are listed in the program. If no equation matches, the expression is already in normal form and we're done.
Bind the variables in the matching equation to their corresponding values.
For conditional equations like abs x = x if x>=0, evaluate the guard using the variable binding determined in step 2. If the guard fails, try the next equation. Otherwise proceed with step 4.
Evaluate the right-hand side of the equation using the variable binding determined in step 2.
The evaluation process sketched out above might seem inefficient, but luckily the interpreter compiles your program to fast native code before executing it. The pattern-matching code uses a kind of optimal decision tree which only needs a single, non-backtracking left-to-right scan of the subject term. You can find a description of the algorithm in my RTA91 paper (DOI 10.1007/3-540-53904-2_107).
In most cases the matching overhead is barely noticable, unless you discriminate over huge sets of heavily overlapping patterns. Using these techniques and native compilation, the Pure interpreter is able to achieve very good performance, offering execution speeds in the same ballpark as good Lisp interpreters. It seems to be one of the fastest implementations of term rewriting as a programming language right now, and is certainly good enough for most programming tasks except maybe the most demanding number crunching applications (and even these can be tackled by interfacing to Fortran or C).
Term rewriting has long been the workhorse of computer algebra systems and equational theorem provers. But it is also a Turing-complete model of computation, which provides you with a very convenient way to write programs in a high-level, algebraic style, and its use as a programming language was explored already in the 1980s by Michael O'Donnell. More information can be found at the Rewriting Home Page of the IFIP Working Group 1.6.
Aardappel: Wouter van Oortmerssen's visual programming language based on term rewriting.
Bertrand: Wm Leler's constraint programming language which uses augmented term rewriting to build numeric constraint solving systems.
ELAN: An environment for specifying and prototyping deduction systems in a language based on rewrite rules controlled by strategies.
Escher: An experimental functional+logic programming language.
Maude: A programming language supporting both equational and rewriting logic.
Mozart/Oz: A multi-paradigm constraint/logic programming language which also supports pattern-matching and rewriting.
OBJ: The mother of all algebraic programming and specification languages (actually, an entire family of languages supporting equational programming and theorem proving).
Otter: A theorem prover which has an embedded equational programming system.
Req: Darius Bacon's calculator programmable with rewrite rules.
Stratego: A language and toolset for program transformation, useful for creating compilers and program generators.
Please see the Rewriting Home Page for a comprehensive list of available literature.
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Why valet park, when autonomous summon technology can have your car navigate parking lots or streets to pick you up? During the GPU Technology Conference last month, Clarion demonstrated its long-range autonomous summon technology, running on NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Xavier. Using just a smartphone, you can call a parked, driverless vehicle to a pick-up spot. It automatically navigates around pedestrians, other vehicles and obstacles on the route to smoothly meet its passengers. Read more for another video of the NVIDIA Drive AGX and additional information.
NVIDIA introduces GeForce RTX R.O.N., a revolutionary AI-powered holographic assistant that delivers the unique thrill of personalized PC gaming, but unfortunately, it’s just their 2019 April Fools’ Day prank. If this device were real, it would tap into the full power of your GeForce RTX 20 Series-powered gaming rig to connect to your games, coach you through gameplay, and stay up-to-date on everything happening in the world of gaming. Plus, it can even create and project 3D AR displays of maps, levels, and data to help you consistently dominate in battle. Read more for a video, additional pictures and information.
NVIDIA has developed a deep learning model capable of transforming rough sketches into photorealistic art, thanks to generative adversarial networks, or GANs, to convert segmentation maps into lifelike images. GauGAN, a tribute to post-Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin, is the interactive app using the model. “It’s much easier to brainstorm designs with simple sketches, and this technology is able to convert sketches into highly realistic images,” said Bryan Catanzaro, vice president of applied deep learning research at NVIDIA. Read more for a video and additional information.
NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 2080 Ti is a pricey graphics card to say the least, but things just got a lot more expensive, thanks to Colorful’s limited edition iGame Kudan model. This Steampunk-inspired card will be limited to just 1,000-units and priced at a whopping $3,000. It’s not all about the looks, as it does come factory overclocked to 1,800MHz, and for comparison, the Founder’s Edition clocks in at 1,635MHz, while 1,545MHz for a reference card. Other upgrades include a triple-slot cooler that combines air and water cooling with three fans as well as numerous heatpipes. Read more for additional pictures and information.
For those unfamiliar with NVIDIA G-Sync, it’s basically a proprietary adaptive sync technology developed aimed primarily at eliminating screen tearing and the need for software alternatives such as Vsync. It eliminates screen tearing by allowing a video display to adapt to the frame rate of the output device (GPU) rather than it adapting to the display, which could traditionally be refreshed halfway through the process of a frame being output by the device, resulting in screen tearing, or two or more frames being shown at once. NVIDIA announced at CES 2019 that it would support some of AMD’s FreeSync displays, thanks to a new GeForce GPU driver. Read more for another video and additional information.
NVIDIA introduced DRIVE AutoPilot at CES 2019 in Las Vegas, the world’s first commercially available Level 2+ automated driving solution that uniquely provides both world-class autonomous driving perception and an intelligent cockpit. The platform is based on the DRIVE AGX Xavier system-on-a-chip (SoC) and DRIVE Software, integrating for the first time the company’s DRIVE AV autonomous driving and DRIVE IX intelligent experience capabilities. DRIVE AutoPilot is part of NVIDIA’s DRIVE platform, which is being used by “hundreds of companies worldwide to build autonomous vehicle solutions that increase road safety while reducing driver fatigue and stress on long drives or in stop-and-go traffic,” said the company. Read more for another video and additional information.
NVIDIA’s press conference with CEO Jensen Huang kicks off tonight at CES 2019 in Las Vegas, and we’re expecting lots of new gaming, artificial intelligence, robotics, as well as auto technology announcements. However, due to the current cryptocurrency downswing, there most likely won’t be too much news on crypto-mining. It’s rumored that the leaked RTX 2060 graphics card will make an appearance as well. Read more for another video about possible new products, a livestream link, and additional information.
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Interpret "Dr. John Cooper Clarke & Hugh Cornwell"
The legendary Dr. John is a six-time Grammy Award-winning musician and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee. Known throughout the world as the embodiment of New Orleans’ musical legacy, Dr. John is a true icon in American culture. His colorful musical career began in the 1950s when he wrote and played guitar on some of the greatest records to come out of the Crescent City, including recordings by Professor Longhair, Art Neville, Joe Tex and Frankie Ford.
In addition to his six Grammy wins (1989, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2008 and 2013), he has received six other Grammy nominations over the years. In 2007 he was nominated for “Sippiana Hericane,” his Hurricane Katrina benefit disc. After Hurricane Katrina Dr. John immediately stepped up to the plate with generous relief fund-raising concerts and recordings. In 2007 he was also inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame and the Blues Hall of Fame. In 2008 he released “City That Care Forgot,” winning him a Grammy for Best Contemporary Blues Album. His latest album 'Locked Down', released in 2012 with Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys also won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Blues Album.
In 2013 Dr. John was awarded an honorary doctorate from Tulane University alongside His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Dr. John is currently hard at work completing an album in tribute to Louis Armstrong which is scheduled to be released in July of this year. After a half century of creating music for others and himself, Dr. John continues to write, arrange, produce and interpret with a passion that has yet to wane.
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Imagine that you are a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) with a new client who needs an opinion on the most advantageous capital structure of a new corporation. Your client formed the corporation in question to provide technology to the medical profession to facilitate compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Your client is very excited because of the ability to secure several significant contracts with sufficient capital.
Use the Internet and Strayer databases to research the advantages and disadvantages of debt for capital formation versus equity for capital formation of a corporation. Prepare a formal letter to the client using the six (6) step tax research process in Chapter 1 and demonstrated in Appendix A of your textbook as a guide.
Write a one to two (1-2) page letter in which you: Compare the tax advantages of debt versus equity capital formation of the corporation for the client. Recommend to the client whether he / she should use debt or equity for capital formation of the new corporation, based on your research. Provide a rationale for the response. Your assignment must follow these formatting requirements: Be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides; citations and references must follow APA or school-specific format. Check with your professor for any additional instructions. Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student’s name, the professor’s name, the course title, and the date. The cover page and the reference page are not included in the required assignment page length.
The specific course learning outcomes associated with this assignment are: Analyze tax issues regarding corporate formations, capital structures, income tax, non-liquidating distributions, or other corporate levies. Use technology and information resources to research issues in organizational tax research and planning. Write clearly and concisely about organizational tax research and planning using proper writing mechanics.
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This paper presents a human posture recognition method form a single image. We first segment an image into homogeneous regions and extract curve segments corresponding to human body parts. Each body part is considered as a 2D ribbon. From the smooth curve segments in skin regions, 2D ribbons are extracted and a human body model is constructed. We assign a predefined posture type to the image according to the constructed body model. For the user input query to retrieve images containing human of specific posture, the system convert the query to a body model. The body model is compared to other body models saved in the local storage of target images and images of good matches are retrieved. When a face detection result is available for the given image, it is also used to increase the reliability of body model. For the query human posture, our system retrieves images of the corresponding posture. As another application, the proposed method provides an initial location of a human body to track in a video sequence.
The content-based image retrieval system framework using human-level features of image contents is presented. The system consists of face detection to locate the human faces within images, face recognition of the similarity measure between a query face and indexed faces within storage. Face detection and recognition techniques used in the system are very simple because short response time in interactive multimedia systems is essential. Color and elongated Gaussian filter response are used for face detection and dimple structural and normalized template matching are used for face similarities. Simulation results are summarized using restricted test images.
In this paper, we present an approach to effectively access desired images in a large image database. Similarity-based image retrieval and image classification are representative methods for accessing images in an image database. With similarity-based image retrieval, it is difficult to specify a proper query image. The image classification can not achieve the high accuracy classification required by users. We present methods for hierarchical classification and the visualization. In addition, we present an image access system which integrates image retrieval with the classification and the visualization in order to overcome the issues mentioned above and improve access efficiency. The hierarchical classification is dynamically structured according to users' needs, and the image feature space visualization is real-time generated to enable users to interactively browse images. In addition, we also show the usability of an image access system integrating image retrieval with the classification and the visualization method.
In this paper,we propose a new scalable simultaneous learning and indexing technique for efficient content-based retrieval of images that can be described by high- dimensional feature vectors. This scheme combines the elements of an efficient nearest neighbor search algorithm, and a relevance feedback learning algorithm which refines the raw feature space to the specific subjective needs of each new application, around a commonly shared compact indexing structure based on recursive clustering. Consequently, much better time efficiency and scalability can be achieved as compared to those techniques that do not make provisions for efficient indexing or fast learning steps. After an overview of the current related literature, and a presentation of our objectives and foundations, we describe in detail the three aspects of our technique: learning, indexing and similarity search. We conclude with an analysis of the objectives met, and an outline of the current work and considered future enhancements and variations on this technique.
We have previously introduced a Bayesian framework for content-based image retrieval that relies on a generative model for feature representation based on embedded mixtures. This is a truly generic image representation that can jointly model color and texture and has been shown to perform well across a broad spectrum of image databases. In this paper, we expand the Bayesian framework along two directions.
This paper presents work toward indexing the image content in a collection of 17,000 cervical spine and lumbar spine images, for purposes of public dissemination by such system as the Web-based Medical Information System. These images were collected as part of a national health survey and to date no radiological or quantitative content has been derived from the images, except for our work, described in this paper. Practical considerations, primarily of labor cost, make the job of deriving radiological interpretations or quantitative anatomical measures by manual methods very difficult. For this reason, the acquisition of content information by automated means, or even by semi-automated means, which require human interaction, but significantly reduce the required labor, are very important. This field is not in an advanced state of development, and the results we present are necessarily work in progress.
Similarity indexing is the supporting technology for fast content-based retrieval of large media databases, and many similarity index structures have been proposed. Compared with the many structures present, less attention has been paid to performance evaluation of index structures and theoretic analysis son factors influencing index performance. In this paper, we attempt to solve part of the problem and focus our research on analyzing the influence of data splitting methods. To give a formal definition for index structure performance evaluation, we introduce the query distribution probability concept and propose using average search cost to evaluate the performance of a similarity indexing structure. We choose the simplest case of similarity indexing - nearest-neighbor search in our discussion and deduce an expression for the average search cost function. Based on analysis of the expression, we proposed some criteria that may be useful in index design and implementation. Then we extend these conclusions to the general similarity indexing case and use these criteria as general rules in index design and implementation. Basic thoughts and analysis are detailed, as well as experiment results.
Shape is a popular feature used for content-based image retrieval. In this paper we propose a new method for image retrieval using a shape boundary represented in scale-space. The proposed method is suggested by the notion of 'dynamic shape' where all 2D boundary representations evolve from a single, primeval, featureless shape - a circle. Shape is represented by linearizing the boundary based on the polar coordinates of boundary points relative to the object's centroid. Points on the shape boundary are mapped to a primeval circle, and two functions are defined, the Radius Difference Function and the Angle Difference Function,and smoothed through scale-space to devolve the shape. Maxima and minima of the Radius Difference Function are extracted and used to calculate similarity between objects. Similarity is calculated using Euclidean distance. Other scale-space approaches to shape representation use various techniques to maintain constant boundary arc length, that any otherwise change in non-intuitive ways over scale. We introduce the contour stability over scale property stating that the perceived boundary length should not change significantly over scale. Experiments show that significant similarity computation may be saved by using coarser scales without effectively reducing retrieval performance.
In this paper we present a technique for shape similarity estimation for content-based indexing and retrieval over large image databases. Here the high curvature points are detected using wavelet decomposition. The feature set is extracted under the framework of polygonal approximation. It uses simple features extracted at high curvature points. The experimental result and comparisons show the performance of the proposed technique. This technique is also suitable to be extended to the retrieval of 3D objects.
Most current image processing systems work on color images, and color is a precious perceptual clue for determining image similarity. Working with color images, however, is not the sam thing as working with images taking values in a 3D Euclidean space. Not only are color spaces bounded, but the characteristics of the observer endow the space with a 'perceptual' metric that in general does not correspond to the metric naturally inherited from R3. This paper studies the problem of filtering color images abstractly. It begins by determining the properties of the color sum and color product operations such that he desirable properties of orthonormal bases will be preserved. The paper then defines a general scheme, based on the action of the additive group on the color space, by which operations that satisfy the required properties can be defined.
The purpose of this paper is two-fold. We begin by exploring the emerging trend to view multimedia information in terms of low-level and high-level components; the former being feature-based and the latter the 'semantics' intrinsic to what is portrayed by the media object. Traditionally, this has been viewed by employing analogies with generative linguistics. Recently, a new perceptive based on the semiotic tradition has been alluded to in several papers. We believe this to be a more appropriate approach. From this, we propose an approach for tackling this problem which uses an associative data structure expressing authored information together with intelligent agents acting autonomously over this structure. We then show how neural networks can be used to implement such agents. The agents act as 'vehicles' for bridging the gap between multimedia semantics and concrete expressions of high-level knowledge, but we suggest that traditional neural network techniques for classification are not architecturally adequate.
This paper presents some methodological observations on the measurement of performance in Visual Information Retrieval systems. The paper identifies three different types of measures tow of which can be determined with methods inherited from physical and social sciences respectively. The third model is more typical of the design and construction of complicated systems, since it allows us to measure the performance of individual modules before their insertion in a particular application. This paper present some methodologies for the decontextualized evaluation, anchoring them to a case study of evaluation of several subsystems of an image database.
There has been significant progress in the area of content- based still image retrieval systems. However, most of the existing visual information management system use static feature analysis models decided by database implementers based on their heuristics, and use indexing oriented data modeling techniques. In other words, such systems have limitations of areas including scalability, extensibility and adaptability. In this paper, we will attempt to resolve the problems that surface in content modeling, description and sharing of distributed heterogeneous multimedia information. A language; named UCDL, for heterogenous multimedia content description is presented to resolve the related problem. The resulting UCDL facilitates a formal content modeling and description method for complex multimedia content and the exchange of heterogeneous content information. The proposed language has several advantages. For instance, an individual user can easily create audio-visual descriptions by using a library of automated tools. Users can perform automated testing of content description becomes implementation independent, thus offering portability across a number of applications for authoring tools to database management systems. Users can have personalized retrieval view through content filtering, and can easily share the heterogeneous content descriptions of various information sources. In addition, the proposed language can be a part of MPEG-7 DDL.
An anchor person is the hosting character in broadcast programs. Anchor segments in video often provide the landmarks for detecting the content boundaries so that it is important to identify such segments during automatic content-based multimedia indexing. Previous efforts are mostly focused on audio information or visual information alone for anchor detection using either model based methods via off-line trained models or unsupervised clustering methods. The inflexibility of the off-line model based approach and the increasing difficulty in achieving detection reliability using clustering approach lead to a new approach proposed in this paper. The goal is to detect an arbitrary anchor in a given broadcast news program. The proposed approach exploits both audio and visual cues so that on-line acoustic and visual models for the anchor can be built dynamically during data processing. In addition to the capability of identifying any given anchor, the proposed method can also be used to enhance the performance by combining with the algorithm that detects a predefined anchor. Preliminary experiment result are shown and discussed. It is demonstrated that this proposed new approach enables the flexibility of detecting an arbitrary anchor without losing the performance.
In this paper, we propose four index structures for music data retrieval. Based on suffix trees, we develop two index structures called combined suffix tree and independent suffix trees. These methods still show shortcomings for some search functions. Hence we develop another index, called Twin Suffix Trees, to overcome these problems. However, the Twin Suffix Trees lack of scalability when the amount of music data becomes large. Therefore we propose the fourth index, called Grid-Twin Suffix Trees, to provide scalability and flexibility for a large amount of music data. For each index, we can use different search functions, like exact search and approximate search, on different music features, like melody, rhythm or both. We compare the performance of the different search functions applied on each index structure by a series of experiments.
The Lockheed Martin (LM) team had garnered over a decade of operational experience in digital imagery management and analysis for the US Government at numerous worldwide sites. Recently, it set out to create a new commercial product to serve the needs of large-scale imagery archiving and analysis markets worldwide. LM decided to provide a turnkey commercial solution to receive, store, retrieve, process, analyze and disseminate in 'push' or 'pull' modes components and adapted and developed its own algorithms to provide added functionality not commercially available elsewhere. The resultant product, Intelligent Library System, satisfies requirements for (a) a potentially unbounded, data archive automated workflow management for increased user productivity; (c) automatic tracking and management of files stored on shelves; (d) ability to ingest, process and disseminate data involves with bandwidths ranging up to multi-gigabit per second; (e) access through a thin client- to-server network environment; (f) multiple interactive users needing retrieval of filters in seconds from both archived images or in real time, and (g) scalability that maintains information throughput performance as the size of the digital library grows.
In this paper we extend the shot transition detection component of the ViBE video database system to include gradual scene changes. ViBE, a browsable/searchable paradigm for organizing video data containing a large number of sequences, is being developed at Purdue as a testbed to explore ideas and concepts in video databases. We also present result on the performance of our cut detection algorithm using a large test set. The performance of two other techniques are compared against our method.
This paper present a new approach to content based retrieval in image databases. The basic new idea in the proposed technique is to organize the quantized and truncated wavelet coefficient of an image into a suitable tree structure. The tree structure respects the natural hierarchy imposed on the coefficients by the successive resolution levels. Al the trees relative to the images in a database are organized into a trie. This structure helps in the error tolerant retrieval of queries. The result obtained show that this approach is promising provided that a suitable distance function between trees is adopted.
Most of the content-based image retrieval systems require a distance computation for each candidate image in the database. As a brute-force approach, the exhaustive search can be employed for this computation. However, this exhaustive search is time-consuming and limits the usefulness of such systems. Thus, there is a growing demand for a fast algorithm which provides the same retrieval results as the exhaustive search. In this paper, we prose a fast search algorithm based on a multi-resolution data structure. The proposed algorithm computes the lower bound of distance at each level and compares it with the latest minimum distance, starting from the low-resolution level. Once it is larger than the latest minimum distance, we can exclude the candidates without calculating the full- resolution distance. By doing this, we can dramatically reduce the total computational complexity. It is noticeable that the proposed fast algorithm provides not only the same retrieval results as the exhaustive search, but also a faster searching ability than existing fast algorithms. For additional performance improvement, we can easily combine the proposed algorithm with existing tree-based algorithms. The algorithm can also be used for the fast matching of various features such as luminance histograms, edge images, and local binary partition textures.
This paper presents a method for fast and effective similarity-based shape retrieval. Shape similarity is determined by comparing the frequencies with which different types of local structure occur in each shape. The system consists of three processes. (1) The segmentation process uses a scale-space approach to find convex segments that lie between curvature zero-crossings at all scales. Local shape structure is represented by short sequences of segments, called terms. (2) The representation process classifiers the terms into types based on a set of local shape features. Then the distribution of term types within the shape is computed. (3) The retrieval process compares the term type distribution of the query shape to the term type distributions of the database shapes and retrieves the most similar database shapes. Efficient data structures are used to store the distributions compactly and to support fast retrieval. The performance of the method on a test database ranged from 69 percent to 100 percent of ideal performance, depending on the number of items retrieved.
In this paper, we propose a self-learning content-based image indexing and retrieval system. Our system employs a hierarchical content representation and a hierarchical content matching method for effective and efficient image/object retrieval. the 'learning' behavior is enabled by our proposed hierarchical content representation which allows easy storage of combinations of regions that have resulted in successful matches to objects of interest as determined by user search patterns and profiles. The learning step effectively performs an automatic analysis of database images into meaningful objects given certain user search patterns and interest profiles. The advantages of the proposed hierarchical content representation and 'learning' schemes are demonstrated on a collection of car and face images, where the significant improvements in search and retrieval speed are described both theoretically and experimentally.
We propose an image clustering algorithm which uses fuzzy graph theory. First, we define a fuzzy graph and the concept of connectivity for a fuzzy graph. Then, based on our definition of connectivity we propose an algorithm which finds connected subgraphs of the original fuzzy graph. Each connected subgraph can be considered as a cluster. As an application of our algorithm, we consider a database of images. We calculate a similarity measure between any paris of images in the database and generate the corresponding fuzzy graph. The, we find the subgraphs of the resulting fuzzy graph using our algorithm. Each subgraph corresponds to a cluster. We apply our image clustering algorithm to the key frames of news programs to find the anchorperson clusters. Simulation results show that our algorithm is successful to find most of anchorperson frames from the database.
Using recent advances in scale-space decomposition techniques, it is possible to transform images into trees in scale space, which represent the topology of regions within the image. We propose that complex objects can be found in the trees using a combination of subgraph isomorphism testing and conventional feature matching and hence provide a vehicle for achieving content-based retrieval and navigations for complex objects in images.
Recently, multimedia database systems have emerged as a fruitful area for research due to the recent progress in high-speed communication networks, large capacity storage devices, digitized media,and data compression technologies over the last few years. Multimedia information has been used in a variety of applications including manufacturing, education, medicine, entertainment, etc. A multimedia database system integrates text, images, audio, graphics, database system is that all of the different media are brought together into one single unit, all controlled by a computer. As more information sources become available in multimedia systems, how to model and search the image processing techniques to model multimedia data. A Simultaneous Partition and Class Parameter Estimation algorithm that considers the problem of video frame segmentation as a joint estimation of the partition and class parameter variables has been developed and implemented to identify objects and their corresponding spatial relations. Based on the obtained object information, a web spatial model (WSM) is constructed. A WSM is a multimedia database searching structure to model the temporal and spatial relations of semantic objects so that multimedia database queries related to the objects' temporal and spatial relations on the images or video frames can be answered efficiently.
In this paper, we propose a new method for indexing large amounts of points in high-dimensional space. The basic principle is as follows: Data points or feature vectors extracted from objects are first quantized into lattice points by using lattice vector quantization. Inverted file is adopted to organize those lattice points. Fast retrieval is implemented by sing the good properties of algebraic lattice. We first tested the indexing performance for range query by using lattice Eg and Hash. The initial experimental result show our method has good indexing performance. However, we found, Hash has to search the inverted file for a large amounts of lattice points if query window is bigger or dimension is high. To solve this problem, we use Trie instead of Hash and propose Tire Parallel Search Algorithm to fast access the inverted file. Further experiments have been done for n-dimensional data point by using lattice Zn. The results show the proposed index structure owns many good properties such as low CPU cost and low I/O cost in comparison to R-tree.
It has been argued that future image coding techniques should allow for 'midstream access', i.e. allow image query, retrieval, and modification to proceed on the compressed representation. In a recent work, we introduced the color visual pattern image coding (CVPIC) technique for color image compression. An image is divided into blocks and each block coded locally by mapping it to one of a predefined, universal set of visually significant image patterns consisting of representations for both edge and uniform regions. The pattern and color information is then stored, following a color quantization algorithm and an entropy encoding stage. Compression ratios between 40:1 and 60:1 were achieved while maintaining high image quality on a variety of natural color images. It was also shown that CVPIC could achieve comparable performance to state-of-the- art techniques such as JPEG.
As an increasing amount of audio-visual data is stored, distribute, and used in the compressed form, compressed- domain techniques will be favorable. However, as conventional features may not be accessible in the compressed domain, exploration of new compressed domain features will become mandatory. Studies have shown that the DC coefficients of a DCT-compressed video can be used to detect shot transitions for relatively simple video sequences.In this work, the use of the energy histogram of the lower frequency DCT coefficients as features for video parsing was examined. The experimental results show an improvement over those obtained by the DC coefficients alone.
A method for lossless compression of large binary images is proposed for applications where spatial access to the image is needed. The method utilizes the advantages of (1) variable-size context modeling in a form of context trees, and (2) forward-adaptive statistical compression. New strategies for constructing the context tree are considered, including a fast two-stage bottom-up approach. The proposed technique achieves higher compression rates and allows dense tiling of images down to 50 X 50 pixels without sacrificing the compression performance. It enables partial decompression of large images far more efficiently than if the standard JBIG was applied.
In the past few years, immense improvement was obtained in the field of content-based image retrieval. Nevertheless, existing systems still fail when applied to medical image databases. Simple feature-extraction algorithms that operate on the entire image for characterization of color, texture, or shape cannot be related to the descriptive semantics of medical knowledge that is extracted from images by human experts.
Image retrieval in medical applications (IRMA) requires the cooperation of experts in the field of medicine, image analysis, feature analysis and systems engineering. A distributed developing platform was implemented to support the progress of the IRMA-system. As the concept for this system strictly separates the steps for medical image retrieval, its components can be developed separately by work groups in different departments. The development platform provides location and access transparency for its resources. These resources are images and extracted features as well as methods which all are distributed automatically between the work groups. Replications are created to avoid repeated network transfers. All resources are administered in one central database. Computationally expensive feature extraction tasks are distributed also automatically to be processed on concurring workstations of different work groups. The developing platform intensifies and simplifies the cooperation of the interdisciplinary IRMA-development- team by providing fast and automated deliveries of components from software developers to physicians for evaluation.
Automated classification of digital video is emerging as an important piece of the puzzle in the design of content management systems for digital libraries. The ability to classify videos into various classes such as sports, news, movies, or documentaries, increases the efficiency of indexing, browsing, and retrieval of video in large databases. In this paper, we discuss the extraction of features that enable identification of sports videos directly from the compressed domain of MPEG video. These features include detecting the presence of action replays, determining the amount of scene text in vide, and calculating various statistics on camera and/or object motion. The features are derived from the macroblock, motion,and bit-rate information that is readily accessible from MPEG video with very minimal decoding, leading to substantial gains in processing speeds. Full-decoding of selective frames is required only for text analysis. A decision tree classifier built using these features is able to identify sports clips with an accuracy of about 93 percent.
In this paper, we propose a dynamic approach to feature and classifier selection. In our approach, based on performance, visual features and classifiers are selected automatically. In earlier work, we presented the Visual Apprentice, in which users can define visual object models via a multiple- level object definition hierarchy. Visual Object Detectors are learned, using various learning algorithms - as the user provides examples from images or video, visual features are extracted and multiple classifiers are learned for each node of the hierarchy. In this paper, features and classifiers are selected automatically at each node, depending on their performance over the training set introduce the concept of Recurrent Visual Semantics and show how it can be used to identify domains in which performance-based learning techniques such as the one presented can be applied. We then show experimental results in detecting Baseball video shots, images that contain handshakes,and images that contain skies. These result demonstrate the importance, feasibility, and usefulness of dynamic feature/classifier selection for classification of visual information, and the performance benefits of using multiple learning algorithms to build classifiers. Based on our experiments, we also discuss some of the issues that arise when applying learning techniques in real-world content-based applications.
In this paper we propose an interactive tool for generating dynamic markers for video object in a distributed video content discussion environment. We address interactive video object selection and real-time video object marker generation which is supported by an automatic object tracking method. The proposed system satisfies the following criteria: (i) automatic object tracking has to be in real- time; (ii) the video object selection has to be carried out with minimal effort and knowledge; (iii) the user has to be notified by the system when the automatic object tracking method encounters problems: and (iv) interactive rectification of the object marker has to be instantaneous and direct. Our experimental results indicate that the proposed tool is very effective and intuitive in creating dynamic object markers for video content on the fly. Automatic object tracking method yields reliable results on a desktop PC in real-time, even with busy background and/or partial occlusion.
An increasing number of people own and use camcorders to make videos that capture their experiences and document their lives. These videos easily add up to many hours of material. Oddly, most of them are put into a storage box and never touched or watched again. The reasons for this are manifold. Firstly, the raw video material is unedited, and is therefore long-winded and lacking visually appealing effects. Video editing would help, but, it is still too time-consuming; people rarely find the time to do it. Secondly, watching the same tape more than a few times can be boring, since the video lacks any variation or surprise during playback. Automatic video abstracting algorithms can provide a method for processing videos so that users will want to play the material more often. However, existing automatic abstracting algorithms have been designed for feature films, newscasts or documentaries, and thus are inappropriate for home video material and raw video footage in general. In this paper, we present new algorithms for generating amusing, visually appealing and variable video abstracts of home video material automatically. They make use of a new, empirically motivated approach, also presented in the paper, to cluster time-stamped shots hierarchically into meaningful units. Last but not least, we propose a simple and natural extension of the way people acquire video - so-called on-the-fly annotations - which will allow a completely new set of applications on raw video footage as well as enable better and more selective automatic video abstracts. Moreover, our algorithms are not restricted to home video but can also be applied to raw video footage in general.
In this paper we present a new descriptor for spatial distribution of motion activity in video sequences. We use the magnitude of the motion vectors as a measure of the intensity of motion cavity in a macro-block. We construct a matrix Cmv consisting of the magnitudes of the motion vector for each macro-block of a given P frame. We compute the average magnitude of the motion vector per macro-block Cavg, and then use Cavg as a threshold on the matrix C by setting the elements of C that are less than Cavg to zero. We classify the runs of zeros into three categories based on length, and count the number of runs of each category in the matrix C. Our activity descriptor for a frame thus consists of four parameters viz. the average magnitude of the motion vectors and the numbers of runs of short, medium and long length. Since the feature extraction is in the compressed domain and simple, it is extremely fast. We have tested it on the MPEG-7 test content set, which consists of approximately 14 hours of MPEG-1 encoded video content of different kinds. We find that our descriptor enables fast and accurate indexing of video. It is robust to noise and changes in encoding parameters such as frame size, frame rate, encoding bit rate, encoding format etc. It is a low-level non-semantic descriptor that gives semantic matches within the same program, and is thus very suitable for applications such as video program browsing. We also find that indirect and computationally simpler measures of the magnitude of the motion vectors such as bits taken to encode the motion vectors, though less effective, also can be used in our run-length framework.
Color objects recognition methods that are based on image retrieval algorithms can handle changes of illumination via image normalization, e.g. simple color-channel-normalization or by forming a doubly-stochastic image matrix. However these methods fail if the object sought is surrounded by clutter. Rather than directly trying to find the target, a viable approach is to grow a small number of feature regions called locales. These are defined as a non-disjoint coarse localization based on image tiles. In this paper, locales are grown based on chromaticity, which is more insensitive to illumination change than is color. Using a diagonal model of illumination changes, a least-squares optimization on chromaticity recovers the best set of diagonal coefficients for candidate assignments from model to test locales sorted in a database. If locale centroids are also sorted then, adapting a displacement model to include model locale weights, transformed pose and scale can be recovered. Tests on databases of real images show promising results for objects query.
Developing semantic indices into large image databases is a challenging and important problem in content-based image retrieval. We address the problem of detecting objects in an image based on color and texture features. Specifically, we consider the following two problems of detecting sky and vegetation in outdoor images. An image is divided into 16 X 16 sub-blocks and color, texture, and position features are extracted form every sub-block. We demonstrate how a small set of codebook vectors, extracted from every sub- block. We demonstrate how a small set of codebook vectors, extracted from a learning vector quantizer, can be used to estimate the class-conditional densities of the low-level observed feature needed for the Bayesian methodology. The sky and vegetation detectors have been trained on over 400 color images from the Corel database. We achieve classification accuracies of over 94 percent for both the classifiers on the training data. We are currently extending our evaluation to a larger database of 1,700 images.
An effective image management system should provide efficient storage of the image collection, while simultaneously providing fast content-based retrieval of the images. The traditional image management approach is to handle compression and indexing separately. Compression does not address the issue of image indexing.
This paper describes an image retrieval system that searches a database for images similar to a target imagined by a user. The system uses image features, rather than keywords, and retrieves images by estimating distance parameters. We use the Mahalanobis distance as the distance measure. The system, first, presents the user some images with a suitable feature vector value and asks the user to select images that are similar to the target he has in mind. Based on the user's selection, the system revises the distance parameters. This process is continued until the target region is reduced to a suitable volume. Since this method requires neither a real target image nor keywords to do the retrieval, it is quite simple and practical. Experimental results show the advantage and efficiency of the proposed system.
This paper present a wavelet-transform-based algorithm for fast and accurate retrieval of images from large image databases. We describe the architecture and the implementation of such a framework to perform a search for an image in a database. The retrieval algorithm entails a wavelet-based methodology that yields an elegant and computationally efficient implementation. This scheme matches the images directly in the wavelet domain, based on the information extracted from only a few of the wavelet coefficients. Experiments show that this novel algorithm provides highly accurate search results.
This paper investigates retrieval and indexing schemes in pixel domain, and points to the future work on image retrieval schemes. Image retrieval schemes generate indices for images in pixel or compressed domain based on their features in the corresponding domain. These indices are used to retrieve images from a database. The features in pixel domain are extracted from the color, shape or texture characteristics of images. The application of these three methods depends on the characteristic of the image database, and the query image. In the near future the image databases contains the compressed version of images, therefore there will be a high demand for the image retrieval techniques in compressed domain.
The amount of pictorial data grows enormously with the expansion of the WWW. From the large number of images, it is very important for users to retrieve desired images via an efficient and effective mechanism. In this paper we prose two efficient approaches to facilitate image retrieval by using a simple method to represent the image content. Each image is partitioned into m X n equal-sized sub-images. A color that has enough number of pixels in a block is extracted to represent its content. In the first approach, the image content is represented by the extracted colors of the blocks. The spatial information of images is considered in image retrieval. In the second approach, the colors of the blocks in an image are used to extract objects. A block- level process is process is proposed to perform the region extraction. The spatial information of regions is considered unimportant in image retrieval. Our experiments show that these two block-based approaches can speed up the image retrieval. Moreover, the two approaches are effective for different requirements of image similarity. Users can choose a proper approach to process their queries based on their similarity requirements.
Significant number of color images on the WWW and many other applications are color quantized. This paper presents a new technique for content-based retrieval of this type of color images. We introduce a technique, which compares the color contents of images by comparing the color tables of the image. An effective measure of the similarity of color tables based on a modified Hausdorff distance has been developed. Computer simulation result on retrieving three sets of colorful images are presented which demonstrated the highly effective of the method.
Video segmentation is an important step in many of the video applications. We observe that the video shot boundary is a multi-resolution edge phenomenon in the feature space. Based on this observation, we have developed a novel temporal multi-resolution analysis (TMRA) based algorithm using Canny wavelets to perform temporal video segmentation. Information across multiple resolution is used to help detect as well as locate abrupt and gradual transitions. We present the theoretical basis of the algorithm followed by the implementation as well as the result. In this paper the TMRA technique has been implemented using color histogram in the raw domain and DCT coefficients in the compressed video streams as the feature space. Experimental result shows that this method can detect as well as characterize both the abrupt and gradual shot boundaries. The technique also shows good noise tolerance characteristics.
In this work, we present a system for the automatic segmentation, indexing and retrieval of audiovisual data based on the combination of audio, visual and textural content analysis. The video stream is demultiplexed into audio, image and caption components. Then, a semantic segmentation of the audio signal based on audio content analysis is conducted, and each segment is indexed as one of the basic audio types. The image sequence is segmented into shots based on visual information analysis, and keyframes are extracted from each shot. Meanwhile, keywords are detected from the closed caption. Index tables are designed for both linear and non-linear access to the video. It is shown by experiments that the proposed methods for multimodal media content analysis are effective. And that the integrated framework achieves satisfactory results for video information filtering and retrieval.
In this paper, we present a fade detection technique for indexing of MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 compressed video sequences. We declare a fade-in if the number of positive residual dc coefficients in P frames exceeds a certain percentage of the total number of non-zero dc coefficients consistently over several consecutive frames. Our fade-detection technique has fair accuracy and the advantage of high simplicity since it uses only entropy decoding and does not use computationally expensive inverse DCTs.
In this paper we address the problem of the detection of abrupt shot changes in videos. Differently from the majority of the techniques in the literature., we perform this task directly on the stream coded in the Mpeg format, without resorting to any decoding procedure. The proposed algorithm proceeds according to a step-wise refinement strategy and combining different cut detection criteria. Experimental results are presented and discussed.
The current trend in content-based retrieval is the development of object-based systems. Such systems enable users to make higher level queries which are more intuitive to them than queries based on visual primitives. In this paper, we present OVID, our Object-based VIDeo retrieval system. It currently consists of a video parsing module, an annotation module, a user interface and a search mechanism. A combined multiple expert approach is at the heart of the video parsing routine for an improved performance. The annotation module extracts color and texture-based region information which will be used by the neural-network-based search routine at query tie. The iconic query paradigm on which the system is based provides users with a flexible means to define object-based queries.
In this paper, we propose an efficient wavelet-based approach to achieve flexible and robust motion trajectory matching of video objects. By using the wavelet transform, our algorithm decomposes the raw object trajectory into components at different scales. We use the coarsest scale components to approximate the global motion information and the finer scale components to partition the global motion into subtrajectories. Each subtrajectory is then modeled by a set of spatial and temporal translation invariant attributes. Motion retrieval based on subtrajectory modeling has been tested and compared against other global trajectory matching schemes to show the advantages of our approach in achieving spatio-temporal invariance properties.
This paper addresses key-frame selection for content-based video indexing and access. The proposed key-frame selection method is aimed to operate in real-time irrespective of the available computation resources and memory. Hence, we provide three solutions to content-based key-frame selection with different costs, and suggests three operation levels. The suggested key-frame selection method has two major parts: (i) segmentation of the video into shots; (ii) analysis of the motion and color activity within each video shot to selected additional frames. We also prove a new color based approach to key-frame selection and discuss how to fuse color and motion based key-frame selection results.
Efficient ways to manage digital video data have assumed enormous importance lately. An integral aspect is the ability to browse, index nd search huge volumes of video data automatically and efficiently. This paper presents a novel scheme for matching video sequences base on low-level features. The scheme supports fast and efficient matching and can search 450,000 frames of video data within 72 seconds on a 400 MHz. Pentium II, for a 50 frame query. Video sequences are processed in the compressed domain to extract the histograms of the images in the DCT sequence is implemented for matching video clips. The binds of the histograms of successive for comparison. This leads to efficient storage and transmission. The histogram representation can be compacted to 4.26 real numbers per frame, while achieving high matching accuracy. Multiple temporal resolution sampling of the videos to be matched is also supported and any key-frame-based matching scheme thus becomes a particular implementation of this scheme.
Studies on MPEG-7 have so far been concentrated only on the normative components. While feature extraction has been an active research subject in content-based retrieval studies, work on content-based search engines is scarce. In this paper, we attempt to perceive the constructs of an MPEG-7 optimum search engine by examining various requirements as well as functionality imposed on, or enabled for, the search engine by the MPEG-7 standard.
Histograms are the most prevalently used representation for the color content of images and video. An elaborate representation of the histograms requires specifying the color centers of the histogram bins and the count of the number of image pixels with that color. Such an elaborate representation, though expressive, may not be necessary for some tasks in image search, filtering and retrieval. A qualitative representation of the histogram is sufficient for many applications. Such as representation will be compact and greatly simplify the storage and transmission of the image representation. It will also reduce the computational complexity of search and filtering algorithms without adversely affecting the quality. We present such a compact binary descriptor for color representation. This descriptor is the quantized Haar transform coefficients of the color histogram. We show the use of this descriptor for browsing large image databases without the need for computationally expensive clustering algorithms. The compact nature of the descriptor and the associated simple similarity measure allows searching over a database of about four hours of video in less than 5-6 seconds without the use of any sophisticated indexing scheme.
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I want to try the delicious and healthy Vietnamese cuisines. How can I find the best Vietnamese restaurant near me? Vietnamese cuisines, just like other ethnic cuisines, are considered alien to the Americans and checking the names of Vietnamese cuisines is often a challenging experience, due to both the strange names and the strange diacritics on their Latin letters.
However, due to the recently rising popularity of Pho, which is Vietnam’s prized noodle soup, more and more Americans become more curious about what Vietnamese people actually eat besides this delicious soup. Remember that we become aware of the variety of Thai foods after trying Tom Yum and that Japanese cuisines are not limited only to sushi and sashimi after trying the famous Ramen. Through Pho, we might be able to explore the richness of Vietnamese cuisines and to find the real jewels in the Vietnamese culinary tradition.
How to Find Vietnamese Restaurant Near Me?
If you want to try Pho and other unique Vietnamese cuisines, finding an authentic Vietnamese restaurant should not be hard to do. There are several ways to find the best Vietnamese restaurants in the United States.
By using your smartphone or internet browser, you can use the online maps to find any restaurants in your locality that serve Vietnamese cuisines. The restaurant itself is not necessarily exclusively Vietnamese. A large variety of Vietnamese foods and drinks are often served in restaurants labeled as Asian, Chinese, or even Japanese and Korean restaurants. If you are lucky, you might be able to find an exclusive Vietnamese restaurant that serves only Vietnamese cuisines. Due to the way search engines, especially Google, handle local business search, almost every establishment is already listed in their directory and appearing on their maps.
Check Vietnamese Enclaves Throughout the Country.
The United States is the melting pot of diverse cultures originating from many different parts of the world. And different ethnic communities often establish exclusive enclaves where they can revive their own specific cultures and run businesses related to such cultures. If you are looking for an eating place that serves Vietnamese cultures, you can simply search online for Vietnamese enclaves like Little Saigon, Little Vietnam, or Little Hanoi. The different names are often associated with political predisposition; however, culinary tradition is mostly independent of political affiliation. Therefore, you can always find delicious Vietnamese cuisines regardless of whether you visit communism-oriented or capitalism-oriented enclaves.
There are three biggest Vietnamese enclaves in the United States: in Orange County, in San Jose, and in Houston. If you live near those places, finding the best Vietnamese restaurants should be so easy that you may find those restaurants within walking distance. Nonetheless, the same enclaves, though smaller in size, can also be found in other cities in more than 20 states in the United States.
As mentioned above, Vietnamese cuisines are often served in any Asian restaurants, regardless of their national affiliation. Certain restaurants allow you to check their menu online. Therefore, check the menu and see whether Vietnamese foods and drinks are listed on the menu.
Find Any Restaurants with the Word Pho in Their Name.
Sometimes, a Vietnamese restaurant doesn’t use the word Vietnamese in its name. Instead, it mentions Vietnam’s most famous food, Pho. Therefore, it is also possible for you to find the best Vietnamese restaurant by searching for Pho restaurants using the internet.
Are All Vietnamese Restaurants Offer the Same Menu?
I know I can find the best Vietnamese restaurant near me, but will I eat the same foods and drink the same beverages when I visit any Vietnamese restaurants? Although all Vietnamese restaurants share a large variety of similar foods and drinks, not all Vietnamese restaurants are the same and you might find that the foods that are served in a particular restaurant are never found in another restaurant.
Restaurants that are located in the same enclave or region may share a similar menu; however, when you finally visit another enclave, especially the distant one, you may find the menu very much different. May Pham writes in Food Republic about such unusual diversity when she compares the menu of Vietnamese restaurants in Little Saigon in Orange Country and the menu of Vietnamese restaurants in Houston. The foods and drinks served in both areas are very much different, with the Houston-based restaurants serving a better variety of Vietnamese cuisines.
If the Menu Is Different, Which Food Should I Choose?
I am aware of the diversity in the menu of every Vietnamese restaurant near me, so give me some clues of the best Vietnamese cuisines that I should try.
The best way to discover the best Vietnamese cuisines that sufficiently tickle your palate is to visit any Vietnamese restaurants yourself and pick any foods, even the ones you are not yet familiar with. However, if you prefer to know what enters your mouth, here are three recommended Vietnamese cuisines that you should try.
As already mentioned in many places in this article, Pho should be your first gate to the world of Vietnamese culinary tradition. This noodle soup is rich in ingredients and flavors. And as mentioned in the first sentence above, Pho is also healthy and rich in nutrients. Pho basically consists of salty broth, shredded chicken or beef meat, sprinkles of herbs, and fresh rice noodles. This combination makes Pho a delicious and refreshing soup to eat.
If you prefer a drier food, try Banh Xeo. Its crispy crepe will crumble when you bite it, giving you an unforgettable eating sensation. The crumbling crepe will reveal the filling of the pancake, which usually consists of pork, shrimp, herbs, bean sprouts, and other ingredients that give this food its special taste. Banh Xeo literally means sizzling pancake because the pancake sizzles loudly when put on a hot pan.
If you want to finish your meal with a delicious dessert, Cà Phé Trứng or egg coffee can be a perfect choice. This dessert, which you may call either a drink or a snack, basically consists of egg yolks, condensed milk, and sugar. Despite the addition of egg, it actually tastes refreshing. You will love this dessert not only because it is delicious, but also because it is reinvigorating and rich in nutrients.
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5 important planning details to make sure you have fun at your wedding!
Planning your wedding requires a lot of time, blood, sweat, and tears. You think about every little detail, trying to make everything perfect for the guests. You spend so much time working to make sure your big day is memorable and fun for everyone that attends. Here comes the big question though: What about you? Have you thought about how to make sure you have the most fun and memorable big day? There are many details you need to consider, so you can take a deep breath, relax, and have fun on your wedding day!
It seems obvious that you would hope to enjoy every part of your wedding day, but think about the most important details. What makes you the most excited when you think about your wedding? Do you really want time to get down on the dance floor? Or is there a long lost friend attending your wedding that you hope to reconnect with? Do you want a moment to eat quietly and enjoy time with your partner? These are all things you can plan for. Decide which things are the most important and then express that to your fiance and bridal party. Once you are clear on what you want to accomplish it will be easy to schedule time to accommodate your desires; after all, it is your big day! Remember also to consider that once you plan for the details you care the most about, to let go of the other things that aren't turning out exactly how you might have hoped.
I know this seems like an obvious one, but amidst all the stress that goes into planning a wedding (and getting married) it can be easily overlooked.
Make sure to get a good night's sleep before your big day. You don't want to be groggy and yawning while you recite your vows to your soon to be spouse!
Make sure that you have planned and prepared well so that you are stress-free. Stress can take a toll on the body, so you want to keep it to a minimum.
The other thing to keep in mind about your health is to make sure you eat a filling, healthy breakfast. There is going to be a lot of things you have to do on the big day, and you want to make sure you have the energy to do it!
I know again this seems like a no-brainer, but things will be going by so quickly that the day will be over before you realize you forgot to enjoy yourself. That means remind yourself to take a deep breath as you walk down the aisle, and take it all in. Again, remember to pause to reflect during your toasts and your first dance. These moments will go by so quickly you want to be sure you get the most out of them! Also make sure to plan time with your new spouse. So many people will be pulling you in every direction that you need to make sure you get to spend and enjoy time with them! You can either steal little moments just the two of you, or actually plan 30 minutes where you two hang out by yourselves (perhaps between the ceremony and reception).
When it comes to the bridal party, your family members, and even your future spouse, you need to let them know what you expect of them. If you don't want anyone getting drunk before the ceremony make sure that's clear. If you want your parents to put aside their differences for one day (and not fight) that might also be something you need to establish with them. If you have expectations for people in your wedding, definitely tell them. It is better to let someone know what you expect of them, instead of being disappointed in them for something they weren't aware of. Obviously you want to avoid being a bridezilla, but letting people know some of your expectations is okay (and even desired by some people). People don't want to be the reason you didn't enjoy your big day, so they will go out of their way to make sure they fulfill your desires!
As a bride-to-be myself, I know this is probably going to be the most challenging detail to accomplish. I want the day to be perfect, so when things out of my control start going wrong, I know it's going to be hard to let it go. I know though, that if I don't let it go, I will let it ruin what otherwise should be the happiest day in my life! So instead of getting cranky about the details going wrong, you should focus on the details that are turning out fantastic, and remember you are marrying the person of your dreams, that is what should matter most!
Now if you just consider these 5 things, and take a deep breath, we are sure you will more than enjoy your big day! We hope you have so much fun on your wedding day, and remember you get to spend the rest of your life with a wonderful partner and person! Do any newlyweds have any pointers on how to have fun at your wedding? We would love additional advice if you have any post-wedding secrets!
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‘P % Q’ means ‘P is not greater than Q’.
‘P $ Q’ means ‘P is neither greater than nor equal to Q’.
In Which of the following expressions does the expression 'J $ K' to be definitely hold true?
In Which of the following expressions does the expression 'A % B' to be definitely hold true?
Which of the following symbols should replace the question mark (?) respectively in order to complete the given expression in such a manner that both P%S, as well as Q$M, definitely holds true?
Which of the following expressions is false if the expression 1%3<4&5%6$8<2$7 is definitely true?
E. Neither I nor II is true.
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that are confidential that are no longer confidential." What does that mean?? Can you translate, please? Are they confidential or not confidential and what are the "plenty of things". What is your secret for figuring out which is which? Sorry, to ask so many questions, but I have no idea of what you're trying to communicate.
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Python is a powerful programming language that's easy to learn and fun to play with. But once you've gotten a handle on the basics, what do you do next? Python Playground is a collection of imaginative programming projects that will inspire you to use Python to make art and music, build simulations of real-world phenomena, and interact with hardware like the Arduino and Raspberry Pi. You'll learn to use common Python tools and libraries like numpy, matplotlib, and pygame to do things like: -Generate Spirograph-like patterns using parametric equations and the turtle module -Create music on your computer by simulating frequency overtones -Translate graphical images into ASCII art -Write an autostereogram program that produces 3D images hidden beneath random patterns -Make realistic animations with OpenGL shaders by exploring particle systems, transparency, and billboarding techniques -Construct 3D visualizations using data from CT and MRI scans -Build a laser show that responds to music by hooking up your computer to an Arduino Programming shouldn't be a chore. Have some solid, geeky fun with Python Playground. The projects in this book are compatible with both Python 2 and 3.
Mahesh Venkitachalam is a software engineer with two decades of programming experience. He has nurtured a passion for technology since the eighth grade, which he channels into his popular electronics and programming blog, electronut.in.
"If you want to become adept at doing clever things with Python, I doubt you'll find a better group of projects or more useful help for understanding how the language works."
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NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- If Congress fails to approve a spending bill by Friday, the federal government will shut down. And boy, things aren't looking good.
Lawmakers have been trying to reach a compromise that would set spending levels for the next six months. Those negotiations continued Tuesday at the White House, and it appears things did not go well.
After the meeting, House Speaker John Boehner accused the White House of proposing cuts that amount to "smoke and mirrors."
And President Obama made a rare appearance at the White House press briefing, where he berated Republicans for including hot-button political initiatives in their proposal.
It appears the two sides are still billion of dollars away from striking a deal. With time running out, a shutdown is looking ever more likely.
If it comes to that, agencies won't be able to spend money, and parts of the federal government will close up shop.
Which services would stop? During the last major shutdowns in the final days of 1995 and early 1996, the government closed 368 National Park Service sites, along with national museums and monuments.
In addition, 200,000 passport applications went unprocessed and toxic waste cleanup work at 609 sites stopped. The National Institutes of Health stopped accepting new clinical research patients and services for veterans, including health care, were curtailed.
Work on bankruptcy cases could slow. In the last shutdown, more than 3,500 cases were delayed.
Which services would the government keep running? Agencies are allowed to perform any operations necessary for the safety of human life and protection of property.
The government would keep essential services -- such as air traffic control and the national security apparatus -- in full operating mode.
Federal workers who provide medical care on the job would be kept on, as would employees who handle hazardous waste, inspect food, patrol the borders, protect federal property, guard inmates or work in power distribution.
Workers who protect essential elements of the money and banking system would also report to work.
The Postal Service, which is self-funded, will continue to operate.
How many federal workers would be furloughed? The government went dark twice during the Clinton administration: Some 800,000 workers were sent home during the first shutdown and 284,000 were sent home during the later shutdown.
It is unclear how many workers would be furloughed in a new shutdown. Each federal agency has its own plan to wind down operations, and administration officials have not released details.
Will Social Security benefits be mailed? During the last major shutdown, the Social Security Administration mailed checks throughout the crisis, and a close reading of established law makes clear the agency has the legal authority to do so again.
During the Clinton-era shutdown, new Social Security claims weren't being processed because the agency furloughed 61,415 employees. As the shutdown wore on, the agency adjusted its plan and recalled workers to start processing new claims.
Will troops overseas get the resources they need? Yes. While some Pentagon activities would stop, it would continue many other operations necessary for the safety of human life and protection of property.
However, the Department of Defense says that if the government shuts down for an extended period, troops might not be paid on time.
How long will a shutdown last? Hard to say. Between 1977 and 1980, there were six shutdowns ranging from eight to 17 days.
Nine shutdowns occurred between 1980 and 1995, and none lasted longer than three full days.
The Clinton-era shutdowns lasted five days and 21 days. Since that episode the federal government has suffered no similar shutdown.
Most political strategists agree that the Clinton-era shutdowns politically benefited the sitting president, who was able to paint Republicans as obstructionist.
If a shutdown does come to fruition, the current crop of Republicans will be looking to avoid the same fate.
How did we get here? Typically, lawmakers pass 12 appropriations bills for the president's approval. Those bills give federal agencies the legal authority to spend and conduct business.
This year, not one of the 12 has been approved by the Senate.
Instead, lawmakers have relied on continuing resolutions. If lawmakers are able to pass another short-term fix, it would be the fifth of the fiscal year.
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*In English: Giant Toy Story Egg! In anticipation of the new Toy Story 4 movie announced by Pixar, we have created a Toy Story giant surprise egg with Buzz Lightyear, Woody, Jessie, Rex, Mr Potato Head, Mrs Potato Head, Zurg and Slinky Dog Toys!
*In Portuguese, Em Portugues, Pt: Em antecipação ao novo Toy Story 4 filme anunciado pela Pixar, criamos um ovo surpresa gigante do Toy Story com brinquedos do Buzz Lightyear, Woody, Jessie, Rex, Sr. Cabeça de Batata e Slinky Dog!
*In Spanish, En Español: Pensando en el anuncio de Pixar sobre la creación de Toy Story 4, hemos preparado un huevo sorpresa gigante de Toy Story con muñecos de Buzz Lightyear, Woody, Jessie, Rex y el Sr Patata!
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Identify two companies in the same industry that utilize social media. Compare and contrast their SM efforts. How does each organization use social media to differentiate the brand as well as advancing differing strategic goals?
Dale Carnegie and Econsultancy are two consulting and training companies that utilize social media to build an audience and promote their services.
Dale Carnegie’s training “teaches professionals to sharpen skills and improve performance” in professional settings.
Similarly, Econsultancy’s training courses, events and publications are focused on sharing “advice and insight” for performance improvements to digital professionals.
Econsultancy does custom training of digital and e-learning services, “on all aspects of digital marketing and ecommerce.” The company’s users are internet industry professional, wanting to ace the marketing exams, or just starting out to learn digital excellence.
Digital and ecommerce are fairly new media. On the other hand, Dale Carnegie, the brand grew out of Dale Carnegie, public speaker, personality development, and author of, “How to Win Friends and Influence People” (1939).
However, differing in products as Dale Carnegie is focused on offering solutions to individuals, teams and organization in the area of employee engagement, leadership, presentation, effectiveness, sales, customer service, talent management and communication.
Carnegie not only wrote books such as, “Public Speaking & Influencing men in Business,” he also showed people how to become successful in business. The Foundations of Dale Carnegie are as a result of Carnegie’s works that influenced standards.
Dale Carnegie’s original body of knowledge has been constantly updated, expanded and refined through nearly a century’s worth of real time business experience. The 160 Carnegie Managing Directors around the world use their training and consulting services with companies of all sizes in all business segments to increase knowledge and performance. The result of this collective global experience is an expanding reservoir of business acumen that our clients rely on to drive business results.
The two companies are similar in that they provide professional training to those wanting to use their services. However, structurally they are very different. In addition to charging for their courses, Econsultancy also offers paid subscriptions ranging in the upper $700 to access in depth digital data research.
On the other hand, Dale Carnegie professional service is a franchise establishment with offices in different cities as well as globally—from Africa and the Middle East, Central and South America, and United States.
Econsultancy’s operates from three locations: New York, Singapore, and London, and like Dale Carnegie has fans in the millions through their global reach on-line or in offices, headquarter in Hauppauge, New York, training representatives in all 50 U. S. states and over 80 countries, in over 25 languages.
Econsultancy uses FB to promote its articles and research, but the two differ in that Econsultancy’s content is nearly almost marketing focused: SEO, digital marketing, marketing salary, web design and automated campaign.
Very unlike other marketing firms offering digital marketing service or other social media related products. B2B marketers such as VerticalResponse, “a self service marketing solutions for small businesses and non-profit organization” also promotes content unrelated to social media. For example it might post articles in the news and ask its audience to chime in on the discussion.
Dale Carnegie distinguishes itself from Econsultancy training further in that it offers free guides to all their articles and strategies for everyone to download and read, while Econsultancy blog posts are focused solely on Facebook.
In addition to Dale Carnegie’s worldwide franchises, it has several FB pages dedicated to different services and geographic reach—training for organizational goals and a page dedicated to 365 Days of Living the Dale Carnegie Principles. It also has a training and leadership FB page focused on a globally engaging partners and fans.
http://www.westegg.com/unmaintained/carnegie/the-man.html Who was Dale Carnegie?
Megan Gassman, reading through the treads of all the people who posted on Robert’s post is indicative of the work that involves, “sift[ing] through all the feedback?” (Dr. Dickinson).
I agree that the ‘Marketing/Operations’ monitoring mentioned can and should be moved to “out-house’ to firms like “Labyrinthrealism, Brooklyn’s Social Media Marketing Firm,” while the “in-house” should go to the employees to control content.
one, working for the business owner to plan a successful SM strategy for 2014.
two, measure results and provide feedback.
Advice to the business owner can take the forms of recommending a new paint job, to which customers to target on SM platforms.
On the other hand, employees can in truth become the “rock star” (Mark Collier) of the company and this can be accomplished with pre-established behavior and rules.
Participating in a SM strategy engagement.
Reading data and making informed judgment that benefits the business owners.
One, get their employees to produce content about the business activity (Derek Overbey).
Three, target customers based on SM users’ behavior (Bill Mickey).
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"Setianism" redirects here. For the branch of Gnosticism, see Sethianism.
The Temple of Set is an occult initiatory order founded in 1975. A new religious movement and form of Western esotericism, the Temple espouses a religion known as Setianism, whose practitioners are called Setians. This is sometimes identified as a form of Satanism, although this term is not often embraced by Setians and is contested by some academics.
The Temple was established in the United States in 1975 by Michael Aquino, an American political scientist, military officer, and a high-ranking member of Anton LaVey's Church of Satan. Dissatisfied with the direction in which LaVey was taking the Church, Aquino resigned and – according to his own claim – embarked on a ritual to invoke Satan, who revealed to him a sacred text called The Book of Coming Forth by Night. According to Aquino, in this work Satan revealed his true name to be that of the deity Set, which had been the name used by his followers in ancient Egypt. Aquino was joined in establishing the Temple by a number of other dissatisfied members of LaVey's Church, and soon various Setian groups were established across the United States.
Setians believe that Set is the one real god and that he has aided humanity by giving them a questioning intellect, the "Black Flame", which distinguishes them from other animal species. Set is held in high esteem as a teacher whose example is to be emulated but he is not worshipped as a deity. Highly individualistic in basis, the Temple promotes the idea that practitioners should seek self-deification and thus attain an immortality of consciousness. Setians believe in the existence of magic as a force which can be manipulated through ritual, however the nature of these rituals is not prescribed by the Temple. Specifically, Aquino described Setian practices as "black magic", a term which he defines idiosyncratically.
Following initiation into the Temple, a Setian can proceed along a series of six degrees, each of which requires greater responsibilities to the group; as a result, most members remain in the first two degrees. Governed by a high priest or high priestess and a wider Council of Nine, the Temple is also divided into groups known as pylons, through which Setians can meet or correspond in order to advance their magical work in a particular area. Pylons of the Temple are now present in the United States, Australia, and Europe, with estimates placing the Temple's membership between 200 and 500.
The Temple of Set is a new religious movement, and draws upon earlier forms of Western esotericism. Among academic scholars of religious studies there has been some debate as to whether the Temple of Set can be characterised as "Satanism" or not. The religious studies scholars Asbjorn Dyrendal, James R. Lewis, and Jesper Aa. Petersen believed that it was apt to consider the Temple of Set to be a Satanic group despite its reluctance to use the term "Satanism" because of its genealogical link to other Satanic groups and its continuing use of "many elements of satanic mythology". Similarly, the sociologist of religion Massimo Introvigne regarded it as Satanist because of its historical origins as a breakaway from the Church of Satan rather than because of its beliefs or practices. Conversely, the scholar Kennet Granholm argued that it should not be considered a form of Satanism because it does not place an emphasis on the figure of Satan. Granholm nevertheless acknowledged that it was an "actor in the Satanic milieu" and part of the wider Left-Hand Path group of esoteric traditions. He suggested that it could also be seen as a form of "Post-Satanism", thereby continuing to reflect its historical origins within religious Satanism.
According to Introvigne, the Temple of Set is a "small but significant" part of the Satanic subculture. The Temple of Set is far more rooted in esoteric ideas than the Church of Satan had been. It has thus been termed "Esoteric Satanism", a term used to contrast it with the "Rational Satanism" found in LaVeyan Satanism. Accordingly, it has been labelled the "intellectual wing of esoteric Satanism", with the Temple presenting itself as an intellectual religion. Aquino possessed a PhD in political science and this formal education was reflected in the way that he presented his arguments, in which he draws broadly upon Western philosophy and science.
Born in 1946, Michael Aquino was a military intelligence officer specialising in psychological warfare. In 1969 he joined Anton LaVey's Church of Satan and rose rapidly through the group's ranks. In 1970, while he was serving with the U.S. military during the Vietnam War, Aquino was stationed in Bến Cát in South Vietnam when he authored a tract entitled "Diabolicon" in which he reflected upon his growing divergence from the Church of Satan's doctrines. In this tract, teachings about the creation of the world, God, and humanity are presented, as is the dualistic idea that Satan complements God. The character of Lucifer is presented as bringing insight to human society, a perspective that was inherited from the depiction of Lucifer in John Milton's seventeenth-century epic poem Paradise Lost.
By 1971 Aquino was ranked as a Magister Caverns of the IV° within the group's hierarchy, was editor of its publication The Cloven Hoof, and sat on its governing Council of Nine. In 1973 he rose to the previously unattained rank of Magister Templi of IV°. According to the scholars of Satanism Per Faxneld and Jesper Petersen, Aquino had become LaVey's "right-hand man". He had nevertheless developed concerns about the Church of Satan, feeling that it had attracted many "fad-followers, egomaniacs and assorted oddballs whose primary interests in becoming Satanists was to flash their membership cards for cocktail-party notoriety". When in 1975 LaVey abolished the system of regional groups, or grottos, and declared that in future all degrees would be given in exchange for financial or other contributions to the Church, Aquino was disenfranchised; he resigned from the organisation on June 10, 1975. While LaVey seems to have held a pragmatic and practical view of the degrees and of the Satanic priesthood, intending them to reflect the social role of the degree holder within the organization, Aquino and his supporters viewed the priesthood as being spiritual, sacred and irrevocable. Dyrendal, Lewis, and Petersen describe Aquino as, in effect, accusing LaVey of the sacrilege of simony.
Aquino provided what has been described as a "foundation myth" for his Setian religion. Having departed the Church, Aquino embarked on a ritual intent on asking Satan for advice on what to do next. According to his account, at Midsummer 1975, Satan appeared and revealed that he wanted to be known by his true name, Set, which had been the name used by his worshippers in ancient Egypt. Aquino produced a religious text, The Book of Coming Forth by Night, which he alleged had been revealed to him by Set through a process of automatic writing. According to Aquino, "there was nothing overtly sensational, supernatural, or melodramatic about The Book of Coming Forth By Night working. I simply sat down and wrote it." The book proclaimed Aquino to be the Magus of the new Aeon of Set and the heir to LaVey's "infernal mandate". Aquino later stated that the revelation that Satan was Set necessitated his own exploration of Egyptology, a subject about which he had previously known comparatively little. In this account, the direct word of Set was appealed to as a source of legitimation. Moreover, by drawing connections between itself and ancient Egypt, this young religion adopted a legitimisation strategy that tried to antedate both Judaism and Christianity.
"The meeting with the Prince of Darkness marked a point of departure between LaVey and Aquino. LaVey was basically a materialist to whom Satan was a personification of the forces of nature. Aquino is an idealist, basing his theology on Plato and the Gnostic/Hermetic tradition."
Historian of religion Mattias Gardell.
Aquino's Book of Coming Forth by Night makes reference to The Book of the Law, a similarly 'revealed' text produced by the occultist Aleister Crowley in 1904 which provided the basis for Crowley's religion of Thelema. In Aquino's book, The Book of the Law was presented as a genuine spiritual text given to Crowley by preternatural sources, but it was also declared that Crowley had misunderstood both its origin and message. In making reference to The Book of the Law, Aquino presented himself as being as much Crowley's heir as LaVey's, and Aquino's work would engage with Crowley's writings and beliefs to a far greater extent than LaVey ever did.
In establishing the Temple, Aquino was joined by other ex-members of LaVey's Church, and soon Setian groups, or pylons, were established in various parts of the United States. The structure of the Temple was based largely on those of the ceremonial magical orders of the late nineteenth century, such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and Ordo Templi Orientis. Aquino has stated that he believed LaVey not to be merely a charismatic leader but to have been actually appointed by Satan himself (referring to this charismatic authority as the "Infernal Mandate") to found the Church. After the split of 1975, Aquino believed LaVey had lost the mandate, which the "Prince of Darkness" then transferred to Aquino and a new organization, the Temple of Set. According to both the historian of religion Mattias Gardell and journalist Gavin Baddeley, Aquino displayed an obsession with LaVey after his departure from the Church, for instance by publicly releasing court documents that reflected negatively on his former mentor, among them restraining orders, divorce proceedings, and a bankruptcy filing. In turn, LaVey lampooned the new Temple as "Laurel and Hardy's Sons of the Desert". In 1975, the Temple incorporated as a non-profit Church in California, receiving state and federal recognition and tax-exemption later that year.
Many members of the Temple had raised concerns about Aquino's authoritarian position within it. Aquino relinquished his office of High Priest in 1979 to Ronald Keith Barrett, who produced an inspired text of his own, titled The Book of Opening the Way. Barrett's approach was later criticized as "more mystical than magical" by Temple members. Barrett's leadership was also criticised as authoritarian, resulting in a decline in the Temple's membership. Barrett resigned his office and severed ties with the organization in May 1982. He subsequently established his own Temple of Anubis, which he led until his 1998 death; it survived until the early 2010s. After Barrett's departure, Aquino retook leadership of the Temple of Set. During this period, the sociologist Gini Graham Scott clandestinely participated in the Temple, using her observations as the basis for her 1983 book The Magicians: A Study of the Use of Power in a Black Magic Group.
From 1980 through to 1986, Aquino worked as a professor at Golden Gate University in San Francisco. He was fascinated with the connections between occultism and Nazism, resulting in some accusations that he was sympathetic to Nazi ideology. In 1983, he performed a solitary rite at Walhalla, the subterranean section of the Wewelsburg castle in Germany that was utilised as a ceremonial space by the Schutzstaffel's Ahnenerbe group during the Nazi period. This resulted in his formation of the Order of the Trapezoid, a Setian group whose members understood themselves as a chivalric order of knights. From 1987 through to 1995, the Grand Master of the Order of the Trapezoid was Edred Thorsson, who had joined the Temple of Set in 1984 and risen to the Fifth Degree in 1990. Thorsson exerted a "discernible influence" over the Setian community through his books, in which he combined aspects of Satanic philosophy with the modern Pagan religion of Heathenry. In 1980 he founded the Texas-based Rune-Gild, which shared many of the Temple's key philosophical tenets but with a focus on the study of runes and their applications in magical practice.
In the 1980s, Aquino attracted greater publicity for his Temple through appearances on television talk shows like The Oprah Winfrey Show and Geraldo. In 1987, during the Satanic ritual abuse hysteria, the three-year-old daughter of a Christian clergyman accused Aquino of sexually abusing her during Satanic rites held at his Presidio home. Responding to the allegations, police raided Aquino's home, however—after no evidence was found to substantiate the allegation and it was revealed that Aquino was living in Washington D.C. at the time of the alleged abuse—the police decided not to charge him with any felony. Aquino attempted to bring formal charges against the chaplain and psychiatrist who had encouraged the girl's claims, although he was more successful in bringing legal action against two books—Carl A. Raschke's Painted Black and Linda Blood's The New Satanists—that had suggested that he was guilty. He then left Presidio and was transferred to St. Louis. In 1994, Aquino retired from active service in the army, being honourably transferred to the Retired Reserve and awarded the Meritorious Service Medal.
While the Satanic ritual abuse hysteria declined, Aquino continued to be a figure of prominence in "mind control" conspiracy theories because of his career as a psychological warfare officer in the US Army. In the United Kingdom during this same period, tabloids like the News of the World and Sunday Mirror published sensationalist articles about the Temple. In the mid-1990s a group of British Setians approached the religious studies scholar Graham Harvey and encouraged him to conduct research into the group so as to combat misconceptions about them. The Temple first registered a website in 1997, the same year as the Church of Satan. It would also establish its own intranet, allowing for communication between Setians in different parts of the world.
One member of the Temple was the New Zealander Kerry Bolton, who split to form his own Order of the Left Hand Path in 1990. In 1995, another couple who joined were LaVey's daughter Zeena Schreck and her husband Nikolas Schreck, both of whom were vocal critics of Zeena's father. In 1996, Don Webb became the high priest of the Temple, a position that he held until 2002. He was replaced by Zeena Schreck, but she resigned after six weeks and was replaced by Aquino, who took charge once more. In that year, Zeena led a schism within the organisation, establishing her own Berlin-based group, The Storm, which she later renamed the Sethian Liberation Movement. Aquino stood down as Supreme Priest again in 2004, to be replaced by Patricia Hardy, who was elected to the position of Supreme Priestess. Although no longer in charge of the organisation, he nevertheless remained its most visible spokesperson.
In addition to the Book of Coming Forth by Night, in which Set himself is purported to speak, the Temple's philosophy and teachings are revealed in a series of occult writings titled the Jeweled Tablets of Set. Each tablet is keyed to a specific degree in the Temple hierarchy. Only the introduction to the first tablet (Crystal Tablet of Set), titled "Black Magic", is available for non-members. The Ruby Tablet, which is available for second-degree members, is the lengthiest and most diverse of the tablets.
The private Temple literature is not regarded as secret per se, but is kept restricted because it contains materials which, according to the Temple, may be dangerous to the non-initiated.
The human individual is at the centre of Setian philosophy. The Temple places great emphasis on the development of the individual, postulating self-deification as the ultimate goal. The realization of the true nature of the Setian is termed "becoming" or "coming into being" and is represented by the Egyptian hieroglyphic term kheper, or "Xeper" (a phonetic of _Xpr_), as the Temple of Set prefers to write it. This term is described in The Book of Coming Forth by Night as "the Word of the Aeon of Set". Members attempt "to preserve and strengthen" their "isolate, psyche-centric existence" through adherence to the left-hand path. This idea is in opposition to the traditional goal of Hermetic and Western mystical practices, which is the surrendering of the ego into a union with either God or the universe.
The Temple teaches that the true self, or essence, is immortal, and Xeper is the ability to align consciousness with this essence. Aquino taught that there is an afterlife for those who have reached the necessary level of individual development. This afterlife could occur in the individual's subjective universe. Those unable to reach this level dissolve into non-existence when the physical body dies. Self-initiation is knowledge understood as a conjunction of intellect and intuition. In keeping with its emphasis on the individual, the Temple encourages their members to celebrate their own birthday, and does not prescribe any other calendar of religious festivities.
Barrett presented Xem as his Aeonic Word to the Setians, presenting it as a natural and necessary further development of Aquino's Xeper. Aquino later acknowledged Xem as a worthwhile magical concept for Setians to explore, but found Barrett's insistence on its exclusivity as incompatible with the Temple's individualistic philosophy.
Aquino's understanding of Satan differed from the atheistic interpretation promoted by LaVey, and the Temple's theology differs from that of the Church of Satan. The Temple presents the view that the name Satan was originally a corruption of the name Set. The Temple of Set promotes the idea that Set is a real entity, and accordingly has been described as being "openly theistic". It further argues that Set is ageless and is the only real god in existence, with all others having been created by the human imagination. Set is described as having given humanity—through the means of non-natural evolution—the "Black Flame" or the "Gift of Set". This refers to humanity's questioning intellect which sets the species apart from other animals and gives it an "isolate self-consciousness" and the possibility to attain divinity. Aquino argued that the idea of the Gift of Set was inadvertently promoted to a wider audience in Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. According to Aquino, the black monolith which imparts human-level intelligence onto prehistoric apes in the film was a symbol of Set.
While Setians are expected to revere Set, they do not worship him, instead regarding him as a teacher and a guide. He is portrayed as a role model on which Setians can base their own deification. According to Webb, "we do not worship Set - only our own potential. Set was and is the patron of the magician who seeks to increase his existence through expansion."
Embracing the idea of aeons from Crowley's Thelema, Aquino adopted the Crowleyan tripartite division between the Aeon of Isis, Aeon of Osiris, and Aeon of Horus, but added to that the Aeon of Satan, which he dates from 1966 to 1975, and then the Aeon of Set, which he dated from 1975 onward. Despite presenting these chronological parameters, Aquino also portrayed the aeons less as time periods and more as mind-sets that can co-exist alongside one another. Thus, he stated that "A Jew, Christian or Muslim exists in the Æon of Osiris, a Wiccan in that of Isis, and a Thelemite in that of Horus".
Aquino placed an emphasis on what he deemed to be the division between the objective and subjective universes. In the Setian religion, the objective world is understood as representing the natural world and humanity's collective meaning systems, while the subjective universe is understood as the individually experienced world and individual meaning systems. Following earlier esotericists like Crowley, Aquino characterised magic as "causing change in accordance with will". Unlike LaVey, Aquino expressed belief in the division between black magic and white magic. He described white magic as "a highly-concentrated form of conventional religious ritual", characterising it as being "more versatile", "less difficult" and "less dangerous" than black magic. However he criticised white magic as "fraud and/or self-delusion" which deceives the consciousness into thinking that it has been accepted in the objective universe.
Aquino divided black magic into two forms, lesser black magic and greater black magic. He stated that lesser black magic entails "impelling" things that exist in the "objective universe" into doing a desired act by using "obscure physical or behavioural laws" and into this category he placed stage magic, psychodramas, politics, and propaganda. Conversely, he used the term greater black magic in reference to changes in the subjective universe of the magician, allowing them to realize their self in accordance with the principle of Xeper. Among Setians it is accepted that there may be changes in the objective universe as a result of greater black magic, however such effects are considered secondary to the impact that they have on the subjective universe.
Within the Temple, rituals are typically known as "workings", and are most often carried out alone. Stressing the religion's individualist nature, there are no rituals that are specifically prescribed by the Temple. Aquino also emphasized that in order to achieve a desired aim, the Setian should carry out physical actions alongside magical ones. There are no regular occasions which are marked by fixed rituals, and the Temple holds to no calendar of festivals.
The Temple uses an inverted pentagram as its insignia, known as the "Pentagram of Set" to Setians. The use of the geometric shape is derived from the Sigil of Baphomet used by the Church of Satan, although stripped of its overtly Satanic add-ons. The Temple explains the meaning and significance of the pentagram by referring to Pythagorean ideas and "mathematical perfection". At Setian gatherings, members wear the pentagram as a medallion. The medallion is colored according to the initiation degree of the Setian.
Both the Church of Satan and the Temple of Set also use the trapezoid symbol. The version used by the Church includes flames, a pitchfork and the number 666, while the trapezoid of the Temple has a left-facing Egyptian sceptre, and the number 666 stylized in geometric shapes rather than as clear numbers.
The internal structure of the Temple of Set is closely reminiscent of that of the Church of Satan as it existed in the 1970s.
All members of the Temple must be affiliated with a pylon, and thus membership is by application, requiring contact with a Setian priestess or priest followed by an evaluation period. The participation of non-initiated in the Temple's rituals are forbidden, due to the belief that their rituals would be dangerous in the wrong hands.
The priesthood of the Temple of Set consists of members holding the third degree or higher; those in the first and second degrees are considered "lay members" of the Temple. The first degree serves as a space for mutual evaluation, in which the Temple assesses whether the individual is appropriate for the group, and the individual decides whether they wish to further their involvement with it. Full membership comes with recognition to the second degree. Many members do not advance beyond the second degree, nor is this expected of them, as while the first and second degree members use the organization's teachings and tools for their own development, the priesthood involves greater responsibilities towards the organization, such as being its official representatives.
Recognition is performed by members of the priesthood. The fourth degree, which is acknowledged by the high priest/priestess, entails that the individual is so advanced in their magical skills that they are able to found their own school of magic, represented in the different orders of the Temple. The fifth degree can only be awarded by the unanimous decision of the Council of Nine and by the approval of the Temple's high priest/priestess. A fifth degree member has the power to utter and define a concept which somehow affects the philosophy of the organization, such as the concept of Xeper defined by Aquino in 1975. Only a handful of members have attained this degree and most "fifth-degree" concepts defined in such a manner are no longer studied in the organization. The final sixth degree represents a Magus "whose Task is complete". This degree is held by a very select few in the Temple, although any fifth-degree member can assume the sixth degree based on their own assessment.
The organization is led by a high priest/priestess, who is also the public face of the Temple. The high priest is chosen among fourth or higher degree members by the chairman of the Council of Nine. This ruling council has nine members chosen from the priesthood (third degree or higher), whose mandate lasts for nine years with a new member being elected every year. The chairman of the council is chosen from among the council members each year. The council has the ultimate ruling power in the Temple and even the high priest is responsible to it. The Temple also has an executive director, whose task is to deal with administrative issues.
In addition to the international organization, the Temple sponsors initiatory Orders and Elements and local groups called Pylons. Pylons are intended to facilitate the initiatory work of the Temple's members by conducting meetings where discussions and magical works take place. The purpose of a pylon is to provide a space in which the Setian can focus on their religion, aided by like-minded individuals. Pylons typically meet in a member's home. Members usually join the Pylon located geographically closest to them. Correspondence- or Internet-based Pylons also exist, with Harvey noting that this online networking is more common than in-person interaction. A Pylon is led a by a second-degree (or higher) member who is called a Sentinel. The term pylon derives from the architectural features which served as fortified gateways to ancient Egyptian temples. One Finnish Setian informed Granholm that the relationship between the orders and the temple was like that of different departments in a university.
Elements are loosely structured interest groups, where specific themes and issues are addressed. They can be open for non-members and are commonly in operation only for short periods. Topics of interest include, for example, animal rights, which was the subject of the Arkte element operated by Aquino's wife Lilith.
There are sections of the Temple known as Orders, each of which focus on a particular theme, for instance ancient Egypt, Norse culture, Tantric Hinduism, or vampirism. Others focus on a particular skill, for instance the Order of Uart focuses on the visual arts and the Order of Taliesin on music. Orders can be understood as schools of different aspects of magic providing different paths of initiation. Orders are led by grand masters, who will usually be the founder of the order. In longer-lived orders the founder may have a successive grand master. Orders are founded by members of the fourth degree. When members reaches the second degree of initiation, they are expected to join an order of their own choosing. In normal circumstances, a Setian is only permitted to join one order, however special dispensation can be obtained for a practitioner to join two.
In 2000, the Temple had thirteen pylons, which were operating in the United States, Australia, Germany, and across Sweden and Finland. The extent of the Temple's membership has not been publicly revealed by the group, however in 2005 Petersen noted that academic estimates for the Temple's membership varied from between 300 and 500, and Granholm suggested that in 2007 the Temple contained circa 200 members. The Temple's members come from a variety of racial backgrounds.
In 1999, the anthropologist Jean La Fontaine suggested that in Britain there were 100 members of the Temple at most, and possibly "considerably fewer". In 2001 the scholar Gareth Medway posited that the group had 70 to 80 members in the United Kingdom, adding that it was the largest Satanic group then-active in the country. In 2009, Harvey concurred with La Fontaine's assessment, although still believed that it was the largest Satanic group in the United Kingdom. He noted that of most members were male, between the ages of twenty and fifty, and that—despite his expectation that they might be political extremists—they endorsed mainstream political positions, with all those whom he communicated with stating that they had voted for either the Conservative Party, Labour Party, or Liberal Democrats.
Petersen 2005, p. 435; Faxneld & Petersen 2013, p. 7.
Dyrendal, Lewis & Petersen 2016, p. 7.
Petersen 2009, p. 7; Dyrendal 2012, p. 370; Petersen 2012, p. 95.
Dyrendal 2012, p. 379; Hume & Drury 2013, p. 151.
Gardell 2003, p. 290; Drury 2003, p. 194; Petersen 2005, p. 435; Baddeley 2010, p. 102; Granholm 2013, p. 217.
Schipper 2010, p. 112; Introvigne 2016, p. 317.
Faxneld & Petersen 2013, p. 7.
Gardell 2003, p. 290; Drury 2003, pp. 193–194; Baddeley 2010, p. 102; Granholm 2013, p. 217.
Dyrendal, Lewis & Petersen 2016, p. 69.
Drury 2003, p. 194; Baddeley 2010, p. 103; Dyrendal 2012, p. 380; Granholm 2013, pp. 217–218.
Gardell 2003, p. 290; Drury 2003, p. 194; Schipper 2010, p. 109.
Medway 2001, p. 22; Gardell 2003, p. 290; Drury 2003, p. 194; Baddeley 2010, p. 103.
Dyrendal, Lewis & Petersen 2016, p. 68.
Dyrendal 2012, p. 381; Petersen 2012, p. 99.
Dyrendal 2012, p. 380; Petersen 2012, p. 99.
Petersen 2005, p. 435; Baddeley 2010, p. 103.
Gardell 2003, p. 390; Baddeley 2010, p. 103.
Granholm 2014, p. 89; Introvigne 2016, p. 351.
Gallagher 2014, pp. 80–88; Introvigne 2016, p. 351.
Granholm 2014, p. 89; Introvigne 2016, p. 353.
Gardell 2003, p. 322; Drury 2003, p. 200.
Gardell 2003, p. 292; Introvigne 2016, p. 353.
Gardell 2003, p. 292; Drury 2003, p. 201; Introvigne 2016, p. 351.
Gardell 2003, pp. 321, 322.
Medway 2001, pp. 201–202; Gardell 2003, pp. 290, 390; Faxneld & Petersen 2013, p. 7.
Medway 2001, p. 203; Introvigne 2016, p. 354.
Dyrendal, Lewis & Petersen 2016, p. 131.
Harvey 1995, p. 285; Harvey 2009, p. 31.
Drury 2003, p. 199; Introvigne 2016, p. 355.
Faxneld & Petersen 2013, p. 220.
La Fontaine 1999, p. 102; Gardell 2003, p. 291; Drury 2003, p. 196; Petersen 2005, p. 435; Schipper 2010, p. 112; Petersen 2012, p. 99.
Hume & Drury 2013, p. 151.
van Luijk 2016, p. 353.
Petersen 2005, p. 436; Harvey 2009, p. 32.
Granholm 2009, pp. 93–94; Granholm 2013, p. 218.
La Fontaine 1999, p. 102; Gardell 2003, p. 291; Petersen 2005, p. 436.
Petersen 2005, p. 435; Granholm 2009, p. 94.
La Fontaine 1999, p. 102; Granholm 2009, p. 92; Dyrendal 2012, p. 385.
La Fontaine 1999, p. 103; Dyrendal 2012, p. 386; Petersen 2012, p. 100.
La Fontaine 1999, p. 102; Petersen 2012, p. 100; Granholm 2013, p. 219.
La Fontaine 1999, p. 103.
Drury 2003, p. 196; Schipper 2010, p. 111.
Faxneld & Petersen 2013, p. 224.
La Fontaine 1999, p. 103; Granholm 2009, p. 91; Granholm 2013, p. 220; Introvigne 2016, p. 348.
Granholm 2009, p. 91; Granholm 2013, p. 221.
La Fontaine 1999, p. 104; Granholm 2013, p. 221.
Drury 2003, p. 197; Harvey 2009, p. 34.
Gardell 2003, p. 292; Drury 2003, p. 199.
Granholm 2009, p. 93; Granholm 2013, p. 223.
La Fontaine 1999, p. 105.
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Faxneld, Per; Petersen, Jesper Aagaard (2013). "Introduction: At the Devil's Crossroads". In Per Faxneld and Jesper Aagaard Petersen (eds.). The Devil's Party: Satanism in Modernity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 3–18. ISBN 978-0-19-977924-6.
Gallagher, Eugene (2014). Reading and Writing Scripture in New Religious Movements: New Bibles and New Revelations. New York City: Springer. ISBN 978-1-137-43483-8.
Granholm, Kennet (2009). "Embracing Others than Satan: The Multiple Princes of Darkness in the Left-Hand Path Milieu". In Jesper Aagard Petersen (ed.). Contemporary Religious Satanism: A Critical Anthology. Farnham: Ashgate. pp. 85–101. ISBN 978-0-7546-5286-1.
——— (2013). "The Left-Hand Path and Post-Satanism: The Temple of Set and the Evolution of Satanism". In Per Faxneld and Jesper Aagaard Petersen (eds.). The Devil's Party: Satanism in Modernity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 209–228. ISBN 978-0-19-977924-6.
——— (2014). Dark Enlightenment: The Historical, Sociological, and Discursive Contexts of Contemporary Esoteric Magic. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-27486-0.
——— (2009). "Satanism: Performing Alterity and Othering". In Jesper Aagard Petersen (ed.). Contemporary Religious Satanism: A Critical Anthology. Farnham: Ashgate. pp. 27–40. ISBN 978-0-7546-5286-1.
Lewis, James L. (2001). Satanism Today: An Encyclopedia of Religion, Folklore, and Popular Culture. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-57607-292-9.
Hume, Lynne; Drury, Nevill (2013). The Varieties of Magical Experience: Indigenous, Medieval and Modern Magic. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO Press. ISBN 978-1-4408-0418-2.
La Fontaine, Jean (1999). "Satanism and Satanic Mythology". In Bengt Ankarloo and Stuart Clark (eds.). The Athlone History of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe Volume 6: The Twentieth Century. London: Athlone. pp. 94–140. ISBN 0-485-89006-2.
Medway, Gareth J. (2001). Lure of the Sinister: The Unnatural History of Satanism. New York and London: New York University Press. ISBN 978-0-8147-5645-4.
Petersen, Jesper Aagaard (2005). "Modern Satanism: Dark Doctrines and Black Flames". In James R. Lewis and Jesper Aagaard Petersen (eds.). Controversial New Religions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 423–457. ISBN 978-0-19-515683-6.
——— (2009). "Introduction: Embracing Satan". In Jesper Aagard Petersen (ed.). Contemporary Religious Satanism: A Critical Anthology. Farnham: Ashgate. pp. 1–24. ISBN 978-0-7546-5286-1.
——— (2012). "The Seeds of Satan: Conceptions of Magic in Contemporary Satanism". Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism. 12 (1): 91–129. doi:10.1163/147783512X614849.
——— (2013). "From Book to Bit: Enacting Satanism Online". In Egil Asprem and Kennet Granholm (eds.). Contemporary Esotericism. Sheffield: Equinox. pp. 134–158. ISBN 978-1-908049-32-2.
——— (2014). "Carnal, Chthonian, Complicated: The Matter of Modern Satanism". In James R. Lewis and Jesper Aa. Petersen (ed.). Controversial New Religions (second ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 399–434. ISBN 978-0-19-931531-4.
Lewis, James L. (2001b). "Who Serves Satan? A Demographic and Ideological Profile" (PDF). Marburg Journal of Religion. 6 (2): 1–25.
Lewis, James L. (2002). "Diabolical Authority: Anton LaVey, The Satanic Bible and the Satanist "Tradition"" (PDF). Marburg Journal of Religion. 7 (1): 1–16.
Petersen, Jesper Aagaard (2009b). "Satanists and Nuts: The Role of Schisms in Modern Satanism". In James R. Lewis and Sarah M. Lewis (eds.). Sacred Schisms: How Religions Divide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 218–247. ISBN 978-0-521-88147-0.
Scott, Gini Graham (2007) . The Magicians: A Study of the Use of Power in a Black Magic Group. Lincoln: iUniverse. ISBN 978-0-595-43362-9.
Taub, Diane E.; Nelson, Lawrence D. (August 1993). "Satanism in Contemporary America: Establishment or Underground?". The Sociological Quarterly. 34 (3): 523–541. doi:10.1111/j.1533-8525.1993.tb00124.x.
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Lawyer and self styled bioethicist Lawrence Gostin recently convinced the prestigious Institute of Medicine to call on the pharmaceutical industry to use America's 2.3 million prisoners as guinea pigs for experimental drugs and vaccines. Lamenting the lack of private citizen volunteers for potentially toxic drug and vaccine trials, the Institute of Medicine apparently is helping one of its biggest funders - the pharmaceutical industry - to experiment on captive populations in the name of the "greater good." Professor Gostin preaches utilitarianism, a 19th century consequentialist theory branded as a pseudo- ethic by the Nuremberg Tribunal after doctors and scientists on trial for forced experimentation on captive prisoners during World War II used the "greater good" defense to justify their actions.
Gostin was paid by the CDC to create the Model State Emergency Health Power Act, which was rammed through many states after September 11, 2001. This legislation took away civil liberties in order to allow state militia to arrest, quarantine and force vaccination and experimental drugs on citizens without their informed consent or access to legal counsel whenever public health officials convince the Governor to declare a public health "emergency." An HIV/AIDS activist, Gostin has stated that "The HIV'AIDS pandemic is probably the defining historical event of the late 20th century and threatens to further define our future." Gostin is working with others in academia and public health agencies to pave the way for forced use of experimental HIV vaccines on captive prison populations in preparation for forced use of HIV vaccine by the entire U.S. population without securing voluntary informed consent from individuals.
There are 2.3 million Americans in prison today. They are fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters. They are behind bars for crimes big and small. Some are innocent. They are all human beings.
I am reminded of the warning by holocaust survivor Martin Niemoller: "In Germany, they came first for the Communists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up."Beware the elitists who come to take away your human rights in the name of the greater good.
So true the last paragraph. I want to quote this in my UOP paper on research and ethics. That is OK I hope. I will site all the info and website.
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Is this a vegan New York Sour? Well, I'm not sure about the other ingredients, but what I used as my egg white substitute is certainly vegan! I enjoy a good New York Sour but when I'm out of fresh eggs I'm usually out of luck. That was until I found out that my dusty can of garbanzo beans (chickpeas) in the cupboard contains an excellent substitute for egg white. That's right, the liquid those chickpeas are canned in is called aquafaba and it works just like eggs in recipes. In 2014 French Chef Joël Roessel discovered that the liquid from canned beans can be used to make foams much like egg whites does*. In 2015 Goose Wohlt found that this liquid could be substituted for eggs for in vegan recipes. Good on ya, boys, I tip my eggless happy hour hat to you! The aquafaba is a perfectly respectable vegan substitution for egg white in a cocktail and it creates a beautiful foam as well. However, I did notice that as the ice melted in my drink the silky mouthfeel of a typical egg white cocktail became somewhat dissipated in the aquafaba version and the foam went a bit flat as well. But the drink was still delicious and I was pleased with the overall results. Do I prefer it over egg white? No, but I'll make darn sure I always have a can of garbanzo beans in my cupboard just in case I'm ever out of egg whites again at happy hour. Just a note; when you open your can of garbanzo beans and strain out the liquid, you might notice a slight odor. I just left my aquafaba out for a few hours and that odor did not transfer to the finished cocktail. Even when using egg whites you must often tap on bitters or a dusting of spice over the top of your drink two mask the smell of the raw egg. By the way, 2 tablespoons of aquafaba is equal to one egg white, 2 tablespoons is 1 ounce. Perfect.
The Not Quite Classic NEW YORK SOUR INGREDIENTS 2 Oz. Bourbon (or Rye) 1 Oz. Fresh Lemon Juice 3/4 Oz. Blood Orange Honey Simple Syrup* 1 Oz. Aquafaba 1 Oz. Dry Red Wine** Garnish: None necessary but I wanted to show off my new cocktail pick so I slid on a lemon slice. Tools: Blender, Cocktail Shaker, Hawthorne Strainer, Bar Spoon Glass: Old Fashioned DIRECTIONS * To make the blood orange honey simple syrup, mix 2 tablespoons of Honey Ridge Blood Orange Creme Honey with 1 tablespoon of hot water. Add the bourbon, blood orange honey simple syrup, lemon juice and aquafaba to the cocktail shaker then dry shake (shake without ice) for several minutes to emulsify the aquafaba. Add ice and shake again to chill the cocktail. (I cheat and put the ingredients in a blender then blend on high for 2 or 3 minutes to emulsify, both methods also create the classic foam top. Then I transfer this to a cocktail shaker filled with ice and shake until well chilled.) Strain into a chilled glass, then pour the wine slowly over the back of a bar spoon to float on top. ** I prefer a Malbec or a nice Rioja in my New York Sours, last night's version got a float of my leftover Campo Viejo Rioja, Reservation 2011.
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0.963848 |
The 3 components of successfully using humor in the workplace 6 brilliant things people with emotional intelligence do under pressure 3 reasons to choose a college based on price The science of happiness and effective teams If your coworker does this when they speak, they may be a psychopath That bad restaurant review you read on Yelp may have been influenced by this odd thing 3 key things to ace the interview according to an expert Emotional intelligence: what is it and how can you improve yours?
We will look to you to promote our CHIEF core values of compassion, humility, integrity, excellence and fun. The Activities Director will be responsible for planning activities based on our residents’ interests, needs and abilities to enhance their quality of life.
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0.999941 |
Article Summary: "The greatest institution humanity has is the marriage between a man and a woman who have fallen in love and have decided to spend the rest of their life together..."
Last week my neighbor mentioned my marriage of thirty four years and told me that I had been very lucky. She said that we were always happy and wondered why other people could not live like this. To her it was some Cinderella story that everybody should have. I thought about it for a while but then realized that I could not leave her with the impression that all marriages or relationships should or could be lived out as if they were movie scrip's without an effort.
A few weeks later when she again mentioned it, I told her that contrary to what she saw we were not by nature happy people. I explained that we worked very hard at being positive and also worked very hard at making the marriage work. She seemed to think that there was some special formula or chemical that bought about love. When I explained that there was no formula but just plain hard work if you really wanted your marriage to work she looked sad. She expected me to talk about the great love and passions which cupid had shot into our lives, instead I told her of the many ups and downs our marriage had gone through.
The work came in celebrating my wife's life every day, not just when I felt like it. I had heard Dr. Myles Monroe speaking on friendship and saying that if your friends merely tolerated you and were not celebrating you they were not really your friends. This statement made such an impact on me that I made it the motto for my life, but if it worked with friends why could it not work for a marriage. So I started to celebrate my wife's life and accomplishments and she in turn started to celebrate mine. This does not come automatically it takes time and effort. I once put a blue hat by our kitchen door to remind me each morning that she was not my personal servant and that I was not to abuse her because I was in a bad mood. I also wrote notes throughout our house which I pasted on the shelves and cabinets saying things like "don't be grumpy or cranky it's not her fault, she is doing her best."
For the sake of the person who is with you, you have to put in a full day's work which will not seem like work if you truly love them. This with time becomes very pleasurable and brings with it a sweet peace and a happy home. The love comes from your unselfish motive and wiliness to put your own life on hold and listen to someone else. I made it a habit to think of the many ways in which she had always made me happy and had put up with all my strange quirks. I got to thinking of why a man and a woman would stay together, and the fact that the man does not have to stay there at all, and neither does the woman. They are not born with us and are not our slaves to do with as we please. A marriage is a team effort and if one of the players refuses to play, then in time the game will be lost and the marriage will become a tragedy for one or both partners. Because we are selfish by nature and always want our own way, it takes a huge effort to share and be considerate of others but especially the one who knows us the best or should, our spouse.
When I retired I stayed home for three years and became the house husband, cooking and cleaning the house, doing the grocery shopping and washing the clothes. Since we had no children in the house I thought it would be a breeze but boy was I wrong. It seemed as if the minute I finished one chore another popped up and the routine started all over. There was always something to do; by the time my wife got home I was exhausted and wondered how she had managed all these years. I quickly learned to value a woman's place in the home. If she were working by the hour I could not afford her.
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0.947388 |
"user group" or "users group"?
Although how people say on the Internet doesn't mean it's grammatical, it's at least statistically more popular. So we can use that as a reference. It looks like more people prefer the singular "user group". When it's broken down to a specific type of user group, all that I checked except Linux and UNIX people prefer singular. (No wonder UNIX and especially Linux people are the most likely associated with geeks in this society.) My conclusion of this search: the geekier and less coherent the members are, the more likely they prefer plural, "users group".
I received a comment from a reader that I think is quite informative and I'd like to share. His comment follows.
I believe that "XYZ Users Group" is the best choice.
Here is a quote from the article that I think supports my position.
The first choice in each group is a plural noun in the possessive case (Fathers', Veterans', Majors', Bankers' and Executives').
The second choice in each group is a singular noun in the possessive case (Father's, Veteran's, Major's, Banker's, and Executive's).
The third choice in each group uses a plural noun that is not in the possessive case. We refer to it as an attributive; that is, it functions as a modifier and does not need to be possessive.
To make the best choices in the five groups above, we must consider whether the possessive or the attributive is more appropriate and, if the possessive case is appropriate, whether the possessives ought to be singular or plural.
But the article goes on and on.
When the group is not possessed by one or more users but is "for" them rather than "possessed by" them, use the attributive form - no " ' ".
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0.999979 |
'Sustainability' in jewelry is not a notion frequently talked about. Though the issue of blood diamonds has been in and out of the news over the past few years, few are aware of the more far reaching consequences of raw material mining (i.e. gold, silver, copper, platinum) on the one hand, and the fact that the lion share of jewelry is produced in industrial manufacturing units, typically located in low wage, poverty ridden countries.
Arabel Lebrusan and Clare Winfield, the minds behind Leblas, an ethical jewelry label based in London, UK, have both worked throughout East Asia for over a decade and have seen with their own eyes the rather appalling working conditions in some of the factories and production sites, and the complete lack of security and hygiene. When they met and decided to embark onto their own jewelry project, they were committed to adhere to the most ethical parameters possible - to the degree of giving the working conditions at suppliers the same priority as to the design of the jewelry itself. At the same time, one of their major goals is to revitalize our Occidental artisanal heritage, the rediscovery of techniques and processes that are quickly disappearing for good, and to introduce them to a new generation of consumers.
Arabel Lebrusan trained in the art of jewelry in the most prestigious European schools, and has collaborated throughout her career in projects with international companies such as Swarowski. But then, three years ago, attracted by the narrative of the object, by its meaning beyond the aesthetic element, she decided to go her own way, and together with her business partner Clare set up the jewelry label 'Leblas'. Doing so meant leveraging all her experiences and her knowledge about artisanal techniques; apply them to contemporary designs, and to combine them with a strictly sustainable process. Leblas, in fact, defines itself as an ethical jewelry boutique that combines traditional techniques with modern design. But at the same time, Leblas stands for much more. It is a jewelry concept where the narrative of the designs prevails, where each piece of jewelry has a meaning and story beyond the aesthetics of the individual creation. Each piece has a history of artisanry, of expert hands that manipulate materials acquired under strict ethical standards, and of work that relies on refined techniques and processes, and that give each piece its own personality. As a result, the designs convince equally through exclusivity as well as through their strict ethical credentials.
But what is behind the rather abstract term 'ethical jewelry'? 'Ethical jewelry' is jewelry that has been crafted throughout and at any stage of the process under ethical and responsible criteria—a process that encompasses materials acquisition, creative techniques and the process of creation itself.
With respect to materials, this means the use of 100% recycled gold or silver, in addition to only precious stones of certified ethical origins, and whose journey can be tracked and traced from the day it was extracted in its mine of provenance. It also means the re-discovery of traditional artisanry, and its preservation for at least one more generation through transformation and adaptation, in order to attract modern buyers. And lastly, all production processes are carried out with a deep respect for the environment and, of course, the working conditions of the workers and artisans.
For Leblas, the first step to engage with their customers is always to try and understand the degree to which each is familiar with the concept of sustainability in relation to jewelry. Once they are attracted by a particular piece of jewelry, the next step is to try and educate them by providing visual information about the different stages of the creation process. They are, for instance, told that the raw material has been worked under application of strict ethical standards, or that the artisans behind each piece have a life time of experience. When it comes to the act of buying a piece of jewelry two types of customers exist: those who know about the dark side of the jewelry making process, and those who seek to buy consciously in accordance with their knowledge. On the other hand, the majority of customers still remains unaware, and is simply intrigued by the design. In either case, the design of a piece of jewelry features as the decisive factor at the time of purchase.
Leblas' trade mark design element is the use of traditional Spanish filigree. Filigree is a jewelry technique whereby threads of gold or silver shape a lace-style design, attributing equal importance to the filled as to the empty spaces. The metallic threads may be plain, twisted, or reeled. Comparing filigree to what is currently being seen on the cat walks, it in fact feels like the exquisite lace work popular in high-end fashion has finally made its way into the world of jewelery. And for Spanish-born Arabel, the filigree's metal thread depicts the history that materializes in each individual design.
Over the centuries, Spanish filigree work has been influenced by various civilizations: the Tartessians, the Iberians, the Phoenicians, the Visigoths, and finally the Arabs whose influence took the art of filigree to new dimensions. Then, in the 16th century, filigree became popular in connection to traditional events and costumes thanks to the influence of the Catholic Church and medieval academic institutions.
In the present however, there are only few artisans left that still own the expertise needed to produce high quality work. Leblas' filigree jewelry is made in a small artisan's workshop that Arabel discovered while scouring the country looking for the best artisans to collaborate with, and who would be prepared to develop new ideas. Her journey was over when she met Lorenzo, an artisan, who has lived and worked in a small Spanish town in the Eastern part of Spain along the Via de La Plata, his entire life. He is a unique third-generation artisan who has been making filigree for the museums and the Spanish Royal Family since he was 14, applying the techniques he was taught by his father and grand-father.
But artisans like him are among the selected few who have so far managed to resist the overwhelming pressure that rests on the jewelry industry to use fast and mechanized processes. Some of the workshops that used to employ 30 or 40 skilled artisans at one time now may only consist of the owner and possibly a small number of family members. Once they retire or are forced to close the workshop their knowledge and skills will be lost. Leblas hence, engages to maintain, rediscover and adapt the traditional techniques. In trying to do so, they have even established an apprenticeship plan that allows for the transfer of these unique artisanal qualities to future generations before they disappear altogether from our culture.
At the time of writing, Arabel and Clare are already heading towards their next design venture: Leblas has recently started to work with artisans from other countries, among them the United Kingdom, again with the goal to incorporate techniques and artisanal processes at the verge of extinction into their designs. The results, no doubt, will be a commendable continuation of this fascinating new chapter of European jewelry design.
Cristina Maraldés is a consultant and lecturer specializing in ethical fashion communications. Pamela Ravasio is an ethical fashion journalist and consultant, and the publisher of the research based eco fashion Blog 'Shirahime 白姫' (http://shirahime.ch).
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0.999999 |
How do leverage ratios help to regulate how much banks lend or invest?
Banks are among the most leveraged institutions in the United States. The combination of fractional-reserve banking and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), protection has produced a banking environment with limited lending risks.
To compensate for this, three separate regulatory bodies, the FDIC, the Federal Reserve and the Comptroller of the Currency, review and restrict the leverage ratios for American banks. This means they restrict how much money a bank can lend relative to how much capital the bank devotes to its own assets. The level of capital is important because banks can "write down" the capital portion of their assets if total asset values drop. Assets financed by debt cannot be written down because the bank's bondholders and depositors are owed those funds.
It is not very useful to look only at the total amount of loans made by a bank. Without additional context, it is too difficult to know if a bank is overly leveraged. Regulators overcome this problem by using the ratio of assets to capital on the bank's balance sheet, or its "leverage ratio." A higher leverage ratio means the bank has to use more capital to finance its assets, at least relative to its total amount of borrowed funds.
A bank lends out money "borrowed" from the clients who deposit money there. In a sense, all of these deposits are loans made to the bank that are callable at any time. Banks often have other, more traditional creditors as well. The leverage ratio is used to capture just how much debt the bank has relative to its capital, specifically "Tier 1 capital," including common stock, retained earnings and select other assets.
As with any other company, it is considered safer for a bank to have a higher leverage ratio. The theory is that a bank has to use its own capital to make loans or investments or sell off its most leveraged or risky assets. This is because there are fewer creditors and/or less default risk if the economy turns south and the investments or loans are not paid off.
Banking regulations for leverage ratios are very complicated. The Federal Reserve created guidelines for bank holding companies, although these restrictions vary depending on the rating assigned to the bank. In general, banks that experience rapid growth or face operational or financial difficulties are required to maintain higher leverage ratios.
There are several forms of capital requirements and minimum reserve ratios placed on American banks through the FDIC and the Comptroller of the Currency that indirectly impact leverage ratios. The level of scrutiny paid to leverage ratios has increased since the Great Recession of 2007-2009, with the concern about large banks being "too big to fail" serving as a calling card to make banks more solvent.
These restrictions naturally limit the number of loans made, because it is more difficult and more expensive for a bank to raise capital than it is to borrow funds. Higher capital requirements can reduce dividends or dilute share value if more shares are issued.
How do investment banks help the economy?
How do interest rates coordinate savings and investment in the economy?
How are investment banks regulated in the United States?
How do government subsidies help an industry?
How does investment banking differ from commercial banking?
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0.96228 |
Input text: the beach backdrop. the swimmer is two feet right of the 14 foot tall house. the white light is in front of the swimmer. the woman is right of the swimmer. the magenta light is above and right of the house. it is in front of the house. the house is 7 feet in the huge sand hill. a yellow light is above the magenta light. the house is leaning left. the upside down zebra is two feet in front of the swimmer. the 4 foot tall gold ufo is -2 feet above the house.it is -10 feet in front of the house. it is facing right. it is leaning right. it is night.
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0.949658 |
Most functions have stdin, stdout, and stderr as (default) IOStreams. Specifically, file-related functions that accept IO (or IOStreams) typically have one form in which IO is the first argument to the function. Another form of the same function without the first IO argument then directs to the IO variant when the IO destination is not explicitly specified. The typical default io is stdin, stdout, or stderr.
Moreover, IOStreams can also point to memory buffers and to strings instead of files, thus allowing input-stream relatedfunctions to work from buffers/strings instead of from files.
For writing entire objects to various file formats, see fileformats.
julia> write(stdout, x); println(); ## it's the byte representation!!!
print() by default converts objects to UTF-8 strings and prints the UTF-8 string, but objects can also define their own show() (showall()) methods.
Julia also provides support for logging output, with info(), warn(), and error(), which print in highlight when on a TTY. To set a different default destination, use the logging() function.
Many common functions, like versioninfo(), whos(), join(), parse(), dump(), get(), getinfo(), showerror() etc., are not principally file writing but terminal display operations. Because they are implemented based on IOStreams, they can also write to any IOStream file instead of the terminal.
Reading beyond the end of a file typically does not throw an exception.
ismarked(io, does stream have a marked position?
operate( open(name, mode) ); If operate is for write operations, you must run GC.gc() to force the flush and close.
"fileio example, plain open and close"
julia> readline(open("/tmp/fileio.tmp")) ## don't worry. flush for read is superfluous.
"this is the time for all good men..."
/etc/passwd: eof=false. isopen=true. isreadonly=true. iswritable=false.
"I am a string masquerading as a file (well, IOBuffer, not IOString)"
julia> s= string( @sprintf("%5.5f", 12.0), " AND ", @sprintf("%5d", 13) ); ## in effect "print to s"
If you need to build up a string with many append operations, you can write to an in-memory IOStream, and then assign it to a string (like s= take!(ios)) before you close the stream. This is the next exampe.
If you need to write and rearrange the contents in a random access manner, use a character buffer instead.
julia> abc_on3_lines= linematches( readlines( open("filename.csv") ), "abc", 3 ) ## an array of strings, with 'abc's in field 3.
For real-world use, instead rely on CSV.jl.
"we are writing to a buffer!\n"
File output operations default to stdout. File Input operations default to stdin. Otherwise, the user provides the IOStream.
"my text has been diverted.\n"
There are equivalent redirect_stderr() and redirect_stdin() functions.
julia> write( "/tmp/manylines.txt", join(mylines, "\n" )*"\n") ## there is no writeline().
Show how to write a personalized Show functions. For own types, users can define show(stream, ::MIME"something", x::myType)= ... to output their own type objects. Moreover, show(io, x) can be used for other displays, too.
True atomic writes are unfortunately not a native feature of Julia. Unfortunately, lock() and unlock() are only advisory reentrant but not threadsafe.
z = [IOBuffer() for i in 1:10] ##@everywhere?
## very short race condition.
touch( lockname ) ## write an empty lock file.
println(fo, content) ## safeappend is enforcing eoln!
the lock could contain a random code, and safeappend checks that the random code is its own before it appends to the file.
if some other processes may be writing to the file without safeappend (e.g., /var/log/syslog), the file can first be copied to a different name, then appended, then moved back–but only if no other file of the same name has appeared. If another file has appeared, then the changes should be discarded and tried all over again. This is an expensive way to handle the problem that is best left only for absolutely necessary cases.
The following are not comparable across rows, only within row.
Do not use symlinks on HFS+. Fortunately, HFS+ has been deprecated in the latest version of macos.
Do not use mv-to-mv-back on APFS. Instead, use the symlink version.
The linux ext4 filesystem is nearly an order of magnitude faster than the macos file systems.
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0.990204 |
Scarlett Johansson was born in New York City. Her mother, Melanie Sloan, is from a Jewish family from the Bronx, and her father, Karsten Johansson, is a Danish-born architect, from Copenhagen. She has a sister, Vanessa Johansson, who is also an actress, a brother, Adrian, a twin brother, Hunter Johansson, born three minutes after her, and a paternal half-brother, Christian. Her grandfather was writer Ejner Johansson. Johansson began acting during childhood, after her mother started taking her to auditions. She made her professional acting debut at the age of eight in the off-Broadway production of "Sophistry" with Ethan Hawke, at New York's Playwrights Horizons. She would audition for commercials but took rejection so hard her mother began limiting her to film tryouts. She made her film debut at the age of nine, as John Ritter's character's daughter in the fantasy comedy Genitori cercasi (1994). Following minor roles in La giusta causa (1995), as the daughter of Sean Connery and Kate Capshaw's character, and Appuntamento col ponte (1996), she played the role of Amanda in Manny & Lo (1996). Her performance in Manny & Lo garnered a nomination for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Lead Female, and positive reviews, one noting, "[the film] grows on you, largely because of the charm of ... Scarlett Johansson", while San Francisco Chronicle critic Mick LaSalle commentated on her "peaceful aura", and wrote, "If she can get through puberty with that aura undisturbed, she could become an important actress.". After appearing in minor roles in Felicità Rubata (1997) and Mamma, ho preso il morbillo (1997), Johansson garnered widely spread attention for her performance in L'uomo che sussurrava ai cavalli (1998), directed by Robert Redford, where she played Grace MacLean, a teenager traumatized by a riding accident. She received a nomination for the Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Most Promising Actress for the film. In 1999, she appeared in Mamma mi sono persa il fratellino! (1999) and in the music video for Mandy Moore's single, "Candy". Although the film was not a box office success, she received praise for her breakout role in Ghost World (2001), credited with "sensitivity and talent [that] belie her age". She was also featured in the Coen Brothers' dark drama L'uomo che non c'era (2001), opposite Billy Bob Thornton and Frances McDormand. She appeared in the horror comedy Arac Attack - Mostri a otto zampe (2002) with David Arquette and Kari Wuhrer. In 2003, she was nominated for two Golden Globe Awards, one for drama (La ragazza con l'orecchino di perla (2003)) and one for comedy (Lost in Translation - L'amore tradotto (2003)), her breakout role, starring opposite Bill Murray, and receiving rave reviews and a Best Actress Award at the Venice Film Festival. Her film roles include the critically acclaimed Weitz brothers' film In Good Company (2004), as well as starring opposite John Travolta in Una canzone per Bobby Long (2004), which garnered her a third Golden Globe Award nomination. She dropped out of Mission: Impossible III (2006) due to scheduling conflicts. Her next film role was in The Island (2005) alongside Ewan McGregor which earned weak reviews from U.S. critics. After this, she appeared in Woody Allen's Match Point (2005) and was nominated again for a Golden Globe Award. In May 2008, she released her album "Anywhere I Lay My Head", a collection of Tom Waits covers featuring one original song. Also that year, she starred in Frank Miller's The Spirit (2008), the Woody Allen film Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), and played Mary Boleyn opposite Natalie Portman in L'altra donna del re (2008). Since then, she has appeared as part of an ensemble cast in the romantic comedy La verità è che non gli piaci abbastanza (2009), the action superhero film Iron Man 2 (2010), the comedy-drama La mia vita è uno zoo (2011) and starred as the original scream queen, Janet Leigh, in Hitchcock (2012). She then played her character, Black Widow, in the blockbuster action films The Avengers (2012), Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Captain America: Civil War (2016), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), and Avengers: Endgame (2019), and also headlined the sci-fi action thriller Lucy (2014), a box office success. With more than a decade of work already under her belt, Scarlett has proven to be one of Hollywood's most talented young actresses. Her other starring roles are in the sci-fi action thriller Ghost in the Shell (2017) and the dark comedy Crazy Night - Festa col morto (2017). Scarlett and Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds were engaged in May 2008 and married in September of that year. In 2010, the couple announced their separation, and subsequently divorced a year later. In 2013, she became engaged to French journalist Romain Dauriac, the couple married a year later. In January 2017, the couple announced their separation, and subsequently divorced in March of that year. They have a daughter, Rose Dorothy Dauriac (born 2014).
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0.999948 |
Do exchange rate fluctuations increase "justifiable" protectionist pressure?
Despite the existence of highly sophisticated markets for forward exchange, swaps, and currency options, most foreign exchange risk is unhedgeable. A firm making investment decisions today cannot forward sell all its future output, nor contract for most of its future supplies of inputs. Because these forward commodity markets are incomplete, an importer or exporter cannot then utilize the elaborate existing markets in forward exchange to offset most of the risk from future exchange rate fluctuations (Kindleberger (1972)and (1985), McKinnon (1986)).
Among economies highly integrated in trade and finance, therefore, unexpected exchange rate changes provoke protectionism by increasing the riskiness of investment - and deviations from purchasing power parity impede the efficient allocation of capital both nationally and internationally. For example, when the dollar suddenly swung from being undervalued in the late 1970s to being highly overvalued from 1981 to early 1985, many expensive investments in manufacturing, mining and agriculture had to be written off because of America's sharp decline in international competitiveness. In 1985-86 as the Japanese yen has risen sharply against all other major currencies, Japanese industrialists now find their profit margins sharply squeezed - with the threat of a severe investment slump in the offing.
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0.985433 |
How to install ubuntu 12.04 lts precise and I think any kind of way to install ubuntu also almost the same as how to install ubuntu 8, ubuntu 9,ubuntu 10, ubuntu 11, ubuntu 13 and although there are slight differences that may be found .
Linux is a free open source software , which means it can be used and updated for free, a lot of the linux operating system that we can use like a fedora, red hat,puppy , and etc. But here I will just give you a little tutorial how to install linux ubuntu 12.04, ubuntu linux is an alternative operating system windows, because the windows are not free, for it as an alternative we can use ubuntu linux that can downloaded for free and use other software also almost free, in addition to using linux then we do not need to worry with the virus because no virus on linux, it's like ubuntu said on the official site.
1. Make sure the disk partition that Ubuntu is available for approximately 6 GB for ubuntu itself is actually about 4.3 GB and for the swap partition is 1024 MB or 1GB .
2. Download ubuntu 12:04 LTS precise for free here or select the appropriate processor like intel or amd used here .
Install using a USB flash disk using Unetbootin.
Install with no CD without flashdik just use the installer on the internal hard drive of direct ubuntu iso file, but there must be a grub boot on your booting computer.
- For windows users install grub2win first.
- Enter the following settings in grub.cfg at the bottom of the texts available in grub2 folder .
set isofile = " / home / / Downloads/ubuntu-12.04-desktop-i386.iso "
# Or set isofile = " / / Downloads/ubuntu-12.04-desktop-i386.iso "
Or could look the source in help.ubuntu.com.
4 . Once determine that we are to install ubuntu boot to ubuntu installer and follow the steps, after first boot press space on keyboard to select the language.
5. Select the "Install Ubuntu" text then select the language that will be used and wait until the loading display appears.
6. After loading passed then the next will be brought to the stage of selecting the language that will be used to install the ubuntu.
7. Click the Continue button to proceed and will be brought to the stage for the beginning of the installation is selecting application / third-party software, click Continue to proceed.
8. After further we see there are two options, namely erase the disk and something else, select "something else" choice to start setting up the hard drive manually.
9. For the hard drive is still new we can make a new partition there by clicking the "New Partition Table" and the button "Add" to start creating new partitions and hard drives with setting self-determined choice but to install ubuntu partition to be available is 4.3 GB, and format with EXT4 partition type can be seen in the image below.
RAM 2 GB and hard drive 100GB then swap partition is 2048MB or 2GB. And can be seen the sources in help.ubuntu.com.
11. The next setting place the boot loader that will and we can set example grub2 will be installed directly on the hard disk/dev/sda or on the first partition is /dev/sda1.
12. Click the "Install Now" and wait a while till the process is completed and the next step is setting the location where we are.
13. After clicking the continue button then the next step is the selection of the type of keyboard that will be used, select a standard keyboard commonly used is the "English U.S." and click Continue.
14. And I think this is the last part of which was to determine the username and password that will be used later during the entry, and I suggest to choose automatic login.
15. After all we fill the username and password and click continue then wait for it to finish and if the installation is finished then restart button will appear and restart the computer, for using the cd/dvd after restart button wait a few minutes and click enter to open the cd/dvd rom opens by itself.
If you have questions and errors in this post please write a comment below this post.
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0.999999 |
Design a new brand identity for an accomplished fine jewellery designer and goldsmith.
Helen came to me looking to overhaul her identity and publicity materials as she felt it wasn’t a true representation of the quality of her work. As Helen’s jewellery is all made by hand, I developed a hand drawn mark based on an H letterform, featuring intricate details seen in some of her jewellery designs. Working with Helen, I developed language to use alongside the identity, such as ‘Fine Jewellery Maker’ and ‘Meet the Maker’.
I visited Helen in her workshop to photograph her creating some jewellery pieces. I focused in her hands to create really authentic imagery which express the handmade quality of her work.
I prototyped a selection of packaging materials including bags, boxes, and ribbons, which would meet customer expectations of how fine, handcrafted jewellery should be presented. Additionally, I explored a variety of different signage and way-finding options for Helen’s workshop in Melbourne, Derbyshire.
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0.953729 |
1958 - 2009 (50 years) Has 6 ancestors and 3 descendants in this family tree.
When Michael was only five years old his father Joseph Jackson, a steel mill worker, founded the "Jackson Five" with Michael as lead singer and his four older brothers Jackie, Jermaine, Marlon, and Tito. Despite his young age, little Michael showed incredible talent, charisma and a great voice. At first the group sang at small talent contests and bars but after being signed to the famous "Motown" label in 1969, the Jackson 5 had 4 consecutive #1 hits in the US: 'I Want You Back', 'ABC', 'The Love You Save,' and 'I'll Be There'. They became one of the most popular singing stars of the 70s. While at Motown, Michael also recorded several solo albums with solo singles that topped the charts ('Got To Be There', 'Ben').
The Jackson 5 left Motown in 1976 and signed with Epic Records. Since Motown owned the rights to their group name, they renamed themselves "The Jacksons" and focused on writing and producing their own material. They subsequently released several albums, such as 'Destiny' (1978) and 'Triumph' (1980).
In 1978, Michael Jackson starred as the Scarecrow in his first feature film 'The Wiz', with Diana Ross as Dorothy. It was here that he met producer Quincy Jones.
Michael Jackson collaborated with Quincy Jones on his next solo album 'Off The Wall' (1979). The album received very positive critical reviews and sold more than 15 million copies worldwide. Jackson was the first artist to have four Top 10 hits from one album, including two #1 hits: 'Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough' and 'Rock With You'.
The two teamed up again for the 'Thriller' album in 1982. It became the best-selling album of all time (with over 50 million copies sold worldwide), and remained at # 1 on Billboard pop ablum chart for a record of 37 weeks. The singles off the 'Thriller' album were accompanied by innovative short films that made Jackson a pioneer in the production of the new genre of music videos, popularized by the newly launched MTV Channel. In fact, Michael Jackson broke a barrier when 'Billie Jean' became the first video by a black artist to be shown on MTV. Both music and videos were praised by critics, and the album produced a record 7 Top 10 singles, including three #1 hits ('Thriller', 'Billie Jean', and 'Beat It'). During this time, he also narrated the Story Book record to the Steven Spielberg movie 'E.T. - the Extra-Terrestrial'. Jackson won 8 Grammy awards in one year (7 for Thriller and 1 for his E.T. narration) - a record that hasn't been broken since. Unforgettable is also Michael Jackson's unique 'Billie Jean' live performance at the "Motown 25" show, where he presented his famous Moonwalk for the first time and showed his incredible talent as a dancer and choreographer.
In 1985, Michael Jackson, along with Lionel Richie, composed the song 'We Are The World' for the charitable organization 'USA For Africa'. The song was recorded and produced with numerous artists lending their voices. The song eventually raised millions of dollars used to fight famine in Africa, and has won numerous awards, including Grammys.
The 'Bad' album followed in 1987, producing another record of 5 consecutive #1 singles. The album was accompanied by Michael Jackson's first major solo world tour, which included the most successful concert series ever by selling out the Wembley Stadium (London) for seven nights (504,000 people), and played to sellout crowds around at each stop. During this time, Jackson published a long awaited autobiography ("Moonwalk", 1988) and made a full length film titled "Moonwalker" starring him in the title role and co-starring Joe Pesci and Sean Lennon (son of John Lennon). He also became the highest paid commercial spokesperson ever, after signing a contract with Pepsi Cola that reportedly paid him US$12 million for 4 TV commercials.
In 1988, Michael Jackson purchased the Neverland Valley Ranch in California. Eventually, he transformed Neverland according to his dream, and it now houses an amusement park, a full size movie theatre, and a zoo. Michael opens the doors to Neverland, as he often invites terminally ill children to come and enjoy themselves.
In the early 90s, Jackson signed the largest recording contract ever with Sony Music. He also established his own music label MJJ Music in the following years.
His next album was entitled 'Dangerous' (1991, 'Remember The Time', 'Heal The World') and the release started with the very much talked about premiere of the 'Black Or White' video. The album also contained the song 'Will You Be There', which became the theme song of the blockbuster movie 'Free Willy'.
The "Heal The World Foundation" (HTW) was founded by Michael Jackson in 1992 as a charitable organization to aid children and the environment. He later donated all his proceeds from the Dangerous world tour to HTW. That same year Jackson published yet another book entitled 'Dancing The Dream', containing poems and writings about topics that were most important to him - music, dance, animals, and children.
In January 1993, his spectacular performance during the half-time show at the US Super Bowl XXVII received the highest ever television audience with 133.4 million viewers. In February 1993, Jackson did his first TV interview in years, talking very openly to Oprah Winfrey about his lost childhood, his music, the rumors surrounding him, and also his serious skin disorder vitiligo, which had previously caused numerous media speculations about him bleaching his skin. The 90 minute interview was broadcast live around the world and became the 4th most watched TV event in history.
'HIStory : Past, Present and Future Book I', a double album with re-mastered old songs and new hits ('They Don't Care About Us'), was released in June 1995. The first single 'Scream' was a duet with his sister Janet and both stared in an award winning innovative and futuristic space ship video which is the most expensive video of all time with a $7 million price tag. The song 'Scream' debuted at #5 on the US Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart, breaking a 25-year old record set by the Beatles, whose single 'Let It Be' debuted at #6 in 1970. Only a few weeks later Jackson broke his own record when 'You Are Not Alone' became the first song ever to debut at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts. The 2-CD set 'HIStory' sold more than 15 million copies worldwide and was accompanied by Jackson's third world tour which was attended by more than 4.5 million people.
In 1995, Michael Jackson merged his ATV Catalog with Sony Music, creating the world's third largest music publishing company.
On November 14, 1996 Michael Jackson married Deborah Rowe, whom he had known for 15 years as the assistant to his dermatologist, and the two have two children: Prince Michael Junior (*February 13, 1997), named after Michael's grandfather, and Paris Michael Katherine (*April 3, 1998). After nearly 3 years of marriage they filed for divorce in October 1999 but released a statement saying that they will remain friends.
The most recent album released by Jackson is 'Blood On The Dance Floor' (1997), an album with several hit remixes and five new songs ('Blood On The Dance Floor', 'Ghosts', 'Morphine').
In June 1999 Michael Jackson organized two charity concerts called "Michael Jackson & Friends" in Seoul (South Korea) and Munich (Germany) to help children in need worldwide. More than 40 renowned pop and classic artists supported the event, which raised US$3.3 million for UNESCO, The Red Cross and the Nelson Mandela's Children's Fund. The Internet broadcast of the event on MCY.COM recorded over 10 million hits, breaking the world record for a single online broadcast.
During his career, spanning over 30 years, Michael Jackson has always striven for excellence. He has won virtually every award by the music and music video industry, and has enjoyed numerous #1 singles and albums.
He has sold over 200 million records worldwide. He has collaborated with many musical legends over the years, including Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, Slash, Diana Ross, Quincy Jones, and more. He is considered a pioneer in the form of music videos and worked with such film directors as Martin Scorcese ('Bad'), John Singleton ('Remember The Time'), and John Landis ('Thriller', 'Black or White'). He has employed cutting edge technologies in the creation of both his music and videos, such as Digital Morphing ('Black or White'), Quantum Range Recording Process ('Dangerous'), and Spatializer Technology ('HIStory').
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0.951849 |
On this day in history, May 5, 1775, Ben Franklin returns from Great Britain after having spent much of the previous two decades as a colonial agent in London. Franklin had become independently wealthy by his early 40s due to the success of his publishing business. After he retired, he devoted much of his time to scientific pursuits and to politics.
Franklin first became involved in politics in 1736 when he became the clerk for Pennsylvania's colonial assembly. He served in this position for 15 years. He served as a deputy postmaster of North America for roughly the same period. He also served on Philadelphia's City Council and as a Justice of the Peace. In 1751, Franklin was elected as a representative to the Colonial Assembly for the first time, a position he would hold for six years. He would later become the Crown's Postmaster for all of North America.
In 1757, Ben Franklin became Pennsylvania's representative to the Crown in London. This began a long career of service to the colonies in England. He would spend 18 of the next 20 years in London as an agent for Pennsylvania, Georgia, New Jersey and Massachusetts. For a short stint in the early 1760s, he would return to the colonies and serve in the Pennsylvania Assembly again and would be elected the Speaker of the House in 1764.
intellectual during his London years.
Franklin returned to London in late 1764 and resumed his career as agent for the colonies. Franklin disagreed with many British policies, but for the most part thought the colonists would have to submit to London's plans. As time progressed, however, his mind slowly changed and he began to realize that Parliament had no intention of being reasonable in its treatment of the colonists.
In late 1772, Franklin obtained several private letters from Thomas Hutchinson and Andrew Oliver, the governor and lieutenant-governor of Massachusetts, from several years earlier. In the letters, the officials recommended abridging civil liberties in Massachusetts in response to the colonists' rebellion and in order to enforce Parliament's will. Franklin privately sent the letters back to officials in Massachusetts who published them in public newspapers. Colonists were outraged and Parliament was shamed.
For his role in the affair, Ben Franklin was brought before the King's Privy Council in January, 1774. He was humiliated and removed from his position as Postmaster General. Later in the year, Parliament passed the Coercive Acts in response to the Boston Tea Party. The Coercive Acts shut down Boston Harbor and the Massachusetts Assembly until the tea was paid for. Franklin realized through all this that reconciliation with England was impossible. He left England permanently and arrived back in Philadelphia on May 5, 1775. The following day, he was informed he had been chosen to attend the Second Continental Congress as a delegate from Pennsylvania.
In Congress, Franklin would help write the Declaration of Independence and serve as America's Ambassador to France, helping secure vital aid and cooperation from the French for the war. He would later be a governor of Pennsylvania and also sign the United States Constitution.
Learn more about Franklin at our Ben Franklin Facts page.
Learn about Franklin's inventions and his studies in electricity here.
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0.999999 |
Investigate a potential candidate for sainthood in this adventure game.
Is there a better alternative to Dracula 3: The Path of the Dragon?
Is Dracula 3: The Path of the Dragon really the best app in Adventure category?
Will Dracula 3: The Path of the Dragon work good on macOS 10.13.4?
Dracula 3: The Path of the Dragon needs a review. Be the first to review this app and get the discussion started!
Dracula 3: The Path of the Dragon needs a rating. Be the first to rate this app and get the discussion started!
Interact and communicate whith the many colourful characters in the adventure, either face-to-face, by post or the era's ultra-modern means of communication: the telephone.
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0.999996 |
What a few exciting months of poetry I have experienced. To sum up in a few sentences: I have attended the amazing Swindon festival of poetry (5 days of incredible poetry, with some of the nicest people on this earth), I have taken on editorship of a poetry website, I have won my first award (almost…), had my first, maybe last, Villanelle published and I attended the forward prize for poetry awards.
So let’s start this chronologically – I had my Villanelle published. It was a strange moment when I realised I was writing a Villanelle, not being one to steer towards the formal side of poetry. I found the experience quite unsettling, but to then have it accepted by the great Fat Damsel website was the icing on the cake. You can read the Villanelle “Wrap Dresses” here – it is a poem about motherhood and our own unique place in this world.
The wonderful Carrie Etter offered me a ticket to go to the Forward Prize poetry event – having read and enjoyed all of the first book nominees, I was very excited to be seeing the poets in action and to be part of such a great celebration of poetry. The evening was truly remarkable with so much talent on one stage, but the star of the show was the best collection winner “Claudia Rankine” – her collection “Citizen: An American Lyric” is truly astonishing and her delivery of the poems on the night was a lesson to us all.
Kei Miller reading from his first two collections – it has changed the way I look at my poetry and was truly inspirational.
Jo Bell – as the resident poet she had a lot to live up to – I think the key to making this work was to make every visitor feel special and Jo did this in so many ways, from the readings of her work, to holding great workshops, helping out the organiser’s in their hour of need and putting up with all our ridiculous questions about living on a longboat! Jo really was the star of the show and it wouldn’t have been the same experience, had she not so willingly thrown herself into the event.
Brilliant readings and workshops from Jacqueline Saphra and Robert Vas Dias – other stand-out readings were (and there are a lot), Jo Bell and Jonathan Davidson in a train carriage keeping us all entertained, Tania Hershman and her wonderful blend of flash fiction and poetry, Luke Kennard delivered some wonderfully varied poetry and has definitely gained me as a new follower! There was an incredibly powerful reading from Isabel Palmer, I can’t wait until I have some time to dive into her new pamphlet. Then there was the exuberant performance of Sophie Herxheimer – she had us all entertained and surprised with the many giant sized poems she provided. It’s tough to recap everything, but there really were so many highlights (some of which haven’t even been covered here) – it will be the must attend event of 2016!
Next up is my (almost) award – I was runner up in the Candelstick Press micro poem competition. It was along the theme of light and is obviously restricted to under 140 letters. My poem used the space available in Twitter quite effectively (I thought) and aimed to play with the meaning of the word light, whilst tying into the process of writing. Take a look below and let me know what you think.
Finally, we come to my editorship of a fantastic poetry website “Amaryllis”, Poetry Swindon’s – poetry blog. It has published brilliant poets and has amazing poetry. I am extremely proud to be taking it forward and I hope I can enhance the already wonderful collection of poetry featured on the site. I look forward to seeing your submissions to the site.
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0.883669 |
How many times has the cashier across from you asked you this question: "Would you like to apply for our store credit card?"
When you hesitate, they follow up with: "It will qualify you for 10 percent off on all your purchases, including this one."
It is easy to say "yes." After all, signing up for the store credit card seems to make financial sense. You were already going to buy the items in front of the cashier. Why not sign up for the card, get your discount and spend less money? Then, when you pay off the item, you can cancel the card.
That does sound smart. Problem is; too many of us never follow through with that "payoff the charge and cancel the card" part. That could lead to financial problems done the road.
The truth? Retail credit cards rarely offer the best terms. There are some benefits to using these cards, just not many.
Here is the main problem with retail credit cards: They usually come with higher interest rates than do standard bank or credit union issued cards. This is important if you have a habit of not paying your credit cards in full each month.
You might intend to pay off your retail credit card in full as soon as your first statement arrives. However, what if you do not have the money? Then you'll pay only part of your bill. Then interest will kick in. Also, retail credit cards are famous for having interest rates in the high teens and low 20s. The interest on these cards can build quickly, leaving you with a debt load that gets larger and larger.
These cards, then, are far from ideal if you struggle each month to eliminate your credit card balances.
Those high interest rates are the biggest drawbacks of retail credit cards. However, they are not the only one. They are also not flexible.
You can use traditional credit cards most anywhere, at grocery stores, gas stations or area department stores. Store credit cards, though, only work at the retail establishment printed on the front of the card. That is a limited card. Remember, having too many open credit card accounts can damage your three-digit credit score. Why waste a credit account on a card that you can use with one retailer?
Another problem with store credit cards? They often have onerous terms, too. Yes, the interest rates are usually awful. However, so are the penalties. The late fees associated with store credit cards can be hefty. Those late payments will often also send your card's interest rate even higher. At the same time, many store cards do not give you as much time to make your payment as do traditional credit cards.
Finally, there are simply better credit card options out there. Banks, credit unions and other card issuers offer a wide variety of credit cards that come with lucrative rewards programs. These cards might provide you with a cash-back bonus at certain times of the year. They might let you earn free airline miles. Others will provide you with points that you can cash in for hotel stays, airplane reservations or retail merchandise. Also, these rewards cards often come with interest rates that are far lower than those offered by store credit cards.
If you pay off your balance each month, store credit cards might not be a bad financial decision. That is especially true if you sign up for a card with a retailer where you spend a steady amount of money each month. Store credit cards often offer discounts on store merchandise, something that can save you money ... as long as you do not keep a balance each month.
Store credit cards might also be an attractive choice for consumers with no credit histories or bad credit. It is easier to qualify for retail credit cards. You can then use these cards to demonstrate sound financial behavior -- paying your credit-card bills on time. This practice will gradually help you rebuild damaged credit or establish a credit history if you do not yet have one.
Before accepting your cashier's offer for store credit, make sure to consider your financial habits and credit status. In most cases, you'll find that a retail credit card does not make sound financial sense.
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0.963083 |
Yes. Should they be? That depends on your family's circumstances. Most financial planners discourage paying for college with funds from a retirement account; they also discourage using retirement funds for a child's college education if doing so will leave you with no funds in your retirement years. However, you can certainly tap your retirement accounts to help pay the college bills if you need to. With IRAs, you can withdraw money penalty free for college expenses, even if you're under age 59½ (though there may be income tax consequences for the money you withdraw). But with an employer-sponsored retirement plan like a 401(k) or 403(b), you'll generally pay a 10% penalty on any withdrawals made before you reach age 59½ (age 55 or 50 in some cases), even if the money is used for college expenses. You may also be subject to a six-month suspension from plan participation if you make a hardship withdrawal in 2017. There may be income tax consequences, as well. (Check with your plan administrator to see what withdrawal options are available to you in your employer-sponsored retirement plan.
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0.96637 |
Babies are big business, and perhaps that is one reason that you are opening or already own a baby store. Baby store logos can help to showcase the elements of your baby store to your customer base while also building your brand and helping you to promote and market your business to the customers in your niche. Baby stores are growing exponentially in number daily. How will you make yours stand out?
Baby store logos can help you grow your baby store into a force to be reckoned with in the market. Because your customers are looking for stores that exude a reputable image and a professional feel, your logo must not only lend these qualities to your business, but should also work to make an impression on those who see the logo before they ever enter your store. In this way, your logo is an enticement for them to come in, look around, see what you have to offer, and above all, buy something and return for more things down the road. In essence, your logo can be used to reel in the customer. Once they are there, your product offerings and your excellent customer service, as well as the vibe of your store can be useful in keeping them coming back and in also whether or not they will recommend you to other families with babies.
- Color. Colors for your baby store can run the gamut from colorful and childlike to refined and sophisticated, depending on the vibe that you are looking to put out. Your designer will have several recommendations for you, but keep in mind that using just basic colors and avoiding a design that has too many colors is important in keeping your logo simple and understandable.
- Font. Font choices in your design will be used to spell out your store's name and perhaps tag line, depending on your preferences. Again, simplicity is a fundamental key to being understood in your target niche.
- Imagery. The imagery that you choose for your logo will be the biggest determinant when it comes to the vibe that your logo will put out to potential and existing customers to your baby store.
As you can see, there are many components to consider when designing the best logo for your baby store. Your designer will take what you envision as the perfect logo and tweak the logo to create a marketing tool that you will use again and again to grow your brand and build a successful business.
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0.999891 |
Taken from a blog by Tomi T Ahonen who is a four-time bestselling author and consultant, lecturing at Oxford on high tech and convergence.
Tomi exposed some of the mobile myths and he went on to dispell some of the widely-held misunderstandings on it. Here are the summary.
- Mobile telecoms is larger than its 100 year older fixed landline telecoms business.
- The mobile telecoms traffic industry alone (excluding handset and network equipment sales) is worth about 650 Billion dollars annually making it larger also than the IT industry (or the advertising industry for that matter). If we add handsets and network equipment, the industry is nearing the Trillion Dollar annual level, which is the rough size of the global automobile industry for example.
- There were 2.7 billion mobile phone subscriptions at the end of last year - twice as many as fixed landline phones in the world; twice as many people have a mobile phone as have a credit card; almost twice as many as have a TV set; three times as many mobile phones in the world as all PCs in use, meaning all laptops, desktops and servers combined. For the most ubiquitous device, a mobile phone is the most widely spread technology on the planet.
- They sell almost 1 billion phones per year.
- the phone replacement cycle is down to 18 months compared with 42 months for personal computers.
- New growth in mobile is much in the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) and Africa is the next big market.
- European mobile phone penetration is at over 105% per capita (and still growing), leading countries like Taiwan, Hong Kong, Israel and Italy are at 125% per capita (and still growing). America has reached 80% penetration and is nowhere near saturation.
- The rapid replacement also means very volatile tastes by a fickle buying public.
- they love their Playstation Portables and iPods but the number one gadget for any kid is the mobile phone.
- 37% admit to avoiding contacts by their parents made to their phone ie the kids screen the calls and don't answer sometimes if the parent calls.
- More than half of Belgian teenagers have awoken at night to an incoming text message from friends; 20% regularly do.
- 39% of British under 14 year olds use their phone as a toy (in playing).
- But for all its addiction to the mobile phone, please don't assume Gen-C is exclusively on mobile, Generation Community is exceptionally aware of multiple overlapping networks and will optimize. Mobile may be most important, but mobile is not their only channel. On the other hand, the top 10% of British students send over 100 text messages every day; in South Korea already 30% of students average over 100 text messages daily.
- reach more than 3 times larger audience via SMS than you can via email.
- the most addictive of any communication tools - as addictive in fact as cigarette smoking.
- SMS texting is worth over 80 Billion dollars worldwide and generates 90% profit.
- Brits send 6 SMS per person, South Koreans send 10, Singaporeans 12 and the Philippinos 15 SMS text messages on average every day.
- The countries with most advanced mobile services are South Korea and Japan.
- highest sustained broadband speeds.
- South Korea and Japan lead the rest of the world in the mobile internet experience.
- In South Korea half of all music sold is not only digital (like under 10% in the USA is on iTunes) but in South Korea 45% of all music is sold directly to musicphones.
- In Japan 54% of consumers willingly accept advertising to mobile phones, and the ads are so compelling that 44% of Japanese consumers actively click on ads.
- Japan is already reporting further that total amount of internet use is more frequent on mobile than on PCs; and that while sales of mobile continue to grow, Japan became the first industrialized country where PC sales turned into decline last year - as more and more Japanese consumers now migrate to the mobile internet.
- It is important to note, that both Japan and South Korea are not the most evolved mobile telecoms countries, as still today, their mobile phone penetration rates are below the industrialized world average.
- the leading markets for mobile phones changing society continue to the Nordic countries, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark.
- Italy, Israel, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong are also very advanced in how much society is changing due to mobile; with UK, Austria, Portugal, Netherlands very closely following those. For example, 54% of Helsinki public transportation single tickets to the trams and subways are paid by mobile; Finnish libraries and dentist offices etc send alerts to their customers via SMS. Singapore decided last year that all e-government initiatives will be enabled via mobile phone (and accessed by SMS). But innovative countries in mobile are all over - in Slovenia all vending machines, all taxis, all McDonald's restaurants etc accept payment by mobile. In South Africa you can have your full paycheck sent to you onto your mobile phone.
- The fixed internet is 13 years old, reaches 1.1 billion internet users generating an enormous amount of traffic on free sites, but the content industry on the fixed internet is worth $25 billion.
- The fixed internet derives its greatest paid content revenues from adult entertainment and gambling.
- The mobile internet is only 8 years old, reaches a potential of 2.7 billion users with mobile content generating $31 billion.
- the largest paid mobile content categories are music and social networking on mobile.
- The mobile data industry is not only more mature or "healthy."
- Videogaming is migrating to mobile (videogames already generate 50% more revenues than videogaming on the internet/broadband).
- Virtual societies, social networking, digital communities - is already twice the size on mobile as on fixed internet.
- Magazines, newspapers are migrating towards mobile.
- TV and radio will be on mobile.
- Advertising is discovering mobile. Hollywood movies see their future on the fourth screen (mobile) and now even the books publishing/printing industry is witnessing a move to mobile.
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You need to map an existing Veeam Agent backup chain to a Veeam Backup & Replication repository.
There are no features in Veeam Agent that would allow mapping existing backups to Veeam Backup & Replication, however it is possible to copy a local backup chain to a Veeam Backup & Replication repository and continue using it.
Here is the list of steps for mapping a local backup chain to a Veeam Backup & Replication repository.
1. Create a backup with Veeam Agent at any temporary backup destination of your choice.
remove the backup files from configuration: right click Disk (backups) > Endpoint Backups > Remove from configuration.
2. Place the backup chain into the required folder.
Backup files reside in C:\VeeamBackup\Backup Job 1 and need to be moved to a Veeam Backup & Replication repository into the following folder: C:\Backup.
Under C:\Backup you will need to create a folder named after the account that is used to access the repository. In this example, the account is DOMAIN1\user1, so the folder name would be DOMAIN1_user1.
The backup files reside in C:\VeeamBackup\Backup Job 1 and need to be moved to a cloud Veeam repository into following folder: C:\Backup.
3. Rescan the Veeam Backup & Replication repository. Here is a brief guide on repository rescan.
Note: For backups that you are mapping to cloud, rescan the repository hosting the tenant backups on the provider side.
4. The Veeam Agent backup should appear under Disk > Imported.
Note: When a backup chain is mapped to cloud, it will not be displayed under Disk > Imported.
5. Point the Veeam Agent job to the required Veeam Backup & Replication repository. Do not run it immediately, just close the wizard after making the changes.
6. On the Veeam Backup & Replication machine, the backup should be moved from the Imported section to Backup > Disk. Make sure that backups are located in Backups > Disks (not Disk (imported)).
7. Run the Veeam Agent backup job. It should continue the imported backup chain.
Note: The described solution works for Veeam Backup & Replication repository and Veeam Cloud Connect repository.
NOTES: 1. If local backup encryption was enabled during the initial job configuration, additional steps may be needed to complete the mapping.
Importing a backup chain to a Veeam Backup and Replication server puts the imported chain in the Disk (encrypted) tab. Before the backup chain can be continued, you will need to right click on the encrypted backup chain and enter the password.
In some cases it may be necessary to enter the password in order to continue the backup chain. If entering the password is required, you will be prompted to do so when the job starts.
2. If Backup & Replication repository’s encryption is enabled at the repository, you should decrypt it using password specification (Right click > Specify password) to finish the import procedure.
3. Migration to local VBR SOBR is described in kb2236 (the outlined method is completely relevant for Veeam Agent backups).
Map the backup to a simple VBR repository.
Add the simple repository to the SOBR repository (make sure VBR processed the existing backup to SOBR extent – as an indication, you will be prompted for it with a special message first and by the end of the process SOBR’s extents will have job’s VBM).
Put a new SOBR extent into maintenance mode and evacuate all the backups from it. This procedure will place the existing temporary repository’s backup to other active extents.
Change the backup job configuration on the VAW side to the SOBR repository and then check the backup from there.
2) Copy VBM and VBK, VIB files to SOBR extents and replace 'space' symbols with 'underscore' (_), e.g. 'Backup Job hostname' to 'Backup_Job_hostname' in the name of the job and the VBM-file.
The backup points itself (VBK, VIB) should be moved to the only extent, whereas VBM should be placed to all the SOBR's extents.
3) Then rename the old local repository VBM to VBM_old and rescan the simple VCC repository. This will clean VCC database of the old job's info.
4) Delete the existing tenant's quota and add a new SOBR's one. It's possible to achieve via tenant's properties by replacing the simple VCC repository with the SOBR one in 'Cloud repositories' section.
5) Rescan the SOBR repository.
Let the Local Policy Job run to its desired location. In our example, that is “E:\VeeamBackup” and under this folder will be a new folder named “Backup Job <Hostname>”.
Check the mapping result. Make sure that there were no folders with suffix _1, _2 created on the Cloud repository Tenant's folder during initial run.
If you have any questions, open a case with Veeam Support.
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0.999995 |
Text: Sacrifice a land: Akki Avalanchers gets +2/+0 until end of turn. Play this ability only once each turn.
Text: When Akki Rockspeaker comes into play, add to your mana pool.
Text: Whenever Akki Underminer deals combat damage to a player, that player sacrifices a permanent.
Text: When Ashen-Skin Zubera is put into a graveyard from play, target opponent discards a card for each Zubera put into a graveyard from play this turn.
, Tap an untapped creature you control: Untap enchanted creature.
Text: You may play two additional lands on each of your turns.
Battle-Mad Ronin attacks each turn if able.
Text: Destroy target land or nonblack creature. It can't be regenerated.
Text: : Ben-Ben, Akki Hermit deals damage to target attacking creature equal to the number of untapped Mountains you control.
Text: Target creature you control gains protection from the color of your choice until end of turn.
Text: Untap target nonlegendary creature and gain control of it until end of turn. That creature gains haste until end of turn.
Text: At the beginning of your upkeep, you may sacrifice Blood Speaker. If you do, search your library for a Demon card, reveal that card, and put it into your hand. Then shuffle your library.
Whenever a Demon comes into play under your control, return Blood Speaker from your graveyard to your hand.
Text: : Put a devotion counter on Bloodthirsty Ogre.
: Target creature gets -X/-X until end of turn, where X is the number of devotion counters on Bloodthirsty Ogre. Play this ability only if you control a Demon.
Text: Boseiju, Who Shelters All comes into play tapped.
If there are exactly two permanents named Brothers Yamazaki in play, the "legend rule" doesn't apply to them.
Text: : Look at the top card of your library.
: Reveal the top card of your library. If it's a land card, Brutal Deceiver gets +1/+0 and gains first strike until end of turn. Play this ability only once each turn.
Text: : You may put a land card from your hand into play. If you control ten or more lands, flip Budoka Gardener.
Text: Sacrifice Burr Grafter: Target creature gets +2/+2 until end of turn.
Text: When a creature dealt damage by Bushi Tenderfoot this turn is put into a graveyard, flip Bushi Tenderfoot.
Text: Untap all creatures you control. Samurai creatures you control get +1/+1 until end of turn.
: Reveal the top card of your library. If it's a land card, Callous Deceiver gets +1/+0 and gains flying until end of turn. Play this ability only once each turn.
Text: Prevent the next 3 damage that would be dealt to target creature or player this turn. You gain 1 life for each damage prevented this way.
: Add or to your mana pool. Cloudcrest Lake doesn't untap during your next untap step.
Text: Name a nonland card. Search target player's graveyard, hand, and library for all cards with that name and remove them from the game. Then that player shuffles his or her library.
: Reveal the top card of your library. If it's a land card, Cruel Deceiver gains "Whenever Cruel Deceiver deals damage to a creature, destroy that creature" until end of turn. Play this ability only once each turn.
Text: Crushing Pain deals 6 damage to target creature that was dealt damage this turn.
: Cursed Ronin gets +1/+1 until end of turn.
Text: For each Spirit, return it to its owner's hand unless that player pays .
Text: Target player puts the top four cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard.
Text: Creatures you control get +1/+0 and gain fear until end of turn.
Text: When Deathcurse Ogre is put into a graveyard from play, each player loses 3 life.
Text: As an additional cost to play Devouring Greed, you may sacrifice any number of Spirits.
Text: As an additional cost to play Devouring Rage, you may sacrifice any number of Spirits.
Text: Players can play spells only during their own turns.
Text: When Dripping-Tongue Zubera is put into a graveyard from play, put a 1/1 colorless Spirit creature token into play for each Zubera put into a graveyard from play this turn.
Text: Whenever you play a Spirit or Arcane spell, Earthshaker deals 2 damage to each creature without flying.
Text: Search your library for an Arcane card, reveal that card, and put it into your hand. Then shuffle your library.
Text: : Target permanent you control gains protection from white until end of turn.
Text: When Ember-Fist Zubera is put into a graveyard from play, it deals damage to target creature or player equal to the number of Zubera put into all graveyards from play this turn.
Text: Prevent all damage that would be dealt by creatures this turn.
Text: Destroy target land. If that land is legendary, its controller sacrifices another land.
: Reveal the top card of your library. If it's a land card, Feral Deceiver gets +2/+2 and gains trample until end of turn. Play this ability only once each turn.
Text: When Floating-Dream Zubera is put into a graveyard from play, draw a card for each Zubera put into a graveyard from play this turn.
Text: : Frostwielder deals 1 damage to target creature or player.
If a creature dealt damage by Frostwielder this turn would be put into a graveyard, remove it from the game instead.
Text: Gale Force deals 5 damage to each creature with flying.
Text: Search your library for four cards with different names and reveal them. Target opponent chooses two of those cards. Put the chosen cards into your graveyard and the rest into your hand. Then shuffle your library.
Text: Glacial Ray deals 2 damage to target creature or player.
Text: Whenever you play a creature spell this turn, draw a card.
Text: When Godo, Bandit Warlord comes into play, you may search your library for an Equipment card and put it into play. If you do, shuffle your library.
Text: Whenever you play a Spirit or Arcane spell, target creature gains flying until end of turn.
At the beginning of your upkeep, discard a card if you don't control an Ogre.
Text: Tap an untapped creature you control: Target player puts the top card of his or her library into his or her graveyard.
Text: Hall of the Bandit Lord comes into play tapped.
, Pay 3 life: Add to your mana pool. If that mana is spent on a creature spell, that creature has haste.
Text: , Sacrifice Hana Kami: Return target Arcane card from your graveyard to your hand.
Text: Hanabi Blast deals 2 damage to target creature or player. Return Hanabi Blast to its owner's hand, then discard a card at random.
Text: Equipped creature has " : Put an aim counter on Hankyu" and " , Remove all aim counters from Hankyu: This creature deals damage to target creature or player equal to the number of aim counters removed."
: Reveal the top card of your library. If it's a land card, untap Harsh Deceiver and it gets +1/+1 until end of turn. Play this ability only once each turn.
, Sacrifice a Spirit: Target opponent reveals his or her hand. Choose a card from it. That player discards that card. Play this ability only any time you could play a sorcery.
Text: , Sacrifice Hearth Kami: Destroy target artifact with converted mana cost X.
Whenever you play a Spirit or Arcane spell, you may remove Hikari, Twilight Guardian from the game. If you do, return it to play under its owner's control at end of turn.
Text: Counter target spell. If that spell is countered this way, put that card on the top or bottom of its owner's library instead of into that player's graveyard.
Text: Counter target Spirit or Arcane spell.
Text: You may choose not to untap Hisoka's Guard during your untap step.
Text: , Discard a card: Counter target spell if it has the same converted mana cost as the discarded card.
Text: Blocking creatures get +7/+7 until end of turn.
Text: At the beginning of your upkeep, you gain 2 life for each Shrine you control.
Text: At the beginning of your upkeep, Honden of Infinite Rage deals damage to target creature or player equal to the number of Shrines you control.
Text: At the beginning of your upkeep, put a 1/1 colorless Spirit creature token into play for each Shrine you control.
Text: At the beginning of your upkeep, target opponent discards a card for each Shrine you control.
Text: At the beginning of your upkeep, draw a card for each Shrine you control.
Tap an untapped legendary permanent you control: Untap Honor-Worn Shaku.
Text: Whenever you play a Spirit or Arcane spell, regenerate target creature.
Text: Players can't untap more than one artifact during their untap steps.
Text: When Iname, Death Aspect comes into play, you may search your library for any number of Spirit cards and put them into your graveyard. If you do, shuffle your library.
Text: When Iname, Life Aspect is put into a graveyard from play, you may remove Iname, Life Aspect from the game. If you do, return any number of target Spirit cards from your graveyard to your hand.
Text: : Initiate of Blood deals 1 damage to target creature that was dealt damage this turn. When that creature is put into a graveyard this turn, flip Initiate of Blood.
Whenever you play a Spirit or Arcane spell, untap Innocence Kami.
Text: Whenever you play a Spirit or Arcane spell, Jade Idol becomes a 4/4 Spirit artifact creature until end of turn.
Text: , : Search your library for a basic land card, reveal it, and put it into your hand. Then shuffle your library.
Text: At the beginning of your upkeep, you may have target creature you control get +X/+X until end of turn, where X is the number of creatures you control. If you do, sacrifice that creature at end of turn.
Text: , : Draw a card. If you have nine or more cards in hand, flip Jushi Apprentice.
: Target creature gets +1/+2 until end of turn.
Text: Whenever you play a Spirit or Arcane spell, target creature can't block this turn.
Text: Whenever you play a Spirit or Arcane spell, Kami of the Hunt gets +1/+1 until end of turn.
Text: Whenever you play a Spirit or Arcane spell, Kami of the Painted Road gains protection from the color of your choice until end of turn.
Whenever you play a Spirit or Arcane spell, target creature gains fear until end of turn.
Text: Sacrifice Kami of Twisted Reflection: Return target creature you control to its owner's hand.
Text: Whenever Kashi-Tribe Reaver deals combat damage to a creature, tap that creature and it doesn't untap during its controller's next untap step.
Text: Whenever Kashi-Tribe Warriors deals combat damage to a creature, tap that creature and it doesn't untap during its controller's next untap step.
Text: , : Target creature deals damage to itself equal to its power.
Text: : Tap target Spirit.
: Prevent all damage that would be dealt to target legendary creature this turn.
Text: At end of turn, if Kitsune Mystic is enchanted by two or more Auras, flip it.
Text: Whenever you play a Spirit or Arcane spell, each other creature you control gets +1/+1 and gains trample until end of turn.
Text: Search your library for two basic land cards, reveal those cards, and put one into play tapped and the other into your hand. Then shuffle your library.
When Kokusho, the Evening Star is put into a graveyard from play, each opponent loses 5 life. You gain life equal to the life lost this way.
Text: Konda's Banner can be attached only to a legendary creature.
Creatures that share a color with equipped creature get +1/+1.
Creatures that share a creature type with equipped creature get +1/+1.
Konda, Lord of Eiganjo is indestructible.
Text: If a creature dealt damage by Kumano's Pupils this turn would be put into a graveyard, remove it from the game instead.
Text: : Kumano, Master Yamabushi deals 1 damage to target creature or player.
Text: Equipped creature has " : This creature gets +1/+0 until end of turn."
Whenever equipped creature deals damage to a blocking creature, Kusari-Gama deals that much damage to each other creature defending player controls.
: Add or to your mana pool. Lantern-Lit Graveyard doesn't untap during your next untap step.
Text: Lava Spike deals 3 damage to target player.
Text: Arcane spells you play cost less to play.
Text: Sacrifice any number of lands. Add to your mana pool for each land sacrificed this way.
Text: All Rat creatures have fear.
, Sacrifice a Rat: Put X 1/1 black Rat creature tokens into play, where X is the number of Rats you control.
Text: : Target creature blocks Matsu-Tribe Decoy this turn if able.
Whenever Matsu-Tribe Decoy deals combat damage to a creature, tap that creature and it doesn't untap during its controller's next untap step.
, Return a land you control to its owner's hand: Put a 1/1 blue Illusion creature token with flying into play.
Text: Name a nonland card and choose a number greater than 0. Target player reveals his or her library. If that library contains exactly the chosen number of the named card, Mindblaze deals 8 damage to that player. Then that player shuffles his or her library.
Text: Whenever you draw a card, remove the top card of your library from the game face down.
Text: Myojin of Cleansing Fire comes into play with a divinity counter on it if you played it from your hand.
Myojin of Cleansing Fire is indestructible as long as it has a divinity counter on it.
Remove a divinity counter from Myojin of Cleansing Fire: Destroy each other creature.
Text: Myojin of Infinite Rage comes into play with a divinity counter on it if you played it from your hand.
Myojin of Infinite Rage is indestructible as long as it has a divinity counter on it.
Text: Myojin of Life's Web comes into play with a divinity counter on it if you played it from your hand.
Remove a divinity counter from Myojin of Life's Web: Put any number of creature cards from your hand into play.
Text: Myojin of Night's Reach comes into play with a divinity counter on it if you played it from your hand.
Text: Myojin of Seeing Winds comes into play with a divinity counter on it if you played it from your hand.
When Mystic Restraints comes into play, tap enchanted creature.
Whenever Nagao, Bound by Honor attacks, Samurai creatures you control get +1/+1 until end of turn.
Text: Whenever one or more creatures you control deal combat damage to a player, tap all lands that player controls and untap all lands you control.
Text: , Sacrifice a creature: Target player discards a card. Play this ability only any time you could play a sorcery.
Text: : Remove target card in an opponent's graveyard from the game. If no cards are in that graveyard, flip Nezumi Graverobber.
Text: , : Target opponent discards a card. Then if that player has no cards in hand, flip Nezumi Shortfang.
Text: Whenever a source you control deals damage to another player, put that many theft counters on Night Dealings.
, Remove X theft counters from Night Dealings: Search your library for a nonland card with converted mana cost X, reveal it, and put it into your hand. Then shuffle your library.
Text: All creatures get -1/-1.
Text: : Nine-Ringed Bo deals 1 damage to target Spirit creature. If that creature would be put into a graveyard this turn, remove it from the game instead.
Text: Equipped creature gets +2/+0 and has first strike.
Text: Equipped creature gets +3/+1.
Whenever equipped creature is put into a graveyard from play, return that card to play under your control if it's a Samurai.
When Oathkeeper, Takeno's Daisho is put into a graveyard from play, remove equipped creature from the game.
Whenever you play a Spirit or Arcane spell, Orbweaver Kumo gains forestwalk until end of turn.
Text: Whenever you play a Spirit or Arcane spell, you may destroy target nonbasic land.
Text: , : Put a 1/1 green Snake creature token into play. If you control ten or more creatures, flip Orochi Eggwatcher.
Text: Orochi Hatchery comes into play with X charge counters on it.
, : Put a 1/1 green Snake creature token into play for each charge counter on Orochi Hatchery.
Text: Whenever Orochi Ranger deals combat damage to a creature, tap that creature and it doesn't untap during its controller's next untap step.
Text: Remove target creature from the game. At end of turn, return that card to play under its owner's control with a +1/+1 counter on it.
Text: , Sacrifice Pain Kami: Pain Kami deals X damage to target creature.
At the beginning of your upkeep, sacrifice a creature if you don't control an Ogre.
Text: Return all creatures you control to their owner's hand.
Text: Look at the top five cards of your library. You may reveal an instant or sorcery card from among them and put it into your hand. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in any order.
Text: Look at the top three cards of your library. You may put those cards on the bottom of your library in any order. If you do, return Petals of Insight to its owner's hand. Otherwise, draw three cards.
: Add or to your mana pool. Pinecrest Ridge doesn't untap during your next untap step.
Text: At the beginning of your upkeep, put a devotion counter on Pious Kitsune. Then if a creature named Eight-and-a-Half-Tails is in play, you gain 1 life for each devotion counter on Pious Kitsune.
, Remove a devotion counter from Pious Kitsune: You gain 1 life.
Text: You may tap or untap target permanent.
Text: Target creature gets -5/-5 until end of turn.
Text: , : Remove up to three target cards in a single graveyard from the game.
Text: Remove from the game target creature that dealt damage to you this turn.
Text: : Put target card in a graveyard on the bottom of its owner's library.
Text: Destroy target non-Spirit creature.
Text: Target permanent's controller sacrifices it. If he or she does, that player reveals cards from the top of his or her library until he or she reveals a card that shares a card type with the sacrificed permanent, puts that card into play, then shuffles his or her library.
Text: , Sacrifice Rootrunner: Put target land on the top of its owner's library.
When Ryusei, the Falling Star is put into a graveyard from play, it deals 5 damage to each creature without flying.
Text: Other Snake creatures you control get +0/+1.
Text: Sacrifice Sakura-Tribe Elder: Search your library for a basic land card, put that card into play tapped, then shuffle your library.
Text: At the beginning of each player's upkeep, that player loses 2 life and draws two cards.
, : Put a training counter on target creature. That creature gains bushido 1 and becomes a Samurai in addition to its other creature types. Play this ability only any time you could play a sorcery.
Text: Other Snake creatures you control get +2/+2.
, , Sacrifice Shell of the Last Kappa: You may play a card removed from the game with Shell of the Last Kappa without paying its mana cost.
Text: As Shimatsu the Bloodcloaked comes into play, sacrifice any number of permanents. Shimatsu comes into play with that many +1/+1 counters on it.
Text: At the beginning of your upkeep, sacrifice a Snake.
Whenever Shisato, Whispering Hunter deals combat damage to a player, that player skips his or her next untap step.
Text: You may change any targets of target Arcane spell.
If you played a spell named Peer Through Depths and a spell named Reach Through Mists this turn, you may search your library for a card named The Unspeakable, put it into play, then shuffle your library.
Text: When Silent-Chant Zubera is put into a graveyard from play, you gain 2 life for each Zubera put into a graveyard from play this turn.
Whenever you play a Spirit or Arcane spell, you may draw a card.
Text: Whenever you play a Spirit or Arcane spell, target land becomes a 3/3 creature until end of turn. It's still a land.
, Return a land you control to its owner's hand: Target creature with power 2 or less is unblockable this turn.
, Return three lands you control to their owner's hand: Return target creature to its owner's hand.
, Return a land you control to its owner's hand: Counter target spell unless its controller pays .
, Return two lands you control to their owner's hand: Discard all the cards in your hand, then draw that many cards.
Text: Other Snake creatures you control get +1/+0.
Whenever a Warrior you control deals combat damage to a creature, destroy that creature at end of combat.
Text: Whenever you play a Spirit or Arcane spell, Soul of Magma deals 1 damage to target creature.
Text: As an additional cost to play Soulblast, sacrifice all creatures you control.
Text: Target creature gets +X/+X until end of turn, where X is the number of lands you control.
Text: Target opponent reveals his or her hand. That player sets aside a card from it, then you set aside a card from it. Repeat this process until all cards in that hand have been set aside. That player returns the cards he or she set aside to his or her hand and puts the rest into his or her graveyard.
Text: When Student of Elements has flying, flip it.
Text: Swallowing Plague deals X damage to target creature and you gain X life.
Text: As Swirl the Mists comes into play, choose a color word.
All instances of color words on spells and permanents become the chosen color word.
Each other Samurai creature you control gets +1/+1 for each point of bushido it has.
, Remove Tatsumasa, the Dragon's Fang from the game: Put a 5/5 blue Dragon Spirit creature token with flying into play. Return Tatsumasa to play under its owner's control when that token is put into a graveyard.
Whenever you play a Spirit or Arcane spell, you may tap or untap target creature.
Text: Equipped creature gets +1/+1. As long as it's legendary, it gets an additional +2/+2. As long as it's red, it has trample.
Text: Whenever you play a Spirit or Arcane spell, target opponent loses 1 life and you gain 1 life.
Text: Counter target spell with converted mana cost 4 or less.
Text: You may put a creature card from your hand into play. That creature has haste. Sacrifice that creature at end of turn.
Text: Whenever one or more creatures blocks, flip a coin. If you win the flip, each blocking creature is sacrificed by its controller. Otherwise, each blocked creature is sacrificed by its controller.
Text: Search your library for a legendary creature card, reveal it, and put it into your hand. Then shuffle your library.
: Add or to your mana pool. Tranquil Garden doesn't untap during your next untap step.
Text: If a player would draw a card, that player removes that card from the game face up instead.
Each player may play cards he or she removed from the game with Uba Mask this turn.
Text: Untaidake, the Cloud Keeper comes into play tapped.
, Pay 2 life: Add to your mana pool. Spend this mana only to play legendary spells.
Text: : The next 1 damage that would be dealt to target legendary creature you control this turn is dealt to you instead.
Text: Villainous Ogre can't block.
As long as you control a Demon, Villainous Ogre has " : Regenerate Villainous Ogre."
Text: Vine Kami can't be blocked except by two or more creatures.
Text: : Target player dealt damage by Wicked Akuba this turn loses 1 life.
Text: Yamabushi's Flame deals 3 damage to target creature or player. If a creature dealt damage this way would be put into a graveyard this turn, remove it from the game instead.
Text: Yamabushi's Storm deals 1 damage to each creature. If a creature dealt damage this way would be put into a graveyard this turn, remove it from the game instead.
Text: Whenever a land comes into play, Zo-Zu the Punisher deals 2 damage to that land's controller.
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The contribution of tourism to a national economy cannot be gainsaid. In some countries of the world, tourism is almost turning into the highest contributor to GDP and therefore other countries are following with calculated policies and programmes to cash in, including Nigeria.
The federal government of Nigeria has over the years established correspondent ministries and important public agencies to help the country drive the agenda of diversifying the sources of income for the state, a chunk of it to include tourism. Some of these public agencies include the Federal Ministry of Tourism, Culture and National Orientation, State Tourism Boards and Local Government Tourism Committees. Other public agencies are the Nigerian Tourism Development Corporation which is responsible for policy implementation, National Institute for Hospitality and Tourism, responsible for Manpower development and National Commission for Museums and Monuments responsible for the preservation of heritages.
The Federal Ministry of Tourism, Culture and National Orientation was chipped off two previous federal ministries, these are the Federal Ministry of Information and Culture and the Federal Ministry of Commerce and Tourism. It was established in 1999. It is responsible for promoting the cultural heritage of the country. Some of the objectives of the ministry include, the promotion of culture and tourism as a foreign exchange earner, positioning the sector as a major employer of labour and the driver of rural development, to mention but a few.
Aside the Federal Ministry of Tourism, the various states within the federation also have their respective tourism ministries charged with the responsibility of developing the tourism sector within their respective jurisdictions.
Further down at the Local Government level, committees or boards have been set up to harness the tourism potentials of the states. In Ekiti state, for instance, Local Government Tourism Committees have been inaugurated. The main purpose of these committees is to identify and develop the tourism potentials of the state.
There are also other public agencies under the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Tourism that are charged to perform various roles within the sector.
The Tourism Development Corporation came into existence in 1992. It started first as the Nigerian Tourist Association way back in 1962. After its establishment in 1992, it was placed under the Ministry of Culture, Tourism, and National Orientation. According to information available on their official website, the Nigerian Tourism Development Corporation’s main functions are to plan, supervise, develop and market tourism in Nigeria. In other words, it was charged with the responsibility of policy implementation.
The National Institute of Hospitality and Tourism, NIHOTOUR, Nigeria was established in 1988 to train professionals for the tourism industry in Nigeria. It was also to introduce post-graduate courses in the travel and tourism and hospitality fields. In a nutshell, it is responsible for Manpower development in the tourism sector.
The National Commission for Museums and Monuments was first established by decree in 1977. With the re-introduction of liberal democracy in Nigeria, that decree has since been replaced with an Act of Parliament, CAP 242 of 1990. The primary aim for the establishment of this Commission is to preserve the rich cultural heritage of Nigeria for the people both living and yet to be born. It is also present same to both local and international tourists to boost tourism in Nigeria. As part of their functions, they collect and document the cultural and natural heritages of Nigeria so that they can be conserved and preserved. In museums dotted around various places in Nigeria, the commission ensures that the heritages are presented to the public for both entertainment and educational purposes.
This is one of the State Government agencies in Nigeria. This one happens to be in Rivers State. This Tourism Development Agency was established in January of 2012. It primary aim is to stimulate responsible partnership in the sector, between local and international players so as to harness the potentials in the tourism sector in Rivers State. It also aspires to develop to measure up to global best practices.
1. a. Identify six public agencies of tourism in Nigeria.
b. Highlight the roles played by four of the public agencies listed above.
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How many spoken languages are there in the world?
There are roughly 6,500 spoken languages in the world today. However, about 2,000 of those languages have fewer than 1,000 speakers.
The most popular language in the world is Mandarin Chinese. There are 1,213,000,000 people in the world that speak that language. You might also like our list of the most widely spoken languages in the world.
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What is the typical menu of villainous images placed before us when we dine out at a movie theater? A scientist has his face deep-cleaned in a bell jar of acid to the epidermal enthusiasm of his "beauticians" (Darkman); a psychopathic criminal mastermind reigns chaos to the citizens of Gotham (The Dark Knight) and another sequel, eight years on, despite his tarnished reputation after the events of The Dark Knight, in which he took the rap for Dent 's crimes, caped crusader feels compelled to intervene to assist the city and its police force which is struggling to cope with the villain’s (who knows the caped crusader all too well) plans to destroy the city (The Dark Knight Rises). This raises the question; Is the role of the villain in Hollywood important for a successful movie? In the movie industry, the success of a movie is based on the amount of revenue the movie brings in, creativity (whether it be time frame or characters), and the story line of the movie. But in order to form a valid opinion on whether or not a villain is needed in a movie to be considered successful, first we must discuss the history of movies that included villains, iconic movie villains and the success of their movies, and finally, the importance of the villain in cinema.
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Can I bypass my ac adaptor to save energy?
I'm going solar at my remote weekend cabin. I'd like my computer, modem & wifi on all the time. The components each have an AC adapter(120AC to 12VDC) I'm thinking that there would be less power consumption and waste if I bypass the ac adapters and wire directly to my 12 volt battery bank (which is recharged by the solar system). I'd not be wasting energy through the adapters. Am I correct in my thinking or all wrong? Help please?
That way, you could channel the solar powered charge, thus driving 120V AC units through whichever battery-powered system you have (either 12Volt or 24Volt).
A residual current device wouldn't be a bad idea either.
If the AC adapters all provide 12 VDC, you are correct that you would save power and improve efficiency if you connected your devices directly to your 12 volt DC battery bank.
However, I would not directly connect any DC powered device directly to your battery bank. At a minimum, you want to add a fuse rated for somewhere between nominal and maximum current draw for the device.
I myself would include a reverse polarity protection diode and perhaps a voltage surge protector. A switch in the power line would not be a bad idea.
You can build all of this into either an electrical box, or a small "Bud" box.
For your DC devices that use lower voltages, you can still bypass the AC adapters with voltage regulators. Just make sure to properly size them and allow for proper cooling.
For some detailed information on voltage regulator components, check out the National Semiconductor, Texas Instruments and EDN web sites.
For parts for the home hobbyist, check out All Electronics, BG Micro, and Hostfelt Electronics.
It can also be more efficient for devices that require higher DC voltages to use a DC to DC converter rather than an AC power inverter.
Vicor Power is but one company that makes a broad line of DC to DC converters.
Thank you, Chas. I'll print your reply and suggestions off and follow it. Much appreciated.
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Before you begin check you local county codes. Some counties will require you to have a fence around your pond if it is bigger the X amount of area and or depth. They may also have required set-backs from property lines.
Now with that out of the way let's go on to the fun stuff!
A sunny area is always nice but also means you will be taking more time maintaining your pond. Ponds in sunny areas are more apt to grow algae. (Not that algae is a bad thing for your pond.) Too sunny of an area will also evaporate your water faster and require your constant filling, thus changing the temperature and condition of the water. A shaded area is ok, but your pond plants usually want 4-6 hours of sun a day. You also want your water to be warm enough for your fish. Too windy of an area near trees will be inviting leaves into your pond that you will have to clean out.
Goldfish like water temperatures 50-70 degrees to stay active. They can handle temperatures up to 95 degrees, but only for a very short time. Goldfish tend to find the deepest spot during the winter and go into a hibernation type state when the water get cooler then 40*.
Koi can handle the same water conditions as Goldfish, however, once the water reaches 70+ degrees they will tend to slow down. Koi should be in water that is at least 3 feet deep - the shallower the water - the easier they are to become food for would be predators.
Plan an area where you won't be stuck pulling dead leaves out all winter long. (I did this twice a week until I cut down the trees.) There are a couple of things you can do if you have no choice but to put your pond by trees that drop leaves during the winter: One is to do what I did - which is use a pool skimmer net to get them out - you can buy bird netting and stretch it over your pond to catch the leaves and wait for the next good wind to blow them off.
Don't put your pond under Cedar trees. Cedar is toxic to ponds and could kill your fish.
The best spot for your pond would be an area that is away from leaf dropping trees, but still get shade from trees during the summer. The pond still needs to have at least 4-6 hours of sun a day to keep the water warm and plants happy. Keep in mind the sun changes location in the sky from summer to winter. An area that gets 4-6 hours of sun during the summer but all day during the winter would be perfect, provided your winter days don't have too many days above 70 degrees.
A few last things to remember when picking out a location is that you will need power for your pump, UV filter and possably lighting. You will also need to make sure you have enough space for your pump and filter.
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Used especially in expressions to add a heightened level of politeness and to affirm or emphasize the preceding words. It may sometimes be translated as "Have a ~" or "It is ~" in English, though no direct translation is possible for all cases.
"It is dawn", "Dawn has arrived"
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Which cruise ships are being refurbished in 2014?
Details: As part of Carnival’s $500 million Fun Ship 2.0 revamp, several new dining and entertainment venues were brought onboard, including a WaterWorks water park for kids, the Caribbean-themed RedFrog Pub, Bonsai Sushi restaurant, Cherry On Top candy store, “Hasbro, The Game Show, “and Playlist Productions’ live musical reviews. The ship also upgraded its swimming pools and gym equipment, and replaced carpeting, tile, and wall coverings throughout.
Details: Carnival Freedom also received upgrades as part of the $500 million Fun Ship 2.0 revamp, but not the same ones as Carnival Legend. Look for Guy’s Burger Joint, Mexican food at the poolside BlueIguana Cantina and adjacent BlueIguana Tequila Bar, EA Sports Bar, Alchemy Bar, “Hasbro, The Game Show,” Playlist Productions’ live musical reviews, Cherry on Top candy store, Caribbean-themed RedFrog Pub, and The Warehouse arcade. The first-ever Dr. Seuss Bookville® family reading center was created onboard as well.
Details: Carnival Pride’s Fun Ship 2.0 enhancements mirror those of Carnival Freedom, but also include some extras: RedFrog Rum Bar, Bonsai Sushi restaurant, and the Library Bar, offering self-serve wine and a full-service bar. The ship was also outfitted with scrubbers — exhaust gas-cleaning technology that reduces air emissions.
Details: Two new food and drink venues were added: Gastrobar, a craft beer and comfort food restaurant, and Slush, which serves frozen drinks made with fresh juice. The Studio – Fine Art Photography (a high-end portrait studio) and a Michael Kors boutique were also added to the ship, as was a new Internet lounge — Celebrity iLounge — which replaced Online@Celebrity. The spa onboard, which was previously operated by spa company Steiner, has been rebranded as Canyon Ranch SpaClub® without the need for a dry dock.
Details: On this ship, 26 outside cabins will be become hypoallergenic staterooms. The ship will also receive new gym equipment, an outdoor fitness garden, new furniture at the Bistro Cafe, and the Cove and Plaza will be redecorated.
Details: The Queen Elizabeth underwent a multimillion-dollar refit to create nine single-passenger staterooms — a first for the line since the QE2, which once offered this category, retired in 2008. They span 159 to 162 square feet and feature single beds and large windows in the outside rooms. The remainder of the cabins received new carpets and flat-screen TVs.
Details: Existing outside cabins will be converted into 21 new Lanai staterooms and receive remodeled bathrooms with new fixtures and walk-in showers. Each room will have direct access to the Lower Promenade walking deck from the balcony, which will have one-way mirrored doors for additional privacy. All suite bathrooms onboard will be upgraded to feature whirlpool tubs, stone vanities, lighted mirrors, and new fixtures. A new nightlife space will also be created to help guests mix and mingle. Aptly named Mix, it will contain three themed bars: Martinis, Champagne, and Spirits & Ales, each selling a selection of what its name promises.
Details: MSC Armonia is the first of the four Lirica-class ships to receive upgrades as part of the $273 million “renaissance” program that will take place through 2015. Two hundred new staterooms will be added, as well as a new splash park; onboard boutiques will be redecorated, and a new perfume store selling luxury brand products will be added to the ship.
Details: Both ships, part of the Jewel class, will be enhanced to include O’Sheehan’s Neighborhood Bar & Grill and the Sugarcane Mojito Bar. Plus, desserts from Carlo’s Bake Shop will now be sold in the coffee shop. In addition, the carpet and tile will be replaced throughout the ships.
Details: This $50 million renovation to all R-class ships included new décor in all cabins and public spaces and the addition of the Baristas coffee bar. The Terrace Café was totally renovated with a new cook-to-order grill. The sports deck has new golf putting greens and shuffleboard courts, and the Canyon Ranch SpaClub has renovated steam rooms and changing areas. Horizons and Martinis bars were outfitted with new furnishings, and Regatta Lounge received new carpets, chairs, and upholstery.
Details: The ship’s $30 million renovation included an 8,800-square-foot Japanese bath area — the largest of its kind at sea — and a new sushi restaurant. The casino was remodeled, and duty-free shops with new luxury brand products from Fendi, Burberry, and Omega were added, as were 14 new cabins. The décor in Sabatini’s restaurant was updated, and the Horizon Court buffet now features live cooking stations, a pastry shop, new décor, and additional seating.
Details: The grand, master, mariner, seven seas, horizons, and penthouse suites have all been redecorated, and the theater has a new LED wall and new tables and chairs. All lounge spaces received updated furnishings and flooring, the Canyon Ranch SpaClub has new steam rooms and stone flooring, and state-of-the-art exercise equipment was added to the fitness center. New teak floors were installed on the 350 suite balconies, and the pool deck now features resort-style couches and lounge chairs.
Details: Navigator of the Seas and Adventure of the Seas both added flat-screen TVs in all cabins, a Royal Babies & TotsSM Nursery (it started on Oasis of the Seas in 2009 and is now being added to each ship as they go into dry dock), specialty Italian restaurant Giovanni's Table, a gigantic movie screen on the pool deck, touch-screen signs, and a new Diamond Lounge for Crown & Anchor Society loyalty members (access is granted when you sign up after your first cruise; you then earn points with each subsequent sailing to use toward precruise and onboard perks).
A few different offerings can be found on these ships as well: Adventure of the Seas added new staterooms, and Navigator of the Seas gained specialty restaurants Sabor Modern Mexican and Izumi Japanese cuisine, the FlowRider® surf simulator, and virtual balconies in 81 interior rooms. Voyager of the Seas is scheduled to go into dry dock in October for additions similar to those on Navigator of the Seas.
Details: Four new penthouse spa suites were built on Deck 10, directly above the Spa at Seabourn. Each one-bedroom suite is 534 square feet with a private balcony looking out over the stern, floor-to-ceiling windows, shower and separate bathtub, two flat-screen TVs, and a bar stocked with healthy snacks.
Details: Along with routine mechanical and electrical maintenance and upgrades, SeaDream I’s Main Salon was refreshed with new paint, upholstery, and carpeting. The staterooms also received new carpeting and basic touch-ups, such as wallpaper replacement.
Details: The ship underwent its regularly scheduled dry dock for mechanical maintenance in addition to replacing carpeting, drapery, flooring, and upholstery as needed.
Details: Formerly Seabourn Pride, Star Pride’s public spaces and dining venues were transformed to reflect the Windstar brand with new furnishings, upholstery, lighting, wall coverings, carpeting, and window treatments. The suites were redecorated with leather headboards, new sofas and chairs, updated lighting, window coverings, carpeting, and new artwork. Destination suites — owner’s suites decked out in cultural décor and local artwork — also debuted.
Bookville is a registered trademark of Dr. Seuss Enterprises.
Canyon Ranch SpaClub is a registered trademark of Canyon Ranch.
FlowRider is a registered trademark of Light Wave Ltd.
Which enhancements are you most excited to experience?
I have sailed on some vessels post "update". One of the things I have seen is that very little goes into these upgrades when it comes to passenger cabins. They upgrade things such as specialty restaurants, pools, atrium areas etc, But these upgrades can be deceiving when you board the vessel, go to your cabin and find stained linen, rusted balconies and outdated looking bathrooms. The upgrades seem to be more for the profit side of the line as opposed to the personal experience of the cruiser. Granted some of the upgrades may be safety/operational related but when a potential passenger thinks the ship has been "upgraded", they think that the WHOLE ship has been upgraded.
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AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY is the oldest learned society in America. The botanist John Bartram made the first proposal for a general scientific society in Philadelphia in 1739, but it was Benjamin Franklin who issued a public call to found a society of "Virtuosi or ingenious Men," offering his services as secretary. The new society held several meetings in 1743, elected members from neighboring colonies, and members read learned papers and made plans to publish them. However, Franklin complained, the members were "very idle"; consequently, the society languished and by 1746 it had died. In 1766, stimulated by the feelings of American nationalism engendered by the Stamp Act, some younger Philadelphians—many of Quaker background and belonging to the Assembly political party—formed the American Society for Promoting Useful Knowledge, which sought to develop and promote better agricultural methods, domestic manufactures, and internal improvements. In response, surviving members of the 1743 group and some others, Anglican and Proprietary in sentiment, then revived the "dormant" American Philosophical Society. Wisely, the rival societies merged in 1769 as the American Philosophical Society, Held at Philadelphia, for Promoting Useful Knowledge. In a contested election, the members chose Franklin, then in London, as the first president.
The society's first important scientific undertaking was to observe the transit of Venus (3 June 1769). Its reports were first published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, then, in full, in its own Transactions (1771), which, distributed among European academies and philosophers, quickly established the society's reputation. Reorganized in 1784 and 1785 after wartime interruption, the society expanded its membership, erected a hall (still in use), and resumed publication of the Transactions. In the ensuing half-century it became the single most important scientific forum in the United States. Its tone was Jeffersonian, republican, deistic, and pro-French. By loaning its facilities, it encouraged such other learned bodies in Philadelphia as the College of Physicians, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Academy of Natural Sciences, and the Agricultural Society.
Thomas Jefferson, president of the United States and the society simultaneously, used the society as a national library, museum, and academy of sciences, asking it to draft instructions for Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and, after the explorers' return, depositing their specimens and report in its museum and library. Materials on American Indian languages collected by Jefferson and another society president, Peter S. Du Ponceau, also went into the library. Joel R. Poinsett donated an impressive collection of ancient Mexican artifacts. During the nineteenth century, the Transactions carried many descriptive articles on American natural history, including those by Isaac Lea on malacology (the study of mollusks), Edward D. Cope on paleontology, F. V. Hayden on geology, Joseph Leidy on anatomy, and Leo Lesquereux on botany. The society's Proceedings also frequently reported Joseph Henry's experiments on electromagnetism.
The society lost preeminence during the mid-1830s to mid-1860s, when specialized learned societies arose. The federal government created its own learned institutions, such as the Smithsonian, and the American Journal of Science was founded. At midcentury the society seemed without imagination or energy—Henry Thoreau called it "a company of old women"—but it continued to meet, publish, and elect persons to membership, overlooking hardly any outstanding scientists.
The bicentennial of Franklin's birth in 1906 brought a renewal of activity, especially in historical publication. From 1927 to 1929 the society drafted plans to reorganize itself as a clearinghouse for scientific knowledge—with popular lectures, a newsletter, and a publications office designed to disseminate "authoritative news of forward steps in all branches of learning." Those plans collapsed with the onset of the Great Depression in 1929. Private bequests and gifts in the 1930s, particularly from R. A. F. Penrose and E. R. Johnson, produced striking changes, however. While retaining its old organization and traditional practices, the society extended its activities in several directions. It expanded its scholarly publications program, adding a book series, The Memoirs, and a year book to its highly respected monograph series, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. In 1933 it inaugurated a program of research grants, including the gift of large amounts for some projects, such as for extensive archaeological work at Tikal, Guatemala, and a number of smaller grants to individuals (these totaled roughly $400,000 annually by the end of the twentieth century), primarily as a way of fostering scholarly publication. The society continued to develop its library, in 1959 opening its Library Hall, which houses one of the principal collections on the history of science in America, including rare first editions of Benjamin Franklin's Experiments and Observations, Sir Isaac Newton's Principia, and Charles Darwin's Origin of Species. In addition, the society sponsors three specific re-search programs in clinical medicine, North American Indians, and the history of the physical sciences. Since the late eighteenth century the society has also maintained an active awards program across a range of disciplines, from the arts and humanities to science and jurisprudence, including the Magellanic Premium (established in 1786), the Barzun prize, the Franklin and Jefferson Medals, the Lashley and Lewis awards, and the Moe and Phillips prizes.
A large percentage of the society's annual operating budget derives from its sizable endowment. The society's Annual Fund (launched in 1992) and foundation grants provide the remainder. Society membership is confined to those who are elected for "extraordinary accomplishment" in their professional fields; more than two hundred society members won the Nobel Prize for their work during the twentieth century. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, society membership stood at over seven hundred, 85 percent of whom resided within the United States.
American Philosophical Society. Year Book. Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, published annually since 1937.
Bearn, Alexander G., ed. Useful Knowledge: The American Philosophical Society Millenium Program. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1999.
Hindle, Brooke. The Pursuit of Science in Revolutionary America, 1735–1789. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1956.
See alsoLearned Societies ; Lewis and Clark Expedition ; Philanthropy .
"American Philosophical Society." Dictionary of American History. . Encyclopedia.com. 18 Apr. 2019 <https://www.encyclopedia.com>.
American Philosophical Society, first scientific society in America, founded (1743) in Philadelphia. It was an outgrowth of the Junto formed (1727) by Benjamin Franklin. Franklin was the first secretary of the society, and Thomas Hopkinson the first president. In 1769 it merged with the American Society for Promoting Useful Knowledge. The combined organization elected Franklin its first president, an office he held until his death. David Rittenhouse and Thomas Jefferson were his immediate successors. The society, which has a notable library located in Philadelphia, confers membership upon people of distinction in all fields of intellectual and scientific study.
"American Philosophical Society." The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.. . Encyclopedia.com. 18 Apr. 2019 <https://www.encyclopedia.com>.
Purpose: To provide financial support in clinical investigation for research in the several branches of clinical medicine, including internal medicine, neurology, pediatrics, psychiatry and surgery. Focus: Clinical sciences; Neurology; Pediatric medicine; Surgery; and Psychiatry. Qualif.: Candidates must be both U.S. citizen and foreign national; have an MD or MD/PhD degree for fewer than eight years; do not have more than two years of post-doctoral training and research; expecting to perform the research at an institution in the United States. Criteria: Fellowship recipients will be selected on the basis of merits.
Funds Avail.: $50,000 for first year and $50,000 for second year. To Apply: Applicants must submit a completed application form and letter of support form. Maintain the application format, do not include additional page. Three references are required. Deadline: September 1. Contact: Linda Musumeci, Research Administrator at [email protected] amphilsoc.org, 215-440-3429.
Purpose: To support the doctoral projects of minority students. Focus: General studies. Qualif.: Applicants must completed all course work and examinations preliminary to the dissertation; devote full-time for twelve months with no teaching obligations-to research on the dissertation. Criteria: Fellowship recipient will be selected on the basis of merits.
Funds Avail.: $25,000. To Apply: Applicants must submit a completed application form and letter of support form available at the website; must maintain the 3-page format and must not be in 11pt. font smaller. Applications must be submitted as email attachments to [email protected] amphilsoc.org. References are required, referees must follow the format (must not exceed one page) and must be sent electronically to [email protected] Deadline: April 1.
Remarks: The Fellowship is named in honor of a distinguished member of the APS. Recipient of the award is expected to spend a three months in Philadelphia. Contact: Linda Musumeci, Research Administrator, [email protected] amphilsoc.org or 215-440-3429.
Purpose: To support research in all areas of knowledge leading to publication. Focus: General studies. Qualif.: Applicants must have a doctorate or have published work of doctoral character and quality. Pre-doctoral graduate students are not eligible. Criteria: Recipients will be selected based on the jury's review of the application materials.
Funds Avail.: Maximum of $6,000. To Apply: Applicants must submit a completed application form and letter of support form available at the website; must maintain the 4-page format and must not be in 11pt. font smaller. Two references are required, referees must follow the format (must not exceed one page) and must be sent in a sealed envelope with the proposal or sent electronically to [email protected] Deadline: October and December.
Remarks: Recipients of the award may re-apply after two years. Contact: Linda Musumeci, Research Administrator at [email protected], 215-440-3429.
Purpose: To provide funds for projects related to the astro-biological field. Focus: Biological and clinical sciences. Qualif.: Applicant must be a post-doctoral student and a U.S. resident performing research anywhere in the world. Foreign applicants must be based at a U.S. institution or planning to carry out research in the United States. Criteria: Grant recipient will be selected on the basis of merits.
Funds Avail.: $5,000. To Apply: Applicants must submit a completed application form and letter of support form available at the website; must maintain the 3-page format and must have a font size greater than 11pt. Applicant must also submit two references. Referees must also follow the format (must not exceed one page) and send their letters of support to [email protected] Applications must be submitted as email attachments to [email protected] amphilsoc.org. Deadline: February 15. Contact: Linda Musumeci, Research Administrator, [email protected] amphilsoc.org or 215-440-3429.
"American Philosophical Society." Scholarships, Fellowships and Loans. . Encyclopedia.com. 18 Apr. 2019 <https://www.encyclopedia.com>.
When John Adams wrote that Philadelphia was "the pineal gland of the republic," he may well have had the American Philosophical Society in mind. The APS, the nation's first learned society, began as a self-consciously colonial enterprise in 1743. It evolved into a place where scientific acumen met political power and where Enlightenment ideals of rational thought exerted influence over the body politic.
A suggestion from the botanist John Bartram that the colonies needed a place for men of curiosity to meet and exchange ideas triggered Benjamin Franklin to form the APS. In his prospectus for the Society, Franklin declared that the colonies had at last reached a level of maturity sufficient to support a leisured, thinking class. As a would-be savant still early in his own maturation, he announced an ambitious Enlightened mission of "promoting useful knowledge." Aspiring artisans, mechanics, and merchants, rather than gentlemen, supplied most of the "virtuosi or ingenious men" who comprised the Society in the colonial era, but its few ardent members soon discovered that too many of their peers were in fact too leisured to bother with serious learning. Within a few years, as Franklin later recalled, the Society went dormant.
The concept of a learned society, however, continued to appeal to Philadelphians interested in social advance or personal prestige, and even after Franklin left for a diplomatic assignment in Britain, others took up the project. By the mid-1760s there were two organizations in the city, aligned loosely with the major political factions, both claiming to be successors to Franklin's initiative. Energized by protonationalist sentiments, the emphatically named American Society appointed the absent Franklin to its presidency (without his knowledge) in 1768, while the more conservative, revived American Philosophical Society boasted members who had actually belonged to its namesake. After a brief but intense contest, the two set aside their differences and merged in January 1769, joined shortly by the Medical Society. In Europe, Franklin abetted the fledgling organization, using his rising reputation in learned circles to forge intellectual ties to the metropole and beyond. The reputation of the Society was further enhanced with the appearance in 1771 of its Transactions, the first scholarly journal printed in North America.
During the Revolution the Society shed most of its Loyalist and pacifist members. The APS reemerged in 1780 and dramatically recast itself in a republican mold. Over a two-year span, a pantheon of Revolutionary heroes were inducted into membership, including George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Paine, and Friedrich von Steuben (a general and advisor to Washington), some of whom barely fit the bill as savants. In France, Franklin did his part to reinvigorate the Society, electing a host of major and minor savants (and one woman, Princess Ekaterina Dashkova [1743–1810] of Russia). When he finally returned to Philadelphia in 1785, he completed the bonding of the Society to the republican state by arranging for the new permanent home of the APS to be built on the State House Yard, adjacent to the nation's capitol and Supreme Court. At the crossroads of early national political power, aligned with republican principles and sharing membership liberally with the new government, the APS acted effectively as a national library, academy of sciences, and patent office.
Science came to be fully in service to the state under Thomas Jefferson, who was simultaneously third president of the APS (1797–1814) and the United States. During his tenure, APS members vigorously advocated the improvement of domestic manufactures, publicized and passed judgments on technological innovations, and debated political economy, and the Society offered "premiums" (prizes) to stimulate improvements in navigation, streetlights, stoves, public education, and the preservation of peach trees from rot. The Society also served as a center for discussion of national exploration and expansion. In 1793 Jefferson drew upon the APS to organize a transcontinental scientific expedition under the botanist André Michaux, and ten years later he dusted off these plans as a framework for Lewis and Clark, preserving the records of that expedition in Philosophical Hall. Finally, between 1794 and 1811 the Society was indelibly associated with its tenant, the Philadelphia Museum, the most popular venue in the early Republic. The museum, under the leadership of the portrait artist Charles Willson Peale, presented a unique blend of science, entertainment, and American self-image to a receptive public.
After the federal government relocated to Washington in 1800 and gradually assumed a more active role in promoting industry and internal improvements, the APS lost much of its advisory role. The Society remains an active scholarly organization, however, and still pursues its mission of promoting useful knowledge.
See alsoAcademic and Professional Societies .
Bell, Whitfield J. Patriot-Improvers: Biographical Sketches of Members of the American Philosophical Society. 2 vols. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1997–1999.
"American Philosophical Society." Encyclopedia of the New American Nation. . Encyclopedia.com. 18 Apr. 2019 <https://www.encyclopedia.com>.
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Law is a system of rules that are created and enforced through social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior. Law as a system helps regulate and ensure that a community show respect, and equality amongst themselves.
What is agriculture? Agriculture is both the theoretical study and practical application of farming, such as the cultivation of cereals.
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Why do so many liberals/MSM lie about Trump saying "all Mexcian immigrants are rapists?"
If you can comprehend my simple argument you would already understand that I freely admit that Trump says BS/offensive things regularly.
Which is why I am stunned that so many liberals feel the need to lie to attack Trump. Why the persistence with the lie on this? Why should anyone accept the lie?
They do it because without the lie, the narrative that he's "racist" falls apart.
If you unpack the entire lie, its easy to refute.
First of all Mexican is not a race.
And illegal, is not a race either. Its just a criminal status.
So you agree that he never said all Mexicans are rapists? Or are you defending lies? Or just bad at comprehension?
If you want to find offense in those words that is fine and legitimate, but anyone with an ability to comprehend words coupled with honesty would admit that it is not true to say he called all Mexicans rapists.
Trump is a criminalist .
You could have shortened that to just "Why do so many liberals/MSM lie". They certainly don't limit their lying to Trumps comments about illegals.
Actual quote: "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."
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You are given a stream of conversation in a mysterious language from planet Mars. Approximate the set of word vocabulary in this language.
You are given a reference to an instance of a class called "WordStream" that has a method called "string GetNextMartianWord()", where Martian is a mysterious language from planet Mars. This method gives you a random word from the Martian language, picked with equal probability, and with replacement (i.e. it could pick the same word more than once). Given N is the maximum number of times that you can sample Martian language by calling this method, and the guarantee that N is at least an order of magnitude larger than the number of possible Martian words, write a pseudo-code algorithm to approximate the number of words Martians have in their language.
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How to let tag cloud show the same size font and in list style?
It is very easy to tag cloud show the same size font and in list style, there are 2 ways to do this: 1. Change sidebar.php in templates: <li> <h2>Tag Cloud</h2> <?php wp_tag_cloud(‘smallest=8&largest=8&number=45&orderby=name&format=list’); ?> <!– wp_tag_cloud(‘smallest=8&largest=8&number=45&orderby=name&format=list’)–> </li> another way is… Read moreHow to let tag cloud show the same size font and in list style?
How to let the post show from lowest to highest?
If you want your posts show from lowest to highest, it is very simple, just add: <!–p query_posts($query_string.’&order=ASC’);–> for example, the following code will let all your post show from lowest to highest: <!–p query_posts($query_string.’&order=ASC’);–> <!–p if (have_posts()) : while… Read moreHow to let the post show from lowest to highest?
List 50 posts of wordpress.
If you want to list 50 posts, use the following code: <ul>  <?php  global $post;  $myposts = get_posts(‘numberposts=-1’);  foreach($myposts as $post) :  ?>    <li><a href=”<?php the_permalink(); ?>”><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>  <?php endforeach; ?>  </ul> if you want to list all… Read moreList 50 posts of wordpress.
<?php echo realpath(‘./’)?> very simple, right?
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In How to find cheap flights – Part 1, I discussed how to save money on your international flights.
If you’re travelling within a region like Europe, the United States, or Southeast Asia, you should consider discount airlines as an alternative to the main airlines, or to long train or bus rides. Discount airlines (also called Low Cost Carriers or LCCs) are no-frill airlines that offer very cheap fares for “basic” service, but try to make up some of the money by charging you for every little extra: baggage check, seat selection, blanket and pillow, food, drinks, insurance, even credit card processing fee. Resist the temptation to buy too many “extras”, and these flights can save you tons of money. To get the lowest fares, book several months in advance. Fares also rise during holidays.
Not all aggregator sites include discount airlines in their search results, so you may have to use the airlines’ individual websites. One aggregator that includes several of them is Skyscanner.
In Europe, the largest and most-established discount airlines are Ryanair, EasyJet, Germanwings, and Air Berlin, but there are many others. You will sometimes see fares that appear impossibly cheap (such as 15£ or the like) but keep in mind that these are the fares without the tax, which can be as much as the regular flight price.
Norwegian, with a hub in Oslo, offers cheap flights within Scandinavia and to other European countries, as well as well-priced flights from main US cities to Europe.
Vueling, with a hub in Barcelona, is useful when flying from Spain to somewhere else in Europe. I used them to go from Málaga to Athens, but experienced a two-hour delay in Barcelona due to the late arrival of the incoming plane. I am not sure if this was typical or just a fluke. Give yourself plenty of time to connect!
Here is a very good article on the topic of budget airlines in Europe: Budget flying within Europe.
In Southeast Asia, the discount carrier of choice is Air Asia. Their main hub is in Kuala Lumpur (with a secondary hub in Bangkok) but they have a lot of routes reaching into China and even Australia. They’re the best deal out there, with good service and few delays. Try to book at least two weeks in advance, preferably three or four. They are very convenient if you want to see several countries and want to avoid crossing land borders.
I remember paying around $50 US for an Air Asia flight between Bangkok and Yangon (Burma). This included a meal and the credit card processing fee, but not the checked luggage fee, which tends to be hefty. Here is one more reason—if you need one—to travel with carry-on only!
Other pan-pacific discount airlines are Jetstar and Tiger Airways. For domestic flights within individual countries, consider Nok Air (Thailand), Cebu Pacific Air (Philippines), Lion Air (Indonesia), and Firefly (Malaysia).
If you’re travelling to Australia, you may want to try finding a good deal to Southeast Asia, and from there a cheap flight to Australia on Air Asia or another low-cost carrier. It is worth comparing the prices from this method to just searching for a straight fare from your original city to Australia.
There are no true discount airlines operating all over Latin America. Mexico, Brazil and Colombia are the only three countries that have discount airlines operating domestically. For Mexico they are: Volaris (also flying to the US), Interjet, and VivaAerobus. Brazil has Gol (also flying to Buenos Aires and Montevideo) and Azul. Finally, Colombia runs VivaColombia.
Although not a LCC per se, Sky Airline is a Chilean airline that operates domestic flights in Chile (cheaper than LAN) as well as to main cities in Colombia and Peru, in addition to La Paz (Bolivia), Sao Paulo (Brazil) and Buenos Aires (Argentina).
If you are planning to fly between several countries in South America, you may want to investigate air passes instead. Those are available from One World alliance, LAN, TAM, and if you’re mostly interested in the southern countries (Argentina, Chile, Uruguay): Aerolinas Argentinas. These passes come with various conditions attached but normally require that your international ticket to South America be with them or one of their partners.
Canada also has discount airlines such as WestJet and Sunwings. Porter, although it does not market itself as a LLC, often has sales of 40-60% off (the price of the flight, not the tax portion), with the best deals reserved for people on their mailing list. Air Canada, the Canadian flagship airline, recently got in the game by introducing Rouge, its budget airline subsidiary. I flew it to Cancun earlier this year. Nothing special to report, except that you have to pay extra for every checked bag.
Please note that the list of discount airlines mentioned in this post is by no mean exhaustive. In addition, discount airlines are in a state of flux. New ones appear; old ones disappear. Make sure you subscribe to the mailing list of all the discount airlines you’re interested in, to receive their promotions and special offers. And remember to pack light and bring some snacks!
You’re very right! Those who are looking to save money fromtheir flights should ensure to subscribe to the mailing list of the airlines ans also travel agencies discount promotions to receive updates and special offers. That’s what I also do.
Everybody knows that you need to be flexible when you’re looking for cheap flights. But when it comes to last minute flights, there’s more to being flexible than choosing anti-social flight times. It also means being flexible about your destination, and the airport you’re flying from. You could find yourself in a gorgeous city that you’ve never heard about before. Alternatively you can check http://www.flight-hotel.com for updated cheap deals.
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This quiz has been finished: 17 times.
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2 Answers, 1 correct | Question has been answered 31 times, 25 times the answer was correct (80.65%) | on average users needed 6.88 seconds to give the correct answer.
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Software unlock for iPhone 3G coming soon?
An unlocked iPhone 3G is a little closer to becoming reality, according to the iPhone Dev Team.
An easy way of unlocking your iPhone 3G could hit the Internet relatively soon.
Gizmodo picked up on a video produced by the iPhone Dev Team demonstrating that it has gained access to the baseband processor used by Apple in the iPhone 3G. The baseband chip is what controls the connection between the phone and the mobile phone network, meaning that a software download that could let you use your iPhone 3G on a carrier network other than the ones officially designated by Apple could be released soon.
I'm sure you remember the fuss about the original iPhone and those who sought to unlock it from the four carriers that were Apple's launch partners for the first iPhone. The iPhone 3G has proven a tougher nut to crack, because Apple apparently changed the baseband to make it more difficult to exploit than the baseband used on the original iPhone. You can unlock your iPhone 3G to use it on another carrier by modifying the SIM card, but what the iPhone Dev Team is trying to accomplish is a software-based unlock that you would just download and install.
There hasn't been as much demand for unlocked iPhone 3Gs, given the much greater distribution of that phone around the world. However, there are still some countries like China that don't carry the iPhone, and there are still some users who want to use their iPhones on a different carrier than the one designated for the iPhone in their country.
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Robert De Niro (; born August 17, 1943) is an American actor and film producer, who has starred in over 90 films. His first major film roles were in Bang the Drum Slowly (1973) and Mean Streets (1973). In 1974, after being turned down for the role of Sonny Corleone in The Godfather (1972), he was cast as the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II, a role for which he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
De Niro's longtime collaboration with director Martin Scorsese began with Mean Streets, and later earned him an Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Jake LaMotta in the 1980 film Raging Bull. He earned nominations for Taxi Driver in 1976 and Cape Fear in 1991. De Niro received additional Academy Award nominations for Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter (1978), Penny Marshall's Awakenings (1990), and David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook (2012). His portrayal of gangster Jimmy Conway in Scorsese's Goodfellas earned him a BAFTA nomination in 1990.
De Niro has earned four nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, for his work in New York, New York (1977), Midnight Run (1988), Analyze This (1999), and Meet the Parents (2000). He has also simultaneously directed and starred in films such as 1993's A Bronx Tale and 2006's The Good Shepherd. De Niro has received many accolades for his career, including the AFI Life Achievement Award (2003) and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award (2010).
De Niro was born in the Greenwich Village area of Manhattan, New York, the son of Virginia Admiral, a painter and poet, and Robert De Niro, Sr., an abstract expressionist painter and sculptor. His father was of half Italian and half Irish descent, while his mother was of Dutch, English, French, German, and Irish ancestry. His Italian great-grandparents, Giovanni De Niro and Angelina Mercurio, emigrated from Ferrazzano, Molise; his paternal grandmother, Helen O'Reilly, was the granddaughter of Irish immigrants.
De Niro's parents, who had met at the painting classes of Hans Hofmann in Provincetown, Massachusetts, divorced when he was three years old. He was raised by his mother in the Greenwich Village and Little Italy areas of Manhattan. His father lived within walking distance and De Niro spent much time with him as he grew up. De Niro attended PS 41, a public elementary school in Manhattan, through the sixth grade. He then went to Elisabeth Irwin High School, the private upper school of the Little Red School House, for the seventh and eighth grades. He was accepted into the High School of Music and Art for the ninth grade, but only attended for a short time before transferring to a public junior high school.
De Niro had a pivotal role in the Francis Ford Coppola film The Godfather Part II (1974), playing the young Vito Corleone. Coppola had remembered his previous auditions for the roles of Sonny Corleone, Michael Corleone, Carlo Rizzi, and Paulie Gatto in The Godfather. His performance earned him his first Academy Award, for Best Supporting Actor, although Coppola accepted the award as De Niro was not present at the ceremony. De Niro became the first actor to win an Academy Award speaking mainly a foreign language; in this case, multiple Sicilian dialects, although he delivered a few lines in English. He and Marlon Brando, who played the older Vito Corleone in the first film, are the only actors to have won Oscars for portraying the same fictional character. The two came together onscreen for the only time in The Score (2001).
After working with Scorsese in Mean Streets, De Niro went on to have a successful working relationship with him in films such as Taxi Driver (1976), New York, New York (1977), Raging Bull (1980), The King of Comedy (1983), Goodfellas (1990), Cape Fear (1991), and Casino (1995). They also acted together in Guilty by Suspicion (1991) and provided their voices for the animated feature Shark Tale (2004). Taxi Driver was particularly important to De Niro's career; his iconic performance as Travis Bickle catapulted him to stardom and forever linked his name with Bickle's famous "You talkin' to me?" monologue, which De Niro largely improvised. The role of Bickle earned him his first Academy Award Nomination for Best Actor. His portrayal of Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull was lauded, as well as his interpretation of Max Cady in Cape Fear.
De Niro would reference In Line of Fire, along with Dirty Harry (1971) and Magnum Force (1973), two more of Eastwood's films, in Righteous Kill (2008). He also appeared in the crime drama Cop Land (1997). He starred in the police action-thriller Heat (1995), along with fellow actor and long-time friend, Al Pacino. The duo drew much attention from fans, as both have generally been compared throughout their careers. Though Pacino and De Niro both starred in The Godfather Part II (1974), they shared no screen time. They once again appeared together in Righteous Kill (2008).
De Niro played Master Chief Billy Sunday in the biographical film Men of Honor (2000), based on the life of Carl Brashear, the first African American to become a U.S. Navy Master Diver. He also hosted 9/11 (2002), a documentary about the 9/11 attacks, shown on CBS and focusing on video footage made by Jules and Gedeon Naudet that showed the role of firefighters following the attacks. He reprised his role as Jack Byrnes in Meet the Fockers (2004) and was featured in Stardust (2007). All of the films were successful at the box office, but received mixed reviews. When promoting Shark Tale, De Niro said that his first experience with voice acting was enjoyable.
De Niro had to turn down a role in The Departed (2006) due to commitments with preparing The Good Shepherd (2006). He said: "I wanted to. I wish I could've been able to, but I was preparing The Good Shepherd so much that I couldn't take the time to. I was trying to figure a way to do it while I was preparing. It just didn't seem possible." In June 2006, it was announced that De Niro had donated his film archive (including scripts, costumes, and props) to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. On April 27, 2009, it was announced that the De Niro collection at the Ransom Center was open to researchers and the public. De Niro directed and starred in The Good Shepherd (2006). The film reunited him onscreen with Joe Pesci, with whom he had starred in Raging Bull, Goodfellas, A Bronx Tale, Once Upon a Time in America, and Casino. The same year, De Niro appeared as himself in an episode of the BBC series Extras, as Ricky Gervais' character claimed it was his ambition to meet De Niro.
De Niro announced that he would appear in the film version of the BBC crime series Edge of Darkness in 2010; however, just after he arrived to begin shooting, De Niro left the film due to creative differences. He was replaced by Ray Winstone. He appeared as Senator John McLaughlin in the action film Machete (2010), and starred in the thriller Stone (2010). He again reprised his role as Jack Byrnes in Little Fockers (2010). He appeared in the action film Killer Elite (2011), Limitless (2011) and the romantic comedy film New Year's Eve (2011).
De Niro has said that he is working with Martin Scorsese on a new project: "I'm trying to actually work... [screenwriter] Eric Roth and myself and Marty are working on a script now, trying to get it done."
De Niro's capital ventures have included co-founding the film studio TriBeCa Productions, the Tribeca Film Festival, the Nobu and TriBeCa Grill (which he co-owns with Broadway producer Stewart F. Lane), The Greenwich Hotel (located in Tribeca), and the restaurant inside the hotel, Locanda Verde (run by executive chef and co-owner Andrew Carmellini). According to the July 2010 issue of Gourmet magazine, De Niro is in negotiations with an internationally renowned chef, Natalia Jibladze, to launch an as-yet-unnamed restaurant in Manhattan under his Tribeca trademark. When in Malaysia in 2010, he dined with the Malaysian Prime Minister's wife and was asked to open a Malay restaurant in Alor Setar, Kedah.
Praised for his commitment to roles, stemming from his background in method acting, De Niro gained 60lb (27kg) and learned how to box for his role as Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull, ground his teeth for Cape Fear, lived in Sicily for The Godfather Part II, worked as a cab driver for a few weeks for Taxi Driver, and learned to play the saxophone for New York, New York. He again put on weight for his performance as Al Capone in The Untouchables (1987).
De Niro married his first wife, Diahnne Abbott, in 1976 and they have a son, Raphael, a former actor who works in New York real estate. De Niro also adopted Abbott's daughter from a previous relationship. They divorced 12 years later, in 1988. De Niro has twin sons conceived by in vitro fertilization and delivered by a surrogate mother in 1995, from a long relationship with former model Toukie Smith.
In 1997, De Niro married his second wife, actress Grace Hightower, at their Marbletown home. Their son was born in 1998 and the couple split in 1999. The divorce was never finalized and in 2004 they renewed their vows. In December 2011 a daughter was born via surrogate. In addition to his six children, De Niro has four grandchildren, one from his daughter Drena, three from his son Raphael.
A local newspaper's report on the continued dispute was picked up by The New York Times and made international news. "When he read about it ... on Election Day, he went bananas," due to the negative publicity, said Gardiner town councilman Wiegand. He had apparently been unaware that the trust had filed the lawsuit; its accountants took the blame, citing their fiduciary duty. A short time, his lawyer met with town officials, at De Niro's direction, and made them an offer they did not refuse—withdrawal of the suit and $129,000 in reimbursement for the town's legal bills, paid by the accounting firm. "[He] made it very clear that De Niro didn't want to screw the town, that he didn't know about any of it and that he wanted it settled as quickly as possible," Wiegand said.
While promoting the film Hillary Clinton and Obama."
^ "BBC One - The Graham Norton Show, Series 14, Episode 3". Bbc.co.uk. 2013-10-29. Retrieved 2014-08-15.
^ "BAFTA Film Awards: 1990". Bafta.org. 2014-02-11. Retrieved 2014-08-15.
^ "Robert De Niro Biography (1943–)". filmreference.com. Retrieved August 20, 2007.
^ "Robert De Niro Biography". contactmusic.com. Retrieved December 7, 2010.
^ Dougan, Andy (2003). Untouchable: a biography of Robert De Niro. Da Capo Press. p. 145.
^ "Biography for Robert De Niro". imdb. Retrieved August 29, 2013.
^ Baxter, John (2002). De Niro: A Biography. HarperCollins. pp. 37–38.
^ "'There was a sense of exhilaration about what we had done'". The Guardian (UK). October 16, 2004.
^ "15th Moscow International Film Festival (1987)". MIFF. Retrieved 2013-02-18.
^ "20th Moscow International Film Festival (1997)". MIFF. Retrieved 2013-03-22.
^ Hayes, Dade (May 17, 2007). "'"De Niro, Pacino reunite for 'Kill. Variety. Retrieved August 20, 2008.
^ a b Graham, Jamie (March 2007). "The Total Film Interview". Total Film (125): 105.
^ Michael Fleming (September 4, 2008). "'"De Niro exits 'Edge of Darkness. Variety. Retrieved September 4, 2008.
^ Michael Fleming (September 12, 2008). "'"Winstone replaces De Niro in 'Edge. Variety. Retrieved September 12, 2008.
^ Jessica Satherley (October 7, 2010). "Monica Bellucci shows off her hourglass figure as she films with Robert De Niro in Rome". Daily Mail (UK).
^ Jessica Satherley (October 7, 2010). "Monica Bellucci shows off her hourglass figure as she films with Robert De Niro in Rome". Daily Mail (UK). Retrieved January 9, 2011.
^ "CBS Orders Robert De Niro Crime Pilot". TVGuide.com. Retrieved January 21, 2011.
^ "ROBERT DE NIRO, PRESIDENT OF THE JURY OF THE 64th FESTIVAL DE CANNES - Festival de Cannes 2014 (International Film Festival)". Festival-cannes.com. Retrieved 2014-08-15.
^ "Locanda Verde - new York - Zagat.com". Zagat.com. May 12, 2009.
^ De Niro teams up with his favorite chef for a new gem in Manhattan. Gourmet Magazine. Retrieved on August 15, 2010.
^ "New York Real Estate – Prudential Douglas Elliman". Elliman.com. Retrieved January 9, 2011.
^ a b ""Drug allegations hit De Niro custody battle"". Guardian. 2001-07-26. Retrieved 2014-08-15.
^ "Robert De Niro and wife welcome a child via surrogate". Daily Mail (London). December 24, 2011. Retrieved December 24, 2011.
^ "Robert de Niro four grandchildren". Contactmusic.com. 2012-10-18. Retrieved 2014-08-15.
^ "De Niro's daughter on him as a father and grandfather". Okmagazine.com. 2008-04-26. Retrieved 2014-08-15.
^ "8 Famous Men With Prostate Cancer". Inhealth.cnn.com. 2012-07-12. Retrieved 2014-08-15.
^ a b Horrigan, Jeremiah (October 28, 2014). "Gardiner in battle for Robert De Niro's dinero".
^ "Cinq ans de prison pour le photographe proxénète" [Five years in prison for pimp photographer]. Libération (in French). 7 January 1999. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
^ "De Niro chez le juge" [De Niro in court]. Libération (in French). 8 May 1999. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
^ "Robert De Niro will be President of the Jury of the 64th Festival de Cannes". cannes.com. April 23, 2009. Retrieved August 29, 2013.
^ Chaban, Matt A.V. (November 4, 2014). "De Niro, in Tax Fight, Wins Little Sympathy From His Neighbors".
^ "The Universal Logo For Human Rights | HUMAN RIGHTS HAVE A SYMBOL". Humanrightslogo.net. Retrieved 2014-08-15.
^ Hayward, John (March 20, 2012). "Liberal racism".
^ Kurlander, Steven (March 22, 2012). "Obama should apologize for De Niro racial joke".
^ Ward, Caroline (March 22, 2012). "Robert De Niro apologizes for 'white First Lady' comments".
^ Bendery, Jennifer (March 22, 2012). "Ann Romney: 'I Laughed' At Robert De Niro's 'White First Lady' Joke". The Huffington Post.
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In the world today, most of the activities are done online. For this reason, people nowadays prefer spending most of their time online. Some platforms have been developed making it possible for people to rely much on the internet. But, there are activities one can do while online and get paid not only to spend time and to have fun. why I say this is that doing some activities on the internet can be lucrative.Some of the activities that one venture online and make money are as follows.
The first one is to start a blog. A blog is a website that is meant to provide information to the reader. This is among the efficient way to generate income on the internet as a variety of readers rely on blogs for information. Therefore, you can start blogging and have a massive following as long as you have quality. With many readers to your blog, companies and organizations will look for your to have their products advertised on your blog and pay good money.
The other way to make money online is by completing surveys online.There are a variety of websites and companies that offer surveying jobs for users to complete and pay them. The surveys can be about a specific product or services offered and need reviews from users. Therefore, if you require some extra money, consider checking of websites that offer surveys for pay.
You can write and publish an eBook. An effective way for a talented writer to generate income is by publishing an eBook. A fee is charged to any person that needs the content of the eBook.
Uploading videos is the other way to make money online. There are multiple platforms for uploading videos such as YouTube. On these platforms you can upload any video whether musical, educational, inspirational and more.If you video gathers many views; the platform may consider using it to embed some adverts, and then they pay you for that based on certain agreed criteria.
You can earn online by selling products. Now that people are doing everything online, there have emerged platforms that act as a marketing place. Most of the social media platforms are the best examples. For This reason, you can start a business of selling certain products and be using these platforms to market your products.
Also, you can be reviewing applications and websites for pay. Developers of application and websites require some users to rate and identify their products for fixes. For this reason, they encourage the users for reviews by paying them some amount. Also, some platforms offer to review services on their behalf.
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Why no cider in Bavaria?
I just came back from a week in Bavaria, Germany and I was rather surprised to find there was no cider anywhere. I stayed in Rothenburg and Nurenberg and everywhere I went — supermarkets, restaurants, bars, etc — there was no cider. Plenty of beer, spirits and soft drinks, but not a single cider. Luckily, I'm not a huge cider-drinker but I was travelling with a coeliac so we were often looking for cider.
Is cider just not that common in Germany or were we simply looking in the wrong places?
It can be had but the new trend of heavily-marketed international ciders hasn't arrived to Germany. High-quality craft ciders from Britain, France or elsewhere would also be hard to find. Consequently, cider is a rather low-key old-fashioned drink and not very prominent. Instead of a well-known brand or the word “cider”, you should look for drinks called “Apfelwein“ or ”Most”.
I guess you have been looking in the wrong places, and possibly for the wrong words on the label. There is Apfelwein which is commonly translated as cider.
In most of Bavaria, beer is the prevalent local (alcoholic) drink (with the exception of some regions in Franconia, which are wine-centric). Cider is generally not a typical drink in Bavaria (there might be exceptions closeby to Frankfurt and/or Lake Constance).
So if you are looking for Cider in Bavaria, the best bet would be to go to an Irish/British/... pub, which will generally have Cider.
On the other hand, apple wine is popular in some regions in Germany. Most well known is probably Frankfurt, but it is also popular e.g. around Lake Constance. It is usually called Apfelwein or Apfelmost. (The term "Cider" would, again, only be used in Irish pubs and the like.) The German variety is typically sour.
The answer is always same: because local fashion and taste don't include it.
One could as well ask "Why no corndogs?". Such question doesn't make any sense, just as yours. You're not supposed to travel somewhere and ask why locals are not observing your customs. The whole point of travel is to experience customs different than yours. "No cider" is just a part of it (for now).
Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged germany food-and-drink bavaria or ask your own question.
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I got my license a couple of weeks ago and now my parents feel that it is my job to drive them around while they are working. I've come up with a general list of fun places to take kids over the summer for those of you who are in the same boat as I. Keep in mind that my siblings are eight and ten so this list is catered around that age group.
To get fun snacks: During the summer I love to cool off with a snow cone or some frozen yogurt. My siblings and I enjoy going to get these treats because they aren't something we have at home and we typically only get them in the summer. It's a fun, easy outing and they are fun to eat while sitting by the pool.
To the park: Being cooped up in the house causes my brother and sister to go a little crazy. They start to get bored and then they don't want to listen and they start to argue with each other. The park is perfect because it doesn't cost money and they can run off some of their energy.
The movies: On days when is super hot (or raining) we love to go to the movies. The movie theater is always cold and we get to relax while also being out of the house. Although this one is kind of expensive, it makes for a fun, enjoyable day.
Swimming: My family recently got a pool put in at our new house. We had one at our old house and didn't realize how much we had missed it until we put one in this year. We love to spend the day in the pool when it's not burning hot outside. Even if you don't have a pool at your house public pools can be a fun place to go. If neither one of those is an option the sprinkler is always fun for younger kids.
Making fun snacks: All three of us love to cook and bake so when we have run out of ideas on where to go (or run out of good food to eat) we love to get in the kitchen and make some yummy snacks. Our favorite things to make are slushies, popsicles, and smoothies to cool off. Our favorite baked goods are brownies and cookies.
Bowling: We have a bowling alley right down the street from our house and it's a great way to spend the day. We are all absolutely terrible at bowling but we all really enjoy it. The kids are also being active (compared to sitting in a movie or something like that) so they get rid of some energy.
At home movie day: My brother's favorite activity to do with me is have a movie day at home. I let him pick out a good movie and we turn off all the lights in the house and I pop popcorn. We have fun popcorn containers and occasionally I will make fun drinks and it feels like we are at the movie theater. It's nice because we can stay in our pajamas and snuggle up with our blankets and pillows on the couch and it doesn't cost money.
Lemonade Stand: Last week my sister went to my cousin's house and they set up a lemonade stand and sold lemonade and cupcakes and made a pretty good amount of money. They had a ton of fun while it also kept them occupied all day and they were proud of themselves for making money.
Craft Day: In my town there are a few art studios you can go to and paint fun things, or take an art class for the day, make mosaics, and make pottery. We always have an enjoyable day when we go to an art studio because it's an extra special treat and we are all really creative and end the day with something fun to bring home. You can also have an art day at home where you paint or buy one of those craft kits and put it together.
Go to a fun restaurant: This is another idea that may be on the pricier side depending on where you live. In our small town there are some restaurants that are fun to go to that don't break the bank. We have an Italian restaurant where kids can make their own pizza and watch it be cooked in a pizza oven. They bring out the dough, cheese, and sauce and whatever toppings they want and when they are ready they can go sit at a bar and watch the pizza cook.
Library: Everyone in our family is a big reader so a day at the library is fun for us. My brother and sister get to pick out a few books and a couple of times a week the library has activities going on that they enjoy going to.
Amusement parks: Large amusement parks can be pretty hectic but where I live there are a few small ones where you can play mini golf, ride go carts, and play in an arcade. It's a fun activity that doesn't cost a bunch of money and we can spend the whole day there.
I have wanted to swim for so long... Great little post!
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Boeing says its experience with the introduction of the 777-300 has been a case of "no news is good news". Mike Fleming, Boeing's 777 fleet support chief, says: "In terms of performance in service, it's been remarkably quiet, which is really an indication of its success. The airlines just wanted a 'carry more people' aircraft, and it appears that is what they have."
Although a relatively small fleet, particularly in Boeing terms, the 777-300's reliability figures stand out as the most successful of any new twin-aisle airliner on entry into service: scheduled reliability of a 12-month rolling average stands at 99.3%, while the three-month rolling average is 99.46%. "It is certainly the highest reliability of any widebody, but the key is sustained reliability. Anyone can have a 99% month now and then, but keeping it at that level or higher is the difference. If anything, it seems to be trending up slightly," says Fleming.
Since the first aircraft entered service with Cathay Pacific in May 1998, only once has any three-month rolling average dipped below 99%, to 98.7%. "We are satisfied with this rate, although we are not stopping," says Fleming. He adds that the company has a goal of keeping scheduled reliability of the 777-200/300 family as a whole at 99%. "We just have to keep working at it."
Among the potential in-service issues for which Boeing braced itself with the -300 was the ground manoeuvring capability of the aircraft - the longest airliner ever produced. Even here, Boeing says, there have been "no issues". The ground manoeuvre camera system, installed to help crews negotiate turns on taxiways and ramps, "is working and has not been a problem", says Fleming. Apparently, the only issues that have surfaced are those encountered by the 777 fleet as a whole, including recent troubles with the Hamilton Standard variable-speed constant-frequency generator system, fitted to all makes and models of the engines that power all 777s.
Turnaround times, another potential issue, have been "slightly longer in general", says Fleming, who believes this to be due largely to the shorter routes, and denser intra-Asian route network on which the 777-300 is predominantly used. Overall, average use of the -300 is 7.5-8h a day, versus 10-10.5h for the -200. "When you factor that in, no operator has reported having difficulty in turnaround times relative to the -200," Fleming says.
By the start of this year, Boeing had delivered 31 -300s to seven operators. Total fleet hours reached 68,737 by 31 December, and were expected to have passed 70,000h as this article was prepared. Another two -300s are to be delivered this year, including one to Korean Air and another to Emirates - the only non-Asia-based operator of the type.
Fleming attributes the -300's overall service reliability to the pathfinding "lessons learned" on the -200, and the philosophy of the simple stretch that underlined the larger model's development. "It really is a tribute to the baseline aircraft and the fact that it essentially entered service as a mature aircraft. We did not have to change much in the way of systems, and this is the result," he adds.
The aircraft also appears to be robust in terms of the effect of updates and in-service modifications such as the Honeywell-developed AIMS-99 (aircraft information management system) improved software load. This was introduced at the end of last year and, "so far, we have not had any reports of problems", he adds.
Although the Rolls-Royce Trent 800 was the last engine to be certificated on the baseline 777-200, the R-R powered -300 was the first version of the new model to enter service, with Cathay Pacific in May 1998.
The aircraft is offered with the 90,000-92,000lb-thrust (400-410kN) Trent 890/892, and the engine has been specified by four of the seven 777-300 operators, including Cathay, Emirates, Singapore Airlines, and Thai International. The engine is common to both the 777-200 and -300.
Eighteen Trent-powered 777-300s were in service by the end of January, with the fleet having accumulated 26,376 cycles, with dispatch reliability running at 99.897%. The latter figure represents six engine-related delays, says the manufacturer.
The company says the engine has recorded zero in-flight shutdowns on the 777-300. No unscheduled engine removals or aborted take-offs since the aircraft's introduction have been reported.
Having put the 92,000lb-thrust PW4090 into operation with 777-300s All Nippon Airways (ANA) and Japan Airlines (JAL) in 1998, Pratt & Whitney developed the more powerful 98,000lb-thrust PW4098 for the -300.
This powerplant, which is the most powerful engine yet put into service on the 777, suffered most of its problems well before its entry into service last August with Korean Air (KAL).
The 10 PW4090-powered 777-300s in service with JAL and ANA since mid-1998 have been reliable, says P&W, which reports an in-flight shutdown (IFSD) rate of zero for the fleet.
More PW4090s are in service with the -200s, and some problems have resulted in removals and shutdowns with their 113 engines.
Dispatch reliability for the PW4090 fleet as a whole, including the -300s, is 99.93%, while unscheduled engine removal rate is 0.26% and shop visit rate 0.030%. The IFSD rate stands at 0.007%, while total engine time was 592,000h by the start of February.
The engine maker encountered severe development issues with the high thrust PW4098 version, which subsequently slipped behind schedule by almost a year.
P&W PW4098 model manager John Danielson reports, however, that the limited fleet of three PW4098-powered 777-300s in service with KAL has proved to be dependable in service, with a dispatch reliability of 100%. Unscheduled engine removals and IFSD rates are therefore at zero.
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This essay is a critical evaluation of the current economic situation in the state of Michigan. This study will attempt to highlight recent failures by the government in their attempt to reduce the economic crisis currently facing the state. It will also outline alternative plans for the future of Lansing that take into account the public choice theory of economics in combination with specific policy prescriptions inspired by up and coming gubernatorial candidate Rick Snyder's outline for government reform. By juxtaposing some of these recent government shortcomings with models provided by public finance theory, one can begin to pinpoint the nature of the mistakes that have been made in the past, and formulate an efficient and effective plan for government reform for Michigan's future. A brief look at the cost-benefit analysis model will also give way to useful insights about how a state government should go about choosing between alternative projects and reforms in the most efficient and socially beneficial manner. What this analysis will reveal is the need for more transparency and accountability in the state's government institutions, particularly when discussing tax-reform. Finally, an overview of the methods used by Ann Arbor SPARK, a public-private partnership that facilitates local entrepreneurs and innovation-based economic development, will provide a more specific model of what Michigan state government should strive to look like in the future.
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Our goal is to connect people with the best local experts. We scored wedding djs on more than 25 variables across five categories, and analysed the results to give you a hand-picked list of the best wedding djs in Kansas City, MO.
Awesome DJz Entertainment is a high-quality and affordable provider of special event entertainment. Since 1995 they have served Kansas City, Missouri, and specialize in weddings, corporate events, birthday parties, school dances, military balls, and country club events. DJ Russell loves to see his clients and their guests having fun, and is qualified to handle nearly all requests. His music selection consists of over 50,000 songs from all genres, and he focuses on material that is appropriate for the age of guests, their musical tastes, and their nationality.
Benjamin T. Warner is a professional DJ and entertainment services provider located in Overland Park, Missouri. The company was the Thumbtack pick for Best of 2015 and Best of 2016, and The Knot's 2017 pick in the Best of Weddings category. Benjamin is a full-time DJ, and has partnered with violinist Michael Turnbo. The two are capable of phenomenal acoustic music performances that are sure to keep guests talking for weeks. They offer unlimited DJ spin time, violin, guitar, cello, drum, and vocal performances, high-quality sound systems, unlimited song choices, wireless microphones for use during toasts, dance lighting, LED lighting, and Master of Ceremonies services. Benjamin also makes himself available during the week for consultations and venue walk-throughs, and is happy to work to customize all services.
Brothers from Another Mother Entertainment, affectionately known as BFAME, is a professional event planning and entertainment provider based in Olathe, Missouri. They have decades of experience and guarantee to create events that stand out. They specialize in providing superior customer care and energetic performances, and tailor their services to weddings, corporate events, private parties, and school events. BFAME is comprised of a team of professionals who are committed to being an instrumental part in any special event, and work one-on-one with each customer to ensure they receive exactly what they want. Their wedding day packages include state-of-the-art sound systems, dance floor lighting, personalized play-lists and event time lines, wireless microphones for use by guests, set-up and tear-down services, and professional DJs and MCs. They also offer premium video production, live piano performances, performance painters, and live band options.
Capture the Moment KC is a mobile DJ and MC services provider based in Olathe, Missouri. They service an assortment of special occasions including weddings, parties, graduations, proms, school dances, anniversaries, and corporate events. They strive to create the perfect atmosphere and to guarantee that clients and their guests will have a great time. Their creative process places great emphasis on face-to-face consultations with clients, which allows for the development of personalized event plans and timelines. Services offered by Capture the Moment KC include experienced and professional DJs and MCs, high-quality sound systems, LED and laser lighting, fog machines, wireless microphones for use by guests, venue uplighting, dance floor lighting, monogram lighting, and photo booth services.
Elite Sounds is a modern event entertainment company based in Kansas City, Missouri that was first established in 2004. They have since become known as the area's most skilled and entertaining event vendor, and strive to create a remarkable experience for all clients. They offer their services to weddings, high school dances, corporate parties, and fundraisers. Elite Sounds was named the Best DJ Company in 2009, was the WeddingWire Couples' Choice Award winner 2010-2017, was The Knot's 2017 pick in the Best of Weddings category, and is a proud member of The Knot's Best of Weddings Hall of Fame. Elite Sounds specializes in innovative music for any type of event, and employ a group of highly experienced and trained music enthusiasts. Services offered by Elite Sounds include DJ and MC services, wireless microphones for use during toasts, state-of-the-art sound systems, dance floor lighting, uplighting, intelligent lighting, photo booths, and DJ booth coverings and facades.
J & C Entertainment is a mobile and wedding DJ service provider located in Raytown, Missouri. They have over 20 years of combined experience, and have proudly performed at countless weddings and special events. Their mission is to create events that run smoothly, and are capable of handling all coordination and hosting duties so their clients can enjoy the event without worrying about whether their guests are having a good time. Services offered by J & C Entertainment include professional DJ and MC services, lighting, photo booths, fog machines, and photo memory books. They offer a variety of packages depending on the client's needs, and give clients the ability to mix and match between packages to further personalize services.
KC Mobile DJ, LLC. is an award-winning, professional entertainment company focusing primarily on Kansas City Metro Area events. The take great pride in complete customer satisfaction and on giving back to the communities in which they serve. KC Mobile DJ, LLC was the 2017 WeddingWire Couples' Choice Award winner and The Knot's 2017 pick in the Best of Weddings category. As a full-service entertainment provider, they offer accommodating DJ services, mixer table and computer facades, high-end sound systems, wireless microphones for guests to use throughout the event, uplighting, dance floor lighting, monogram lighting, sound-activated lighting, text request lines, and photo booth and general photography services. In addition to entertainment services, KC Mobile DJ, LLC. also offers wedding and event planning services performed by professional coordinators.
Lawrence DJ Service offers one-of-a-kind wedding entertainment to residents of the Greater Kansas City area. DJ Jason Spencer has nearly a decade of experience, and is passionate about creating memorable events for his clients. Jason is known for being professional while at the same time fun and energetic. He specializes in weddings, but serves anniversary parties, college parties, and birthday parties as well. Lawrence DJ Service was the 2015 WeddingWire Couples' Choice Award winner, and previous customers have said Jason ensured their event ran smoothly, and that he was great to work with.
Moran Events is a professional DJ and lighting specialist currently serving all areas within 100 miles of Lee's Summit, Missouri. They cater their services to a variety of events including weddings, birthdays, holiday and corporate events, school dances, and social and community events. Services offered by Moran Events include venue uplighting, monogram projection, DJ and MC services, pin spots, video and slide projection, and pattern projection which is great for walls and dance floors.
Ron Ruth Wedding Entertainment, located in Blue Springs, Missouri, is owned and operated by its namesake, Ron Ruth. Ron is a certified Wedding Entertainment DirectorⓇ and a professionally trained entertainer and performer. His passion is to make people smile, laugh, and dance, and to create extraordinary celebrations. Ron Ruth Wedding Entertainment has been a WeddingWire award winner each consecutive year since 2010, and past customers have said he is professional, attentive, unique, flexible, and energetic. Ron has been involved in the wedding and DJ industry for more than 25 years, and prides himself on consistently providing high-end, comprehensive wedding entertainment services.
Sound Extreme Entertainment is Shawnee, Missouri's leading provider of special event DJ and entertainment services. They serve weddings, corporate events, birthday parties, and private parties, and in addition to entertainment, they offer pre-planning and event coordination services. Their primary goal is to create amazing, memorable events, and they were The Knot's 2012 pick in the Best of Weddings category. Services offered by Sound Extreme Entertainment include hours of professional music and MC services, face-to-face consultations, high-end sound systems, wireless microphones for use in toasts, reception coordination, enhanced venue lighting, and set-up and tear-down services. They also offer karaoke, big screen projectors, and music videos.
The Dance Factory is a professional DJ service provider located in Kansas City, Missouri. They are locally owned, affordable, and experienced, and offer award-winning services. They specialize in traditional and non-traditional celebrations, and include professional event planning at no additional cost. The team of DJs are highly knowledgeable and capable of mixing music in real-time. By using only professional-grade equipment, The Dance Factory can cater their services to nearly any type of event including wedding ceremonies and receptions, business and corporate events, military balls and command parties, theme parties, birthday parties, community festivals and big tent events, stadium and sporting events, car shows and motorcycle rallies, college and Greek life parties, and political and charitable events. The Dance Factory was The Knot's 2017 pick in the Best of Weddings category, and is a proud member of the School Dance Network for Certified Responsible DJs.
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What do these three things have in common: basketball, Oreo Blizzards, and the BK Whopper?
Answer: My grandmother Dorothy Shea.
She passed away a few years ago, but this week we will be celebrating her birthday as a way to remember her - and as a way for the kids to learn about her.
She played high school basketball in Logan, Utah... something I never learned about her until after her passing. I think I was aware that she liked watching baseball on t.v.
Recently, my girls have been getting into baseball. So, we've watched different movies on t.v. or Netflix, rather - to teach them the sport. So, I'm going to do the same thing with basketball.
We have two movies in the queue - ready to go to show them how basketball is cool. One is called The Pistol: The Birth of a Legend. I watched it a few months ago and remembered that this kid could spin the basketball on his finger for a very long time... they are looking forward to seeing that.
We also have queued - a girls basketball movie - to show them that girls can play the game, too. This one is called The Mighty Macs, this one is also a good family movie, G-rated - and I think my girls will like it.
Other than that, I've been telling the kids some other interesting things about Grandma. Like she was a very loving sister who took care of her younger Down Syndrome sister after her parents died. She could do that not only because she was loving, but because she went to school for nursing and knew how to help her.
Grandma was artsy-crafty as well, into ceramics and Brazilian embroidery. See the link for a bunch of great google images of this beautiful craft. I have one pillow from Grandma with this emboidery on it - it's beautiful.
Her favorite color was purple, she loved jewelry, and like me, she loved Oreo Blizzards... I'm not the biggest BK whopper fan though... if we eat out there, I'm ordering the chicken sandwich.
I haven't decided what to make for dinner on the night of her birthday - either homemade-style chicken sandwiches or burgers - I'm not sure which to make... but I have a few days to decide.
Grandma also played the cello, she could play the piano as well. Here are some other cool things about her that my mother told me: Mom was close with all of her sisters. She was the youngest of the group comprising Mabel, Rose, Lucille and Dorothy. Later she had another sister, Veda, with Down Syndrome. They grew up in Logan Utah and they all played musical instruments in the band and orchestra. They loved going roller skating when they were growing up and they used to sled down the hill by the Logan Temple. The city blocked off the street, no cars, it was used for sledding.
I do remember that we used to go to family reunions with Grandma's side of the family - that is the reason why I am very close to my 2nd cousins (the children of my mom's cousins).
She has good looking eye brows. I can see the resemblance to my mom.
Oh, this is funny, this is also something I learned about her after her passing, apparently, in high school, she skipped school several days to go to the theater to watch Gone with the Wind. No surprise she had to skip school to watch it - that movie is about 5 hours long. Anyway, she went again and again during school hours to try and memorize the film. I think the number was something like 23 times!
Movies must have been a lot cheaper to go to back then. But I get the whole memorizing your favorite film thing... I do that, too.
Always took her children to Church, never sent them with someone else.
Graduated from nurses training at St. Marks Hospital in SLC, Utah with a certificate of graduation from the University of Utah in nursing.
Worked at Valley Children’s Hospital in Fresno, CA,.
Also, I saw an email from my Mom that one of Mom's cousins became a nurse after hearing all the exciting and inspirational stories that Grandma shared. She loved nursing, there was a story about operating an iron lung, and so forth.
I still feel like I know so little about this woman. She was my grandmother, but in the capacity that I knew her, in the time I knew her, me as a child, her as an old woman... well, I just wish I could have known her better.
I'm thankful for the stories and little interesting bits of trivia that I have learned about her. And I hope to be able to pass these things onto my children, and future grandchildren so they can be as excited about family history as I am.
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In the same vein as our previous Riot Roundtable where we reviewed Kanye West’s video for Runaway, this time we are going to take a group perspective on the new Kid Cudi album.
Man On The Moon II: The Legend Of Mr. Rager is the latest release from the Cleveland rapper, featuring collaborations with artists like Mary J Blige, Kanye West, Cee-Lo Green and more.
Following Man on The Moon: The End Of Days, it has a hard task to follow, and we’re going to analyse whether we think it has achieved the success of it’s predecessor.
Since there has already been so many leaks for the album which we’ve already covered, we’re going to take a slightly different approach this time around. Instead of reviewing the album as a whole, JB, Pete and I will each highlight a track that stands out for us, and give a brief summary of how it fits in the finished piece.
Despite being one of the later songs in the album, All Along stood out for me instantly. I loved The End Of Days for Cudi’s brutal honesty and emotion, and the complex strings and symphonies that came as a package. All Along is the closest the new album gets to this (along with the lead single, Erase Me), and it’s nothing short of spectacular. The track tackles Cudi’s fears that he is destined to be alone, and in true Cudi style, it uses clever word play and abstract lyrics to convey an essentially simple point. There are a lot of layers to the sound and it incorporates more complex sounds than most rappers are capable of. This is Cudi at his pinnacle, and the reason I place him so far ahead of his competitors.
One of the darker songs on the album, and one of my favourite tracks in which Cudi allows us to delve into the less responsible side of his mind. The ambience of the song is incredibly surreal and almost drug-induced with the synthetic beats mixed together with high pitched guitar, resulting in a euphoric piece worthy of being played anywhere. There also is a clear sense of darkness in the song, a convention Cudi is all too often the instigator of – Cage, i feel, holds one of the strongest verses on the album and definitely the strongest out of all of the collaberating artists, he really impressed me having not heard any of his stuff prior.
As the sun kisses us on the foreheads gently. Gentle with the drugs, heavy with the love.
Cudder has teamed up with Cee-Lo to create this fantastic and upbeat song which i personally think has quite a sad background meaning. In the track Cudi talks about his success and the problems that are unfortunately package along with it, fame and wealth can taint the best of friendships and it can also bring the strongest willed people down with temptation. In recent interviews he has expressed that he has become bored of rapping, this may or may not be due to these problems but it does seem that rapping is causing a rift in his mind. Cee-lo’s unique voice in the chorus mixed with Cudi’s amazing lyrics creates an awesome track, i just hope it was titled with Scott Pilgrim Vs The World in mind.
Some of the producers and feature artists have talked a little about the background story of the album, check it out here.
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James Comey testifies before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday.
With Kasowitz over and out, we're going to wrap up the live blog for today. Thanks for following along.
Kasowitz doesn't take questions, and leaves.
Kasowitz is now speaking at the National Press Club in Washington -- notably, not at the White House.
The president never suggested Comey "let Flynn go."
Trump never told Comey: "I need loyalty, I expect loyalty."
Comey has admitted he is a leaker.
It's now established Trump wasn't being investigated.
Sigh. Typo in first sentence: I am Marc Kasowitz, *Predisent* Trump’s personal lawyer.
Trump's team is apparently furious at Comey's admission that he arranged the leak of the contents of his memo to press for the appointment of an independent counsel.
"We will leave it to the appropriate authorities to determine whether this leaks [sic] should be investigated along with all those others being investigated."
We're finally getting word of the statement from Trump's lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, but still waiting on his appearance.
When he speaks he'll say Trump never told Comey "I need loyalty."
With the hearing wrapped up, Trump is now speaking to the Faith & Freedom conference.
The hearing has wrapped up and members are now going into closed session.
But we're waiting to hear from Kasowitz, Trump's attorney.
And the market's reaction? The Dow hit an intraday record in afternoon trade as Comey testified.
Sen. John McCain asked about Comey's recollection of one thing Trump said to him. Comey says he didn't ask what "that thing" was but took it to mean a mutually beneficial relationship.
Another question about the existence of tapes. Comey says it occurred to him in the middle of the night that, "Holy cow, there might be tapes."
And: "If there are tapes, it's not just my word against his."
Back at the White House, spokeswoman Sanders is getting a bit sarcastic in answering reporters' questions about the subject.
Asked if she would look into whether there is a secret Oval Office taping system @SHSanders45: "Sure, I'll try to look under the couches."
?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!!?!?!?!? Q: Is there a White House taping system? @SHSanders45 "I have no idea"
Comey again says he takes the president at his word about his firing, and that the Russia investigation was "irritating" Trump.
Trump is set to speak soon at a religious-themed event. Meanwhile, deputy White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders is fielding questions from reporters and mostly passing them off to Kasowitz's statement later today.
Sarah Sanders at briefing: "No I can say definitively the president is not a liar."
Sen. Tom Cotton tries to get to heart of Russia question by asking Comey if he believes Trump colluded with Russia.
But Comey won't go there. It's a question "I don't think I should answer in an open setting."
Former Attorney General Lynch is featuring pretty prominently in this hearing -- and not in a good light. Comey says she asked him not to call the Hillary Clinton email probe an investigation -- just "a matter."
This is a recipe for conservatives' outrage.
Yet Comey won't say if he believes he would have been fired if Clinton won the election. "I don't know. I might have been."
Looks like we'll be hearing from Team Trump today.
Comey's keeping up a sense of humor at the hearing, a feat considering the scrutiny he is under and the live broadcasts of the proceedings.
He says he broke a date with his wife to have dinner with Trump.
"In retrospect, I wish I had been with her that night," he says.
Comey says he didn't leak to reporters directly, since he worried "it would be like feeding seagulls at the beach."
Richman's bio says he is an adviser to Comey.
Wow. Comey says he asked a "good friend" of his at Columbia Law School to share the contents of his Trump memos with a reporter.
Comey’s “good friend at Columbia Law School” is most likely Daniel C. Richman.
James Comey testifies Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
More from the younger Trump, as the president has resisted Twitter.
Just for the record, the hearing's been going on for about an hour and 15 minutes. Trump has not tweeted.
The president has a speech to give in a little more than an hour, so the window is closing.
Conservatives are jumping on Comey's statement to Sen. Marco Rubio that he didn't know why he didn't tell White House counsel about Trump's Flynn request.
He said, "I was a bit stunned" and didn't have the presence of mind.
Remember Trump's tweet about Comey and tapes of their conversations?
Comey says: "Lordy, I hope there are tapes."
One of the president's sons weighs in.
Comey answered Sen. James Risch by saying "that's correct" to a question about whether Trump was under investigation while he served as FBI chief.
To Sen. Dianne Feinstein, he said "I take the president at his word I was fired because of the Russia investigation."
Comey said kept written record of meetings w/ Trump because knew he may need to defend himself/FBI. Only time he had to do that w/ a POTUS.
Here's more on the tarmac meeting that Comey and Burr were talking about. It took place in Arizona last June.
Comey says it was former President Bill Clinton's meeting on an airport tarmac last year with Loretta Lynch that sparked his decision to speak about Hillary Clinton's emails.
For the first time in this hearing, Comey says he doesn't think he can answer a question since it's an open session.
Burr asked about the FBI confirming any criminal allegations in a report based on memos from Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent.
Read more about the dossier Burr is referring to.
That may have been first acknowledgment that Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser, was under criminal investigation.
Comey is sworn in and now under oath. He's not going to repeat his written testimony, he says.
He says the shifting explanations for his firing confused him and concerned him.
And he's highly annoyed with Trump, saying the administration chose to defame him and the FBI.
"Those were lies," Comey says.
Warner, the panel's top Democrat, is saying "this is about Russia" and the hearing's being held today because "a foreign adversary attacked us."
He calls Comey's testimony "disturbing," referencing the loyalty pledge Comey says Trump asked him for.
Comey's expression doesn't change a bit as Warner reminds everyone watching Trump called him a "nutjob."
While most of Washington is focused on Comey, the House today is debating a bill that would roll back the Dodd-Frank bank reform law. It's expected to pass, though the bill's prospects in the Senate seem remote.
Burr has of course read Comey's opening statement. But he's saying Americans "need to hear the president's description of events."
Trump’s personal lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, has said Trump feels “completely and totally vindicated” by Comey’s prepared testimony.
Here we go. Sen. Burr is kicking things off and reminding members there's a closed session scheduled for this afternoon.
That's set for 1 p.m. But let's see if they stick to that.
Comey's testimony could turn out to be a boon for local bars, as the just-posted tweet shows. One DC bar is even offering free drinks if Trump tweets during the hearing.
Here's an audience seat reserved for one high-profile figure, Preet Bharara, whom Trump fired in March. The former U.S. district attorney for the southern district of New York is reportedly a guest of Sen. Chuck Schumer, the New Yorker who leads Senate Democrats.
Trump and congressional Republicans want to get moving on their agenda, but the various Russia probes and the Comey drama are not helping.
U.S. stocks /quotes/zigman/3870025/realtime SPX are doing a whole lot of nothing in early action Thursday. Traders may be more focused on the U.K. elections, where results won't be available until after the market closes.
Analysts at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods say there may be a subtle impact on markets from the Comey affair.
Despite the lack of any new information from Mr. Comey's statement, we still think there is an indirect market impact from today as the hearing will not completely put to rest Congress' interest in these investigations. This continued interest will mean Congress' limited time, resources, and energy will be directed toward these matters instead of toward policy and legislation. As we enter a period where time is of the essence in order to pass tax legislation before mid-2018, distractions, such as these investigations, continue to hurt the prospects for tax reform.
So Trump will be watching.
But will he be tweeting? The president hasn’t tweeted since yesterday and has a few events on his schedule today – but critically, the first one isn’t until around 12:30 p.m. That gives him time to watch and respond to at least the first two and a half hours.
The President will be in the West Wing watching Comey's testimony with his legal team and senior advisors.
Here's a link to the home page for the intelligence committee. It's led by Richard Burr of North Carolina and the top Democrat is Mark Warner of Virginia.
With 15 members who all want to ask questions, get ready for a long day.
We’ll keep an eye on market indexes as the testimony goes on and investors watch for any bombshells. The Dow was off about 12 points shortly after the opening bell but the Nasqaq climbed more than 6 points.
Among the important unanswered questions from the testimony: Whether Comey thinks Trump was trying to obstruct justice and why Comey kept notes on his private meetings with Trump but not with former President Barack Obama.
Take a look at the line for the hearing.
Comey’s testimony was released yesterday afternoon, so what he’ll say at the outset isn’t a surprise: that President Donald Trump wanted his loyalty; that Trump wanted him to help “lift the cloud” that the probe of potential Russian interference was casting over his administration; and that he assured Trump he wasn’t personally under investigation.
But his testimony left a number of questions unanswered, as MarketWatch wrote, and the Q&A session with senators will be the most revealing part of the day.
Good morning and welcome to the live blog. The hearing is scheduled to kick off at 10 a.m. Eastern and we’ll be bringing you updates and analysis for the duration.
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Why would I have my story written by someone?
My clients have important stories to tell, but many are too busy to write themselves. Others are not trained, disciplined writers and want to entrust their stories to an expert who will preserve them in a timely way.
How will your book on me be unique?
Recording, editing, and giving historic context to your story is only a starting point. I am a literary memoirist. As such, I will also create an additional layer of original text around your story, giving new life and meaning to cultural pieces, time periods, and beloved figures. I will treat your story like literature.
Will this still be my story, flavored by me?
Absolutely. There is no single “true” version of a story. Ten people would tell ten different versions of the same event. I am interested in preserving your version. What that means is that you are the source of our information and so everything will be crafted around you and your point of view, including your voice.
Can you veto a choice made by me?
You entrust me with creating the best possible version of your book. Naturally, there are various checkpoints built in to the process so that you can take part. Ultimately, this is your book, so the final say is yours.
Your book’s appearance will depend on your personal style and vision. It can be elegantly simple or rich with photographs and color or full of recipes and artwork. I will recommend a fitting style. Also, depending on the story you have to tell it will likely be between 50 and 150 pages.
This will roughly be a 3-month project from start to finish, depending on how quickly you are able to return approved material.
What if my vision is different from the above?
I am happy to work with you, tailoring the process to your specific needs. I can coach your own memoir writing, or trail you for six months to observe your story intimately and write it from scratch.
Whether you will be retaining my services or writing your life story on your own, here are some suggestions on how to collect the ideas, prompts, and props that will make your memories more accessible.
-Look through old photographs, albums, and letters. Pull out the ones that are especially significant to have handy.
-Listen to music that reminds you of a certain travel experience.
-Eat a comfort food that you haven’t had in many years.
-Open up an old chest (hand-me-downs, trophies, ballet shoes, etc.). See if you can dig up the physical manifestations of hobbies, affiliations and relationships that have been important to you.
-Organize any official papers you may have containing birth, death, and marriage information for various generations.
-Write a letter to future generations offering these lessons on how to live life.
Copyright © 2018 Carmit Roslyn - Personal Historian.
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Ichthyosaurs were large marine reptiles that lived through most of the Mesozoic Era. They seem to have evolved from a group of terrestrial reptiles (a group which is still to be identified) during the early Triassic period, about 245 million years ago, initially looking rather like lizards with fins.
Ichthyosaurs continued to evolve during the Triassic period, and both dolphin-like and somewhat serpent-like forms existed, the latter sometimes growing to huge sizes, as much as 50 feet (15 meters) in length. By the early Jurassic period, Ichthyosaurs had reached their peak of diversity, and a long slow decline in diversity continued through the Jurassic and into the Cretaceous period. The last Icthyosaurs finally became extinct during the middle to late Cretaceous, perhaps about 90 million years ago.
In outward physical form, Ichthyosaurs tend to resemble whales, dolphins or sharks. This is a result of convergent evolution - sharks, cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises), and ichthyosaurs all evolved similar body shapes, because it is a good hydrodynamic solution for swimming.
One difference between Ichthyosaurs and many other marine predators, is that it is believed that Ichthyosaurs probably hunted by sight (rather than for example echo-location). Part of the evidence for this is that Ichthyosaurs generally had comparatively large eyes - one particular genus of Ichthyosaur, namely Temnodontosaurus which lived in Jurassic Europe and was about 30 feet (12 meters) long, had the largest eyes of any known vertebrate - its eyes were 10 inches (26 centimeters) in diameter.
Another noteworthy fact about Ichthyosaurs is that at least some species, perhaps even all species, seem to have given birth to live young. The evidence for this is that fossils have been found of Ichthyosaurs containing fossils of babies within the abdomen. It has been suggested that perhaps these babies were stomach contents and therefore evidence of cannibalism, however it seems more likely that these fossils show a pregnant Ichthyosaur that died just before (or perhaps even during) giving birth.
Fossil fragments of Ichthyosaurs have been known since at least 1699, however the the first complete fossil specimen was found by Mary Anning in 1811 in Lyme Regis, England (Mary Anning subsequently discovered three species of Ichthyosaur). A large number of other fossils were also found by a 1905 expedition to central Nevada, including a 55 foot (17 meter) Shonisaurus (a very large, late Triassic Ichthyosaur), which since 1977, has been designated as Nevada's State Fossil.
On the 21st of May 1799 a baby girl was born to Richard and Mary Anning, Lyme Regis, Dorset. The daughter was christened Mary and she grew up to become one of the most famous fossil hunters of her age. She collected and studied fossils found in the surrounding cliffs of the Jurassic coast. Mary’s contribution had a major impact when scientific enquiry was leading to a change in the way people thought about the evolution of life and our planet - a story that would culminate with Charles Darwin's; ‘On the Origin of Species', published in 1859.
This is a factual history of England’s most famous fossil hunter Mary Anning and her major finds, which included ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs and a pterodactyl. It also includes notes on other major pioneering palaeontologists of her time, including William Buckland, Henry de la Beche and William Conybeare, who were her friends and mentors.
The author Nigel J. Clarke, a life-long resident of Lyme Regis, has also written “Lyme Bay Fossils”, the best selling guide to the fossils of the Jurassic coast. In the summer months he conducts regular guided fossil hunts along the same cliffs and beaches as Mary Anning once frequented.
Provides information on the characteristics and life of the dinosaur known as Ichthyosaurus.
This detailed guide was developed in association with the Park. Berlin-Ichthyosaur is home to North America's largest concentration of Ichthyosaur (large marine reptiles) remains, and the historic ghost town of Berlin and Union, Nevada. Side 1 features a trail map of the park along with photos and text describing points of interest. Side 2 has historical notes about Berlin and vintage photos plus charts of features in the town. The map is 18.5" x 26", printed two sides, folded to a handy 4" x 9" and printed on waterproof, tear-resistant material.
Our journals and planners are great for popping in your bag or having in your workspace or desk at home to grab when that special little thought comes to you and ensure you get the things you think about done! Suitable to be used with most media, pencils, pens, felt tips, watercolours, pastels and perfect for creating collages and artwork ideas.
Criticism about the neo-Victorian novel ― a genre of historical fiction that re-imagines aspects of the Victorian world from present-day perspectives ― has expanded rapidly in the last fifteen years but given little attention to the engagement between science and religion. Of great interest to Victorians, this subject often appears in neo-Victorian novels including those by such well-known authors as John Fowles, A. S. Byatt, Graham Swift, and Mathew Kneale. This book discusses novels in which nineteenth-century science, including geology, paleontology, and evolutionary theory, interacts with religion through accommodations, conflicts, and crises of faith. In general, these texts abandon conventional religion but retain the ethical connectedness and celebration of life associated with spirituality at its best. Registering the growth of nineteenth-century secularism and drawing on aspects of the romantic tradition and ecological thinking, they honor the natural world without imagining that it exists for humans or functions in reference to human values. In particular, they enact a form of wonderment: the capacity of the mind to make sense of, creatively adapt, and enjoy the world out of which it has evolved ― in short, to endow it with meaning. Protagonists who come to experience reality in this expansive way release themselves from self-anxiety and alienation. In this book, Glendening shows how, by intermixing past and present, fact and fiction, neo-Victorian narratives, with a few instructive exceptions, manifest this pattern.
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Will ocean wildlife soon face the same pressure that led to the extinction of many land animals when the world industrialized? The consortium of researchers said marine life could face the same pattern of extinctions that befell land-based wildlife in the 1800s, comparing the Industrial Revolution's inexhaustible consumption of land and resources to current human activity on the world's oceans. Writing in the journal Science, the scientists said that while ocean life largely dodged that expansionary period's terrestrial species loss, because fishing was still performed in smaller areas of water closer to shore, these are different times.
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Water erosion is the removal and transportation of soil, sediment, or mineral components of a rock by a moving, liquid water source. This source could be a river, stream, coastline, rainfall, flood, channel, etc. Water erosion can occur at very low rates that may displace materials just a few centimeters, or at high rates that can cause a total displacement of many kilometers. The amount of liquid water acting as an erosive agent and the steepness of the surface the material is resting on are the factors that will determine the rate of erosion. The amount of water present determines the mass of the erosive agent, while the slope of the surface will determine how much velocity can be generated. Therefore, these two factors combined create the conditions that determine how much force the water will generate. As the amount of water involved in an erosive event increases, so will the size of the particles the water is able to move. Water erosion may involve the transportation of only sand size or smaller grains, or may displace large boulders or entire sheets of rock at one time.
Whenever and wherever it rains on land, water hits the Earths surface and immediately moves to the lowest place it can be. This process is known as surface runoff, and is a type of erosion that is prevalent everywhere on the Earths surface. One way surface runoff can transport soil and sediments is called sheet erosion, where the amount of rainfall is significant enough to move materials downward with the flow of the rainwater. If the amount of rainfall increases, water will start to move faster towards the lowest point it can reach, favoring certain paths over others. As more water rushes down the same path, the path will deepen and become a channel that will be the preferred route for rainwater to take. This is referred to as gully erosion, which looks like an impromptu stream after heavy rainfall.
River and stream formation is similar to the process of gully erosion described above. This difference is that a river or stream has a consistent source that allows for water to move through the channel constantly (or at least seasonally). Because a river or stream is always running, it can make dramatic changes to its surroundings over the course of its lifetime. Probably the most dramatic example of erosion caused by a river is the Grand Canyon of Arizona, with the Colorado River running through it. However, wild rivers are able to cause much more erosion than just deep V-shaped canyons. They can meander to create dramatic loop shapes, only to cut off the loop and leave a lake there later on. Wild rivers flood frequently and cause erosion not only to the river’s path but the entire floodplain around it.
Materials that are eroded away by a river or stream end up suspended it the flow in parts of rivers that are turbulent, while in more calm waters sediment will settle out of the water and be deposited in the stream bed. Eventually, most eroded materials will end up in the body of water the channels leads to, often in a sediment deposit called a delta. However, in rivers that are dammed, we see that much sediment gets stuck above the dam at the bottom of a man-made lake called a reservoir. This causes both engineering and environmental issues as the reservoir fills up with sediment providing less room for the water that the reservoir was intended to hold.
Coastal erosion is constantly changing the way rock and sediment is deposited on the coastlines, determining the shape of entire continents. Coastal erosion is usually associated with the removal of sediments from the coast, causing the coastline to steadily retreat over time. However, coastal currents play a role in redistributing sediment along the coast so that not all of the eroded sediment is being washed out to sea. Depending on the geologic nature of the coastline, coastal erosion can produce a variety of rock formations, ranging from tunnels and natural bridges to steep cliffs.
Flooding occurs when the amount of rainfall oversaturates the underlying material of an area (soil, bedrock, asphalt, etc.), causing water to build upon the surface. Floods can result in dramatic events of erosion, particularly in cities where much of the ground is covered in relatively non-porous concrete. Due to the high volumes of water present, flood conditions generate enough power to displace sediments, from the size of a grain of sand to boulders the size of cars, a great distance.
In some cases, flooding is not the result of rainfall, but rather the result of the release of a great amount of water, such as from behind a dam. One such case of this are the Missoula Floods; a series of catastrophic floods that took place at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum. The source of the water in the case of these floods was Glacial Lake Missoula, which formed in the wake of the retreating ice sheet, and filled with water as it melted. The lake was dammed by ice, and as it melted it released massive quantities of water at a time. This is an event known as a glacial lake outburst flood. A flood of this size causes enormous amounts of erosion, and today we see evidence of the Missoula Floods across eastern Washington and the Willamette Valley in Oregon.
Follow this link for photos of Dry Falls, the site of the largest waterfall that ever existed and the canyon below, both formed via erosion by the powerful outburst of water in the Missoula Floods.
A much less dramatic but very common example of water erosion is the displacement of agricultural soil by surface runoff; an issue that farmers have faced since the invention of agriculture. Surface runoff is a problem on farms because it carries away topsoil that is vital for the success of crops. The topsoil can end up in waterways, carrying herbicides, pesticides, and other pollutants with it, therefore damaging aquatic ecosystems. To mitigate the effects of surface runoff, people in the American southwest have been using acequias for hundreds of years. An acequia is a manmade irrigation ditch that can help to transport water to farms that are not near to a water source but also directs snowmelt and rainwater to a channel creating gully erosion, which does damage to a smaller area than sheet erosion.
1. Which is not a kind of erosion generated by rainfall?
2. Why is sedimentation in large reservoirs an issue?
A. The reservoirs fill with large boulders instead of sand.
B. The sediment takes up space needed to water.
3. What source of water erosion is responsible for the creation of Dry Falls in Washington State?
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February is Women in Horror Month. This is a relatively new event to celebrate women who contributed to the genre. Here are my five picks for the best horror fiction written by women.
1. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: This may be the novel that began women in horror. Frankenstein, in all its forms, is iconic in the horror genre. The original novel is a classic gothic tale, written as a framed story (told by Captain Robert Walton) and written in epistolary form. Brilliant.
2. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson: Jackson’s haunted house story is a chilling literary ghost story. The book relies on terror, never revealing the ghost, making it a much creepier read.
3. The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons: Another outstanding tale of an evil house. Siddons’ novel is hailed by the master himself, Stephen King, as one of the best genre novels of the 20th century.
4. Dark Places by Gillian Flynn: Flynn reached stardom for her novel Gone Girl, but I think Dark Places is a superior read. The story is told by the survivor of a family massacre, allegedly committed by her brother. A great mystery with some interesting tie-ins to satanic cults.
5. Night Film by Marisha Pessl: The winner of the 2013 Shirley Jackson award, Night Film is an interesting read. It’s the story of Ashley Cordova, daughter of mysterious film director Stanislas Cordova, and the investigation of Ashley’s suicide. Some genuinely terrifying moments in this one.
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The following essay is a brief outline of developments in evolutionary biology and molecular biology just before the emergence of the field of molecular evolution. It is based on published and unpublished works by Michael Dietrich, John Beatty, and Jay Aronson. This work is not to be taken as a definitive history. Rather, we hope it stimulates scientists who were active during this tumultuous period in biology to contribute their recollections and related documents to the website.
The 1950s and early-1960s was a time of tremendous advance in molecular biology. Most importantly, the structure of DNA unraveled and its role in protein synthesis was elucidated. Encouraged by their progress, many molecular biologists developed a faith in their emerging discipline that was described by E.O. Wilson as an "imperialistic zeal." Indeed, many molecularly inclined biologists began to argue that the best way to answer questions about evolution was to study them at the molecular level. Using newly developed techniques, including protein sequencing, immunoelectrophoresis and micro compliment formation, molecular biologists were for the first time able to compare proteins of different species at the level of single amino acid substitutions. For the first time in history, biologists were no longer reliant solely on morphological characteristics or microscopic phenomena like blood coagulation and chromosomal rearrangements in systematics research. Indeed, as the physical anthropologists John Buettner-Janusch and Robert Hill declared in the introduction of their 1965 article entitled "Molecules and Monkeys:"
"The era of the molecule, the protein molecule, is upon us. Anthropology, as it attempts to reconstruct the phylogeny of man and his fellow members of the order Primates, must take cognizance of molecules. It is unlikely that significant quantities of proteins will ever be extracted from fossil primates. But we can study the differences in many proteins of the living primates, a group of mammals that exhibit a remarkable degree of evolutionary stratification."
The place of molecular evolution within evolutionary biology can only be understood within the context of the evolutionary synthesis, the unification of a disparate group of biological disciplines-systematics, paleontology, botany and zoology-through the reinterpretation and integration of Mendelian genetics with Darwinian evolution in the 1930s and 1940s. The synthesis can be seen as the construction of compatibility arguments among the various fields of biology; as well as the professionalization of evolutionary biology in various institutional contexts including The Society for the Study of Evolution, its official journal, Evolution, and the National Research Council's Committee on Common Problems of Genetics, Paleontology, and Systematics.
The proponents of the synthetic theory maintain that all evolution is due to the accumulation of small genetic changes, guided by natural selection, and that transpecific evolution is nothing but the extrapolation and magnification of the events that take place within population and species.
Just a few short years after the Dobzhansky, Mayr, Simpson and others claimed that they had succeeded in unifying biology under the rubric of natural selection, molecular biologists began making claims that evolution at the molecular level was radically different than evolution at the morphological and organismal level. Most obviously, they claimed that molecular evolution occurred at a steady rate and was largely unaffected by the forces of natural selection (this idea led to the formulation of the molecular evolutionary clock). This issue would come to have a profound impact within the world of systematics.
At least one molecular evolutionist, Emile Zuckerkandl claimed that molecular data were "'cleaner' material for phyletic investigations than morphological characters" because changes at the molecular level were not likely to be affected by the perturbing influence of the organism's interaction with its environment. This notion allowed molecular evolutionists to make sweeping claims about evolution and speciation based solely on the comparison of one or a few protein sequences. To give but one example, Emanuel Margoliash reconstructed the entire evolutionary history of humanity-starting with its one-celled ancestors-by comparing amino acid differences in the cytochrome-c molecule of a wide variety of living organisms.
This symposium in a certain sense is a milestone on our travels along uncharted paths of molecular biology. Not too many years ago it would have been presumptuous to have undertaken a serious discussion of the molecular bases of evolution…We are now in a position of having maps…indicating some of the guiding landmarks along the road leading to an understanding of the molecular events involved in the evolution of pathways, proteins and genes….It is tempting to try framing our possible travels toward this goal, in terms of an analogy, as a "Biologist's Pilgrims Progress."
Tatum was not the only molecular biologist to articulate the apparent ascendance of molecular biology over older approaches to the study of life. At least in the eyes of Mayr, Simpson, and Dobzhansky, there was increasing sentiment in both the scientific and lay communities that traditional biology was merely "stamp-collecting" and naturalists were "old-fashioned." In response to these beliefs, the architects of the synthesis launched an "unprecedented counterattack" aimed at protecting organismal biology from the "imperialistic zeal" of molecular biologists. These maneuvers were carried out in popular scientific journals of the day (including Science, American Naturalist, and American Scholar) and portrayed molecular biologists in a less-than-flattering light. G.G. Simpson, for instance, described molecular biology as a "gaudy bandwagon" that was "manned by reductionists, travels on biochemical and biophysical roads, and carries a banner with a strange device: DNA." In his writings throughout the 1960s, Simpson insisted that molecular biology was subservient to evolutionary biology, and not vice versa.
Mayr and Dobzhansky took a slightly different approach, claiming that the molecular approach was better suited than the organismal approach to tackle certain types of problems in biology. They did this primarily by setting up a dualism in the biological sciences. For Dobzhansky, this involved articulating a difference between Cartesian biology (which sought to reduce all biological phenomena to their physical and chemical roots) and Darwinian biology (which sought to make sense of the great mass of biological facts by explaining them in light of evolution). While both biologies were important for studying life, Dobzhansky made it clear that Cartesian biology could only be understood in terms of Darwinian biology and not vice versa. Hence his famous statement that "nothing makes sense except in light of evolution."
Mayr made his case for the importance of molecular and organismic approaches in biology by distinguishing between the proximate and ultimate causes of biological phenomena. Proximate causes, which Mayr believed could often be profitably answered using molecular approaches, dealt with biology at the functional level. For instance, a bird begins its migration on a certain day because fluctuations in daylight have a specific impact on the bird's endocrine system. This type of explanation is profitably reducible to the molecular level (e.g. hormone X binds to receptor Y which leads to a release of hormone Z which causes the bird to leave its summer nesting site and fly south, etc.). However, Mayr argued, it tells us absolutely nothing about the crucial question of why the bird migrates. Such ultimate causes simply cannot be reduced to the molecular level.
As we have documented elsewhere, the architects of the evolutionary synthesis did not argue that molecular biology had no value. Rather, they hoped to integrate the study of biologically important macromolecules into the study of organisms without reducing biology to physics and chemistry. They also hoped to persuade molecular biologists to focus on how all of their molecular data fit within the framework of evolution by natural selection. In more specialized journals and at conferences, they sought to spread the gospel of the evolutionary and organismal approach among the increasingly molecularly-inclined researchers of the day.
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