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CREDIT INSURANCE COST and can you justify it?
Credit Insurance - What does it cost?
1) Credit insurance allows you trade in the knowledge that if you suffer a bad debt then there is someone to pick up the debt and therefore protect your cash flow and stop your company becoming one of tomorrows insolvency figures itself (a bit like health insurance but for a company rather than an individual).
2) Credit insurance allows you to identify the better risks which will in turn allow you to sell more goods to these companies which helps increase sales and therefore profit.
4) To recuperate a bad debt (and don't forget there is the extra risk of increasing your sales to recover the debt) if your gross margin is 10% and you suffer a debt of £10,000 then you will need to make an extra £100,000 of sales to get back to where you were before.
5) Credit insurance can help to enhance your borrowings by either getting the lending rate reduced because you have the security of credit insurance or may allow you to borrow more.
6) Credit insurance is a definable cost, whereas bad debts will come in peaks and troughs and it's just a case of whether you survive those peaks?
7) There are also a number of intangible benefits, the main one being that credit insurance can help you avoid the bad debts by providing a professional opinion as to the credit worthiness of a company, plus most insurers continually monitor for information (both good and bad information) that will give you an up to date view of your customer.
8) If you find that you have a large number of debts that have to be sent for collection - a couple of the insurers will collect these for free (it is in their interests to do so, hence the free service) you can then offset the cost of collections against the cost of insurance - and because the service is free, then you are more likely to use it sooner, which will bring the cash in faster and reduce the chances of the debt becoming bad.
10) And finally, for now: Piece of mind - sleep in the knowledge that both your company and it's workforce won't be out on the street tomorrow looking for work because a company (through no fault of their own, other than the fact that they didn't take out credit insurance) has let you down.
So, in summary, you can reclaim the costs, it can help you increase your turnover, it protects your company, plus possible fringe services (debt collection for nothing), so in fact it could be deemed an investment because of all the benefits.
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Star Wars: Episode IX is an upcoming American epic space opera film produced, co-written and directed by J. J. Abrams. It will be the third installment of the Star Wars sequel trilogy, following The Force Awakens (2015) and The Last Jedi (2017), and the final installment of the main Star Wars film franchise. The film is being produced by Lucasfilm and Bad Robot Productions and will be distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. It is set to be released on December 20, 2019, in the United States. The sequel trilogy was announced after Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm in October 2012. Colin Trevorrow was announced as Episode IX's director in mid-2015, but left the project by late 2017 due to creative differences. He was replaced by Abrams, who previously directed The Force Awakens. Most of the cast of the previous two movies reprise their roles, and Billy Dee Williams returns to the franchise onscreen for the first time since 1983's Return of the Jedi. Principal photography began in August 2018 at Pinewood Studios near London and wrapped on February 15, 2019.
Star Wars: Episode IX is an upcoming American epic space opera film produced, co-written and directed by J. J. Abrams. It will be the third installment of the Star Wars sequel trilogy, following The Force Awakens (2015) and The Last Jedi (2017), and the final installment of the main Star Wars film franchise. The film is being produced by Lucasfilm and Bad Robot Productions and will be distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. It is set to be released on December 20, 2019, in the United States.
The sequel trilogy was announced after Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm in October 2012. Colin Trevorrow was announced as Episode IX's director in mid-2015, but left the project by late 2017 due to creative differences. He was replaced by Abrams, who previously directed The Force Awakens. Most of the cast of the previous two movies reprise their roles, and Billy Dee Williams returns to the franchise onscreen for the first time since 1983's Return of the Jedi. Principal photography began in August 2018 at Pinewood Studios near London and wrapped on February 15, 2019.
Additionally, Dominic Monaghan and Matt Smith were cast in undisclosed roles. Brian Herring returns to puppeteer BB-8, and Jimmy Vee and Greg Grunberg reprise their roles as R2-D2, an astromech droid in the service of the Resistance, and Temmin "Snap" Wexley respectively.
J. J. Abrams has returned to direct.
In October 2012, Star Wars creator George Lucas sold his production company Lucasfilm, and with it the Star Wars franchise, to The Walt Disney Company. Disney announced a new trilogy of Star Wars films. In August 2015, Colin Trevorrow was announced as the director of Episode IX. He was to write the script with frequent collaborator Derek Connolly. It was also announced that Rian Johnson, director and writer of The Last Jedi, would write a story treatment for the film. However, in April 2017, Johnson stated that he was not involved, claiming it was "old info". In February 2016, Disney chief executive officer Bob Iger confirmed that pre-production on Episode IX had begun. At the end of April 2017, Disney announced that the film would be released on May 24, 2019. A month later, filming was expected to begin in January 2018, but this was later pushed back to August.
In August 2017, it was announced that Jack Thorne would rewrite the script. On September 5, 2017, Lucasfilm stated that Trevorrow had left the production following creative differences. The Hollywood Reporter reported that his working relationship with Kathleen Kennedy had become unmanageable after failing to deliver a satisfactory script, despite writing several drafts. Johnson was rumored as the top choice to replace Trevorrow as director, but stated "it was never in the plan for me to direct Episode IX." The next day, it was announced that J. J. Abrams, the director of The Force Awakens, would return to direct the film. Abrams would also co-write the script with Chris Terrio and produce the film with his company Bad Robot Productions, Kennedy and Michelle Rejwan. Disney also moved the film's release date to December 20, 2019.
Billy Dee Williams has been confirmed to return as Lando Calrissian.
There's a lot of minutes of footage. I don’t mean just outtakes. This is unused, new content that could be woven into the storyline. ... It's going to look like it was meant to be. Like it was shot yesterday.
In July 2018, Keri Russell was in talks to play a part for some "action-heavy fight scenes", along with the long-awaited confirmation that Billy Dee Williams will return as Lando Calrissian. At the end of the month, Russell was confirmed to have been cast, along with the announcement of returning and additional new cast members. In late August, Dominic Monaghan and Matt Smith were cast in unspecified roles. Jimmy Vee and Greg Grunberg reprise their roles as R2-D2 and Temmin "Snap" Wexley, respectively. Brian Herring returns to puppeteer BB-8.
Principal photography began on August 1, 2018, at Pinewood Studios near London, England. Filming was also done in Wadi Rum, Jordan. Oscar Isaac stated that Abrams was allowing more improvised acting than in the previous two films. On January 28, 2019, Anthony Daniels finished filming for his role as C-3PO in the film. Principal photography wrapped on February 15.
On January 10, 2018, it was reported that John Williams, who composed the music for the eight previous saga films, would return to compose and conduct Episode IX. The next month, Williams announced that it would be the last Star Wars film for which he would compose the score.
The film was originally set to be released on May 24, 2019, but was later pushed back to December 20. Though Abrams has stayed silent about details of the film, he expressed his hopes that its viewers would be "satisfied."
↑ Revealed to Empire by John Boyega, albeit in an interview he did not recall. Inverse pointed out that he did not deny the claim in his response. Boyega previously implied a time gap by stating that he was growing out his hair.
↑ Fisher, who died in late 2016, will appear through the use of unreleased footage from The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Hipes, Patrick (July 27, 2018). "Star Wars: Episode IX Rounds Out Cast, Which Will Include Carrie Fisher In Unreleased Footage". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved July 27, 2018.
↑ "Star Wars: Episode IX Cast Announced". StarWars.com. July 27, 2018. Retrieved December 29, 2018.
↑ Boucher, Geoff (February 15, 2019). "'Star Wars IX': The Last Skywalker Film Wraps Principal Photography". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved February 15, 2019.
↑ Jacobs, Meredith (December 27, 2018). "'Star Wars Episode 9' Rumors: Actor Sort of Confirms 1-Year Time Jump". Inverse. Retrieved December 27, 2018.
↑ Roper, Kerri-Ann (April 30, 2018). "John Boyega teases Star Wars news as he promotes cancer-fighting app". Archived from the original on July 26, 2018. Retrieved December 27, 2018.
↑ Pearson, Ben (May 1, 2018). "John Boyega Teases Star Wars Episode 9 Time Jump". /Film. Retrieved December 27, 2018.
1 2 3 4 Hutchinson, Corey (December 18, 2017). "Star Wars: Every Confirmed Cast Member For Episode 9". Screen Rant. Retrieved January 2, 2018.
1 2 Hipes, Patrick (July 27, 2018). "Keri Russell Is In 'Star Wars: Episode IX' After All". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved July 29, 2018.
1 2 Agar, Chris (August 3, 2018). "Star Wars 9 Will Use The Last Jedi Footage of Leia". ScreenRant. Retrieved August 3, 2018.
1 2 3 Sanda, Clayton (December 28, 2018). "Carrie Fisher to appear in Star Wars Episode IX via unused footage". Good Morning America. Retrieved December 28, 2018.
1 2 Fleming, Mike (August 24, 2018). "Dominic Monaghan Re-Unites With JJ Abrams In Star Wars: Episode IX". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved August 24, 2018.
1 2 D'Alessandro, Anthony (August 28, 2018). "'Star Wars: Episode IX' Taps 'Doctor Who' Alum Matt Smith". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved August 28, 2018.
↑ Herring, Brian [@BrianHezza] (August 7, 2018). "1st shooting day for the little guy!" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
1 2 "Star Wars: Greg Grunberg Teases Episode IX Return".
↑ Leonard, Devin (March 7, 2013). "How Disney Bought Lucasfilm—and Its Plans for 'Star Wars'". Bloomberg Businessweek. Retrieved May 26, 2013.
1 2 Rebecca, Ford (August 15, 2015). "'Star Wars: Episode IX' Sets 'Jurassic World' Director Colin Trevorrow to Helm". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved August 16, 2015.
↑ Chitwood, Adam (January 12, 2016). "'Star Wars: Episode IX' Director Colin Trevorrow Promises "Satisfying" Answer to Rey Theories". Collider.com. Retrieved April 7, 2017.
↑ Ford, Rebecca; Siegel, Tatiana (June 20, 2014). "'Star Wars: Episode VIII' Sets Director". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved June 20, 2014.
↑ Johnson, Rian [@rianjohnson] (April 24, 2017). "That's old info, I haven't been involved in writing IX" (Tweet). Retrieved April 25, 2017 – via Twitter.
1 2 Khatchatourian, Maane (April 25, 2017). "Disney Dates Lion King and Frozen 2, Pushes Fifth Indiana Jones Film to 2020". Variety. Archived from the original on April 25, 2017. Retrieved April 25, 2017.
↑ Hornbuckle, Jon (May 26, 2017). "Star Wars: Episode IX to delay filming until 2018 following script rewrites after Carrie Fisher's tragic death". The Sun. Retrieved July 4, 2017.
↑ Kim, Lawrence (June 3, 2017). "Star Wars: Episode IX to begin filming in January 2018". Click Lancashire. Retrieved July 4, 2017.
↑ Kit, Borys (August 1, 2017). "'Star Wars: Episode IX' Gets a New Writer (Exclusive)". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved August 13, 2017.
↑ McNary, Dave (September 5, 2017). "Colin Trevorrow Out as 'Star Wars: Episode IX' Director". Variety. Retrieved September 5, 2017.
↑ Kit, Borys; Galuppo, Mia (September 5, 2017). "Colin Trevorrow Out as 'Star Wars: Episode IX' Director". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved September 12, 2017.
↑ Fleming Jr, Mike (September 6, 2017). "Might Rian Johnson Return For 'Star Wars: Episode IX'?". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved September 5, 2017.
↑ Perry, Spencer (September 11, 2017). "Rian Johnson Casts Doubt on Directing Star Wars: Episode IX". ComingSoon.net. Retrieved September 12, 2017.
↑ Kroll, Justin (September 12, 2017). "J.J. Abrams to Replace Colin Trevorrow as Director of 'Star Wars: Episode IX'". Variety. Retrieved September 12, 2017.
↑ Parker, Ryan (September 12, 2017). "J.J. Abrams to Replace Colin Trevorrow as 'Star Wars: Episode IX' Writer and Director". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved September 12, 2017.
↑ "How will Carrie Fisher's death affect the Star Wars franchise and will they recast Princess Leia?". Telegraph. December 28, 2016. Retrieved December 29, 2016.
↑ "A Statement Regarding New Rumors". StarWars.com. January 13, 2017. Retrieved January 23, 2017.
↑ Desorbough, James (April 7, 2017). "The late Carrie Fisher will appear in final Star Wars movie, says brother Todd Fisher". The New York Daily News. Retrieved April 7, 2017.
↑ Parker, Ryan (April 14, 2017). "Carrie Fisher Will Not Appear in 'Star Wars: Episode IX'". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved April 15, 2017.
↑ Khatchatourian, Maane (April 14, 2017). "Carrie Fisher Won't Appear in 'Star Wars: Episode IX'". Variety. Retrieved April 15, 2017.
↑ Alexander, Julia (July 27, 2018). "Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill will appear in Star Wars: Episode IX". Polygon. Retrieved December 16, 2018.
↑ Kroll, Justin (July 6, 2018). "'Star Wars: Episode IX' Eyes Keri Russell (EXCLUSIVE)". Variety. Retrieved July 6, 2018.
↑ Kit, Borys (July 9, 2018). "'Star Wars': Billy Dee Williams Reprising Role as Lando Calrissian". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on July 10, 2018. Retrieved July 9, 2018.
↑ Vee, Jimmy [@realjimmyvee] (March 18, 2018). "Yes, hopefully I'll be in all of them from now on" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
↑ "Photos of Jordan's Wadi Rum set from Star Wars: Episode IX!". October 8, 2018.
↑ Kohn, Eric (October 12, 2018). "Oscar Isaac Is Taking the Year Off After Star Wars: Episode IX, So He's Passing on Everything". IndieWire. Retrieved October 12, 2018.
↑ Hall, Jacob (February 15, 2019). "'Star Wars: Episode 9' Has Wrapped Filming – See a New Image From the Set". Film. Retrieved February 15, 2019.
↑ Weiss, Josh (January 10, 2018). "John Williams Says He's Scoring Star Wars: Episode IX For J.J. Abrams". Syfy Wire. Retrieved January 11, 2018.
↑ Jones, Jordan (January 11, 2018). "John Williams will be returning for Star Wars: Episode IX". Flickering Myth. Retrieved January 11, 2018.
↑ Hughes, William (March 3, 2018). "John Williams says he's only got one more of these damn Star Wars movies in him". The A.V. Club. Retrieved March 3, 2018.
↑ Armitage, Hugh; Chapman, Matt (January 1, 2019). "Star Wars Episode 9: Everything you need to know". Digital Spy. Retrieved January 24, 2019.
↑ "Star Wars: J.J. Abrams on Whether Episode 9 Was Affected by The Last Jedi Response". IGN. February 22, 2019. Retrieved February 22, 2019.
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Tourists enjoy snow surfing at a resort by a high-rise apartment buildings in Beijing.
Beijing, China (CNN) -- Snow and freezing temperatures in China's western Xinjiang autonomous region have killed at least four people, state media reported Monday.
Nearly 300 casualties had been reported and at least 960,000 people had been affected, the Xinhua news service said, without clarifying the figures. It also reported that 16,000 houses had been destroyed.
Economic damages were estimated at 320 million RMB ($47 million), and the government had spent 40 million RMB ($5.9 million) on disaster relief, Xinhua said.
A new wave of cold gripped the region on Monday, with temperatures well below freezing.
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The following guidelines apply to “appraisal,” the process by which archivists decide which materials will be selected and retained as part of the permanent collection. Since every archival or manuscript collection is in some sense unique, the guidelines should not be seen as inviolable rules, but rather as points for consideration.
SCUA archivists apply their experience and professional judgment when making decisions about each collection on its own merits. In general, these guidelines are applied to groups of materials, rather than individual items, and in most cases we prefer to err on the side of caution, opting for retention when there is any doubt, rather than disposal. Since archival materials are often unique, once an item is discarded, it is discarded for good. In appraising a collection, we emphasize efficiency and speed in carrying out the work, as opposed to a thorough vetting of every item.
Research potential: do these materials have a significant historical or cultural value and will future researchers likely have an interest in them?
Documentary value: does these materials document an event, person, process, idea, or place of significant social or cultural interest?
Depth of documentation: do these materials as a whole provide a rich understanding of a subject?
Context: do these materials form a coherent body within a larger collection such that they should be retained together?
Uniqueness or rarity: are these materials sufficiently rare or unique or are they duplicated elsewhere, perhaps in other form? Do these materials provide a unique or uniquely valuable perspective?
Associational value: are these materials associated with someone else in our collections or with some well-known figure who we may wish to document?
Monetary value: are these materials valuable in a monetary sense?
Display or promotional value: would these materials be useful in an exhibit (either in house or online) or in informational material we produce?
Unpublished material: Our goal is to document not just what happened, but how things happened, and we are particularly interested in materials that reveal behind-the-scenes activities and personal perspectives. While published materials are valued, we are most interested in unpublished material, such as correspondence, diaries and journals, memoranda, notes, lectures and speeches, drafts, and unpublished writings. In many cases, these materials reflect a personal perspective on events that would be unavailable in any other form.
Minutes of meetings, agendas: minutes of meetings, agendas, and annual reports are highly valuable for documenting an organization’s activity, and when paired with the correspondence of officers and internal memoranda and other communications, they may provide a particularly well-rounded view.
Audiovisual materials: SCUA places a high emphasis on visual documentation and actively seeks photographs, motion pictures and videos, drawings, and sound recordings for their cultural, aesthetic, and historical value.
Detailed financial records are generally not retained because of their often voluminous nature, their low research potential, and, in some cases, their exposure of potentially sensitive or personal information.
Receipts, invoices, legal financial filings, and such are rarely retained, however annual reports and summary statements may be valuable.
Published materials are typically closely scrutinized. Many modern (post-1900) books, periodicals, sound recordings, and movies are “readily available,” either through a circulating library or online, and are therefore not retained because they are seldom consulted by researchers in SCUA.
SCUA emphasizes retention only of those items that are not readily available in their specific form (e.g. edition), that are so integral to the content and context of the collection that they should not be disposed; that have unique association with key people or that have annotations or marginalia of value; or that have high cultural or monetary value.
In most cases, we retain a single copy of each publication by the creator of a collection.
News clippings are seldom retained, particularly if the source is unidentified.
Offprints, reprints, and photocopies of articles are seldom retained unless they are written by the creator of the collection.
Personnel records: Due to the potential for exposing personal data or other sensitive information, SCUA typically does not retain personnel records of any sort.
Medical records: Formal medical records are generally not retained. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) limits our ability to make most classes of medical records publicly available, but we generally choose not to retain materials that fall outside of HIPAA due to the likelihood of revealing personal information and to generally low research value.
Collections relating to the history of medicine or other fields in which health and medical care are of central concern.
Medical records 75 years old and older are typically retained.
A person wishing to include their own medical records in their collection may do so.
Student papers, class records, or other instructional records that include grades or evaluations are not accepted.
Recommendations for students (e.g. for application to graduate school or employment) are not accepted if they were written under an expectation of confidentiality.
A person wishing to include their own student records in their collection may do so.
Research data: although data sets may be retained due to their importance to a collection, SCUA archivists will give due consideration to whether the archive is the appropriate place to preserve the information and whether we have the technology and skills to make the data available in the long term.
Although SCUA archivists will remove duplicates when they are encountered, they make no special effort to be thorough.
Photostats, photocopies, or digital copies of materials held in other repositories are generally not retained unless the originals are unavailable to the public.
Unidentified photographs: Although unidentified photographs have only a limited utility for researchers, SCUA’s archivists may choose to retain them due to their artistic merit, their role within the context of the collection as a whole, the scene(s) or period of time represented, or the photographic process involved.
Closure due to privacy: Although SCUA regularly agrees to close portions of a collection, or even an entire collection to preserve privacy or confidentiality; we do not accept materials that are permanently closed.
SCUA is glad to work with donors to discuss closure of sensitive materials and arrive at a clearly specified date after which the materials may be made available to the public.
Copyright restrictions: SCUA often accepts materials in which the donor retains copyright or in which copyright is help by a third party, however these can be less convenient for researchers to use.
Materials on deposit: Due to considerations over liability and the potential for scholarly confusion, SCUA does not accept materials on deposit, wherein SCUA acts as steward of materials for which the donor retains legal ownership.
Other considerations: SCUA may choose not to accept materials for which we cannot provide proper stewardship due to the lack of necessary technology or skills. For example, materials that require specific equipment or proprietary software to use; materials written in languages or scripts for which we lack expertise; or materials that may be better cared for and more frequently used elsewhere. To the extent that we are able, we will be glad to assist you in locating a better home for your materials.
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Prescription placebos used in research and practice.
The purpose of the placebo group is to account for the placebo effect, that is, effects from treatment that do not depend on the treatment itself. Such factors include knowing one is receiving a treatment, attention from health care professionals, and the expectations of a treatment's effectiveness by those running the research study. Without a placebo group to compare against, it is not possible to know whether the treatment itself had any effect.
Patients frequently show improvement even when given a sham or "fake" treatment. Such intentionally inert placebo treatments can take many forms, such as a pill containing only sugar, a surgery where nothing efficacious is actually done (just an incision and sometimes some minor touching or handling of the underlying structures), or a medical device (such as an ultrasound machine) that is not actually turned on. Also, due to the body's natural healing ability and statistical effects such as regression to the mean, many patients will get better even when given no treatment at all. Thus, the relevant question when assessing a treatment is not "does the treatment work?" but "does the treatment work better than a placebo treatment, or no treatment at all?" As one early clinical trial researcher wrote, "the first object of a therapeutic trial is to discover whether the patients who receive the treatment under investigation are cured more rapidly, more completely or more frequently, than they would have been without it."p.195 More broadly, the aim of a clinical trial is to determine what treatments, delivered in what circumstances, to which patients, in what conditions, are the most effective.
Therefore, the use of placebos is a standard control component of most clinical trials, which attempt to make some sort of quantitative assessment of the efficacy of medicinal drugs or treatments. Such a test or clinical trial is called a placebo-controlled study, and its control is of the negative type. A study whose control is a previously tested treatment, rather than no treatment, is called a positive-control study, because its control is of the positive type. Government regulatory agencies approve new drugs only after tests establish not only that patients respond to them, but also that their effect is greater than that of a placebo (by way of affecting more patients, by affecting responders more strongly, or both).
In a single-blind experiment, information that could introduce bias or otherwise skew the result is withheld from the participants. In most cases, the subjects do not know if they are receiving an active treatment or a placebo. Blinding an experiment reduces bias and controls for the placebo effect.
A classic example of a single-blind experiment is the Pepsi Challenge. A researcher, often a marketing person, prepares cups of cola. One cup is filled with Pepsi, while the other is filled with Coca-Cola. The researcher knows which soda is in which cup but does not reveal this information to the subject. The subject then tries both sodas and is asked which they prefer. In practice, blinding an experiment can be very difficult. The Pepsi Challenge, for example, is only blind if the subjects are unable to discriminate between the two sodas by taste. In some cases, an active placebo may blind an experiment better than a passive placebo.
The use of a placebo control is not the only way to blind an experiment. For example, in a blind study on the effectiveness of prayer, the participants are not told who has and has not had prayers said for them. To test the effect of changing the frequency of fluorescent lights on headaches, the light fittings are changed at night in the absence of the office workers.
Because a doctor's belief in the value of a treatment can affect his or her behavior, and thus what his or her patient believes, clinical trials are usually conducted in "double-blind" manner: that is, not only are the patients made unaware when they are receiving a placebo, the doctors are made unaware too.
Nearly all studies conducted find benefit in the placebo group. For example, Khan published a meta-analysis of studies of investigational antidepressants and found a 30% reduction in suicide and attempted suicide in the placebo groups and a 40% reduction in the treated groups. However, studies generally do not include an untreated group, so determining the actual size of the placebo effect, compared to totally untreated patients, is difficult.
The practice of using an additional natural history group as the trial's so-called "third arm" has emerged; and trials are conducted using three randomly selected, equally matched trial groups, David wrote: "... it is necessary to remember the adjective ‘random’ [in the term ‘random sample’] should apply to the method of drawing the sample and not to the sample itself.".
It is a matter of interpretation whether the value of P-NH indicates the efficacy of the entire treatment process or the magnitude of the "placebo response". The results of these comparisons then determine whether or not a particular drug is considered efficacious.
However, in particular cases such as the use of Cimetidine to treat ulcers, a significant level of placebo response can also prove to be an index of how much the treatment has been directed at a wrong target.
Adhering to the protocol had a psychological effect, i.e. genuine placebo effect.
People who were already healthier were more able or more inclined to follow the protocol.
Compliant people were more diligent and health-conscious in all aspects of their lives.
Appropriate use of a placebo in a clinical trial often requires or at least benefits from a double-blind study design, which means that neither the experimenters nor the subjects know which subjects are in the "test group" and which are in the "control group". This creates a problem in creating placebos that can be mistaken for active treatments. It therefore can be necessary to use a psychoactive placebo, a drug that produces physiological effects that encourage the belief in the control groups that they have received an active drug.
A psychoactive placebo was used in the Marsh Chapel Experiment, a double-blind study in which the experimental group received the psychedelic substance psilocybin while the control group received a large dose of niacin, a substance that produces noticeable physical effects intended to lead the control subjects to believe they had received the psychoactive drug. The term "psychoactive placebo" is rare in the literature; but, when it is used, it always denotes a placebo of this type. For example, "Neither the experienced investigator nor the naive [subject] is easily fooled on the matter of whether he has received a psychedelic substance or merely a psychoactive placebo such as amphetamine."
For broader coverage of this topic, see Placebo in history.
In 1747, James Lind (1716–1794), the ship's doctor on HMS Salisbury, conducted the first clinical trial when he investigated the efficacy of citrus fruit in cases of scurvy. He randomly divided twelve scurvy patients, whose "cases were as similar as I could have them", into six pairs. Each pair was given a different remedy. According to Lind’s 1753 Treatise on the Scurvy in Three Parts Containing an Inquiry into the Nature, Causes, and Cure of the Disease, Together with a Critical and Chronological View of what has been Published of the Subject, the remedies were: one quart of cider per day, twenty-five drops of elixir vitriol (sulfuric acid) three times a day, two spoonfuls of vinegar three times a day, a course of sea-water (half a pint every day), two oranges and one lemon each day, and electuary, (a mixture containing garlic, mustard, balsam of Peru, and myrrh). He noted that the pair who had been given the oranges and lemons were so restored to health within six days of treatment that one of them returned to duty, and the other was well enough to attend the rest of the sick.
In 1784, the French Royal Commission looked into the existence of animal magnetism, comparing the effects of allegedly "magnetized" water with that of plain water. It did not examine the practices of Franz Mesmer, but examined the significantly different practices of his associate Charles d'Eslon (1739–1786).
In 1799, John Haygarth investigated the efficacy of medical instruments called "Perkins tractors", by comparing the results from dummy wooden tractors with a set of allegedly "active" metal tractors, and published his findings in a book On the Imagination as a Cause & as a Cure of Disorders of the Body.
Flint’s paper is the first time that he terms "placebo" or "placeboic remedy" were used to refer to a dummy simulator in a clinical trial.
… to secure the moral effect of a remedy given specially for the disease, the patients were placed on the use of a placebo which consisted, in nearly all of the cases, of the tincture of quassia, very largely diluted. This was given regularly, and became well known in my wards as the placeboic remedy for rheumatism.
Jellinek in 1946 was asked to test whether or not the headache drug's overall efficacy would be reduced if certain ingredients were removed. In post-World War II 1946, pharmaceutical chemicals were restricted, and one U.S. headache remedy manufacturer sold a drug composed of three ingredients: a, b, and c, and chemical b was in particular short supply.
On initial analysis, there was no difference between the self-reported "success rates" of Drugs A, B, and C (84%, 80%, and 80% respectively) (the "success rate" of the simulating placebo Drug D was 52%); and, from this, it appeared that ingredient b was completely unnecessary.
However, further analysis on the trial demonstrated that ingredient b made a significant contribution to the remedy’s efficacy. Examining his data, Jellinek discovered that there was a very significant difference in responses between the 120 placebo-responders and the 79 non-responders. The 79 non-responders' reports showed that if they were considered as an entirely separate group, there was a significant difference the "success rates" of Drugs A, B, and C: viz., 88%, 67%, and 77%, respectively. And because this significant difference in relief from the test drugs could only be attributed to the presence or absence of ingredient b, he concluded that ingredient b was essential.
It indicated that, whilst any given placebo was inert, a responder to that particular placebo may be responding for a wide number of reasons unconnected with the drug's active ingredients; and, from this, it could be important to pre-screen potential test populations, and treat those manifesting a placebo-response as a special group, or remove them altogether from the test population!
What made this trial novel was that the subjects were randomly allocated to their test groups. The up-to-that-time practice was to allocate subjects alternately to each group, based on the order in which they presented for treatment. This practice could be biased, because those admitting each patient knew to which group that patient would be allocated (and so the decision to admit or not admit a specific patient might be influenced by the experimenter's knowledge of the nature of their illness, and their knowledge of the group to which they would occupy).
Recently, an earlier MRC trial on the antibiotic patulin on the course of common colds has been suggested to have been the first randomized trial. Another early and until recently overlooked randomized trial was published on strophanthin in a local Finnish journal in 1946.
From the time of the Hippocratic Oath questions of the ethics of medical practice have been widely discussed, and codes of practice have been gradually developed as a response to advances in scientific medicine. The Nuremberg Code, which was issued in August 1947, as a consequence of the so-called Doctors' Trial which examined the human experimentation conducted by Nazi doctors during World War II, offers ten principles for legitimate medical research, including informed consent, absence of coercion, and beneficence towards experiment participants.
Unlike within the domain of medicine, in which the logic of placebos is relatively straightforward, the concept of placebo as applied to psychotherapy is fraught with both conceptual and practical problems.
^ Gaddum JH (March 1954). "Clinical pharmacology". Proc. R. Soc. Med. 47 (3): 195–204. PMC 1918604. PMID 13155508.
^ Chambless DL, Hollon SD (February 1998). "Defining empirically supported therapies". J Consult Clin Psychol. 66 (1): 7–18. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.586.4638. doi:10.1037/0022-006X.66.1.7. PMID 9489259.
^ Lohr JM, Olatunji BO, Parker L, DeMaio C (July 2005). "Experimental analysis of specific treatment factors: efficacy and practice implications". J Clin Psychol. 61 (7): 819–34. doi:10.1002/jclp.20128. PMID 15827994.
^ Coronary Drug Project Research Group (October 1980). "Influence of adherence to treatment and response of cholesterol on mortality in the coronary drug project". N. Engl. J. Med. 303 (18): 1038–41. doi:10.1056/NEJM198010303031804. PMID 6999345.
^ Gallagher, E. J.; Viscoli, C. M.; Horwitz, R. I. (1993). "The relationship of treatment adherence to the risk of death after myocardial infarction in women". Journal of the American Medical Association. 270 (6): 742–4. doi:10.1001/jama.270.6.742. PMID 8336377.
^ Harman WW, McKim RH, Mogar RE, Fadiman J, Stolaroff MJ (August 1966). "Psychedelic agents in creative problem-solving: a pilot study". Psychol Rep. 19 (1): 211–27. doi:10.2466/pr0.1966.19.1.211. PMID 5942087.
^ a b Dunn, Peter M. (January 1, 1997). "James Lind (1716-94) of Edinburgh and the treatment of scurvy". Archives of Disease in Childhood: Fetal and Neonatal Edition. 76 (1): F64–5. doi:10.1136/fn.76.1.F64. PMC 1720613. PMID 9059193.
^ Gauld, Alan (1992). A history of hypnotism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-48329-2.
^ Donaldson IM (December 2005). "Mesmer's 1780 proposal for a controlled trial to test his method of treatment using "animal magnetism"". J R Soc Med. 98 (12): 572–5. doi:10.1258/jrsm.98.12.572. PMC 1299353. PMID 16319443.
^ Best M, Neuhauser D, Slavin L (June 2003). "Evaluating Mesmerism, Paris, 1784: the controversy over the blinded placebo controlled trials has not stopped". Qual Saf Health Care. 12 (3): 232–3. doi:10.1136/qhc.12.3.232. PMC 1743715. PMID 12792017.
^ Booth C (August 2005). "The rod of Aesculapios: John Haygarth (1740–1827) and Perkins' metallic tractors". J Med Biogr. 13 (3): 155–61. doi:10.1258/j.jmb.2005.04-01. PMID 16059528.
^ Green SA (December 2002). "The origins of modern clinical research". Clin. Orthop. Relat. Res. (405): 311–9. PMID 12461388.
^ Haygarth, J. (1801). Of the Imagination, as a Cause and as a Cure of Disorders of the Body; Exemplified by Fictitious Tractors, and Epidemical Convulsions (New Edition, with Additional Remarks) (PDF). Bath: Crutwell.
^ a b c d e Jellinek, E. M. JSTORE "Clinical Tests on Comparative Effectiveness of Analgesic Drugs", Biometrics Bulletin, Vol.2, No.5, (October 1946), pp.87–91.
^ Lasagna L, Mosteller F, von Felsinger JM, Beecher HK (June 1954). "A study of the placebo response". Am. J. Med. 16 (6): 770–9. doi:10.1016/0002-9343(54)90441-6. PMID 13158365.
^ Yoshioka A (October 1998). "Use of randomisation in the Medical Research Council's clinical trial of streptomycin in pulmonary tuberculosis in the 1940s". BMJ. 317 (7167): 1220–3. doi:10.1136/bmj.317.7167.1220. PMC 1114162. PMID 9794865.
^ Patulin Clinical Trials Committee, Medical Research Council (April 2004). "Clinical trial of patulin in the common cold. 1944". Int J Epidemiol. 33 (2): 243–6. doi:10.1093/ije/dyh028. PMID 15082620.
^ Chalmers I, Clarke M (April 2004). "Commentary: the 1944 patulin trial: the first properly controlled multicentre trial conducted under the aegis of the British Medical Research Council". Int J Epidemiol. 33 (2): 253–60. doi:10.1093/ije/dyh162. PMID 15082623.
^ Hemminki E (2005). "Commentary on an early placebo controlled trial in Finland". The James Lind Library. Archived from the original on 2008-08-28.
^ Herbert James D (2005). "Moving from empirically supported treatment lists to practice guidelines in psychotherapy: The role of the placebo concept". Journal of Clinical Psychology. 61 (7): 893–908. doi:10.1002/jclp.20133. PMID 15827997.
James Lind Library A source of historical texts on fair tests of treatments in health care.
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Kelly Rowland (born Kelendria Trene Rowland February 11, 1981 in Atlanta, Georgia) is an African American R&B, pop singer, actress, and member of the successful musical trio Destiny's Child.
Rowland lived with the family of fellow group member Beyoncé Knowles starting at age 10. She later rose to fame with the then quartet Destiny's Child in 1998 with the Billboard Top 10 hit, "No, No, No (Part 2)". Even after much publicized turmoil involving new and exiting group members, Destiny's Child (eventually a trio consisting of original members Rowland and Knowles, with Michelle Williams) managed to become one of the most successful pop/R&B acts in the late 90s/early 00's, earning four #1 Billboard 100 singles and a #1 album.
Kelly and Destiny's Child toured as an opening act for both Christina Aguilera and TLC before their 1998 platinum-selling self-titled debut album Destiny's Child was released. Their debut album was produced by Wyclef Jean and Jermaine Dupri and featured the platinum-selling, number one Hot 100 single "No, No, No". Destiny Child's second album The Writing's On The Wall, released in 1999, featured two number-one hits in "Bills, Bills, Bills" and "Say My Name". "Bug-A-Boo" and "Jumpin' Jumpin'" were also popular singles from the album. "Say My Name" won two awards at the 2001 Grammy Awards for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal and Best R&B Song, the latter of which was awarded to the songwriters, which included Kelly herself.
Their next album, Survivor, proved to be another smash, going to number one on both the American Billboard 200 and R&B Albums charts, as well as the Canadian album chart. Two singles from the album went to the top of the Hot 100: "Independent Women" (Part 1) and "Bootylicious", with the album's title track reaching number two. "Independent Women" (Part 1) had been the theme song for Charlie's Angels in late 2000, before the album's 2001 release. The title track "Survivor" would win the group their third Grammy for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. The album's fourth and final single, "Emotions", was a cover of the Bee Gees hit of the same name; it continued the group's impressive string of top ten hits.
Over the course of the supergroup's seven albums, Rowland evolved from backing singer to joint lead singer of destiny's child. Rowland shared lead vocals with Beyonce Knowles on even the group's earliest hits such as "Independent Women" (pre-chorusx2)"With me" (second verse), "Get on the bus" (second verse)and "Bills Bills Bills" (pre-chorusx2), but her vocal talent was overlooked by some of the media as she was overshadowed by Beyonce Knowles, the group's most prominent lead singer and chief songwriter. Rowland's lead vocals as long with those of Michelle Williams were more prominent on the groups later albums.
After the success of the trio's third album, Survivor, the three members separated to pursue solo endeavors. Rowland, in 2003, released her first solo album, the two million selling Simply Deep. The album, which went Gold in the US and debuted at #1 on the UK album chart, included "Dilemma", a duet with Nelly which spent ten weeks at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 (making Rowland the first Destiny's Child member to top the charts outside of the group) and won Rowland her first Grammy Award in 2003 for Best Rap/Sung collabration, she shared this award with Nelly. Rowland has won four Grammy Awards, three with Destiny's child and one as a solo artist. Additionally, she branched into acting with her role in the 2003 summer blockbuster, Freddy vs. Jason and in the 2005 independant film The Seat Filler.
Following solo success, Rowland rejoined Knowles and Williams to release their fourth (and final) studio album, Destiny Fulfilled. The album hit #2 on the Billboard 200. Rowland and the other two-thirds of Destiny's Child embarked on a European and American tour sponsored by McDonald's titled, Destiny Fulfilled and Lovin' It, in 2005. Shortly before the end of the tour, the members of Destiny's Child announced their breakup.
Rowland is currently signed to a deal to endorse and appear in commercials for Dark & Lovely hair products of the Soft Sheen Carson product company.
Rowland has some individual TV and music projects lined up.She is to appear in three upcoming episodes of US UPN sitcom "Girlfriends" in February 2006. She is featured on new album llumination by soul greats Earth, Wind & Fire. Their album was released September 20th. Kelly's singing can be heard on their party joint "This Is How I Feel", produced by Organized Noize, also featuring rapper Big Boi of OutKast and singer Sleepy Brown. She is also a featured artist on a song called "Here We Go Again", which impacted radio on September 13 and is already major gaining airplay looking set to achieve similar success to her duet with Nelly on the song "Dilemma". This is the second single from rapper Trina's new album Glamorest Life in stores October 4th and the video for this single was filmed in September and will impact the TV music channels in late October. Kelly has already began working on her second album, which is expected to be released in Spring 2006.
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Do international remittances cause Dutch disease?
The diagnosis: Dutch disease caused by international remittances afflicts the middle income countries but not the upper income and low income countries. The middle income countries can inoculate their economies from getting the disease with robust macro and sectoral economy conditions. But if they get infected, and their condition is not managed well or the illness is not treated, Dutch disease could cripple their economies.
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Hot and humid summers can pose risks. Know how to recognise the signs of heat illness and take preventive action to reduce your risk.
To understand how you can prevent heat-related illnesses, it’s important to first understand how your body regulates its temperature. The human body temperature is normally 37°C regardless of the environmental temperature, as it is regulated by your body’s natural feedback system. When the outside temperatures rise, there are various ways that your body tries to cool itself to maintain a normal temperature.
When your temperature rises, the brain sends a signal to your blood vessels, sweat glands and muscles to assist in lowering the temperature. Your blood vessels begin to dilate, enabling blood to flow near the surface and allowing your body to reduce internal temperature by radiating heat loss outwardly. You also start to sweat onto the skin; the water evaporates removing heat from the skin and creating a cooling effect.
Heat-related illnesses include itchy rashes, muscle cramps, swelling, rapid breathing , fainting, heat exhaustion, and heatstroke, a medical emergency that occurs when the body cannot regulate its temperature.
Heatstroke is a serious condition. Symptoms include high temperature, altered behaviour such as feeling disoriented, lack of sweating, nausea, flushed skin, rapid breathing, fast heart rate and headache.
If you think that you or someone else may be experiencing heatstroke, take immediate action by contacting emergency services or visiting your local emergency department . Find a cool place to rest and rehydrate, and lower body temperature by any means possible - use cold water, air-conditioning or fanning, ice packs, or cold wet towels on the head, neck and armpits.
Wear loose-fitting clothing, when possible. Your body can’t cool itself efficiently if you wear tight or heavy clothing. Loose and light clothing can help prevent overheating.
Shield your skin from the sun. Sunburn makes it more difficult for your body to cool itself. Always protect yourself by wearing sunglasses and sunscreen with a minimum of SPF 15.
Drink plenty of fluids. When you’re dehydrated, the risk of overheating increases. Consume enough water to help your body produce sweat and keep you cool.
Be careful when taking certain medications. Some medications can increase the risk of dehydration or affect your body’s cooling. Ask your doctor about your medication.
Never leave someone in a parked car. Leaving someone in a parked car, especially during warmer months, is a leading cause of heat-related illnesses and can have serious health consequences.
If possible, stay inside during the hottest parts of the day. Sometimes it’s best to just avoid the heat entirely and stay where it’s air-conditioned. For exercise during peak temperatures, visit a local gym or indoor pool.
Ease into a warmer environment. When traveling or relocating, it can take several weeks to acclimatise to a hotter environment. Avoid activity during the warmest times of the day until you get more accustomed to the high temperature.
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For years our approach to weight loss has been to eat less and move more. The approach may have taken on different names like Atkins, South-Beach, or The Zone, which all have their novelties, but the bottom line is very similar. While each of these programs offers a successful weight loss platform for many individuals, research into the long-term outcomes of dieters finds that after a few years the vast majority of dieters who follow these regimens regain the weight, or gain even more weight.
First, it must be understood that describing overweight and obesity (O&O) simply as the product of too much caloric intake plus too little caloric expenditure, is not accurate. While there is some utility to this formula, O&O is now recognized in the scientific literature as the result of deviations from the norm in many complex biological functions.
Next, it follows that tackling O&O is also not a simple equation, but is rather a complex process that addresses every individual at the biological level. Furthermore, since weight management is an emotionally charged subject, successful weight loss programs must include strategies to maneuver through complex psychological processes.
In fact, when we analyze why diets fail, we find that emotional and psychological factors are many times at the root of the failure. For instance, if the motivation to lose weight is simply due to dissatisfaction with personal appearance, as opposed to being motivated by health or idealistic reasons, then the diet is almost doomed to fail from the start.
Why is this type of motivation self-destructive? Interestingly, there are many common dieting behaviors in those dieters who are motivated by dissatisfaction with appearance. Their choices regarding food variety and amount often become overly restrictive. Choice restriction is often accompanied by thought restriction, which means forcing oneself to avoid thoughts about certain foods and food venues. Interestingly, this in itself can lead to food cravings.
Furthermore, these dieters are more likely to analyze their dietary performance with dichotomous (all-or-nothing) thinking, using statements like “today was a good/bad day for my diet,” or “I’m on/off the diet.” It seems that the combination of restrictive choices and food cravings plus dichotomous thinking leads to binge eating, loss of self-efficacy (the trust in one’s ability to succeed) and ultimately dropping the diet.
To summarize, the self-destructive diet pattern starts with motivation not driven by health or ideals, but usually dissatisfaction with appearance. Restrictive eating and thoughts promote cravings. Perceived failures are analyzed with all-or-nothing thinking, which opens the door to bingeing, loss of confidence, and diet termination.
This is a major point! We’re saying that motivation and attitudes are more important for weight management than which weight loss program you choose!
Now that the formula is clearer, let us examine opportunities for success. First, those engaging in weight loss need to trust in their ability to succeed. Even after so many failures, they must understand that in many instances their dieting was doomed to fail from the beginning, independent of their actions.
Next, one must consider that loss of control is part of the process. Our world is filled with so many gastronomic delights, it's almost impossible not to lose oneself occasionally. Therefore, setting reasonable goals to improve control is appropriate, especially with the use of mindfulness and relaxation techniques.
Moving on, emphasizing success, and having self-mercy will discourage all-or-nothing thoughts, and encourage a deeper, more objective thought process. Finally, supporting positive attitudes towards personal appearance will shift weight-loss motivation away from vanity dieting, and towards health and ideal driven weight management. This is the intention that will spark interest in healthy eating, and motivate long-term lifestyle changes.
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Song from a small tree. The bird was also photographed. It had a rufous head like the field guide female, but this vocalisation should be the song.
Song in flight. The bird was also photographed.
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Serverboard or MotherBoard setup for high end gaming and content creation?
I'm planning on doing a massive upgrade to my system, which is used for 3D graphics creation, music production and gaming.
I know of some very interesting setups (for gaming) but all of these use a workstation motherboard, which limits me to an 8 core cpu.
These server boards also have the option of hooking up multiple PCIe devices such as multilpe graphics cards etc, (I could hook up up to four NVIDIA Titan cards) and can hold a lot more DIMM memory.
What about power supply for a server setup? How would that work?
Yet could all that power be used to its full potential? Even if you run Windows 7 Ultimate and not a sever edition? Or is there a bottlneck somewhere that renders all that capacity useless?
I would realy like to know what the upsides and downsides are when you use a server rig instead of a desktop rig.
If you're doing all that for professional work, buy a workstation.
If home, stick with 1 CPU, and save your sanity.
The main downsides to a server rig are that compatibility is not as good, and if you plan to game, some games will not run with multiple CPUs correctly. Secondary to that, less IO on the board, as rule. Most everything else can be worked around. You need a Windows Server OS to serve many clients, and not much else.
Additionally, high core-count server CPUs generally run at lower clock speeds than desktop CPUs, which limits gaming performance becasue games still care very much about having a few fast threads.
Don't expect dual-socket server motherboards to have been tested with SLI. It may or may not work depending on the PCIe topology of the particular board.
Use an Asus WS board.
Question What to do with the components if the motherboard needs to be replaced and new one is not here yet?
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At the lowest programming level,[clarification needed] executable code consists of machine language instructions supported by an individual processor--typically a central processing unit (CPU) or a graphics processing unit (GPU). A machine language consists of groups of binary values signifying processor instructions that change the state of the computer from its preceding state. For example, an instruction may change the value stored in a particular storage location in the computer--an effect that is not directly observable to the user. An instruction may also invoke one of many input or output operations, for example displaying some text on a computer screen; causing state changes which should be visible to the user. The processor executes the instructions in the order they are provided, unless it is instructed to "jump" to a different instruction, or is interrupted by the operating system. As of 2015[update], most personal computers, smartphone devices and servers have processors with multiple execution units or multiple processors performing computation together, and computing has become a much more concurrent activity than in the past.
The first theory about software--prior to creation of computers as we know them today--was proposed by Alan Turing in his 1935 essay On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem (decision problem).
which is software that uses the computer system to perform special functions or provide entertainment functions beyond the basic operation of the computer itself. There are many different types of application software, because the range of tasks that can be performed with a modern computer is so large--see list of software.
Computer software has to be "loaded" into the computer's storage (such as the hard drive or memory). Once the software has loaded, the computer is able to execute the software. This involves passing instructions from the application software, through the system software, to the hardware which ultimately receives the instruction as machine code. Each instruction causes the computer to carry out an operation--moving data, carrying out a computation, or altering the control flow of instructions.
Many bugs are discovered and eliminated (debugged) through software testing. However, software testing rarely--if ever--eliminates every bug; some programmers say that "every program has at least one more bug" (Lubarsky's Law). In the waterfall method of software development, separate testing teams are typically employed, but in newer approaches, collectively termed agile software development, developers often do all their own testing, and demonstrate the software to users/clients regularly to obtain feedback. Software can be tested through unit testing, regression testing and other methods, which are done manually, or most commonly, automatically, since the amount of code to be tested can be quite large. For instance, NASA has extremely rigorous software testing procedures for many operating systems and communication functions. Many NASA-based operations interact and identify each other through command programs. This enables many people who work at NASA to check and evaluate functional systems overall. Programs containing command software enable hardware engineering and system operations to function much easier together.
Software patents, like other types of patents, are theoretically supposed to give an inventor an exclusive, time-limited license for a detailed idea (e.g. an algorithm) on how to implement a piece of software, or a component of a piece of software. Ideas for useful things that software could do, and user requirements, are not supposed to be patentable, and concrete implementations (i.e. the actual software packages implementing the patent) are not supposed to be patentable either--the latter are already covered by copyright, generally automatically. So software patents are supposed to cover the middle area, between requirements and concrete implementation. In some countries, a requirement for the claimed invention to have an effect on the physical world may also be part of the requirements for a software patent to be held valid--although since all useful software has effects on the physical world, this requirement may be open to debate. Meanwhile, American copyright law was applied to various aspects of the writing of the software code.
Software patents are controversial in the software industry with many people holding different views about them. One of the sources of controversy is that the aforementioned split between initial ideas and patent does not seem to be honored in practice by patent lawyers--for example the patent for Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP), which purported to claim rights over any programming tool implementing the idea of AOP, howsoever implemented. Another source of controversy is the effect on innovation, with many distinguished experts and companies arguing that software is such a fast-moving field that software patents merely create vast additional litigation costs and risks, and actually retard innovation. In the case of debates about software patents outside the United States, the argument has been made that large American corporations and patent lawyers are likely to be the primary beneficiaries of allowing or continue to allow software patents.
Software is usually designed and created (aka coded/written/programmed) in integrated development environments (IDE) like Eclipse, IntelliJ and Microsoft Visual Studio that can simplify the process and compile the software (if applicable). As noted in a different section, software is usually created on top of existing software and the application programming interface (API) that the underlying software provides like GTK+, JavaBeans or Swing. Libraries (APIs) can be categorized by their purpose. For instance, the Spring Framework is used for implementing enterprise applications, the Windows Forms library is used for designing graphical user interface (GUI) applications like Microsoft Word, and Windows Communication Foundation is used for designing web services. When a program is designed, it relies upon the API. For instance, a Microsoft Windows desktop application might call API functions in the .NET Windows Forms library like Form1.Close and Form1.Show to close or open the application. Without these APIs, the programmer needs to write these functionalities entirely themselves. Companies like Oracle and Microsoft provide their own APIs so that many applications are written using their software libraries that usually have numerous APIs in them.
^ Fuegi, J.; Francis, J. (2003). "Lovelace & Babbage and the creation of the 1843 'notes'". Annals of the History of Computing. 25 (4): 16-26. doi:10.1109/MAHC.2003.1253887.
^ "Ada Lovelace honoured by Google doodle". The Guardian. December 10, 2012. Retrieved 2018.
^ "Embedded Software--Technologies and Trends". IEEE Computer Society. May-June 2009. Archived from the original on 28 October 2013. Retrieved 2013.
^ Gerardo Con Díaz, "The Text in the Machine: American Copyright Law and the Many Natures of Software, 1974-1978," Technology and Culture 57 (October 2016), 753-79.
^ "MSDN Library". Archived from the original on 11 June 2010. Retrieved 2010.
^ v. Engelhardt, Sebastian (2008). "The Economic Properties of Software". Jena Economic Research Papers. 2 (2008-045). Archived from the original on 5 January 2016.
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A vast majority of the Punjabi live in India and Pakistan; however, large Punjabi communities can also be found in nearly thirty other countries. While the living conditions of the Punjabi differ greatly from country to country, they have retained much of their traditional culture and lifestyle.
The name "Punjabi" is used to describe both those who speak Punjabi, and those who inhabit the Punjab region in India and Pakistan. Punjabi is an Indo-European language that is divided into six main dialects. It is primarily spoken in the major regions of India and Pakistan.
There are many different social classes and occupational sub-groups among the Punjabi. For this reason, it is difficult to adequately describe their lifestyle. Modern Punjabi culture was largely shaped by the partitioning of India and Pakistan in 1947. This event resulted in massive migrations that separated the Muslims from the Hindus and Sikhs. The incorporation of new government policies also had far-reaching effects on the lives of the Punjabi.
The caste system is India's strict organization of heriditary classes. The Punjabi are divided into castes called jati. For the Punjabi, a caste is described as a group of families in an area, with common ancestry, who marry among themselves, and have a common traditional occupation based upon a common type of inherited productive property. Castes generally have origin stories that explain how they came into an area, and/or their present occupational position. Caste divisions vary according to region, but they generally range from the upper castes of Brahmins (priests, scholars, landowners, and skilled artisans) to the lowest caste of laborers and servants. Various artisan castes include those who are skilled as carpenters, masons, blacksmiths, barbers, and weavers. The jati are further divided into clans, villages, and families.
The caste system in India is not fully supported by religion, as it is specifically rejected by Islam and Sikhism. Most of the Diaspora Punjabi who are Hindu, are of the higher castes and are usually well educated. For this reason, they have easily assimilated into the various communities in which they now live.
The Punjabi immigrants have taken on a variety of occupations. Many of the Sikhs, who are characterized by their neatly wound turbans, have excelled as mechanics, construction workers, and business professionals. Other Punjabi have found work in retail and trade, particularly through small family businesses.
In traditional Punjabi culture, the men are responsible for overseeing the family possessions such as land, shops, or other business assets. The women are responsible for overseeing the homes. They cook, care for the children, manage the household finances, and take care of any domestic animals.
Marriage is highly desired among all Punjabi, whether Muslim, Hindu, or Sikh. Traditionally, residences were patrilocal, which means that young couples lived in the husband's village near his parents. However, in most Diaspora Punjabi communities, this does not occur. Newly-married couples set up their homes wherever they choose. Marriages can still be arranged by parents, but this is rarely done without extensive discussions.
Among the Punjabis, there is no overall system of social control. Instead, each institution (such as business, home, civil administration, religious organization, or political organization) has its own set of laws and disciplinary measures.
It is commonly said among the Punjabi that "land, women, and water are the sources of all conflicts." This simply means that they deem it necessary to control the means by which a person perpetuates his family and property.
The Diaspora Punjabi reflect the three major religions of their homeland: Hinduism, Islam, and Sikhism. Most of the Diaspora Punjabi speakers are Sikhs, except for those in Myanmar who are mostly atheists.
Sikhism is a monotheistic religion that was founded in northern India during the sixteenth century. Its teachings have combined the elements of both Hinduism and Islam in an attempt to find one god who transcends all religious distinctions.
Although there are many Christian resources available in the Punjabi language, very few Punjabi have been reached with the Gospel. Even in predominantly Christian countries, such as Tanzania and Kenya, the Punjabi have a very small Christian population.
There is a great need for church planting teams to begin focusing on the Punjabi. Their search for 'one god who transcends all religions' can provide the open door to share Jesus - the one true God and Savior - with them.
* Ask God to give wisdom to missions agencies focusing on the Punjabi.
* Pray that the Lord of the harvest will thrust forth many laborers to work among the Punjabis.
* Pray for effectiveness of the Jesus film and other evangelistic tools among the Punjabis.
* Ask God to encourage the small number of Punjabi Christians.
* Ask the Holy Spirit to soften their hearts towards the Gospel message.
* Ask the Lord to raise up strong local churches among the Punjabi.View Punjabi in all countries.
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Jordan, despite severely limited water and agricultural resources, has hosted, since 2011, almost 655,000 Syrian refugees, making it the second largest refugee-hosting country in the world, in proportion to its population. According to a Human Rights Watch report, however, starting in early 2017, Jordan has been summarily deporting over 1000 Syrian refugees per month, without opportunity to challenge their removal or properly investigating the danger posed by their return. The reality is that there is a real danger to refugees who are returned, either from airstrikes, or being perceived as an enemy of Daesh or President Assad’s forces.
The interviews in the Human Rights Watch Report suggest that many of these collective deportations are done without a given reason. Additionally, of the deportations that have a reason, many serve as punishment for persons allegedly connected to militant groups. The punishment, however, can be far reaching, and anyone from family members to other families from the same village of origin can be deported. Many refugees are now avoiding calling or taking calls from relatives still living in Syria, because connections to people simply living in Syria can be grounds for deportation, regardless of whether those people are connected to militant groups.
The report notes that Jordan is a party to the Arab Charter of Human Rights, which in no uncertain terms prohibits collective expulsion. By punishing and expelling family members and villages, Jordan is failing to uphold its obligations under this charter. Furthermore, Jordan has also pledged to uphold the “customary international law principle of nonrefoulement,” which discourages returning refugees to places where they would be persecuted or at risk of cruel or inhumane treatment. The report, which interviewed 35 Syrian refugees in Jordan, and 13 Syrian refugees who had been deported, is a poignant example of this. Not one of the thirteen Syrian refugees who had been deported felt safe upon their return, nor have they been able to return to their homes.
Contact your government officials and ask them to increase aid to nations supporting refugees, like Jordan!
You might say: Hello, my name is _______ and I’m calling from [town name, state name]. Please tell the [Senator/Rep] that I support refugees and aid to nations that support refugees. I’d like to see more aid going to nations, such as Jordan, that support an enormous load to provide assistance to those in need. [Senator/Rep X] should support increased funding for both international refugee assistance and for refugee resettlement in the U.S. Thank you for your time!
*If you are determining policy in Jordan, the HRW report has concrete recommendations for you near its beginning!
Human Rights Watch. “I Have No Idea Why They Sent Us Back” Jordanian Deportations and Expulsions of Syrian Refugees. United States of America, 2017. Accessed 10/9/2017.
“Jordan: Syrian Refugees Being Summarily Deported: No Due Process Protection; Risk of Serious Harm.” Human Rights Watch. (Retrieved 10/9/2017).
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The tools developed to predict floods for sandy shorelines are generally not applicable to coral reef–lined coasts.
Understanding wave-driven coastal flooding is a challenging scientific problem; the need for forecasts is becoming more urgent because of sea level rise, climate change, and ever-growing coastal populations. The tools developed for sandy shorelines are generally not applicable to coral reef–lined coasts with their complex bathymetry, hydrodynamically rough reef platforms, steep and poorly sorted beaches, and low coastal elevations. Advances in understanding and predicting flooding on coral reef–lined coasts thus require concerted efforts from a number of disciplines, including climatology, oceanography, geology, and ecology.
To encourage such multidisciplinary collaboration, a meeting earlier this year brought together more than 30 experts from 12 countries over 3 days. Attendees addressed the current state of knowledge of the factors controlling spatial extent, timing, and magnitude of flooding along tropical, coral reef–lined coasts. The meeting focused on four research themes: sea level; wave climate; wave transformation, water levels, and coastal flooding; and coral reefs, sediment, and shorelines.
The overarching goal was for the participants to share advancements in their fields and lay out a pathway to provide forecasting tools for hazard risk reduction along tropical reef–lined coasts. The strength of the workshop was the comprehensive review and extended discussions of in situ and remote sensing observations, numerical models, and products for each of the research themes.
The need for early-warning capabilities—on the order of days—to provide forecasts of flooding. Such short-term forecasts are dominated by tides, wind-generated waves, local wave setup, and barometric pressure. The goal is to reduce risks to life and assets by providing a timely warning.
The need to begin developing predicted scenarios of flooding that start a few decades into the future and focus on the time frame of decades. Such long-term projections are primarily governed by sea level rise, wind and wave climates, coral reef biogeomorphology and sediment budgets, and anthropogenic impacts. The goal is to increase the resiliency of coastal communities by providing guidance to support climate adaptation planning.
The greatest needs for developing early-warning systems and future scenarios include coral reef bathymetry and island topography.
The greatest needs for developing early-warning systems and future scenarios include coral reef bathymetry and island topography. These will require field observations to calibrate and validate numerical models of wave-driven flooding over coral reefs; records from past flooding events to define local event thresholds; downscaled pressure and wind fields for more accurate future wave modeling; historic coastal change data, especially island vertical development; carbonate sediment budgets; and coral reef and island coring to understand how they have evolved over recent changes in sea level.
The meeting participants resolved to continue data and knowledge sharing and to begin a dialogue with regional and international bodies. A report of the workshop discussions, including the overview presentations and the expertise of the workshop participants, can be found here.
The workshop was supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Geological Survey. This workshop was run in collaboration with Deltares and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization and under the auspices of the Group on Earth Observations Blue Planet initiative. I thank William J. Skirving, John J. Marra, Robert McCall, Ap van Dongeren, and Ronald K. Hoeke for their help with writing this article.
—Curt D. Storlazzi (email: [email protected]), Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center, U.S. Geological Survey, Santa Cruz, Calif.
Citation: Storlazzi, C. D. (2018), Challenges of forecasting flooding on coral reef–lined coasts, Eos, 99, https://doi.org/10.1029/2018EO098517. Published on 16 May 2018.
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0.964473 |
A baby has astounded doctors by surviving despite being born four months premature and weighing just 1lb 6oz.
Esme Poulsom was given just a one per cent chance of survival when mother Kirsty Barrett's waters broke after just 19 weeks.
But Ms Barrett, 24, and partner Gareth Poulsom refused to give up hope and Esme was born so small she could fit into her mother's hand.
Esme was so fragile and Ms Barrett was so ill after the birth that she was not allowed to see her new baby for two agonising days.
Doctors warned the couple that the first weeks of Esme's life were 'touch and go' and she may not survive.
But against the odds, Esme is now eight months old - although she is still battling lung and feeding complications because of her early birth.
Ms Barrett and Mr Poulsom, who also have a two year-old daughter Ava, are also preparing a formal complaint against health chiefs over the handling of her Esme's care.
They claim medics at one hospital 'gave up' on Esme even before she was born and have since failed to properly address her ongoing problems.
Esme's remarkable story began last November when Ms Barrett went into labour just 19 weeks into her pregnancy.
Four days later her waters broke and Ms Barrett said doctors at Nevill Hall Hospital in Abergavenny, Gwent told her she would either miscarry or give birth within 48 hours.
Neither happened and her labour calmed but doctors warned there was no chance of the baby surviving without waters and said the pregnancy would stop developing normally.
They recommended an abortion but Ms Barrett and Mr Poulson refused and decided to let nature take its course.
Two weeks after Ms Barrett's waters broke - and still having periodic contractions - she was discharged and put herself on bed rest at home in Pontypool, Gwent.
She said: 'I was told at Nevill Hall that if I got to 23 weeks I could have steroids to stop the contractions and help viability at around 24 weeks.
'But when I reached 23 weeks I was told they wouldn't give me steroids because they felt I would miscarry.
Ms Barrett knew of someone at the Royal Gwent Hospital in nearby Newport who had been given steroids in a similar situation.
Mr Poulson contacted them and a doctor agreed to take over his partner's care if she could get transferred.
Ms Barrett claims that Nevill Hall initially refused to the transfer, saying Ms Barrett was in active labour but they relented after agreeing that the baby's head was not engaged.
Within 20 minutes of getting there Ms Barrett was given a steroid injection.
A week later the mother developed blood poisoning and had to have a Caesarian section and Esme was born on December 18 - four months ahead of her due date of April 7.
Ms Barrett recalled: 'They didn't think Esme would survive because she'd had no waters for five weeks.
'There was a one per cent chance. They thought they would give her to us and she would pass away. But she was born crying. They couldn't believe it.
'She was so tiny and for the first couple of days Gareth brought me pictures because I couldn't see her.
Instead Esme kept improving, and after eight weeks was transferred back to Nevill Hall and put in the special care baby unit.
But it was then that the first problems emerged with her lungs which medics allegedly down-played.
Esme began bottle feeding but her mother feared she was taking milk into her lungs.
Despite her concerns the hospital discharged her after 100 days - with her baby still choking and coughing while feeding.
Ms Barrett said: 'She was getting worse. One day, going to Nevill Hall, she stopped breathing in the car. I had to resuscitate her.
Esme stopped breathing a second time and Gareth had to resuscitate her.
Kirsty again repeated her concerns about her taking milk into her lungs, but says she was again told the baby had an infection.
But Esme's condition worsened and she was transferred to specialists at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff.
But once more Esme defied the odds and was returned home via Nevill Hall.
'A couple of weeks later we had a phone call from UHW asking how she was,' said Ms Barrett.
'We went down there and they were quite shocked at the state of her lung. It was still partly collapsed.
Esme was admitted and attempts were made to reinflate her lung.
They were only partially successful and problems remain with her swallowing mechanism, and she may eventually require a feeding tube to be fitted into her stomach.
Ms Barrett and Mr Poulson are now preparing a complaint to the Aneurin Bevan Health Board over the handling of Esme's case.
MailOnline has approached the Health Board for comment.
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0.999877 |
About the Book: "The Adventure of the Abbey Grange", one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is one of 13 stories in the cycle collected as The Return of Sherlock Holmes.
My Review: In this story, Holmes wakes Doctor Watson up early one winter morning to rush to a murder scene at the Abbey Grange near Chislehurst. Sir Eustace Brackenstall has been killed, apparently by burglars. Inspector Stanley Hopkins believes that it was the infamous Randall gang, a father and two sons, who have committed several other burglaries in the neighborhood.
Holmes and Watson arrive at Abbey Grange, where Lady Brackenstall is resting with a purple swelling over one eye, the result of a blow during the previous night's incident. There are also two red spots on her arm. Her maid, Theresa Wright, who has been with her mistress since she was born, later tells Holmes that Sir Eustace stabbed her with a hatpin.
Lady Brackenstall tells Holmes that her marriage was not happy. Sir Eustace Brackenstall was a violent, abusive drunkard. Moreover, Lady Brackenstall found it hard to adjust to life in England after the freedom that she enjoyed in her native Australia, which she left 18 months before. She had been married for about a year.
She then tells what happened. She says that about 11 o'clock, she walked around the house to check it was secure before going to a bed. In the dining room, she encountered an elderly man coming in the French window, followed by two younger men. The older man struck her in the face, knocking her out. When she came to, she was tied to an oaken chair with the bellrope, which they had torn down, and gagged. Then Sir Eustace came into the room, and rushed at the intruders with a cudgel. One of them struck and killed him with a poker. Lady Brackenstall fainted again for a minute or two. She saw the intruders drinking wine from a bottle taken from the sideboard. Then they left, taking some silver plate.
Sir Eustace's body is still lying at the murder scene. The poker has been bent into a curve, suggesting a strong attacker. Hopkins tells Holmes some unsavory things about Sir Eustace: He poured petroleum over his wife's dog and set it alight, and once threw a decanter at Theresa. Theresa says Sir Eustace physically and verbally assaulted his wife, especially when he was drunk.
Holmes examines the knots in the bell-rope, and the frayed end. He notes that if the bell-rope was tugged hard enough to tear it down, the bell would have rung in the kitchen, and asks why nobody heard it. Hopkins answers that it was late, and the kitchen is at the back of the house, where none of the servants would have heard. This suggests that the burglars must have known this, indicating a link between them and one of the servants.
Oddly, the thieves did not take much, only a few items of silver plate from dining room.
The half-empty wine bottle and glasses interest Holmes. The cork had been drawn with the corkscrew of a "multiplex knife", not the long corkscrew in the drawer, and one of the glasses has beeswing dregs in it, but the others have none.
It is odd that they didn't drink the entire bottle.
Holmes also draws Watson's attention to the wineglasses. The presence of beeswing in only one indicates that only two people used the glasses; they poured the dregs into the third to make it look as though there were three. Holmes deduces from this that Lady Brackenstall and her maid lied.
Upon returning to the Abbey Grange, Holmes climbs on the mantelpiece, examining the severed end of the bellrope, and a bracket upon which he must kneel to reach it. Holmes has now developed the killer's profile: 6 ft 3 in (191 cm) tall, active, dextrous, and quick-witted. He cut the bell-rope with a knife, and frayed the loose end to make it look broken. But he could not reach the end still hanging from the ceiling, which is cut clean. Sir Eustace's blood is on the seat of the oaken chair. How could a splatter have landed there if Lady Brackenstall was bound there before her husband's murder?
Holmes confronts Lady Brackenstall and Theresa. He tells them he knows they are lying and demands the truth. But Lady Brackenstall stands by her story.
On the way out, Holmes notices a hole in the ice on the pond, and writes a note for Hopkins.
Holmes searches for the killer: almost certainly a sailor (indicated by the knots and the active physique), who was previously acquainted with Lady Brackenstall, and whom she and Theresa would protect. Her only contact with sailors was on her voyage from Australia, and only with the officers of her ship (her social equals).
Lady Brackenstall traveled by the Rock of Gibraltar of the Adelaide-Southampton Line, which is now halfway to Australia. However, the ship's first officer, Jack Croker, has been promoted to captain. He has remained in England and in two days will take command of the company's new ship, Bass Rock. His employers describe him as a splendid fellow - hot-headed ashore, "but loyal, honest, and kindhearted."
Holmes takes a cab to Scotland Yard, but does not go in. He tells Watson he is reluctant to name the criminal to the police until he knows more.
That evening, Inspector Hopkins calls at 221B Baker Street, with two items of news. As suggested in Holmes' note, the stolen silver was found at the bottom of the pond. Why should the burglars have put it there? Holmes suggests that the theft was a blind - a deliberate false clue. But Hopkins rationalizes that the pond was chosen as a temporary hiding place.
The other news is even more problematic. The Randall gang was arrested in New York that morning, so they couldn't commit a murder in Kent the previous night. But there are other gangs of three burglars; Hopkins will look for them. He asks Holmes if he has any hints to offer. Holmes reminds him of his suggestion of a blind, but Hopkins pays no heed, and leaves.
Later that evening, Captain Croker comes to Baker Street, summoned by a telegram from Holmes. Holmes demands a full account of what happened at the Abbey Grange that night. He warns Croker that he has already deduced most of it: if Croker lies or conceals anything, he will summon the police.
Croker met Mary (Lady Brackenstall) on the voyage from Australia. He fell in love with her, but not she with him. He was even pleased to hear of her marriage to a wealthy gentleman. Then he happened to meet Theresa, who told him of Sir Eustace's abusive behavior. He met secretly with Mary at the house; the last time on the previous night.
They were in the dining room when Sir Eustace burst in, insulted Mary, and struck her with the cudgel. He then attacked Croker, who killed him with the poker, in self-defense. Croker adds that he has no regret whatever, for he would not leave Mary in "in the power of this madman".
To avoid the scandal that could ensue, Croker and Theresa concocted the cover story of burglars caught in the act. He cut down the bell-rope exactly as Holmes deduced; he opened the wine bottle with his pocket knife's corkscrew; he took some silver plate, and dropped it in the pond.
Holmes tells Crocker that the police don't yet know the truth, and that he will wait 24 hours before revealing it, allowing Croker to get away. Croker indignantly refuses the offer - he will not leave Mary to "face the music" as an accomplice. He offers to agree to any version of the case that will leave Mary out of it.
But Holmes was only testing him, and is impressed by his loyalty to Mary. He has given Hopkins "an excellent hint" and doesn't feel he must do more. He designates Watson as the "jury", and asks him to "render a verdict". Watson declares Croker "Not guilty."
Holmes tells Croker he will keep silent unless someone else is charged, and that he may come back to Mary in a year.
Excellent plot, I recommend this book to any reader who appreciates a well written mystery story.
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0.940006 |
Atop the tallest of earth's peaks dwell the gods of earth, and suffer not man to tell that he hath looked upon them. Lesser peaks they once inhabited; but ever the men from the plains would scale the slopes of rock and snow, driving the gods to higher and higher mountains till now only the last remains. When they left their old peaks they took with them all signs of themselves, save once, it is said, when they left a carven image on the face of the mountain which they called Ngranek. But now they have betaken themselves to unknown Kadath in the cold waste where no man treads, and are grown stern, having no higher peak whereto to flee at the coming of men. They are grown stern, and where once they suffered men to displace them, they now forbid men to come; or coming, to depart. It is well for men that they know not of Kadath in the cold waste; else they would seek injudiciously to scale it. Sometimes when earth's gods are homesick they visit in the still of the night the peaks where once they dwelt, and weep softly as they try to play in the olden way on remembered slopes. Men have felt the tears of the gods on white-capped Thurai, though they have thought it rain; and have heard the sighs of the gods in the plaintive dawn-winds of Lerion. In cloud-ships the gods are wont to travel, and wise cotters have legends that keep them from certain high peaks at night when it is cloudy, for the gods are not lenient as of old. In Ulthar, which lies beyond the river Skai, once dwelt an old man avid to behold the gods of earth; a man deeply learned in the seven cryptical books of earth, and familiar with the Pnakotic Manuscripts of distant and frozen Lomar. His name was Barzai the Wise, and the villagers tell of how he went up a mountain on the night of the strange eclipse. Barzai knew so much of the gods that he could tell of their comings and goings, and guessed so many of their secrets that he was deemed half a god himself. It was he who wisely advised the burgesses of Ulthar when they passed their remarkable law against the slaying of cats, and who first told the young priest Atal where it is that black cats go at midnight on St. John's Eve. Barzai was learned in the lore of the earth's gods, and had gained a desire to look upon their faces. He believed that his great secret knowledge of gods could shield him from their wrath, so resolved to go up to the summit of high and rocky Hatheg-Kla on a night when he knew the gods would be there. Hatheg-Kla is far in the stony desert beyond Hatheg, for which it is named, and rises like a rock statue in a silent temple. Around its peak the mists play always mournfully, for mists are the memories of the gods, and the gods loved Hatheg-Kla when they dwelt upon it in the old days. Often the gods of earth visit Hatheg-Kla in their ships of clouds, casting pale vapors over the slopes as they dance reminiscently on the summit under a clear moon. The villagers of Hatheg say it is ill to climb the Hatheg-Kla at any time, and deadly to climb it by night when pale vapors hide the summit and the moon; but Barzai heeded them not when he came from neighboring Ulthar with the young priest Atal, who was his disciple. Atal was only the son of an innkeeper, and was sometimes afraid; but Barzai's father had been a landgrave who dwelt in an ancient castle, so he had no common superstition in his blood, and only laughed at the fearful cotters. Barzai and Atal went out of Hatheg into the stony desert despite the prayers of peasants, and talked of earth's gods by their campfires at night. Many days they traveled, and from afar saw lofty Hatheg-Kla with his aureole of mournful mist. On the thirteenth day they reached the mountain's lonely base, and Atal spoke of his fears. But Barzai was old and learned and had no fears, so led the way up the slope that no man had scaled since the time of Sansu, who is written of with fright in the moldy Pnakotic Manuscripts. The way was rocky, and made perilous by chasms, cliffs, and falling stones. Later it grew cold and snowy; and Barzai and Atal often slipped and fell as they hewed and plodded upward with staves and axes. Finally the air grew thin, and the sky changed color, and the climbers found it hard to breathe; but still they toiled up and up, marveling at the strangeness of the scene and thrilling at the thought of what would happen on the summit when the moon was out and the pale vapours spread around. For three days they climbed higher and higher toward the roof of the world; then they camped to wait for the clouding of the moon. For four nights no clouds came, and the moon shone down cold through the thin mournful mist around the silent pinnacle. Then on the fifth night, which was the night of the full moon, Barzai saw some dense clouds far to the north, and stayed up with Atal to watch them draw near. Thick and majestic they sailed, slowly and deliberately onward; ranging themselves round the peak high above the watchers, and hiding the moon and the summit from view. For a long hour the watchers gazed, whilst the vapours swirled and the screen of clouds grew thicker and more restless. Barzai was wise in the lore of earth's gods, and listened hard for certain sounds, but Atal felt the chill of the vapours and the awe of the night, and feared much. And when Barzai began to climb higher and beckon eagerly, it was long before Atal would follow. So thick were the vapours that the way was hard, and though Atal followed at last, he could scarce see the gray shape of Barzai on the dim slope above in the clouded moonlight. Barzai forged very far ahead, and seemed despite his age to climb more easily than Atal; fearing not the steepness that began to grow too great for any save a strong and dauntless man, nor pausing at wide black chasms that Atal could scarce leap. And so they went up wildly over rocks and gulfs, slipping and stumbling, and sometimes awed at the vastness and horrible silence of bleak ice pinnacles and mute granite steeps. Very suddenly Barzai went out of Atal's sight, scaling a hideous cliff that seemed to bulge outward and block the path for any climber not inspired of earth's gods. Atal was far below, and planning what he should do when he reached the place, when curiously he noticed that the light had grown strong, as if the cloudless peak and moonlit meetingplace of the gods were very near. And as he scrambled on toward the bulging cliff and litten sky he felt fears more shocking than any he had known before. Then through the high mists he heard the voice of Barzai shouting wildly in delight: "I have heard the gods. I have heard earth's gods singing in revelry on Hatheg-Kla! The voices of earth's gods are known to Barzai the Prophet! The mists are thin and the moon is bright, and I shall see the gods dancing wildly on Hatheg-Kla that they loved in youth. The wisdom of Barzai hath made him greater than earth's gods, and against his will their spells and barriers are as naught; Barzai will behold the gods, the proud gods, the secret gods, the gods of earth who spurn the sight of man!" Atal could not hear the voices Barzai heard, but he was now close to the bulging cliff and scanning it for footholds. Then he heard Barzai's voice grow shriller and louder: "The mist is very thin, and the moon casts shadows on the slope; the voices of earth's gods are high and wild, and they fear the coming of Barzai the Wise, who is greater than they... The moon's light flickers, as earth's gods dance against it; I shall see the dancing forms of the gods that leap and howl in the moonlight... The light is dimmer and the gods are afraid..." Whilst Barzai was shouting these things Atal felt a spectral change in all the air, as if the laws of earth were bowing to greater laws; for though the way was steeper than ever, the upward path was now grown fearsomely easy, and the bulging cliff proved scarce an obstacle when he reached it and slid perilously up its convex face. The light of the moon had strangely failed, and as Atal plunged upward through the mists he heard Barzai the Wise shrieking in the shadows: "The moon is dark, and the gods dance in the night; there is terror in the sky, for upon the moon hath sunk an eclipse foretold in no books of men or of earth's gods... There is unknown magic on Hatheg-Kla, for the screams of the frightened gods have turned to laughter, and the slopes of ice shoot up endlessly into the black heavens whither I am plunging... Hei! Hei! At last! In the dim light I behold the gods of earth!" And now Atal, slipping dizzily up over inconceivable steeps, heard in the dark a loathsome laughing, mixed with such a cry as no man else ever heard save in the Phlegethon of unrelatable nightmares; a cry wherein reverberated the horror and anguish of a haunted lifetime packed into one atrocious moment: "The other gods! The other gods! The gods of the outer hells that guard the feeble gods of earth!... Look away... Go back... Do not see! Do not see! The vengeance of the infinite abysses... That cursed, that damnable pit... Merciful gods of earth, I am falling into the sky!" And as Atal shut his eyes and stopped his ears and tried to hump downward against the frightful pull from unknown heights, there resounded on Hatheg-Kla that terrible peal of thunder which awaked the good cotters of the plains and the honest burgesses of Hatheg, Nir and Ulthar, and caused them to behold through the clouds that strange eclipse of the moon that no book ever predicted. And when the moon came out at last Atal was safe on the lower snows of the mountain without sight of earth's gods, or of the other gods. Now it is told in the moldy Pnakotic Manuscripts that Sansu found naught but wordless ice and rock when he did climb Hatheg-Kla in the youth of the world. Yet when the men of Ulthar and Nir and Hatheg crushed their fears and scaled that haunted steep by day in search of Barzai the Wise, they found graven in the naked stone of the summit a curious and cyclopean symbol fifty cubits wide, as if the rock had been riven by some titanic chisel. And the symbol was like to one that learned men have discerned in those frightful parts of the Pnakotic Manuscripts which were too ancient to be read. This they found. Barzai the Wise they never found, nor could the holy priest Atal ever be persuaded to pray for his soul's repose. Moreover, to this day the people of Ulthar and Nir and Hatheg fear eclipses, and pray by night when pale vapors hide the mountain-top and the moon. And above the mists on Hatheg-Kla, earth's gods sometimes dance reminiscently; for they know they are safe, and love to come from unknown Kadath in ships of clouds and play in the olden way, as they did when earth was new and men not given to the climbing of inaccessible places.
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The crust of the Earth is divided into plates that move relative to one another. The interaction of these plates creates many of the earth's landforms. Provided information about crustal characteristics and plate boundaries, students will experiment with representative materials to understand crustal interactions.
Goal: Expose students to different crustal types and their interactions.
List the three types of plate interactions.
Name one landform that results from each plate interaction.
We are most familiar with the layer of the earth called the crust. It is the layer we live on. Surprisingly, it is the thinnest of Earth's layers. The crust ranges in thickness from 5 to 100 km, yet it represents less than 0.1% of the total volume of Earth! The crust is ridged and brittle, and when it cracks or moves, earthquakes occur. The two crust types are continental crust and oceanic crust.
Continental crust is about 35 to 100km thick. It is thickest beneath mountain ranges and plateaus. Continental crust is much lighter, or less dense, than oceanic crust. It contains a large portion of quartz material (SiO2), also known as felsic material.
Oceanic crust is the rock found below the world's oceans. It is the thinner, about 5-10 km thick, and more dense. It is composed of mafic (iron- and magnesium-rich) rock such as basalt. Because oceanic crust is more dense it tends to sink below the lighter continental crust when the two crust types collide.
On Earth the crust is fragmented into a dozen or more large and small regions known as plates. A single plate can be made of both continental and oceanic crust. These plates move relative to one another as they ride atop hotter, mobile material.
Divergent boundaries form when plates break and spread apart from one another. This occurs when a convection current develops below the crust. Upwelling hot magma forces plates to spread as the magma oozes through cracks at the surface, creating new crust. The place where new oceanic crust is formed is called a spreading ridge. An example of a spreading ridge is the Mid-Atlantic Ridge at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
Divergent boundaries are not found only in the ocean. Sometimes a continental plate will tear apart due to the same upwelling forces that tear apart oceanic plates. For example, Lake Superior is believed to be the remnant of a failed continental rift. That rift did not succeed in tearing the continent into two separate pieces, but it did create a valley that is now filled by water.
Convergent boundaries are found where two plates collide. Large scale examples of this are seen when continents collide. When plates collide they buckle like the hood of a car in a head-on collision, forming huge mountain ranges. The mountains of Denali National Park are the result of continent - continent collision.
When continental and oceanic crusts collide, heavier oceanic plates slide under lighter continental plates. This process is known as subduction. As it slides below the continental crust, sinking deeper into the hot mantle, the oceanic crust begins to melt. This melted oceanic crust becomes less dense (because it is now in a liquid form) and therefore rises towards the surface causing continental crust to rise up above it, forming mountains and volcanoes.
Mountain ranges formed near subduction zones include the Andes, the Cascades and the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. The Andes formed as the Nazca Plate was subducted below the South American Plate. The Cascades and the Aleutian Islands are forming as the Pacific Plate slides under the North American Plate.
Deep underwater trenches form where continental and oceanic crusts collide. A trench is a depression in the sea floor that can be over a mile deep and hundreds of miles long. When oceanic crust collides with oceanic crust one plate subducts and begins to melt. The melting plate rises towards the surface and can push through the above plate forming underwater mountains and volcanoes. Volcanoes produced from oceanic-oceanic collisions can result in island chains. The Marianas Islands were produced from an oceanic-oceanic collision.
Transform boundaries form where two plates collide and slide next to each other along a fault instead of uplifting or subducting. A famous example of such a collision is the San Andreas fault in California. The thin strip of California to the west of the fault rides with the Pacific Plate as it slides along the side of the North American Plate. The San Andreas is very active, and this constant movement results in frequent earthquakes. Point Reyes National Park in California preserves the beauty associated with fault movement.
The following activities can be used to explain different crustal types, interactions between them, and fault boundaries.
Fill a clear plastic or glass container with water. Container should be at least 10 inches deep and wider than a paper towel for best results.
Float a paper towel (like those from the bathroom) on the surface of the water.
Carefully, using your finger, dip one end of the paper towel under the surface of the water.
The paper towel should start to sink, or "subduct", similar to the action of a sinking oceanic plate.
Fill an old cake pan with wax (about 1 to 2 inches thick) and heat over a hot plate to melt the wax.
Bring the wax to a temperature that allows for a thin, cooled film of wax to form on the surface. This represents the earth's crust.
Using a sharp knife, cut a spreading ridge in the center of the pan, above the heat source. Cutting a simple straight line will demonstrate the action at a spreading center. Cutting a zigzag pattern using horizontal lines connecting vertical lines will demonstrate a spreading ridge where both divergent and transform boundaries are found. This is closer to real-life than a simple straight cut.
The wax "plates" should begin spreading due to upwelling convection currents of warm wax from below. If there is little motion in the "plates", try separating the "plates" from the rest of the wax by cutting simple straight boundaries to separate the "plates" from the excess "crust".
Ask students to describe the two types of crust. Which one is thicker? Which one is heavier? How do those differences affect the landforms we see on Earth's surface? What types of landforms result from different plate interactions? What happens when a subducted plate starts to melt? Why do plates move? What is convection?
The following variation is much less complicated and allows students to perform the plate interactions with foam and cardboard. This variation will help students visualize different plate boundaries with foam pieces.
Give foam pieces to each small group or pair of students. There should be either two thick foam pieces labeled "continental crust", two cardboard pieces labeled "oceanic crust" or one "continental" foam and one "oceanic" cardboard. These foam pieces represent plates floating on the mantle (or table, in this case).
Have students move the strips along the top of the table simulating the three types of plate interactions: colliding (convergent boundary), pulling apart (divergent boundary) and sliding next to each other (transform boundary).
Students then draw pictures of how the foam pieces interact and label the types of interactions.
After the interactions are noted, have students exchange pieces of foam to have different plate interactions; continent-continent, continent-ocean, ocean-ocean.
You may want to diagram the interactions on the board for the students before starting the activity.
Have students draw a step by step cartoon of how Oceanic and Continental crust interact. Label each frame with an explanation of landforms and interactions resulting from the collision.
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0.990426 |
In the Jotforms integration with Mailchimp I have selected the List I want to integrate to in Mailchimp. Then I match the fields. I have one field called "Areas of Interest". This has 5 multiple choice options.
When I test the form to make sure it's integrating properly, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. It seems random and when I select more than one area of interest and submit form it also doesn't integrate.
Do you know why it is inconsistent?
What I suggest you do is to add a Form Calculation field where all the choices of the user will be saved in one field. This way, the field matching should work.
1. Add a Form Calculation Widget field under the Area of Interest.
2. Set the field expression to Area of Interest A-Z. Click Add field then select the multiple choice element (Area of Interest). It will show as Area of Interest 0-9 first. Click on it to make the field get the text value of the multiple choice element. It should show as Area of Interest A-Z.
After this, you can make the field hidden and map this to the MailChimp Integration instead of the multiple choice field.
The integration should work properly now.
If I hide the field then it won't show up when I try to map it to the mailchimp integration.
No, it should still appear in the match dropdown field.
By the way, you are using a checkbox field in your form. Checkbox allows multiple selections.
While in your MailChimp form, you are using a radio button field which only allows single selection. Technically, they can be mapped in the integration but the checkbox can't be saved into a radio field when there are multiple options selected. This is probably the reason why it is not consistent.
You must replace the radio button field in your MC form with a checkbox field. Then in the integration window, check the "Let subscribers select their group" so the checkbox field from your MC form will be automatically created in your JotForm form.
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0.994492 |
"For instance strtol is better than atoi and you should be checking each time whether strtok returns null"
from question "Putting values into a struct from a file"
"You can also look into strtol which is better than using atoi in terms of error checking"
from question "Int to char array as a function returning an array of char the simple way"
"You need to error check strtol and ensure there are as many passed before using them -- strtol is better than atoi as helps detect errors"
from question "Passing argument from main to function in C"
"Use strtol it does better error reporting than atoi"
from question "Getting the first value from this string and convert it to an integer"
"If you want to accept a number rather than a digit and only a number strtol works much better than atoi as it allows you to check for failures"
from question "C Using isdigit to check if optarg is a digit"
"All have more or less cumbersome and non-obvious error checking involving errno strtol is way much better than atoi in any case so avoid using atoi"
from question "Which is preferd use istrstream or strtol/strtod for reading number from string"
"Strtol is better than atoi with better error handling"
from question "String conversion to int"
"Besides strtol is a better option than atoi as strtol can handle failures better"
from question "In C: I want to take a mix of characters and convert them to lower case"
"I would recommend strtol which provides better error handling than atoi or sscanf"
from question "C: How to convert a string of ints into actual ints and store them in an array?"
"The c function strtol is much better make it a habit to prefer that one to atoi"
from question "How do I convert a char* to an int?"
"You can also use strtol which is obviously better than atoi"
from question "Runtime error using atoi() in C"
"I start off calling gets to fill the buffer then using strtol to convert the human-readable text in buffer to an actual computer int value - note that strtol is more powerful than atoi and uses long int instead of int as its declared type"
from question "Having trouble acquiring Int from "gets(*buffer)""
"I understand that strtol and strtof are preferred to atoi atof since the former detect errors and also strtol is much more flexible than atoi when it comes to non-base-10"
from question "Why does OSX document atoi/atof as not being threadsafe?"
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0.93868 |
What is your favorite way to eat a pomegranate? Mine is to sprinkle the arils (seeds) over a bowl of granola or cereal and top it with a little almond milk. Of course, since pomegranates are a delicious, nutritious fruit, I also like to just eat them fresh... but I do not like the mess that happens when I try to open and de-seed a pomegranate in the kitchen. They are still yummy - but it looks a little like a crime scene if you walk in on me with my hands covered in pomegranate juice - LOL!
What? You've never had a pomegranate? You are missing out! It is time to change that.
Imagine my delight to meet the friendly people from juicy gems who grow pomegranates out in sunny California and find out that they specialize in making them eater-friendly! No mess required. I'm in - sign me up! They invited me to try their pomegranate arils three ways: fresh, frozen, and dried.
Just in case you are wondering, aril is another word for seed. Because so many people think of something hard and crunchy when they hear the word seed, and pomegranate arils are not hard and crunchy, I'm going to keep referring to them as arils ok? If you are wanting a texture comparison, the fresh and frozen arils are similar to the consistency of uncooked sweet corn. A little bit of texture, and a lot of juiciness. Oh - that gives me an idea for another salad to try! The dried ones are similar to the consistency of dried cranberries, but smaller, and much sweeter. These pomegranate arils are tasty frozen, but eating them frozen is a treat for warm weather. Pomegranates are nutritious and delicious!
For this review the lovely people at juicy gems had me head over to our local Wal-Mart where you can find their 10 oz. bags of frozen arils in the frozen fruit aisle. One of the benefits of getting the frozen arils is that they stay fresh for a really long time. You can find their fresh arils at several retailers, but their frozen ones are right there at Wal-Mart, and is there anyone out there that does not drive by a Wal-Mart every month? Probably not! So stop in and pick up a couple bags of juicy gems the next time you are in the neighborhood.
I've been keeping a steady supply of juicy gems defrosting in the fridge to put on my morning granola or other cereal. It has been unseasonable warm here this past month, so I have not had them in my hot oatmeal yet, but I'm pretty sure that will be happening next week when they're predicting snow. I just open the bag of frozen arils and pour about half of them into a resealable container and put them in the fridge at night for the next two or three days' breakfast treats. The 10 oz. bags contain 2 servings at a 3/4 cup serving size. Putting 3/4 of a cup of fruit in my 1 cup of granola every morning would be a bit overwhelming, so I usually use around 1/4 cup of the juicy gems pomegranate arils in my bowl of granola.
My other new favorite use for the arils is as salad toppers. I made the most delicious salad by accident one day when I threw a bunch of leftovers in a container and topped them with juicy gems right before I headed out the door to work.
I tried it again without the bell peppers and it was not as satisfying. Something about the combination of those arils with the peppers made this salad pop with flavor.
Then I got around to baking with the juicy gems. Oh yes, my family started laughing at me, but they were delicious baked with chicken, just adding a little sweetness ... although they loose their color when baked, so I've decided that next time I will set some defrosted arils aside to add as garnish after the chicken is baked. Yes, that is honey mustard dressing as a glaze for the chicken - I'm on a honey mustard kick this month. In December it will probably be raspberry vinaigrette, you should stop back by to see what I make next!
I've been waiting for salmon to come up again on our menu rotation to try this latest salad, and it was worth the wait! I grilled the salmon and then put it over a bed of romaine lettuce which was generously seasoned with honey mustard... yes ~ pomegranates do work wonderfully with other dressings, or even no dressing if you'd like a dry salad ~ I'm just letting you in on what I did. :) So after the lettuce and dressing, I added the salmon, chopped green bell peppers, and about a quarter cup of juicy gems. It was delicious!
Arlene and I have been working on a smoothie using juicy gems, crushed pineapple and chocolate whey powder. I'll let you know once we've perfected the recipe.
Just in case you love the challenge of de-seeding a pomegranate yourself... Arlene and I saw these lovely ones at Costco this morning! They have plenty - and they're juicy gems - so they'll be delicious!
I received free product in exchange for this honest review. I was not required to write a positive review, nor was I compensated in any other way. All opinions are mine, or those of my family. I am disclosing this in accordance with FTC regulations.
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0.954315 |
Slow cooker braised beef stew recipe. Beef chuck roast with vegetables, mushrooms, and spices cooked in a slow cooker. Would you like to cook this beef stew faster? Why do not use a pressure cooker? Food cooked in a pressure cooker turns juicy and has a perfect flavor.
Instructions: Heat the olive oil in an electric pressure cooker turned to the saute mode. Add the beef chuck roast to the hot oil and brown on all sides. Turn off the saute function, then stir in all vegetables.
In a large mixing bowl, combine the Worcestershire sauce, beer, mushroom soup, and soup mix. Whisk well and pour mushroom mixture over the roast. Close the instant pot and lock the lid. Press Meat/Stew button and cook at high pressure for 120 minutes.
Using the Natural Release method, open the pressure cooker. Allow staying for a few minutes to bring the pressure to normal. Measure 2-3 cups (500-750 ml) of cooking liquid and pour into the medium saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Boil for 5-6 minutes or until reduced by half.
In a small mixing bowl, combine cornstarch and water. Whisk until cornstarch has been dissolved completely. Stir the cornstarch mixture into the boiling sauce and cook, stirring occasionally, until it thickens.
Place beef cubes into 4-5-quart (450 L) slow cooker.
In a 1 1/2-2-quart(11/2-2 L) pan, combine slivered peel, onion, beef broth, dry red wine, port, vinegar, soy sauce, thyme, ginger, and five spice. Mix well and bring to a boil over medium-high heat.
Remove cooked liquid from the heat pour over the meat in the slow cooker. Cover the pot and cook on high-heat setting for 5-6 hours or until beef is tender.
In a frying pan, heat the butter over medium heat. Add sliced mushrooms. Open the lsow cooker and skim off and discard fat from liquid. measure 1 cup (250 ml) of the liquid and pour into thepan with mushrooms. Cook, stirring mushrooms often, until lightly browned.
Using a slotted spoon, remove cooked beef from the slow cooker and place in a single layer in a shallow casserole. Pour cooked mushrooms among the liquid over the meat.
Preheat an oven to 375 F (180 C). Bake in preheated oven until meat is sizzling and browned, for about 15 minutes.
Measure 2 cups (500 ml) of cooking from the slow cooker. Pour the liquid into 2-3-quart (2-3 L) pan. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, for about 8-12 minutes.
In a small mixing bowl, combine cornstarch and water. Mix until cornastarch has dissolved completely. Pour the cornstarch mixture into boiling liquid and stir until thickened, about 30 seconds. Remove the sauce from the heat and pour evenly over beef and vegetables. Mix well. Season with salt and black pepper. Serve hot.
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0.978984 |
A novel approach is being suggested for the interpretation of Qoh 8:1, which views Qoh 8:1-3a as dealing with a person's demeanour. In particular, it is shown that these verses provide advice regarding one's facial and oral expression when in an audience with a high ranking official. Qohelet 8:1-3a consists of four parallel lines anchored on the two keywords: and . Recognition of the underlying structure of 8:1-3a, and similarities with Elephantine Ahiqar and Sir 13:26, points to some minor scribal errors. Correction of these errors restores the contextual sense of the verse. In particular, it is being suggested that in 8:1 the impossible should be emended to read "speak well," and the two rhetorical questions in 1a refer to facial and oral expression. A parallel line is obtained in 1b, if instead of one reads ' or "his mouth," assuming the ligature or an extra , respectively. The proposed interpretation suggests that the population of Yehud had considerable access to higher officialdom during the Ptolemaic period, making the advice in 8:1 rather useful.
presented commentators with significant problems. The awkward nature of the verse is apparent in the indefinite nature of the questions asked, and in the answer being unrelated to these questions. It is not obvious in the first question what the criterion for comparison is, and the general sense of in the second question obscures its meaning.
This approach, of viewing 1a as suggesting that no one except the wise could possibly understand the apothegm presented in 1b, provides structural coherence to the verse and is favored by a number of commentators.4 However, Nowack noted: "in diesem Fall würde man die Determination von vermissen und, was die Hauptsache ist, das folgende wort 1b bedarf eines d. i. einer Deutung nicht."5 Moreover, nowhere in the Tanach is the meaning "apothegm, adage, maxim" for attested. While use of the article in the Qohelet corpus is somewhat inconsistent, the absence of the article here is a decided objection to this approach.6 In the immediately following vv. 2-4 and possibly v. 5, the root is used in the sense of words, or speech. Furthermore, MT speaks in 1a of "knowing" , not "making it out" or "deciphering." A person could know the meaning of an apothegm without being a student of wisdom. However, it seems that Qohelet is looking for a person who is both wise and knows the meaning of the adage in v. 1b. Why would he insist on both conditions? Finally, even if it is assumed that Qohelet means "make it out" when he uses why would knowing the meaning of 1b epitomize wisdom?
Commentators are also divided on where v. 8:1 should be included. Many commentators think that 8:1, or at least 8:la, is the conclusion of the preceding unit.7 They view 8:la as concluding that acquisition of a complete understanding of everything is impossible, which is the point of 7:23-29.8 However, the flow of logic in unit 7:23-29 does not require a concluding remark about the limitations of a person's wisdom.9 Attachment of v. 1 to unit 7:23-29 would be gratuitous.
In addition to the difficulties regarding 8:1 that have been mentioned, commentators were also challenged by the referent of in 1bα and 1bß. Do the two in v. 1b have the same referent? Is this referent is the referent of in 1bß and a man's wisdom brightens his face, why was it harsh in the first place? If the two ו in v. 1b have different referents what are they? How does 1b relate to 7:3 and 7:2, where seemingly a somber or sad face is suggested as being the proper demeanour for the wise?
The purpose of this paper is to provide answers to the questions that were posed, assuming the unit intends to advise Judeans on proper and useful behaviour when appearing before rulers. In this context, it is being suggested that the impossible should be emended to read "speak well." Thus, in 1a the two questions refer to facial and oral expression. A parallel response is obtained in 1b, if instead of one reads "his mouth," assuming the ligature , or assuming an extra נ. It will be argued that these minor emendations more aptly fit the context.
It seems that already the ancient versions encountered considerable difficulty with 8:1. This can be sensed from the various implicit emendations that their translations contain. The Septuagint apparently adds to 1aα rendering ("who knows the wise?") and drops the of comparison from . The rendering of by ("interpretation of the word, or saying") gives 1aß some definiteness, though "saying" is not in the semantic field of and "word" gives a meaningless expression. Aquila reads instead of , and so does Symmachus .16 However, the phrase never occurs in the Tanach, nor do the sub-phrases and . The Targum understands v. 1 as the challenge to comprehend God's word as it appears in the scriptures, saying: "who is the wise man, who can stand before the wisdom of God, and fathom the words of the prophets?" The Targum is even more definite than the Septuagint regarding ,it homiletically renders by ("words in the prophets").
The Septuagint also reads ("will be hated" = instead of ("will be changed"), and so does the Peshitta .17 On the other hand the Targum's reflects the MT reading "will be changed," where the verb "change" is conjugated like verbs with a segol.18 The Vulgate's commutabit also implies the reading . The Vulgate's rendition of 1bß by et potentissimus faciem illius commutabit ("and the omnipotent will change his face") leaves one with more questions than answers.
Unlike the MT, where is the noun "boldness, impudence," the versions read the adjective , "harsh, impudent" (Deut 28:50, Prov 7:13).19 As Gordis noted, this reading would necessitate the change of .20 The changes in the Versions do not imply use of a different Vorlage than MT, but they do reflect the challenges that 8:1 posed to them.
Classical Jewish exegetes also struggled with 8:1. Rashi (1040-1105) assumes that in 1aα the word "important" ( ) is implied, and in 1aß the word means "interpretation" and/or "compromise." It seems that Rashi understands in the sense of "fearful expression, frightening sight" exploiting Ex 34:30, which describes the shining face of Moses and the Israelites' fear to approach him. Unfortunately, adding does not make the question in 1aα more definite. Actually, in 9:15-16 Qohelet complains that the wise are not that important and their wisdom is not appreciated. Furthermore, the generality of leaves "interpretation of a thing" or "compromise of a thing" nebulous.
Rashbam (c. 1085-1174) also assumes an implied in 1aα. He understands in the sense of "strength." It seems that Rashbam assumes that wisdom makes a person's face shine and brings him joy. This joy then increases the shining of the face. Rashbam's approach amounts to reading into the text a two stage process, which can be hardly justified.
Ibn Ezra (1089-c. 1164) notes that sometimes in biblical texts a word or letter is implied.21 He suggests that this might be the case in v. 1, which should be read: 22 He also raises the possibility that v. 1 is a question and an answer: "Who is as the wise? One who knows the meaning of a thing." This would require deletion of the from and addition of a to . Ibn Ezra tries to imbue with some definiteness by explaining that it means understanding the utility of everything and why it is so . While this sounds reasonable, it is not anchored in the text. He also raises the possibility that is the result of metathesis and should be read "make distinct, declare, interpret." In a vein similar to that of Rashbam, Ibn Ezra suggests that acquired wisdom would induce humility, and will remove anger and arrogance from a person's face. Again, such a two stage process is not indicated in the text.
Qara (second part of 11th to first part of 12th century) expands the range of possible implications in 1aα by admitting , thinks," a word play on . This in effect undermines Rashi's suggestion since it shows that many attributes can serve as the referent of the question in 1aα. Qara also undermines Ibn Ezra's explanation of suggesting that it refers to "any question that is asked" . In his view, acquisition of knowledge changes a person's face, making it bright and happy.
Sforno (1470-1550) assumes that the question in 1aα alludes to the wise in 7:28, and in 1aß refers to the morals of mythological stories. He understands the change occurring in 1bß as being that of mind controlling desires. Sforno's explanation, as well as that of the preceding Jewish commentators, highlights their unsuccessful attempts to accord v. 1 some definiteness and internal coherence. Their failures stem from resorting to extraneous elements for explaining the verse, rather than exploiting the text at hand.
Qohelet 8:1 continued to challenge commentators to this day. Modern commentators, as their predecessors, continued to imbue 8:1 with extraneous notions. For instance, Ginsburg says regarding 1a: "The next lesson which this common sense view of life teaches is gentle submission. He who is truly wise, who understands the import of this matter, or of this view of life, has no com-peer."23 He explains that 1b gives the reason for the sentiment expressed in the former clause. Such a wise person has no equal "because his wisdom, or the prudent view of life according to which he regulates his conduct, makes him cheerful, and teaches him submission, to endure that which he cannot cure."24 One would be hard pressed to detect in our verse any textual references to "gentle submission" in life.
Hengstenberg considers 1aß the reason for 1aα. No one is equal to the wise man "because wisdom leads us into the nature, the essence of things, and thus furnishes a basis for right practical conduct."25 In his view, "The reason of the joy afforded by wisdom may be found in the insight it gives into the nature of things, specially, into the providence of God; and in the assurance and decision with which, as a consequence, we can regard the practical question of life."26 This wisdom changes the hard and rigid features of one's face, which express boldness and impudence. Hengstenberger, too, is reading much extraneous material into the Qoh 8:1.
However, it is doubtful that the highly intellectual attributes described in 1a (according to Delitzsch) are on a par with the physical expressions of the face in 1b.
In Stuart's view, the questions in 1bα amount to: "Who, like a wise man, can explain the difficulties, or solve the questions that arise in respect to wisdom?" He understands the two last clauses as constructed alike and stating: "The wisdom of a man enlightens his face, and haughtiness or impudence disfigures his face."30 Stuart also imbues 1a with his own notions. Unfortunately, the comparison in 1b suggested by Stuart is not antithetical, and Stuart is aware of that. Moreover, knowing about a wise man's ability to deal with fundamental problems of wisdom has nothing to do with facial expression. In other words, v. 1b can stand alone; it does not need 1a, as interpreted by Stuart.
Wildeboer views 1a as praise of wisdom-its indispensability, and 1b as description of two of its effects. He takes 1bα as referring in general to both of those effects: wisdom illumines one's countenance (sie erleuchtet das Angesicht) and wisdom makes the face bright (macht das Gesicht hell). The first effect is explicated in 1a, which Wilderboer assumes speaks about wisdom giving a clear and confident view (sie gibt einen klaren, sicheren Blick) as in Qoh 2:14, Ps 19:9 and 119:130. The second effect is explicated in 1bß, suggesting that wisdom changes the coarseness of expression (frechen, rohen Gesichtsausdruck).31 This explanation is too complicated to be obvious to the reader. Moreover, Wilderboer does not textually substantiate his assertions regarding wisdom's indispensability and its provision of a clear view.
Graetz finds it significant for the exegesis of 8:1 that the Septuagint and Aquila give essentially the same translation of 1aα. According to this indication the original construction might have been ? In his view the meaning of was misunderstood by all. It is not connected with , but means "compromise," as in NH lukewarm." Only the wise know how to find a compromise in a conflict. Graetz suggests that Qohelet specifically refers to a conflict arising from one's obligations to a ruler according to a loyalty oath, and participation in morally repugnant acts in case he is a tyrant. Graetz adopts the Septuagint's reading ("will be hated" = ) and consequently considers 1b an antithetical parallelism, a wise man is liked and an impudent man is hated.32 In this case one wonders why Qohelet adds in 1a the word Without it the text reads better and is less problematic. Moreover, the conflict described by Greatz has no basis in the text. Finally, nowhere else has it been asserted that a wise man is liked. Reading ("will be hated") destroys the parallelism between 1aα and 1aß, since "hate" is not the opposite of "a bright face."
More recent exegesis did not produce new understanding of 8:1. For instance, Gordis surprisingly does not discuss 1a, except the word . He suggests that 1b deals with a royal court setting, and in 1bα "the stress is not upon the gracious act, but upon appearing gracious toward one's associates in court,whatever may be one's real feelings. A court official cannot display his dislikes or anger at will. His wisdom will impel him to maintain his suavity and poise under all circumstances."33 The next statement is a nuance of 1bα, "A courtier will avoid the appearance of being overbold and aggressive. His good sense will lead him to disguise such an expression."34 In Gordis' view wisdom does not introduce lasting changes of demeanour, but rather enables control and manipulation of one's feelings. It is doubtful that such a sense can be deduced from the terms ("will brighten") and ("will be changed").
Fox also leaves 1a unexplained. He considers 1b as describing the advantages of wisdom in the presence of a despot. Fox observes: "A man's wisdom will not make him actually happy in the presence of a despot, but it does teach him to affect a cheerful demeanour so as to ingratiate himself with whoever is in power and disarm his suspicions. Impudence, on the other hand, betrays itself by a scowl, and this could very well cause trouble with the ruler."37 If Fox is correct, then the text should have been .
While Seow's paraphrase expresses a useful thought, but it is not anchored in the MT.
The most extensive emendation of 8:1 has been suggested by Ginsberg. He makes the following three emendations: (1) in 1aα; (2) reads (or ) instead of in 1bα; and, (3) vocalizes the final word in 1bß.39 With these emendations Ginsberg obtains the meaning: "Who here is wise (or, or is acquainted with-see immediately), and who knows the meaning of the saying: 'A man's pleasure lights up his face (cf. Prov 15:13 and the paradox in Koh 7:3), but fierceness darkens his face (cf. Job 14:20; Lam 4:1; Dan 5:6; 7:28)'?" However, the suggested mechanism, by which the original Aramaic was rendered as the Hebrew , is not convincing. It has been noted already, that the meaning "apothegm, adage, maxim, saying" for is nowhere attested in the Tanach. Also, the sources cited in support of the meaning "darkens" for are not compelling. Ginsberg takes 8:2 being the answer to the question posed in 8:1; Qohelet answers a question about a proverb with a proverb. However, it is difficult to see how this could be the case, if Ginsberg rendition of 8:1 is correct and 8:2 means "Heed the face of a king, and in the matter of an oath of God be not over hasty." The watching of a king's face could only make sense if 8:1 is first understood.
Text analysis focused on the unusual phrase , the meaning of the phrases and , and the vocalization of and . BHS notes that the reading has been proposed in an effort to create synonymous parallelism with 1aß. It is notable that the expressions and occur several times in the Tanach (Hos 14:10, Ps 107:43, Jer 9:11), but not the comparative 40. The abnormal instead of the normal , with the ה dropped and its vowel under the comparison, is not of infrequent occurrence, especially in later books (Ezek 40:25; 47:22; 2 Chr 10:7; 25:10; 29:7; Neh 9:19; 12:38; 1 Sam 13:21; Ps 36:6).41 It has been suggested that 1aα should be parsed . Seow believes that the Greek traditions had a Vorlage that read instead of 42 . However, the phrase never occurs in the Tanach, nor do occur the sub-phrases and . Zapletal thinks that the original reading might have been just 43.
The word occurs in biblical Hebrew only in Qoh 8:1 but frequently in the Aramaic portion of Daniel (Dan 2:4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 16; 2:4, 6, 15, 21; 5:12, 16, etcetera.), mostly in contexts of mantic wisdom.44 It occurs frequently in the Qumran texts, where it refers to the interpretation of biblical texts.45 Most commentators take it to be an Aramaic loan word related to BH and , and render it "interpretation."46 In Daniel, the phrase "meaning of the words" (5:15, 26) and "meaning of the thing" (7:16) are closest to in Qoh 8:1, and they refer to definite items or events. Qohelet uses in the sense of "word, thing" in 1:1, 8, 10, 5:1, 2, 6, 6:11, 7:8, 21, 8:1, 3, 4, 5, 9:16, 17, 10:12, 13, 14, 20, 12:10, 11, 13, and three times in the form . In the immediately following vv. 2-4 and possibly v. 5, the root is used in the sense of words, or speech.
The phrase has been interpreted by some commentators "gives a clearer view" (Ps 19:9, 119:130), and by some "makes the face pleasant." Most commentators understand as reflecting the "brightness" which appears on a wise man's face when he correctly analyzes a matter ( ). The concept "a bright face" or the effect of "brightening one's face, or eyes" is mentioned in Num 6:25; Isa 60:5; Ps 4:7; 19:9; 34:6; Prov 16:15; Job 29:24, etcetera. However, expressions similar to are used in the Tanach only in reference to the deity (Ps 31:17; 67:2; 80:4, 8, 20; 119:135, Dan 9:17). A somewhat more remote use of "a bright face" in reference to a human is Prov 16:15, "in the light of the king's countenance is life," and Sir 13:26, .
Ginsburg argues that Deut 28:50 shows cannot mean "the impudence of his face," since one could not say that the enemy is impudent to the young, and therefore must mean a foe treating with "vigor" both old and young.49 Gordis observes that "The change is unnecessary. The suffix in refers back to (so most comm.) or possibly may be rendered impersonally as 'one's boldness.'"50 BHK raised the possibility that should be emended to . Such an emendation is orthographically untenable.
Comparison of 2 Kgs 25:9 with Jer 52:33 shows that is the result of a confusion.51 Indeed many Hebrew MSS have . The revocalization "has been suggested to harmonize with the Active 52. This emendation is not necessary, since the Passive gives a more fitting sense.53 The idiom "to change (one's) face" = "to change (one's) expression" is attested in Job 14:20, Sir 12:18 ( ), and 13:24 ( ). Knobel raised the possibility that reflects the Arabic šana', "brighten, lighten." He says: "Vielleicht könnte man auch das arab. šana' splenduit, luxit vergleichen und übersetzen: der Unmuth seines Angesichts wird heller, geht in Heiterkeit über."54 This suggestion would only introduce redundancy into 1b.
A review of the exegesis on Qoh 8:1 shows considerable agreement on the interpretation of its keywords and phrases. The major difficulties that commentators encountered were of a thematic nature: giving meaning to 1a; deciphering the inner structure of 1b; and, identifying the logical continuity of the verse. In the following, a novel approach for resolving these difficulties will be proposed.
The general statement in v. 1 opens with the question "Who is as the wise?" which intrigues the reader in its indefiniteness and challenge, initiating contemplation and anticipation. Qohelet's reference set for this question will become clear only later, after v. 2 has been read, and particularly after the structure of 8:1-3a becomes obvious. The understanding of the second question, as it appears from the analysis, depends on the meaning of and is disputed.
If the reading is adopted, the noun is awkward; an adjective would give a better fit. Such an adjective can be obtained from by transposing the first two letters. The phrase "speak nicely" makes good sense. It is akin to the expression in Gen 49:21 and reflects Qohelet's principle in 3:7b about there being a time for keeping quiet and a time for talking. The first part of v. 1 then says: Who is as the wise? Who knows to speak nicely? It is notable that a wise person's capability to speak nicely is highlighted by Qohelet (9:17; 10:12 and 12:10).
Clearly, 1bα speaks about the effect that wisdom has on a person's demeanour. It cannot mean a wise man's capability to manipulate his facial expression. In that case Qohelet would have used the ל of purpose with the infinitive (cf. 5:5). Qohelet says that wisdom brightens one's face, gives it a pleasant expression. Various opinions have been offered on what specifically refers to. Demeanour has historically played an important role in establishing a person's veracity, and is consequently often applied to a witness during a trial. Demeanour evidence is quite valuable in shedding light on the credibility of a witness. This is one of the reasons why personal presence at trial is considered to be of paramount importance, and has great significance concerning the Hearsay rule. To aid a judge or jury in determining whether to believe or not believe particular testimony, they are provided with the opportunity to hear statements directly from a witness in court whenever possible. It is likely that Qohelet refers to this aspect of a pleasant demeanour-one associated with truthfulness.
The difficult 1bß deals with a person's tone of speech. This view is based on the assumption that in 1bα affected the reading 1bß. Specifically, it is being posited that the original 1bß read "and the forcefulness of his mouth will be changed." In the original text the מ was misread as under the influence of the preceding . There is evidence that scribes sometimes wrote two letters so close to each other that confusion arose. For instance, in 11QPsa (Plate 8*, Column X, lines 1 and 6) , , and look like , and looks like .65 The ligature is well attested in the Tanach, and there is considerable evidence of the confusion.66 For instance, one finds in Jos 5:2 (Ketib) but (Qere); 2 Kgs 22:4 but in 2 Chr 34:9 ; Jer 49:19 but in Jer 50:44 (Qere) and (Ketib); etcetera. The ligature is probably attested in Job 15:27, where would not only be more meaningful but also form a paronomasia with . The form occurs in Ps 17:10 and 59:13, and the prefixed form in Ps 58:7. There are numerous cases in the Tanach where the י is missing.
It is also possible that the word under the influence of the preceding , was spelled . A similar error might have occurred in Prov 15:14 where was written under the influence of in Prov 15:13. The Massoretes corrected this error in the Ketib-Qere apparatus, making the Qere instead of the Ketib 67. Whichever emendation mechanism is adopted 1bß would refer to the tenor of one's speech, akin to (Ps 68:34), "who thunders forth with his mighty voice." Understanding 1bß as referring to the tenor of one's speech is also supported by Sir 13:26, often cited as a paraphrase of Qoh 8:1. While Sir 13:26a, as 8:bα, states that the visible effect of a good heart is a shining face ( ), Sir 13:26b states that the effect of evil thought is contentious speech ( )68).
If the interpretation of as is correct, 8:2a as 8:1bß, will also refer to the "face" or to the expression of the face.72 The second part of 8:2, however, seems to refer to speech, as the term "utterance" (Job 5:8) indicates. The specific nature of this "utterance" is not clear. Commentators suggested that this "utterance" related to the "oath of loyalty" (unmen-tioned in the Tanach, cf. 1 Chr 11:3, 29:24),73 "swearing by the name of God" (Exod 22:10),74 and "King's/peoples' oath to God," (2 Kgs 11:17).75 The structural analysis that follows suggests another possibility; that one should be sensitive to a king's change in tenor of speech-to his inclusion of swearing by God. Swearing obviously expresses much emotional involvement and is intended to convey irrational commitment and ultimate credulity.
The first column refers to the wise ( ), a person ( ), a king ( ), and both a wise person and king. Since the first two are also the referents in the corresponding cola of the second column, it is reasonable to assume that that the referent in 8:2b is the king's speech, and 8:3aß refers to both the wise and king; i.e., to a bad argument made by the wise person to the king. In that case, one is advised in 8:2b to watch for a change in the king's tenor of speech indicated by his use of emotionally high-charged language, such as swearing. In 8:3aß one is advised to leave the king's presence when he sees that his words have a bad effect on the king. Since the last three cola in the first column deal with facial expression one would have expected the first colon also to refer to the face. In Modern Hebrew 1bα should have something akin to "who is as the wise knows facial expression." Unfortunately, Qohelet did not have the appropriate Hebrew phrase for "facial expression." He left it unsaid, assuming that it would be sensed from the parallel cola.
The second column refers to manner of speech, which is indicated by use of the root and the organ of speech ( ) in lieu of speech. In the first and last colon the quality of speech is addressed, and in the following two cola the change in tenor is mentioned. In 8:1-3a Qohelet alludes to a range of capabilities that a wise person has regarding demeanour. In particular, a wise man's pleasant facial expression is a basic asset in reducing animosity and promoting rationality and sincerity; he can "read" the facial expressions of others; he is articulate; he can modify the tenor of his speech; he is capable of noticing variation in tenor of speech; and he knows to assess their effect.
8:3a: A wise petitioner should not be disquieted by a change in the king's facial expression. However, seeing that his arguments badly affect the king he should leave.
This study is in full agreement with Irwin's position with respect to the sub-unit 8:1-3a. It has been shown in this study that the theme of 8:1-3a is human demeanour in particular one's facial and oral expression. The four lines of 8:1-3a form a clear parallelism, which is anchored on the two keywords: and 80.
The structure of 8:1-3a, as well as Sir 13:26, imply that 1bß has to refer to speech.81 It has been demonstrated that such a reading is possible, since there is evidence that could be a corruption of , the organ of speech. The parallelism of and in v. 4 indicates that in the entire section the term should be understood as "speech, utterance, words."
Moreover, the structure of 8:1-3a implies that 2b must refer to the king's face as 3a does. It has been demonstrated that such a reading is not only possible, but also elegantly resolves the problem of the awkward in 2a. The reading instead of introduces an Aramaism.82 However, this is not the only Aramaism in the book.
Finally, the unit structure implies that the abrupt 1aα must allude to facial expression. Unfortunately Qohelet did not have a proper Hebrew term for "facial expression."83 He left 1aα undefined, assuming the reader would deduce the alluded sense from the concrete examples in 1bα, emended 2a, and 3a.
Difficulties encountered in interpretation of 8:1 forced many commentators to use extraneous notions for imbuing this verse with definiteness and internal coherence. Recognition of the underlying structure of 8:1-3a, and similarities with Sir 13:26 and Elephantine Ahiqar, point to some minor scribal errors. Correction of these errors restores the contextual sense of the verse. The proposed interpretation of 8:1 and understanding of 8:1-3a suggests that the population of Yehud had considerable access to higher officialdom during the Ptolemaic period, making the advice given rather useful.
Tur-Sinai, Naphtali H. הספר. Volume 2 of הלשון והפר. Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1959. Waldman, Nahum. "The dābār ra' of Eccl 8:3." Journal of Biblical Literature 98 (1979): 407-408.
1Heinrich Graetz, Kohelet (Leipzig: C.F. Winter'sche Verlagshandlung, 1871), 100.
2 Michael V. Fox, A Time to Tear Down and A Time to Build Up (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 276.
3 Moses Stuart, Commentary on Ecclesiastes (New York: G.P. Putnam, 1851), 230.
4 Ernst Elster, Prediger Salamo (Göttingen: Verlag der Dieterichschen Buchhandlung, 1855), 102; Ferdinand Hitzig and Wilhelm Nowack, Der Prediger Salomos (2nd ed. KEHAT 7; Leipzig: Hirzel, 1883), 267; Stuart, Commentary, 230; New Jewish Publication Society; James L. Crenshaw, Ecclesiastes (Westminster: John Knox Press, 1987), 149; etc..
5 Hitzig and Nowack, Prediger, 267.
6 Charles H. H. Wright, The Book of Koheleth (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1888), 395.
7 For instance, the following think that 8:1 alludes to the preceding material: Stuart, Commentary, 230; Hans W. Hertzberg, Der Prediger (KAT n.s., 17, 4; Gütersloh: Mohn, 1963), 156-163; Kurt Galling, "Der Prediger," in Die fünf Megilloth (2nd ed.; ed. Max Haller; HAT 18; Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 1969), 108-110; Norbert Lohfink, Kohelet (NEchtB; Wurzburg: Echter Verlag, 1980), 56-59; Aare Lauha, Kohelet (BKAT 19; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchen Verlag, 1978), 146; Diethelm Michel, "Qohelet-Probleme: Überlegungen zu Qoh 8,2-9 und 7,11-14," ThViat 15 (1979/80): 81-103; Roger N. Whybray, Ecclesiastes (OTG; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989), 128; James A. Loader, Polar Structures in the Book of Qohelet (BZAW 152; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1979), 50-54; Tremper Longman, The Book of Ecclesiastes (NICOT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 209; Klaus R. Baltzer, "Women and War in Qohelet 7:23-8:1a," HTR 80 (1987): 127-32; Oswald Loretz, "'Frau' und griechisch-jüdische Philosophie im Buch Qohelet (Qoh 7,23-8,1 und 9,6-10)," UF 23 (1991): 245-64; Michael V. Fox, and Bezalel Porten, "Unsought Discoveries: Qohelet 7:23-8:1a," HS 19 (1978): 26-38; etc.
8 Choon-Leong Seow, Ecclesiastes: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New York: Yale University, 2008), 290.
9 Aron Pinker, "Qohelet's Views on Women-Misogyny or Standard Perceptions? An Analysis of Qohelet 7:23-29 and 9:9," SJOT 26/2 (2012): 157-191.
10 George A. Barton, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Ecclesi-astes (ICC; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1908), 149. Cf. also Lauha, Kohelet, 144.
11 Franz Delitzsch, Hoheslied und Koheleth (BKAT 4; Leipzig: Dorffling & Franke, 1875), 331.
12 Many consider 8:1 the beginning of a new unit. See, for instance, Ernst W. Hengstenberg, Commentary on Ecclesiastes (Philadelphia: Smith, English & Co., 1869), 191; Delitzsch, Hoheslied, 330; August Knobel, Commentar über das Buch Koheleth (Leipzig: Verlag von Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1836), 269; Seow, Ecclesiastes, 290; etc.
14 Charles. F. Whitley, Koheleth: His Language and Thought (BZAW 148; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1979), 71. Whitley notes that in Egyptian Aramaic הפשר occurs with the meaning "to settle an account."
16 This reading has been adopted by the Vulgate, as well as a number of modern commentators. Seow, Ecclesiastes, 277; H. Louis, Ginsberg, Studies in Koheleth (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1952), 35; etc..
17 There was apparently a tradition for such reading, as indicated in the passage: "Rabbah bar Rab Huna says, with respect to every man who has impudence of expression it is lawful to call him wicked, for it is written (Prov 21:29) 'a wicked man hardens his face.' Rab Nachman bar Isaac says, it is lawful to hate him, for it is written (Qoh 8:1) 'and the coarseness of his face is changed.' Read not changed (ישנא) but hated (ישנא) (bTa'anit, 7b). This reading has been adopted by Graetz, Kohelet, 101; D. Carl Siegfried, Prediger und Hocheslied (HAT II, 3/2; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1898), 62; etc..
18 Compare 2 Kgs 25:29 with Jer 52:33. /הא confusion occurs often in the Tanach. See for instance, Lam 4:1 ישנא for ישנה Gen 42:43 אברך for הברך; איך[Gen 26:9] but היך [Dan 10:17]; Lev 24:7 לאזברה for להזברה; Ruth 1:20 מרא for מרה; 1 Kgs 22:25, 2 Kgs 7:12 הבחלה but אבחלה in 2 Chr 18:24; Job 8:21 ימלה for מראי; Isa 44:8 חרהו for חראו; Ezek 14:4 הב (K) but אב (Q); 2 Chr 20:35 אחחבר for התחבר; Ezek 14:3 האדרש for ההדרש; Jer 25:3 אשבים for השבים; Ps 76:6 אשזללו for השחוללו; Isa 63:3 אגאלתי for הגאלתי; Jer 52:15 האמון for ההמון; Hos 12:9 און for אדרם ;הון in 2 Sam 20:24 and 1 Kgs 12:18 but הדרם in 2 Chr 10:18; נאק in Ezek 30:24 but נהק in Job 6:5; צנא Num 32:24 but צנה Ps 8:8; דבה (Deut 23:2) but דכא in some MSS (Tanach Koren 11 end); Dan 11:44 according to the Massorah, in the Land of Israel the reading was חמה and in Babylon חמא; etc..
19 This reading has been adopted by a number of modern commentators. Cf. for instance, Barton, Ecclesiastes, 151; Siegfried, Prediger, 62; BDB 739a; etc..
20 Robert Gordis, Koheleth, the Man and his World: A Study of Ecclesiastes (3rd ed.; New York: Schocken, 1968), 286.
21 For instance אל בקצפך אל תוביחני (Ps 38:2); יחי ראובן ואל ימת ראובן (Deut 33:6); מתן בסתר יבפה אך ושחד בחק יבפה חמה ץזה (Prov 21:14); מאל אביך ויץזרך ומאח שדי (Gen 49:25); מישרים אהבוך ץלמות (Song 1:4); etc..
22 The reading ביודץ is also adopted by Knobel, Buch Koheleth, 269.
23 Christian D. Ginsburg, Coheleth (London: Longman, 1861), 390. Ginsburg says, "The phrase פשר דבר exactly corresponds to the Hebrew נבון דבר in 1 Sam 16:18." This does not seem to be the case. In 1 Sam 16:18 דבר is apparently referring to speech.
25 Hengstenberg, Commentary, 191. Hengstenberg takes דבר = מה שהיה in 7:24 and designating the object of wisdom, but does not provide any justification.
28 Edward H. Plumptre, Ecclesiastes: or, the Preacher (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1881), 174.
29 Publius Ovidius Naso (43 b.c.e. - 14 c.e.), Epistulae ex Ponto II (starting 9 c.e.), 9.47.
30 Stuart, Commentary, 230. Stuart (231) believes that on a deeper level Qohelet is saying: "Wisdom preserves life, or imparts the light of life, while haughtiness brings on the disfigurement of death." The questions in 1a are Qohelet's uncertain sentiments on whether this deep thought would be understood by the reader. Indeed, there is much room to doubt!
31 D. Gerrit Wildeboer, "Der Prediger," in Die fünf Megillot (Freiburg: Mohr, 1898), 149.
32 Graetz, Kohelet, 100. Graetz understands 1bß as meaning: "der Trotzige (der sich geradezu dem Könige widersetzt, wie die Verschworenen gegen Herodos) wird verhasst."
37 Fox, Time to Tear Down, 276.
39 Ginsberg, Studies, 35. Ginsberg says: "חבמת is to be assumed to be original in the Hebrew, but to reflect there a חבמת which (under the influence of חבים in the first half of the verse) had supplanted the correct חדות in the Aramaic original from which the Hebrew was made."
40 Attempts to see in these expressions support for linking 8:1 to the preceding section cannot be justified.
41 Note also Qoh 6:10 שהתקיף (Ketib) but שתקיף (Qere); Qoh 10:3 בשהםבל (K) but כשסכל (Q); and, 2 Kgs 7:12 בהשדה (K) but בשדה (Q). It has been suggested that the non-syncope of the ה is indicative of a Northern provenance. Cf. Gary A. Rendsburg, "The Northern Origin of the 'Last Words of David' (2 Sam 23,1-7)," Bib 69/1 (1988): 116.
42 Seow, Ecclesiastes, 277, says: "As Euringer has argued, tis oiden sophous 'who knows the wise' in LXX may be the result of an inner Greek corruption from tis hade sophos 'who is so wise' (as in Aq; cf. tis houtos sophos in Symm; also SyrH, OL), an error prompted in part by the next rhetorical question: kai tis oiden lysin rhematos 'who knows the solution of a saying' (see Euringer, Masorahtext, pp. 93-94)."
43 Vincenz Zapletal, Das Buch Kohelet (Freiburg: O. Gschwend, 1911), 189.
44 Scott C. Jones, "Qohelet's Courtly Wisdom: Ecclesiastes 8:1-9," CBQ 68/2 (2006): 211-228. Jones suggests that in 8:1a: פשר דבר refers to the prognostication of a divine oracle, and it belongs, as it does elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, in the context of mantic wisdom in the royal court."
45 H.-J. Fabry and U. Dahmen, פשר ThWAT 6: 810-816.
46 The feminine form פשרה occurs in Sir 38:14, where it parallels רפאות and may mean "judgment," as the Samaritan פשרונה (Exod 21:1 and frequently).
47 The MT idiom ץז פניו is unique, but supported by a number of Hebrew MSS that have ץוז, with the mater clearly indicating a noun. Seow, Ecclesiastes, 278-79, argues that "the unique expression ץז פנים is to be preferred, since it is likely that the other reading merely conforms to the more common idiom."
48 Delitzsch, Hoheslied, 331. Cf. b. Ber. 16b; b. Šabb. 30b; b. Besah 25b; and b. 'Abot 5:20.
50 Gordis, Koheleth, 286-287. Cf. 7:1, יום הולדו, "the day of one's birth," and Gordis' note there.
51 Cf. Sir 9:18, 12:18, and 13:25.
52 Vulgate; Hitzig and Nowack, Prediger, 268; Zapletal, Kohelet, 190; BHS; Galling, Prediger, 108-110; Ginsberg, Studies in Koheleth, 35; etc.
53 In this case it would be necessary to change ישנא to תשנא.
55 Cf. Graetz, Kohelet, 101; BHS; Fox, Time to Tear Down, 276; Seow, Ecclesiastes, 278; etc.. Some follow the Versions deleting אני. Cf. William A. Irwin, "Ecclesiastes 8:2-9," JNES 4 (1945): 130-31.
56 Mitchel J. Dahood, "Canaanite-Phoenician Influence in Qoheleth," Bib 33 (1952): 41.
57 Hertzberg, apud Gordis, Koheleth, 286.
58 The working definition of demeanour is: The outward physical behaviour and appearance of a person. Demeanour is not merely what someone says, but the manner in which it is said. Factors that contribute to an individual's demeanour include tone of voice, facial expressions, gestures, and carriage. Cf. David Friedlander and Stan Franklin, "LIDA and a Theory of Mind," in Artificial General Intelligence 2008 (ed. Pei Wang, Ben Goertzel and Stan Franklin; Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2008), 141.
59 Ginsburg, Coheleth, 390. Variants of the phrase נבון דבר occur in Dan 10:11 and 9:23.
60 This seems to be the general understanding of the phrase. Cf. P. Kyle McCarter, Jr. I Samuel (AB 8; Garden City: Doubleday, 1980), 279; Yehudah Kiel, אלאומשל א (Jerusalem: Mosad HaRav Kook, 1981), 163, who translates מבלבל ץניניו בתבוה מדבר בבינה ובהשכלאו; Elia S. Artom, שמואל (Tel-Aviv: Yavneh, 1959), 55, who translates רגיל לומר דברי בינה etc.
62 This confusion is probably caused by the fact that the semantic field of דבר includes word and thing.
63 Naphtali Tur-Sinai, הספר (vol. 2 of הלשון והספר Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1959), 404.
64 Zer-Kavod, קהלת in חמש מגילות (Aaron Mirski, et al. (eds.); Jerusalem: Mosad HaRav Kook, 1973), 3, note 18. See also 6:11 and 7:21. Cf. Job 15:11.
65 Emanuel Tov, The Textual Criticism of the Bible: An Introduction (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1990), 199.
66 Raphael Weiss, "On Ligatures in the Hebrew Bible (ם=נו)," JBL 82 (1963): 188194. Qimchi, in his commentary on 1 Chr 1:7, says: לפי שחם קרובים בכחיבה וכן חשחנה הקריאה בוי״ו וביו״ד .Cf. Rabbinic Bibles (Mikraot Gedolot).
67 The following are instances of extra/missing נ in the Tanach: Judg 4:11 בצץנים (K) but בצץננים (Q); Job 19:2 ותדכאונני for ותדכאוני; Prov 3:15 מפנײם (K) but מפנינים (Q); Prov 15:14 ופני (K) but ופי (Q); 2 Sam 21:6 ינתן (K) but יתן (Q); 1 Kgs 17:14 תתן but תת (Q); Jer 42:6 אנו (K) but אנחנו (Q); Prov 8:17 ימצאנני instead of ימצאנני; Ruth 3:4 תץשין instead of חץשי etc.
68 The meaning of the hapax legomenon שיג (1 Kgs 18:27) is in doubt. I assumed that it refers to a contentious interaction.
70 Arthur E. Cowley, Aramaic Papyri in the Fifth Century B.C. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923), 215, line 101: מן ברק אנת תהשתר לך חזי קדמתך מנדץם קשה ץל א נפי מ לך אלתום זץיר כצפה (Look before thee: Something harsh (=a harsh expression) [on the f]ace of a k[ing] (means) 'Stand (=tarry) not!' His wrath is swifter than lightening: do thou take heed unto thyself). Cf. Mitchel J. Dahood, "Qoheleth and Recent Discoveries," Bib 39 (1958): 311; Ginsberg, Studies, 34-36.
72 Panc C. Beentjes, "'Who Is Like the Wise?': Some Notes on Qohelet 8,1-15," in Qohelet in the Context of Wisdom (ed. Anton Schoors; BETL 136; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1998), 306. Beentjes suggests that the questions in 8:1 are not rhetorical, and they are answered by the אני in 8:2. However, a single word answer does not occur in the Tanach.
73 Elster, Prediger, 103; Wildeboer, Prediger, 149; Ginsburg, Coheleth, 391-392; Hitzig and Nowack, Prediger, 269; Knobel, Buch Koheleth, 272; Graetz, Kohelet, 101-102; Plumptre, Ecclesiastes, 175; Stuart, Commentary, 232; Wright, Koheleth, 396; Zapletal, Kohelet, 190; Barton, Book of Ecclesiastes, 149; Marcus A. Jastrow, Jr. A Gentle Cynic, Being a Translation of the Book of Koheleth (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1919), 227; Gordis, Koheleth, 288; Crenshaw, Ecclesiastes, 148, etc.. According to Josephus, Ptolemy Lagi demanded an oath of loyalty from the Jews (Ant. XII, 1 and XI, 8, 3).
74 Hengstenberg, Commentary, 163; Fox, Time to Tear Down, 277; Ginsberg, Studies, 105; Oswald Loretz, Qohelet und der Alte Orient: Untersuchungen zu Stil und theologischer Thematik des Buches Qohelet (Freiburg: Basel, 1964), 74; Seow, Eccle-siastes, 279; Longman, Ecclesiastes, 209, etc..
75 Delitzsch, Hoheslied, 333; Siegfried, Prediger, 62; T. Anthony Perry, Dialogues with Kohelet: The Book of Ecclesiastes (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993), 135; etc.
76 Roland E. Murphy, Ecclesiastes (WBC; Dallas: Word Inc, 1992), 82. In Murphy's view vv. 2-4 modify v. 1.
77 Diethelm Michel, "Qohelet-Probleme," 87-92. Michel suggests that 8:2-5 is a quotation of traditional wisdom that is critiqued in vv. 6-9. A similar position is adopted by Schwienhorst-Schönberger who states: "In der literarischen Gestaltung dieser Texteinheit thematisiert Kohelet sein Verhältnis zur Tradition. Zum Thema 'Weisheit und Macht' lässt er die Tradition (in Form einer Schülerantwort) zu wort kommen (V 2-5), um sie anschließend kritisch zu relativieren (V 6-9)." Cf. Ludger Schwienhorst-Schönberger, Kohelet (HTKAT; Freiburg: Herder, 2004), 413. Krüger introduces an artificial ambiguity into 8:2 saying: "The semantic ambiguity of this admonition is in contradiction to its pragmatic function: the text gives its readers an instruction how to behave vis-à-vis a king, but it does not make clear to its readers how they are supposed to behave. Thus, the text looks like a caricature of the opportunism of a courtly wisdom: the wise man sees himself as the sovereign master of the situation (cp. verse 1) and yet is only the king's plaything and the object of his moods." See Thomas Krüger "Meaningful Ambiguities in the Book of Qoheleth," in The Language of Qohelet in Its Context: Essays in Honour of Prof. A. Schoors on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday (ed. Angelika Berlejung and Pierre van Hecke; OLA 164; Leuven: Peeters, 2007), 68. However, the obvious asymmetry between man and king fully undermines the possibility that "man sees himself as the sovereign master of the situation." Qohelet's advice tries to optimize the outcome in an unfavourable situation.
78 Commentators usually consider vv. 3, 5, and 6 having a moral or religious connotation. However, more often in Qohelet רץ means "discomfort," "misfortune," or "un-happiness." Jones, "Qohelet's Courtly Wisdom," 222, note 43, notes that "the phrase [דבר רע] could also be rendered as a 'bad word.' This sense is supported by Qohelet's advice in v. 4." Waldman suggests that that the phrase דבר רע in 8:3 refers to a conspiracy or rebellion against the king. It should be noted that ancient treaties consider rebellion to begin with the thought, proceeding on to the spoken word, that is, fomenting of sedition, and then the actualization in deeds. Thus, דבר רע could be understood as words that can be interpreted in a bad sense. See Nahum Waldman, "The dābār ra' of Eccl 8:3," JBL 98 (1979): 407.
80 Christian Klein, Kohelet und die Weisheit Israels: Eine formgeschichtleche Studie (BWANT 132; Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1994), 75, note 13. Klein considers Qoh 8,1b the only maxim in the entire Book of Qohelet that can be defined as synthetic parallelism. However, Lauha, Kohelet, 144, note 11, felt "die beiden Stichoi... sind also synonym parallel."
81 It is notable that word and speech are keywords in the often quoted parallel between the Ahiqar text (Cowley, Aramaic Papyri, 215, lines 101-104) and Qoh 8:2-4. For instance, Ahiqar twice emphasizes that the word of the king (מלת מלך) is to be soothing to the heart of the subordinate; once emphasizes the urgency of fulfilling the king's command (פקיד); twice emphasizes the paradoxically gentle but destructive force of the king's speech (ממלל מלך), and, by metonymy, his tongue (לשן מ) and, once the subordinate is warned to watch his speech.
82 Seow, Ecclesiastes, 279, says: "Even less likely is the proposal to read אנפי מלך "before the king" instead of אני פי מלך in MT (so Ginsberg, Studies, 35, and Whitley, Koheleth, 71). To account for the unassimilated נ in אנפי, one would have to assume an Aramaism here." In this study, אנפי מלך is understood as "the king's face."
83 The phrase הברת פניהם in Isa 3:9 refers to what can be discerned from the face. It does not mean "facial expression."
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As part of its Big Data Cloud Service, Oracle provides a set of internal and external tools designed to help users efficiently deploy and manage Hadoop-based big data systems.
Oracle's Big Data Cloud Service offers enterprise users a platform on which to quickly and easily implement a big data architecture based on Apache Hadoop and other open source technologies.
The service utilizes Oracle's cloud infrastructure and other technologies, from Oracle and elsewhere, to provide a complete environment to set up, manage and elastically scale Hadoop clusters through a centralized portal. Big Data Cloud eliminates many of the cluster implementation complexities for Oracle Hadoop users by providing the tools necessary to deploy a system, secure its environment and integrate it with other services.
The heart of the service doesn't come from Oracle itself; it comes from Cloudera Inc.'s CDH distribution of Hadoop and related big data tools, which together comprise a scalable, integrated architecture for managing massive volumes of heterogeneous data.
For those not in the know, Hadoop is an open source framework for building distributed processing systems across clusters built on commodity hardware. Because of its distributed architecture, Hadoop can effectively manage petabyte-scale data sets and support sophisticated analytics while controlling security, governance and data access.
CDH includes four core Hadoop modules that help facilitate storage and processing operations: Hadoop Common, a set of utilities that supports the other modules; the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS), which can store a mix of structured, semistructured and unstructured data; the Hadoop Yarn job scheduler and cluster resource manager; and the MapReduce processing engine and programming framework.
In addition to the core Hadoop components, CDH offers a number of other Apache technologies that work in conjunction with Hadoop to expand on or add to its capabilities. Many of them are integrated into the Big Data Cloud Service along with the Hadoop distribution.
One of the most important is the Apache Spark processing engine, which supports a wide range of operations, including data transformations, machine learning, batch and real-time stream processing, and advanced modeling and analytics. IT teams often use Spark as a batch processing engine rather than MapReduce because of Spark's flexibility and in-memory processing capabilities, which offer significant performance improvements over MapReduce.
ZooKeeper, a coordination service for maintaining and synchronizing configuration and naming information for distributed applications.
Like other cloud-based services, Big Data Cloud evolves quickly, so the list of supported Apache tools will likely change over time. Refer to Oracle's documentation to view the most current list of what's available as part of the service to support Oracle Hadoop deployments.
Along with CDH, Big Data Cloud also gives Oracle Hadoop users several Cloudera-developed tools that come with its Cloudera Enterprise Data Hub Edition bundle, and that are particularly useful for working with Hadoop clusters.
That includes the Cloudera Manager administrative console, the Cloudera Search software for accessing Hadoop data, the Cloudera Navigator data management and security tool, and Apache Impala, a SQL-on-Hadoop engine that was created at Cloudera and elevated to a top-level project by the Apache Software Foundation in November 2017.
It isn't all just a repackaging of Cloudera's technology, though. The Big Data Cloud Service also includes a number of other utilities and applications for managing data and system resources, as well as the following Oracle Big Data Connectors to facilitate access to Hadoop data: Oracle Loader for Hadoop; Oracle XQuery for Hadoop; Oracle Data Integrator Enterprise Edition; Oracle R Advanced Analytics for Hadoop; and Oracle SQL Connector for HDFS.
Additionally, Big Data Cloud includes Oracle Big Data Spatial and Graph, which offers spatial and graph analytics services that support Hadoop workloads and NoSQL database technologies. It also offers optional integration with Oracle's Big Data SQL Cloud and Cloud Infrastructure Object Storage Classic services.
Big Data Cloud is efficient and greatly simplifies the process of standing up Oracle Hadoop clusters that can process and store vast amounts of data.
However, Big Data Cloud does come at a price that varies depending on computing and storage resource requirements, as well as the selected payment plan. In this case, the price starts at $29.0322 per compute hour or $14,400 per month for a three-node starter pack cluster.
Implementing a Hadoop cluster is a significant undertaking and should not be taken lightly.
For many organizations, the price is worth it when taking into account the complexities and costs that come with standing up their own big data platforms.
Implementing a Hadoop cluster is a significant undertaking and should not be taken lightly. That said, organizations that have the in-house IT infrastructure and resources to pull it off themselves might prefer the more granular control that an on-premises deployment provides.
Before considering Big Data Cloud or any other big data platforms for your organization, be sure to do a thorough analysis that looks at the long-term total cost of ownership and in-house resource requirements. As always, the devil is in the details.
Do you plan to implement Oracle's Big Data Cloud Service? Why or why not?
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0.945753 |
What does the name "Irwin Allen" conjure up in your mind? Much will depend on when you were born, where you lived, whether you had access to television or went to the cinema, what influences were around you in your youth, what your friends talked about, the toys you saw in stores, and how much you enjoyed a good wholesome adventure yarn. For younger generations, your influences more likely revolve around family members who themselves grew up under the Irwin Allen universe.
Irwin Allen is formally credited as being a producer, director, radio and television host, and writer, but he was in fact, much, much more than this. Words that might describe him include award winning, businessman, deal maker, salesman (he was often described as being able to sell ice to eskimos), innovator, creator, showman (the Barnum of his generation), facilitator, negotiator etc. Whatever words are used, the end result was a vast range of television shows and movies that are remembered with fondness, affection, and which have loyal followings that have stood the test of time.
Irwin Allen had an eye for the kind of entertainment the family market would enjoy. For instance, Irwin had a fascination with the circus, making The Big Circus in 1959, and later in the 1970's proposing another movie project tentatively called "Circus, Circus, Circus!" His career successes coincided with the post-war boom, the Cold War, the colourful swinging sixties and the space race to the Moon, and he capitalized on the mood of the time.
On the subject of circus acts, Irwin Allen could be described metaphorically as being a juggler himself. Whereas other producers might have been more than content with one successful television show on the airwaves, during the sixties Irwin Allen was juggling three prime time shows whilst forging ahead with other prospective projects. To achieve this feat he depended upon a very skilled, excitingly innovative, and capable production team with many award winning and nominated crew members. Many of these crew members had had a long and successful careers at Twentieth Century Fox before joining the "Irwin Allen Bandwagon."
Whilst the majority of visitors to this site may be here because of an affection for his 1960's science fiction shows and 1970's disaster movies, Irwin Allen in fact had had a substantial career much earlier, making his name as a Hollywood columnist, radio show host and in the late 1940's, creating the first celebrity quiz show called "Hollywood Merry-Go-Round." He learned the business and networked with the stars, writers, producers during the heyday of Hollywood. His career as a movie producer began when he was brought in as a co-producer with Irving Cummings Jr. for Double Dynamite in 1948 and just 4 years later earned one of the highest accolades possible, the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for The Sea Around Us.
Not all of Irwin Allen's productions were universally or critically acclaimed, and yet they have largely developed lives of their own over the decades, each with their individual worldwide followings. Perhaps Irwin Allen's work inspires the independent thinking or rebellious side in a lot of us where we watch and enjoy these movies and shows for what they are, fun entertainment, rather than critiquing them to the point of extinction. The escapism these productions provide makes us forgiving of the flaws or scientific anomalies in each, and yes, fun can be had questioning these inaccuracies, but in the fullness of time, what we have is happy memories of his achievements. Is anyone really going to dislike a show such as Doctor Who because the TARDIS breaks all rules of dimensional space by being vastly bigger on the inside than when viewed from the outside? No, because the premise of show is making the unbelievable believable for around an hour a week when we all want to relax our brains from the stresses and strains of the "real world". That's what Irwin Allen tapped into with his sci-fi shows. And similarly with the disaster genre - he made fear and disaster an adventure to be conquered.
Given his extensive record in the movie and television industry, it may come as some surprise that he never had a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. As the man who created some of the most popular shows and movies for a generation of fans, he deserves to be remembered for what he brought to the field of entertainment between the 1940's and 1980's.
The Irwin Allen News Network (IANN) and this website were established to make sure Irwin Allen's work is documented and permanently recorded for the future and to recognize the contributions of all the people who played their part in sealing the name "Irwin Allen" in cinematic and television history.
By clicking on the links around this site you can explore the work of this amazing gentleman and his brilliant teams of actors, directors, writers and production crews.
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0.999983 |
How to enable the built-in Bluetooth devices using the wireless switch?
Enabling the built-in Bluetooth devices using the wireless switch.
Please refer to the following steps to enable the built-in Bluetooth devices using the wireless switch.
- The Bluetooth functionality may not work depending on the third party devices or the software version used by third party companies.
- When purchasing Bluetooth devices, please check their operating and compatibility conditions.
1. Slide the Wireless Switch to On and double-click (wireless switch icon) on the notification area at the bottom right of the desktop.
2. Select Enable Bluetooth Device and click Apply.
- A message Setting up the Wireless devices. Process may take several minutes. Please wait. will be displayed.
3. Click OK to close the Wireless Device Switch dialog box.
4. A bluetooth icon will appear on the notification area at the bottom right of the desktop.
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0.96748 |
The Case of Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization, also known as the "Military Case" or the "Tukhachevsky Case"), was a 1937 secret trial of the high command of the Red Army, a part of the Great Purge.
The Case of Military was a secret trial, unlike the Moscow Show Trials. It is traditionally considered one of the key trials of the Great Purge. Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky and the senior military officers Iona Yakir, Ieronim Uborevich, Robert Eideman, August Kork, Vitovt Putna, Boris Feldman and Vitaly Primakov (as well as Yakov Gamarnik, who committed suicide before the investigations began) were accused of anti-Soviet conspiracy and sentenced to death; they were executed on the night of June 11 to 12, 1937, immediately after the verdict delivered by a Special Session (специальное судебное присутствие) of the Supreme Court of the USSR.
The Tribunal was presided over by Vasili Ulrikh and included marshals Vasily Blyukher, Semyon Budyonny; Army Commanders Yakov Alksnis, Boris Shaposhnikov, Ivan Panfilovich Belov, Pavel Dybenko, and Nikolai Kashirin; and Corps Commander Yelisey Goryachev. Only Ulrikh, Budyonny and Shaposhnikov would survive the purges that followed.
The trial triggered a massive subsequent purge of the Red Army. In September 1938, the People's Commissar for Defense, Kliment Voroshilov, reported that a total of 37,761 officers and commissars were dismissed from the army, 10,868 were arrested and 7,211 were condemned for anti-Soviet crimes.
The trial was preceded by several purges of the Red Army. In the mid-1920s, Leon Trotsky was removed as Commissar of War, and his known supporters were expunged from the military. Former tsarist officers had been purged in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The latter purge was accompanied by the "exposure" of the "Former Officers Plot". The next wave of arrests of military commanders started in the second half of 1936 and increased in scope after the February–March 1937 Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), where Vyacheslav Molotov called for more thorough exposure of "wreckers" within the Red Army since they "had already been found in all segments of the Soviet economy".
General Mikhail Tukhachevsky was arrested on May 22, 1937 and charged, along with seven other Red Army commanders, with the creation of a "right-wing-Trotskyist" military conspiracy and espionage for Nazi Germany, based on confessions obtained from a number of other arrested officers.
Before 1990, it was frequently argued that the case against the eight generals was based on forged documents created by the Abwehr, documents which deluded Stalin into believing that a plot was being fomented by Tukhachevsky and other Red Army commanders to depose him. However, after Soviet archives were opened to researchers after the fall of the Soviet Union, it became clear that Stalin actually concocted the fictitious plot by the most famous and important of his Soviet generals in order to get rid of them in a believable manner.
At Stalin's order, the NKVD instructed one of its agents, Nikolai Skoblin, to concoct information suggesting a plot by Tukhachevsky and the other Soviet generals against Stalin and pass it to Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the German Sicherheitsdienst intelligence arm. Seeing an opportunity to strike a blow at both the Soviet Union and his archenemy Wilhelm Canaris of the German Abwehr, Heydrich immediately acted on the information and undertook to improve on it, forging a series of documents implicating Tukhachevsky and other Red Army commanders; these were later passed to the Soviets via Beneš and other neutral parties. Stalin's archives indeed contain a number of messages received during 1920–30s duly reporting the possible involvement of Tukhachevsky with the "German Nazi leadership".
While the Germans believed they had successfully deluded Stalin into executing his best generals, in reality, they had merely served as useful and unwitting pawns of Stalin.[clarification needed] It is notable that the forged documents were not even used by Soviet military prosecutors against the generals in their secret trial but instead relied on false confessions extorted or beaten out of the defendants.
Afraid of the consequences of trying popular generals and war heroes in a public forum, Stalin ordered the trial also be kept secret and for the defendants to be executed immediately following their court-martial. Tukhachevsky and his fellow defendants were probably tortured into confessions.
At first, it was thought 25-50% of Red Army officers were purged, but it is now known to be 3.7-7.7%. Previously, the size of the Red Army officer corps was underestimated, and it was overlooked that most of those purged were merely expelled from the Party. 30% of officers purged 1937-9 were allowed back.
Another suggestion is that Tukhachevsky and others indeed tried to conspire against Stalin. Leon Trotsky, in his later works, argued that while it was impossible to speak conclusively about the plot, he saw indications in Stalin's mania for involvement in every detail of Red Army organization and logistics that the military had real reasons for dissent, which may have eventually led to a plot. However, the revelations of Stalin's actions following the release of Soviet archival information have now largely discredited this theory. While the military may well have had many secret reasons for their dislike of Stalin, there is now no credible evidence that any of them ever conspired to eliminate him.
Victor Suvorov has claimed that the purge was intended to replace Red Army officers with more competent generals for his future conquests. For example, he claims that the ultimate reason why Tukhachevsky was killed is because he failed to conquer Poland during the Polish-Soviet War; despite this failure, Tukhachevsky had made a career in the party when he suppressed the Tambov rebellion. Suvorov compared the change of leadership in the Army as teeth of an shark: each new row is sharper than the previous one.
Vadim Rogovin's book 1937: Stalin's Year of Terror contains a lengthy discussion of another unexplained mystery: that it took only about two weeks to force admissions of guilt from the accused despite the fact that all of them were relatively young, able-bodied military trained people. Rogovin contrasts it with the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, where the inquest lasted about four years, despite brutal tortures.
"Известия ЦК КПСС" ("Izvestiya TseKa KPSS" - Reports of the Central Committee of the CPSU), #4, April 1989).
"Report of the Party Commission headed by N. Shernik, June 1964." Voennye Arkhivy Rossii, No. 1. Moscow 1993.
"M. N. Tukhachevskii i 'voenno-fashistskii zagovor,'" Voenno-istoricheskii Arkhiv, No. 1. Moscow, 1997.
"The Case of the So-Called 'Anti-Soviet Trotskyite Military Organization' in the Red Army," Political Archives of the Soviet Union, vol. 1, No. 3., 1990.
This page was last edited on 18 March 2019, at 21:21 (UTC).
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How much do you know about tobacco, aside from the fact that cigarettes are stuffed with dried, finely cut tobacco leaves? Ever been curious about the tobacco plant and its history? If you’re interested in learning more about the tobacco plant and its roots, no pun intended, here are some quick facts you should know.
⦁ Tobacco is classified under the nightshade family of plants, many of which are considered poisonous to humans. Nightshades are typically rich in alkaloids, which are natural pesticides and are used by nightshade plants as a defense mechanism against getting eaten. One such alkaloid is nicotine, which is a highly addictive drug for humans.
⦁ There are many types of tobacco plant. Two of these, Nicotiana tabacum and Nicotiana rustica, are used in the production of tobacco products such as cigars and cigarettes. Nicotiana Tabacum is the most commonly used variety of tobacco today.
⦁ North America is the homeland of the tobacco plant. Other species in genus Nicotiana can be found all over the world. It’s even been discovered that, prior to the advent of modern tobacco, Australian aborigines consumed a certain type of tobacco that’s native to the Australian continent.
⦁ Tobacco is an old, old crop. Historians believe that the tobacco plant was first cultivated and domesticated several millennia ago. What started as wild growth in South America eventually spread to North America, where certain varieties of the plant have been domesticated as early as 1000 – 1400 BC. Diggers in northeastern Peru actually recently found fossilized tobacco dating back to the Pleistocene Era, 2.5 million years ago.
⦁ The tobacco plant once enjoyed sacred status for ancient civilizations in the Americas. As early as then, peoples from North America and South America were aware of tobacco’s abilities to alter a person’s mental state, so the tobacco plant was widely used in important ceremonies. Tobacco was often consumed with other substances to enhance its narcotic effect.
⦁ Ancient Native Americans consumed tobacco plants in more ways than modern humans can conceive. Of course, ancient Native Americans smoked its leaves, but they also ground the plant up and snorted the powder up their noses. Tobacco plants were mixed with liquids and imbibed. Tobacco-laced enemas were also common then.
⦁ Aside from being used as a hallucinogenic substance, tobacco also served as a rudimentary form of medicine. The skin was rubbed with tobacco juice or exposed to tobacco smoke to prevent insect bites. Tobacco’s other medicinal qualities have been widely recorded. Tobacco smoke or tobacco juice was also used to protect other plants from pests.
⦁ Upon reaching the New World in 1492, Christopher Columbus was given tobacco leaves, among other gifts. Columbus was not aware of the value of tobacco leaves, but Europeans eventually became acquainted with the many uses of tobacco.
⦁ Rodrigo de Jerez, a man who sailed with Columbus, was the first European to learn the art of smoking tobacco leaves and he was held captive for seven years for his newfound knowledge. Jerez had seen the natives in the act of smoking the leaves, and, when he started smoking back home in Spain, the Spanish grew frightened of him. They believed that only the devil could expel smoke from his mouth. So the infamous Spanish Inquisition captured Jerez and held him captive for seven years.
⦁ Tobacco plants started sprouting in Santo Domingo by 1531, and active farming of the plants became widespread. In fact, Nicotiana tabacum was specifically brought to Cuba and Santo Domingo for cultivation.
⦁ Tobacco reached French shores in 1556, and this kick-started the spread of the tobacco plant throughout Europe. Tobacco was acclaimed for its supposed medicinal properties, and the plant enjoyed particularly high popularity in Spain. French Queen Catherine de Medici used tobacco to relieve the pain brought by migraines. English sailors had started to smoke tobacco, too.
⦁ Sir Francis Drake brought the Nicotinia tabacum plant to the Americas in 1573. Tobacco cultivation boomed with the invention of the clay pipe and its introduction to England. It wasn’t long before the American tobacco trade was born, and, in 1615, the first American tobacco crop was sold to England.
⦁ Tobacco was once used as currency. It was highly valuable, especially for the early European settlers, which considered the tobacco plant a cash crop. Many colonies were supported by the commerce of the tobacco plant.
⦁ The American Revolutionary War was said to have been encouraged by tobacco growers fighting restrictions on tobacco commerce. Oddly, tobacco sales also played a large part in funding the said war.
⦁ Tobacco is as popular now as it was then. Since its discovery, the cultivation and harvest of tobacco has greatly grown. In fact, tobacco is the most widely produced domesticated crop in the world, not counting food crops.
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0.999145 |
Ankle sprains are a common injury in many sports and activities. Sprains commonly occur when the ankle rolls outwards, overstretching the ligaments on the outside of the foot. Less commonly, sprains occur when the ankle rolls inwards.
The outside of the ankle consists of 3 main ligaments, while the inside aspect consists of 1 large ligament. These ligaments are very important to the stability of the ankle joint during physical activity. They connect the lower leg bones to the ankle bones.
stopping or pivoting suddenly What do I feel?
It normally takes four to six weeks for an ankle injury to heal, depending on severity. It is important that you get assessed correctly by a physiotherapist so that you can begin a rehabilitation program that is appropriate for you and the injury.
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0.967057 |
In the final paragraph of The New South, 1945 – 1980: The Story of the South’s Modernization, historian Numan V. Bartley wrote an epitaph for the well-intentioned post-Civil Rights Sunbelt South of the 1970s. The book was published in 1995, so Bartley could remark with the benefit of hindsight that the new service economy had resulted in mostly low-wage jobs that were picked up by women and blacks, while “corporate and professional people prospered.” What Bartley described at the end of his book was the South of my childhood, an urbanized, post-movement culture foraging around its crumbling foundations.
In the South of the 1980s, Bartley wrote, “social developments wreaked havoc on traditional southern folk culture.” By the time I began the first grade, in the fall of 1980, the shifts had already occurred. George Wallace had one more gubernatorial term in him, but with Reagan’s presidential victory, the days of the conservative “Solid South” Democrat were basically over. At the dawn of cable TV, our dads still had and used leather-working kits, but they were a novelty, not something we needed. Without fail, each fall and spring, us kids were taken to an array of folksy outdoor festivals where craftspeople sold their homemade wares, and in preparation for Sunday supper, we were dragged to the curb markets where our mothers and grandmothers bought homegrown vegetables. For us, it was the heyday of the Atari 2600 and Toys ‘R Us, yet we were expected to be excited about playing with wood-carved rubber-band guns and diligent about shelling a bag-full of blackeyed peas. The times, they had already a-changed.
Bartley was also right about the prosperity that came from working a service job for a corporation. My father worked a blue-collar job with the telephone company (AT&T/South Central Bell/BellSouth) from 1966 until 2008, and when my mother went to work in 1984, she became an office manager for Franklin Life Insurance, which later became part of now-infamous AIG— “too big to fail.” Those jobs allowed my parents to enjoy ascendant middle-class benefits like private school for their sons and a week at the beach every summer. What was lost, however, were the homespun ways of their youth, the ones they tried to share with us. We had a foot in two worlds: the old one that necessitated personal interaction and hands-on labor to overcome daily obstacles, and the new one whose conveniences allowed bouts of laziness, neglect, and indolence.
Just as the newly modernized South of the 1970s and ’80s confused our parents as to how daily life should work and where boundaries should be drawn, my generation is now struggling with new issues of the same sort. My parents never wondered whether to limit screen time or sugar intake. If my dad wanted to watch TV, the video games got turned off so he could. My mother went to the grocery store on Saturdays, and if we ate all of the Fruit Rollups in a day, they were gone until the next Saturday. If somebody was talking on the phone, anyone else who called got a busy signal and had to wait. There were no questions of appropriateness and manners; those were already answered. By contrast, this world of options and availability, of scrolling and choosing, of swiping left and blocking and un-friending is less like the South of the past and more like existentialism gone wild!
Our children are growing up in a world where a person with access to technology doesn’t have to face, endure, or even experience anything that they find unappealing or inconvenient. As parents my age enjoy the privilege of ordering groceries and Christmas gifts online, downloading apps and movies and music, and making reservations and arrangements quickly, our children have “learned” that transactions occur conveniently and that human contact can be avoided. Talking to another person face-to-face has become a “folk culture” thing to do— which is a major problem in a place with that built its new incarnation on a corporate service economy.
These days, I regularly lament the loss of good service. For example, the other day, I called my neighborhood pizzeria to order dinner. The young man on the phone was pleasant enough, but at the end of our conversation, when I said, “Thank you,” he replied, “Mm-hmm.” And when I said,” Goodbye,” he hung up without a word. That’s not service. Service is more than writing down what I want and giving it to the kitchen. The food was the reason I came, but service should be the reason I’m glad I came.
If we’re going to have this service economy, catering to beach-goers passing through and tourists mulling over lynching sites and truckers carrying goods north out of New Orleans and Mobile, we need that classically Southern folk-culture know-how. A person can’t provide service if he only looks up from his cell phone long enough to tell customers, “Use the kiosk over there.” We need not to lose that “How y’all doin’?” and we darn sure need to get back to “Thank y’all for coming, and have a good day now.” It just makes a difference.
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Am I the only person who thinks Chris Martin is lazy?
[quote user="silver fox"] I am not talking about running far enough, or how many touches a player makes, I am talking about a player chasing lost causes and trying to win the ball back when they lose it. Given the chance I would prefer to have Tevez in the side rather than Torres, because he is the type of player I like to see on the field, because he never gives up. I do not have access to stats but I guess that Tevez has scored more goals than Torres this season, and in comparison Holt has scored more goals than Chris Martin. [/quote]I hope certain people aren''t reading this because, by your logic, a Mr D Huckerby would not make the team under your management. He was not the "chasing back" type, even when playing left mid. Cristiano Ronaldo would also not be in your team, because he likes to sit on the floor complaining when he gets tackled. Those pesky Brazilians Ronaldo & Ronaldinho certainly didn''t work hard enough and would have to make way too, perhaps you could replace them with Leon McKenzie in your team? He used to chase the ball like a headless maniac.Whatever you, or I, or anyone says about Chris Martin my point is this: can we please debate his football skills? Not his lung capacity or appetite for ball chasing.Tevez has more goals than Torres. However, Berbatov has more goals than both - but I bet you wouldn''t like that guy in your team huh?! What a waste of space he is, with his stupid flicks, tricks and poncing about. He should be chasing lost causes and winning the ball back, rather than letting the midfield do that, and staying up front where he can do damage.
Am I the only person that thinks it''s typically ENGLISH that we''re all here debating whether he runs far enough??? Not the timing of his runs, the quality of his touch, the inventiveness of his play, his spotting of through balls, his link up play or his knowledge of his teammates positions around him. I''m not saying he''s brilliant at all of these things, but can''t we talk about ACTUAL FOOTBALL SKILL for once????? We need a combination of players: tryers & talents, workers & creators, etc.Do you think the Spanish sit around complaining that Torres doesn''t chase back enough? Or the Dutch sit around worrying about Sneijder''s work rate? Drives me round the bend, seriously.
Think you are the moron, anyone in their right mind would take promotion at first attempt to get the "Pot of Gold" things can soon go wrong if we plan to consolidate this year for a push next year, i.e Lambert could get offered a top job, one he couldn''t turn down etc etc.[/quote]You wanna watch out for that "pot of gold" myth. Many teams had that pot of gold, blew it on players in an attempt to stay in the division, and are now utterly ruined. Pompey, Hull, Leicester, Watford, Leeds are all clubs that got drawn into the "consolidate in the premiership" game, and it''s going to take (or, in Leeds'' case, has taken) a long time to get back on an even keel.
[quote user="Adam NCFC"]Lappin was suspended. Please keep up.[/quote]Well thought-out comment, thanks.Ricardo, great report as always, keep em coming.
And why would you put an apostrophe in "fans"? Fans is a word. It''s not two words joined together.
[quote user="tom1902"]We struck gold with Huckerby that year, before he signed we were nothing.[/quote]Apart from the playoffs, and the 8th place finish.
[quote user="mtv"]Might have been but I do remember he got an improved contract out of it!
He said the usual ''I''m flattered to be mention with such a big club''[/quote]MTV, I''m intrigued - how do you feel about Iwan Roberts? Talismanic centre forward? A hulk of a man who bled yellow & green?
him etc and feel he should still be here should bear 1 thing in mind..
Jas, that''s the biggest crock of b****cks I''ve read on this thread yet!
ineptitude, upon Lambert at exactly the right time. I direct you to the bit at the end of my post:[quote user="Mook"]Ask any Sheffield Wednesday fan - you can go through years and years of wilderness before getting anything in place that can change things. It''s all very well to sit there and look smug as we now have the Lambert/McNally combo, but there was absolutely NO guarantee that this situation would have arisen. We could have had 10 / 20 years of Gunns, Roeders, Grants, Christ only knows who else, Bryan Robson? Steve Tilson? Phil Parkinson? Dave Penney? Jeremy Goss? I shudder to think. And THAT is why the Worthy Out campaign split the terraces so vehemently. Stick with a tried and tested manager who MAY have lost it but by the same logic MAY well have got it back together again. Or plunge into the wilderness of football management in the simple belief that it "can''t get any worse". Well it can get worse. And it did. And it''s just chance and luck that things have turned around again.[/quote]I''m certainly not saying that Nigel was doing brilliantly BUT, for some of us, he had enough in his favour (play-offs, promotion, Huckerby, Gary Holt, regaining the Pride of Anglia etc) to be worth NOT waging a personal war against in favour of getting anybody - just ANYBODY - in his place. And that''s all the WO movement was. It was an object in removing one man. With absolutely no thought or regard as to who would replace him.
From reading the posts on this thread it would appear that a small bunch of kids were the ring leaders behind Worthington leaving the club and it was the worst thing that ever happened, him leaving.......bloody hell what short memories you lot have! At the end his team was not playing for him, the results were against him and the MAJORITY of the paying fans were against him. It doesnt matter what a small bunch of poster on a website think, whether you like it or not you don/didn''t represent the majority view on this matter.
Yes the club went on a downward spiral, but it was well into that downward spiral while he was here. It is no good then saying his sacking lead to Grant, Roeder Gunn but you could also say that Doncasters sacking lead to Lambert so you can follow the trail as far as you want, the facts are the club had to hit a bottom before it could get back up.
Worthington held on to his job for finacial reasons and not for anything thing else, he want his contract paying up (and I would to) and wasn''t never going to leave until he was sacked.
To say the Worthy Out campaign got personal well, It was personal, it was about getting one man out and another in, Ofcourse it was personal. Can anyone tell me how to do it politely. It is how football fans react worldwide (except on here apparently!) It makes me laugh when I see some of the most personal of attacks on here between posters over the stupidest of things.
Every survey/poll that was done at that time was shown that the large majority of fans wanted him out. He made constant attacks on the fans in his ''dying days'' His tactics were boring, his team ''long balled'' it for most of its games.
Ofcourse he had success but his time was up and instead or accepting that he left kicking and screaming which was the cause of the campaign.
In my opinion it should have carried on to get rid of Doncasters as well but even though there will be deniers, Some people still backed him unbelievably.
Now of course this post will be dissected and bits will be thrown back but the broad meassge is Worthington''s time was up he had to go, whether some people on here liked it or not!
[/quote]This is relatively true, but also a very simplistic view. Worthington was undermined by the board here, hung out to dry in the hope that he would walk. The fans who had been so happy when he took us up, wouldn''t give his team the time of day anymore.I don''t think many, including Nigel by the looks of the interview, would say that he had not run out of steam. But it was the horribly personal nature of the campaign, the in-fighting between fans, the ridiculous polarisation, cheering the opposition goals etc etc that made the real problem. Everything got so utterly ridiculous, and considering the CRAP that we''ve been through since then, it wasn''t the magic bullet that we thought.Yes, you can say that the fans but the motion in place for Lambert/McNally. I totally disagree. Ask any Sheffield Wednesday fan - you can go through years and years of wilderness before getting anything in place that can change things. It''s all very well to sit there and look smug as we now have the Lambert/McNally combo, but there was absolutely NO guarantee that this situation would have arisen. We could have had 10 / 20 years of Gunns, Roeders, Grants, Christ only knows who else, Bryan Robson? Steve Tilson? Phil Parkinson? Dave Penney? Jeremy Goss? I shudder to think. And THAT is why the Worthy Out campaign split the terraces so vehemently. Stick with a tried and tested manager who MAY have lost it but by the same logic MAY well have got it back together again. Or plunge into the wilderness of football management in the simple belief that it "can''t get any worse". Well it can get worse. And it did. And it''s just chance and luck that things have turned around again.
I''ve got a really bad limp due to a bad tackle on Sunday.Gait news.
Do we sustain or go for broke in January?
Bolton just posted a loss of £34.5 million. Man Utd posted a loss of £83.6 million. Man City posted a loss of £92.6 million. Spurs just posted £7 million pound loss. Hull are bust. Portsmouth are bust. Liverpool nearly went into administration.Can I just ask - why on earth do people still believe that getting to the premiership is worth taking a massive risk for?
I''m still wondering why you''re so angry with Stephen Fry, Wiz. Any thoughts on this? What did you think of his article to explain the recent hoo-ha? I thought it was rather well-worded and explained his position on the debate, and on quitting twitter.I''m still struggling to find what a brilliant comedy actor (a career which imo will be revisited for decades to come), a writer of fantastic books, a staunch defender of English-ness and a director/fan of your football team has ever done to upset you?If you can lay off the angry pills or from trying to twist something I''ve said into something it''s not, I''d be genuinely interested to hear what he''s done that''s got your back up so much.
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0.982572 |
my laptop doesn't charging and the charge adapter is fine what can be the problem?
Then that leaves the battery or the charging circuit as the issue.
If you have a friend with the same laptop, you could borrow their battery or ask them to try charging your battery in their laptop. If charging your battery in someone else's works, then it would suggest the charging circuits on your laptop.
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0.798635 |
A handcar (also known as a pump trolley, pump car, jigger, Kalamazoo, velocipede, or draisine) is a railroad car powered by its passengers, or by people pushing the car from behind. It is mostly used as a maintenance of way or mining car, but it was also used for passenger service in some cases. A typical design consists of an arm, called the walking beam, that pivots, seesaw-like, on a base, which the passengers alternately push down and pull up to move the car.
It is not clear who invented the handcar, also written as hand car or hand-car. It is likely that machinists in individual railroad shops began to build them to their own design. Many of the earliest ones operated by turning large cranks. It is likely that the pump handcar, with a reciprocating walking beam, came later. While there are hundreds of US patents pertaining to details of handcars, probably the primary designs of mechanisms for powering handcars were in such common use that they were not patentable when companies started to manufacture handcars for sale to the railroads.
Handcars were absolutely essential to the operation of railroads during a time when railroads were the primary form of public transportation for people and goods in America, from about 1850 to 1910. There may have been handcars as early as the late 1840s but they were quite common during the American Civil War. They were a very important tool in the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad. There were many thousands of them built. They were commonly assigned to a "section" of track, the section being between about 6 to 10 miles long, depending upon the traffic weight and locomotive speed experienced on the section. Each section would have a section crew that would maintain that piece of track. Each section usually had a section house which was used to store tools and the section's handcar. Roughly 130,000 miles of track had been constructed in America by 1900. Thus, considering there was a handcar assigned to at least every ten miles of that track, there would have been a minimum of 13,000 handcars operating in the United States. This number is obviously a gross underestimate because many sections were shorter than 10 miles and railroads also had spare handcars for use in unusual circumstances. Telegraph company Western Union and other rail-users had their own handcars, adding to the overall handcar population.
The first handcars, built in the railroad shops, were probably made of whatever parts the shops had around or could easily make. These cars were probably quite heavy. Heavy handcars need more people to propel them. More people will add more power but at some point the benefits are offset by the weight of the people: their own weight would not be compensated by any extra power they can produce. Many companies made handcars in the years following the American Civil War as evidenced by the number of advertisements in contemporary publications such as The Car Builder's Dictionary. By the mid 1880s The Sheffield Velocipede Car Company, The Kalamazoo Velocipede Company and the Buda Foundry and Manufacturing Company were the three large companies who were the primary builders of handcars. Sheffield was almost immediately acquired by industrial giant Fairbanks Morse. All three companies changed their names over the years but for most of the years that they produced handcars, they were still identified as Sheffield, Kalamazoo and Buda. Hand cars continued to be available through the first half of the 20th Century. Fairbanks Morse was still offering a handcar from their catalog as late as 1950 and Kalamazoo sold them until at least 1955.
While depictions on TV and in movies might suggest that being a member of a handcar crew is a joyride, in fact pumping a traditional handcar with bronze bearings rather than modern roller bearings can be very hard work. The disagreeable nature of this experience must have been heightened by the dead weight of typical section crew supplies such as railroad spikes, track nuts and bolts, shovels, pry bars of various sorts and other iron and steel equipment.
Motor section cars began to appear in the very early 1900s, or a few years earlier. They quickly replaced most of the handcars. Those handcars that were not scrapped during World War I, were probably scrapped during World War II. It is not clear how many handcars survived. They can be found in railroad museums and some are in private hands.
Handcars have been normally used by railway service personnel (the latter also known as Gandy dancers) for railroad inspection and maintenance. Because of their low weight and small size, they can be put on and taken off the rails at any place, allowing trains to pass. Handcars have since been replaced by self-propelled vehicles that do not require the use of manual power, instead relying on internal combustion engines or electricity to move the vehicle.
Handcars are nowadays used by handcar enthusiasts at vintage railroad events and for races between handcars driven by five person teams (one to push the car from a halt, four to pump the lever). One such race, the Handcar Regatta, was held in Santa Rosa, California from 2008 to 2011 and other races are held in Australia. See the section on racing below. Aside from handcars built for racing, new handcars are being built with modern roller bearings and milled axles and crankshafts.
In Australia, hand cars or pump carts are commonly referred to as Kalamazoos after the Kalamazoo Manufacturing Company, which provided many examples to the Australian railway market. Many Kalamazoos are preserved in Australia, some even being used for races.
There is a push car service along the railroad tracks between Anguiatú in Guatemala and rural towns across the Salvadoran border. Sometimes it is pulled by a horse.
In Japan, dozens of commercially operated handcar railway lines, called human car tramway (人車軌道, jinsha kidō) or human car railway (人車鉄道, jinsha tetsudō) existed in early 20th century. Those lines were purely built for its passenger/freight service, and "drivers" pushed small train cars all the way. The first line, Fujieda-Yaizu Tramway, opened in 1891, and most of the others opened before 1910. Most lines were very short with less than 10 km lengths, and the rail gauges used were either 2 ft 6 in (762 mm) or 2 ft (610 mm). As the human-powered system was fairly inefficient, many handcar tramways soon changed their power resources to either horse or gasoline. The system was not strong against a competition with other modes of transport, such as trucks, horses, buses, or other railways. Taishaku Handcar Tramway ceased its operation as early as 1912, and almost all the lines were already closed before 1945.
The current Keisei Kanamachi Line.
The part of the current Tōbu Kiryū Line.
In Taiwan, commercially operated handcars were called either light railway line (Traditional Chinese: 輕便線; Hanyu Pinyin: qīngbiàn-xiàn), hand-pushed light railway line (手押輕便線; shǒuyā qīngbiàn-xiàn), hand-pushed tramway (手押軌道; shǒuyā guǐdào), or most commonly, hand-pushed wagon (手押臺車; shǒuyā táichē). The first line was built in the 1870s. The network developed later under Japanese rule. In 1933, its peak, there were more than 50 lines in the island with 1,292 km network, transporting local passengers, coal, factory products, sugar, salt, bananas, tea leaves, and others. Most lines, excluding those in mines and isolated islands, have disappeared after Japanese have left. However, a few lines survived well until the 1970s. Currently, only the sightseeing line in Wūlái still exists, although its line is not human-powered anymore.
Handcars are a recurring plot device of twentieth century film, both comedy and drama.
The opening scene of Blazing Saddles, set at a railroad construction site, features a handcar.
In the movie Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, the culminating chase scene takes place along a railway, with one of the pursuers chasing the heroes down the tracks on a handcar.
In the Dad's Army episode "The Royal Train", the Walmington-on-Sea Home Guard platoon find themselves stuck on a runaway train. Warden Hodges, the vicar, the verger and the town mayor chase them using a handcar.
In the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the three main characters encounter an old blind man on a handcar after escaping from prison and in the conclusion of the movie.
In the movie The Great St Trinian's Train Robbery two St Trinian's schoolgirls use one to move between distant points levers.
In the Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner episode "Rushing Roulette" (1965) Wile E. Coyote attempts to catch the Road Runner using a handcar.
In 1998, Sega manufactured the handcar-themed arcade game Magical Truck Adventure which the player controls by pumping a large handle.
Buster Keaton uses a handcar during a chase scene in the film The General; he also uses a powered drasine in The Railrodder.
In the Simpsons episode "500 Keys", Marge chases a toy handcar called the "Pooter Toot Express". The two figures pumping the car pass gas every time they pump.
In Reds (1981), John Reed, played by Warren Beatty, attempts to leave Russia via a velocipede but is detained by Finnish troops at the border.
The Canadian Championship Handcar Races are held annually at the Palmerston Railway Heritage Museum (formerly the old Palmerston CNR station) in Palmerston, Ontario, Canada each June. These races began in 1992 and have been running since.
An annual handcar race, Dr. E. P. Kitty's Wunderkammer, featuring the Great Sonoma County Handcar Races (formerly known as The Hand-car Regatta), is held in the rail-yard in old downtown Santa Rosa, California.
A multi-faceted festival, it was centered in races of numerous widely varying human-powered vehicles operating on railroad tracks. These included traditional hand-powered carts and others powered by pedals or pushing.
A similar race is happening in the nearby Northern California town of Willits, California, on Sept. 8 and 9, 2012. Other races are held in Australia, some using preserved old handcars. See the reference above discussing Kalamazoos in Australia.
A handcar, in original condition (at the Shelburne Falls Trolley Museum). The foot brake operating mechanism may be seen between the wheels.
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The Ringstrasse is a circular road surrounding the Innere Stadt district of Vienna, Austria and is one of its main sights. It is typical of the historical style called Ringstrassenstil (Ringstrasse Style) of the 1860s to 1890s.
The street was built to replace the city walls, which had been built during the 13th century and reinforced as a consequence of the First Turkish Siege in 1529, and instead of the glacis, which was about 500m wide. The fortification had been obsolete since the late 18th century, but the Revolution of 1848 was required to trigger a significant change. In 1850, the Vorstädte (today the Districts II to IX) were incorporated into the municipality, which made the city walls a simple impediment to traffic. In 1857, they were finally demolished, and the creation of a boulevards was ordered.
During the following years, a large number of public and private opulent buildings were erected. Both nobility and the moneyed aristocracy rushed to build showy mansions along the street. One of the first buildings was the Heinrichshof by Theophil Hansen, (1861-62) owned by the beer brewer Heinrich Drasche, which was located opposite the opera house until 1945.
State Opera: The first opera house, the Vienna Court Opera, was built as the first monumental building of artistic importance on the Ringstraße from 1861-1869 by A. Sicard von Sicardsburg and E. van der Nüll in neo-Romantic style. The architects were severely criticised, people spoke of a "sunken box" or "another Battle of Sadowa", which caused van der Nüll to commit suicide, while Sicardsburg died of a heart attack two months later.
During World War II (on March 12, 1945) the stage was destroyed by bombs and the building gutted by fire. The reconstruction of the State Opera was carried out from 1948-1955 by E. Boltenstern.
The parliament building was erected between 1873-1883 by Theophil Hansen in neo-Renaissance style with austere classical elements. It was severely damaged in 1945 and rebuilt after the war. The gables, attics and the access ramps were decorated with magnificent sculptures by E. Hellmer, J. Lux and V. Piz. In front of the Parliament is the Pallas Athena Fountain (1898-1902 by C. Kundmann).
The Vienna Stock-exchange, the Wiener Börse was founded in 1771 by Maria Theresia. By 1877, the exchange had moved to the building constructed by Theophil Hansen on Schottenring because the Herrengasse location had become too small.
The "Musikverein" concert hall, built by Theophil Hansen on Karlsplatz square, was inaugurated in 1870 (altered 1911).
The University of Vienna was founded by Duke Rudolf IV in 1365. The University of Vienna is the oldest university in the German-speaking world and one of the largest universities of Central Europe.
1873 - 1884 built by Heinrich von Ferstel in renaissance-style and in monumentally baroque-style.
The Burgtheater (Imperial) Court Theatre), originally known as K.K. Theater an der Burg, then until 1920 as the K.K. Hofburgtheater, is the Austrian National Theatre in Vienna and one of the most important German language theatres in the world. The Burgtheater was created in 1741 and has become known as "die Burg" by the Viennese population;its theater company of more or less regular members has created a traditional style and speech typical of Burgtheater performances.
The theatre was moved to a new building at the Ringstraße on 14 October 1888 designed by Gottfried Semper and Karl Freiherr von Hasenauer.
The Rathaus was designed by Friedrich von Schmidt in the Gothic style, and built between 1872 and 1883. On the top of the tower is the Rathausmann, one of the symbols of Vienna. Facing the Rathaus is a large park, the Rathauspark.
The Votivkirche in Vienna, Austria, is one of the most important neo-Gothic religious architectural sites in the world. Built 1856-1879 by Heinrich von Ferstel (1828-1883). The church was to be a Votivgabe (a thank-you present to God) for the rescue of Franz Joseph from a knife-attack.
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0.999997 |
CLL is always a cancer of the B-lymphocytes. There used to be a possible diagnosis of T-cell CLL, but as our understanding of leukemia and lymphoma evolved, there is no longer such a diagnosis.
CLL patients should never receive live vaccines such as shingles or yellow fever, although they have been occasionally inadvertently given with no untoward effects.
The number of new cases annually (the incidence) of CLL is not now nor is it predicted to rise quickly. However, because we keep living longer and longer, the number of patients every year with CLL (the prevalence) is predicted to rise quickly over the next decade. In other words, every year there will be more CLL patients alive than the year before.
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0.997794 |
General Description By soft tracing or bicycling, crossing temples, passing beautiful rice fields and traditional villages, where the people do the handicrafts in their traditional style, where the woman makes an offering for the temples. Up toward hill, overwhelmed by the natural surrounding. Finnaly, after 30 minutes of walk The Moding residence with the golden warmth of the iron wood combined with the broken white sandels wood as the ceiling which is came from other crossing island Sulawesi, demonstrated the unique of this wooden house, offering you a place to relax and enjoy the feeling you'll never forget. - 1 unit House with 3 Bedroom, 3 open air Bathroom and 1 open air dining room as a Balai Bengong - 1 Unit House with 4 Bedroom and 4 open air Bathroom - 2 Unit Honeymoon Suite face to the spectacular view where you could see and hear the sound of UWOSRiver. Peace and cool Half moon edge of pool on the second level when the sun could tanned your silk skin on the day time and cooling down at evening. Transportation Located amidst the serenity of Bali's stunning landscape from the central UBUD Bali's creative and cultural village. Which is the location of the movie Eat, Pray and Love took place with Julia Roberts as the star from the novel written by the famous Elisabeth Gilbert.
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0.939235 |
Dith Pran was a Cambodian journalist who suffered four years of abusive treatment after the Communist Khmer Rouge forces took over his country in 1975. Pran eventually escaped and became a crusader for justice in Cambodia. His story was portrayed in the 1984 movie The Killing Fields.
Dith Pran was born on September 27, 1942, in the town of Siem Reap, Cambodia. At that time, the Japanese army occupied Cambodia, which belonged to French Indochina, but Pran's home was far from the center of power. Pran grew up in a middle-class family near the ruins of ancient temples called Angkor Wat with his two sisters and three brothers. His father, Dith Proeung, was a public-works official who supervised the building of roads. Pran attended local schools, where he learned French. He learned English on his own, and after finishing high school in 1960, he went to work as an interpreter (a person who translates from one language into another) for the U.S. Military Assistance Command in Cambodia.
After World War II (1939–45) Communist rebels in neighboring Vietnam fought against French attempts to take over their country. (Communists believe in revolution to achieve a society in which the means of production—land, factories, and mines—are owned by the people as a whole rather than by individuals.) The Communists drove the French forces out, gained control over North Vietnam, and began fighting anti-Communist forces in the south, which were supported by the United States. Although Cambodia remained fairly peaceful, Vietnamese troops from both sides began using the country as a place of refuge. In 1965 Cambodia's government ended its relations with the United States, charging that U.S. troops had entered the country's borders to pursue their enemies.
Khmer Rouge, or "Red Cambodians," another Communist group. The Khmer Rouge wanted Cambodia to return to farming to meet its citizens' needs and to destroy anything linked to the West. Pran moved his family to Phnom Penh and was hired as a guide and interpreter for New York Times reporters in the area, including Sydney Schanberg, who had come to Phnom Penh in 1972. The two became close friends, and by 1973 Pran worked only with Schanberg.
As the war continued, the Khmer Rouge seemed to become stronger. Meanwhile the United States had pulled its troops out of Vietnam, which was then overtaken by Communist forces. In April 1975 American personnel left Phnom Penh as well. Knowing that the Khmer Rouge was about to win, thousands of Cambodians scrambled to escape. Pran helped his wife and their four children escape on a U.S. military truck, but he stayed to help Schanberg report the story of the Khmer Rouge takeover. Both men hoped that with the takeover complete, things would eventually calm down. But the Khmer Rouge soldiers entering the city soon displayed their true intentions.
What followed were attacks on shops, looting, and killings. Soldiers opened fire on people in the streets. Many were slaughtered in these first attacks, and many more were killed as almost three million Cambodians were forced out of the city. Pran, Schanberg, and two other reporters went to a hospital to see how many were dead or injured and were met by a group of armed Khmer Rouge soldiers. Pran talked the soldiers out of killing Schanberg and the others, saving their lives. Schanberg soon returned to the United States, where he looked after Pran's wife and children in New York, New York.
Pran, meanwhile, was stuck in the new Cambodia, or "Kampuchéa" as the Khmer Rouge had renamed it. He dressed like a peasant and pretended to be a simple villager. It was a wise decision. The Khmer Rouge had orders to execute anyone who wore eyeglasses, perfume, makeup, watches, or other evidence of Western influence. As a symbol of the fact that Cambodia was starting over, 1975 was referred to as "Year Zero." Pran made his way to a village twenty miles from Siem Reap, where he and other villagers were forced to harvest rice while receiving political instruction at night. The workers were allowed to eat just one spoonful of rice per day. Pran and the other starving villagers ate anything they could find: bark, snakes, snails, rats, and even the flesh of dead bodies. One night Pran dared to sneak out to try to eat some raw rice. For this the guards ordered his fellow villagers to beat him and leave him outside in a rainstorm.
Nearly two million Cambodians were killed by the Khmer Rouge, but the rest of the world remained silent. Having withdrawn from Southeast Asia, the United States had turned its attention to other issues, and there were few protests of the Khmer Rouge killings. But Sydney Schanberg did not forget. He had received a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his Cambodia reporting, and he continued to search for his friend Pran. In January 1979, the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia and finally overthrew the Khmer Rouge. Pran returned to his hometown and found that over fifty members of his family had been killed. Wells were filled with skulls and bones, and the land was covered with graves. Nicknamed "killing fields," these were distinguished from the nearby ground by the fact that the grass was greenest over them.
The Vietnamese made Pran a village administrative chief. When a group of Eastern European reporters visited, he managed to get a message to Schanberg through a member of the East German media. But once the Vietnamese learned that Pran had been a reporter, he decided to escape before they could question him. In July 1979 Pran and several others set out on a sixty-mile journey past land mines and the forces of the Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge. He arrived at the Thai border and entered a refugee camp there in October. He asked an American relief officer to contact Schanberg, who met him a week later. Schanberg helped Pran move to the United States, where he was reunited with his family. The New York Times gave him a job as a reporter, and Pran became a U.S. citizen in 1986.
Pran began to devote his spare time to helping fellow Cambodians who had suffered under the Khmer Rouge. He took several trips back to Cambodia and attempted to bring the Khmer Rouge to justice before the World Court. He and his wife operate the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project, which maintains a photographic record on the Internet to assist Cambodians in finding missing family members. Pran interviewed twenty-nine people who had suffered during the takeover and published the results in 1997 as Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields: Memoirs by Survivors. For Pran, the ghosts of Cambodia remain, and the memories are "Still alive to me day and night," he said in an online interview at The Site. "It's unbelievable what [the Khmer Rouge] did to the Cambodian people."
Pran, Dith. Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields: Memoirs by Survivors. Edited by Kim DePaul. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997.
Schanberg, Sydney H. The Death and Life of Dith Pran. New York: Viking, 1985.
Pran passed away on the 30th of March, 2008, yielding to pancreatic cancer.
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0.999874 |
Question: Is milk actually good for my teeth?
I’ve been hearing that calcium might not actually be good for your bones. Is milk not really good for my teeth, then?
Calcium has long been associated with making (and keeping!) bones strong, but a recent study by the British Medical Journal found that calcium intake caused a minimal increase in bone density, and found no correlation between calcium intake and fracture risk. Earlier studies have reached similar conclusions. So, does that mean drinking milk or getting other dietary calcium won’t lead to healthy teeth?
Well, it’s difficult to say. Your bones and teeth are largely made up of calcium and do need this element to be healthy, but weight, activity level, hormones, diet, environmental exposures, substance abuse, and genetics all also play a huge factor in your overall bone health. Also, many of the studies regarding calcium consumption are observational and correlation doesn’t always mean causation.
So, should you keep drinking milk? Yes, but it’s important to get your calcium from a variety of sources, especially from dark leafy greens and beans. It’s also important to exercise regularly and maintain an overall balanced diet, so don’t feel like you have to go overboard with your calcium consumption (unless your doctor says otherwise) in order to have healthy bones.
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0.82717 |
How to modify MEDs in BGP-advertised MEDs for NE80E?
1. If no policy is configured for a route, the IGP route cost for the route is advertised as the MED when EBGP and IBGP peers advertise the route.
2. MEDs can be modified by running any of the following three commands under the BGP view: 1. peer x.x.x.x route-policy abc; 2. default med X; 3. network x.x.x.x route-policy abc. Configure apply cost value (MED value) in commands 1 and 3.If all of the three are configured, they take effect in the priority order of command 1, command 2, and command 3. Note that the default med command applies only to EBGP route advertisement.
3. If X in the default med 0 command is 0, the MED is the IGP cost.
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0.999706 |
I knew almost nothing of Cowboy Bebop until January of this year (2019). The series recently celebrated its twentieth anniversary, it was revealed Netflix is making a live action adaptation. Friends of mine had already urged me to give the series a try previously, so my curiosity was piqued, and I felt it was the time to finally watch this show.
After finishing Cowboy Bebop, I felt the immediate urge to recommend this show to everyone. So this is not exactly a review that may or may hint at the plot or premise, and is an extended explanation as to why it is worth the time.
My goal before I started the show was to watch at least one episode per day as to not binge. The episodes are 22-24 minutes long apiece, and I felt that a whole day would give each episode it’s due and time to sink in. My watching experience revealed I had underestimated how much time I would need to process some of them.
Each episode features our crew of bounty hunters in Spike Spiegel, Jet Black, and Faye Valentine aboard the spaceship Bebop. The show is set in our universe, taking place in the year 2071, with our leads journeying among the stars, trying to get by in the cold vacuum of space by cash-in in on wanted criminals. The color palette, jazz-influenced score, and deceptively simple animation are dripping with style, which all serves to compliment the futuristic yet grounded tone.
Given the show is set in not so distant future, it sometimes feel like a precursor to the kind of characters that intrigue modern audiences: complex, extremely relatable, and realistic. At first the characters fit into distinct, familiar archetypes so audiences can understand them on a familiar level. However, the first three episodes hint that these archetypes and expectations will be slowly eroded through the series to reveal the flawed, multidimensional characters underneath.
Unlike the shows of today, however, Cowboy Bebop is disciplined with character exploration and adheres to a primarily episodic form of storytelling. Each episode can be generally defined by a genre or theme. These include noir, westerns, science fiction, and horror. Sometimes these may blend to make intriguing combinations due to the similarities and contrasts between the genres. This episodic discipline helps bring out the best in character dynamics while simultaneously allowing each episode to be inviting to even the uninitiated viewer. There are of course a few threads that follow through the show, but these are often faint and never overtake the isolated stories, existing mostly the give the show a beginning and end.
All of these elements tied together took my breath away and left me in a state of amazement that an episodic story like this could be so beautiful. My recommendation for Cowboy Bebop is not based in hype or its influences on our culture in the last twenty years. This show acknowledges emotions and struggles and sympathizes with us, which differentiate it from shows like Black Mirror and The Twilight Zone. Cowboy Bebop exists to help us process all of the harder questions that life brings, allowing us to find our own answers.
I recommend Cowboy Bebop, I adore Cowboy Bebop, because it reminds us we are ultimately our choices, and why the most powerful choices we can make are the ones in which we most believe. Please, take the time to check it out for yourself. Did I mention this show also features a corgi?
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You are John T. Longy, a night-watchman at JUPITER, a secret base, set in an old, partially abandoned research facility in a remote countryside location. JUPITER is the main laboratory of the OLYMPUS GROUP.
Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason is a psychological horror video game developed by Action Forms for Microsoft Windows.
The game story develops with help of a unique system called Mental Echo - the ability to penetrate another character's memory and change the actions taken by that character in the past. This can involve saving people's lives by taking over their bodies in their memories and changing the course of history.
The game, being set in an arctic setting, employs body heat as a health meter - the player must use heat sources (such as lights or stoves) to replenish health.
Dino Crisis (Japanese: ディノ クライシス Hepburn: Dino Kuraishisu?) is a survival horror video game produced by Capcom, originally released in 1999 for the PlayStation and later ported to the Dreamcast and Microsoft Windows in 2000. It was directed and produced by Resident Evil director Shinji Mikami, and developed by a team that would later become part of Capcom Production Studio 4.
An otherworldly game of stealth and investigation set in the windswept woodlands of early colonial America.
Metro: Last Light (formerly Metro 2034) is a first-person shooter video game developed by Ukrainian studio 4A Games and published by Deep Silver for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It was released in May 2013. The game is set in a post-apocalyptic world and features action-oriented gameplay.
Resident Evil 6, known as Biohazard 6 (バイオハザード6 Baiohazādo Shikkusu?) in Japan, is an action-adventure third-person shooter video game in the Resident Evil series, developed and published by Capcom. Capcom defines the game's genre as "dramatic horror", however there is disagreement among reviewers whether this installment belongs in survival horror genre. It was released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on October 2, 2012. The Microsoft Windows version was released on March 22, 2013.
Alien Breed 2: Assault, like Evolution, is an isometric shooter set on board a futuristic spacecraft. In each level, the main character Conrad is given a series of tasks such as collecting key cards, restoring power, or escorting innocents, which he must complete before finding that level's exit. Standing in his way are a variety of aliens who will attack him, usually en masse. He can also suffer damage from explosions, fires, electrical disturbances, and enemy turrets. Conrad can run and shoot in all directions, and can collect a number of different weapons and items to aid him.
It's Dead Space plus blunt weapons in post-apopoland (that's post-apocalyptic Poland, BTW). And there's a demo, too !
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Is it safe or legal to have your community web page on facebook?
Many communities of owners have setup private groups and web pages within Facebook for keeping on top of community issues and communicating with one another. There are two issues with this. First and foremost, there is no legality in this and should there be any information leak or unauthorized access to this group or even worse a denuncia, it is the community which is responsibe for the costs and damages. Secondly, Facebook does not comply with the Data Protection Act requirement that specifically applies to the Horizontal law of property, therefore Facebook and other free forming internet groups, like that of Yahoo and Google are without a doubt not compliant with the Spanish LOPD and as such all communities using such groups and services could face hefty fines from the Spanish Data Protection Agency and furthermore be served denuncia’s by owners who may come to argue the case and legality of the group and its provision of information over the net.
While the news is not an immediate concern for owners, it is one that should be food for thoughts for all those communities who use these free (not paid services) or none specific services (i.e social networking websites) that don’t comply with the LOPD in reference to the horizontal law of property in particular in Spain. The legal issues that it can bring on is endless, and there are plenty of dedicated services which are free like OCM , Votoweb, Vecino and designed specifically for communities of owners and comply with the requirements.
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0.978501 |
Can someone help me to rewrite this code so that it works the way I intended?
Private Sub frm Salvage Manager Entry_Load1(By Val sender As Object, By Val e As System.
event handler displays an error message to the user.
I want my date fields to validate the dates entered to make sure they are valid, but I also want the user to be able to tab through the field without having to enter any date at all. I can enter 2/29/2010, but the date will not be accepted because it is not a leap year.
The problem is the field will not allow the user to leave it blank.
I find it annoying not being able to type in the date so I dismissed that control as an option.
If not, the user will get a message asking them to reenter a valid date. Show("Please input a valid date between 01/01/1930 to 01/01/2099 in the format mm/dd/yyyy.", "Invalid Date Entered", Message Box Buttons. I've tried the Date Time Picker, but I couldn't figure out how to get the control to let me type in dates instead of choosing them by clicking.
But I get a Null Reference Exception error, even when the masked text box is deinately not Null.
The properties on the masked text box include: Mask: 00/00/0000 Validating Type: Date Time Text Mask Format: Include Literals This is exactly as I have used masked textboxes on previous apps and it worked then, so why not now? private void Form1_Load(object sender, Event Args e) void masked Text Box1_Type Validation Completed(object sender, Type Validation Event Args e) // Hide the tooltip if the user starts typing again before the five-second display limit on the tooltip expires.
It was when the date was being parsed back to the datetime. Before it would work fine if it started out as null, it only doesn't work when there is a date that gets blanked out.
This may not be the most elegant way to do this, but it does work.
string reg Year [email protected]"(200[8,9]|201[0-9])"; //for year from 2008-2019 Plz correct this Reg Ex if wrong. Year Only for which i need to extract these values.
string reg Month [email protected]"(0[1-9]|1)"; string reg Date [email protected]"(0[1-9]|[0-9]|3)"; string [email protected]"[- /]"; string ddmmyyyy=reg Date seperator reg Month seperator reg Year; I want to return user date part, month part and year part using this.
It only breaks when there is a date already bound and I try to blank it out.
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0.908569 |
My cousin lives in Boston and I was worried that he was somehow affected by the attacks. It immediately brought me back to 9/11 and the memory of how powerless I felt watching the Twin Towers fall. Luckily, my cousin was fine. But it wasn’t true for others. The grief of losing family and friends is unbearable.
Deliberate attacks against civilians by individuals or armed groups are always human rights abuses. Amnesty International condemns the attacks in Boston in the strongest terms. The victims have a right to remedy, including to see those responsible brought to justice in a fair trial that respects human rights and reaffirms the rule of law.
The Obama administration is right to prosecute the suspect in criminal court and ignore those calling for denial of human rights and civil liberties. The trial must be fair, the suspect must be treated humanely and we must not let fear-mongering and discrimination flourish. We all want justice and security, but there’s a right way and a wrong way to go about it.
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Riffs, riffs, riffs. This album has plenty of them and all of them are tasty with nice little hooks. The production is awesome for it's time (1985) due to the fact of star producer Max Norman producing this, who is a household name for his powerful, clean productions. Chris Oliva's guitar work is unbeatable yet again, as this album shows plenty of his creative solos and riffs. The whole band is tight on the songs, and Savatage planned all these songs very well before recording. The album starts off with the killer title track "Power of the Night" which has one of the greatest riffs I've ever heard and this song is more or less based around the groove of the band, than the singing with a legendary chorus passage: RAISE THE FIST OF THE METAL CHILD!!!
#2 on this album is "Unusual" which is a more vocal-oriented song that has some eerie keyboards,and guitar parts to give the album some needed varience. Steve Wacholz does a great job pounding the skins on this album, and Keith Collins does some pretty bass playing to back up the band nicely. Jon Oliva ails like a madman about to rip off someones balls on this album.
Anyways track number three is "Warriors" and is one of the catchiest songs on the cd which opens with a cool guitar part and then has some outstanding Vocals during the Verse and Chorus. As Jon Oliva chants "Warriors, warriors, warriors of the World" I always think of the Manowar cd "Warriors of the World"....were Manowar Savatage fans? Warriors is one of early Sava's best song period in my opinion.
Next up is "Necrophilia" which starts off with another great guitar riff, and busts into a heavy rockin' song, that lasts the remainder of the song (which is not a bad thing in the least bit as this is one of Savas most killer tracks ever). If you want metal with catchy riffs rocking songs then this is the one for you. Like any of Savatage's early CDs.
"Washed Out" is the next offering on Power of the Night and although it is a short song it delivers some pretty good fast paced riffage.
"Hard For Love" is one of my fave songs on this album as it has a very catchy guitar part and a sweet and memorable chorus to boot.
"Fountain of Youth" is a special song on here, with some simple but very effective axe work by Criss Oliva. I love Jon Olivas screams in this song so much it gets me going all the time. The atmosphere of this track always captures me.
Next up is "Skull Session" which starts off with a fast powerful riff and then turns into a groovy verse with plenty of surprises. One of the less memorable songs on the disc, but still solid though.
"Stuck on You" has yet a handful of great riffs, but is the weakest track on POTN in my book. The song becomes tired pretty fast, but is still worth a listen of course.
"In the Dream", the closing piece, is more of a mellow track, which is Savatage's first real power ballad, as it suits the ending of the album, and still has that edge that is very attracting to the ears. The song has a sentimental vibe with sad lyrics and a catchy chorus. Very good indeed!
Overall this is a great album from start to finish (with possible exception of Skull Session and Stuck on You) and should be in your collection if you like Metal/Hard Rock of the 80's or Savatage. Traditional US power metal at it's best! Not interestening for a stucked proghead though, but already for the casual classic metal collector/listener.
I think that Power of the Night is one of the weakest Savatage's album, along with Fight for The Rock. It lacks the rough sound and the energy of the two previous albums, and the songs aren't as catchy. Nevertheless, I'll give this album three stars because it supposed one step ahead in the subject of the production, and Criss Oliva's guitars sound very good!
Best songs for me: Power of the Night (Raise the fist of the metal child!!!), Warriors and In The Dream, the first Savatage's ballad!
"Power Of The Night" is the 2nd full-length studio album by US, Florida based heavy/power metal act Savatage. The album was released through Atlantic Records in May 1985. Savatage was formed in 1979 under the Avatar monicker (they also occasionally went by the Metropolis monicker). After releasing a demo and an EP under the Avatar name they changed their name to Savatage in 1983 and recorded a demo before being signed to Par Records for the release of their debut full-length studio album "Sirens (1983)". "The Dungeons Are Calling" EP followed in 1984 (also released through Par Records), before Savatage was picked up by major label Atlantic Records. At this point in time Savatage seemed destined for greatness and commercial success.
Stylistically "Power Of The Night" continues the traditional heavy metal style of "Sirens (1983)", although the tracks are generally a bit more polished and in the case of "Hard For Love" obviously aimed at a mainstream audience. In the other end of the spectrum Savatage also experiments with new features like slightly symphonic keyboards on "Unusual". So "Power Of The Night" is overall a more diverse release than "Sirens (1983)".
The sound production is sligthly thin sounding, but otherwise detailed and powerful enough. The performances are as always on a high level. Jon Oliva is blessed with a set of really strong pipes, and his delivery is commanding and passionate. Little brother Criss Oliva is a guitarist extraordinaire and puts the icing on the cake with his hard edged riffs and blistering solos. The cake here being the tight and well playing rhythm section of Keith Collins (bass, backing vocals) and Steve Wacholz (drums, percussion).
So upon conclusion "Power Of The Night" is a great sophomore album by Savatage although I wouldn´t necessarily call it a step up from "Sirens (1983)". It´s debatable if the more polished and accessible nature of some of the tracks is a plus or a minus, but it did show that Savatage wasn´t a one-trick pony and that they were capable of composing music in different musical styles. A 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.
|C| A solid album from 1985 and another relevant work of proto-prog metal.
Power of the Night, the sophomore effort of the (at this stage) 80s proto-prog metal band Savatage, is quite a solid step up from their debut, and shows much more of the band's creative potential in pioneering the use of new artistic devices of composition ("progressiveness") in their music. Whilst this may be primarily an 80s metal oriented album, it is by no means the musical equivalent of the popular hair-metal "one hit wonder" counterparts of the time, as there is far more substance, creativity, and passion and far less "hook" and other superfluous idioms of much corporate-created music, though there are attempts on a couple tracks in this direction. That being said, this is still far from overtly progressive sounding metal, though there are plenty of hints and even overt statements of the style, enough to deem this album as a fairly good model of "proto-prog metal" if we should choose to use such simultaneously specific yet in fact vague labels. Certainly, in the context of the 80s metal style, the music here is far less repetitive and much more creative than pretty much any of their popular 80s hair-metal counterparts.
Track Commentary: The album title track has an interesting introduction with electronic- music pads and sound effects, which I find an interesting way to start a metal album. This moves straight into the main riff. This song is definitely your typical (though high quality) early 80s metal, everything really pieces together quite nicely in this song, and I really like the heavy use of syncopation during the verse and solo. This song is very characteristic of the band's aggressive metal sound, with a really cool bass-guitar unison ending. Unusual, the second track, continues in much of the same vein, though a slower, sixteenth-note rhythm based feel. I like the use of string sounds during the verse, and the synthesizers during the chorus really add so much, as well as the throbbing base. I like the modulations in the section before the solo, very creative and not something you'd ever hear in heavy metal, particularly at the time. Warriors has an overtly prog-metal sound to it, which is cool hearing that considering this album came out right in the middle of the eighties, probably prog's darkest period in its existence. The chorus of the song seems a little forced, though Jon Oliva does a great job with it, especially when he does that downward chromatic movement on the repeat. The section before the ending chorus as another synth-pad-laden, which is really cool though a little out of place considering its context within the song. Necrophilia is a very driven song with a sort of bluesy sounding guitar work, quite superb riffs all around. The duel octave-sounding guitar work is really great. It sort of sounds like where they would go with their music with Hall of the Mountain King. Washed out is more NWBHM sounding, lots of chugging sixteenth note playing by the bass and guitar, and very eighties metal sounding solo (meaning awesome). Hard for Love, as the title suggests, sounds like another one of those typical "record-company-pressured-us-to-try-to-make-a- hit" song, which is really lame. It's exactly the sort of rubbish that gives 80s metal such a low "dated" reputation among even less musically educated metal-heads, though the band tries to incorporate some unique things in it, as if to say "you know we'd like to make better music than this but it is what it is." Fountain of Youth is pretty much the artistic opposite, starting off with less conventional and thicker distortion-guitar chords (similar to the ones often used by Fates Warning, if I'm not mistaken) and some synth effects. I sense that this is the sort of music that represents the band's true creative outlet. The guitar tabbing is played very clean and sounds great. There is a very progressive sounding section with voice effect synth-pads with really effective and creative guitar work. And talk about an unconventional ending! Skull Session is a much more straightforward track, another very driving, somewhat NWBHM sounding galloping-rhythm-based track. Stuck On You is actually much better than you'd expect considering the title (and even the lyrics), the guitar work is very good, especially during the chorus, and the overall song has a very metal head-banging feel to it (particularly during the solo), though the lyrics are still really annoying and uncharacteristic of the song. I love the micro-meter triplet hemiola they throw in toward the end of the solo, which they do several times at the end of the song. Really cool. In The Dream sounds a lot like where they would go much later in their discography with Streets and what-not, a sort of heavy ballad, and I suppose their potential for that sound was always there, they just didn't go full on with it until later, which I find interesting. The song provides a good ending for a good album.
Considering the "mixed-bag," inconsistent nature of their debut, this album has a generally higher level of quality all around; enough that, in my view, it should establish the album as a relevant work of proto-prog metal. The raised level of maturity and consistency in the band's sound is more than noticeable, and other than the dreadful record-company-forced follow- up album Fight for Rock, it could be considered the great foundation of their sound from which the band would soar to new heights in their creativity for the next few works of their discography.
Post a review of SAVATAGE "Power Of The Night"
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0.977352 |
Christianity and Islam Among the widely known religions of the world are Christianity and Islam Christianity and Islam introduction. Both have been subject to various criticisms and controversies tracing back since the fall of the Constantinople on the hands of the Muslim Turks. But did everyone know that Christian and the Islam faith Islam was founded by Muhammad referring to the Quran while Christianity was started by the followers of Jesus of Nazareth but they both acknowledge a spiritual tradition related to Abraham.
For the two religions, God rules, judges, forgives and hes the This paper will compare and contrast the attitudes of Christianity and Islam toward merchants and trade from the religions" origins and any change over time until about 1500. The basic's of a merchant's life from either Christianity or Islam varies. Christianity and Islam have many similarities and can easily be compared to one another.
Both trace their roots to Abraham. Both believe in prophecy, Gods messengers (apostles), revelation, scripture, the resurrection of dead, and the centrality of Islam and Christianity Essay Islam and Christianity There are hundreds of religions in this world.
Of them two are the most prominent. Islam and Christianity. It is averaged that there are 750 million people practicing Islam, and another 1 billion practicing Christianity. Christianity and Islam are the two most popular religions around the world but Christianity is the largest religion in the world with 1.
9 billion followers. The two religions are monotheistic and believe in one single God but Islam refers to the same god, as Allah. Christianity vs. Islam. Christianity and Islam are the world largest religions and their comparison and contrasting revolves around quite a wide range of variables. In Christianity, the followers are believe in Christ which is This essay seeks to describe Islam and Christianity and their key differences.
Islam and Christianity are differing in their elementary outlooks in regarding to the God they are worshiping, the nature of their faith, and their faith about the resurrection and crucifixion o Jesus, Christians understand that Jesus is the son of the living God. B Compare and Contrast essay: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism Introduction of Religions Christianity most widely distributed of the world religions, having substantial representation in all the populated continents of the globe.
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0.982317 |
Alessandro Blasetti was a director with remarkable scope. He covered a lot of ground from 1920s experimental realism to 1950s rosy comedies starring Sophia Loren, Vittorio De Sica, and Marcello Mastroianni.
Blasetti was also a Fascist of primo giorno, one of the original Fascists, and when he made a Fascist propaganda film, it was not sur commande but heartfelt, made with conviction.
Vecchia guardia is one of the few true Italian Fascist propaganda films, and its screen life was short. As a rule, explicit political propaganda films are not popular, and they do not serve their cause. Perhaps on the contrary. I have often thought that one of the reasons why Nazi propaganda films were not released in 1930s Finland was that they functioned rather as counter-propaganda. Finns find images and sounds of yelling and croaking dictators and slavishly adoring masses repellent.
Vecchia guardia is quite similar to the contemporary Nazi propaganda films such as Hitlerjunge Quex. It is well made, it has a lot of realistic aspects, it is not impossibly idealized and one-sided, and the director is top-ranking.
One of the hallmarks of Vecchia guardia is its often stark realism. Another one is the staccato rhythm, the blunt editing with royal disregard for smooth transitions in image or sound. In this sense Vecchia guardia resembles avantgarde cinema and may be felt profoundly alienating in a Brechtian sense. There are, indeed, affinities with Kuhle Wampe. There are also affinities with direct cinema and nouvelle vague.
After the Great War the atrocities of the Socialists are getting intolerable, not only their outright violence towards innocent citizens but also their incessant strikes which are turning society into chaos. The most blatant case is their strike at the mental hospital: the madmen turn loose. Decent citizens have no other alternative than to defend themselves militantly. There is tremendous enthusiasm in the conclusion: "a Roma! a Roma! a Roma!". The joyous crowd reaches the Eternal City in the finale, singing a rousing anthem about the call of Mussolini.
Four men of different ages personify Italy's way to Fascism. There is the hero, the dashing activist of the squadra. There is his buddy, a buffoonish strongman with echoes of Maciste. There is his little brother, a teenager who is a technical wizard, also a humoristic character with touches of Gyro Gearloose (Pelle Peloton / Oppfinnar-Jocke / Archimede Pitagorico) in Walt Disney comics. In the final battle against the socialists the young boy is instantly shot, the first martyr of the Fascists, a bit like Horst Wessel. Having witnessed all this, the father, the old, wise professor, finally must face the truth, and he, too joins the Fascists in their triumphant march to Rome.
Blasetti brings a lot of realistic density and humoristic detail into his yarn. Children are important. The wine harvesting scene is delicious. But even though Vecchia guardia is heartfelt, one never forgets that this is un film à thèse, and it lacks the irrestistible drive of great art.
In these remarks I draw from Peter von Bagh, whose writing we published as our programme note.
It seems that the film or much of it has been shot with direct sound.
The undisputed strength of Vecchia guardia is the brilliant cinematography by Otello Martelli. The sense of immediacy is astonishing. Martelli had started with Roberto Roberti, and he went on with Mario Camerini and became a key cinematographer of Neorealism (Paisà, Caccia tragica, Riso amaro, Stromboli, Luci del varietà, Francesco, giullare di Dio, Roma ore 11, I vitelloni, La strada, L'oro di Napoli, Il bidone, Le notti di Cabiria, La ragazza in vetrina). He also shot Sopralluoghi in Palestina for Pasolini. In short, he became one of the most distinguished and original cinematographers in the history of the cinema. But that distinction is already displayed in Vecchia guardia.
A few weeks before our screening it was found out that the film print is in weak condition, and we had to screen a Betacam SP. It is complete and so well made that even on video it is possible to appreciate the high quality of the cinematography, also in ambitious and challenging night scenes.
An irregular notebook and scrapbook of rough notes on films and related matters.
John Coltrane: Live at the Village Vanguard Again!
The Booker Ervin Sextet: Heavy!!!
Sun Ra and His Arkestra: Jazz in Silhouette / Sound Sun Pleasure!!
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0.999995 |
There are few laws in California that have generated as much criticism and debate as California’s “Three Strikes Law.” Indeed, in late 2012, voters approved Prop 36 to soften the criteria for saddling a defendant with a third strike and even allowing those with such a third strike to appeal their sentence based on a third strike.
About This Article Briefly: Two attacks on the same victim, separated by thirty minutes during which defendant walked away and left the victim for dead, only to return and realize the victim was still alive – and then beat him more, were not part of a continuous course of conduct, so they were two strikes, not one.
When one victim is violently attacked by a defendant sufficient to merit a “strike,” but there is a break in the attack, the issue becomes whether there is really two attacks and thus two strikes, or just one attack and one strike.
On the evening of July 20, 2010, Harley Paul Finney stabbed Chad Robinson more than ten times. Robinson almost died. During Finney’s trial in San Luis Obispo Superior Court, the jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict on the attempted murder charge, but did return a guilty verdict for assault with a deadly weapon (Penal Code § 245(a)(1)) with a finding that Finney inflicted great bodily injury on the victim (Penal Code § 12022.7(a)).
The complaint against Finney also alleged that, in 1999, he suffered two prior strikes as a juvenile for mayhem and an assault on a sixty year old homeless man. Finney allegedly beat the man with a skateboard and kicked him in the head in two episodes thirty minutes apart. When the plea to this prior case was entered, Finney acknowledged that the “convictions” (there are no “convictions” in juvenile court, only adjudications) qualified as two strikes.
Prior to sentencing in his case involving Chad Robinson, Finney filed a motion to ask the judge to treat the two strikes as one strike. The argument was that both strikes arose from a single criminal act and that under People v. Burgos (2009) 117 Cal. App. 4th1209, the court should consider it as one strike, not two.
The trial court first reviewed the facts of the juvenile matter. It noted that Finney left the victim for dead after beating him with his skateboard and crushing his skull. He then returned thirty minutes later and kicked the victim three more times in the head when he discovered the homeless man was still alive. In other words, there was a clear, intended break between the two incidents. They were separate and distinguishable from Burgos’ facts, which were a carjacking and a robbery that the court deemed merged as one act. As such, the trial court denied Finney’s request that the court treat the prior incident as one strike.
In sentencing Finney for his stabbing of Robinson, the judge considered it a “Three Strikes” case, and as a third strike, sentenced him to 29 years to life.
Finney then appealed, claiming the trial court made a mistake in denying what Finney called a “Burgos Motion.” The Second Appellate District, in People v. Harley Paul Finney (2012 DJDAR 4331), agreed with the trial court, saying the two attacks were not part of a continuous course of conduct at all.
Moreover, the Appellate Court noted, had Finney brought his motion under People v. Superior Court (Romero) (1996) 13 Cal. 4th 497, the trial court would have been correct to deny a request to strike a strike. The appellate court explained that Finney had “an extensive criminal record” dating back to age fourteen. He had two separate prior convictions for beating up and robbing other homeless men. Finney also had a record for beating up a California Youth Authority (CYA) staff member and was involved in nine fights during his seven years in custody. In other words, the court found that Finney fit the type of career criminal that the Three Strikes Law (Penal Code §§ 667(b) to (j) and 1170.12) intended to reach.
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0.999706 |
I know. Someone is saying, "What Coco Cay? Is there such a place?"
Yes. It is Royal Caribbean International's private Bahamas island.
Most of the popular Caribbean cruise lines own a private island resort in the Bahamas or elsewhere in the Caribbean. In addition to CocoCay, Royal Caribbean "owns" Labadee, Haiti.
Some other privately owned Bahamas islands are: Castaway Cay - Disney Cruise Line's private island; Great Stirrup Cay - Norwegian Cruise Line's private island; Half Moon Cay - Holland America's private island; and Princess Cay - Princess Cruises' private island.
Private Bahamas islands are used primarily by Caribbean cruise lines as a beach stop on 3 day or 4 day Bahamas cruises and on other Caribbean cruises.
Coco Cay is used as such - a private beach getaway.
My family's first and only visit to this island was on a 4 day Royal Caribbean cruise to the Bahamas in July 2010. The cruise itinerary included only two stops - CocoCay and Nassau.
Our day on the beach turned out to be a beautiful one.
Like all the others, Royal Caribbean's private Bahamas island resort is not equipped to anchor a cruise liner near the coast.
Consequently, our ship docked out at sea and we rode "tenders" (smaller boats - like ferries) to shore.
Note: Coco Cay is being transformed and ships will be able to dock.
The first thing that hit me about the island, was how hot it was. Yes, it is the Bahamas and it was summer, so we got hit really hard with the tropical sun.
Anyway, I also noticed how beautifully accommodating the island was. There were restrooms, shopping areas, hammocks hanging between trees, a huge barbecue area for lunch and of course the beach.
Most people got off the tender and quickly headed to the beach. We spent most our time in the clear, blue water, playing in the sand or hanging out on a hammock.
Some people found other interesting things to do.
6. Try the very popular Waverunner - a motorized ride across the waves.
Let me hasten to add that amidst all the fun activities, there is a time for food - a well-rounded family barbecue. Lunch included burgers, hot dogs, corns, rolls, salads, rice, barbecue chicken, chicken wings, desserts and more. We were stuffed.
After lunch, we went back to more water, hanging out on a beach chair or off to nap. A full stomach and the hot sun combine to put you to sleep.
When it was time to head back to the ship, everyone agreed that it was a well-spent day on Royal Caribbean's private Bahamas island.
Whatever you choose to do, your family will enjoy their day at Coco Cay.
If you are thinking of an all inclusive Caribbean cruise, you will be pleased if Royal Caribbean's private Bahamas island is included as a "port of call".
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0.529541 |
Top 5 Most Powerfull Computer in the World: The list of the most powerful computers in the world has been released. This list contains 500 computers from around the world. That's why it has been named Top-500.
This list has been prepared by Laurence Berkeley National Laboratory. These Powerful Computers do many other things, including weather, maritime bustling, artificial intelligence.
This computer is located in the US-based Oak Ridge National Laboratory. IBM is the creator of this computer. It has an IBM Power9 22C 3.07GHz processor.
It is located in the Chinese-based Computer National Super Computing Center. This is made by the Fujitsu Company. This computer has a Xeon Gold 6148 20C 2.4GHz processor. This computer works on LinuX.
This computer is located in America's Laurence Livermore National Laboratory. As the name implies, IBM has made it. It has an IBM POWER9 22C 3.1GHz processor. It works on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system.
This computer is set up in China's National Supercomputer Center in Guangzhou. It is made by NUDT. It has an Intel Xeon E5-2692v2 12C 2.2GHz processor. This works on Kylin Linux system.
This computer is set in Switzerland's National Supercomputing Center. It is made by Cray Inc and has a Xeon E5-2690v3 12C 2.6GHz processor. Which works on the Cray Linux Environment Operating System.
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0.999997 |
Do you think trees need pruning every year?
Many varieties of fruit trees need to be pruned at least once a year. Nonetheless, there are species of trees such as pines, oaks or cypresses which can't be pruned.
Farmers usually prune fruit trees to strengthen the quality of the tree. By pruning the tree, the sap of a peach tree, for example, will allow to obtain a bigger and a more resistant fruit to droughs.
Rainy periods can be also dangerous since they threaten excellent harvests of peaches, pears, apricots and more kinds of fruits. In consequence, small farmers place plastic bags on fruits like bananas or peaches before packing them to export.
As I see it, pruning constitutes just a small stop in that battle farmers face against adverse weather conditions.
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0.99987 |
Charles is a Prototype Designer at Safran Analytics; he works closely with user-experience specialists. Together, they design data-elated solutions (data visualisation*, IoT**, digital tools, etc.) and implement methods of collaboration that are still not widespread at Safran (collective intelligence, Design Thinking***, Lean Start-up****etc.).
As my job titles suggests, my mission is to make prototypes of solutions to ensure they are viable, before the company invests too many resources in their development. So, I work at the very early stage of the concept and remain focused on the user experience.
I work with other people at Safran Analytics who are specialized in user experience (User eXperience (UX) Designer, UX Researcher). Our skills complement each other; by working together, we are capable of designing a product, adapting it to users' needs and practices and then developing it using the most appropriate solution. This is where I come in as a prototype designer.
Safran Analytics works on the "data chain", i.e. all the various stages from the acquisition of data from a source - whether in a factory or an aircraft - and its analysis right up to the consumption of the data, which can be a long and complex process.
To avoid committing ourselves to a project with no guarantee of results, my team needs to be able to test the points that represent a high risk of failure. So, we develop technical solutions to verify several hypotheses such as: "Is the data acquisition possible?", "Is the technical solution chosen acceptable", and "Does the solution actually meet the need", even if it means redefining the need more precisely.
The prototype produced makes it possible to validate these hypotheses in a simple manner. To do this, we use the Lean Start-up**** approach, which allows us to work efficiently and to have quick results and feedback. This means we don't spend long months on the deployment of a project without actually knowing if it will meet the requirement in question.
We also use the Design Thinking*** approach, which facilitates the decision-making, co-creation and adoption processes, while remaining focused on meeting the user's need.
Finally, I also test various innovative technologies that could be used inside the Group in the Garage (Safran Analytics' prototyping and collaboration area) and in the Aerogarage (the Safran Fab Lab in Paris-Saclay).
What studies did you do to become Prototype Designer?
After high school, I did the "preparatory classes" for the Grandes Ecoles (Top French Engineering Schools) and earned a place at the École des Mines de Saint-Étienne. I did an engineering degree in computer science, microelectronics and new technologies. It was a really comprehensive curriculum combining computing and electronics which enabled me to understand every aspect of today's technologies and acquire technical skills, which I went on to perfect at Seoul National University in South Korea.
After graduating, I created a start-up with three school friends. We developed a holographic projection system without goggles, i.e. a system where the hologram projected could be moved with the hands. After spending three years on this project and making several functional prototypes, I felt I needed a change and I came across this vacancy for a prototype designer, which I thought sounded interesting. Although I was a bit reluctant to join a large group after three years in my start-up, I was won over by Safran's vision, and the entrepreneurial aspect of the job, and particularly the team I was joining.
First of all, you have to have technical skills and a broad, up-to-date knowledge of current technologies. This knowledge is crucial for ensuring the proposals and new ideas are coherent, and for determining which technology is best suited to the users' needs. You also have to be inquisitive by nature.
Then, you need good soft skills to really understand the users of the services and products we develop. You have to be able to put yourself in their shoes and have the empathy to understand every aspect of the user's job, not just the technical side.
You also need to have good communication skills. An idea is only great when you can explain it and share it. In my job I have to be able to explain highly technological information in a simple way, so that everyone can understand.
I enjoy working with my team; working with people who have different yet complementary skills to mine is particularly rewarding. The communication between the team is easy and effective. I really appreciate the great atmosphere in the team, which is something we share with all the people involved in our projects.
I also deal with exciting technological subjects. We are asked to work on a wide range of different projects, meaning we constantly need to innovate.
The hands-on, manual aspect of my job allows me to give a clear meaning to what I do, while retaining a DIY***** (Do It Yourself) spirit.
Finally, I feel great pride when a project succeeds, particularly as regards the team who always give their utmost; that is what makes me want to get up in the morning and come to work.
I don't really know at the moment. Uncertainty is an inherent part of my job, and the jobs of my team-mates. We depend on each other but also on technology developments and the related methodologies, which we must keep up to date with. My goal is to stay in the field of innovation, to be able to test and provide new solutions for the Group. The position changes as technology moves forward, so I'll see where it leads me!
* Data visualisation is the study, science or art of representing data in a visual format. This may be through graphs, diagrams, maps, time charts, computer graphics or even animations.
** IoT meaning the " Internet of Things" or simply connected objects, refers to the extension of the Internet to things and places in the physical world.
*** Design Thinking is an approach to innovation and innovation management, developed in the 1980s, combining analytical thinking and intuitive thinking in order to address and facilitate creative processes.
**** A Lean start-up is a specific approach for starting a business activity or launching a product. It is based on validated learning, (i.e. checking the validity of concepts), scientific experimentation and iterative design. It shortens the time needed to get a product to market, makes it possible to regularly measure progress, and have regular feedback from users. With this in mind, companies (especially start-ups) seek to design products and services that best meet the needs of their consumers, with minimal initial investment.
***** DIY (for Do It Yourself) culture refers to the philosophy of individuals taking the opportunity to do odd jobs and repairs. They are no longer simply consumers or spectators but actively involved in things. In companies, this translates into promoting creativity and links into the Make or Buy approach, i.e. choosing whether to make something yourself or have it made.
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0.999981 |
Sometimes when we're driving, we suddenly smell gasoline in the car, and then we get nervous. What's wrong with that? I'm sure there are a lot of drivers out there. Here's an analysis of why there's gasoline in the car. Gasoline is produced and sold according to the brand name, and the specifications of the brand are regulated by national gasoline product standards and are related to different standards. At present, there are 3 gasoline license plates in China (IV), which are 90, 93 and 97 respectively. The state (V) is 89, 92 and 95 respectively (98 in the appendix). The number of gasoline is divided by octane number. For example, gasoline on 97 refers to a gasoline fuel equivalent to 97 percent of isooctane and 3 percent of n-heptane resistance. The larger the label, the better the anti-knock performance. Depending on the engine compression ratio, you should choose the different brand of gasoline, which will be indicated on the manual of each vehicle. A mid-range sedan with a compression ratio of 8.5-9.5 should generally use the 90 (country IV) gasoline, and the car with a compression ratio of 9.5 should use the gasoline of 93 (country IV). At present, there are 89, 92, 95 and other labels on the market, which represent the octane value of gasoline, which means the anti-detonation of gasoline, which has nothing to do with the cleaning of gasoline. The so-called "high label gasoline is cleaner" is misleading. It is more scientific, more economical, and can give full play to the engine's efficiency according to the engine compression ratio or the requirement of the automobile instruction manual.
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0.944654 |
I'm using CLI in JIRA to create a Confluence page. How do I pass the @pageId@ to a JIRA action?
I'm using Bob Swift CLI in JIRA to create a Confluence page. How do I pass the @pageId@ to a JIRA action?
--action copyPage --space "eWebProjects" --parent "Project List" --title "eWeb Project Template" --newTitle "eWeb Project %original_id%"
--action renamePage --id @pageId@ --newTitle "eWeb Project @pageId@"
--action copyPage --space "eWebProjects" --parent "eWeb Project @pageId@" --title "eWeb Request Template" --newTitle "eWeb Request @pageId@"
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0.994136 |
Here are eighteen facts proving that Trump is a Russian agent.
— Trump has a long financial history with Russia. As summarized by Jonathan Chait in an invaluable New York magazine article: “From 2003 to 2017, people from the former USSR made 86 all-cash purchases — a red flag of potential money laundering — of Trump properties, totaling $109 million. In 2010, the private-wealth division of Deutsche Bank also loaned him hundreds of millions of dollars during the same period it was laundering billions in Russian money. ‘Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,’ said Donald Jr. in 2008. ‘We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia,’ boasted Eric Trump in 2014.” According to Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s guilty plea of lying to Congress, Trump was even pursuing his dream of building a Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign with the help of a Vladimir Putin aide. These are the kind of financial entanglements that intelligence services such as the FSB typically use to ensnare foreigners, and they could leave Trump vulnerable to blackmail.
— Trump encouraged the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails on July 27, 2016 (“Russia, if you’re listening”), on the very day that Russian intelligence hackers tried to attack Clinton’s personal and campaign servers.
— The Trump campaign was full of individuals, such as Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates and Michael Flynn, with suspiciously close links to Moscow.
— Manafort, who ran the Trump campaign for free and was heavily in debt to a Russian oligarch, now admits to offering his Russian business partner, who is suspected of links to Russian intelligence, polling data that could have been used to target the Russian social media campaign on behalf of Trump.
— Once in office, Trump fired Comey to stop the investigation of the “Russia thing” — and then bragged about having done so to the Russian ambassador and foreign minister while also sharing with them top-secret information. Later, Trump fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions because he would not end the special counsel investigation that resulted after the firing of Comey. As Lawfare editor Benjamin Wittes argues, “the obstruction was the collusion” — Trump has been effectively protecting the Russians by trying to impede the investigation of their attack on the United States.
— Trump has refused to consistently acknowledge that Russia interfered in the U.S. election or mobilize a government-wide effort to stop future interference. He has accepted Putin’s protestations that the Russians did not meddle in the election over the “high confidence” assessment of the U.S. intelligence community that they did.
— Like no previous president, Trump attacks and undermines the Justice Department and the FBI (“a cancer in our country”) — two institutions that stand on the front lines of combatting Russian espionage and influence operations in the United States.
— Again, like no previous president, Trump attacks and undermines the European Union and NATO — he has suggested that France should leave the E.U. and that the United States should leave NATO, reportedly saying, “NATO is as bad as NAFTA.” The E.U. and NATO are the two major obstacles to Russian designs in Europe.
— Trump has praised Putin (“a strong leader”) while trashing just about everyone else from grade-B Hollywood celebrities to leaders of allied nations. Trump even praised Putin for expelling U.S. diplomats and, notwithstanding instruction from his aides (“DO NOT CONGRATULATE”), congratulated Putin on winning a rigged reelection.
— Trump is sowing chaos in the government, most recently with a record-breaking partial government shutdown and “acting” appointees in key posts such as the Defense Department and Justice Department, thus furthering a Russian objective of undermining its chief adversary.
Now that we’ve listed 18 reasons Trump could be a Russian asset, let’s look at the evidence he is not.
I can’t think of anything that would exonerate Trump .
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0.999169 |
Find a Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation Center near me in Newton, AL.
Drug treatment in Newton can often be a matter of going through the motions although not getting much achieved, or only getting results that will be short-lived because insufficient time and effort was spent in treatment getting down to the root of what caused the problem initially. The problem is that sometimes individuals aren't in the right rehabilitation for them, even though they are in what would be looked at "rehab". By way of example, some drug rehab facilities in Newton, Alabama call themselves a treatment facility however only really allow the time to detox and perhaps address some things that might help the person stay drug free after they leave treatment. Likewise, short-term facilities in Newton will not be ideal for someone who is dependent to alcohol or drugs, because after only thirty days or less in treatment individuals aren't prepared to return to their normal lives and be confident about managing things which trigger their substance abuse. It's just unrealistic, which is why such brief stints in rehab usually cause short-lived successes that result in relapse.
To completely reap the benefits of rehab, individuals should be within a drug treatment facility in Newton that doesn't only provides them with ample time to address anything which may compromise their decision to be drug-free, but in addition a big change of environment that is ideal for recovery. For this reason inpatient and residential alcohol and drug treatment facilities in Newton, Alabama provide an individual the most beneficial chance to actually get drug-free and stay this way, and should be considered as the primary option. If someone refuses to go to alcohol and drug rehab, this can be a hurdle that may be overcome using an effective drug intervention. So consult with a drug and alcohol rehabilitation counselor to get an intervention started immediately if this sounds like the next step.
Household and Income Statistics in: Newton, AL.
MedMark Treatment Centers is a Drug and Alcohol Rehab, Outpatient Drug Rehab Program that can be reached at 334-692-4455. They specialize in Co-Occurring Mental And Substance Abuse Disorders, Treatment for addicts with Hiv/Aids, Drug and Alcohol Programs for Pregnant Women, Treatment for Women and accept the following forms of payment: Self Payment, Medicaid, Private Insurance.
They are located at 9283 U.S. Highway 84 West Newton, AL. 36352.
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0.999428 |
How to install Modern Age Premium APK?
1. Check the Android version to verify compatibility of Modern Age Premium APK with your smart phone; Find Android version: go to Settings - About the phone - Android version. Make sure Modern Age Premium is compatible with your Android phone.
2. Click the download button to download Modern Age Premium. Once the download completed,find Modern Age Premium in your download folder or notification center and tap the icon to install the APK.
3. Find Modern Age Premium icon in your home screen then tap the icon to open it.
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0.999999 |
Why use mutual funds in the first place? The short answer is to save money and to earn returns that are hopefully higher than those associated with guaranteed investments, such as Certificates of Deposit. Before investing with mutual funds, be sure to know your investment objective, which is the goal and time frame you have to invest. This will guide you in choosing the best funds for your purpose. In general, mutual funds are best used for time horizons of more than three years and preferably more than 10 years.
The reason why most mutual funds usually provide greater returns over time than guaranteed investments is due to the risk premium rewarded to investors. This premium comes in the form of higher returns associated with accepting market risk, which is the risk of losing some portion or the entire original amount invested.
The greatest risk for you as an investor, however, is likely to be you. Be careful of "chasing performance," which is the human tendency to continuously seek and buy the highest performing funds while selling the under-performing ones. Remember that investing should not be thrilling, it should be boring. Slow and steady wins the race!
Buying Baskets: Diversify, Diversify, Diversify!
Mutual funds are like baskets of investments because one single mutual fund can invest in dozens or hundreds of stocks and/or bonds, referred to as "holdings." There are many mutual funds that are diverse enough alone to invest a large portion of your hard-earned savings, but it is a good idea to spread your risk (diversify) across the different mutual fund types, such as stock funds, bond funds, and money market funds.
Front Load: These are charged up front (at the time of purchase) and can be up to 5% or more of the amount invested. For example, if you invest $1,000 with a 5% front load, the load amount will be $50.00 and therefore your initial investment will actually be $950.
Back Load: These are charged only when you sell a fund. Also called deferred sales charges, back loads are usually in the 5% range and may decline or even be reduced to zero over time, usually after five or more years.
No Load or Load Waived: As the name implies, this category of fund expense has no front load or back load.
Expense Ratio: Not all funds charge loads; however there are underlying expenses in all mutual funds. Expense ratios average around 1.50% ($1.50 for every $100) for stock mutual funds and are for the ongoing management of the fund. Also, sometimes included in the expense ratio is an operational charge, called a 12b-1 fee.
We've all seen the disclaimers about past performance. However, a mutual fund investor will still consider past performance in their initial evaluation before buying. Review longer periods, such as 5 and 10 years, and compare the performance with that of other funds in the same category.
It is also important to see how long the manager has been at the helm of the fund. If, for example, you find a mutual fund with an impressive five-year return but the manager's time at the fund, called "manager tenure," is only one year, this new manager cannot be given credit for that 5-year performance.
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0.998058 |
Considering Mooky the Cow is a cow, I thought you'd all like to know a bit more about cows.
Cattle were originally identified by Carl Linnaeus as three separate species. These were Bos taurus, the European or "taurine" cattle (including similar types from Africa and Asia); Bos indicus, the zebu; and the extinct Bos primigenius, the aurochs. The aurochs is ancestral to both zebu and taurine cattle. Recently these three have increasingly been grouped as one species, with Bos primigenius taurus, Bos primigenius indicus and Bos primigenius primigenius as the subspecies.
Complicating the matter is the ability of cattle to interbreed with other closely related species. Hybrid individuals and even breeds exist, not only between taurine cattle and zebu (including the sanga cattle breeds, Bos taurus africanus) but also between one or both of these and some other members of the genus Bos: yak (called a dzo or "yattle"), banteng and gaur. Hybrids can also occur between taurine cattle and either species of bison (for example, the beefalo breed), which some authors consider to be in the genus Bos as well. The hybrid origin of some types may not be obvious – for example, genetic testing of the Dwarf Lulu breed, the only humpless taurine-type cattle in Nepal, found them to be a mix of taurine cattle, zebu and yak. Cattle cannot successfully be hybridized with more distantly related bovines such as water buffalo or African buffalo.
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0.992549 |
Buddhism in Vietnam - Buddhism may have first come to Vietnam as early as the 3rd or 2nd century BCE from South Asia or from China in the 1st or 2nd century CE.
The territory of modern-day Vietnam was divided amoung three different states for most of pre-modern history. In the north, the state of Nam Viet (the predecessor to the modern Vietnamese state) was largely a vassal state of the Chinese Empire from 111 BC until 939 CE, and as such Chinese language and culture, including Chinese forms of Buddhism, were integrated into the Vietnamese culture. The Chinese Chan school (Thien in Vietnamese) and the Pure Land school became the most influential schools in the Nam Viet region. The Thien school was most influential in monasteries and among the elites, while the Pure Land school was most influential among ordinary people. By the tenth century, Buddhism flourished among all classes of people.
In the central region of modern-day Vietnam, was the kingdom of Champa, which from the third century onwards was influenced by Indian forms of Sravakayana and Mahayana Buddhism, as well as forms of Hinduism. In the south, the Mekong Delta region was part of the Khmer Empire from the 10th century to the 17th century. The Khmers adopted Theravada Buddhism from the 13th century onwards.
From the fifteenth century onwards, the northern Viet state expanded southward, conquering the Champa kingdom and enventually annexing the Mekong Delta from the Khmer state. The Viet ethnic group eventually settled throughout the central and southern regions of modern-day Vietnam, likely often displacing the Cham and Khmer ethnic groups. Forms of East Asian Buddhism were brought to the rest of Vietnam with this southward expansion, though other forms Buddhism are also practiced, particularly in the south near Cambodia.
Southeast Asia circa 1100 C.E. showing the approximate areas of control for the Dai-Viet (Vietnam), Champa, and Khmer Empires.
The northern region of Nam Viet was largely a vassal state the Chinese Empire from roughly 111 BCE until 1000 CE, and absorbed many aspects of Chinese culture, including the Chinese forms of Mahayana Buddhism.
The central region, was part of the Champa kingdom from the late 2nd century until the 15th century.
The southern Mekong Delta region was part of various Cambodian kingdoms until the 17th century.
The Chinese Chan school (Thien in Vietnamese) and the Pure Land school became the most influential schools in the Nam Viet region. The Thien school was most influential in monasteries and among the elites, while the Pure Land school was most influential among ordinary people. By the tenth century, Buddhism flourished among all classes of people.
As the Viet state expanded southward from the 15th century onwards, the Chinese forms of Buddhism were brought to the central and southern regions of modern-day Vietnam.
In the central region, the kingdom of Champa emerged around present-day Danang in the late 2nd century AD. The Champa kingdom was heavily influenced by Indian culture; they adopted the Hindu religion and the Sanskrit language. By the 8th century Champa had expanded southward to include what is now Nha Trang and Phan Rang.
After the Cham–Vietnamese War (1471), the Champa state was greatly diminished. The kingdom was reduced to a small enclave near Nha Trang with many Chams fleeing to Cambodia.
The kingdom was formally annexed into Vietnam in 1832.
The southern region of modern-day Vietnam, around the Mekong Delta, was part of successive Cambodian states until the 18th century, when the region was annexed and settled by the Vietnamese. "Cambodians, mindful that they controlled the area until the 18th century, still call the delta Kampuchea Krom, or ‘Lower Cambodia’."
From the 1st to 6th centuries AD, the Mekong Delta was part of the kingdom of Funan. "Funan, known as Nokor Phnom to the Khmers, was centred on the walled city of Angkor Borei, near modern-day Takeo. The principal port city of Funan was Oc-Eo in the Mekong Delta and archaeological excavations here tell us of contact between Funan and China, Indonesia, Persia and even the Mediterranean."
Funan was heavily influenced by Indian culture. The Sanskrit language was adopted at court, and it appears that the main religion was Hinduism until around the 5th century, when Buddhist doctrines gained influence.
There is a record in China of two Buddhist monks from Funan, named Mandrasena and Sanghapala,:58,92 who visited China in the 5th and 6th centuries and translated some texts from Sanskrit (or Prakrit) into Chinese. Among these texts they translated is the Mahayana Saptaśatikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, also called the Mahāprajñāpāramitā Mañjuśrīparivarta Sūtra.
After the decline of the kingdom of Funan, the region was absorbed into the Khmer Empire from around 900 C.E. The official religions of the Khmer included both Hinduism and Mahayana Buddhism until the 13th century, when Theravada Buddhism was introduced from Sri Lanka. Therevada Buddhism became the official religion.
The Mekong Delta region was annexed and settled by the Vietnamese Nguyen lords in the 17th century.
There are conflicting theories regarding whether Buddhism first reached Vietnam during the 3rd or 2nd century BCE via delegations from India, or during the 1st or 2nd century from China.
In Nam Viet (northern Vietnam), by the end of the second century CE, the city of Luy Lâu, northeast of the present day capital city of Hanoi, had developed into a major regional Mahayana Buddhist center. Luy Lâu was visited by Indian Buddhist missionary monks en route to China. The monks followed the maritime trade route from the Indian sub-continent to China used by Indian traders. A number of Mahayana sutras and the agamas were translated into Classical Chinese there, including the Sutra of Forty-two Chapters and the Anapanasati.
Nam Viet was the birthplace of Buddhist missionary Kang Senghui who was of Sogdian origin.
The Viet state achieved independence from China in 969 CE, and with the exception of a Chinese takeover from 1407–1427 CE, remained independent until the French colonial era.
During the Đinh dynasty (968-980), Buddhism was recognized by the state as an official faith (~971) by the Vietnamese monarchs. The Early Lê dynasty (980-1009) also afforded the same recognition to the Buddhist church. The growth of Buddhism during this time is attributed to the recruitment of erudite monks to the court as the newly independent state needed an ideological basis on which to build a country. Subsequently, this role was ceded to Confucianism.
From 1954 to 1975, Vietnam was split into North and South Vietnam. In South Vietnam, President Ngô Đình Diệm, a member of the Vietnamese Catholic minority, was accused of pursuing anti-Buddhist policies, leading to civil strife.
With the fall of Saigon in 1975, the whole nation came under Communist rule; many religious practices including Buddhism were discouraged. Organized sangha were suppressed. In the North the government had created the United Buddhist Sangha of Vietnam, co-opting the clergy to function under government auspices. However, in the South, the Unified Buddhist Sangha of Vietnam still held sway and openly challenged the communist government. The Sangha leadership was thus arrested and imprisoned; Sangha properties were seized and the Sangha itself was outlawed. In its place was the newly created Buddhist Sangha of Vietnam, designed as the final union of all Buddhist organizations, now under full state control.
Since Đổi Mới (1986) many reforms have allowed Buddhism to be practiced relatively unhindered by the individuals. However no organized sangha is allowed to function independent of the State. It was not until 2007 that Pure Land Buddhism, the most widespread type of Buddhism practiced in Vietnam, was officially recognized as a religion by the government.
After the fall of South Vietnam to communism in 1975 at the end of the Vietnam War, the first major Vietnamese Buddhist community appeared in North America. Since this time, the North American Vietnamese Buddhist community has grown to some 160 temples and centers.
The most famous practitioner of synchronized Vietnamese Thiền in the West is Thích Nhất Hạnh who has authored dozens of books and founded the Dharma center Plum Village in France.
Vietnamese painting of the Pure land of Ksitigarbha.
According to Cuong Tu Nguyen & A. W. Barber, followers in Vietnam practice differing traditions without any problem or sense of contradiction.
Nguyen, et al, also state that gaining merit is the most common and essential practice in Vietnamese Buddhism with a belief that liberation takes place with the help of Buddhas and bodhisattvas. Buddhist monks commonly chant sutras, recite Buddhas’ names (particularly Amitābha), doing repentance and praying for rebirth in the Pure Land.
The overall doctrinal position of Vietnamese Buddhism is the inclusive system of Tiantai, with the higher metaphysics informed by the Huayan school (Vietnamese: Hoa Nghiêm); however, the orientation of Vietnamese Buddhism is syncretic without making such distinctions. Therefore, modern practice of Vietnamese Buddhism can be very eclectic, including elements from Thiền (Chan Buddhism), Thiên Thai (Tiantai), Tịnh độ Pure Land Buddhism, and popular practices from Vajrayana.
Some scholars argue that the importance and prevalence of Thiền in Vietnam has been greatly overstated and that it has played more of an elite rhetorical role than a role of practice. The Thiền uyển tập anh (Chinese: 禪苑集英, "Collection of Outstanding Figures of the Zen Garden") has been the dominant text used to legitimize Thiền lineages and history within Vietnam. However, Cuong Tu Nguyen's Zen in Medieval Vietnam: A Study and Translation of the Thien Tap Anh (1997) gives a critical review of how the text has been used to create a history of Zen Buddhism that is "fraught with discontinuity". Modern Buddhist practices are not reflective of a Thiền past; in Vietnam, common practices are more focused on ritual and devotion than the Thiền focus on meditation. Nonetheless, Vietnam is seeing a steady growth in Zen today. Two figures who have been responsible for this increased interest in Thiền are Thích Nhất Hạnh, currently residing in France, and Thích Thanh Từ, who lives in Da Lat.
↑ "However, it was only after the Chinese came to Vietnam that the Buddhists erected a center at Luy-lau which was the capital of Giao Chi and was a popular place visited by many Buddhist missionaries. Luy-lau became a major Buddhist center."
↑ Cuong Tu Nguyen. Zen in Medieval Vietnam: A Study of the Thiền Uyển Tập Anh. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997, pg 9.
↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Harvey 2012, p. 223.
↑ 3.0 3.1 Linh Hoang 2012, p. 20.
↑ Roof 2011, p. 1210.
↑ Schliesinger 2015, p. 18.
↑ Coedès, George (1968). Walter F. Vella, ed. The Indianized States of Southeast Asia. trans.Susan Brown Cowing. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-0368-1.
↑ Nguyen Tai Thu. The History of Buddhism in Vietnam. 2008.
↑ Tai Thu Nguyen (2008). The History of Buddhism in Vietnam. CRVP. pp. 36–. ISBN 978-1-56518-098-7.
↑ Nguyen Tai Thu 2008, pg 77.
↑ Nguyen Tai Thu 2008, pg 75.
↑ Nguyen Tai Tu Nguyen 2008, pg 89.
↑ Việt Nam: Borderless Histories – Page 67 Nhung Tuyet Tran, Anthony Reid – 2006 "In this first formal attack in 1370, a Confucian official named Lê Quát attempted, without much success, to brand Buddhism as heretical and to promote Confucianism. Times had drastically changed by Ngô Sĩ Liên's Lê dynasty."
↑ The Vietnam Review: Volume 3 1997 "Buddhism The close association between kingship and Buddhism established by the Ly founder prevailed until the end of the Trân. That Buddhism was the people's predominant faith is seen in this complaint by the Confucian scholar Lê Quát ."
↑ Elise Anne DeVido. "Buddhism for This World: The Buddhist Revival in Vietnam, 1920 to 1951, and Its Legacy." in Philip Taylor (ed), Modernity and Re-enchantment: Religion in Post-revolutionary Vietnam. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies: Singapore, 2007, p. 251.
↑ Gettleman, pp. 275–76, 366.
↑ "South Viet Nam: The Religious Crisis". Time. 1963-06-14.
↑ Tucker, pp. 49, 291, 293.
↑ 28.0 28.1 "Pure Land Buddhism recognised by Gov’t." Viet Nam News. December 27, 2007. Accessed: April 7, 2009.
↑ 29.0 29.1 Alexander Soucy 2007.
↑ 30.0 30.1 Cuong Tu Nguyen & A. W. Barber 1998, pg 135.
↑ Cuong Tu Nguyen & A. W. Barber 1998, pg 134.
↑ Cuong Tu Nguyen & A. W. Barber 1998, pg 134 .
↑ Cuong Tu Nguyen 1997, p. 94.
↑ Alexander Soucy 2007; Cuong Tu Nguyen & A. W. Barber 1998.
This article uses material from the September 2018 revision of Buddhism in Vietnam on Wikipedia ( view authors). License under CC BY-SA 3.0.
This page was last edited on 29 March 2019, at 09:46.
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It says cv2 doesn' t work with python 3 I was wondering if this has been fixed or if there is a way around it. 下面我们一起来看看关于python ImportError: DLL load failed: % 1 不是有效的 Win32 应用程序问题解决办法， 希望此例子. > > > import MySQLdb. を実行してopencv3をインストールしたのですが、 import cv2のところで" ImportError: DLL not found. 環境の違いはVisual Studioの有無のみですが、 ここ（ python - Can' t import cv2; " DLL load failed" - Stack Overflow） で書かれている. Import the package: import cv2. DLL load failed:. Make sure you have removed old manual installations of OpenCV Python bindings ( cv2. 实验环境： 系统版本： Win 10 企业版 Anaconda ： Python 3. 0( 64- bit) 问题描述： 安装OpenCV后使用import cv2 时出现如下错误. · I' m using the django framework in Visual Studio with python 2. 7 and i' m trying to import an opencv file called cv2, the system recognizes its there. Two weeks ago, I built openCV- 3. 0, using Visual Studio x64 on Windows 7, with Python 3. I' ve copied cv2.
pyd into the Python34\ Lib\ site- packages folder. import cv2 ImportError: DLL load failed: % 1 不是有效的 Win32 应用程序。 win7 64位， opencv2. 7， 运行的程序： import cv2 im. · Re: [ spyder] Error importing OpenCV ( works in normal python shell). > > import cv2 ImportError: DLL load failed:. line 7, in < module> from. import cv2 ImportError: DLL load failed:. Fail to import due to a " DLL load failed error. com/ skvark/ opencv- python#. · import error: DLL load failed: The specified module could not be found. I see that you are facing issues while you are installing python application. · python中导入一个包， import cv2总是报错‘ ImportError: DLL load failed with error code’ ， 报错形式： 网上找了好久的. Python、 opencv安装, import cv2, 运行时:. DLL load failed: % 1 不是有效的Win32应用程序相关信息， 包括 ImportError. import opencv error ( DLL load failed) From: Xristos.
dll files after successfuly installed open python idle i a try to import cv2 and i take that. NewLine; コードには & NewLine; & NewLine; import numpy. python cv2 opencv c. Make sure that cv2. pyd is in your Python' s lib\ site- packages\ directory. Also check if OPENCV_ DIR = C: \ Program Files\ OpenCV 3. 0\ x64\ vc14, or similar, is in your Windows' system variables setting. 0- win32 ( installed from python website) ; numpy 1. 10- cp35- win32; matplotlib 1. 3- cp35- win32; opencv 3. _ system_ import( name, * args, * * kwargs) ImportError: DLL load failed: The specified module could not be found. You may try this conda install command for installing OpenCV 3. The conda- forge repository does have OpenCV 3.
0 binary for 32- bit and 64- bit Windows. conda install - c conda- forge opencv= 3. python导入crypto模块失败， 提示： ImportError: DLL load failed:. python中 import. · 使用Python import cv2失败 显示. 打包的格式也正确， 而提交上去的结果一直是Format error. windows python opencvのインストールwindows10にpython 3. 2インストールしましたpip installでnumpyインストールし. DLL load failed; import cv2;. opencv- python( cv2) ] Can' t Import. in < module> from. The error you see appears during Python imports usually. import 시에 다음과 같은 에러가 나는 경우가 있는데, ImportError: DLL load failed: 지정된 모듈을 찾을 수 없습니다.
해당 모듈이. in < module> import cv2 ImportError: DLL load failed:. Pesquise outras perguntas com a tag python instalação opencv ou faça sua própria pergunta. Python : ImportError: DLL load. ImportError: DLL load failed: The specified module could not be. fix “ import qgis. core ImportError: DLL load failed. When i run the following code import cv2 Python shows the above error. Thank for supporting! Python - Failure to import cv2: DLL load failed. and test python - c " import cv2. I' ve moved the the dll files suggested by Rafael to / Windows/ System32 but I' m still getting the dll load failed error. After pip install opencv- python Is still not possible to import cv2 ImportError: DLL load failed:. found for opencv- python error:. QtのPythonバインディングにはPyQtとPySideがあって、 元々あったのはGPLのPyQtだけどNokiaとPyQt製作.
阿里云 > 教程中心 > python教程 > 解决- win10系统- python3中import cv2显示" ImportError: DLL load failed: 找不到. import ' cv2' ImportError: DLL load failed Подскажите, как её исправить. matplotlib в python 3. 5: ошибка DLL load failed- 2. Ciao a tutti, volevo importare la libreria cv2 ( già provato con pip install opencv_ python- 3. 0- cp36- cp36m- win32. whl e scaricato il file opencv) ma ho problemi. After doing a simple pip install opencv- python or pip install opencv- contrib- python and trying to import the library, I ran into this issue: λ python Python. ImportError: DLL load failed: The specified module could not be found # 3. I have installed opencv on my windows machine using python 3. 6 without any issues, using: pip install opencv- python but when I try to import cv2 I get the following.
Python importerror dll load failed. My Python code says: import cv2 But tha파이썬을 사용하면서 종종 패키지를 import 하는 부분 등에서. 上手くできなかった事 PythonでOpenCVのパッケージを入れて、 コマンドプロンプトでPythonを起動し、 import cv2. У меня есть эта проблема, когда я пытаюсь импортировать cv2 на python и получить следующее. ImportError: DLL load failed: % 1 is not a valid Win32 application. Does anyone know how to fix this? This problem occurs when i am trying to import cv2. 파이썬을 사용하면서 종종 패키지를 import 하는 부분. 이러한 DLL load failed / 지정된. [ Python] ImportError: DLL load failed:. I have this issue where I try to import cv2 on python and get the following error message. > > > import cv2 Traceback ( most recent call last) : File ” “, line 1, in. PythonのOpenCVパッケージのインストールに手こずったときのメモ。 上手くできなかっ た事 PythonでOpenCVのパッケージを入れて、 コマンドプロンプトでPythonを起動し、 import cv2 としても「 ImportError: DLL load failed: % 1 は有効. import opencv error ( DLL load failed.
Date: : hi i have windows 10 and python 3. after successfuly installed open python idle i a try to import cv2. · import CV2 出现“ ImportError: DLL load. 然后解压后， 将其中的python. x import cv2 “ ImportError: DLL load failed:. During import fiona, I am getting following error. How to fix python ImportError: DLL load failed:. DLL load failed: The specified module could not be found. My Python code says: import cv2. I got the same error on most of my import statements. やった！ 完了！ ！ ！ import cv2! とかやったら、 ImportError: DLL load failedと メッセージが出る。. ちなみに今回Anacondaを使ってたので少し面倒だったけど python( x, y) だとopenCVが同梱されてるみたいですね。 Permalink | コメント( 0). I have a situation very much like the one at ImportError: DLL load failed: % 1 is not a valid Win32 application, but the answer.
Import CV2: DLL load failed ( Python. 7， 运行的程序： import cv2 img = cv2. import cv2 をしたときに ImportError: DLL load failed がでる． 解決策. com/ questions/ / dll- load - failed- error- when- importing- cv2 ここのソリューションの一つ.
上記の点を解決した後に 元々動かしたかったスクリプト（ 他の人が書いたもの） を実行し ても、 別のエラーにより動きませ. " C: \ Anaconda2\ lib\ site- packages\ matplotlib\ pyplot. py", line 72, in < module> from matplotlib.
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Ivanka Trump's Father's Day gift guide backfired big time over the weekend.
Ivanka Trump HQ innocently tweeted the brand's picks for Father's Day gifts on Twitter, saying, "Whether a football lover or a coffee aficionado, these picks will please every dad."
Soon after posting the message Twitter users trolled the first daughter over her gift ideas. User @paradisedicey2 wrote, "What will please my dad is not losing health insurance!" Another user called @ezradf said, "My dad wanted a clean environment without rising sea levels or record high temps. I wish that had been one of your gifts."
Others gave suggestions referencing former FBI Director James Comey's testimony.
"What's a good gift for a dad who's heading to prison soon? Asking for a friend," wrote @tunedhuman.
"'Matching orange jumpsuits for father-in-law/son-in-law duos should for sure be on this list," said another.
The gift guide includes a $250 coffee maker, a $117 set of grooming products and a $325 briefcase.
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--- # De Bruijn Graph Assembly --- ## Requirements Before diving into this slide deck, we recommend you to have a look at: - [Introduction to Galaxy Analyses](/training-material/topics/introduction) - [Sequence analysis](/training-material/topics/sequence-analysis) - Quality Control: [slides slides](/training-material/topics/sequence-analysis/tutorials/quality-control/slides.html) - [tutorial hands-on](/training-material/topics/sequence-analysis/tutorials/quality-control/tutorial.html) --- ### <i class="fa fa-question-circle" aria-hidden="true"></i><span class="visually-hidden">question</span> Questions - What are the factors that affect genome assembly? - How does Genome assembly work? --- ### <i class="fa fa-bullseye" aria-hidden="true"></i><span class="visually-hidden">objectives</span> Objectives - Perform an optimised Velvet assembly with the Velvet Optimiser - Compare this assembly with those we did in the basic tutorial - Perform an assembly using the SPAdes assembler. --- .enlarge120[ # ***De novo* Genome Assembly** ## **Part 2: De Bruijn Graph Assembly** ] #### With thanks to T Seemann, D Bulach, I Cooke and Simon Gladman --- .enlarge120[ # **de Bruijn Graphs** ] .pull-left[ * Named after Nicolaas Govert de Bruijn * Directed graph representing overlaps between sequences of symbols * Sequences can be reconstructed by moving between nodes in graph ] .pull-right[ .image-50[!(../../images/debruijn.png)] ] --- .enlarge120[# **de Bruijn Graphs** * A directed graph of sequences of symbols * Nodes in the graph are k-mers * Edges represent consecutive k-mers (which overlap by k-1 symbols) ] Consider the 2 symbol alphabet (0 & 1) de Bruijn Graph for k =3 !(../../images/debruijn01.png) --- .enlarge120[# **Producing sequences** * Sequences of symbols are produced by moving through the graph ] !(../../images/debruijn02.png) --- .enlarge120[ # **K-mers?** .pull-right[.image-25[!(../../images/specialk.png)]] <hr> * To be able to use de Bruijn graphs, we need reads of length **L** to overlap by **L-1** bases. * Not all reads will overlap another read perfectly. * Read errors * Coverage "holes" * Not all reads are the same length (depending on technology and quality cleanup) ***To help us get around these problems, we use all k-length subsequences of the reads, these are the k-mers.*** ] --- .enlarge120[ # **What are K-mers?** .pull-right[.image-25[!(../../images/specialk.png)]]] !(../../images/kmers01.png) --- .enlarge120[ # **K-mers de Bruijn graph** .pull-right[.image-25[!(../../images/abc.png)]]] !(../../images/ex1-1.png) --- .enlarge120[ # **K-mers de Bruijn graph** .pull-right[.image-25[!(../../images/abc.png)]]] !(../../images/ex1-2.png) --- .enlarge120[ # **K-mers de Bruijn graph** .pull-right[.image-25[!(../../images/abc.png)]]] !(../../images/ex1-3.png) --- .enlarge120[ # **K-mers de Bruijn graph** .pull-right[.image-25[!(../../images/abc.png)]]] !(../../images/ex1-4.png) --- .enlarge120[ # **The problem of repeats** .pull-right[.image-25[!(../../images/repeatlogo.png)]]] !(../../images/ex2-1.png) --- .enlarge120[ # **The problem of repeats** .pull-right[.image-25[!(../../images/repeatlogo.png)]]] !(../../images/ex2-2.png) --- .enlarge120[ # **The problem of repeats** .pull-right[.image-25[!(../../images/repeatlogo.png)]]] !(../../images/ex2-3.png) --- .enlarge120[ # **The problem of repeats** .pull-right[.image-25[!(../../images/repeatlogo.png)]]] !(../../images/ex2-4.png) --- .enlarge120[ # **Different k** .pull-right[.image-25[!(../../images/bigk.png)]]] !(../../images/ex2a-1.png) --- .enlarge120[ # **Different k** .pull-right[.image-25[!(../../images/bigk.png)]]] !(../../images/ex2a-2.png) --- .enlarge120[ # **Different k** .pull-right[.image-25[!(../../images/bigk.png)]]] !(../../images/ex2a-3.png) --- .enlarge120[ # **Different k** .pull-right[.image-25[!(../../images/bigk.png)]]] !(../../images/ex2a-4.png) --- .enlarge120[ # **Choose k wisely** .pull-right[.image-25[!(../../images/wisely.png)]]] .enlarge120[ * Lower k * More connections * Less chance of resolving small repeats * Higher k-mer coverage * Higher k * Less connections * More chance of resolving small repeats * Lower k-mer coverage ***Optimum value for k will balance these effects.*** ] --- .enlarge120[ # **Read errors** .pull-right[.image-25[!(../../images/hazardsymbol.png)]]] .image-75[!(../../images/ex3-head.png)] !(../../images/blank.png) --- .enlarge120[ # **Read errors** .pull-right[.image-25[!(../../images/hazardsymbol.png)]]] .image-75[!(../../images/ex3-head.png)] !(../../images/ex3-2.png) --- .enlarge120[ # **Read errors** .pull-right[.image-25[!(../../images/hazardsymbol.png)]]] .image-75[!(../../images/ex3-head.png)] !(../../images/ex3-3.png) --- .enlarge120[ # **Read errors** .pull-right[.image-25[!(../../images/hazardsymbol.png)]]] .image-75[!(../../images/ex3-head.png)] !(../../images/ex3-4.png) --- .enlarge120[ # **More coverage** .pull-right[.image-50[!(../../images/depthlogo.png)]]] .enlarge120[ * Errors won't be duplicated in every read * Most reads will be error free * We can count the frequency of each k-mer * Annotate the graph with the frequencies * Use the frequency data to clean the de Bruijn graph ***More coverage depth will help overcome errors!*** ] --- .enlarge120[ # **Read errors revisited** .pull-right[.image-50[!(../../images/hazardsymbol.png)]]] !(../../images/ex3a.png) --- .enlarge120[ # **Another parameter - coverage cutoff**] .enlarge120[ * At what point is a low coverage indicative of an error? * Can we ignore low coverage nodes and paths? * This is a new assembly parameter ***Coverage cutoff*** ] --- .enlarge120[ # **de Bruijn graph assembly process**] .enlarge120[ 1. Select a value for k 2. "Hash" the reads (make the kmers) 3. Count the kmers 4. Make the de Bruijn graph 5. **Perform graph simplification steps** - use cov cutoff 6. Read off contigs from simplified graph ] --- .enlarge120[ # **Graph simplification**] ## Step 1: Chain merging !(../../images/tipclipping.png) --- .enlarge120[ # **Graph simplification**] ## Step 2: Tip clipping !(../../images/shortnodes.png) --- .enlarge120[ # **Graph simplification**] .pull-left[ !(../../images/bubblemerging.png) ] .pull-right[ ## Step 3: Bubble collapsing * Detect redundant paths through graph * Compare the paths using sequence alignment * If similar, merge the paths .reduce70[Image: Zerbino & Birney 2008] ] --- .enlarge120[ # **Graph simplification** ## Step 4: Remove low coverage nodes * Remove erroneous nodes and connections using the "coverage cutoff" * Genuine short nodes will have a high coverage ] --- .enlarge120[ # **Make contigs** * Find an unbalanced node in the graph * Follow the chain of nodes and "read off" the bases to produce the contigs * Where there is an ambiguous divergence/convergence, stop the current contig and start a new one. * Re-trace the reads through the contigs to help with repeat resolution ] --- .enlarge120[ # **Velvet** Velvet has two separate programs: * Velveth * Makes the k-mers and * Efficiently counts (hashes) them * All in O(N) time * Velvetg * Makes the graph - O(U) time. U = unique k-mers. * Simplifies it * Makes contigs - O(E) time. E = edges in graph But: You need to choose **k** and **c** wisely! ] --- .enlarge120[ # **Velvet - Paired end scaffolding** * Breadcrumb algorithm ] !(../../images/breadcrumb.png) --- .enlarge120[ # **Assembly Exercise #2** * We will perform an optimised assembly using the Velvet Optimiser in Galaxy. * The optimiser will pick a good value for **k** and **c**, and perform graph simplification for us. * We will compare the results with our earlier, simple assemblies. ] --- .enlarge120[ # **Extensions of the idea** ] --- .enlarge120[ # **SPAdes** .pull-right[.image-50[!(../../images/spades.png)]]] .enlarge120[ * de Bruijn graph assembler by Pavel Pevzner's group out of St. Petersburg * Uses multiple k-mers to build the graph * Graph has connectivity **and** specificity * Usually use a low, medium and high k-mer size together. * Performs error correction on the reads first * Maps reads back to the contigs and scaffolds as a check * Under active development * Much slower than Velvet * Should be used in preference to Velvet now. ] --- .enlarge120[ # **A move back to OLC**] .pull-left[ .enlarge120[ * New long read technologies * PacBio and MinIon * Assemblers: HGap, CANU * Use overlap, layout consensus approach * CANU can perform hybrid assemblies with long and short reads ] ] .pull-right[ !(../../images/minionpacbio.png) ] --- .enlarge120[# **Bandage** * Assembly graph viewer and manipulator * Written by Ryan Wick of Centre for Systems Genomics - Uni. Melbourne, Australia ] !(../../images/bandage.png) --- .enlarge120[# **Assembly Exercise #3** * We will perform an assembly with **SPAdes** in **Galaxy** * We will again look at the assembly metrics and compare them with our sample and optimised Velvet assemblies. ] --- ### <i class="fa fa-key" aria-hidden="true"></i><span class="visually-hidden">keypoints</span> Key points - We learned about how the choice of k-mer size will affect assembly outcomes - We learned about the strategies that assemblers use to make reference genomes - We performed a number of assemblies with Velvet and SPAdes. - You should use SPAdes or another more modern assembler than Velvet for actual assemblies now. --- ## Thank you! This material is the result of a collaborative work. Thanks the [Galaxy Training Network](https://wiki.galaxyproject.org/Teach/GTN) and all the contributors ([Simon Gladman](/training-material/hall-of-fame#slugger70)) !
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Advocate for smarter data privacy regulation and promote the benefits of a data-driven world.
Catalyst products aims to inform decision makers, engage stakeholders, and improve data privacy regulation. An integrated approach to complex policy making is only proven way to create effective policy and succeed in a data-driven world.
Tomorrow’s breakthroughs, businesses, and products are made possible by data-driven innovations. Next is better with data.
Businesses, markets, industries, and global economies are interconnected and interdependent. Data informs and improves products, services, and efficiency. Economies are stronger with data.
In an interconnected global community, data-driven governments are more responsive and more accessible. Empowerment and equality are possible with data.
Future use of the world’s resources and the potential of better, more innovative services, products, and opportunity for all people requires access to, and trust in, data. Responsibility is not optional with data.
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Why did we choose the name ASP?
We chose the name ASP as a means of expressing our purpose. "Active Self Protection" is our desire for ourselves and those we train, and it also points to an old term for a small, venomous snake in north Africa famous for its small size but potent bite when threatened. (and famous for being Cleopatra's method of suicide) See the analogy there? A person doesn't need to be big or threatening to be able to defend themselves if they are ready to go. Finally the acronym ASP also leads to our basic philosophy of self-defense, before, during, and after an encounter: Attitude, Skills, Plan. Having the proper Attitude, appropriate Skills, and a good Plan mean everything in a defensive encounter. So use ASP to assess your readiness to defend yourself and your loved ones!
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Need increased visibility of your infrastructure or service availability and performance?
Accurate and timely monitoring and alerting is key to the smooth running of your online services and infrastructure. I can provide you with the tools you need to visualize your service availability and view the performance of your servers over time. Comprehensive monitoring allows you to quickly respond to incidents and even predict potential issues before they are likely to occur.
As well as service availability monitoring with Nagios, I can provide resource and performance monitoring which can help you analyze trends over time. Using tools such as Munin and Cacti, you can gather and graph statistics over time. This information is invaluable when it comes to debugging issues or predicting future resource requirements.
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Women 's rights in Egypt have long been severely restricted due to Sharia (Islamic law) and cultural traditions. The laws in Egypt act like an enemy of women 's rights as they are based on gender discriminatory. How can a woman has unequal value of a man and treated differently! So, it was the time for the women to unite and stand together to get back their freedom and proof to the world that they are not birds placed in cages. They asked for their rights; freedom of speech and to be treated equal to men as they are no less. In order to get their rights back, the laws should be revised, and women have to unite and protest opposing discrimination. Unfortunately, the Arab Society has limited the rights of women as the legal system is based on the Islamic laws, and the man always have been valued more than the woman, and obtained more privileges and opportunities.
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This article is about virtualization software. For the desktop icon docker, see Dock (computing). For the company, see Docker, Inc. For other uses, see Docker (disambiguation).
Docker is a computer program that performs operating-system-level virtualization. It was first released in 2013 and is developed by Docker, Inc.
Docker is used to run software packages called containers. Containers are isolated from each other and bundle their own application, tools, libraries and configuration files; they can communicate with each other through well-defined channels. All containers are run by a single operating-system kernel and are thus more lightweight than virtual machines. Containers are created from images that specify their precise contents. Images are often created by combining and modifying standard images downloaded from public repositories.
The software debuted to the public in Santa Clara at PyCon in 2013.
Docker was released as open source in March 2013. On March 13, 2014, with the release of version 0.9, Docker dropped LXC as the default execution environment and replaced it with its own libcontainer library written in the Go programming language.
On September 19, 2013, Red Hat and Docker announced a collaboration around Fedora, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and OpenShift.
In November 2014 Docker container services were announced for the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).
On November 10, 2014, Docker announced a partnership with Stratoscale.
On December 4, 2014, IBM announced a strategic partnership with Docker that enables Docker to integrate more closely with the IBM Cloud.
On June 22, 2015, Docker and several other companies announced that they are working on a new vendor and operating-system-independent standard for software containers.
As of October 24, 2015[update], the project had over 25,600 GitHub stars (making it the 20th most-starred GitHub project), over 6,800 forks, and nearly 1,100 contributors.
In April 2016, Windocks, an independent ISV released a port of Docker's open source project to Windows, supporting Windows Server 2012 R2 and Server 2016, with all editions of SQL Server 2008 onward.
A May 2016 analysis showed the following organizations as main contributors to Docker: The Docker team, Cisco, Google, Huawei, IBM, Microsoft, and Red Hat.
On October 4, 2016, Solomon Hykes announced InfraKit as a new self-healing container infrastructure effort for Docker container environments.
A January 2017 analysis of LinkedIn profile mentions showed Docker presence grew by 160% in 2016.
Docker can use different interfaces to access virtualization features of the Linux kernel.
Docker is developed primarily for Linux, where it uses the resource isolation features of the Linux kernel such as cgroups and kernel namespaces, and a union-capable file system such as OverlayFS and others to allow independent containers to run within a single Linux instance, avoiding the overhead of starting and maintaining virtual machines (VMs). The Linux kernel's support for namespaces mostly isolates an application's view of the operating environment, including process trees, network, user IDs and mounted file systems, while the kernel's cgroups provide resource limiting for memory and CPU. Since version 0.9, Docker includes the libcontainer library as its own way to directly use virtualization facilities provided by the Linux kernel, in addition to using abstracted virtualization interfaces via libvirt, LXC and systemd-nspawn.
Building on top of facilities provided by the Linux kernel (primarily cgroups and namespaces), a Docker container, unlike a virtual machine, does not require or include a separate operating system. Instead, it relies on the kernel's functionality and uses resource isolation for CPU and memory, and separate namespaces to isolate the application's view of the operating system. Docker accesses the Linux kernel's virtualization features either directly using the libcontainer library, which is available as of Docker 0.9, or indirectly via libvirt, LXC (Linux Containers) or systemd-nspawn.
Software: The Docker daemon, called dockerd, is a persistent process that manages Docker containers and handles container objects. The daemon listens for requests sent via the Docker Engine API. The Docker client program, called docker, provides a command-line interface that allows users to interact with Docker daemons.
Objects: Docker objects are various entities used to assemble an application in Docker. The main classes of Docker objects are images, containers, and services.
A Docker container is a standardized, encapsulated environment that runs applications. A container is managed using the Docker API or CLI.
A Docker image is a read-only template used to build containers. Images are used to store and ship applications.
A Docker service allows containers to be scaled across multiple Docker daemons. The result is known as a swarm, a set of cooperating daemons that communicate through the Docker API.
Registries: A Docker registry is a repository for Docker images. Docker clients connect to registries to download ("pull") images for use or upload ("push") images that they have built. Registries can be public or private. Two main public registries are Docker Hub and Docker Cloud. Docker Hub is the default registry where Docker looks for images. Docker registries also allow the creation of notifications based on events.
Docker Compose is a tool for defining and running multi-container Docker applications. It uses YAML files to configure the application's services and performs the creation and start-up process of all the containers with a single command. The docker-compose CLI utility allows users to run commands on multiple containers at once, for example, building images, scaling containers, running containers that were stopped, and more. Commands related to image manipulation, or user-interactive options, are not relevant in Docker Compose because they address one container. The docker-compose.yml file is used to define an application's services and includes various configuration options. For example, the build option defines configuration options such as the Dockerfile path, the command option allows one to override default Docker commands, and more. The first public version of Docker Compose (version 0.0.1) was released on December 21, 2013. The first production-ready version (1.0) was made available on October 16, 2014.
Docker Swarm provides native clustering functionality for Docker containers, which turns a group of Docker engines into a single virtual Docker engine. In Docker 1.12 and higher, Swarm mode is integrated with Docker Engine. The swarm CLI utility allows users to run Swarm containers, create discovery tokens, list nodes in the cluster, and more. The docker node CLI utility allows users to run various commands to manage nodes in a swarm, for example, listing the nodes in a swarm, updating nodes, and removing nodes from the swarm. Docker manages swarms using the Raft Consensus Algorithm. According to Raft, for an update to be performed, the majority of Swarm nodes need to agree on the update.
Docker implements a high-level API to provide lightweight containers that run processes in isolation.
Docker is a tool that can package an application and its dependencies in a virtual container that can run on any Linux server. This helps enable flexibility and portability on where the application can run, whether on premises, public cloud, private cloud, bare metal, etc.
Because Docker containers are lightweight, a single server or virtual machine can run several containers simultaneously. A 2016 analysis found that a typical Docker use case involves running five containers per host, but that many organizations run 10 or more.
Using containers may simplify the creation of highly distributed systems by allowing multiple applications, worker tasks and other processes to run autonomously on a single physical machine or across multiple virtual machines. This allows the deployment of nodes to be performed as the resources become available or when more nodes are needed, allowing a platform as a service (PaaS)-style of deployment and scaling for systems such as Apache Cassandra, MongoDB and Riak.
Docker can be integrated into various infrastructure tools, including Amazon Web Services, Ansible, CFEngine, Chef, Google Cloud Platform, IBM Bluemix, HPE Helion Stackato, Jelastic, Jenkins, Kubernetes, Microsoft Azure, OpenStack Nova, OpenSVC, Oracle Container Cloud Service, Puppet, ProGet, Salt, Vagrant, and VMware vSphere Integrated Containers.
The Cloud Foundry Diego project integrates Docker into the Cloud Foundry PaaS.
Nanobox uses Docker (natively and with VirtualBox) containers as a core part of its software development platform.
Red Hat's OpenShift PaaS integrates Docker with related projects (Kubernetes, Geard, Project Atomic and others) since v3 (June 2015).
The Apprenda PaaS integrates Docker containers in version 6.0 of its product.
Jelastic PaaS provides managed multi-tenant Docker containers with full compatibility to the native ecosystem.
The Tsuru PaaS integrates Docker containers in its product in 2013, the first PaaS to use Docker in a production environment.
On October 15, 2014, Microsoft announced integration of the Docker engine into the next Windows Server release, and native support for the Docker client role in Windows. On June 8, 2016, Microsoft announced that Docker now could be used natively on Windows 10 with Hyper-V Containers, to build, ship and run containers utilizing the Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 5 Nano Server container OS image.
Since then, a feature known as Windows Containers was made available for Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016. There are two types of Windows Containers: "Windows Server Containers" and "Hyper-V Isolation". The former has nothing to do with Docker. The latter, however, is a form of hardware virtualization (as opposed to OS-level virtualization) and uses Docker to deliver the guest OS image. The guest OS image is a Windows Nano Server image, which is 652 MB in size and has the same limitations of Nano Server, as well as a separate end-user license agreement.
^ Docker on macOS uses a Linux virtual machine to run the containers. It is also possible to run those on Windows using Hyper-V or docker-machine.
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^ "IBM and Docker Announce Strategic Partnership to Deliver Enterprise Applications in the Cloud and On Prem". IBM. December 4, 2014. Retrieved April 20, 2015.
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"Sydney 2000" redirects here. For the Summer Paralympics, see 2000 Summer Paralympics. For the video game, see Sydney 2000 (video game).
Sydney was selected as the host city for the 2000 Games in 1993. Teams from 199 countries participated. The Games’ cost was estimated to be A$6.6 billion. The Games received universal acclaim, with the organisation, volunteers, sportsmanship and Australian public being lauded in the international media. Bill Bryson from The Times called the Sydney Games "one of the most successful events on the world stage", saying that they "couldn't be better".
James Mossop of the Electronic Telegraph called the Games "such a success that any city considering bidding for future Olympics must be wondering how it can reach the standards set by Sydney", while Jack Todd in the Montreal Gazette suggested that the "IOC should quit while it's ahead. Admit there can never be a better Olympic Games, and be done with it," as "Sydney was both exceptional and the best".
In preparing for the 2012 Olympic Games in London, Lord Coe declared the Sydney Games the "benchmark for the spirit of the Games, unquestionably" and admitting that the London organising committee "attempted in a number of ways to emulate what the Sydney Organising Committee did." These were the final Olympic Games under the IOC presidency of Juan Antonio Samaranch. These were also the second Olympic Games to be held in spring and is to date the most recent games not to be held in its more traditional July or August summer slot.
The final medal tally was led by the United States, followed by Russia and China with host Australia at fourth place overall. Several World and Olympic records were broken during the games. With little or no controversies, the games were deemed generally successful with the rising standard of competition amongst nations across the world.
Sydney won the right to host the Games on 24 September 1993, after being selected over Beijing, Berlin, Istanbul and Manchester in four rounds of voting, at the 101st IOC Session in Monte Carlo, Monaco. The Australian city of Melbourne had lost out to Atlanta for the 1996 Summer Olympics four years earlier. Beijing lost its bid to host the games to Sydney in 1993, but was later awarded the 2008 Summer Olympics in July 2001 after Sydney hosted the previous year, and it would eventually be awarded the 2022 Winter Olympics twenty-two years later in 2015. Although it is impossible to know why members of the International Olympic Committee voted for Sydney over Beijing in 1993, it appears that an important role was played by Human Rights Watch's campaign to "stop Beijing" because of China's human rights record. Many in China were angry at what they saw as U.S.-led interference in the vote, and the outcome contributed to rising anti-Western sentiment in China and tensions in Sino-American relations.
The Oxford Olympics Study 2016 estimates the outturn cost of the Sydney 2000 Summer Olympics at USD 5 billion in 2015-dollars and cost overrun at 90% in real terms. This includes sports-related costs only, that is, (i) operational costs incurred by the organizing committee for the purpose of staging the Games, e.g., expenditures for technology, transportation, workforce, administration, security, catering, ceremonies, and medical services, and (ii) direct capital costs incurred by the host city and country or private investors to build, e.g., the competition venues, the Olympic village, international broadcast center, and media and press center, which are required to host the Games. Indirect capital costs are not included, such as for road, rail, or airport infrastructure, or for hotel upgrades or other business investment incurred in preparation for the Games but not directly related to staging the Games. The cost for Sydney 2000 compares with a cost of USD 4.6 billion for Rio 2016, USD 40–44 billion for Beijing 2008 and USD 51 billion for Sochi 2014, the most expensive Olympics in history. Average cost for the Summer Games since 1960 is USD 5.2 billion, average cost overrun is 176%.
In 2000, the Auditor-General of New South Wales reported that the Sydney Games cost A$6.6 billion, with a net cost to the public between A$1.7 and A$2.4 billion. Many venues were constructed in the Sydney Olympic Park, which failed in the years immediately following the Olympics to meet the expected bookings to meet upkeep expenses. In the years leading up to the games, funds were shifted from education and health programs to cover Olympic expenses.
It has been estimated that the economic impact of the 2000 Olympics was that A$2.1 billion has been shaved from public consumption. Economic growth was not stimulated to a net benefit and in the years after 2000, foreign tourism to NSW grew by less than tourism to Australia as a whole. A "multiplier" effect on broader economic development is not realised, as a simple "multiplier" analysis fails to capture is that resources have to be redirected from elsewhere: the building of a stadium is at the expense of other public works such as extensions to hospitals. Building sporting venues does not add to the aggregate stock of productive capital in the years following the Games: "Equestrian centres, softball compounds and man-made rapids are not particularly useful beyond their immediate function." In the years after the games, infrastructure issues have been of growing concern to citizens, especially those in the western suburbs of Sydney. Proposed rail links to Sydney's west have been estimated to cost in the same order of magnitude as the public expenditure on the games.
Although the Olympic Games Opening Ceremony was not scheduled until 15 September, the football competitions began with preliminary matches on 13 September. Among the pre-ceremony fixtures, host nation Australia lost 1–0 to Italy at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, which was the main stadium for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics.
The opening ceremony began with a tribute to the Australian pastoral heritage of the Australian stockmen and the importance of the stock horse in Australia's heritage. It was produced and filmed by Sydney Olympic Broadcasting Organisation and the home nation broadcaster, Channel 7. This was introduced by a lone rider, Steve Jefferys, and his rearing Australian Stock Horse Ammo. At the cracking of Jefferys' stockwhip, a further 120 riders entered the Stadium, their stock horses performing intricate steps, including forming the five Olympic Rings, to a special Olympics version of the theme which Bruce Rowland had previously composed for the 1982 film The Man from Snowy River.
The Australian National Anthem was sung, the first verse by Human Nature and the second by Julie Anthony.
The ceremony continued, showing many aspects of the land and its people:- the affinity of the mainly coastal-dwelling Australians with the sea that surrounds the "Island Continent". The indigenous occupation of the land, the coming of the First Fleet, the continued immigration from many nations and the rural industry on which the economy of the nation was built, including a display representing the harshness of rural life based on the paintings of Sir Sidney Nolan. Two memorable scenes were the representation of the "Heart" of the country by 200 Aboriginal women from Central Australia who danced up "the mighty spirit of God to protect the Games" and the overwhelmingly noisy representation of the construction industry by hundreds of tap-dancing teenagers.
Because Bibi Salisachs (the wife of Juan Antonio Samaranch, the IOC President) was seriously ill and not able to accompany her husband to the Olympics, former Australian Olympic Champion swimmer and member of the Parliament of New South Wales, Dawn Fraser, accompanied Samaranch during the Australian cultural display, explaining to him some of the cultural references that are unfamiliar to non-Australians.
A record 199 nations entered the stadium, with a record 80 of them winning at least one medal. The only missing IOC member was Afghanistan (banned due to the extremist rule of the Taliban's oppression of women and its prohibition of sports). The ceremony featured a unified entrance by the athletes of North and South Korea,[a] using a specially designed unification flag: a white background flag with a blue map of the Korean Peninsula. Four athletes from East Timor also marched in the parade of nations as Individual Olympic Athletes and marched directly before the Host country. Although the country-to-be had no National Olympic Committee then, they were allowed to compete under the Olympic Flag with country code IOA. The Governor-General, Sir William Deane, opened the games.
The Olympic Flag was carried around the arena by eight former Australian Olympic champions: Bill Roycroft, Murray Rose, Liane Tooth, Gillian Rolton, Marjorie Jackson, Lorraine Crapp, Michael Wenden and Nick Green. During the raising of the Olympics Flag, the Olympic Hymn was sung by the Millennium Choir of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia in Greek. Following this, Tina Arena sang a purpose-written pop song, The Flame.
The opening ceremony concluded with the lighting of the Olympic Flame. Former Australian Olympic champion Herb Elliott brought the Olympic Flame into the stadium. Then, celebrating 100 years of women's participation in the Olympic Games, former Australian women Olympic medalists: Betty Cuthbert and Raelene Boyle, Dawn Fraser, Shirley Strickland (later Shirley Strickland de la Hunty), Shane Gould and Debbie Flintoff-King brought the torch through the stadium, handing it over to Cathy Freeman, who lit the flame in the cauldron within a circle of fire. The planned spectacular climax to the ceremony was delayed by the technical glitch of a computer switch which malfunctioned, causing the sequence to shut down by giving a false reading. This meant that the Olympic flame was suspended in mid-air for about four minutes, rather than immediately rising up a water-covered ramp to the top of the stadium. When the cause of the problem was discovered, the program was overridden and the cauldron continued its course, and the ceremony concluded with a spectacular fireworks display.
The first medals of the Games were awarded in the women's 10 metre air rifle competition, which was won by Nancy Johnson of the United States.
The Triathlon made its Olympic debut with the women's race. Set in the surroundings of the Sydney Opera House, Brigitte McMahon representing Switzerland swam, cycled and ran to the first gold medal in the sport, beating the favoured home athletes such as Michelie Jones who won silver. McMahon only passed Jones in sight of the finish line.
The first star of the Games was Ian Thorpe. The 17-year-old Australian first set a new world record in the 400 m freestyle final before competing in an exciting 4 × 100 m freestyle final. Swimming the last leg, Thorpe passed the leading Americans and arrived in a new world record time, two tenths of a second ahead of the Americans. In the same event for women, the Americans also broke the world record, finishing ahead of the Netherlands and Sweden.
Samaranch had to leave for home, as his wife was severely ill. Upon arrival, his wife had already died. Samaranch returned to Sydney four days later. The Olympic flag was flown at half-staff during the period as a sign of respect to Samaranch's wife.
Canadian Simon Whitfield sprinted away in the last 100 metres of the men's triathlon, becoming the inaugural winner in the event.
On the cycling track, Robert Bartko beat fellow German Jens Lehmann in the individual pursuit, setting a new Olympic Record. Leontien Zijlaard-van Moorsel set a world record in the semi-finals the same event for women.
In the swimming pool, American Tom Dolan beat the world record in the 400 m medley, successfully defending the title he won in Atlanta four years prior. Dutchwoman Inge de Bruijn also clocked a new world record, beating her own time in the 100 m butterfly final to win by more than a second.
The main event for the Australians on the fourth day of the Games was the 200 m freestyle. Dutchman Pieter van den Hoogenband had broken the world record in the semi-finals, taking it from the new Australian hero Ian Thorpe, who came close to the world record in his semi-final heat. As the final race finished, Van den Hoogenband's time was exactly the same as in the semi-finals, finishing ahead of Thorpe by half a second.
Zijlaard-van Moorsel lived up to the expectations set by her world record in cycling in the semis by winning the gold medal.
Controversy erupted at the Women's Gymnastics All-Around final, when gymnast after gymnast fell on the vault. Some gymnasts were physically injured, and all were shaken, but nothing was done to try to discover the reason most gymnasts were having severe problems. Finally, in the middle of the third round (out of four), it was determined that the vault horse had been set 5 cm too low – enough of a difference to throw off the impeccable timing of many of these world-class athletes. While athletes were allowed to vault again, the remedy did not fully repair injuries and shaken confidence. The medals were eventually all won by Romanian gymnasts, with Andreea Raducan becoming the first athlete from her country to win the title since Nadia Comaneci in 1976. Teammates Simona Amanar and Maria Olaru took silver and bronze, respectively. This result also marked the first sweep of the event since the Soviet Union's in 1960.
The swimming 4 x 100-metre medley relay of B.J. Bedford, Megan Quann (Jendrick), Jenny Thompson and Dara Torres became the first women's relay under 4-minutes, swimming 3:58 and setting a world record, claiming the gold medal for the United States.
Rulon Gardner, never a NCAA champion or a world medalist, beat Alexander Karelin of Russia to win gold in the super heavyweight class, Greco-Roman wrestling. Karelin had won gold in Seoul, Barcelona and Atlanta. Before this fight he had never lost in international competition, had been unbeaten in all competitions in 13 years, and had not surrendered a point in a decade.
Australian Cathy Freeman won the 400 metre final in front of a jubilant Sydney crowd at the Olympic Stadium, ahead of Lorraine Graham of Jamaica and Katharine Merry of Great Britain. Freeman's win made her the first competitor in Olympic Games history to light the Olympic Flame and then go on to win a Gold Medal. The attendance at the stadium was 112,524 – the largest attendance for any sport in Olympic Games history.
In a men's basketball pool match between the USA and France, the USA's Vince Carter made one of the most famous dunks in basketball history. After getting the ball off a steal, the 6'6"/1.98 m Carter drove to the basket, with 7'2"/2.18 m centre Frédéric Weis in his way. Carter jumped, spread his legs in midair, scraped Weis' head on the way up, and dunked. The French media dubbed the feat le dunk de la mort ("the dunk of death").
The Canadian flag at athletes' village is lowered to half-staff as Canadian athletes pay tribute to former prime minister Pierre Trudeau after hearing of his death in Montreal (Because of the time difference, it was 29 September in Sydney when Trudeau died). The Canadian flag flew at half-staff for the remainder of the Olympics, on orders from both IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch and Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy, as the state funeral did not take place until 3 October.
Cameroon won a historic gold medal over Spain in the Men's Olympic Football Final at the Olympic Stadium. The game went to a penalty shootout, which was won by Cameroon 5–3.
The last event of the games was the Men's Marathon, contested on a course that started in North Sydney. The event was won by Ethiopian Genzhnge Abera, with Eric Wananina second and Tesefe Tola, also of Ethiopia third. It was the first time since the 1968 Olympics that an Ethiopian had won the gold medal in this event.
The Closing Ceremony commenced with Christine Anu singing her version of the Warumpi Band's song, My Island Home. She performed with several Aboriginal dancers atop the Geodome Stage in the middle of the stadium, around which several hundred umbrella and lampbox kids created an image of Aboriginal dreamtime.
The Geodome Stage was used throughout the ceremony, which is a flat stage which is mechanically raised into the shape of a Geode.
"I am proud and happy to proclaim that you have presented to the world the best Olympic Games ever."
Subsequent Summer Olympics held in Athens, Beijing and London have been described by Samaranch's successor, Jacques Rogge, as "unforgettable, dream Games", "truly exceptional" and "happy and glorious games" respectively – the practice of declaring games the "best ever" having been retired after the 2000 games.
The Olympic Hymn was sung by soprano Yvonne Kenny. The ceremony also featured performing artists such as Jimmy Barnes, INXS, Midnight Oil, Kylie Minogue, Slim Dusty, Christine Anu, Nikki Webster, John Paul Young, Men at Work, Melbourne-based singer Vanessa Amorosi, Tommy Emmanuel, and pop duo Savage Garden.
The Games were then handed over to their modern birthplace, Athens, which succeeded Sydney as summer Olympic host city. Two Greek flags were raised; one to honour the birthplace of the Olympics, and the other to honour Athens. The ceremony concluded with a huge fireworks display on Sydney Harbour. The fireworks display itself concluded with a very low flyover of Stadium Australia by an RAAF F-111C which performed a dump-and-burn manoeuvre synchronised with the extinction of the Olympic Flame. This created the appearance of the flame being carried away into the sky, flying in a northeasterly direction out across Sydney Harbour and ultimately towards Athens in a symbolic handover.
In honour of her gold medal win during the games, Cathy Freeman represented Oceania in carrying the Olympic flag, joining Archbishop Desmond Tutu (Africa), John Glenn (The Americas), Kazuyoshi Funaki (Asia), Lech Wałęsa (Europe), Jean-Michel Cousteau (Environment), Jean-Claude Killy (Sport), and Steven Spielberg (Culture) when it was raised again, at the XIX Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City; the opening ceremony there took place on 8 February 2002.
Although demonstration sports were abolished following the 1992 Summer Olympics the Sydney Olympics featured wheelchair racing as exhibition events on the athletics schedule.
Special quarantine conditions were introduced to allow entry of horses into Australia to participate in equestrian events, avoiding the need for such events to take place elsewhere as had happened at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne.
These are the top ten nations that won medals in the 2000 Games.
The ranking in this table is based on information provided by the International Olympic Committee. Some other sources may be inconsistent due to not taking into account all later doping cases.
199 National Olympic Committees (NOCs) participated in the Sydney Games, two more than in the 1996 Summer Olympics. In addition, there were four Timorese Individual Olympic Athletes at the 2000 Summer Olympics. Eritrea, Federated States of Micronesia and Palau made their Olympic debut this year.
Afghanistan was the only 1996 participant that did not participate in 2000, having been banned due to the extremist rule of the Taliban's oppression of women and its prohibition of sports.
SOCOG organisational structure circa 1998 – five groups and 33 divisions reporting to the CEO are organised primarily along functional lines with only a limited number of divisions (e.g. Interstate Football and Villages) anticipating a venue focussed design.
SOCOG organisational structure circa 1999 – functional divisions and precinct/venue streams are organised in a matrix structure linked to the Main Operations Centre (MOC). Some functions such as Project Management (in the Games Coordination group) continue to exist largely outside this matrix structure.
These bodies are often collectively referred to as the "Olympic Family".
Organisation of the 2000 Summer Paralympics was the responsibility of SPOC the Sydney Paralympic Organising Committee. However much of the planning and operation of the Paralympic Games was outsourced to SOCOG such that most operational programmes planned both the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Organisation of the Games included not only the actual sporting events but also the management (and sometimes construction) of the sporting venues and surrounding precincts, the organisation of the Sydney Olympic Arts Festival and Olympic torch relay. The relay began in Greece and travelled to Australia via numerous Oceania island nations.
The internal organisation of SOCOG evolved over the phases of the project and changed, sometimes radically, several times.
In late 1998 the design was principally functional. The top two tiers below the CEO Sandy Hollway consisted of five groups (managed by Group General Managers and the Deputy CEO) and twenty divisions (managed by divisional General Managers), which in turn were further broken up into programmes and sub-programmes or projects.
In 1999 functional areas (FAs) broke up into geographic precinct and venue teams (managed by Precinct Managers and Venue Managers) with functional area staff reporting to both the FA manager and the venue manager. Ie, SOCOG moved to a matrix structure. The Interstate Football division extant in 1998 was the first of these geographically based venue teams.
The origins of the volunteer programme for Sydney 2000 dates back to the bid, as early as 1992.
On 17 December 1992, a group of Sydney citizens, interested in the prospect of hosting the 2000 Olympic and Paralympic Games, gathered for a meeting at Sports House, at Wentworth Park in Sydney.
In the period leading up to 1999, after Sydney had won the bid, the small group of volunteers grew from approximately 42 to around 500. These volunteers became known as Pioneer Volunteers. The Pioneer Volunteer programme was managed internally by SOCOG's Volunteer Services Department in consultation with prominent peak groups like The Centre for Volunteering (Volunteering and TAFE. Some of the Pioneer Volunteers still meet every four months, an unseen legacy of the games which brought together a community spirit not seen before.
During the Olympic games tens of thousands of volunteers, the official figure was placed at 46,967, helped everywhere at the Olympic venues and elsewhere in the city. They were honoured with a parade like the athletes had a few days before.
The bid logo, designed by architect and designer Michael Bryce, featured a colourful, stylised image of the Sydney Opera House.
The official logo – also referred to as the "Millennium Man" – took the image of the bid logo and combined it with a stylised image of a runner to form a torchbearer in motion; formed by two small yellow boomerangs for arms and a larger red boomerang for legs. The Olympic torch is represented through a blue smoke trail, which draws the iconic peaks of the Sydney Opera House.
The design process of the official logo, as well as all other aspects of the Olympic Games' visual design identity, was awarded to Melbourne design studio FHA Image Design. The Sydney Olympics brand identity project officially commenced in 1993.
The official mascots chosen for the 2000 Summer Olympics were Syd the platypus, Millie the echidna, and Olly the kookaburra and were designed by Matthew Hattan and Jozef Szekeres and named by Philip Sheldon of agency Weekes Morris Osborn in response to the original SOCOG recommendation of Murray, Margery and Dawn after famous Australian athletes.
There was also an unofficial mascot, Fatso the Fat-Arsed Wombat, which was popularised by comedy team Roy Slaven and HG Nelson on the TV series The Dream with Roy and HG. Roy and HG also frequently disparaged the official mascots on their television program.
The bronze medals for the 2000 Olympics were created from melted down Australian 1 cent and 2 cent coins – which had been removed from circulation from 1992 onward.
The bouquets handed to medal recipients incorporated foliage from the Grevillea baileyana, also known as the white oak.
The International Olympic Committee awarded Sydney and its inhabitants with the "Pierre de Coubertin Trophy" in recognition of the collaboration and happiness shown by the people of Sydney during the event to all the athletes and visitors around the world.
The New South Wales Police Force was granted use of the Olympic Rings in the New South Wales Police Force Olympic Commendation and the New South Wales Police Force Olympic Citation for having staged the "safest" games ever.
In F.J. Campbell's 2018 novel No Number Nine, the last part of the book is set at the Sydney 2000 Olympics.
In Tom Clancy's thriller Rainbow Six, the 2000 Olympic Games are the setting of a plot by eco-terrorists, who plan to use the games in order to spread a terrible new plague throughout the world.
In Morris Gleitzman's children's book Toad Rage, a cane toad travels to Sydney in a bid to become the Olympic mascot.
^ The national teams of North Korea and South Korea competed separately in the Olympic events, even though they marched together as a unified Korean team in the opening ceremony.
^ a b How the media viewed the Sydney Olympics. Cool Running. Retrieved on 19 April 2015.
^ Mossop, James (1 October 2000). "Sydney has set the highest standards for future hosts". The Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 26 October 2013.
^ "Sydney 2000 the Olympic Games benchmark, Sebastian Coe says". The Australian. 25 July 2012.
^ Keys, Barbara (2018). "Harnessing Human Rights to the Olympic Games: Human Rights Watch and the 1993 'Stop Beijing' Campaign". Journal of Contemporary History. 53 (2): 415–438. doi:10.1177/0022009416667791.
^ Flyvbjerg, Bent; Stewart, Allison; Budzier, Alexander (2016). The Oxford Olympics Study 2016: Cost and Cost Overrun at the Games. Oxford: Saïd Business School Working Papers (Oxford: University of Oxford). pp. 9, 13. SSRN 2804554.
^ "Sydney 2000 – Auditor Slams Costs". liebreich.com. 23 April 2003. Archived from the original on 7 February 2005.
^ Poynter, Gavin; MacRury, Iain (6 October 2009). Olympic Cities: 2012 and the Remaking of London. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. pp. 137–. ISBN 9780754671008. Retrieved 21 February 2013.
^ Findling, John E.; Pelle, Kimberly D. (2004). Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 252–. ISBN 9780313322785. Retrieved 21 February 2013.
^ Saulwick, Jacob (12 April 2008). "No medals for economic benefits of the Games". Business Day. Archived from the original on 16 May 2008. Retrieved 16 April 2008. The article is based largely on a recent study by James Giesecke and John Madden from the Centre of Policy Studies at Monash University.
^ Afghanistan-Analysts. Retrieved on 19 April 2015.
^ 11 Olympic Theme Songs, Dissected. Time (26 July 2012). Retrieved 3 May 2014.
^ "Patrick Mboma". Archived from the original on 17 May 2013. Retrieved 9 July 2010.
^ Longman, Jere (2 October 2000). "Sydney 2000: Closing Ceremony; A fond farewell from Australia". New York Times. Retrieved 12 May 2010.
^ "Reflections on the Olympic Wheelchair Racing Exhibition Races". Archived from the original on 17 June 2009. Retrieved 15 June 2009.
^ "Strict quarantine conditions for overseas horses competing in the Sydney 2000 Games". Department of Agriculture. 26 November 1999. Archived from the original on 7 May 2015. Retrieved 23 December 2014.
^ "Sydney 2000". International Olympic Committee. Retrieved 17 January 2013.
^ "2000 Summer Games". Database Olympics. Archived from the original on 15 January 2013. Retrieved 17 January 2013.
^ "Sydney 2000 International Olympic Committee". Archived from the original on 22 July 2009. Retrieved 8 July 2009.
^ Official Report of the XXVII Olympiad, Volume One: Preparing for the Games (PDF). Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games. 2001. p. 178. ISBN 978-0-9579616-0-9.
^ "Architect Michael Bryce". ABC Queensland. 19 October 2005. Archived from the original on 1 November 2007.
^ White, Leanne (9 June 2011). "The Sydney 2000 Olympic Games Bid: Marketing Indigenous Australia for the Millennium Games". The International Journal of the History of Sport. 28 (10): 1455. doi:10.1080/09523367.2011.578341. Retrieved 17 August 2014.
^ Desktop (27 September 2012). "Top Ten Australian Logos – 8th | Desktop". Desktop | The Culture of Design. Desktop Magazine. Retrieved 26 November 2014.
^ "Syd, Olly and Millie – mascots of the 2000 Olympic Summer Games". Beijing2008. 5 August 2004. Archived from the original on 17 May 2013. Retrieved 25 October 2006.
^ "The Rise of Fatso – The Fat Arsed Sydney Olympics Wombat". Strategic Resources International. February 2001. Retrieved 10 October 2008.
^ Marr, Jim (8 December 2000). "Satire: Roy Slaven on the Rampage". Workers Online (81). Retrieved 30 June 2006.
^ "Amply-rumped wombat was real darling of the Games". Sports Illustrated. 1 October 2000. Archived from the original on 6 October 2008. Retrieved 10 October 2008.
^ Olde, Peter (2000). "The Olympic Bouquets" (PDF). Grevillea Study Group Newsletter (57): 8. ISSN 0725-8755. Retrieved 14 November 2011.
^ "Olympic History". Archived from the original on 22 July 2009. Retrieved 8 July 2009.
^ John Dugdale (3 October 2013). "Tom Clancy: The top five novels". The Guardian. Retrieved 27 March 2018.
^ "Second Grade Rules, Amber Brown By Paula Danziger". Chicago Tribune. 8 August 2004. Retrieved 27 March 2018.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to 2000 Summer Olympics.
"Sydney 2000". Olympic.org. International Olympic Committee.
"Results and Medalists — 2000 Summer Olympics". Olympic.org. International Olympic Committee.
"Satellite view of 2000 Sydney Olympics sites". Archived from the original on 18 April 2004.
This page was last edited on 27 March 2019, at 05:33 (UTC).
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In the collection before the down vest, how to properly clean it? Tell you the following recipe.
1. Prepare a pot of warm water, put in the amount of detergent in the water.
2. Put the down jacket in the water soak for 10 minutes after the start of cleaning, careful not to hand rubbing clothes, dirty place must use a soft brush or waste toothbrush to wash.
3. Brush clean, do not like the same twist twist to squeeze water, but to squeeze down the clothes down, and then wash with water first.
4. In the second time cleaning, pour one or two spoons of white vinegar in the water, put the down jacket on the inside soak 5 to 10 minutes, gently rub a few times. Dry when the attention, along the lines of hands against the extrusion, hanging dry.
5. Do not sun exposure, to be placed in a ventilated place, the general dry two or three days to dry. After the dry will find clothes are flat, not fluffy. Then take the clothes down on the bed, with a large racks to beat clothes, everywhere to shoot. And soon downjacket to restore the fluffy appearance.
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What is Google Allo App, how does it work ?
Google Allo, the instant messaging app from the search giant power by the new Google Assistant, will start going live for users across the world. Messaging has come a long way for Google which has gone from GTalk to G-chat to Hangouts via Google Wave and Buzz.
Google actually described Allo as a messaging up for Android and iPhone users. But it does a lot more than just allow you to send messages to other people. It's a smart messaging app in that it has the power of Google built-in and can apparently learn over time.
Similar to WhatsApp, Allo is based on your phone number, so you can use it to send text messages to anyone in your phonebook - not just other Allo users. Apart from that, Google highlighted three aspects of Allo that make it unique: Expression, Google Assistant, and Security.
During a demo at Google I/O, Google showed how you can use Allo to keep in touch with people. It looked like any other messaging app; chats appeared as bubbles, with one person's chat bubbles appearing on one side in a certain colour, and another person's chat bubbles appearing on the opposite side, and you could scroll up and down to see the entire threaded conversation.
like Facebook Messenger - you could send stickers, which Google said were sourced from artists around the world. You could also send emoji. But one of the hottest features is something called Whisper or shout. This will let you slide up or down on the send button to change the size of your reply, meaning there's no need to write in caps all the time when you're angry.
Continuing with this theme of giving you more ways to express yourself, Allo offers a feature called Ink that lets you get creative with photos. You can doodle on them, for instance. Allo also took the Smart Reply feature from Google's Inbox app, so now you can quickly respond while on the go. If someone asks if you want to grab dinner, Allo might serve up responses like "I'm in" or "I'm busy".
Allo uses machine-learning and natural language processing in order to suggest replies on the fly, meaning it can anticipate what you want to say next and how you might say it. The more you use Allo, the better your suggestions become. And they will always be unique to you. However, because messaging isn't just about texts, replies also contain stickers and emoji.
You'll even see smart reply options when someone send you a photo. Allo can understand the content and context of photos, thanks to Google's computer vision capabilities. If someone sends you a photo of pasta, you will see smart replies that include mentions of pasta, yummy, or whatever. The idea here is that assistive technology can help you communicate with little to no effort.
If you didn’t catch the news when Google first announced Allo back in May, I'm going to start with the basics. How a messaging app works can be surprisingly complicated, so bear with me a bit as I go through it. There are some neat little surprises in how Google decided to set Allo up — but if you really don’t care about things like SMS relay, I won’t blame you if you skip on down to the next section.
Allo is available starting on both Android phones and iPhones — but that’s it. Google hasn’t made it available on the web, on desktop, or on tablets. In fact, you can’t even use the same account on multiple phones. The Google Assistant will only be available in English to start, but it will be coming to more countries soon.
Allo identifies you by your phone number (which it verifies with a text message), which is great because it means you don’t have to fiddle with account setup. You can associate your Allo account with your main Google ID (for me, this happened automatically) or keep it separate if you’d prefer that.
The downside to this system, as said above, is that it’s only going to work on your phone. Google says it will look to expand Allo to other platforms eventually. For me, that’s a nonstarter. I can’t think of a single messaging app I use that doesn’t have a web or desktop version that I use all the time — heck, even Android SMS can work with third-party apps to let you converse from your big keyboard. But maybe I'm the weird one — in today's mobile-first / mobile-only world, Google may do just fine.
On the other hand, that aggressive simplification has benefits. For example, Allo also doesn’t have any contact lists for you to maintain. It just piggybacks off your phone’s main contacts app. If your contact has Allo installed, they’ll show up on top.
If your contact doesn’t have the app installed, one of two things happen. Both are actually kind of interesting.
If they’re on an iPhone, they’ll receive an SMS with your name, the contents of your message, and a link to download the app. They can then download it or — if they want — just reply via SMS. Google has set up a full SMS relay so that your recalcitrant friends can avoid installing it at all if they don't want to.
If they’re on an Android phone, something new and intriguing happens. Google is calling it an "app preview notification," and basically it shoots a notification directly to your Android device instead of going through SMS. Your friend will get a notification that looks and acts almost as if they had the app installed in the first place, message content and all. It means they won’t incur any SMS fees, either. Your recipient can reply within the notification, or tap on it to install the app.
Why go into this much detail on how all this works? Beyond the interesting technical details, it illustrates the lengths to which Google must go to give Allo even a small chance of building up a critical mass of people to try a new messaging app. It’s radically, almost violently unclear how Allo is going to take on WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Line, iMessage, and all the rest. Many of these apps have more than a billion users, and so the Big Question for Google is how it’s going to get Allo distributed to an equally large number of people. We don’t know yet whether it will be installed by default on Android devices — we only know that Google decided not to hijack SMS like Apple’s iMessage does.
This system of pushing out the full contents of messages while still offering an easy way to download is a clever way of creating a network effect. Having somebody demand you install an app to chat is annoying. Getting a text you can’t do anything with unless you install an app is also annoying.
||ੴ||ਇੱਕ ਓਅੰਕਾਰ Satnam Shri Waheguru Ji A Web Blog about Product Review, Blogging Tips, Tech Reviews: What is Google Allo App, how does it work ?
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This method of calculating the required down payment applies to properties that have been constructed for one year or more or were constructed under FHA inspection. For those homes that are less than one year old or were not inspected during construction by FHA and/or VA, the required down payment is 10 percent of the value. Even though there is a difference in the down payment, the maximum loan amount is the same.
The usual down payment may vary with some of the programs available through FHA. As stated earlier, the easing of the down payments from approximately 50 percent allowed more people to purchase homes. Since the loans of FHA are relatively safe and possible loss to the lender is reduced, these loans usually have an interest rate that is below that charged on conventional mortgages or those loans with no governmental backing. With a lower interest rate, the monthly payments are lower, thus allowing a person to qualify for a greater loan amount with no increase in income. The effect that interest rates can have on the amount of the loan was dramatically illustrated in the high interest rates of late 1979 and into 1981. During this period, rates shot up from approximately 9.5 percent to over 18 percent. It was estimated that, with residential mortgage interest rates at 18 percent, only 5 percent of the population could afford housing.
♦ Assumable - FHA allows a person to assume an existing mortgage without the escalation or change of the interest rate. This escalation or change of interest for the assumption of a mortgage still exists today for some types of conventional mortgages. FHA felt that with America being a mobile society, the transfer of property should be made as easy as possible and one way was to allow those mortgages meeting the standards of FHA to be assumable On December 1, 1986, HUD made a major change in its assumption policy, in that any assumption made within 24 months after origination requires FHA qualification of the assumptor.
♦ No Prepayment Penalty - Probably one of the most important mortgage reforms instituted by FHA was to allow the borrower to pay off the mortgage prior to the due date of the mortgage without any prepayment penalty or prepayment premium. This lack of prepayment penalty is now a standard feature of all mortgages insured by FhA, but the penalty still can be found in many conventional mortgages. As a real estate professional, you need to know which conventional lenders in your area have prepayment penalties.
♦ Minimum Property Standards - As mentioned in the previous section, one of the reforms instituted by FHA was minimum property standards.
property has been inspected on a periodic basis and has been certified to conform to a minimum set of standards.
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Armenia officially the Republic of Armenia, is a mountainous country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bordered by Turkey to the west, Georgia to the north, the de facto independent Nagorno-Karabakh Republic and Azerbaijan to the east, and Iran and the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakchivan to the south.
Armenia is a unitary, multi-party, democratic nation-state with an ancient cultural heritage. Established in the 6th century BC, after the fall of Urartu. Armenia became the first state in the world to adopt Christianity as its official religion In the early years of the 4th century (the traditional date is 301 AD). For this reason, Armenia is often referred to as the "first Christian nation. An Armenian principality and later a kingdom, known as Cilican Armenia, existed on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea between the 11th and 14th centuries.
Between the 16th and early 19th century, the traditional Armenian homeland composed of Eastern Armenia and Western Armenia came under rule of the rivaling Ottoman and Persian Empires. By the mid 19th century, Eastern Armenia had been conquered by Russia over Persia, while most of the western parts of the traditional Armenian homeland still remained under Ottoman rule. During World War I, the Armenians living in their ancestral lands in the Ottoman Empire were systematically exterminated in the Armenian Genocide.
After almost 600 years of statelessness, Armenia was able to become independent in 1918; however, the First Republic of Armenia, surrounded by hostile countries, was Sovietized in 1920. Between 1922 and 1991, Armenia was part of the Soviet Union. The modern Republic of Armenia became independent in 1991.
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How do I get to the dashboard of a project?
The dashboard provides a fast graphical representation of all the key data points of a testing project. To access the dashboard for any project go to the left hand menu and select the desired project from the drop down menu, as shown below.
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Past value of the difference between small saver and big saver ROI can be calculated easily.
Best example the consumption share from the GDP decreased dramatically between 2000-2015 in China.
For a long-time Mr Pettis arguing about that the lower than inflation interest rate was a hidden channel to transfer money from the consumers to the investors.
If someone try to correlate the average wealth of any individual in China with the average yearly interest then I'm 85% sure it will be highly correlated.
Obviously if we want to calculate it for the future then it is a different kind of matter.
At the moment we are in an eigenstate, chaotic attractor or whatever you wean to call it.
The process periodicity falling back to the eigenstate, so to calculate the ROI easy, it simply following a normal distribution in the given eigenstate.
All of them or certain partial combination of them will bring the system toward a new eigenstate.
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Pre-Columbian site in Tlaxcala, central Mexico. It flourished c. 250 bce–c. 950 ce and is notable for its wall paintings (in situ).
The ruins of Cacaxtla lie in the hilly uplands between Tlaxcala and Puebla, c. 100 km east of Mexico City, on ancient routes of communication between the Central Highlands and both the Gulf Coast region and the Southern Highlands of the Mixteca. Only portions of the site have been excavated, and its history is not yet fully understood. Archaeological evidence indicates human occupation since the Late Pre-Classic period (c. 300 bce–c. 250 ce), with intense occupation during the Classic period (c. 250–c. 900 ce). The site had a longstanding relationship with the neighboring hill of Xochitecatl. Pottery, traces of talud–tablero architecture, and residential structures suggest that Cacaxtla may have had ties to Teotihuacan during the early part of the Classic period (c. 200–c. 500 ce).
Very different cultural affiliations are indicated by the surface ruins, which date from the Late Classic period (c. 600–c. 900 ce) and into the Early Post-Classic period (c. 900–c. 1050 ce), a time of instability and strife in the Central Highlands. Located on a defensible hilltop, the Cacaxtla acropolis grew taller over the centuries, layering new construction over old. In its final phases, the acropolis was lined with outward-facing porticos, while the interior was divided into three parts: a central Great Plaza bordered to the north and south by elite residential, administrative, and religious complexes, organized around more private courtyards. Defensive trenches and walls were added late in the building sequence. The wall paintings for which the site is famous have been attributed to c. 650–c. 950 ce. They have a distinctive local character but also reflect strong external influences, including other Central Highland, Southern Highland, and Maya styles.
Six major paintings have been discovered to date at Cacaxtla, and more likely lie in the unexcavated sections of the acropolis. Several of the existing paintings show traces of modifications and repairs, evidence of the time depth of the painting tradition; many were carefully buried underneath fine earth when they were covered by new construction. This reverential treatment has contributed to the excellent state of preservation in which the paintings find themselves today.
The earliest painting yet unearthed is the Serpent Corridor, a narrow passageway where the lower part of each wall is painted with a feathered serpent lying atop an aquatic border where lively sea creatures fill compartments separated by diagonal dividers. Another painting, the Captive Stair, covers the step leading up from the South Plaza into the Serpent Corridor. A series of toponyms are painted on the riser of the step, and the tread is decorated with sprawling and emaciated bodies, likely representing war captives. The viewer is rendered complicit by this painting, offered the choice to step on these images of suffering bodies.
The Red Temple complex later incorporated both paintings. A stairway was built over the Serpent Corridor, and the feathered serpent and aquatic border repainted to ascend the stair. The walls of the stairway and the extension of the east wall onto the landing were painted with a scene of an old merchant god moving through a supernatural landscape, against a red background. The old merchant god, richly dressed in finely woven textiles, jaguar pelt, and jade jewelry, stands next to his backpack (cacaxtli), laden with luxury goods. A cacao tree grows in front of him, and on the walls flanking the stair are maize plants with human heads for the ears of maize, with outsize toads and other strange creatures moving between them. The scene relates commerce and agriculture, the two poles of the Mesoamerican economy, and casts both as practices with supernatural overtones, which take place in the underworld before the creation of the present era. The old merchant god displays notable similarities to God L, the Maya god of trade and the underworld, while the maize plants resemble the Maya Maize God, at the same time illustrating widely held Mesoamerican beliefs about the relationships between humans and their principal foodstuff. The very location of the paintings, connecting the small South Plaza below the principal level of the site to an elite compound above, suggests both the location of the underworld and the trader’s journey from the hot lowlands to the Central Mexican highlands.
Another early painting bordering the South Plaza lies within the Temple of Venus, where the twin interior pillars of a small two-room structure are painted with a standing male and female figure. Each wears a distinctive five-lobed white ornament at the waist, a symbol associated with Venus in the Mesoamerican world; pointed star signs border each pillar. The male figure also has a scorpion tail, another attribute associated with Venus in Mesoamerica.
Bordering the Great Plaza in the central portion of the site, the Battle Mural represents a bloody conflict, represented at nearly life size. The battle scene covers over 20 m of a talud–tablero wall that is bisected by a stairway. The forty-nine participants depicted can be divided into two groups, both of which stand out from the vivid turquoise blue background: the victors, armed with spears, knives, and round shields, stand in a variety of aggressive poses. They are simply dressed, some with jaguar-skin jerkins or accessories, and wear headbands with short feathers. Each is given a name or title by a glyphic compound placed near his head. The vanquished are almost all prone, dead, or horribly wounded; they are naked and unarmed but wear elaborate headdresses in the form of birds’ heads with long trailing feathers, and rich ornaments such as jade pectorals, nose bars, and other accessories. Only two sumptuously clothed “bird” warriors remain standing, in attitudes of apparent resignation close to the center of the wall painting on either side of the stairway. Their costume, of skirt and pointed poncho or quechquemitl, suggests that these figures may be represented as female. This very public painting likely represents a historical conflict, rendered so as to make victory seem inevitable. While visible, the Battle Mural framed all activities which took place in the Great Plaza, the most public space of the acropolis. It was covered by new construction not long after it was painted.
The portico paintings of Structure A are very different in character. These paintings frame the doorway into the inner room of a two-room temple above and to the east of the Battle Mural, and were available to a much more restricted audience. Here, figures dressed in bird and jaguar costumes stand in peaceful coexistence, in statuesque poses. On the north side of the doorway, a figure dressed in a jaguar suit stands on a jaguar serpent; on the south side of the doorway, a figure dressed in an eagle costume stands on a feathered serpent. These may be the dual rulers, or perhaps the patron deities of the city. Both figures look towards the doorway, whose entrance is painted as if it were the mouth of a mountain, so that the aquatic borders framing the scenes appear to be rivers flowing out of the mountain. Thus, the entire painting represents the term altepetl, or “water-mountain,” the Nahuatl word for a city-state, its government and territory. Maize grows out of the mouth of the mountain, and the two smaller figures painted on the broad doorjambs as one passes through the doorway also have associations with maize and maize deities. In its focus on duality, and its representation of elements associated with the rainy season in the north and the dry season in the south, the mural anticipates the program of the Aztec Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlan, centuries later (see Mexico City, §I).
The Structure A murals have one of the most complex histories of modification of any of the murals at Cacaxtla. Another painting, likely earlier than the portico paintings, lies on the back wall of the inner room; it was covered with mud at some point during the building’s history and is now in very poor condition due to the erosion of the wall on which it was painted. The area bordering the doorway of the portico murals was also later covered by clay reliefs, each showing a seated figure inside a cave. Areas of the portico and jamb murals were later highlighted with a bright and runny red paint. This history of updating, combined with the careful burial of the paintings beneath a layer of fine earth, points to their importance for the inhabitants of Cacaxtla.
The Cacaxtla wall paintings have been admired for the fidelity and individuality of their depiction of the human figure, as well as for their compositional dynamism. Both aspects represent a break with the artistic conventions of the Central and Southern Highlands, and are exceptional even by Maya standards. They are eclectic, revealing a harmonious blend of influences from many parts of Mesoamerica: Teotihuacán, Xochicalco, the Gulf Coast region, Oaxaca, the Maya region, and other areas. The formal style of the wall paintings is closest to the Maya tradition, for example as at Bonampak, but the painting technique is distinctively local, using nopal cactus gum as a binder. Most glyphs derive from Teotihuacan, although there is also a stylistic link with glyphs at Xochicalco; other glyphs, and some of the numerals, display Mixtec or Zapotec influence.
Because of this cosmopolitan style, the Cacaxtla murals have sometimes been attributed to the Olmeca–Xicalanca, a group mentioned in some 16th-century ethnohistorical sources. Little is known about them, but tradition places their origin in the southeast Gulf Coast region, and they are thought to have had extensive contacts, especially through trade, with the Central Highlands. However, other scholars believe that the Cacaxtla murals are a local tradition, which deliberately incorporated Maya style, just as previous generations at Cacaxtla made art which affiliated them with Teotihuacan. After the collapse of Teotihuacan in the 6th century ce, artists and patrons at Cacaxtla turned their attention south, where the Maya city-states were still flourishing, incorporating elements of Maya style into a distinctive local painting tradition which continued even after the collapse of the Maya city-states.
For discussion of Mesoamerican wall painting see also Mesoamerica, Pre-Columbian, §VI.
Foncerrada de Molina, M. “Mural painting in Cacaxtla and Teotihuacan Cosmopolitanism.” In Third Palenque Round Table, 1978, Part 2, edited by Merle Greene Robertson, 183–203. Austin, 1980.
McVicker, D. “The ‘Mayanized’ Mexicans.” American Antiquity: Quarterly Review of American Archaeology [incorp. Mem. Soc. Amer. Archaeol.] 50 (1985): 82–101.
Lombardo de Ruíz, S. and others. Cacaxtla: El lugar donde muere la lluvia en la tierra. Tlaxcala, 1986.
Stuart, G. E. and Ferorelli, E. “Mural Masterpieces of Ancient Cacaxtla.” National Geographic 172 (1992): 120–136.
McCafferty, S. and McCafferty, G. “The Conquered Women of Cacaxtla: Gender Identity or Gender Ideology?” Ancient Mesoamerica 5 (1994): 159–172.
Santana Sandoval, A. El santuario de Cacaxtla. Mexico City, 2011.
Uriarte, M. T. and Salazar, F., eds. La Pintura Mural Prehispánica en México: Cacaxtla, 2 vols. Mexico City, 2013.
Brittenham, C. and Nagao, D. “Cacaxtla Figural Ceramics.” An. Inst. Invest. Estét. 36, no. 104 (2014): 55–96.
Brittenham, C. The Murals of Cacaxtla: The Power of Painting in Ancient Mesoamerica. Austin, 2015.
Brittenham, C. and Magaloni, D. I. K. “The Eloquence of Color: Material and Meaning in the Cacaxtla Murals.” In Making Value, Making Meaning: Techné in the Pre-Columbian World, edited by Cathy Lynne Costin, 63–94. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2016.
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0.999951 |
Ова е список на национални гесла на земјите. Овие се јавуваат на места како грбови, монети и банкноти. Некои земји одбрале да немаат гесло.
Брунеи: Секогаш во служба со господово водење.
Иран: де факто: Esteqlāl, āzādī, jomhūrī-ye eslāmī (Фарси, Независност, слобода, Исламската Република); де јуре: Allaho Akbar (Арапски, Господ е голем)Грешка во наводот: На ознаката <ref> ѝ недостасува ознака за затворање </ref>.
Руанда: Unity, Work, Patriotism (Единство, Работа, Патриотизам).
Турција: Egemenlik kayıtsız şartsız milletindir. (Турски, Независноста лежи неусловно со нацијата)Грешка во наводот: На ознаката <ref> ѝ недостасува ознака за затворање </ref>.
↑ "Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat - Antigua and Barbada". конс. 2006-08-02.
↑ "Prime Minister Andranik Margaryan's Welcome Message on the Occasion of the 70-anniversary of the Establishment of the Union of Armenia's Writers". конс. 2006-08-03.
↑ "New South Wales State Flag & Emblems". конс. 2006-09-03.
↑ "Department of Premier and Cabinet: Ensigns of Public Authority". конс. 2006-08-03.
↑ "Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat - The Bahamas". конс. 2006-08-02.
↑ "Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat - Barbados". конс. 2006-08-02.
↑ "Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat - Belize". конс. 2006-08-02.
↑ "La Constitution de la République du Bénin". конс. 2006-08-02.
↑ "The Government of Brunei Darussalam - National Flag and Crest". конс. 2006-08-05.
↑ "About Bulgaria: National Symbols - Flag, coat of arms, anthem". конс. 2006-08-05.
↑ "United Nations Human Rights Website - Core Document Forming Part of the State Parties - Vanuatu". конс. 2006-08-27.
↑ "Constitution de la République Gabonaise" (PDF). конс. 2008-01-19.
↑ "Seatle Gambia Association - Coat of Arms of The Gambia". конс. 2006-08-15.
↑ "Republic of Ghana: The Ghana Coat of Arms". конс. 2006-08-16.
↑ "Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat - Grenada". конс. 2006-08-02.
↑ "Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat - Guyana". конс. 2006-08-02.
↑ "Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat - Dominica". конс. 2006-08-02.
↑ "Constitution of Equatorial Guinea". конс. 2006-08-15.
↑ "National Portal of India : Know India : National Symbols". конс. 2006-08-22.
↑ "Laos - Foreign Investment Management Cabinet: Politics". конс. 2006-08-22.
↑ "Lesotho Embassy in Washington - Lesotho Fact Sheet". конс. 2006-08-22.
↑ "Liberian President Sirleaf Addresses Joint Session of Congress". конс. 2006-08-22.
↑ "Luxembourg Tourist Office in London: Luxembourg - Small and Beautiful". конс. 2006-08-22.
↑ "Government of Malaysia - Malaysian flag and crest". конс. 2006-08-23.
↑ "The Republic of Mauritius Web Portal - Coat of Arms". конс. 2006-08-27.
↑ "Namibia in a Nutshell - Symbols". конс. 2006-08-23.
↑ As shown on the coat of arms of Nepal.
↑ "The Dutch royal house: The royal coat of arms". конс. 2006-08-02.
↑ Article 15 of the "Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria". конс. 2006-08-23.
↑ "Information of Pakistan: Basic Facts". конс. 2006-08-02.
↑ Section 40 of "Republic Act No. 8491: An act prescribing the code of the national flag, anthem, motto, coat-of-arms and other heraldic items and devices of the Philippines" (DOC). конс. 2006-08-27.
↑ "Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat - St. Kitts and Nevis". конс. 2006-08-02.
↑ "Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat - Saint Lucia". конс. 2006-08-02.
↑ "Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat - St. Vincent and the Grenadines". конс. 2006-08-02.
↑ "Government of Samoa - Crest". конс. 2006-08-27.
↑ "Gouvernement du Sénégal - La Constitution : Titre Premier". конс. 2006-08-27.
↑ "National Constitution of Sierra Leone". конс. 2006-08-02.
↑ "Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat - Suriname". конс. 2006-08-02.
↑ "Swaziland National Trust Commission - General Swaziland Information: Social". конс. 2006-08-27.
↑ "Tanzania National website: Country profile". конс. 2006-08-02.
↑ "Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat - Trinidad and Tobago". конс. 2006-08-02.
↑ "Spain: Symbols - The national coat of arms". конс. 2006-08-27.
Последната промена на страницава е извршена на 17 август 2017 г. во 07:53 ч.
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0.999326 |
Summary: It's Lois' birthday, and she waits for her surprise party … and waits. Perry couldn't have taken her seriously last year when she said she didn't like these things, could he?
Walking into the Daily Planet, Clark Kent quickly scans the area for Lois. Spotting Jimmy Olsen at the coffee machine, Clark motions for Jimmy to meet him at his desk.
JO: Hey, CK, what's up?
CK: Have you seen Lois today?
JO: Yeah she was here earlier, but the Chief sent her out on a story. She should be gone for hours.
CK: Great! Did you get the stuff I wanted?
JO: Yeah. Lois almost caught me trying to sneak it into Perry's office.
CK: Are you sure she doesn't suspect anything?
JO: If she does she's not letting on. I haven't heard her grilling anyone either.
CK: Neither have I. Maybe she learned her lesson last year.
LL: Clark, are you sure you can't go to your parents *next* weekend? I thought we could have a picnic or something.
CK: Lois, I'm sorry. I've already got my tickets and they're non-refundable. Besides my dad really needs my help this weekend.
Now Clark was feeling guilty. He didn't know Lois on her last birthday, in fact he had only found out her birthday was Saturday *after* he had told her he was spending the weekend in Smallville. Then he found out that Lois thought the Planet was throwing her a surprise party. But Perry had told him that the year before Lois had said that she really didn't like surprise parties. So Perry didn't plan one.
Clark was in a bind, he didn't want Lois to spend her birthday feeling sorry for herself. But Lois might get suspicious if he stayed in Metropolis. Then he came up with an idea.
The sounds of upbeat music filled Lois's apartment as she finished straightening up. Lois was dancing around thinking what she would wear to the *surprise* party tonight. Usually she knew exactly where they were going and how they planned on getting her there. But everyone had been real tight lipped this year and she didn't have an inkling.
Going through her closet she found a red sundress with a flared knee length skirt and crisscrossed back. It was casual enough that she could just throw on some sandals but dressy enough for heels if the situation warranted them.
She thought about calling Clark's apartment, just to see if he really had gone to Smallville. But figured he probably wouldn't answer anyway.
Lois was getting impatient. It was 8:30 already and no one had even called. Suddenly remembering her comments at last year's party she began to feel foolish, then she got angry.
One of the few times I joke around and Perry took me seriously, she thought, and here I am dressed up like a damn fool, waiting for a party that's not going to happen.
Storming into her bedroom to change, Lois noticed that her window was open. But as she went to close it Superman appeared with a dozen red roses in an exquisite vase and a picnic basket full of food.
S: Clark told me. The Planet hadn't planned a party this year and by the time Perry found out you were expecting one, well there just wasn't enough time to plan one.
LL: Oh, well I'm glad you're here. I was just about to change clothes and drown myself in a gallon of chocolate ice cream.
S: Well, I've got fresh pasta and cream sauce, hot Italian breadsticks and some great wine as an alternative. What do you say?
LL: Who could pass that up? But where did you get food like this at this hour?
Clark had never seen Lois look so beautiful—and sad—the red dress made her look irresistible. But Clark knew he couldn't go too far. Lois was just starting to get over her *Superman fixation*. But he hadn't wanted her to be alone on her birthday.
They ate slowly, enjoying the excellent food. After they were done, Lois had put on some soft music and asked him to dance.
It took all of his willpower not to give in to Lois's advances. He knew that if he gave in as Superman, Clark would move one step further back in Lois' mind. He'd left after only one dance.
When Clark had asked Lois about her weekend Lois just smiled and said 'fine'. No mention of her birthday or Superman at all.
This year the Planet hadn't planned a party either, but several people were in on a plan to make Lois think they had if she asked them. So far… she hadn't said a word. But Clark had something special planned. And *nothing* could go wrong.
Clark had been so deep in thought that he hadn't heard Lois come up to him.
CK: Lois? How long have you been standing there?
LL: Long enough, now come on, we've got to get going.
CK: Where are *we* going, Lois? I thought *you* were on a story.
LL: Well, Perry has a story for *us*, Clark. Let's go.
CK: All right. Fill me in on the details.
LL: Well, it seems there is this big charity function tonight, I haven't heard much about it though. Perry says it's a very *private* function to earn money for a new orphanage. But he really thinks that it is just a plan for Intergang to launder money. Anyway, Perry got me an interview with the head man in charge of planning tonight's party.
CK: And you think he's just going to up and tell you all the evil details? Come on, Lois, get real.
LL: Goll, Clark, what's gotten into you? You've been a grouch all day.
CK: Nothing, Lois, I just don't feel like interviewing some moron who planned a private party, they're not against the law you know.
LL: I'll do all the talking then, but Perry said you should go.
CK: If that guy is part of Intergang then I'm Donald Duck. Lois this thing looks totally aboveboard. He gave you everything you need: a list of planning committee members, the budget for the party, the budget and the plans for the new orphanage, and the guest list for tonight's party, what more could you want. Besides anyone who would just hand over that information wouldn't be hiding anything.
LL: All right already, I get the point. I'll just go write up a little story on how much good this ball is going to do for all the poor orphans of Metropolis.
CK: You do that, Lois.
Back at the Daily Planet Lois is finishing her write up on the Charity Ball. Perry storms out of his office yelling.
PW: Lois! You seen Clark? I've got a crisis on my hands and need someone on it right away!
LL: I haven't seen Clark since we got back from that interview, Chief. What's the crisis?
PW: Someone just called in a report of a robbery down at the pier, one of the warehouses that stores computer components for Quartech. #7 I think.
LL: I'll go, Chief, my story from this morning is done and I could use a little excitement today.
PW: Well…, since we can't find Clark and I don't want you down on that pier alone, I'll send Jimmy with you. But stay out of trouble. You hear?! JIMMY!!
PW: Go with Lois down to the pier and make sure she stays out of trouble.
JO: Whatever you say, Chief.
JO: Are you sure we're in the right place, Lois? I don't see any cops around.
LL: I'm sure he said #7 down at the pier, and I'm not leaving till I check it out.
JO: OK then, let's go.
JO: Hey, I left my camera in the Jeep, I'll catch up.
Lois cautiously opens the door of #7 and sneaks inside. She is shocked to see a candlelit table set for two. She is even more surprised to see Clark standing by the table with a big smile on his face.
CK: I thought I'd try and surprise you. Looks like I did a fairly good job.
CK: I think that's how I was able to pull it off. And while Perry kept us busy with that story this morning Jimmy was out here getting all this set up.
CK: Back at the Planet where he belongs, he had his motorcycle hidden out here.
LL: Oh. Clark, this is so sweet. And I had no idea. Really.
CK: I know. Well, the food's getting cold, maybe we should eat.
As Lois sits down at a table with pasta and cream sauce, hot Italian breadsticks and wine, she has a moment of deja vu.
CK: Lois, there is something I've wanted to tell you for a long time. This seemed to be the perfect opportunity. And I thought we could make this your annual birthday dinner.
LL: But, Clark, the food? How did you know?
Clark answered by spinning into Superman.
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0.989481 |
Can I use TreeSize Free to scan my mobile phone?
Yes, TreeSize Free can scan mobile devices that are connected to the PC via USB. Most smartphones and digital cameras use the MTP (Media transfer protocol), which is not supported by many disk space managers. TreeSize, on the other hand, is able to scan these devices and show the disk space that is occupied on your mobile device.
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0.901598 |
These are IQs, their percentiles, and rarity on a 15 SD (e.g. Wechsler) and 16 SD (e.g. Stanford-Binet) scale. They were calculated using the NORMDIST function in Excel. The number of decimal places for the rarity was varied in the hope it might be useful. You can see why presently nobody should be able to get a deviation IQ higher than 195 (or 201 on the 16 SD scale). There are not enough people in the world to 'beat'. Note that rarities given are of people that have a certain IQ or higher. Some people might find it more useful to know the rarity of people that have a certain IQ or lower. In that case use this example as a guide: If you want to know how many people have IQs of 84 or lower, look at the rarity of people that have an IQ of 116 or higher. (100 - 84 = 16. 100 + 16 = 116).
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0.988342 |
My dogs always have cold ears. Problem solved with a hoodie. The hoodie keeps their ears toasty warm.
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0.999554 |
He put his furry head in my lap.
while he ate the last of the pork roast?
a cougar for a pet.
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0.986644 |
Yesterday I went for a run - and by run I mean jog :-) Why do we still call it running when it is nowhere near "running" - I guess it just sounds cooler (I digress).
Back to my story - I went on a run. I had not put my running shoes on in 2 or 3 months. I had previously been on the couch to 5k program but had decided to give it a rest because I had been experiencing some pain in my knees. It was really frustrating to stop, but it is what I felt I needed to do.
Jog 90 seconds - Walk 90 seconds - Jog 3 minutes - Walk 3 minutes - and this cycle would repeat for 25 minutes.
But yesterday morning when I got back into a running program, I decided that I would not take anything with me. No watch, no phone to track my progress, no ipod to listen to music. I would just run - and think.
And then something happened that had never happened before. I ran over a mile. I warmed up with a brisk walk and then just started running - and did not stop until I reached my cool down spot. At one point during this little run of mine, I found myself thinking "Hey! I'm doing it! Huh, I'm running." It's quite possible that I could have gone even farther (I plan on finding out tomorrow morning).
I had a bit of a revolutionary thought about this when I got home.
Sometimes, we follow a plan but that plan gets in the way of our being and doing our best. Taking from Nike, sometimes we need to "Just Do It!" In my case, it turned out that the couch to 5k program was holding me back. It was telling me that I needed to stop jogging and walk. But realistically, I just needed to push through and do it. Don't get me wrong - I am not in any way trying to knock a program that is wonderful and is creating lots of runners. I am simply sharing what I am learning.
I think it is the same in life. Sometimes we just plan too much and that plan really gets in the way of what is best for us. Sometimes, we just need to do it. Just take the plunge. Take a risk. Stop waiting for the perfect moment, or for every circumstance to line up, and just do something.
I have been so fortunate in my life to be able to take some leaps into the unknown. I have had many opportunities to move where I feel led with nothing more than "Well, this seems to be what God wants me to do." And in all those moments of jumping at God's call at a moment's notice, He has never let me down.
I am not against planning - trust me - planning can be a very very good thing :-) But am I planning things or am I submitting myself to God's plan? Because sometimes God's plan is no plan. Sometimes God's plan is a leap into the unknown. And you know what - I have found those leaps to be very exciting.
The official music video is absolutely amazing (great dancing), but I could not embed it. Check it out here.
Among the wonderful things that I have found on Pinterest, is a love for cake pops. Not that I have ever had a cake pop, but they just look so cute.
It's by the gal who writes the Bakerella blog. She was also kind enough to post an Amazon video explaining how to make cake pops.
P.S. - I am 5 posts away from my 100th post and there is a giveaway in the making. Keep checking back :-) It's going to be good.
I recently became part of an art journaling 30 day challenge. It is being hosted by Janel at Run With Scissors.
I have a goal to art journal every day and then post on my Flickr, so there should be daily updates there.
But I also thought that I would share my journal pages here every Saturday until the challenge is done.
I really like how this last one turned out sort of looking like a beach ball - which not my original intention, but I really like it.
For this issue of Freedom Friday I thought that I would share an article that I came across last night. The following is an article that I found on the Exodus Cry blog. Be prepared. It might make you very furious.
June 1, 2011, Nigerian police raided a baby farm hidden in the maternity home ironically named “The Cross Foundation.” 32 pregnant teens were saved and taken to the headquarters of an anti–trafficking organization. Four babies, who had been sold but not collected, were also rescued.
The teenage mothers were locked up in the clinic and made to produce babies for sale. Some of the girls informed the authorities that they were forced to sell their babies to the proprietor for around $190 depending on the gender. The infants were then purchased by human traffickers or for witchcraft rituals.
The doctor arrested for running the operation is now being held for interrogation. Currently he is denying all allegations and claiming “The Cross Foundation” to be a clinic designed to help teens with unwanted pregnancies. In other words, when he doesn’t sell the babies, he murders them.
He holds to the story that the newborns were handed over to social welfare for adoption. However, evidence suggests that they were taken by human traffickers where the stated adoptions were illegal.
The buying and selling of babies, in Nigeria, is illegal and the doctor will likely be charged with child abuse and human trafficking, facing a prison time of up to 14 years.
In Western Africa, “baby factories” or “baby farms” are common. Teens, ages between 15–17, with unplanned pregnancies are lured to clinics where their newborns are taken and can be sold for up to $6,400 by traffickers. In some parts of the country they are considered valuable for sacrifice due to the belief that they strengthen charms.
Human trafficking in Nigeria is ranked the third most common crime, right behind financial fraud and drug trafficking. There traffickers, rarely caught or prosecuted, are allowed to roam free.
Many of the blogs that I follow have been talking about Pinterest.
I have been p-interested and p-intrigued, but only recently took the p-lunge.
I became an official member yesterday (I think). I've got one word to describe this new thing to me - addicting!!!
Basically, Pinterest is like an online inspiration board. It is a way to categorize all the stuff that you find on the internet, so that it is easy to find later, which replaces the need for all the tabs on my bookmark bar.
Holy toledo! You actually have a picture to show you what it is. It is such a great way of organizing all your websites and projects of interest.
Aaaaand, as if that was not wonderful enough, I have not really even touched on the addicting part. Oh yes, it gets better. You can also see what others are pinning. Eeek. I have found soooo many things that I want to make and the recipes ... oh all the wonderful recipes that I have found. It's wonderful, and fabulous, and I am absolutely addicted.
On another note, I am about 8 posts away from numero 100 and I am planning on having a giveaway. I have no idea what that giveaway will be, but it is coming. Yeah!
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0.999986 |
Some tips before you book an Israel vacation: Israel is a Jewish state, and the many public Holidays follow the Jewish calendar from year to year.
The holy city of Jerusalem has both ancient and modern attractions in architecture, the arts, theater, music and culture.
Explore Israel’s economic center of Tel Aviv, pretty Haifa, the resort city of Eilat, or spiritual Nazareth.
Regions include Golan Heights where you can see nature reserves, historic and archeological sites; the Galilee; Jordan Valley; The Dead Sea; and Carmel Mountain.
Weather: Beautiful in spring and autumn; humid and extremely warm in summer; rainy winters.
"Public holidays follow the Jewish calendar."
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0.991006 |
Why is the brain divided? The difference between right and left hemispheres has been puzzled over for centuries. In a book of unprecedented scope, Iain McGilchrist draws on a vast body of recent brain research, illustrated with case histories, to reveal that the difference is profound not just this or that function, but two whole, coherent, but incompatible ways of experiencing the world. The left hemisphere is detail oriented, prefers mechanisms to living things, and is inclined to self-interest, where the right hemisphere has greater breadth, flexibility, and generosity. This division helps explain the origins of music and language, and casts new light on the history of philosophy, as well as on some mental illnesses.
In the second part of the book, McGilchrist takes the reader on a journey through the history of Western culture, illustrating the tension between these two worlds as revealed in the thought and belief of thinkers and artists, from Aeschylus to Magritte. He argues that, despite its inferior grasp of reality, the left hemisphere is increasingly taking precedence in the modern world, with potentially disastrous consequences. This is truly a tour de force that should excite interest in a wide readership.
Iain McGilchrist is a former Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, where he taught literature before training in medicine. He was Consultant Psychiatrist and Clinical Director at the Bethlem Royal and Maudsley Hospital, London, and has researched in neuroimaging at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. He now works privately in London and otherwise lives on the Isle of Skye.
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0.99478 |
Why do African media get Africa wrong?
Most African media only broadcast to home viewers and use wire services for their broader audience.
Nanjala Nabola recently caused a bit of a stir with her Al Jazeera article asking, "Why do Western media get Africa wrong?" Reading through the piece, which was both interesting and informative, I couldn't help but wonder: Just who does get Africa right? Is there even such a thing as getting Africa right?
From the outset, let me state that I agree with many of Nanjala's criticisms of media coverage of events on the continent. As she says, much of it is devoid of nuance and context and seem oblivious to what Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie describes as the "danger of a single story" - the reductio ad absurdum of the tale of a continent of over a billion people and 54 countries, their existence, history and stories compressed into one simple, superficial, easily regurgitated cliche: "The hopeless continent." "Africa rising." "Magical Africa."
However, it is not just Western media (itself a rather obtuse concept) that are guilty of reporting in this manner. African media commit many of the same sins though, given the fact that most only broadcast to discrete home audiences, it is easy for them to escape censure. While Africans in almost every country on the continent have the opportunity to be regularly appalled by their portrayal on CNN, Al Jazeera and BBC, it is rare that Kenyans will flip the channel to check what Nigerian journalists are reporting about them.
This is because few African media houses are actually trying to cover the continent for the continent. Many have their hands full reporting (or not reporting) news at home and do not think of Africa so much as a story that needs to be covered, but as part of the rest of the world and take their cue on reporting it from the Western outlets. As South African photojournalist and film-maker Greg Marinovich notes, "Most African media stories on Africa are from international wires." Few have bureaus or send reporters outside their home countries, choosing to rely on the same Western reporters they delight in bashing.
Look at South Sudan, CAR, Congo or even Somalia, for instance. Most media on the continent remain supremely oblivious to the happenings there. Even in neighbouring nations such as Kenya, which has paid a huge price for Somalia's instability, media only seem able to regurgitate the Western tropes about fighting terror and Islamic extremists. Few journalists bother to understand the genesis of the two-decade long anarchy or to explain the reasons and wisdom of Kenya's intervention. In October 2011, many were busy beating the patriotic drum of war and most have since lost interest in what Kenyan troops are doing across the border.
Nanjala also points out that in most Western reporting of Africa, "The Rest is necessarily set up in opposition to the West," resulting in coverage where "issues or situations are rarely, if ever, analysed for their intrinsic impact or worth. Events or situations are analysed as what the West is not." But that, too, cuts both ways. Sometimes, African media will mirror this and set up the Rest in opposition to the perceptions of the Western press.
Another example from Kenya: As the elections last year approached, the country was inundated by Western journalists, many undoubtedly there in anticipation of a repeat of the 2007/8 post-election bloodshed. Most Kenyan media-folk were appalled, having themselves determined to practice something called peace journalism. In any case, their resultant, overly uncritical reporting of the election seemed at least partly motivated by the desire to prove to their Western counterparts that Kenya was not another African basket case.
Maybe media, whether Western or African should just cover stories in Africa, as opposed to seeking African stories.
"An important gap in the way that Africa is reported is not just the disappearance of regular correspondents, but also of longer more considered television documentaries.As current affairs coverage has declined, the only television outlet left for factual programming about Africa is on the news. So the kind of explanations and background context that would once have been contained in a thirty or forty minute programme, if they happen at all, now have to be compressed into a two or three minute package. It also means that the nature of what is covered will be dictated by news priorities. TV news, which is how most people find out about the world, is an event driven operation. Contemporary news reporting in Africa is invariably of the 'fire fighting' tendency. In the absence of resident correspondents, a highly professional reporter - well attuned to the needs and expectations of the various outlets- is flown in when disaster occurs and expected to deliver something within days if not hours."
Perhaps the answer lies in an approach that does away with the idea of covering Africa. Since, like Chimamanda, most people on the continent do not primarily identify themselves as Africans except in opposition to those who aren't. As Mwalimu Julius Nyerere observed, "Africans all over the continent, without a word being spoken either from one individual to another, or from one country to another, looked at the European, looked at one another, and knew that in relation to the European they were one."
To cover Africa is necessarily to step outside of it, to see it in relation to "the European". Such a perspective is hardly going to reflect how Africans see themselves. It is not an invalid perspective though. Just, again to borrow from Chimamanda, an incomplete one.
Patrick Gathara is a strategic communications consultant, writer, and award-winning political cartoonist based in Nairobi. He blogs at www.gathara.blogspot.com.
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0.930481 |
Einstein replaced Newton's conception of gravitation as a force with general relativity, which views gravitation as the dynamics of spacetime. In 1917 he applied his theory to the universe as a whole. He made two assumptions: the universe is homogeneous on average and static; and it is closed on itself, a curved volume of space with no boundary. However, Einstein's equations have no such solutions unless an extra term is inserted that acts as a repulsion to offset the gravitational attraction of matter for itself. Thus were born both modern cosmology and the notion of a cosmological constant, Lambda.
In 1929 Hubble found that the universe is expanding, a feature that Friedmann and Lemaître had shown were necessary consequences of Einstein's equations if Lambda were zero. There are then three models depending on whether the geometry of space is closed, Euclidean, or open. All three models are characterized by a deceleration in the expansion from a big bang.
Since Hubble's discovery, astronomers have largely focused on determining which of the three Lambda-free models applies on the large scale to the actual universe. Brian Schmidt recognized that white dwarf stars induced to explode as supernovae in galaxies of high expansional redshift z constitute a promising luminosity standard with which to measure the geometry of spacetime. In 1994 he formed the High-z Supernova Search team to develop this method. They performed the necessary local calibrations and the renormalizations of the different light-curve shapes needed to get accurate results.
Contemporaneously, Saul Perlmutter assumed the leadership of a team that used robotic telescopes to find and characterize supernovae that explode in nearby galaxies. With a redirected effort, the Supernova Cosmology Project automated and brought to maturity the empirical techniques developed by astronomers. The discovery of many supernovae became routine and contributed to the early statistics that the universe may currently be accelerating in its expansion rate, a surprising conclusion reached by the Perlmutter and Schmidt teams simultaneously in 1998.
Adam Riess realized that observations at redshifts z larger than readily measurable by telescopes on the ground could eliminate alternative explanations. He led the effort to use the Hubble Space Telescope to find supernovae at z larger than unity. These definitive observations show that supernovae look substantially fainter at large z than predicted by any of the Lambda-free models. Acceleration is required. The best fit for the data is achieved when the current energy-density of the vacuum is about 70% of the critical value that makes the large-scale geometry of space Euclidean, where the last result is suggested by the fluctuations in the microwave background. The corresponding small but nonzero value for the cosmological constant then turns out neatly to resolve the conflict of the universe's age in Euclidean-space models where Lambda is set to zero.
The discovery of a non-vanishing energy density of the vacuum, or some more bizarre alternative, has profound consequences for physics, astronomy, and philosophy. It is an accomplishment richly deserving of the Shaw Prize in Astronomy 2006.
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0.998911 |
Donald Morton is a retired astrophysicist whose career included being a rocket scientist at Princeton University, Director of the Anglo Australian Observatory and Director General of the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics at Canada’s National Research Council.
In this essay I would like to explore some basic issues in the controversial topic of climate change. Specifically, these are 1) scientific principles, 2) natural and anthropogenic contributions, 3) backwarming by atmospheric carbon dioxide, 4) climate models, 5) benefits of a warming planet and increasing carbon dioxide, 6) other ecological and health problems, 7) family size, 8) uninterruptable and inexpensive electricity, 9) biofuels and 10) rising sea level. My ultimate conclusions are to generate more electricity with nuclear energy and emphasize adaptation where needed rather than expending resources in the hope of mitigating a global warming that could be dominated by natural effects.
The scientific method has delivered uncountable benefits worldwide through our understanding of how nature works leading to new technologies, often aided by the availability of abundant energy. The essential feature of the scientific method is to develop a mathematical theory or model to explain some phenomenon and then make predictions of other phenomena to establish the validity of the model. As successful predictions accumulate, confidence in the model increases, while failed predictions indicate that the model must be revised or rejected.
According to Popper (1935, 1959), acceptable scientific theories can be falsified by observations, but never established beyond question. Instead, we just obtain a better understanding of the limits of validity of a particular theory. For example, future research very likely will change our theories and understanding of turbulence, but already flight and wind tunnel experiments have given us confidence in the safety of aeroplanes. In other cases, as noted by Kuhn (1962), a paradigm change occurs, as from Newtonian gravity to Einstein’s General Relativity, demonstrating that we never can say the science is settled.
Since science is based on observations confirming predictions, we must recognize that any consensus among scientists about a particular issue proves nothing. Before the Michelson-Morley experiment in 1887, there was a consensus among most physicists that all space required a substance called the aether to transmit light waves. Prior to 1984, when two Australian doctors demonstrated that the bacterium Heliobacter pylori caused gastric ulcers, there was a consensus that blamed anxiety. Similarly, recent research has challenged the consensus that linked heart disease and cholesterol consumption.
Also central to the scientific method is the full publication of the methods and data used to reach a particular conclusion. Otherwise there can be no independent check on a scientific claim. Even the most careful and scrupulous of scientists can make mistakes or have unrecognized biases. The publication of the Climategate emails revealed a determined rejection of this fundamental principle.
disclosed Climategate e-mail, Feb. 21, 2005.
Lack of information about the tuning (calibration) of climate models is another important example. As described by Voosen (2016) “For years, climate scientists had been mum in public about their ‘secret sauce’: What happened in the models stayed in the models. The taboo reflected fears that climate contrarians would use the practice of tuning to seed doubt about models—and, by extension, the reality of human-driven warming. … Indeed, whether climate scientists like to admit it or not, nearly every model has been calibrated precisely to the 20th century climate records—otherwise it would have ended up in the trash.” If we do not know the assumptions that went into the calibration of a climate model, how can we validate it and trust its predictions?
Another aspect of the scientific method is the careful and consistent use of definitions. Thus, any discussion of climate should begin by stating the time scale needed to distinguish between climate and weather and defining the term climate change. A rise in global temperatures beginning about 1975 led to concerns about the effects of human-generated carbon dioxide (CO2), the formation of the Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases in 1985 and the establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988. However, after temperatures stopped rising in the early 21st century, it was clear an interval longer than 10 years was needed to average out the random effects of weather, so now the World Meteorological Society recommends 30 years. Furthermore, we must be careful using the term climate change. Is it the sum of all natural and anthropogenic effects or just the human contributions? Our climate always has been changing naturally so it is essential to state which is being discussed.
Also, the term greenhouse gas for CO2, methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and certain chlorofluorohydrocarbons is very misleading. Greenhouses become hot by preventing the interior air heated by the sunlight absorbed by the plants from mixing with outside air, not by absorption by the glass enclosure. The only connection between CO2 and greenhouses is the addition of CO2 to about 1000 parts per million to enhance the growth of the plants inside. A more appropriate name for the infrared radiative backwarming by our atmosphere would be the Arrhenius Effect in recognition of Svante Arrhenius (1896, 1906) for his calculations of the global heating due to CO2. Similarly designating CO2 as a pollutant, when that gas is essential for life on Earth, is an unscientific label.
As well we should avoid the misleading term “ocean acidification”, which leaves the impression it is used to raise alarm. The present pH range of 8.4 to 7.8 in the oceans is decreasing at a rate between 0.13 to 0.24 per century (IPCC2013 p 3.8.2) so adding CO2 is shifting the oceans towards the neutral pH of 7.0 making them less reactive. In a few centuries this might be a problem for some organisms, but not because of a reaction with acidic water.
Finally, scientists should welcome challenges to their results and recognize that often useful criticism can come from someone working in a different discipline. Convincing responses to challenges, as well as independent reproduction of initial results, help build confidence in theories and models. Science progresses by the persistent questioning of every measurement, every theory and every model.
2. NATURAL AND ANTHROPOGENIC CONTRIBUTIONS TO CLIMATE CHANGE.
In spite of temperature being an intensive thermodynamic variable, so any average has no physical meaning for any system outside of thermodynamic equilibrium, climatologists find it useful to calculate the temperature anomaly for a site, the difference with respect to some long-term average for the same time of day and then average over the whole earth, with extrapolations for regions with no measurements. There is no scientific basis for believing that a time series of this single statistic, which happens to be in temperature units, can represent the evolution of the whole earth, which certainly is not in equilibrium. See for example the discussions by Essex and McKitrick (2007) and Essex, McKitrick and Andresen (2007). Nevertheless, the IPCC uses curves such as Fig. 1 to illustrate a gradually rising global temperature and the consequences of increasing atmospheric CO2, which is plotted in Fig. 2. Prior to the Mauna Loa data, which began in 1958, we have measurements from ice cores from the Antarctic Law Dome (Etheridge et al. 2001) indicating a rise from 291 ppm in 1880 to 334 ppm in 1978, overlapping well with the direct measurements. The relevant CO2 infrared absorption bands are strongly saturated so they contribute in proportion to the logarithm of the concentration.
The rise in the temperature anomaly from 1975 to 2001 did occur while the CO2 concentration increased from 331 to 371 parts per million by volume (ppm) (ln 371/331 = 0.114), but the comparable rise from 1910 to 1945 happened during a much smaller change of 300 to 310 ppm (ln 310/300 = 0.0033) in atmospheric CO2. Furthermore, CO2 does not account for the slightly decreasing temperatures from 1945 to 1975 nor the level interval from 2001 to the beginning of the strong natural El Nino event of 2016.
Fig. 1. The global annual average near-surface temperature anomalies since 1850 from the United Kingdom Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/~timo/diag/tempts_12monrunning_global.png ). The 1998 and 2016 spikes are due to the natural El Nino warming of the Pacific Ocean.
If any conclusion can be taken from Fig. 1 and 2, it must be that effects other than CO2 make an important contribution to terrestrial temperatures. Thus, for example, Chen and Tung (2018) proposed that changes in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) can affect global temperatures.
Unfortunately, this statement is an opinion based on unvalidated climate models.
Furthermore, even if that statement were verifiable, it is too broad to be of any use in deciding what must be done. A 90% effect would signal the need for drastic changes in life style for all developed countries and constrained development in the others, while at 55%, adaptation rather than mitigation should be sufficient. If we want to make rational choices between investments in adaptation and mitigation, the priorities for future investigations should be a better understanding of the natural contributions to climate change, as well as the effects of human changes in land use and the feed-back mechanisms mentioned below.
3. BACKWARMING BY ATMOSPHERIC CO2, THE ARRHENIUS EFFECT.
At atmospheric pressures, the well studied spectrum of CO2 has some infrared bands that absorb sunlight reradiated from the earth’s surface. The much-less-abundant CH4, N2O and some CFC’s also contribute some absorption bands, but the dominant absorber is water vapour. Note how quickly a desert site cools at night compared with a humid location. The heating of our atmosphere and then the earth’s surface by these absorbers is not in question. The issue is how much that heating can be affected by positive feedback processes such as the extra absorption caused by the increase in water-vapour present in warmer air and the negative feedback due to the reflectivity of additional clouds. Aerosols that reflect, absorb and scatter radiation and influence cloud formation also could produce a negative feedback while carbon soot would have a positive effect.
Thus, the Charney Report (1979) estimated an Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees C for a doubling of the CO2 concentration once equilibrium occurs. After 34 years of abundant research money and dozens of computer models, the latest report, IPCC2013, proposed the same unhelpful range of 3 degrees and added the comment “No best estimate for equilibrium climate sensitivity can now be given because of a lack of agreement on values across assessed lines of evidence”, which means that we do not even know the probability distribution. A temperature increase near 1.5 degrees for a doubling of CO2 should be manageable with adaptation technologies while 4.5 degrees would imply that major efforts in mitigation are needed.
The broad IPCC estimate is an output of climate models – the same models mentioned above that lack validation because we do not know the calibration details. Since climate models must include the whole earth, the fastest computers still require averaging over grids of about 102 x 102 km2 on the earth’s surface and 1 km in altitude. Consequently, much of the basic physics that occurs on smaller scales is represented by a multitude of parameters that must be tuned (calibrated) by fitting the model to observed phenomena. If the steep temperature rise from 1975 to 2001 in Fig 1 affected the tuning, there could be a warm bias, so empirical methods are preferable. Thus, Lewis and Curry (2018) determined an ECS of 1.50 K (5%–95% range: 1.05–2.45 K) by comparing global temperatures during the interval 2007 to 2016 with the interval 1869 to 1882 and the corresponding concentrations of CO2.
Numerical models that provide useful weather predictions for some 10 days ahead are an outstanding achievement representing the three phases of water in the earth’s atmosphere interacting with local geography, all warmed by the sun during the day and radiating to space at night. These weather models are validated by comparing predictions with actual happenings and benefit from continuing revisions when the predictions fail. Climate models are an extension of these weather models, but the long-term nature of climate makes such comparisons with reality much more difficult. Where they have occurred, the results from the models have not been very supportive, as in Fig. 3, copied from the 2013 IPCC Report. This pattern of the climate models predicting higher temperatures than observed has continued with later temperature data if one discounts the natural 2016 El Nino warming of the Pacific Ocean.
Fig. 3. Model predictions and temperature observations from IPCC2013 (Fig. 11.9). Beginning in 2006, RCP 4.5 (Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5) labels a set of models for a modest rise in anthropogenic backwarming gases corresponding to an increase of 4.5 Wm-2 or 1.3% of the total solar flux integrated over all wavelengths.
“As a result, collections such as the CMIP5 MME cannot be considered a random sample of independent models. This complexity creates challenges for how best to make quantitative inferences of future climate.”.
Climate models can be very useful to help understand various physical processes and identify which are the most important, but it is premature to use them for reliable estimates of the relative importance of natural and anthropogenic contributions to climate change or to predict quantitatively the consequences of additional CO2 in our atmosphere. It is regrettable that these serious issues about the reliability of climate models are not repeated in the IPCC Summary for Policy Makers.
5. BENEFITS OF A WARMING PLANET AND INCREASING CO2.
All the concerns about climate change are based on the often-unstated premise that the mean global temperature and its distribution were optimum just prior to the industrial revolution and we must do everything possible to limit any increase of more than 2 degrees C and preferably no more than 1.5 degrees. Climatologists tell us that our production of CO2 already has used up about a degree of that warming. Yet, we have coped well with that increase and have welcomed the benefits of industrialization. Why should any increase of more than another degree be so serious? We do know that more people die each year due to excess cold than to excess heat (Gasparrini et al. 2015).
Also, as expected for a warming climate and increasing CO2 concentration, the world is becoming greener. From satellite observations of the leaf-area index for the years 1982-2009, Zhu et al (2016) found greening over 25 to 50% of the global vegetated area compared with decreases on less than 4%. Their ecosystem models indicate that CO2 fertilization can account for 70% of the greening.
Even though there is much uncertainty about the quantitative effect of CO2 and similar atmospheric gases on global temperatures, we need a rational discussion comparing the benefits and dangers of more CO2 and rising temperatures and what are acceptable limits. A key part of that that discussion should be the extent that developed countries must lower their living standards and how much developing countries must forgo improvements to achieve these limits.
6. OTHER ECOLOGICAL AND HEALTH PROBLEMS.
Anyone who claims that climate change is the most serious threat to the Earth is stating an opinion with no scientific basis and is diverting attention from other important ecological and health problems. Surely, providing adequate fresh water and food for everyone deserves more attention than the uncertain human contributions to climate change. Where does basic medical care for the developing world come in our list of priorities? The prevalence of AIDS remains a significant challenge in Sub-Sahara Africa. Furthermore, according to the Economist (2018 June 2-8, p. 54) malaria kills 400 000 people a year. Should eradicating malaria be less important for the affected countries than reducing the generation of CO2? What about excess fishing of the oceans or all the pollution from non-degradable plastic waste? In areas prone to earthquake, should strengthening buildings have priority over climate-related projects? We do not have the resources to deal with all these challenges. Choices are required.
Most developed countries allocate significant funds in foreign aid to help address many of the above problems. However, now there is the risk that governments will divert some of this money to fulfill commitments to the 2016 Paris Climate Agreement. Whatever our view of the dangers of CO2, we must give serious attention to the other challenges to health and ecology.
More people inevitably result in more generation of CO2 and more use of all of our Earth’s resources, whether fresh water or scarce minerals. The absence of a person is a much more effective way to reduce CO2 than any life-style change when that person joins the adult population. One does not want to consider forced population control as was the case in China from 1979 to 2016, but rather to note the effects of increasing opportunities for women outside the home in developed countries. Birthrates have fallen, often seriously, below the stable number of 2.1 babies for each woman, while countries such as Nigeria have 5.4 births per woman according to the Economist (2018 Jul 21, p. 35).
Thus, in developing countries where the birthrate exceeds about 2 per woman, the priorities should be to educate women and generally enhance prosperity so that women see alternatives to large families. The use of the cheapest fossil fuels, even coal, to increase the availability of electricity that would ease many tedious tasks, could in the long term more than offset the CO2 generated. Fewer grandchildren will ease the task of saving the planet.
8. UNINTERRUPTABLE AND INEXPENSIVE ELECTRICITY.
There is much talk about renewable sources displacing fossil fuels for all electricity generation, if not for all energy needs, but proper engineering analyses tell us this is not possible with existing technology if we require an uninterruptable supply for extended intervals. As an example, Andrews (2017) compared actual daily average wind and solar generation in the Texas grid for the three years 2010 – 2112 with the actual demand. Then he calculated what storage would be needed if the renewables were increased to match the average demand and the surpluses, mainly in the spring and fall, were used to compensate for the shortfalls that occurred during the winter and late summer. He concluded that to match the demand on all occasions with batteries would require storage of 5×1013 Watt hours corresponding to 4×107 times the 1.3×106 Watt-hour battery system that Neoen-Tesla has installed in South Australia. For California, the storage problem became real on 2018 Sep. 10 when the governor signed legislation committing the state to generate 50% of its electricity from renewable sources by the year 2025, 60% by 2030 and 100% by 2045 while planning to close its last nuclear generator, Diablo Canyon, by 2025. Further ignoring engineering realities, the governor also signed an executive order requiring the total CO2 emissions to be negative after 2045 (http://euanmearns.com/california-goes-carbon-negative/#more-22547 ).
An alternative scheme for storage is to pump water to a high elevation when excess energy is available. Then when renewables are not producing, the head of water can generate electricity. However, it is difficult to find sites with sufficient volumes and altitude differences. For example, the large Coire Glas water storage system being constructed in Scotland with a capacity of 30 GWh (Mearns 2013) represents only 2 seconds of the United Kingdom peak electricity consumption of 5×1010 GW. The modest capacity provided by the South Australia battery or pumped water in Scotland could cover brief intervals of no sun or wind, but not extended calms when the sun is unavailable.
Some electricity grids hope to cope with gaps in renewable generation by increasing the price of electricity when the supply is limited to encourage non-essential users to wait, but in one study Andrews (2018) concluded that electricity demand is relatively insensitive to price and that higher electricity rates will not achieve significant demand reductions unless raised to levels where many people are no longer able to pay their electricity bills. Another approach is to continue to burn fossil fuels for electricity, but then capture and store the CO2. Suitable processes are feasible on a small scale, but none are yet practical on the necessary industrial scale (Andrews 2016). Thus, a common solution is stand-by generators powered by natural gas, but in this on-off mode they are much less efficient, so some of the saving in CO2 is lost and the users have the capital and operating costs of duplicate fossil-fuel generating systems and their connections to the grid. Thus, we can understand why, in most locations, electricity prices continue to rise while the costs of solar cells and windmills are falling (Shellenberger 2018).
Electric vehicles can have many practical uses. However, if their primary purpose is to reduce the generation of CO2 from fossil fuels, this will happen only where the major source of the electricity is hydro or nuclear. The limited storage capacity of electric vehicles often will require charging when the wind is not blowing and the sun not shining. Also, one must ask how many charging cycles are possible before the process becomes inefficient and the battery must be replaced and how much fossil fuels and scarce materials have been used in the manufacture of the battery.
The requirement in many jurisdictions that automobile fuel contain a certain percentage of alcohol derived from crops is often justified as a way to reduce CO2 generated by road transport because regrowth absorbs the CO2, but the enthusiastic proposers never thought through all the consequences. Past advocates such as Al Gore now admit it was a faulty scheme (Kolawole 2010), but the profits to corn farmers have generated such a strong support in American states like Iowa that few politicians have the courage to challenge the policy. Not only does the generation of the alcohol from corn produce more CO2 than it saves, it also diverts the crops from feeding people. (Lomberg 2013).
Similarly, the production of palm oil for biofuels is transforming more and more natural tropical rain forest to cultivated rows of palm trees, thus constraining the habitat of many species, particularly the orangutan (http://savetheorangutan.org/about-orangutans/habitat ) Furthermore, the use of tropical peatlands for palm trees releases large quantities of stored CO2 (Watts 2011).
Wood chips from temperate forests are another popular biofuel. As reported by Montague (2018), chips from trees harvested from the south-east United States are shipped to northern England for burning in the Drax thermo-electric plant because the rules of the European Union classify wood chips as a renewable resource earning a tax advantage, even though the benefits in reduced atmospheric CO2 take the many-decade life of a tree to arrive.
Fig. 4. The sea-level anomaly from various methods and the satellite data since 1992 as plotted by Bitterman (2015).
Increasing global temperatures are expected to raise sea levels through the thermal expansion of ocean waters and the melting of polar ice, but it is premature to conclude that human activity has had any effect yet on rising sea levels.
Nevertheless, many locations are at risk from the natural effects, particularly storm surges. Protecting existing human habitation and valuable real estate with sea walls and strongly discouraging further development in such areas should have high priorities in any climate-action policies and funding. Even if the IPCC predictions of a human-caused rise of 0.3 to 0.6 m by 2100 were valid, this is insignificant compared with storm surges of multiple meters.
– reduce the loss of coral sand by constraining the flow patterns of wind and water.
To this I can add my own comment – stop claiming reparations from developed countries for a naturally rising sea level.
If our goal is to save the planet for our grandchildren, we must be not burden them with the repayment of debt incurred installing renewable energy sources when we are unwilling to spend the money now. For example, when the citizens of Canada’s Province of Ontario objected to the high electricity costs due to favourable contracts for renewable sources, the recently defeated government borrowed money to reduce the present rates. If we want dependable electricity without producing CO2, we should invest in more nuclear generation.
Furthermore, until we have more certainty in the relative importance of natural and human contributions to rising global temperatures, we should prioritize adaptation over mitigation. Otherwise we could waste much effort and resources trying to limit a temperature rise over which we have limited control while neglecting places where early adaptation could be useful.
Every scientist, regardless of his or her own conclusions about the relative importance of natural and human contributions to present climate change, has the duty to challenge all unscientific statements and practices about the subject. Otherwise, as discrepancies continue to accumulate, the whole scientific enterprise, far beyond just climate change, is at risk of being rejected by the rest of the population.
Report cover turbulent image: By C. Fukushima and J. Westerweel, Technical University of Delft, The Netherlands – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3082535 Flow visualization of a turbulent jet, made by laser-induced fluorescence. The jet exhibits a wide range of length scales, an important characteristic of turbulent flows. Cover clouds and sun a screenshot from video footage licensed from Shutterstock.
Thanks Mr. Morton for sharing and making your comprehensive work publicly accessible, best regards from Copenhagen, Heine Stromdahl, math teacher – mostly in primary school but also in High School.
This quote is so wildly anti-science that I can’t believe that Dr. Jones wasn’t fired immediately after it was revealed.
Your final paragraph regarding the growing discrepancies leading to rejection is very true and may already be happening. Perhaps it is just like a fuse burning out when overloaded as a protective action.
The Province of Ontario mentioned in your report is an example of what happens when politicians also do not question science and the setting of unattainable goals, but join bandwagons in an effort to gain votes by being “part of the team”. Eventually there is massive rejection at the polls. Errant and expensive policies scrapped. Other Canadian provinces are now rejecting carbon taxing.
The USA has also started to backtrack and other countries are gradually seeing the folly of the Paris Accord.
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In May 2017 the Tobacco Products Directive will come into force. This regulation was created in the EU parliament by un-elected officials, voted through by MEP’s and coincided with a massive increase in lobbying spend by tobacco and pharmaceutical industries. However as this was enacted into UK law in May 2016 the recent Brexit vote to leave the EU will not effect this current legislation, only a repeal of the law in UK parliament would change the current situation.
This is an update to the article: “Electronic Cigarettes in 2016 – How E-cig UK regulation is set to change the way you vape” which received hundreds of thousands of views and hundreds of comments and shares.
To recap, here are some of the regulations and restrictions that must be complied with for the e cigarette regulation for 2017.
Maximum refill containers can not exceed 10ml.
Aside from the increase of environmental waste from all these extra plastic bottles, this will increase e liquid cost as packaging makes up a significant part of the cost of production.
Maximum nicotine strength of 20mg.
A blow to new users who are coming from a heavy smoking habit, 24mg was a common strength to help initially kick the cigarettes. The biggest effect will be on the DIY market, where high strength nicotine concentrate of up to 72mg/L was commonly used to mix your own juice. No “end consumer” can purchase nicotine base liquid in strength over 20mg/L and bottle size over 10ml.
Maximum tank capacity of 2ml.
Say goodbye to a lot of the high performance and “sub ohm” vaping tanks and a massive reduction of product choice. Expect only a few compliant tanks to be available and to be refilling them much more often.
Product approvals, Packaging requirements, customer notifications and data reporting.
Some of this is welcomed by the industry to increase quality control and safety, however much of this is already done voluntarily by reputable retailers and manufacturers. Costly product registration for each and every product variation (each variation of strength and flavour) will massively reduce e liquid choice and new flavours brought to market. Extra business costs for compliance will ultimately lead to increased cost of products for the consumer.
So 2017 will be the year of change for electronic cigarettes in the UK. Expect a massive shake up of the industry with smaller businesses shutting down, a massive reduction of product offerings and increased costs across the board. At CigElectric we have been preparing for compliance for over a year and are well positioned to adapt to the changes. We will be selling our 30ml e liquids until the 19th of May and hope to have all our popular flavours available in 10ml size after that, unfortunately our 24mg strength will be discontinued. We will be selling our highly popular EU compliant Endura T18 starter kit and EU compliant iClear clearomizer range along side other high quality and compliant tank options.
We recommend stocking up on your regular products well before the 20th of May as there may be a rush due to customers stockpiling in preparation for the ban.
We would really appreciate if you could share this article as much as possible as there are many e cig users who are unaware of the upcoming changes to the UK vaping laws and regulations.
Welcome to the February newsletter from CigElectric!
We hope you all had a great January and good luck with those New Year resolutions! This month we wanted to address a recent study claiming vaping can lead to smoking and harms current smokers’ chance of quitting, an e-liquid promotion and re-stock and a round up of all the other e-cig news from January.
Welcome to the September newsletter from CigElectric!
Thank you to all our new and returning customers for the month of August. This month we introduce some amazing new products, a massive 20% discount on 10ml e-liquids and a round up of all the news from August including a very important announcement from Public Health England!
Thank you to all our new and returning customers for the month of June. Summer is finally here and to celebrate we are offering a 15% discount on all starter kits! Why no take this chance to upgrade or grab one for a friend or family member. Of course as always a round up of all the other e-cig news from June.
Welcome to the May newsletter from CigElectric!
Thank you to all our new and returning customers for the month of April. This month we have an important announcement about 30ml e-liquid price changes, a special discount offer for all existing customers, updated stock and accessories for Aspire Nautilus tank users, and a round up of all the other e-cig news from April!
Welcome to the April newsletter from CigElectric!
Thank you to all our new and returning customers for the month of March. This month we introduce the all new iTaste MVP 3.0, we are bringing back the original e-liquid tops due to customer feedback, and a round up of all the other e-cig news from March!
Welcome to the March newsletter from CigElectric!
Thank you to all our new and returning customers for the month of February. This month we have an e-cig starter kit promotion, an extension of our re-stock discount and a round up of all the other e-cig news from February!
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The next major recorded is a similar legend, that of the wizard [[Shekelor]] who sought to find this unnamed mage and use his power to unseat the Lady himself. He went missing for months as he searched Pandemonium for the crystal containing the wizard's essence. When he finally returned, it was through a portal in the center of the [[Great Bazaar]]. Shouting a single sentence — the specifics of which vary from telling to telling — he then burst into flames, leaving nothing but a thin ash behind on the street.
The next major recorded event is a related legend, that of the wizard [[Shekelor]] who sought to find this unnamed mage and use his power to unseat the Lady himself. He went missing for months as he searched Pandemonium for the crystal containing the wizard's essence. When he finally returned, it was through a portal in the center of the [[Great Bazaar]]. Shouting a single sentence — the specifics of which vary from telling to telling — he then burst into flames, leaving nothing but a thin ash behind on the street.
Solid facts do not begin to be recorded until approximately a millennium before the present day; not coincidentally, about when the [[Guvners]] were first founded in Sigil. It is known that prior to about a thousand years ago, it was not factions but rather guilds that were the major political and governmental driving force in the city. Around this time, however, the time of the factions began to rise, and the draw of belief over industry slowly pushed the guilds out of prominence. Though it was a slow decline — the most prominent guild in Sigil, the [[Planewalker's Guild]], did not finally leave the city until around 500 years ago — the factions slowly grew more and more numerous. They had not yet taken power, as splintered as they were, but the split loyalties did much to sow unrest within the city.
Solid facts do not begin to be recorded until approximately a millennium before the present day; not coincidentally, about when the [[Guvners]] were first founded in Sigil. It is known that prior to about a thousand years ago, it was not factions but rather guilds that were the major political and governmental driving force in the city. Around this time, however, the time of the factions began to rise, and the draw of belief over industry slowly pushed the guilds out of prominence. They had not yet taken power, as splintered as they were, but the split loyalties did much to sow unrest within the city.
Approximately 630 years ago, the infighting between factions reached its peak. Somewhere between 49 and 52 factions are recorded to have existed at this time, and their fighting, both direct and indirect, finally reached the point of entirely disrupting life within the city. In response, the Lady made her decree, limiting the number of factions within the city to a maximum of 15 on penalty of death. This event is known nowadays as the [[Great Upheaval]], and was ironically the key in cementing the factions as the major political force in the city.
Seen by many as an ill omen, the remaining citizens of Sigil cemented their relationships with the factions. With the number of such organizations having been culled, the factions quickly grew in power, using their increasing influence to force their members to withdraw from the city's guilds under claims of avoiding similar split loyalties as caused the original problems. Within a century and a half, even the [[Planewalker's Guild]], once the most prominent organization in the city if not the entire Upper Planes, had dropped to almost nothing and disbanded from Sigil. By this point, the factions were well-situated and had claimed the city's day-to-day duties for themselves.
Some 300 years ago, the next major shake-up to the factions occurred following an [[Anarchist]] plot against the [[Mercykillers]], culminating in the assassination of the Mercykillers' factol. This even quickly spread into a war that pulled in nearly every faction in the city, ending in the destruction of three altogether, the largest blow to the factions since the Great Upheaval. This event left a power vacuum that was quickly filled by the arrival of the [[Harmonium]] and [[Fated]], and the reconstitution of the [[Ochlocrats]] into the [[Xaositects]].
Some 300 years ago, the next major shake-up to the factions occurred following an [[Anarchist]] plot against the [[Mercykillers]], culminating in the assassination of the Mercykillers' factol. This even quickly spread into a war that pulled in nearly every faction in the city, ending in the destruction of three altogether, the largest blow to the factions since the Great Upheaval. This event left a power vacuum that was quickly filled by the arrival of the [[Harmonium]], and the reconstitution of the [[Ochlocrats]] into the [[Xaositects]], and the return of the [[Athar]].
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Where to buy my first new car?
Don't assume you have to go to a franchised dealer (your local Ford/Renault dealership) to buy your new car, because you've got plenty of options when it comes to spending your cash. There are more places than ever that can sell you a new car, but if you pay a rock-bottom price you’ll probably get a rock-bottom service. The most common new-car outlets are Franchised dealers, car supermarkets and brokers.
These are appointed by the manufacturer they represent. They generally charge the highest prices, but should offer expertise along with ease of servicing, because the chances are they'll focus on just the one marque - or no more than a tiny handful of them.
As well as keeping some cars in stock - and having access to nationwide stocks of new cars through the official network channels - you'll be able to order exactly the car you want. That means your colour, spec (with options) and exactly the right trim and engine for your needs.
These hold massive stocks and work on tiny margins – so you can make decent savings. The idea is that they pile 'em high and sell'em cheap, so they make lots of small profits rather than a small number of big ones. There’s usually no haggling at all, although you might be able to chip something off the asking price if you're lucky. However, you won't be able to choose the car’s specification (as it’s already in stock), so there's no chance of adding any options.
Most importantly though, bargains abound by taking this route. You have to be careful though and make extensive checks before buying, because if problems crop up later, you may struggle to get them sorted; car supermarkets don't specialise in individual makes and they're more interested in selling cars than fixing them.
You'll find quite a few of these if you use the internet, but they're not as common as they used to be thanks to shrinking margins on new cars. The idea is the a broker can order in bulk and secure savings accordingly, but if you take this route you must read any contract before you sign it, because there are often hidden costs in the small print.
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Does the Fed control the markets?
It feels like it, doesn’t it? For a few years now, the stock market has been on a tear and bond market yields have dropped significantly (at the same time, bond values have risen). Many would argue that a large contributor to that run-up has been the Fed’s quantitative easing/bond-buying policies.
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What role has Wikileaks played in the world?
WikiLeaks has played a crucial part in changing how we view confidential and top-secret information. The international non-profit organisation was set up in Iceland in October 2006 by Australian computer programmer, Julian Assange, and holds the motto ‘We open governments’. The main impetus of the site is to publish original secret files, documents, and details, plus classified media and news leaks provided through anonymous sources. It is done under the umbrella of ‘freedom of information’. They have had nominations for the UN Mandela prize (2015) and nominations over six consecutive years for the Nobel peace prize (2010-2015).
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Orthognathic surgery vs Facial contouring surgery for a smaller face, which would be the best one for me?
Ji Young Kim, aged 23, has made a huge decision. She grew up being bullied and called “Big rock face” for her large face since she was little. She visited a plastic surgery hospital to change her protruding cheekbone and asymmetrical face into a smaller and slimmer one. However, after her consultation she couldn’t decide which one to choose, orthognathic surgery or facial contouring surgery.
Similar to her case, a lot of people choose orthognathic surgery or facial contouring surgery, expecting a grand and noticeable change of their facial size. It is for sure that those surgeries are the most well-known ones for reducing the size of your face, either by excision of facial bone or replacing the bone. These two surgeries, however, are two different ones. Therefore, if you are considering to get a facial bone surgery, it is important that you make a precise analysis of the shape of your face and choose the correct one that fits best.
First, orthognathic surgery is done when the jaws are misplaced or their functions are not carried out well due to protruded jaw or facial asymmetry. It is correcting the placement of jaws by cutting the upper and lower jaws. Once you get an orthognathic surgery, you can improve your mastication function including chewing food and speaking, and since the location and shape of the jaws are changed to normal, you can see a dramatic facial change.
Facial contouring surgery, on the other hand, is for changing the shape of your facial bone to make your facial shape prettier, and it includes square jaw surgery, cheekbone reduction surgery, and chin surgery. In case of strong and rough facial appearance due to too much growth of facial bone, the surgery reduces the size of the bone and changes the facial shape into a smoother one, so it is focused more on making aesthetical improvement.
Whether you should get orthognathic surgery or facial contouring surgery is decided based on mastication of your teeth, shape of the jaw bone, and the condition of the central line of your face. If you have malocclusion, jaw bones are not in the right place, or the central line of your face is tilted, you should get orthognathic surgery that corrects the placement of upper and lower jaw as well as their shape. However, if the central line of your face is straight, and you’re simply worried about the shape and appearance of your lower jaw bone, getting orthognathic surgery can solve the problem of your facial shape.
Dr. Sang Hoon Park, a specialist in plastic surgery said “it is recommended that you have an in-depth consultation with a doctor specialized in plastic surgery for deciding on orthognathic surgery or facial contouring surgery in order to get maximized effect of facial bone surgery. If you choose a hospital-level medical institution where you can have precise prediction of facial change after the surgery through close diagnostic system and joint treatment of plastic surgery center, dental center, and orthodontic center, you will be able to have safe and high satisfactory result of surgery.
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0.995424 |
Mother's Day is a holiday celebrated annually as a tribute to all mothers and motherhood. It is celebrated on various dates in many parts of the world. Although the origins of the holiday date back to the times of the ancient Greeks and Romans, the modern form of the celebration of Mother's Day in the United States began in the early 20th century.
It was first celebrated in 1908 in Grafton, West Virginia, when Anna Jarvis held a memorial for her mother Ann Reeves Jarvis who, in turn, many years earlier had founded Mothers' Day Work Clubs in five cities. Anna Jarvis began a campaign to make the Mother's Day a national holiday and she succeeded in 1914 when the U.S. President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the second Sunday in May a Mother's Day.
Nowadays Mother's Day (or a similar event) is celebrated in more than 150 countries around the world, although at different dates. Many countries, including the USA, Canada, Australia, Japan and many European countries, celebrate Mother's Day on second Sunday of May. On the other hand, in many African countries it is celebrated on 21 March. To summarize, most of the Mother's Day dates around the world fall in May or in March.
Anna Jarvis (woman who founded Mother's Day) believed it became too commercialized by 1920s and fought to have it abolished .
In the USA, Mother's Day is one of the biggest holidays for phone calls, and Father's Day is the busiest day for collect (reverse charge) calls .
Typically, 30% less is spend on Father's Day gifts than on Mother's Day gifts .
Mother's Day is the most popular day of the year to dine out in the United States with almost 40% of consumers doing so . Accordingly, it is also the busiest day of the year for KFC .
Mother of John and Clarence Anglin, 2 of the 3 men who ever escaped from Alcatraz, received flowers anonymously every Mother's Day until her death in 1978. The interesting thing is her sons were officially reported to have drowned in San Francisco Bay while escaping in 1962 .
Jonathan Mulinix, The Founder of Mother's Day Later Fought to Have It Abolished.
Pallavi Gogoi, Father's Unspectacular Day, Bloomberg.
Phil Izzo, Number of the Week: Spending Less on Father’s Day, The Wall Street Journal.
Mother's Day Dining Fact Sheet.
Chris Fuhrmeister, KFC Is the Mother's Day Destination.
June 1962 Alcatraz escape, Wikipedia.
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0.97182 |
Facebook has formed data-sharing partnerships with 60 device makers, including Apple and Microsoft, giving them access to information of users and even their friends, a media report has claimed, weeks after the social media faced massive backlash for improperly sharing personal data of up to 87 million people.
Facebook has shared data with such companies for years, letting device makers use features such as "like" buttons and address books in their gadget's software.
The Times reported some device makers had access to user data such as relationship status, religion, political leaning and events.
This deal supposedly continued even after Facebook made it known it would comply with the Federal Trade Commission's consent decree, which was meant to put a stop to the gathering of data without a direct agreement between the party and the firm.
Facebook and other internet companies are grappling with a global backlash over the extent to which they hoover up and handle user data.
Bottom line: It's more bad news for Facebook as the social network is again accused of privacy violations.
Apple, Samsung and Microsoft did not immediately respond to requests for comment. "Facebook's view that the device makers are not outsiders lets the partners go even further, The Times found: They can obtain data about a user's Facebook friends, even those who have denied Facebook permission to share information with any third parties".
This was tightly regulated with "signed agreements that prevented people's Facebook information from being used for any other goal than to recreate Facebook-like experiences", according to Archibong, and had to be approved by Facebook to prevent any misuse.
Elisabeth Winkelmeier-Becker, one of the legislators who questioned Facebook Vice President for Global Public Policy Joel Kaplan in April, said the data partnership violated the privacy of users.
According to Facebook Vice President Ime Archibong, "these partnerships work very differently from the way in which app developers use our platform" and aren't similar to the way certain apps/games can gain access to your account information. Facebook said that in the device partnerships described by the New York Times, personal data was mostly processed on users' phones.
Unlike developers that provide games and services to Facebook users, the device partners can use Facebook data only to provide versions of "the Facebook experience", the officials were quoted as saying.
Archibong assures that this practice is now winding down due to the popularity of the Android and iOS apps, with Facebook ending 22 of the 60 partnerships already.
In a blog post, Facebook confirmed some parts of the Times' report but disputed others.
Facebook posted a response to the New York Times article.
The social network has been under growing pressure over its handling of user data.
If there's ever a problem with an Apple product, a class action lawsuit is sure to follow - and it's rarely just one. Apple which has been criticised of late for security, quality and battery issues will look to fix these with iOS 12.
GM for strategic investments and partnerships at NetEase Games, Simon Zhu also shared the company's view on this minority stake. They made it clear that their "commitment to that world is not diminished by this announcement".
It then had unveiled plans to set aside 100 billion yuan over five years to boost its logistics network. This is the first time that solid-state LiDAR has been applied in unmanned vehicles.
Mr Mattis said Beijing was intimidating and coercing others in the region by putting weapons systems on manmade islands. Mattis is expected to have strong words for China at a Shangri-la dialogue conference in Singapore beginning on Friday.
Martinez also confirmed that Kompany will be given until the last possible moment to prove his fitness ahead of Belgium's first World Cup fixture against Panama on June 18.
Nick Jonas & Priyanka Chopra 'Cozied Up' Good On Hot New Date Night!
Nick Jonas seemed to really like Priyanka's happy photo, so much so that he was compelled to comment on the photo. Nick Jonas and Priyanka Chopra seem to definitely be a thing, you guys! "They didn't show any PDA".
Over the years, economic reports have struggled to find a single reason why. "No one revealed the numbers to the public". Defying fears of a global trade war, US businesses have made it abundantly clear that they see no reason to stop hiring.
Microsoft , once opposed to that kind of open-source software development, is now one if the biggest contributors to GitHub . With more than 1,800 repositories, Microsoft is now sharing much more repos than any of its technological giant partners.
On Sunday, two U.S. warships sailed close to the Paracel Islands in a long-planned operation created to challenge China's claims. Mattis said on Friday that the US would continue to "pursue a constructive, results-oriented relationship with China".
Wynne's party has appeared on the verge of a catastrophic loss where her Liberals could lose official party status. A senior Liberal, speaking on condition of anonymity, said "the party is facing an existential crisis".
Canada's Public Health Agency has also recorded six cases of E. coli "with a similar genetic fingerprint" to the U.S. infections . Food and Drug Administration , 11 fields in the Brawley, Calif. area are shown to be original sources of the romaine lettuce.
Coteau, who wasn't on the call, said he learned of the move on social media . "We all, of course, wanted to win this election". Provincial NDP leader Andrea Horwath gives the thumbs up to supporters at an NDP rally in Toronto, Sunday, June 3, 2018.
While Janet wasn't at the hotel at the time of the incident, she did show up when police arrived. Just months before the two broke up, Jackson gave birth to their son, Eissa Al Mana .
Her mother, Amalija Knavs, was seen walking along the White House grounds around midday Friday. Four days later, she was hospitalized and stayed at a Water Reed Medical Center for five days.
But Telegram has 200 million global users, and is ranked as the world's ninth most popular mobile messaging service . The repeated request comes after Telegram's owners refused to hand over message transcripts to state security .
Merkel said she was willing to discuss with the new Italian government ways to boost employment rates among young people in Italy .
Users across the United Kingdom and the Continent were affected, although the problems were worse in some places than others. The card payments company says services are back to normal and its systems are working at "full capacity" on Saturday.
ARM also released its Mali-V76 video processing unit that will soon support up to 8K videos at 60 fps frame rate. The Mali-G76 GPU is ARM's offering to have the graphics departments handled for the next generation of SoCs.
So it looks like the next few days are going to be pivotal as Liverpool look to wrap-up their third big-money signing of the summer following the arrivals of Naby Keita from RB Leipzig and Fabinho from Monaco .
The busy 2017 season saw 17 named storms , of which 10 became hurricanes, with six reaching the major storm status. The cone is swept out ahead of the storm location in a set of circles in 12-hour increments.
Despite Trump's overall net worth drop, the Trump Organization did have some areas of success over the past year . In its first year open, Bloomberg reported it was valued at $100 million - up $30 million from last year.
Search efforts are continuing today for two people who remain missing after a deadly plane crash in the waters off Amagansett. Only two bodies had been recovered as of early Sunday, but all four of the plane's occupants are presumed dead.
"He's not, but he probably does", Giuliani, who recently joined Trump's legal team, said on ABC's "This Week". The remarks caused a stir online. "Pardoning other people is one thing, pardoning yourself is another".
" Neymar is going to have ups and downs like he had in training until the third, fourth game (on his return)". Neymar marked his return from injury with the first goal in Brazil's win over Croatia at Anfield .
She finished the rain-shortened tournament with back-to-back 65s and used 29 putts in each of those rounds to finish fourth. Ariya, now ranked fifth in the world, has been as high as number one, while Moriya is also highly-ranked at ninth.
In a note from the studio they reveal the new artwork and details regarding upcoming videos for the game on their Facebook page. EA has announced what they're going to show in regards to Anthem at EA Play (which takes place next Sunday).
Both the suspect and the police officer were taken to a hospital. About 100 people were inside the cathedral during the incident.
Everton goalkeeper Jordan Pickford, making only his third worldwide appearance, hardly had a save to make in the first half. But, the England manager insisted his player's adjusted to the new formation and were unlucky not to score more goals.
Murray and Joseph Craft of Alliance Resource Partners, who donated a million dollars to the president's inauguration. The owner of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant has said its plant has been unprofitable for six years .
That's because there is a lot of distrust of Microsoft in this cohort, which is understandable given Microsoft's history. Credible sources indicate that the deal could be announced as early as today, Monday June 4th.
In May, Maduro's government freed 20 people who were arrested during protests against widespread blackouts. In April of this year, the hearing scheduled at the beginning of his trial was canceled for the 12th time.
Michael Dellegrazie, the owner, said the dog was alive when the flight from Phoenix, Ariz., landed at the airport around 6:30 a.m. There have been several high-profile airline incidents involving pets this year, prompting airlines to review their policies .
A local newspaper reported the suspect - a 53-year-old Austrian who was "verbally aggressive" - had attacked a man. The police statement urged people to "avoid speculation" and said more details of the incident would follow.
As of Friday, police say no arrests have been made and are urging witnesses to come forward with information about the incident. The angered cyclist then pulled out his weapon before attempting to break the car's windows in a frightening attack.
Hundreds of area residents whose lives have been touched by cancer gathered in Washington Square. "I'm not shy", she said. Determined to fight from the get-go, she recalled the very moment her doctor told her she had a life-threatening disease.
Anyone not in Wyoming could stream it via the WAV app on their phones, and by Friday morning, it hit all major digital retailers. The opening track, "I Thought About Killing You" gets into, well, that, but also his own suicidal thoughts.
Production is reported to be two months late, with the site speculating that this may mean it won't go on sale until November. Not a lot is known about this cheaper variant of iPhone 2018 apart from some of the hardware specs that were leaked earlier.
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0.987761 |
What happens when you scratch on the cue ball during the last shot in cutthroat billiards?
During the last shot, the player made the shot but then the cue-ball continued to roll into the pocket.
Does the scratch count or is the game over as soon as the object ball drops in the pocket?
Are you playing cutthroat billiards on a coin-op pool table or a standard pocket billiards pool table?
Playing cutthroat pool on a standard pocket billiard tables, your inning is over, and each player gets to spot one of their balls, and play passes to the next player in the rotation.
If you make either opponents' balls, you continue. If you miss, you lose your turn. If you scratch, you lose your turn. Scratch on the winning shot, you lose.
Obviously, it has to be a loss for the person that scratched because you can't retrieve the ball.
Unfortunately I can't point you toward any specific official rule set that spells all of this out in detail though.
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0.97811 |
The impact of air pollution on verbal tests, researchers found, became more pronounced as people got older.
It is well known that air pollution has negative effects on human health.
Above all, air pollution reduces liveablity of different cities, including the capital already ranked among the world's worst liveable cities for different reasons by different worldwide agencies.
"Air pollution reduces the level of intelligence for a year, said si Chen of the Yale school of public health, USA".
The study estimated that reducing fine particulate matter concentrations to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standard of 50 microgrammes per cubic metre would increase verbal and math scores. Not only can the effect of air quality on this older population undermine their ability to function, making them less productive in many cases, but China may have to provide special care to many of them, an additional cost to the government.
In a country struggling with pollution and with nearly non-existent laws or implementation of laws promoting environmental protection, the study carried out in China is most relevant to safeguard the safety of the future generation.
Zhang elaborated, "The damage on cognitive ability by air pollution also likely impedes the development of human capital". The study also showed that individuals with little education were more affected by pollution, possibly because they typically work outdoors.
A good number of India's most polluted cities are not too keen to clean up their act, according to a list maintained by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB). Differences between male and female brains may also account for this difference, the study said.
"Indian government has been denying the global studies, even by prominent bodies like World Health Organization, which quantified the number of deaths caused by air pollution in the past and are advocating for Indian studies on the same", Greenpeace India campaigner Sunil Dahiya said.
According to who, the 20 most polluted cities in the world are in countries that are developing.
China came out as the most polluted country in a separate study by research group Eco Experts last month, with three cities in the top 10 - Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai.
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0.997034 |
When is the right time to outsource business?
When used in the right way, outsourcing can be a great way to reduce costs and increase efficiency within your business.
Outsourcing can be a brilliant way to make your company more efficient, gain access to expertise that you simply don't have, and help you move into new areas.
The big trick is working out when you should outsource and when you should stay in-house.
If you don't outsource enough, you'll find that your business will be unable to compete and you'll become less nimble. On the other hand, outsourcing too much will result in you giving up the core aspects that make your company unique and losing the edge that can distinguish your products and services from the competition.
Getting the correct balance isn't an easy task, but if you get it right, your business will reap the rewards. The first thing to do is examine all of your company’s operations, and separate the tasks and processes that make your business unique.
A brilliant example of this is Coca-Cola. The company produces the syrup that makes its hugely popular soft drink ‒ but outsources (via franchises) the bottling of the product. In this way, the main company retains control of the part that makes it unique, passing on the work that practically any other company could do.
Getting the right split with your business might not be as straightforward, but there are still measures that you can apply to make your job easier.
Look for any task that is critical to your business, but one for which your customers will not mind if it changes. For example, if sending printed instructions with a product is important, it is the design and content that customers care about – not which printing service you used. Likewise, customers largely don’t care how a product gets to them – only that it does so on time and without damage.
Ultimately, it's essential to maintain control of any area of your business that customers directly care about and has a direct impact on the reputation of the organisation. While many businesses have outsourced customer support or sales, it’s important to think about whether this is the right thing for your company.
Customers are unforgiving of poor service, and smaller businesses or those looking to expand into new areas need to get everything right, particularly when it comes to customer management.
Next, you have commodity tasks that every business needs to perform. Managed print services are a good example of this. Any potential benefits of retaining an in-house team to support your print infrastructure are likely to be far outweighed by the cost reductions, spare resources and additional oversight on offer via an outsourcing package, such as to Brother's Managed Print Services team.
In all cases, outsourcing commodity tasks lets you take advantage of another company's expertise and economies of scale, helping to make the task cheaper and more efficient for your business.
For all tasks, a cost/time analysis is a good way to examine each bit of work. Beyond a threshold that you set, outsourcing is the clear route to take; under that threshold, in-house expertise works the best. A good example of this is designing new packaging for a product.
Unless you have the expertise in-house, you have to hire freelance designers and buy the kit to prototype and build the finished boxes. Clearly, going for external expertise would save you time and money, while delivering better results.
A cost/time analysis can be used to deliver in the short-term, too. If you know that you ultimately want your own in-house team of developers, for example, a cost/time analysis may tell you that the best short-term goal is to outsource, while you handle recruitment internally.
When you're considering expansion, outsourcing should be top of the list and investigated thoroughly. If you were to develop a new product that needed a particular part, consider whether someone else already manufactures the bit that you need or whether they could adapt an existing component for you.
By buying in expertise in different fields, you could easily get your product to market faster and cheaper than if you had to manage everything in-house.
Finally, you need to ask yourself, can your business ever be an expert in a certain field? Nothing highlights this as much as internal IT departments. They require an increasingly growing range of expert skills to provide the infrastructure, security and governmental compliance that your business needs.
Rather than having an in-house team performing each job subpar, outsourcing core IT components, such as security, will deliver better results for less.
Outsourcing isn't a panacea, but utilised in the right away after proper analysis, your business can retain its unique qualities while reducing cost and increasing efficiency.
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