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0.999984 | Sitting in front of a computer 8 hours a day can make it difficult to stay healthy. It is important not to have unhealthy snacks at your desk. If you have candy sitting around your desk, try switching it to fruit. You also want to make sure that you are drinking a lot of water. According to an article from WebMD, you should be drinking at least 10 glasses of water a day. Keeping a full water bottle at your desk is a great way to make sure that you are staying hydrated. | 2019-04-20T08:50:06 | https://apurgentcare.com/tag/health-tips/ |
0.943469 | The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, written by L. Frank Baum, was first published in 1900. Although the original first run printing was very limited, it proved to be so popular that by 1949 it had sold over three million copies, one million copies alone by 1938 (before the classic movie was even made). The author wrote a number of sequels to the book, and in 1910 a silent film version of the first book was filmed. Another silent film version was released in 1925. Although it is considered a classic of children's literature, there has been written much to cast it as a political allegory. I won't delve too much into that aspect here, but one significant change from the book was the fact that the original slippers were silver, and this has been construed as a reference to the Populist idea of transferring the country from a gold standard to one of which silver was also used. Anyone interested in this can check out the wikipedia article which details this theory here.
In 1939, a musical extravaganza appeared on the screens. It was a fairly popular movie, especially among kids, but it failed to make a profit. This seems preposterous now, in retrospect, since it has achieved such a fan base in the 75+ years since its release, but it is true. Some of the fault for that, as I understand it, was because of the rigid standard of showing movies and getting them out of the theater as quickly as possible to make room for the newer movies that were constantly coming out.
The original movie cut ran for 2 hours. Think about that for a minute if you will. The studio execs had conniptions over the length of the film. (No movies ran that long, unlike today when it's not uncommon to have epic movies run 2½ hours or more. Lawrence of Arabia, one of the longest movies I have ever seen, ran over 3½ hours). The movie suffered some cuts, including a scene known as "The Jitterbug", that were cut from the movie. (A side note: When the Wicked Witch mentions that she has "sent a little insect to take the fight out of them", it was referring to this scene. The scene was deleted, but the line was left in, which may cause some confusion to newcomers to the film, since no insect actually appears in the movie). Remarkably one of the scenes that the execs wanted to cut was "Somewhere Over The Rainbow". They said they thought it slowed the movie down. Thankfully, clearer heads prevailed, including associate producer Arthur Freed who threatened to leave the movie production if it were cut.
Some other tasty tidbits of the production: No less than 5 directors had their hand in the pie. Even though Victor Fleming was credited with the final cut, No less than King Vidor, another prominent director finished up the last few scenes, but chose not to take credit, granting that since Fleming had directed the majority of it he should get the credit. Buddy Ebsen (Jed Clampett on The Beverley Hillbillies and Barnaby Jones on the TV show by the same name) was originally cast as the Tin Man, but got sick from the makeup (and almost died). By the time he had recovered, the part had already been given to Jack Haley (who by now had a different kind of makeup).
In 1959, television started airing the movie annually. (The first TV airing was in 1956, but it did not become the annual event until 1959). I seem to recall, in my vague memory, that it was on Thanksgiving weekend when I used to see it. It was a very good experience for a young kid. I do remember one thing in particular, however. Movie Fan Fare, a website I frequent often, once had a post asking it's readership what movies scared you, when you were young. Well, I watched dozens of old horror movies when I was young, and none of them really scared me. But I still remember one night, after having seen this movie, having nightmares about the flying monkeys from the film.
The impetus for reviewing this movie at this time comes from the calendar I bought for 2017. It features some classsic movie theater posters from the past. I hope to review all of them over the coming year (although I admit a couple of them may take some effort to find).
The movie begins in black and white, the better to achieve an effect of the barren landscape of Dorothy's farm in Kansas. These scenes were the ones directed by Vidor, and his feel for the starkness and desolation of the landscape is enhanced by the sepia tones of this segment. Dorothy Gale (Judy Garland) is an innocent young girl whose optimistic outlook on life is threatened by Miss Elmira Gulch (Margaret Hamilton). Miss Gulch is a rich and cranky old spinster who wants to take Dorothy's dog, Toto (Terry the Dog), and have it euthanized because it bit her.
Unable to get her Aunt Em (Clara Blandick) and Uncle Henry (Charley Grapewin) to sympathize or listen to her, as well as the hired hands on her aunt and uncle's farm, Huck (Ray Bolger), Hickory (Jack Haley) and Zeke (Bert Lahr). She decides to run away. On her journey she meets Professor Marvel (Frank Morgan) who uses a bit of subterfuge to convince her to return home.
Back at the farm, a tornado is approaching. Everyone runs to hide in the storm cellar, but Dorothy, arriving a little late, can't get anyone to open the cellar, so she runs to hide in the house, and is knocked out by a flying piece of the house. The twister takes the house , and eventually drops it in Oz where it lands in Munchkin Land (a country populated by little people), killing the Wicked Witch of the East. Glinda, the Good Witch of the North (Billie Burke) arrives to ask her if she is "a good witch or a bad witch". She insists she is not a witch at all and expresses a desire to go back to Kansas.
Unable to help her, Glinda tells her she must seek out the Wizard of Oz in the Emerald City. To get there she must "follow the yellow brick road". To hamper her journey, the Wicked Witch of the West (Hamilton) seeks to stop her and take the ruby slippers Dorothy has acquired from the witch's sister, after she died.
Along the way, Dorothy gains three friends who accompany her: The Scarecrow (Bolger) who wants the wizard to give him a brain, The Tin Man, who wants to get a heart, and The Cowardly Lion, who wants to acquire courage. Through many travails (and a number of musical interludes), the four arrive at the Wizard's palace, but the fearsome Wizard insists they must prove themselves worthy and gives them a task; to get the magical broomstick from the Wicked Witch of the West.
It would probably not count as a spoiler to reveal the rest of the movie, since I doubt there is anyone old enough to read this blog who has never seen this movie at least once, but I'll refrain from it anyway.
The movie has entered the echelon of "classic" in the canon of great movies. It was ranked as #6 of the 100 greatest movies by AFI in 1998 (and has since been downgraded to #10 in the 2007 ranking). Personally, I'd put it even higher, maybe even as high as #3, but I'm far from a movie expert. "Over the Rainbow" got a much better ranking as it was ranked #1 in an AFI 2004 ranking of the best 100 Songs. In addition several quotes from the film are in the top 100 greatest quotes from the same AFI, as well as the Wicked Witch of the West garnering a #4 ranking on their list of greatest movie villains. Needless to say, the movie has left a profound impact on the viewing public. It continues to be a favorite, and you'd have to be very isolated indeed to not have had a chance to watch it, since on one or another cable channel it is still shown at least once a year.
The movie has been adapted or used in several other movies over the years. Among them, an all-black soul adaptation featuring Diana Ross and Michael Jackson, which itself was a film version of a popular Broadway musical. Also a much-maligned, but personal favorite of this author, Under the Rainbow, a comedy from 1981 featuring Chevy Chase and Carrie Fisher, in which hundreds of little people from across the country converge on Hollywood to be cast in the 1939 movie.
Well, folks, I must be easing on down the road (an intentional reference to the aforementioned The Wiz). Godspeed, and keep an eye to the skies for an evil woman riding a broomstick.
Happy new year! Thank you for covering one of my all time favorites on your blog. Great trivia tidbits, and I love the original poster, don't remember ever seeing that anywhere before.
I own the blu ray of this film but don't pull it out for a viewing nearly often enough. Now I need to!
Great to have you back visiting again, Chris. I miss it when I don't see any comments from you for a while. Glad to be able to do one that brings you back. Thanks.
Well if you haven't read the one I did on "Xanadu" a few months back, at least go read that one. I thought of you while I was writing it. I thought it might be one you liked. | 2019-04-23T12:31:17 | http://midnitedrive-in.blogspot.com/2017/01/following-yellow-brick-road.html |
0.999999 | Don't we all know what the Golgi apparatus is?
That all sounds very straightforward - what's the mystery?
Do these structural differences mean that the Golgi has distinct functions in different cells?
So Golgi membranes don't all look the same, but they are all doing the same things?
Apart from evolutionary and morphological questions, this all sounds pretty well established - what are the issues?
So what do we know about the specific machinery for conventional, dogma-respecting traffic through the Golgi?
Is that it for unresolved issues?
Is there hope for resolution of the issues in Golgi structure and function?
Yes and no. The Golgi apparatus (or Golgi to its friends) is named after Camillo Golgi, who first reported in 1888 a reticular structure in the cytoplasm of many cell types that he found by silver chromate staining. The text book story, which most people probably do know, emerged with the advent of electron microscopy (EM) more than half a century later, when the structure was revealed to be a set of flattened membrane-bound compartments, or cisternae, that are typically arranged in a stack (Figure 1). Radiolabeling studies then led to the current dogma that the Golgi is the organelle through which newly made secretory and membrane proteins pass as they move from the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) to the plasma membrane, or other membrane-bound compartments of the cell; and it is now also part of the classic picture that the Golgi elaborates and edits the generic glycan structures that are attached to proteins in the ER.
What the classical Golgi looks like. (a) Top: an electron micrograph of a section through a typical metazoan cell. The Golgi is a stack of cisternae arranged from cis (light green) to trans (dark green). Note the contact sites between the trans cisternae and ER (Caenorhabditis elegans hypodermal cells courtesy of Gillian Howard (MRC-LMB); scale bar = 500 nm). Bottom: a schematic drawing of the electron micrograph on the left, with the important structures labeled: the cis-Golgi is colored pale green, the trans-Golgi dark green. (b) A Golgi from the unicellular green alga Ostreococcus tauri imaged by electron cryotomography. The sample is frozen rather than fixed and so this represents one of the first images of a native Golgi stack. Left: a single slice through the three-dimensional reconstruction. Right: the Golgi highlighted in a view through the whole cell: cisternae are colored purple, red, gold, yellow, and green (cis to trans), and ER light blue. From Henderson et al. (2007), PLoS One 2, e749; scale bars = 100 nm.
Well, first of all, the Golgi is by no means always as described by its discoverer. The structure that Camillo Golgi first observed was a typical mammalian Golgi, with individual stacks that are linked to form long connected ribbons arranged around the microtubule organizing center near the nucleus. However, in some cell types - for example muscle - and in most invertebrates and plants, the Golgi is not a linked ribbon but rather exists as one to hundreds of individual stacks scattered through the cytosol. Worse still, some species lack altogether the classic 'stack of plates' arrangement of the cisternae. This led to the belief that some species - fungi in particular - had no Golgi apparatus, and suggestions that the organelle emerged only after the first eukaryotes. However, it transpired that in these fungi the Golgi cisternae are present but spend most, and perhaps all, of their time apart. In more extreme cases such as microsporidia the Golgi is no more than a cluster of tubes and vesicles. Figure 2, which shows an immunofluorescence image of the Golgi in a mammalian and a yeast cell, illustrates the different arrangement of the membranes. The current view is that all eukaryotic cells have a Golgi of some sort, and thus it was a feature of the last common eukaryotic ancestor.
How the Golgi differs between mammals and yeast. Confocal immunofluorescence image of a mammalian cell and a yeast cell expressing the same myc-tagged Golgi protein (yeas tKre2). The mammalian Golgi stack forms ribbons next to the nucleus, whereas in yeast the Golgi comprises small cisternae found throughout the cytoplasm. Scale bar = 10 μm.
Yes and no - again. Despite varying greatly in shape and size, the Golgi performs some roles that are almost certainly shared by all cells and species. All eukaryotes make their membrane and secreted proteins in the ER, and require some mechanism for routing them out of the ER to various destinations inside the cell, or out of it. One key role of the Golgi is as the main sorting point for all of this post-ER traffic (Figure 3a). Proteins for different destinations all exit the ER in vesicles coated in the specialized coat protein COPII, and these fuse to each other and to the first, or 'cis', cisterna of the Golgi. ER resident proteins that have escaped in the COP II vesicles are then recycled back to the ER in COPI vesicles, and the remaining proteins exit from the opposite, or 'trans', side of the Golgi. These proteins must be sorted into carriers to be transported to different destinations. Secreted and cell surface proteins are transported to the plasma membrane, whilst lysosomal proteins are initially sorted to endosomes that mature and subsequently fuse with lysosomes. All this departing traffic depends on specialized cargo receptors and traffic machinery that are recycled and returned to the Golgi, probably at the trans cisterna.
What the Golgi does. From the perspective of the cell, the Golgi can be thought of as a black box with material entering from ER or endosomes, and then leaving with various consequences. (a) Sorting. Newly made secreted and membrane proteins arrive at the cis-Golgi from the ER in COPII-coated vesicles and are sorted from the trans-Golgi to the other organelles of the cell. COPI vesicles retrieve escaped ER residents, and are widely, but not universally, thought to also recycle Golgi enzymes from later to earlier compartments as the cisternae mature. (b) Modification of proteins. Newly made proteins from the ER receive a range of post-translational modifications as they move through the Golgi stack, as illustrated here by the processing of N-linked glycans. (c) Modification of the lipid bilayer. The membrane of the ER is primarily composed of phospholipids. Sphingolipids, such as sphingomyelin in mammals, and glycolipids are made in the Golgi using ceramide delivered from the ER, and cholesterol levels also increase toward the trans side. Thus, the membrane leaving from the trans-Golgi is very different in composition to that which arrived from the ER.
Not exactly the same, no. All cells require that the Golgi provides the traffic route from the ER to the rest of the cell, but the Golgi also performs functions that are more variable between cell types. First, some cells make specialized secretory structures, such as the insulin-containing granules of the pancreas, and these too form at the Golgi (Figure 3a). Second, the Golgi adds post-translational modifications to the cargo proteins traveling through from the ER. The most prominent of these activities is the trimming and extension of the glycan core structures that are attached in the ER (Figure 3b). The precise glycan structures attached vary between protein, cell type and species, and they are synthesized by resident enzymes that are often arranged in the stack in the order in which they act. The diversity of glycosylation is illustrated by human blood groups, which arise from different alleles of a particular Golgi glycosyltransferase. In some cells long polymers of glycans are attached, and the Golgi has a major role in the biosynthesis of proteoglycans in animals and pectins in plants. Other modifications include sulfation, phosphorylation and proteolysis, and all of the enzymes involved are integral membrane proteins. This is strikingly distinct from the ER, where many of the resident proteins are soluble within the ER lumen, and may account for one morphological specialization of the Golgi membranes: it may be that the flattened shape of the cisternae reflects the need to keep the soluble cargo proteins in the lumen close to the 'catalytic carpet' of enzymes that lines Golgi membranes and applies the appropriate modifications to passing cargoes.
A further role for the Golgi is in lipid metabolism (Figure 3c). In particular, the Golgi contains enzymes that convert ceramide made in the ER into sphingolipids. In mammals these are sphingomyelin and glycosphingolipids, which are abundant components of the plasma membrane. These lipids have the capacity in model systems to combine with cholesterol to form domains, which has led to suggestions that they could contribute to protein sorting in the Golgi. It was noted years ago that the Golgi is able to direct sphingolipids to the plasma membrane rather than back to the ER, and it is tempting to speculate that this remodeling of the lipid bilayer may be a primordial function of the Golgi.
Where shall I start? Perhaps the most recent issue - and one of the most controversial - is the so-called Golgi bypass. The classical view is that all protein traffic from the ER is directed through the Golgi apparatus. But a couple of papers have recently claimed that particular membrane proteins can bypass the Golgi and arrive at the cell surface with modifications acquired in the ER but lacking subsequent Golgi modification. The nature, and even existence, of this 'unconventional' secretion route is not universally agreed upon, and why only some proteins would be able to access such a route is unclear. The evidence for unconventional secretion will become more robust if and when its specific machinery is identified - especially given that the principal protein claimed so far to be required for bypassing the Golgi, GRASP, is itself a Golgi resident with a well established role in cisternal stacking.
Ah well. That is a rather embarrassing question. Although we know what arrives and departs, how proteins move from one side of the Golgi to the other has been debated for decades, and still is. The original model from electron micrographs was that cisternae formed on the cis side, and then 'progressed' or 'matured' through the stack until they broke up at the trans side or fused with a pre-existing trans cisterna. This was then challenged by the proposal that transport vesicles carry cargo forward through the stack. Although cisternal maturation is back in favor with most in the field, some recent papers have suggested that tubular connections form between cisternae to allow rapid forward movement of cargo. For a lucid account of the details of this long-running debate the interested reader is referred elsewhere (see below). It also remains to be seen if the nature of intra-Golgi transport has any implications for the way that the Golgi performs its fundamental roles for the cell.
A particularly poorly understood aspect of the Golgi is the generation of the carriers that move from the trans Golgi to the plasma membrane. Unlike other traffic steps, no coat proteins have been identified, and there may be redundant pathways to the plasma membrane, especially in polarized cell types such as epithelia and neurons where proteins need to be delivered to different parts of the cell surface. Likewise, there appear to be multiple routes back to the Golgi from endosomes, but how many routes, what machinery acts for which, and where they arrive at the Golgi are not yet resolved.
It's not. Another is the mechanism that ensures that the Golgi resident enzymes remain in the stack rather than departing with exiting cargo. There is evidence that transmembrane domains can contribute to retention, but how different enzymes are targeted to different parts is not known, or even how the transmembrane domains act.
How the Golgi stack is assembled from individual cisternae is also not well understood, nor the purpose that is served by the stacked arrangement, given that it is not a universal feature of all Golgis. Indeed, the issue of how and why the Golgi varies between organisms is also waiting to be resolved as more of the field explores species outside of the two kingdoms of lab life, yeast and HeLa cells.
Some lipid transport may also occur via non-vesicular routes, as contact sites can often be seen between the trans-Golgi and ER (see, for example, Figure 1a), and some sterol and ceramide transport proteins have binding domains for both organelles. However, the components and ubiquity of these contacts remain enigmatic. In mammalian cells, the Golgi ribbon and stacks fragment during mitosis to facilitate equal distribution between daughters, indicating that Golgi structure can be regulated. Finally there are the general issues of homeostasis and scaling that apply to all cellular structures (as discussed recently in BMC Biology by Wallace Marshall). In the case of the Golgi there must be homeostatic mechanisms underlying the stack's highly regular, if species-specific, size and shape.
Max Planck argued that a scientific truth only triumphs when its opponents eventually die, but I believe that technological advances will save us from what would otherwise, I hope, be a long wait. In particular, recent advances in super-resolution microscopy hold the promise of clearly resolving the distribution of cargo, resident enzymes, and traffic machinery within individual cisternae, and even following this through time in living cells. In addition, improved methods of specimen preparation for electron microscopy, combined with tomography, provide new opportunities for understanding Golgi structure (Figure 1b). It can be hard to localize specific proteins in thick sections, but there has been exciting recent progress in studying frozen unfixed sections in which it may eventually be possible to recognize protein density corresponding to recently solved structures of trafficking components. Ultimately, a molecular level understanding of mechanism will need to move beyond descriptive studies towards the biochemical reconstitution of Golgi function in vitro. This is a daunting challenge that few, if any, labs are currently embracing, but it may be that particular steps can be addressed in isolation as structural biologists have recently had considerable success expressing recombinant membrane transport components that will be invaluable for such in vitro assays.
Much of the molecular machinery of the Golgi was identified by biochemical assays and yeast genetics. More recently, genome-wide RNA interference screens in metazoan cells have identified a few further components that were missed or were absent from yeast. More unexpectedly, an increasing number of rare genetic diseases are being found to be caused by null alleles of genes encoding Golgi proteins. It seems that the loss of some Golgi proteins that are ubiquitously expressed and well conserved in evolution results in defects that, although severe, are not cell lethal but instead specific for particular tissues or cargo proteins, or result in reduced levels of glycosylation. This suggests that some Golgi machinery is not required for basic traffic but for ensuring that the organelle functions at maximum efficiency, especially when large amounts of material are being secreted.
It is clear that much of the Golgi remains mysterious over 110 years after its discovery, a reflection surely of its complexity rather than the quality of research in the field. Given its central role in membrane traffic and the increasing number of links to human disease, resolving these questions seems certain to open the door to a new understanding of fundamental mechanisms in eukaryotic biology. | 2019-04-24T22:57:04 | https://0-bmcbiol-biomedcentral-com.brum.beds.ac.uk/articles/10.1186/1741-7007-9-63 |
0.999933 | The Volkswagen Golf BlueMotion was awarded Best Green Car of the Year 2010 by WhatCar?
The Volkswagen Golf BlueMotion was awarded Best Green Car of the Year 2010 by WhatCar? The Volkswagen Golf BlueMotion was praised for making the best of existing technology. Its strengths include stop-start technology, along with lowered suspension and aerodynamic bodykit. There’s also a particulate filter to help minimise other emissions. The latest model has combined economy of 74.3mpg and co2 emissions of 99g/km.
The Volkswagen Golf BlueMotion has all standard specification such as ABS with ESP, seven airbags, Climatic semi-automatic climate control and an RCD 210 radio / MP3 compatible CD player, there are some additional features which include start/stop system, regenerative braking, hill hold, longer gear ratios, low rolling resistance tyres, a multifunction computer showing recommended gear changes for maximum economy and sports suspension. This new Volkswagen Golf BlueMotion version is fitted with a sports styling kit to improve aerodynamics and boost efficiency as well as to distinguish this car from others in this range. The kit includes sports bumpers, side skirts and an enlarged rear roof spoiler and 15inch alloy wheels. At the rear there are cherry red lights and the Volkswagen Golf BlueMotion badge which is also featured at the front.
Prices start at £17,325 on the road for the Volkswagen Golf BlueMotion, this classy car isn’t the obvious choice for car buyers seeking to reduce costs but in Blue Motion guise it looks far more frugal with its low fuel consumption and emissions and just as important is that the thing that make the Volkswagen Golf special are still very much intact. | 2019-04-20T18:20:14 | https://www.motoring.co.uk/car-news/volkswagen-golf-bluemotion-is-best-green-car-of-the-year_22767 |
0.998791 | How does it compare to Energy Drinks?
There are countless stories of people trying this product and falling in love with it.
People who were sick and tired of being sick and tired.
I was skeptic, but I got a free trial and I was going to find out for myself if it really worked.
I felt more awake in the mornings, slept better and less distracted.
BUT thats not what won me over.
I usually have horrible PMS every month. A "Class A" emotional train wreck.
I'm a single mom, out of state ex, hard working but ALWAYS EXHAUSTED!
Anyways, by the end of my first trial week, my moods were stable.
My time came and went and first time in years I wasn't a emotional wreck before or during.
THAT WAS WORTH IT FOR ME!
I researched the ingredients on the label by googling the item plus "scholarly articles"
and found NON BIAS clinical level research of the ingredients. AND IT WAS REALLY GOOD STUFF!
"Do not judge a book by its cover, its the CONTENTS on the INSIDE that count"
INTERNET REVIEWS: In case you are like me and research what people are saying before you purchase.
#1: The product has DETOX componets and if you have a lot of toxins, you may get a headache and other cleansing side effects.
#2: TAKE AS DIRECTED: To get best results, it's important to take capsules on empty stomach and drink plenty of water.
#3: WATCH YOUR OTHER HABITS: If you drink coffee/caffeine with the product, you may feel a crash or over stimulated.
#4: KNOW YOUR ALLERGIES product may contain shellfish, milk, nuts!
AND ANOTHER REVIEW IS AN OUTRIGHT LIE!
YOU CAN pause your service and/or cancel with NO fee or problems.
WHY bad reviews if it's SO GOOD??
Competitors or skeptics with trust issues, because there ARE scams out there.
Its not bad to work smarter for your health fitness....and thrive helps. Its like a kickbutt multi-vitamin.
I never had any issues. I felt amazing and more alive than before. Thousands of success stories every day.
I know my body is getting a load of nutrition. I sleep better and my moods are level. The proof is in the 8 week trial.
YOU DESERVE TO GIVE YOURSELF A FAIR CHANCE, make your OWN REVIEW.
Product may contain shellfish, milk and nuts.
Sign up for a FREE customer profile and look around.
Marketing is not for everyone, and at first I didn't promote. BUT then I saw my friends and others I knew buying it and loving it anyways.
I thought, "hmmm, I could have done that"
IF you want to be a promoter and supplement your income, this is the business. It's quickly growing and is still young. In this business, you are never alone. There are conf. calls weekly to help keep you motivated and give ideas. You will be in my network team, where everyone is together sharing helpful tools. I've tried other at-home businesses, but NOT LIKE THIS! | 2019-04-25T21:42:05 | http://thrive.freeblog.site/ |
0.998729 | "The deck being the brainchild of an English wool merchant, William Bradford, whose chance encounter with Leonard da Vinci on the Continent resulted in the purchase of a design for an optical device (the first camera), leading to the making of the first known photographs, i.e., The Lost Tarot, how in 1994 the deck was discovered buried in a farmer’s field near Nottingham, England, and how the use of digital tools allowed for its restoration."
The deck is carefully wrapped and comes with a Testamentum from this fictitious William Bradford to help add a deeper element of this world creation. I love that it has an old and weathered feel to it, but I found it a little hard to read to be honest. I hope that if another edition is printed, they make it a little easier on the eyes.
The companion guide is nicely written and breaks down symbolism in the deck as well as offers archetypes, key words, and an affirmation for each Major Arcana card. The Four Aces however, do not include archetypes and an affirmation for each card.
The Four Aces are my favorite of all. They really are quite beautifully done.
The card stock is of decent quality although the cards themselves due to their length may be difficult to manage for small hands. I was a bit confused as to why the deck box wasn't wrapped in plastic upon taking it out of the mail envelope as most decks traditionally are, but I do enjoy the fact that the deck does include a wax stamp on the front cover. It adds a very nice touch to the medieval feel of the deck.
I do find some of the imagery to be striking and thoughtful while a few others I find that I don't resonate with and find to be a bit messy or cartoonish like The Magus and The Devil. Who do I think this deck would be good for? I would recommend this deck if you are really into world creation, the medieval period, renaissance fairs, and falling into the fictitious myth surrounding the deck's creation. I suppose that this would be a great way for you to bond with it. I appreciate the time and effort it took the creator to do this and the extra touches like the wax seal and the Testamentum.
As this is my first Major's only deck, I feel that I personally as a reader need more. Some images flow well together, while I feel a few are out of place or aren't fully cohesive with the rest of the deck. I could definitely get a better feel from it if the other 52 cards were present. It is not my preferred style of artwork, so I feel that my personal taste has something to do with it as well. For my personal tastes, I would definitely like to see more of a universal flow with the imagery if a full deck is created.
After Tarot was created by Pietro Alligo and Corrine Kenner with artwork by Giulia Francesca Massaglia. The deck was published by Lo Scarabeo in 2016.
It is an interesting take on the traditional Rider Waite Smith deck as this is a spin on what happens 1 second after the moments captured in the RWS cards we have come to know and love so well over the decades. 1 second after The Fool walks off of that cliff, what do you think happens? The After Tarot is here to help us answer those questions in a fun and unique way!
Great card stock! Solid and gives a nice riffle shuffle.
I love the design on the back of these cards!!!
I love how the deck still honors the original meanings however there seems to be an added edge to them or an extra piece of the puzzle. If you read with RWS a lot, give this deck a try for a new perspective - it won't disappoint.
I am not one for Lo Scarabeo decks honestly. I don't have many and the ones I do have I tend to use a handful of times and never pick up again. For some reason, I just don't resonate with their decks. After Tarot is the exception! From the concept to the card stock and overall feel of the deck - I AM IN LOVE! I like the RWS yes, but dare I say that I may end up using this version more? It really has freed my mind in how I look at traditional tarot.
The Box and packaging were great! The box is nice and sturdy with a magnetized closure on the side to keep your guidebook and cards dry, clean, and secure. I also love the reproduction of The Moon on the inside cover! It was definitely a nice surprise.
The Guidebook (written by Corrine Kenner) is 160 pages and comes with small color reproductions of the cards. The guidebook is divided into sections in a unique way. It is organized by The Fool and then by the numbers - The Ones, The Twos, The Threes, and so on. Each card has archetype or phrase associated with it as well as the card description, key symbols, and suggested interpretations.
It then goes into The Four Pages, The Four Knights, etc. The only problem I have with this however is that it may require a bit more work to find your desired page if you're in a hurry as the Major Arcana are not separated. I also have an issue with the fact that The Four Pages in the guidebook don't have the same layout as the other court cards in the guidebook. I also wish that the author had gone into the same amount of detail with the court cards as she had with the Major and Minor Arcana. The way the court cards are written about just has a different feel from the rest of the guidebook.
Here are some of my favorite images in the deck. Click on the image to expand it.
This deck is an adventurer, an explorer, a hunter. It likes to take a birds eye view of the situation in order to see the bigger picture.
This deck is helpful for determining what to do with a new skill. It also likes to aid you in thinking in a new way and may even push you to use your skills, talents, and abilities.
This deck is not going to sugarcoat anything. It will tell you like it is. It may even like to play around or could be a bit childish. It will present you with your options however, you may have to decipher the truth for yourself.
The best way for me to collaborate with this deck is when planting new seeds and digging deep to find answers. This deck may even be particular to readings concerning the material - health, career, family, or finances.
Love! Pure and simple. Lovingly helping in decision making. There will be a sense of partnership and unity that comes when we work together. What more could I ask for!
All in all, I am really enjoying this deck thus far. I love the different spin it gives on traditional tarot and I think you will too! Do you work with this deck? What have your experiences been with it? | 2019-04-18T22:28:37 | https://www.mavenunmasked.com/blog-1/?category=Deck+Reviews%2FInterviews |
0.99979 | The cost of lunch for the 2018-19 school year is $3.00. On Fridays, students may order an extra slice of pizza for an additional $1.50.
Lunch ticket prices are as follows: 5 for $15.00, 10 for $30.00 and 20 for $60.00. | 2019-04-24T00:13:03 | http://www.icaberks.org/lunch_menu |
0.999999 | How long have you been roleplaying in general?: Since 2012.
What previous experience do you have as a staff member, either here or on other communities?: From 2014 to 2016 I owned, operated, and moderated Eagles Gaming EpochRP, a custom DayZ Epoch server. In 2015, I also worked as a content developer for GOAT Dark RP.
Have you received any punishments or citations on the server? If so, what were they for?: No.
Why should we choose you over other applicants for this position?: I believe that I am a qualified applicant because after running and maintaining a roleplaying server I understand that in order to have a positive roleplaying experience, it must be maintained by a dedicated staff that renders an unbiased and impartial decision. I was reintroduced to serious roleplay through the Mobsters Paradise server, and I would like to assist in its growth, whether that be with resolving a dispute with a player or assisting a new player in understanding how the server operates. Lastly, currently my only character on the server with any faction affiliation is my police character (Detective Patrick McGlover), allowing for an unbiased approach to moderation situations.
Please summarize the duties of a staff member: The primary duty of a staff member is to maintain the quality roleplaying that occurs on the server, this is done by reinforcing the rules set by the server as well as ensuring that all players have their disputes settled both fairly and in such a way that both parties understand why the decision was made. Furthermore, whenever a request for a staff member is made, it should be dealt with in a timely manner. This could mean that the staff member would have to sacrifice some in–character playing time to answer it. Lastly, the staff member must be professional and approachable, as they are representing the server and should strive to make the roleplay experience as positive as possible.
Basic Information Steam Name: Trader Joe SteamID: STEAM_0:1:42744104 What rank are you applying for?: Admin How long have you been playing on Mobster’s Paradise: 3 months How long have you been roleplaying in general?: Since 2012. What previous experience do you have as a staff member, either here or on other communities?: From 2014 to 2016 I owned, operated, and moderated Eagles Gaming EpochRP, a custom DayZ Epoch server. In 2015, I also worked as a content developer for GOAT Dark RP. Staff Knowledge Section Have you received any punishments or citations on the server? If so, what were they for?: No. Why should we choose you over other applicants for this position?: I believe that I am a qualified applicant because after running and maintaining a roleplaying server I understand that in order to have a positive roleplaying experience, it must be maintained by a dedicated staff that renders an unbiased and impartial decision. I was reintroduced to serious roleplay through the Mobsters Paradise server, and I would like to assist in its growth, whether that be with resolving a dispute with a player or assisting a new player in understanding how the server operates. Lastly, currently my only character on the server with any faction affiliation is my police character (Detective Patrick McGlover), allowing for an unbiased approach to moderation situations. Please summarize the duties of a staff member: The primary duty of a staff member is to maintain the quality roleplaying that occurs on the server, this is done by reinforcing the rules set by the server as well as ensuring that all players have their disputes settled both fairly and in such a way that both parties understand why the decision was made. Furthermore, whenever a request for a staff member is made, it should be dealt with in a timely manner. This could mean that the staff member would have to sacrifice some in–character playing time to answer it. Lastly, the staff member must be professional and approachable, as they are representing the server and should strive to make the roleplay experience as positive as possible. | 2019-04-21T17:20:54 | https://pastebin.com/VwMx9X1h |
0.999999 | Should energy resources in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge be developed?
Viewpoint: Yes, energy resources in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge should be developed because dependence on foreign resources poses a serious threat to the security of the United States.
Viewpoint: No, energy resources in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge should not be developed because the gain would be minimal and the cost to the environment unacceptable.
When the first major oil strike occurred, at Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1859, the momentous character of the event could hardly have been appreciated. There were no automobiles then, nor could anyone have imagined the importance that petroleum would acquire within three-quarters of a century. Even if they had, most observers would have presumed that America had all the oil supplies it needed.
At that time, paleontologists were just beginning to understand the fact that dinosaurs had once ruled the planet. It would be years before scientists understood that the deposition of their bodies in the earth—the result of a great cataclysm some 65 million years ago—had provided Earth's "new" human rulers with a vast but nonetheless limited supply of energy in the form of petroleum.
Likewise it would be years before prospectors began to discover ever more abundant supplies of oil on U.S. soil, first in Texas and surrounding states, and later in Alaska. Also in the future lay the discovery of even more impressive reserves in the Middle East, a region that until the mid-twentieth century was economically impoverished and geopolitically insignificant.
By 1973, much had changed. America and other industrialized nations had millions of cars on the road and regularly imported millions of barrels of crude oil from Saudi Arabia and other nations, which—because of their vast oil wealth—had become powerful players on the international scene. In 1973, Americans would be forced to confront their dependence on foreign oil. That was the year when the Organization of Oil-Exporting Countries (OPEC), composed primarily of Arab nations, placed an embargo on oil sales to the United States in retaliation for U.S. support of Israel. The results were disastrous: suddenly scarce, petroleum was in high demand, and anyone who lived through that time can recall the long lines at the gas pumps, the frustration of cancelled family trips, the exigencies of enforced conservation, and the fears raised by dependency on hostile foreign powers for the fuel that literally runs our nation.
Those fears subsided somewhat with the conclusion of the embargo—unsuccessful inasmuch as it failed to sway U.S. policy in the Middle East—but they have resurfaced again and again over the years. One of the most dramatic instances of such resurfacing occurred after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. Though a small band of Muslim extremists actually carried out these acts, the subsequent response by a large segment of the Arab world—most notably, a refusal to wholeheartedly condemn the terrorists' actions—once again gave notice to Americans that their trade agreements with Saudi Arabia and other oil-exporting Arab nations could break down at any time.
In the eyes of many Americans, three decades of strained relations with the Arab world only served to reinforce the need to develop oil resources on U.S. soil. By that time, most economically viable reserves in the continental United States had been tapped, but Alaska still presented a potentially rewarding frontier for future exploration. In response to the embargo of 1973, America stepped up its efforts to extract oil from Alaska.
Significant oil reserves had first been discovered along the shores of the Arctic Ocean in 1968, but the lack of infrastructure (including roads) in that largely uninhabited region had presented an impediment to exploitation of those reserves. Then, in 1969, a group of petroleum companies paid the state $1 billion for drilling rights and proposed the building of a pipeline. Opposed by environmentalists, the proposed pipeline had gone unbuilt, however, until November 1973, a month after the Arabs imposed the embargo, at which point Congress authorized the construction of a 789-mi (1,262-km) pipeline.
The pipeline made possible the transport of oil from the Prudhoe Bay oil field on the Arctic coast to the harbor at Valdez, from whence oil tankers transported it to the ports on the West Coast of the United States. However, environmental concerns remained, and loomed greater in the years that followed. In part, this was due to the growth of an increasingly powerful and politically forceful environmental movement, which was still in its infancy at the time the original pipeline was proposed. But concerns over the threat posed to the Alaskan wilderness by the extraction and transport of oil had also spread far beyond the limits of the environmentalist movement to the population as a whole. This was particularly the case after the 1989 disaster of the Exxon Valdez, an oil tanker that ran aground off of Prince William Sound, causing the worst oil spill in the history of North America and doing immeasurable damage to the environment.
In the essays that follow, arguments are made, based on scientific speculation regarding the recoverability of resources, both for and against the development of energy resources in ANWR. In other words, not all arguments against drilling necessarily revolve around environmental concerns alone, and not all arguments in favor of it are based purely on concerns for national security. Obviously, those two positions—the environment on one hand, and national security on the other—play a major role in governing one's views on the advisability of exploiting the resources at ANWR. However, at heart the question is one of costs versus benefits.
On the one hand, there are the costs involved in the impact on the environment, as well as on the lives of native peoples. Furthermore, there is the sheer economic cost of extraction and development of ANWR reserves against the economic and political benefits to be accrued from those actions. On the other hand, there is the political cost of dependence on oil exported by increasingly hostile nations, combined with the potential economic benefits, both to the state of Alaska and to the nation as a whole.
Viewpoint: Yes, energy resources in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge should be developed, because dependence on foreign resources poses a serious threat to the security of the United States.
For the last 40 years of the twentieth century and into the first decade of the twenty-first century, drilling for oil in the Coastal Plain of the 19 million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) has been strongly debated. The ANWR, located in northeastern Alaska, is an area abundant with fauna and flora, and rich with oil potential. Energy experts agree that the Coastal Plain (commonly called 1002 Area) is currently the most promising domestic onshore oil and gas prospect. The consensus of most petroleum geologists is that its potential is on the order of billions of barrels of recoverable oil and trillions of cubic feet of recoverable gas.
Since 1985 oil and gas leasing on this federally owned land, administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (within the Department of the Interior), has been banned. Exploration and development of oil and gas are supported by the oil companies and by the majority of Alaskan officials and citizens, but has been opposed by many environmental organizations. The inhabitants of the area, the Inupiat Eskimos and Gwich'in Indians, are also actively involved since they have a direct economic relationship to the land, and to its wildlife and other natural resources. The U.S. Congress will ultimately decide whether to open up the ANWR for oil exploration and development.
Under federal law, 17.5 million acres (about 92%) of ANWR will remain permanently closed to all development. The remaining 1.5 million acres (about 8%) on the northern Coastal Plain of ANWR is the only area being considered for development. If oil drilling commenced, less than one half of one percent, or about 2,000-5,000 acres, of the 1.5 million acres of the Coastal Plain would be directly affected. According to Senator Frank Murkowski (R-AK), the actual area in the ANWR covered by such structures as drilling rigs, buildings, and roads would be less than the size of the Anchorage International Airport.
The 11 countries of OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) account for more than 40% of the world's annual oil production and possess about 75% of the proven reserves. At the time of the 1973 Arab oil embargo, the United Stated imported only 36% of its oil. As of 2001, the U.S. imported, according to the American Petroleum Institute, a little over 55% of the oil needed domestically. Experts at the Department of Energy are expecting the import percentage to increase from 55% to 65% by the year 2020.
Little interest was given to oil potential in ANWR when oil prices were low. However, in 1999, OPEC and other oil-exporting nations agreed to cut oil production. Within five months world oil prices went from $10 to $33 per barrel; but leveled off in 2001 to about $26. Consequently, interest in Alaskan oil, and especially in ANWR development, has drastically increased. Recent OPEC production agreements have renewed calls for U.S. policies that might reduce dependence on foreign oil and help with uncertainties in energy markets due to continuing Middle East crises.
United States oil production has steadily declined since its peak in 1973. ANWR development would alleviate current oil supply problems. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), peak annual ANWR production—assuming that 9.4 billion barrels of petroleum are recoverable at a market price of $24 per barrel—would be approximately 1.4 million barrels per day, compared with projected U.S. oil imports of 15.3 million barrels per day and total oil use of 24.3 million barrels per day in 2015. (The level and timing of peak production would depend upon the rate at which the ANWR oil fields are developed; according to the EIA, from the time of approval to first production would be from 7 to 12 years.) Supporters of development argue that ANWR oil would reduce dependence on foreign sources, and that the additional incremental supply could be crucial in determining oil prices. At the upper estimate, the U.S. Geological Survey projects that ANWR reserves could total as much as 16 billion barrels of recoverable oil, an amount that represents all the oil currently imported from Saudi Arabia for the last 30 years.
New petroleum technology, including advances in computing and exploration methods, developed since the early 1970s will allow companies to tap underground reservoirs with a much smaller surface impact. Senator Murkowski recently said that through such technologies oil companies could safely develop a manageable "footprint" (the area occupied by infrastructure) in order to protect the surrounding environment and the ecology. If the Prudhoe Bay oil fields were built today using the latest techniques, the footprint would be 1,526 acres, 64% smaller than when actually built. In addition, millions of dollars of research on wildlife resources and their habitat on Alaska's North Slope have greatly increased the scientific understanding of arctic ecosystems and have also shown that wildlife and petroleum extraction can coexist.
The indigenous Gwich'in Indians are most apprehensive about oil development in the Refuge because they depend on the barren-ground caribou of the Porcupine herd for food. They fear that ANWR development would disrupt the caribou's calving grounds and diminish their food supplies. However, Department of Interior Secretary Gale Norton stated in 2002 that the wildlife of the ANWR can be adequately protected and America's treaty obligations with native tribes would not be violated by oil exploration in the ANWR chiefly due to improvements in oil-drilling technology.
Proponents of drilling point to the oil fields at Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk, both about 60 mi (100 km) west of the Refuge, and the central Arctic caribou herd. According to Pat Valkenberg, a research coordinator with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the herd has increased its numbers from 15,000 in 1985 to 27,100 in 2000 despite several hundred miles of roads and more than a thousand miles of elevated pipe.
As mentioned previously, drilling in the ANWR can now be accomplished with far less impact than could have been possible using older technology. Among the improvements are smaller gravel pads to support the wells, greater distances that can be reached from a single (draining) pad, the re-injection of drilling wastes (eliminating the need for large waste pits), and a reduction in the need for gravel roads. In addition, other improvements include three-dimensional seismic exploration, four-dimensional time-lapse imaging, ground-penetrating radar, and enhanced computer processing of resulting data on geological structures. According to the Energy Department, these latter improvements have increased the number of successful wells from about 10% to as much as 50%, resulting in a decrease in the number of pads and exploration costs. Together, these advances decrease the developmental impact.
Between 1980 and 1994, Alaska's North Slope (ANS) oil field development and production activity contributed over $50 billion to the U.S. economy. The oil-rich region extended eastward from the 2-billion-barrel Kuparuk River field, past the Prudhoe Bay field (originally 11 billion barrels, now down to about 4 billion barrels), and a few smaller fields (such as Lisburne and Endicott), and in all likelihood extends through ANWR's 1002 Area. With the close proximity of these current oil resources, it is believed that the ANWR could easily contain the largest un-drilled, petroleum potential known in the United States.
The state of Alaska is already strongly tied to oil with regards to its revenue base. The Prudhoe Bay field, the largest single accumulation of oil ever discovered in North America, is located on lands owned by Alaska. The proportion of the state budget utilizing petroleum revenues has risen from an annual average of 12%, initially in 1968, to 90% 15 years later, and currently holds at 80%. According to Arctic Power, an Alaskan nonprofit organization, since 1987 the North Slope oil fields have provided the country with nearly 20% of its domestic production. But its actual production has been on the decline during that same period. Peak production was reached in 1980 with 2 million barrels per day, but is currently at nearly 1.2 million barrels per day. By 2010 oil flow is predicted to drop to just 315,000 barrels per day, and no new fields have been identified to compensate for the decline.
Industry interest in the 1002 Area is based in part in keeping the Trans-Alaska Pipeline operating efficiently. Oil is transported from the North Slope by the 800-mi (1,290-km) system, from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez in south-central Alaska, where it is then transferred to tankers. Pipeline costs are largely fixed; a smaller flow of oil means higher pipeline rates per barrel.
Both the national and Alaskan state governments have important political and economic reasons to develop natural resources and assist those corporations extracting them. Revenues (estimated in the billions of dollars in the form of bonus bids, lease rentals, royalties, and taxes) and employment (estimated by Senator Murkowski to create between 250,000 and 735,000 jobs) from such companies are central to their financial welfare. Backed by the majority of Alaskans, two U.S. senators and one house representative from Alaska are strong advocates of oil development in the ANWR in order to meet the state's economic needs.
Mark Rubin of the American Petroleum Institute says that ANWR is the best place to look for domestic oil. The Coastal Plain lies between two known major discovery areas. To the west, the Prudhoe Bay, Lisburne, Endicott, Milne Point, and Kuparuk oil fields are currently in production. To the east, major discoveries have been made in Canada, near the Mackenzie River delta, and in the Beaufort Sea. Rubin adds that if current predictions hold, then there is more oil in ANWR than any other place in the United States. Petroleum geologists agree that the Coastal Plain is America's best possibility for a major discovery like the giant "Prudhoe Bay-sized" discovery. Estimates from the Department of Interior range from just under 6 to upwards of 16 billion barrels of recoverable oil.
According to a February 2000 poll performed by the Dittman Research Company, more than 75% of Alaskans favor exploration and production of the oil reserves in ANWR as long as it is done in an environmentally sound way that keeps land disturbances to a minimum. According to a poll taken by the Los Angeles Times between January 31 and February 3, 2002 (and backed by earlier polls with similar results), 48% of all Americans favor opening a part of the ANWR to energy exploration. Alaska Democratic Party Chairman Scott Sterling said that he supports oil drilling in ANWR as long as wildlife is protected.
The Inupiat people of the North Slope have called the Arctic their home for thousands of years. They have depended on Alaska's North Slope and the area within the ANWR for their very lives. The majority of Inupiat Eskimos support onshore oil development on the Coastal Plain. These partial-subsistence hunters will gain financially (by providing jobs, schools, and a better economy) from leasing ANWR's potentially rich land to the oil companies. On the other hand, the Inupiat people fear the potential disruption of wildlife and their way of life. However, former Inupiat Mayor Benjamin P. Nageak said that since the first discovery of oil in 1969 the oil companies have consistently met the strict standards and regulations that were imposed on them in order to protect the land. Nageak went on to say that his people have the greatest stake possible in seeing that all development is performed in an environmentally safe way.
Oil development in the ANWR could yield up to 16 billion barrels of oil. The U.S. economy is highly dependent on oil and because of this the country is currently importing over half its oil, much from the Middle East. Conservation and renewable energy have great potential, but for today and for many years to come, oil will be a major source of energy. While it may be gratifying for some to strongly resist drilling in sensitive areas, it is naïve to ignore the national security and economic benefits that ANWR oil extraction can provide. Rather than trying to prevent the inevitable, ecologists (and others sensitive to the environment) should work hard to design and implement enforceable environmental standards for drilling in sensitive areas such as ANWR. Because the United States—at least for the foreseeable future—is so dependent on petroleum, the energy resources of the ANWR should be developed.
Viewpoint: No, energy resources in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge should not be developed, because the gain would be minimal and the cost to the environment unacceptable.
Early explorers to the North Slope of Alaska often noted oil seeps and oil-stained sands on the surface. Yet it was not until 1944 that oil exploration began in earnest on 23 million acres of what was then called Naval Petroleum Reserve Number 4 in northwestern Alaska.
In 1968, North America's largest oil field was discovered near Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. The Trans-Alaska pipeline was finished in 1977. By 1981, the oil fields around Prudhoe Bay, Endicott, and offshore in the Beaufort Sea, yielded about 1.7 million barrels of oil per day—about 25% of U.S. domestic production. By 1988, these oil fields showed signs of exhaustion and oil yields declined. No new oil fields have been discovered in this area.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, oil companies leasing off-and onshore sites farther east announced the potential for oil drilling on these holdings. These sites are situated in or just offshore of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), designated by Congress in 1960 as an 8.9-million acre protected wilderness. The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA, 1980) doubled ANWR's size, but omitted protection for the shoreline region known as 1002 Area, pending further research into its oil-production potential and its effects on wildlife. This region is the main focus of interest for oil companies and conservationists. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has analyzed the region's energy potential, and found that ANWR and 1002 Area do contain oil. The questions remain, though, about whether it is economically feasible to recover it.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) meanwhile conducted numerous studies to assess the effects of oil exploration and extraction on ANWR's wildlife. They concluded that resource exploitation would seriously affect the Porcupine herd of caribou, destroy polar bear den areas, and disrupt key breeding bird sites.
There is oil under ANWR. But the first two questions that need to be answered are: "How much is there?" and "Is it economically and technically feasible to extract it?"
The most reliable studies of potential oil deposits under ANWR have been conducted by the USGS. The agency assessed the potential for technically recoverable oil in ANWR and in 1002 Area. The agency has reported that there are three likely scenarios surrounding the amount and recoverability of the oil.
Scenario 1: Most Likely, Most Recoverable, Least Amount.
There is a 95% probability of finding 5.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil from ANWR's Coastal Plain. Peak production rates for this scenario are estimated between 250 and 400 million barrels per year.
There is a 50% probability of finding 10.3 billion barrels of oil that are recoverable from ANWR's Coastal Plain. Peak production rates for this scenario are estimated between 400 million and 600 million barrels per year.
Scenario 3: Least Likely, Least Recoverable, Greatest Amount.
There is a 5% probability of finding 16 billion barrels of recoverable oil from ANWR's Coastal Plain. Peak production rates for this scenario are estimated between 600 and 800 million barrels per year.
No matter how much oil is under ANWR, it will take time to develop the area and extract it. For all scenarios, and at the highest extraction rate, significant amounts of oil will not be produced until about 10 years after development begins, with the greatest yield after 15-20 years. Maximum yield will be recoverable for less than five years, before it begins declining rapidly. Thus, any amount of oil recovered from ANWR will not affect immediate energy needs and will contribute most to our energy needs for a period of only a few years. As discussed below, even at its greatest, this contribution is insignificant compared with U.S. energy consumption.
Not all of the oil believed to underlie ANWR is technically or economically recoverable. The FWS reports that at prices lower than $16 per barrel, there is no economically recoverable oil in 1002 Area of ANWR. The amounts and rates of oil extraction set out in the above scenarios assume an oil price of $24 per barrel to make extraction economically feasible. It is clear that the most recoverable oil (at 95%) yields the least economic return in terms of oil production.
Much of the oil under ANWR and 1002 Area occurs as small, widely dispersed deposits. The USGS, with concurrence from oil companies, states that accumulations of less than 100 million barrels of oil are uneconomic for mining. Other economic factors that influence the cost of oil extraction are the current state of oil-extraction technology and the field's proximity to infrastructure.
The region known as 1002 Area is 100 mi (161 km) wide and located more than 30 mi (48 km) from the tail end of the nearest pipeline and more than 50 mi (80 km) from the nearest gravel road and oil support facility. To be fully developed, 1002 Area would require the construction of all the above, plus production sites, power plants, processing facilities, loading docks, living quarters, airstrips, gravel pits, utility lines, and landfills. Thus, its isolation adds significantly to the costs of developing its oil. The USGS report shows that far less oil can be economically recovered than actually occurs, or even than is technically recoverable. (Technically recoverable oil is defined as the in-place oil that is available for extraction based on geology and the state of current oil-extraction technology, regardless of cost.) Further, when oil prices decline, some oil companies may simply abandon their oil fields, leaving the infrastructure and waste lagoons intact.
The crux of the argument in favor of oil drilling in ANWR and 1002 Area is that it will significantly reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil; that it will make the United States more "energy independent." That argument is patently untrue.
As of 2000, the United States consumes about 19.6 million barrels of oil each day, or 7.154 billion barrels per year. If development of ANWR's oil fields began tomorrow and oil began to flow by 2010, the national rate of oil consumption would by then be more than 8 billion barrels per year. By the time of ANWR's maximum output, in 2020, U.S. oil consumption is projected to be about 9.5 billion barrels per year. Yet at its maximum output, ANWR would yield merely 800 million or so barrels of oil per year. And this high yield would last for only about five years, before declining drastically.
In short, even if ANWR could produce the maximum amount of oil (16 billion barrels, at a 5% chance of recovery), it would at best contribute less than 10% of U.S. oil needs. If the mean amount of oil was recoverable (10.3 million barrels, at 50% chance of recovery), at best about 5% of U.S. oil needs would be met. For the most recoverable oil (5.7 billion barrels, at 95% chance of recovery), only about 2% of our oil needs would be met by ANWR.
Those who are concerned with U.S. dependence on foreign oil—which should be everyone—obviously cannot find relief in ANWR's oil. However, raising fuel-efficiency standards in American cars and trucks—or even using better tires—will significantly reduce our oil consumption and thus our need for foreign oil. Raising the fuel-efficiency of cars, SUVs, and trucks to 39 mi (63 km) per gallon (mpg) would save vastly more oil than occurs in all of ANWR. At 39 mpg, we would save a whopping 51 billion barrels by 2050. Just using more efficient tires would save more oil than ANWR can produce. On an annual basis, by 2020 (the time of ANWR's maximum output), if vehicles are getting 39 mi (63 km) to the gallon, we would be saving more than 1.2 billion gallons of oil per year—far more than ANWR yields.
ANWR is one of our last, great undisturbed wildernesses and the last U.S.-owned remaining intact arctic-subarctic ecosystem. It is recognized as a key component in an international arctic-subarctic refuge network (including neighboring preserves in Canada, where resource exploitation is forbidden). The FWS studies have shown that oil extraction in ANWR, and particularly in 1002 Area, will have severely negative effects on wildlife.
ANWR is home to the Porcupine herd of caribou, which migrates through the refuge and into and out of adjacent preserves in Canada. However, the largest concentration of caribou calving locations lies within 1002 Area. The FWS has shown that oil extraction in this area would reduce suitable calving locations, reduce available forage for caribou, restrict their access to insect-relief habitat on the coast, expose the herd to higher predation, and alter ancient migratory pathways, with unknown consequences for the herd. The FWS concludes that there is no doubt that oil drilling will damage, perhaps irremediably, the Porcupine herd of caribou. A 1987 FWS report also indicates a similar "major" effect (defined as "widespread, long-term change in habitat availability or quality" that would negatively affect wildlife) for ANWR's muskoxen.
The FWS reports that ANWR and 1002 Area are "the most important land denning habitat for the Beaufort Sea polar bear population." Denning bears are female bears with cubs. Without these denning areas, this population of polar bears would decline, due to increased cub mortality. Development might also result in more deadly bear-human confrontations.
More than 135 species of birds are known to nest in 1002 Area, including many shore-birds, waterfowl, loons, songbirds, and raptors. Oil drilling would result, at the least, in disturbance of nests, at worst, in destruction of the habitat required by breeding birds for nesting and feeding. Most affected birds include snow geese, seabirds, and shorebirds.
ANWR is tundra. Permafrost lies beneath it. This land and its vegetation are extremely vulnerable to disturbance and mend slowly or not at all. The land is still scarred, and the vegetation still damaged, where simple seismic studies were conducted more than 15 years ago. Tire tracks leave scars and ruined vegetation that takes decades to recover, if they recover at all. Wildlife cannot survive in this harsh place while waiting for vegetation to recover. And if simple tire tracks leave permanent scars, the damage inflicted by the infrastructure built to sustain oil extraction will do irremediable damage.
The Inupiat and Gwich'in peoples of northeast Alaska depend on the caribou for survival. (Gwich'in means "people of the caribou.") Not only do these native people have a deep spiritual and cultural attachment to the caribou, but they rely on them for much of their subsistence, from meat to skins for clothes and shelter to tools and trade. The Gwich'in are most closely associated with the Porcupine caribou herd, which is most threatened by oil development. Both the Gwich'in and the Inupiat continue to lobby the U.S. government to abandon plans for oil development in ANWR, and to pressure the Canadian government to oppose it.
To make oil drilling in ANWR more palatable, Congress nominally reduced the size of the area open to "production and support facilities" to 2,000 acres on the Coastal Plain (1002 Area), or a 2,000-acre "footprint." "Footprint" is an oil-industry term used to describe the number of acres actually covered with a layer of gravel to support oil-field infrastructure.
However, this provision excludes "leasing and exploration," which will be permitted on the entire 1.5-million-acre Coastal Plain. Exploration means drilling. Oil companies do not drill anywhere they will be prohibited from extracting profitable oil.
Further, the 2,000-acre limit applies only to "surface" acreage. It does not cover "seismic or other exploratory" activities. Seismic research is done with convoys of bulldozers and "thumper trucks." Oil exploration entails erecting large oil rigs and airstrips for aircraft.
The limitation also does not apply to aboveground pipelines, which, because they do not touch the ground, are not considered as part of the acreage developed! FWS studies show that caribou avoid calving within 2.7 mi (4.4 km) of pipelines and roads, thus greatly expanding the "footprint" impact of development on wildlife.
The impression given by the limitation is that the 2,000 acres will be contiguous and compact. That is false. Nothing prevents smaller, intermittent developments over a vast area of the Coastal Plain. In fact, the USGS has reported that "oil under the coastal plain is not concentrated in one large reservoir, but is spread underneath [it] in numerous small deposits." Developing these widely dispersed deposits would damage an area far greater than 2,000 acres—and would affect wildlife throughout the region.
There is oil under ANWR. However, the amount of oil that can be extracted technically and profitably does not begin to approach the amount of oil the U.S. needs to reduce its dependence on imports. Improving fuel efficiency will have a far greater impact on reducing our oil consumption and dependence on foreign oil. Furthermore, it will save a priceless and irreplaceable wilderness that a secretary of the interior described this way: "[ANWR's] wildlife and natural [wilderness] values are so magnificent and so enduring that they transcend the value of any mineral that may lie beneath the surface. Such minerals are finite. Production inevitably means changes whose impacts will be measured in geologic time in order to gain marginal benefit that lasts only a few years."
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service [cited July 12, 2002]. <http://www.r7.fws.gov/nwr/arctic/index.html>.
"Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Potential Impacts of Proposed Oil and Gas Development on the Arctic Refuge's Coastal Plain: Historical Overview and Issues of Concern." U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Report [cited July 12, 2002]. <www.fws.gov>.
"Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, 1002 Area, Petroleum Assessment, 1998." USGS Report [cited July 12, 2002]. </geology.cr.usgs.gov/pub/fact-sheets/fs-0028-01/fs-0028-01.htm>.
Baden, John A. "Drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?" Bozeman Daily Chronicle (31 October 2001).
Chance, Norman. "The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: A Special Report." Arctic Circle. University of Connecticut [cited July 12, 2002]. <http://arcticcircle.uconn.edu/ANWR/>.
Corn, M. Lynne, Lawrence C. Kumins, and Pamela Baldwin. "The National Arctic Wildlife Refuge." The CRS Issue Brief for Congress. National Council for Science and the Environment [cited July 12, 2002]. <http://cnie.org/NLE/CRSreports/Biodiversity/biodv-14.cfm>.
Doyle, Jack. Crude Awakening: The Oil Mess in America: Wasting Energy, Jobs, and the Environment. Friends of the Earth, 1994.
Lentfer, Hank, ed. Arctic Refuge: A Circle of Testimony (Literature for a Land Ethic). Milkweed Editions, 2001.
Mitchell, John G. "Oil Field or Sanctuary?"National Geographic Society [cited July 12, 2002]. <http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/data/2001/08/01/html/ft_20010801.3.html>.
Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) [cited July 12, 2002]. <www.nrdc.org/land/wilderness/anwr>.
NWR News [cited July 12, 2002]. <http://www.anwr.org/index.html>.
The Oil and Gas Resource Potential of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge 1002 Area, Alaska. Open File Report 98-34. Staff of the U.S. Geological Survey. Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey, 1999.
Petroleum Supply, Consumption, and Imports, 1970-2020 (million barrels per day). National Association of State Energy Officials [cited July 12, 2002]. <http://www.naseo.org/events/winterfuels/2001/presentations/Blake1.pdf>.
Potential Oil Production from the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Updated Assessment. Report # SR/O&G/ 2000-02, U.S. Department of Energy [cited July 12, 2002]. <http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/analysis_publications/arctic_national_wildlife_refuge/html/execsummary.html>.
"Senator Launches Battle over Drilling in Arctic Refuge." Inside Politics. February 21, 2001 [cited July 12, 2002]. <http://www.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/02/26/arctic.refuge.drilling/>.
Strohmeyer, John. Extreme Conditions: Big Oil and the Transformation of Alaska. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993.
Trustees for Alaska [cited July 12, 2002].<www.trustees.org>.
Union of Concerned Scientists [cited July 12,2002]. <www.ucsusa.org/energy/brf_anwr.html>.
Ward, Kennan. The Last Wilderness: Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Wildlight Press, 2001.
The animals of a particular habitat, region, or geological period.
The plants of a particular habitat, region, or geological period.
Relating to or denoting geological surveying methods involving vibrations produced artificially, such as by explosions.
Prudhoe Bay, on the North Slope west of ANWR, has been in oil development since the early 1980s. Since few people ever go there and see for themselves, not many people know what the impact of oil exploitation has been. Below are a few facts that should be considered before developing ANWR for oil extraction.
More than 1,000 square miles of tundra are covered with gravel (an area greater than Rhode Island); 23 additional oil fields cover another 2,000 acres; the Trans-Alaska pipeline and haul road eat up another 10,000 acres; there are more than 1,123 mi (1,807 km) of subsidiary roads and pipelines connected to oil wells, with an additional 500 mi (804 km) of roads along these pipelines; there are two 6,500-ft (1981-m) airstrips.
More than 10,000 acres of wetlands have been filled and covered by gravel for roads, airstrips, drill pads, and other facilities. All told, more than 22,000 acres of the North Slope is covered in gravel; there are 350 mi (563 km) of gravel roads; one mile of road requires 50,000 cubic yards of gravel. (Phillips Petroleum used more than 1 million cubic yards of gravel to fill in a 100-acre wetland for just one well.) Gravel is mined from open pits along floodplains, river deltas, and riverbanks; gravel mines covered the entire flood-plain of the Put River. The FWS estimated that over 60-million cubic yards of gravel have been mined, enough to cover Rhode Island with a 1-in (2.5-cm) layer of gravel.
The Arctic is arid, getting a mere 3-12 in (8-30 cm) of precipitation per year. Oil exploitation is water-intensive: each year 27 billion gallons of water are used for oil extraction; a single well requires 1.5 million gallons for drilling and another 360,000 gallons for "camp" use. Winter roads are "paved" with 6-in (15-cm) thick ice: one mile of road requires 1-1.5 million gallons of water for "paving," ice helipads need 2-3.6 million gallons; one airstrip gets 8 million gallons of water for ice-paving.
Between 1991 and 1997, 25 billion gallons of toxic pollutants were discharged into surface waters of the North Slope. Saline water (estimated at 16.4 million gallons) from the Prudhoe Bay is drawn into wells, contaminating freshwater resources.
Oil and other contaminant spills are a chronic problem: there are about 400 spills a year of various toxic substances onto the surface; between 1984 and 1993, there were 1,955 crude oil spills (376,321 gallons), 2,390 diesel spills (464,856 gallons), 977 gasoline spills (13,382 gallons), and 1,360 hydraulic fluid spills (77,301 gallons). From 1996 to 2000, more than 1.3 million gallons of oil (crude, diesel) were spilled. In 2000 alone, 18,000 gallons of drilling mud spilled at a BP facility, 9,000 gallons of crude gushed from a ruptured pipeline, destroying a wetland, 92,000 gallons of a salt water/crude oil mixture covered the tundra near a Phillips Petroleum site.
As of 1990, more than 4 million gallons of crude, gasoline, diesel, hydraulic fluid, acids, corrosives, heavy metals, lead, and other toxic chemicals had been spilled on the North Slope. Oil companies admit that they are unable to control or to clean up spills, citing the inclement Arctic weather. Their "spill drills," or clean-up tests, fail repeatedly.
Before 1988, about 6 billion gallons of drilling wastes were dumped into 450 unlined reserve pits. After mixing with snow and freezing, during spring melt, the wastewater flows over the tundra as toxic runoff and accumulates in wetlands and ponds. Lawsuits have forced oil companies to abandon surface pits. Today, the waste is injected under the permafrost. To date, less than half the surface reservoirs have been cleaned up. In March 2001, more than 5,000 gallons of drilling waste spilled onto the tundra from a waste injection facility.
"Should energy resources in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge be developed." Science in Dispute. . Encyclopedia.com. 20 Apr. 2019 <https://www.encyclopedia.com>. | 2019-04-23T00:12:09 | https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/science-magazines/should-energy-resources-arctic-national-wildlife-refuge-be-developed |
0.580965 | Russia's Conservative Modernization: A Mission Impossible?
Summary: The Kremlin’s new strategy of “conservative modernization,” which emphasizes economic diversification and strengthening of the rule of law, cannot initiate any significant change, since the obstacles to modernization are endemic to the system itself.
Vladimir Putin and Dmitri Medvedev's conservative modernization campaign represents a marked departure from the politics of the previous decade. Russia's system no longer maintains a semblance of meritocracy and without radical reform, Russia's oil-dependent economy cannot hope to take its place among the modern great powers. Conservative modernization aims to, among other things, diversify Russia's economy, strengthen the rule of law, and broaden media freedoms without bringing political upheaval. It has the potential to spur Russia's growth, but at present, is merely a propaganda tool which serves to further the rent-seeking policies and nationalist goals of the Kremlin elite.
Conservatism is in vogue in Russia. At its most recent national convention in St. Petersburg in November 2009, Vladimir Putin's United Russia described itself again as a conservative party. Officially, it stands for the country's heritage and its values. These values were laid out in Dmitri Medvedev's first annual address as President to the Russian parliament in November 2008. Now, the conservatives' principal task, as both Putin and Medvedev told convention delegates in St. Petersburg, is to bring about Russia's modernization—without losing traditional values, or, more importantly, tampering with the country's political regime.1 The current buzz word is conservative modernization. The idea is that Russia's backwardness would be overcome in an evolutionary manner without destroying or dramatically weakening the state. It would also be based on Russia's core values: traditional family, a strong state, patriotism, "faith in Russia," and great-power independence.2 Can Putin, Medvedev, and the United Russia pull it off?
Conservative modernization is emerging as a hallmark of the Medvedev presidency. The official vision of modernization was described at length in Medvedev's "Go Russia!" article first posted on an independent Internet news site in mid-September.3 Even though he later complemented this vision with many—perhaps too many—details, which have diluted the original message,4 the idea of modernization has become the Leitmotif of the Kremlin's policy agenda.
True, the talk of modernization is still mostly talk, but its emergence is both significant and revealing. Just two years ago, the same voices were striking very different tones at the Kremlin. In early 2008, Putin's choice of Medvedev as successor was framed within the Kremlin's "2020 Strategy"5 as an official vision of Russia's economic and social transformation, which elaborated on the "Putin plan" and served both as an election manifesto for Medvedev and a symbol of continuity between the two presidents. The "Strategy" foresaw the rise of Russia, even though hardly anyone was ignorant of the very slim and uncertain foundation of Russia's growth, and of its glaring defects.
Now, overhaul is treated as an urgent task. The United Russia convention hall rings with phrases which one last heard in the days of perestroika, and with reference to the moribund Soviet system: "Tak zhit' nel'zya—One cannot go on living like this!" The intriguing thing is that the man driving the change—there is no doubt that Medvedev's initiative has the backing of Putin, the paramount leader—is the same person responsible for building the country's present political, economic, and social system. Of course, corruption was not born in Russia on Putin's watch; neither was strong dependency on energy and raw materials exports, but the rent-seeking bureaucracy that has virtually taken over the state is a phenomenon of the last decade.
The irony of the situation is that the major political project of today is designed to undo some of the salient features of the preceding presidency, which until very recently (cf. the "2020 Strategy") was considered a uniquely successful one. It is even more ironic that those who personify these distinctive features are the same people who are now vowing to undo them.
So what is it that Medvedev and Putin are hoping to achieve? Is this achievable? If not, is there a credible alternative to conservative modernization? If there is, what would be the drivers of change, and who would be its agents? And, finally, should modernization fail, what could be the future of Russia? These are the principal questions dealt with in this article.
Let us start with the definition. What passes for conservatism—draping itself in navy blue, the distinct color of Russian conservatism, and seeking a place next to Germany's Christian Democrats and to the People's Party in the European parliament—is the ideology (a thin veneer) and practice (tons of it) of the people who rule and own Russia—and own it because they rule it. Their conservatism is sincere in the most literal sense: these people have achieved their goals and are now seeking to consolidate and perpetuate their gains. Where most elite values can be best measured in dollars (or euros), conservation of the existing system is a most pragmatic ideology.
Russia's post-imperial nationalists seek to appropriate Russian patriotism through continued reliance on the still immense emotional resource of the WWII experience (the Great Patriotic War, to the Russian people), through pandering to national pride in the genuine achievements of the Soviet era, such as space exploration or the cultural revolution, but also through pointing fingers at Russia's historical enemies, such as the Poles.8 Anti-Americanism has become the mainstay of conservative discourse on global affairs. At Putin's initiative, historians writing school textbooks have been encouraged to give a "positive" view of Russian history which had been "tarnished" by liberal critics in the late 1980s and 1990s.
So much for heritage. Values are more difficult to come by. Of the non-material ones, loyalty to a group, clan, corporation, and to the boss top the list. Loyalty in exchange for protection and the "us vs. them" approach to the wider world are the guiding operating principles of those who wield power and call themselves conservatives. Some of them are practicing Orthodox Christians, but most observe the church rituals, candle in hand, especially on holy days.
Politics was reduced to political technology. Based on their victory in the parliamentary-presidential election cycle of 1999–2000, Putin and his allies managed to form a more solid political machine than the Kremlin had in the Yeltsin era. "Unity" and "All Russia," the two wings of the political elite that clashed bitterly in the 1999 parliamentary elections, were combined into a "United Russia" bloc, then a party, which led to a degree of consolidation of the ruling bureaucracy. Giving the "party of power" a generally conservative orientation symbolized the emphasis on stability, which was popular after a decade and a half of turmoil in the country, which started with Gorbachev's perestroika.
Conservatism has been useful in helping the authorities fight their two main domestic political adversaries: communists and liberals. It is virtually forgotten by now, but the 2003 Duma election marked the end of the Communist party as a major force in Russian domestic politics. The Communists, who used to poll a quarter of the popular vote, were the leading force in the parliament during the 1990s, and vociferously opposed President Yeltsin and his cabinets (although letting their budget bills pass rather than being dismissed alongside with the Duma), were simply routed by Putin and his allies, including Zhirinovsky. Ever since, they have been confined to the ghetto of a minority party, receiving between one-eighth and one-seventh of the popular vote.
Now, communism is officially disparaged as an ideology, October Revolution Day abolished as a holiday, and tsarist Russia is glorified and sometimes imitated. Lenin and his Bolsheviks are treated negatively—at best as misguided firebrands—while their White Russian enemies, such as General Denikin and Admiral Kolchak, are rehabilitated as genuine Russian patriots. The émigré anti-communist philosopher Ivan Ilyin has been adopted as a major intellectual source of conservative thinking. Alexander Solzhenitsyn's "GULAG Archipelago" has been made required reading in high school, but official attitudes toward Stalin remain ambivalent. On the one hand, his repressions are seen as criminal excesses; on the other hand, he remains a statesman and a victorious war leader.
Communists have been caged, and liberals decimated. It was also in 2003 that neither of the two liberal and democratic parties, the Union of Right Forces and Yabloko, managed to get into parliament. That spelled the end of an era when liberals and democrats were part of the Russian political mainstream. From then on, they have been clearly driven to the margins of Russian political life.
Unlike the communists, the liberals were less dangerous to the Kremlin because of their own political appeal, than as a partner of some formidable political challenger. In the late 1980s, it was the liberals' alliance with the populist Yeltsin that demolished the Soviet regime and swept away Gorbachev. In the early 2000s, a similar figure seemed to be emerging in Mikhail Khodorkovsky who, the Kremlin suspected, was scheming to take over power. In 2003, the Khodorkovsky challenge was put down by Putin and his power base, the YUKOS oil company, broken up and nationalized. Even before the Khodorkovsky case, the Kremlin had moved resolutely to establish control over the electronic media, wrestling major liberal-leaning TV stations from two other oligarchs, Berezovsky and Gusinsky.
The Kremlin triumphed. Its victory was complete in political, economic, and ideological spheres. Communism was derided as a demon of the twentieth century; liberalism, as a holdover from the nineteenth. Conservatism, by contrast, looked like a serious force well designed for the beginning of the twenty-first century. It helped that at the time many of the leading nations around the world were led by conservatives: George W. Bush in the United States, Angela Merkel in Germany, Jacques Chirac, and then Nicolas Sarkozy in France, Silvio Berlusconi in Italy, the LDP in Japan and—one might add—the CCP in China. In the eyes of the Kremlin, what brings them all together is close ties to the business communities in their countries, and thus a link to real power; a strong preference for law and order at home, and Realpolitik abroad; and a certain elite disdain for those not endowed with wealth and power. In a word, conservatism, seen from the seat of the Russian government, is a rich man's ideology. The Kremlin fancied itself in good company, even if many others did not necessarily include the Russian leaders in their own company.
This did not bother the Kremlin very much. Again in 2003, Goldman Sachs published its famous BRIC report9 which put Russia on a trajectory of a steep and inexorable rise to the upper echelons of the world's economic powers: indeed, Russia was supposed to overtake all European economies and become the world's number five, behind the United States and the Asian giants. Most strikingly, the projections of the report were not made conditional on any set of specific reforms. The report must have given Putin and his colleagues a shot in the arm.
Risks remained, however. Domestically the Kremlin had to be vigilant. In early 2005, both the communists and the liberals suddenly appeared to present real risks to the triumphant Kremlin leadership. Had they tried harder, the communists could have certainly exploited the pensioners' widespread discontent over mishandling of a social benefits reform. As for the liberals, they emerged in the Kremlin's mind—in the wake of the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine—as a "fifth column" of the United States, plotting "regime change" in Russia.
Offense was the best form of defense. Russian conservatives had to be not only vigilant, but militant. The Kremlin, while continuing to give its support to United Russia, set about forming reserve or satellite parties on the left ("A Just Russia") and the right ("The Right Cause"). In a parallel move, it encouraged the formation of three "clubs" within United Russia, on the right, the left, and the center. It also reached out to the youth by buying into young nationalist groups ("Nashi") and sanctioning formation of United Russia's own youth wings ("The Young Guard"). These had to be used in street battles with the government's enemies, or just critics. The general idea was to fight off the new challenges and to further stabilize the existing politico-economic system.
This was not to be. In the fall of 2008, the economic crisis demolished the old certainty. Even though the worst has been avoided so far (no major strikes or other social upheavals, no split within the tandem or the ruling group in general, no pressure from the outside), it dawned on the Russian leadership that a simple return to the oil-driven growth of 2003–2008 was not to be expected. Even if the prices did rebound again, Russia, and by extension its political system, would remain exceedingly vulnerable to their volatility in the future. Since other countries were obviously using the crisis to improve their economies and finances, and to reach new technological levels, Russia's refusal to do the same would impair its global standing and thus present a challenge to the system from the outside. But how can one manage modernization and conservation at the same time?
The crisis called for a new approach. Economic and social reformism that Putin had proclaimed at the beginning of his first term, but then shelved amid the oil bonanza, has been rediscovered. Medvedev set goals of ending the Russian economy's dependence on raw materials exports, reining in corruption, and securing independence for the judiciary while broadening media freedoms. Medvedev's "Go Russia!" piece is not a revolutionary manifesto, much less one designed to attack Putin or tarnish his legacy to please the opposition. Yet, on the face of it, this is a plan to re-energize the country while avoiding political upheaval.
The young President sounds a bit idealistic when he denounces paternalism. From Putin's more seasoned perspective, the government is the only genuine modernizer. It has the political power, controls much property, and, unlike its would-be detractors, would have no interest in "using modernization for political purposes" because it already has all it wants. Politics, the Kremlin is convinced, is generally wasteful11 unless carefully manipulated. To illustrate the point, Russian TV likes to refer to post-Orange Ukraine, with its constant bickering in and outside the Rada, which often paralyzes decision making. With virtually the entire Russian elite marshaled around "the tandem," the government is the only engine to pull the country ahead.
This was good, but not good enough. By the late 2000s, there came a realization that while the Putin majority was an indispensable electoral resource, guaranteeing the overall stability of the regime by providing it with the genuine consent of the governed, its main advantage—the public's passivity and abdication from active public life—was also its principal deficiency in terms of the modernization agenda: the Putin majority was sterile. It was one thing to ignore the opposition intelligentsia ("old liberals") in the early 2000s; by the end of the decade, ignoring the best and brightest of the IT generation was less affordable.
"Two nations" was conservative nineteenth century British statesman—and later Prime Minister—Benjamen Disraeli's comment on contemporary class-divided British society. There may have been something of the concept of "two nations" behind Medvedev's gambit. According to some Kremlinfriendly political technologists,12 Russia is divided into a massive, but passive majority dependent on the state, but critical for the survival of the government, and a minority of active and self-reliant people, some intensely patriotic or even nationalistic, but most with a global outlook. Putin the paternalist had long captured the former group, thus ensuring the stability of the system; Medvedev the modernizer now needed to make a pitch for the latter one to move the country forward.
Medvedev was explicit. In his famous article he made it clear that he stands for comprehensive modernization, including in the political realm. He was not readily believed, but many people became curious. In the annual address to parliament, he seemed to backtrack somewhat. Yet, the whole thing is more than public relations or mere imitation, as some critics suggest.14 The Russian leaders are obviously inspired by the example of East Asian countries. Japan, as noted above, has been de facto a one-party state throughout most of its post-WWII history. The "rise of the Asian tigers" (South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, Singapore) happened on the watch of the conservative governments even in those countries which later turned democratic. Officially communist and clearly authoritarian, China and Vietnam are surging ahead. The issue is, can a strong one-party rule that does not allow political competition lead to a technological and societal breakthrough in Russia as it apparently did in Asia?
Putin and Medvedev realize they are dealing with more than just an economy that needs modernization. Their vision is a Russia that not only has a diverse and innovative economy, but also a society that is made productive and stable by the prominence of the middle classes, inspired by the traditional values of mainstream Orthodoxy and other religions, and even a polity built on multi-party competition in the continental European-style, or a two-party system, as in the U.S. or the UK. They also want Russia as a great power: a magnet rather than a master in its own neighborhood, a co-equal of the leading centers such as the EU, China, and the United States, and a member of the "collective global leadership."
This vision may be tempting, but it cannot be achieved in a conservative way because the obstacles to the goals it sets are endemic to the system over which Putin and Medvedev preside. Corruption is not an evil; it is the organizing principle. The business-bureaucracy nexus cannot be wished away; it can only be broken. Indivisible power cannot be separated into branches by simply appealing to the Constitution, which mandates this separation. Conservatism will only imitate change and compromise the vision. Revolutionary change, of course, is not the answer: Putin and Medvedev are correct regarding this question. What is needed is an effort which will not undermine the state, but replace the current politico-economic system: radical modernization.
The drivers of change are a legion: Russia is basically open to the world. International comparisons are poignant, and international competition is real. Should its modernization effort fail, Russia may not hold together in one piece: the best and the brightest would leave, and the more successful regions may secede from those regarded as drags. At the very least, the notion of Russia as a great power would finally be history, and the country would lay by the wayside of globalization.
The crucial question is about the agent of change. In the Asian countries mentioned above, there were leaders bold enough to initiate change. They were also able to ensure discipline within the elite, who became their associates. Looking to the top leader as the top reformer has a long tradition in Russia. From Peter I to Alexander II to Gorbachev, reforms were always coming in a top-down fashion, spearheaded by an enlightened despot. When Russia's rulers were not great reformers themselves, they, like Yeltsin, provided vital backing to the actual reformers. But all the Russian rulers cited above were essentially liberal reformers.
Not this time. Putin's predecessor as a conservative reformer was Peter Stolypin. The ruthless anti-revolutionary and pro-monarchy prime minister famously called, one hundred years ago, for "twenty years of peace and quiet" that would transform Russia. One can only guess what Russia might have looked like by 1930 had Stolypin not been assassinated in 1911 and had the tsar avoided being dragged into WWI three years later, which eventually led to the Bolshevik takeover. Putin, too, is calling for two decades of mildly authoritarian rule (he assumed power in 2000 and his "strategy" runs to 2020) and promises a modernized Russia at the end. The problem is, corruption in Russia has never been such a systemic factor as now. Modernization would seek to do away with it; conservation would seek to perpetuate it: the result would be a gridlock!
This is a tall order. Even a ruler as tough as Putin—provided he is willing—may find it hard to break that gridlock by disciplining the elites and to turn them into willing and active participants in the modernization drive. China's political system is much more authoritarian, but it is meritocratic. Russia's is based on rent distribution. Of course, Russia has a number of well-trained and enlightened bureaucrats wishing to do good for the country, but the general bureaucratic environment is determined by kickbacks and other forms of official corruption. No "vertical of power" is capable of making the elites put the national interest above their own—and certainly not in the situation where the top of the vertical has to rely on the loyalty of the lower end, bought at the price of licenses to steal.
Business is minding its own business. Normally, the business community would be the natural driver of modernization and a partner of the enlightened leadership and a patriotic bureaucracy. Russia's business elites, however, have not been noted for particular courage vis-à-vis the authorities, whether tsarist or post-communist. A century ago, this passivity contributed to the Bolshevik coup; more recently, the YUKOS lesson has been learned only too well. Big and, to a degree, medium-sized business has bought into the system and mastered competition in "administrative resources" (i.e., official corruption). As such, it feels comfortable and abhors change. Breaking the power-and-property nexus is a sine qua non for liberating Russia's entrepreneurship and innovation.
The middle classes are not there—yet. Until now, the Russian middle classes have been focused on improving their own material circumstances and thus are not yet plausible agents for change. Post-Communist Russia has demonstrated the triumph of the private over the public in a most astonishing and pervasive manner. Middle classes here are essentially consumers, not citizens or entrepreneurs. Seen from that angle, today's Russia is not a nation: there is no res publica. It is also a country without a golden age to look back to. Conservative spokesmen are right: ironically, the Russians have never had it "so good" in terms of affluence, but also of personal freedom. However, unless the middle classes develop a public interest and start comparing Russia not to its past, but also to its neighbors, they will not become a driver for a higher quality of life.
The crisis has not produced an upheaval. As discussed, the current economic crisis, which many thought would bring pressure from below to bear on the Russian leadership, has so far failed to do that. The tandem is standing tall, its popularity virtually unaffected. Liberal activists who saw a ray of hope in the protests of car importers in the Far East or the disgruntled factory workers near St. Petersburg have been confounded: protests come in ripples, not in waves. It is only if the crisis is used to put the Russian economy on a new material foundation that its impact on the country's development will be positive.
Can outside pressure help, as some liberals hope? Gorbachev's concessions, after all, were rooted in the growing financial difficulties the Soviet Union faced in the late 1980s.15 Serious Western pressure on Russia and its leaders would certainly have an impact, but hardly to the liberals' liking. The underside of a hypothetical "confrontation of choice," in which the United States would actually apply pressure on the Russian leaders to make them change their domestic and international behavior in accordance with the values and principles espoused by Americans, would be so huge in terms of U.S. national security as to make it virtually unthinkable.
So, what could work? At the very top, a major driver could be the geopolitical factor, which drove Russia's modernizations of the past—both liberal and illiberal. Peter the Great, Alexander II, and Stalin all feared that a backward Russia would be too weak to stand up to its rivals. The key difference, of course, is that in the age of globalization the challenge Russia is facing is predominantly a non-military one. As such, it requires openness and private initiative, the opposite to state-run mobilization. Differences over these issues, and over the specific interests that would be affected by policy choices, would bring back genuine debate within the elite and the opening of the political system. Business would be relieved from its vow to keep out of politics. The public space, non-existent today, would re-emerge with people starting to care about issues, not only their narrow interests. At the middle classes level, a tax reform away from the flat low tax which is being increasingly talked about would probably create an interest about how public money is spent, and thus a real demand for accountability.16 A more austere financial environment can end the situation of "no taxation and no representation."
There may be several other drivers. The oil price, in a comfortable range for now, may drop and hit Russia again. A man-made disaster may provoke mass discontent. Successful transformation of a neighboring state, (e.g., Ukraine) may lead to the question: why can we not do better? One thing is clear, however. Giving priority to system conservation will stifle the modernization effort. A failure to modernize would speed up the already advanced process of Russia's steady decline and marginalization, and potentially lead to its break-up. The situation is dire. In principle, oil and gas money plus clean water, fresh air, and transit routes may sustain the elite for decades, and even leave something to the declining population. This, however, does not have to be Russia's future. As Medvedev and Putin tinker with conservative change, a combination of conflicts of interest and leadership ambitions, patriotism and national pride, business common sense, and a popular feeling of justice and revulsion against the reigning cynicism and license economy may start working for a more modern Russia.
2. Dmitry Medvedev, Address to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, November 5, 2008, Grand Kremlin Palace, Moscow.
3. Dmitry Medvedev, Go Russia! http://eng.kremlin.ru/speeches/2009/09/10/1534_type104017_221527.shtml.
4. Dmitry Medvedev, Address to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, November 5, 2008, Grand Kremlin Palace, Moscow.
5. Vladimir Putin, Speech at Expanded Meeting of the State Council on Russia's Development Strategy through to 2020, February 8, 2008, The Kremlin, Moscow.
6. The Basis of the Social Concept, http://www.mospat.ru/en/documents/social-concepts/.
7. Address by President Vladimir Put, September 4, 2004, The Kremlin, Moscow. Nichego u nih ne vyidet, Rossiiskaya gazeta, November 22, 2007 (#4525).
8. Name of Russia, results http://www.nameofrussia.ru/rating.html, November 4-National Unity Day website http://4november.ru/index.html.
9. Goldman Sachs, "Dreaming with BRICs: The Path to 2050."
10. Alexey Kudrin. Speeches at St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, June 7, 2008.
11. Boris Gryzlov izbran spikerom Gosdumy chetvertogo sozyva, December 29, 2003.
12. Peredacha vlasti. Rossia 2.0, Vedomosti # 198 (2468), October 20, 2010.
13. Fundamental'lnaya nauka: Pochemu my utekli. Vedomosti # 186 (2456), October 2, 2009.
14. Dmitry Medvedev, Go Russia! http://eng.kremlin.ru/speeches/2009/09/10/1534_type104017_221527.shtml. Dmitry Medvedev, Address to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, November 12, 2009, The Kremlin, Moscow.
15. Yegor Gaidar, Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia, (ROSSPEN, 2007).
16. Nikita Belykh. Mestnoe samoupravlenie: den'gi pod nogami, Vedomosti #223 (2493), November 25, 2009.
Copyright © 2010 The Johns Hopkins University Press. This article first appeared in The SAIS Review of International Affairs, Volume 30, Number 1, Winter-Spring 2010, pages 27-37. Reprinted with permission by The Johns Hopkins University Press. | 2019-04-26T02:01:00 | https://carnegie.ru/publications/?fa=41108 |
0.998128 | DaVaris Daniels is back practising with the Stampeders.
Finally, the Calgary Stampeders are getting some reinforcements back.
After the better part of six weeks spent integrating new receivers into their lineup, the Stampeders had a familiar face back on the practice field Thursday morning when DaVaris Daniels re-joined his teammates.
Slowly but surely the Stamps aerial attack has begun to find its feet during the last couple of weeks as guys like Chris Matthews and Bakari Grant have started figuring out the offence and rookie Markeith Ambles has come into his own.
The addition of a guy like Daniels, though, could provide a huge boost as the Stamps start their preparation for the West Final next Sunday against either the Saskatchewan Roughriders or Winnipeg Blue Bombers.
Daniels broke his collarbone during his team’s Week 14 matchup against the Tiger-Cats in Hamilton and the injury interrupted a solid season for the third-year pro.
In 12 games, Daniels had 50 catches for 747 yards and seven touchdowns, but perhaps most importantly, he’d begun stepping up in a big way as his fellow receivers had one-by-one gone down with season-ending injuries.
Daniels had 116 receiving yards in each of his two previous games prior to the injury, and had five touchdowns in the four games prior to the broken collarbone.
He was a pivotal part of the Stamps offence, and has developed a trust with quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell that few of the other receivers currently on the active roster have built.
For a Stamps team that was riding a three-game losing skid heading into last weekend’s season finale against the B.C. Lions, Daniels is exactly the sort of player they need back in the lineup – and that’s something he’s been working on practically since the day he got hurt.
Daniels can play both in the slotback position and at wide receiver, and said he isn’t sure where he’ll be asked to line up if – and it remains a big ‘if’ – the Stamps coaches decide he’s good to go for the West Final.
Eric Rogers practised on Thursday as well after missing the win against the Lions, and that means the Stamps are probably going to have options when they host the Riders or Bombers.
That’s not something they could say a couple weeks ago.
The Stampeders defence led the CFL in just about every single statistical category, but didn’t see a single player get nominated for an end-of-season individual award other than quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell.
Inexplicably, that includes Tre Roberson, who was overlooked for the West Division’s Most Outstanding Rookie nomination in place of Jordan Williams-Lambert.
They also only had three all-stars nominated on the defensive side of the ball – Micah Johnson, Alex Singleton and Ciante Evans.
That’s a little strange, but the Stampeders refused to complain on Thursday.
The Stampeders are obviously going to be watching Sunday’s West semi-final pretty closely to figure out anything they can about their potential opponents.
Do not expect anyone to say who they’d prefer to play, though.
When he was asked on Thursday, Dickenson mostly just made a joke before admitting he’d rather the game not be a blow out.
The Stampeders have played both the Bombers and Riders recently, losing to both in October. If that’s an advantage, though, they’re not sure they see it. | 2019-04-26T11:53:33 | https://torontosun.com/sports/football/cfl/calgary-stampeders/stamps-notes-davaris-daniels-is-back/wcm/1ca574a4-71c4-4800-a03a-9f7bc305e2d2 |
0.998871 | His parents were both secular Jews.
Esther and Richard Joel, Miriam and Sheldon Adelson, Bret Stephens, Shmuley and Debbie Boteach. Photo: Omar Flores.
In a Thursday op-ed for the establishment New York Times, supposed conservative Bret Stephens called for the full on repeal of the Second Amendment in the wake of the largest mass shooting in American history.
Stephens, who is also paid by MSNBC to appear on television to discredit actual conservatives, started out his piece by claiming that he “never understood the conservative fetish for the Second Amendment,” a clue that perhaps he never really was a conservative in the first place.
From a personal-safety standpoint, more guns means less safety. The F.B.I. counted a total of 268 “justifiable homicides” by private citizens involving firearms in 2015; that is, felons killed in the course of committing a felony. Yet that same year, there were 489 “unintentional firearms deaths” in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Between 77 and 141 of those killed were children.
From a national-security standpoint, the Amendment’s suggestion that a “well-regulated militia” is “necessary to the security of a free State,” is quaint. The Minutemen that will deter Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un are based in missile silos in Minot, N.D., not farmhouses in Lexington, Mass.
From a personal liberty standpoint, the idea that an armed citizenry is the ultimate check on the ambitions and encroachments of government power is curious. The Whiskey Rebellion of the 1790s, the New York draft riots of 1863, the coal miners’ rebellion of 1921, the Brink’s robbery of 1981 — does any serious conservative think of these as great moments in Second Amendment activism?
This is clearly not the opinion of an actual conservative but rather someone working for the establishment who on one hand continually claim they only want “common sense” gun reform while on the other calling for the wholesale repeal of the right to own firearms by private citizens.
Stephens then lists reasons he believes that liberals continue to lose the gun control battle, essentially arguing that the supposed facts that the left puts out are actually lies but instead of fighting against them we should aim for a loftier goal of ending the Second Amendment altogether.
Apparently Stephens believes his readers are complete morons.
Consider this logic. He wants to literally get rid of the Constitutional protection of owning a firearm while claiming they should never be outlawed? That is a stunningly perfect example of liberal logic if I have ever seen one.
Make no mistake, gun grabbers on both sides of the aisle are lining up in yet another attempt at restricting and or outright banning private gun ownership in America. This New York Times op-ed is just the latest example in a long list of admissions by the gun control left that this has never been about “common sense” reform but rather has always been about restricting Americans from owning weapons themselves.
This article (minus the “anti-Semitism from the editor) originally appeared on The Daily Sheeple.
Sacrifice: What Would You Die For?
BTW when I point out how the Jews constantly rebelled against the Romans, one of the apologists for jews explained it to me as (paraphrased): that was all in the past. I’m talking about now, today the Christians and Muslims are the danger.
It must be demonstrated that the Jews have NEVER changed, that everything that has occurred up until now is a continuation of thousands of years of planning.
That photo reminds me. I’ve always found it odd, but not really surprising, there’s an inordinate amount of people (supposedly on our side) bitching about Soros yet NEVER mention Adelson. In fact, this is the gauge I use to determine if someone is a subversive. It’s pretty damn accurate.
Their anti-Muslim hysteria would be a lot more believable if they weren’t pushing for them to come to White countries en masse. Obviously they aren’t that concerned about any threat posed by “radical Islam”.
The only reason to read any Ministry of Truth publications is to guage what direction big brother is trying to take things. Obviously no truth is to be found in anything the MoT puts out. | 2019-04-23T16:18:39 | http://www.renegadetribune.com/conservative-new-york-times-columnist-calls-repealing-second-amendment/ |
0.999754 | Summary: Peter contacts his mother, demanding answers and the safety of Elena.
It's snowing outside and while the sun is up, it hasn't started to warm yet. Peter stands outside, punching numbers into a payphone from a pre-paid calling card bought at the gas station he stands outside. It's early in the morning than it is where he's calling, cause he just happens to be a couple states away, wrapped in a scarf and coat, trying to stay warm against the cold. Best way to avoid quick Company response? Call from the middle of somewhere very far away at a public phone. Or that's what spy movies have taught him is a good idea. Hopefully she'll answer a call from a public phone.
Angela Petrelli, meanwhile, is alone in her office, save for her sentient shadow: the Haitian, who sits at a small, ornate desk off to the side in an antique chair. The woman herself is walking the room. Gentle, distant music plays from somewhere decidedly indistinct; Paganini - Cantabile on violin. The calm eye of the storm while, outside, things rage.
The cell phone. A modern necessity, these days, when one is running a Company with a capital C. Alas. The small black phone, sitting on her imposing desk amidst a myriad of important documents, lamps, pens, and books, gives a simple ring and draws Angela toward it. The number garners a frown. She exchanges a suspicious glance with the Haitian before bringing the phone to her ear. "This is Angela Petrelli," she answers, her tone curt, business-like, and above all, expectant. Who are you and what do you want?
There's some wind in the background, but it seems too quiet to be a city. No horns honking, no ambient street noise, just an occasional sound of tires going by, as if a small unfrequented highway is nearby. "Mom," Peter says into the phone, voice soft with obvious strain and tension.
A current of tension runs through Angela the moment the identity of the person on the phone is confirmed. His voice, after all, is quite familiar. But tension does not equate nervousness, no, not for Angela Petrelli. She turns to face the Haitian, letting it be known by the hardening of her features and the pointed look in her eye who is on the line. "Peter," she says simply — tightly. "I've been expecting your call."
"Figured you would be— you didn't even have them clean up after themselves in her apartment," Peter says, a hint of anger beginning to seep through his voice. He pauses, actually seeming to pull the phone away for a moment as he takes a deep breath. It's pretty obvious he's trying hard to remain calm, even with all the tension still there when he speaks again. "Is know she wasn't hurt in her apartment— but is she okay?"
Angela allows Peter his silence, lets him take his time. In her office, she strolls from her desk to a nearby wall adjacent many shelves of file boxes. But this wall, in particular, holds something else: another form of data. An arrangement of four screens. "She's fine," she answers with a reassuring mother's tone, holding her head high as she regards the top right screen: Elena, in the cell miles away. "And she'll continue to be fine if you do what's right. Turn yourself in, Peter. Be responsible."
"So you can kill me, like you sent Gabriel to do?" Peter asks, the tension coming through again, heightening. Relieved as he may be that she's all right, he has other things on his mind that are making that relief less than it should be. "You already know I'm not going to turn myself in. And by taking Elena away— you just proved everything I've been saying your Company does to people they say they're trying to help."
"This goes beyond your ideals of right and wrong. We have to what's necessary," Angela is quick to answer, her voice becoming heated — yet there's a distance there even so, a detached manner, as if she's not talking to her own son.
"Taking Elena was not necessary," Peter says, voice thickening with force. "She was the one who had the best chance of helping me and you took her." He takes in a slow breath before he can continue again, but the strain is still very audible. "If anything else happens to her, you'll be the one responsible for what happens when I find out about it."
"As I said, she's safe, and she'll continue to be so — but you're not going to see her again unless you turn yourself in. She knows about your transgressions, by the way, and wants you to do what's right." Angela turns her back on the video monitors slowly, crossing one arm over the buttons of her suit's jacket. "I don't want to be in this situation any more than you do, Peter. But you're going down a very dark path. As the head of this Company, it's my responsibility to prevent you from spinning out of control. As your mother … I never wanted this for you."
"I understand what's going on now," Peter says, taking in a tight breath that can be heard over the phone. "What happened with Mr. Nakamura was an accident. It shouldn't have happened. I tried to fix it and…" He trails off, a different kind of teeth gritting this time, as if he's afraid to say much more. "I'll believe she wants me to turn myself in when she tells me herself. What exactly did you want for me, mom?"
"I'd let her speak to you, but she's not nearby," Angela replies with a tone of apology — barely there, but if you listen hard enough… "You can't fix it," she snaps. "Not yet. It's not a switch you can turn off and on. More people will get hurt if you don't come to the Company."
"You don't believe I can do this without your Company," Peter says, anger in his voice, the words almost spat out. "You don't believe I'm strong enough— is that why you told Gabriel to kill me, mom? Is that why you offered him freedom — for himself and Elle — in exchange for my life?"
"Yes." One stinging affirmation. Angela holds the phone in silence for a moment; she strides across her office, standing across the smaller desk opposite the Haitian, touching her fingers to a stack of leatherbound books. "I wanted to test him," she states matter-of-factly. "Even if you fight Gabriel's ability, there will still be blood and it will still be on your hands. You've taken the wrong fork in the road and there's no going back, but there's another way to go from here."
It does sting. So much that there's silence on the other end. A few cars drive by that can be heard more vividly, as if he's taken the phone away from his ear. When she hears his breath again, enough time has passed from the last words that she might suspect Peter's left the phone hanging off the hook. Not the case, luckily. "And what exactly is the other path, mom?"
Angela's response is silence, broken after a few moments by her sudden voice. "Things are going to get worse before they get better. I can't tell you, Peter, not now. You don't trust me and I don't honestly blame you. For now, the best thing you can do is cooperate. No one has to get hurt."
"No one else has to get hurt, you mean," Peter says, voice thickened. "How about this… I have a few demands. I want to know what your Company has planned for me if I turn myself in. And what they'll do to Elena. As much details as you can give. Get the paper work together, as much as you can, put it in a binder on top of my coffee table and leave it there. Maybe after some of my questions are answered, I'll be more inclined to listen to you."
"I can tell you right now that you don't need it," says Peter's mother, flippant, confident, and ever-so-slight impatient with this line of conversation. "But I'll indulge your stubbornness, I know there's no bargaining with a Petrelli when they're on a streak. Very well."
"You just know the only way you'll ever get me is if I come in myself," Peter says in a soft tone, looking at the numbers on the phone. "You know things will get even worse than they already are if you do anything more to hurt Elena." There's a small pause. "I'll call you tomorrow. You can let me know if the file is there or not." And with that, he doesn't give her much time to respond when he hangs up the phone. Stubborn Petrellis. | 2019-04-21T16:29:34 | http://heroesmush.wikidot.com/stubborn-petrellis |
0.999999 | The Selective High Schools Mathematics Test vary from test to test, but generally lasts for : 40 minutes.
Selective High Schools Mathematics Test contains 40 questions.
All tests use multiple-choice questions. You are given questions and you have to choose the best answer that you think is correct.
Calculators, rulers protractors are not allowed.
The test involves 4 major components: Numbers, Data, Algebra, Measurement and Geometry . To these 4 major strands you have to add Working Mathematically in problem solving.
Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication and Division. | 2019-04-26T12:03:57 | http://www.tutorinmaths.com.au/selective-schools.html |
0.996672 | In the summer of 2014, governments across tropical Asia readied for a looming weather and political emergency---potential droughts, crop failures, and food shortages that could stress developing world nations and challenge their ability to respond. According to weather observatories, the chance of an El Niño event occurring before the year's end was high. The central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean was warming up, a predictive precursor of El Niño, a temporary increase in global temperature that at its worst can generate a worldwide cascade of catastrophic changes to weather patterns.
It was a false alarm. But the following year El Niño materialized with a vengeance. Boosted by the earlier warmth in the Pacific, the 2015--16 El Niño turned out to be one of the strongest events on record. Intense droughts affected almost 40 million people in southern Africa; flooding swept South American countries, displacing 150,000 people; and coral reefs experienced the most significant bleaching event scientists have ever seen, with nearly all corals in some parts of the Great Barrier Reef dying due to the high temperatures.
In space, a new NASA satellite, launched on July 2nd, 2014, allowed scientists to study the El Niño's rise and fall, and its effects on the global carbon cycle in greater detail than ever before. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) was equipped with sensitive instruments able to measure atmospheric CO concentrations 10 times more accurately than previous methods.
Overall, the 2015--16 El Niño led to the fastest rise in atmospheric CO on record, and helped push CO concentrations above 400 ppm for a full year for the first time in modern history. The OCO-2 findings went deeper. They revealed that the sudden surge in CO was greatly enhanced by emissions coming from the tropical forests of South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia---all responding to the El Niño by temporarily shifting from carbon sink to source. However, there were striking regional differences in each forest's response.
And with tropical forests storing almost 250 billion tons of carbon, their fate has major implications for the Earth's atmosphere---and life on Earth.
"This research shows that El Niño is truly a global phenomenon, impacting all the world's tropical regions and beyond," said William Laurance, of James Cook University--Australia, and a Mongabay board member. The "region-specific effects on forests and ecosystems" were intriguing, he said, "reflecting nuances of the global climate that we hadn't appreciated previously."
Using this data to make large-scale inferences about the global carbon cycle was hailed as "an important milestone," by Emanuel Gloor, of the University of Leeds. It gets "us closer to near-real-time monitoring of ecosystem function and carbon cycle dynamics," said Trevor Keenan, of the University of California--Berkeley.
Liu's team found that, during the 2015--16 El Niño, extreme drought meant trees stopped absorbing CO in South America. In Southeast Asia, forest fires raged in extremely dry conditions, quickly releasing stored carbon. And in tropical Africa, high temperatures resulted in increased ecosystem respiration.
Together, the three regions emitted 2.5 gigatons more carbon during the 2015--16 El Niño than during the opposing phase of the cycle, known as La Niña, in 2011, with emissions split roughly evenly between the three forest regions. That's comparable to "about a third of all the emissions from fossil fuel burning," commented OCO-2 science team member Scott Denning when the research was published---but it wasn't the scale of the emissions that surprised Liu.
"I was more surprised by the complexity of the Earth's carbon-climate system," she said.
The 2015--16 El Niño brought record-breaking temperatures and the third major drought in a decade to the Amazon, affecting an area 20 percent greater than ever previously observed.
At first, drought causes trees to absorb less CO as they slow their photosynthesis rate, or stop photosynthesizing completely, to conserve water. But if conditions become extremely dry, hydraulic failure may occur: air bubbles form in the trees' xylem---the channels that carry water from the roots to the canopy, resulting in tree death.
Many species of tree are already near their limit of drought tolerance due to climate change, according to a 2012 study. Even a small shift to drier conditions could lead to hydraulic failure for 70 percent of 226 forest species, the research found. "Rapid forest collapse as a result of drought could convert the world's tropical forests from CO sink to source during this century," the scientists reported.
Climate models predict that Amazon droughts will become more common in the future, said Juan Carlos Jiménez-Muñoz, of the University of Valencia, which could result in an intensifying positive feedback loop. "In simple terms, more warming leads to more severe droughts, and maybe to more extreme El Niño events, which in turn leads to more severe droughts linked to El Niño conditions."
Paulo Brando, of the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts, said that some resilience to droughts is to be expected, because the Amazon rainforest "has adapted to periodic droughts over millions of years." But when multiple droughts hit in quick succession---as seen in 2005 and 2010, and again with the intense 2015--16 event---there is limited time for recovery, Jiménez-Muñoz said. This reduces forest resilience, increasing the chances of degradation "with implications for carbon uptake."
"A major 'unknown' is whether Amazon forests are resilient enough to cope with the intensification of drought regimes," that's predicted to accompany future climate and land use change, explained Brando. A better understanding of the recovery capacity of forests is needed in order to know "how much is too much" for Amazon forests, he said.
The Amazon also saw a peak in fire activity during the 2015--16 event, Brando added. "A major concern is that, with mega-droughts becoming more common in the near future, fires could burn forested areas that are currently too moist to carry a fire." Wildfires dump the stored carbon in trees all at once into the atmosphere.
By late 2015, parts of Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand were without clear sight of the sun, as smoke clouded the sky. Indonesia's forest fire crisis engulfed the region in a toxic haze which was later shown to have affected 69 million people; over 100,000 likely died as a result.
"What makes Indonesia special compared with other tropical forest regions is that a substantial part of the tropical forest is on peatland, and that the human factor is much more important," van der Werf explained. "If you look at a map with forest loss over the past decades, there is hardly anything untouched."
Peatlands are especially carbon-rich, accumulating organic material over thousands of years. Draining the peatlands "lowers the water table so the land can be worked on for agriculture, but it also means the peat starts to decompose," van der Werf said. "During an El Niño, dry conditions lead to even lower water tables, which makes both the forests and peat vulnerable to fire, and humans take advantage of these drought conditions to burn the forests," in order to clear more croplands, especially for oil palm production.
"The drought-fire mechanism in peatland depends on the level of the groundwater table in relation to the surface, that maintains the water content of the upper peat layer," explained Muh Taufik of Wageningen University.
If the groundwater level becomes depleted, this is known as hydrological drought. Taufik's research has shown that, in years of hydrological drought, fires burned 10 times the area of forest as in non-drought years. Taufik also found that there has been a general drying trend in Borneo's groundwater over the last century, making the forests ever more susceptible to fire.
Lan Qie, of Imperial College London, highlights a second major threat to Borneo's forests: fragmentation. This is a "persistent and progressive threat," said Qie, whose research has shown that forest fragment edges, adjacent to fields or oil palm plantations, are significant sources of carbon emissions because trees are more likely to die if they are near an edge.
But even where intact forests remain, extreme El Niño events can knock those forests off balance. Qie's study also found that the 1997--98 El Niño, which was more pronounced in the region than the 2015--16 event, caused so much tree mortality due to drought that Borneo's intact forests tipped from carbon sink to source.
The good news: These forests recovered quickly, suggesting that intact forests have a degree of resilience to even strong droughts, Qie said. Southeast Asia's Dipterocarp forests have evolved "under a climate regime including El Niño-driven supra-annual droughts," she added, with periodic, synchronized mass-seeding being an adaptation to these conditions. But, as has been seen in the Amazon, "it is possible that the resilience of the Borneo carbon sink may also be challenged in the future," Qie concluded.
Again, it is a matter of "how much is too much," but no one currently knows where the tipping point may be, beyond which climate stressed tropical forests won't be able to recover.
Until recently, Indonesia's peatlands were thought to be the largest tropical peatlands in the world. But in January of 2017, scientists published confirmation of a discovery: peat forests in the Congo basin covering 145,500 square kilometers (56,177 square miles) knocked Indonesia's peatlands into second place.
The OCO-2 research revealed that tropical African forests did not dry out during the 2015--16 El Niño event: instead, rainfall levels remained normal. But temperatures did rise, driving increased ecosystem respiration, which resulted in heightened CO emissions.
This lack of data is also a hindrance when looking ahead. "There are still many uncertainties as to how the climate will change across Central Africa in response to increased greenhouse gas emission," said Greta Dargie, who led the Congo peatland research, and there is "little consensus among the climate models for projections of precipitation patterns across the region."
The Congo peatlands "appear to be strongly dependent on rainfall for the maintenance of their water tables," said Dargie, of the University of St. Andrews. A reduction in rainfall, or an increase in evapotranspiration---the movement of water from the soil, up through a tree's trunk and leaves, into the atmosphere---which could occur if temperatures increase, "could lead to the peatlands becoming drier and therefore result in an increase in carbon dioxide emissions," she said. But more research is needed to fully understand these mechanisms.
The emissions from El Niño events also have a long-term cumulative effect: "global atmospheric CO levels have permanently ratchet[ed] up a notch as a result of the strong 2015--16 El Niño event," Liu explained.
But the magnitude of the most recent El Niño's carbon emissions may be smaller than one might expect, considering the event's near record intensity, said Gloor, which is some good news for forest resilience. "Interestingly, and maybe surprisingly, the global atmospheric concentration record does not show any signs that carbon release during the 2015--16 El Niño was anomalously large compared to other El Niño events in the past," once fossil fuel emissions are taken into account, he said.
"Thus, so far, tropical forests seem to be able to cope with the steadily increasing temperatures, even when further enhanced during El Niño phases," he concluded. However, "the very rapid increase in temperatures is unprecedented. My guess is that if [peak dry season] temperatures move towards 45-50 degrees Celsius, 113-122 degrees Fahrenheit then forests may not be able to cope."
The possibility of a looming tipping point---when the world's tropical forests cease to act as a sink, and become a permanent source of carbon---is an active area of research. "Some models project tropical forests will change from a sink to a source for carbon later in this century," said Keenan, although "there is large disagreement between model projections."
"Our satellite record isn't long enough yet to distinguish between" those varying model predictions, Liu explained. To get a better handle on if and when tipping points may occur, "we need a longer data record that is sensitive to changes of tropical forest carbon fluxes, such as that provided by OCO-2 type satellites, as well as field studies and experiments that can push tropical systems artificially into new conditions," she said.
Irrespective of the timing of any climate-induced tipping point, human activity changing the face of the world's tropical forests may ultimately prove to be more critical.
"Given that both fires and peat oxidation are so substantial, it is unlikely that the Indonesian forests as a whole are sinks," van der Werf concluded. In a drained peatland, "carbon goes out much faster than it went in."
For the Amazon, Ahlström anticipates that three factors will determine whether the forest will be resilient in the long-term: "future changes in rainfall; the ecosystems' ability to adapt to new, warmer, and more extreme climates that have no present analog; and deforestation."
In the meantime, more research is needed "in order to understand the likely future trajectory of the tropical carbon sink" and "directly inform policy" Keenan said. Liu agrees to the need for more tropical data, coupled with the right tools "to piece those data sets together into a complete picture" and "improve our understanding of how the Earth system works."
Laurance concludes, "clearly, we still have a lot to learn about Earth's climate, and how it affects life and ecosystems." The big unknowns: are dangerous climate and deforestation tipping points approaching faster than we can understand and respond to them? | 2019-04-19T23:16:25 | http://www.kleanindustries.com/s/environmental_market_industry_news.asp?ReportID=829560 |
0.997296 | Through a tweet, Acton stated that it was time to do away with Facebook, considering the latest revelations on how Cambridge Analytica was misusing data.
"It is time. #deletefacebook," he wrote.
Acton left Facebook in September 2017 and recently announced a $50 Million investment in secure messaging app Signal and joined the company's foundation.
Facebook has been under fire from the public and politicians in the United States and the United Kingdom over its data privacy practices.
The company is taking a financial hit too as reports indicate that it lost $50 Billion in market value this week.
Earlier this week, it also emerged that Cambridge Analytica allegedly had a hand in Kenya's 2017 election although members of Jubilee Party's top hierarchy denied the claims.
Murathe admitted that the party hired the company but only for branding purposes.
"They were basically branding and all that but not directly," he stated.
He, however, did not go into the details of how SCL did that and what impact it had in the 2017 polls.
According to statistics, by late last year, the number of active Facebook users in the world had surpassed the 2 billion mark.
As of 31, December 2017, the number of Facebook users in Kenya stood at 7 million. | 2019-04-25T18:49:48 | https://www.kenyans.co.ke/news/27991-whatsapp-co-founder-brian-acton-wants-facebook-users-delete-it |
0.998266 | PASADENA, Calif. -- A new image from NASA's Chandra and Spitzer space telescopes shows the dusty remains of a collapsed star. The dust is flying past and engulfing a nearby family of stars.
"Scientists think the stars in the image are part of a stellar cluster in which a supernova exploded," said Tea Temin of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass., who led the study. "The material ejected in the explosion is now blowing past these stars at high velocities."
It shows the Chandra X-ray Observatory data in blue, and data from the Spitzer Space Telescope in green (shorter wavelength) and red-yellow (longer). The white source near the center of the image is a dense, rapidly rotating neutron star, or pulsar, left behind after a core-collapse supernova explosion. The pulsar generates a wind of high-energy particles -- seen in the Chandra data -- that expands into the surrounding environment, illuminating the material ejected in the supernova explosion.
The infrared shell that surrounds the pulsar wind is made up of gas and dust that condensed out of debris from the supernova. As the cold dust expands into the surroundings, it is heated and lit up by the stars in the cluster so that it is observable in infrared. The dust closest to the stars is the hottest and is seen glowing in yellow in the image. Some of the dust is also being heated by the expanding pulsar wind as it overtakes the material in the shell.
The unique environment into which this supernova exploded makes it possible for astronomers to observe the condensed dust from the supernova that is usually too cold to emit in infrared. Without the presence of the stellar cluster, it would not be possible to observe this dust until it becomes energized and heated by a shock wave from the supernova. However, the very action of such shock heating would destroy many of the smaller dust particles. In G54.1+0.3, astronomers are observing pristine dust before any such destruction.
G54.1+0.3 provides an exciting opportunity for astronomers to study the freshly formed supernova dust before it becomes altered and destroyed by shocks. The nature and quantity of dust produced in supernova explosions is a long-standing mystery, and G54.1+0.3 supplies an important piece to the puzzle.
The Spitzer observations were made before the telescope ran out of its coolant in May 2009 and began its "warm" mission. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages Spitzer for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. | 2019-04-21T18:56:08 | http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/news/1093-ssc2010-04-Ashes-to-Ashes-Dust-to-Dust-Chandra-Spitzer-Image |
0.999993 | Why should I cure my tobacco?
Curing tobacco is a means of removing any unpleasant smell that uncured tobacco has. You can smoke your tobacco without curing it if you don't mind the smell (not unlike herbal tobacco), but I'd advise against it. Curing tobacco doesn't take long and vastly improves the smell.
During my younger years, it was common practise of mine to pick up the ripened brown tobacco leaf that had fallen from the lower stem onto the ground, roll it into a cigarette and smoke it. Other allotment holders would sample the leaf with enjoyment. I don't know if it was the oudoor air, but no unpleasant smell spoilt the smoke.
I would further mention that one particular year I was late pulling up the stems after removing all the large leaf. It was after a frost had turned all the small leaf on the plant dark brown. I tried to see if this brown tobacco leaf could be smoked: it could, with a very strong cigar flavour for both Havana and Virginia. I have never followed this idea through, but how about one of you readers of this site giving it a try?
My next attempt at curing tobacco required a greenhouse. I calculated that it would require the whole of the British summer to cure the leaf. Because of this the curing took place the following summer after growing the crop. The principle was to suspend a platic sheet holding water near the top of the greenhouse. A small fan blew across the water, raising the humidity in the air. This system worked and is shown in my instructions, but I needed a system that would work much faster. I am impatient by nature and after months of growing I needed results and a smoke that wouldn't have heads turning whenever I lit up.
To cure your tobacco leaves, you'll need a tobacco curing chamber. You should avoid using wooden tobacco curing chambers as the smell of the wood will be absorbed into the tobacco. Further down this page I give full instructions for building your own portable tobacco curing chamber, just like the one in the picture above, that will cure 18 kilos (40 pounds) of tobacco leaves in just 4 weeks. This should cost you no more than about £50 / $75 using materials from boot sales or about £100 / $US150 using new materials and equipment. This chamber can be scaled up or down depending on the size of your tobacco crop.
Hundreds of years ago, tobacco was smoked in pipes or was ground into snuff to be rubbed into the gums. Tobacco curing was unheard of. Tobacco wasn't smoked as cigarettes until cheap paper became available. The tobacco smoked back then must have smelled because it hadn't been cured.
The first clues to curing tobacco came from the old sailing ships that brought tobacco to Europe from the West Indies. The ships were in at sea for several weeks with tobacco on board. They were also in port for two or three weeks while the tobacco was loaded and unloaded. The heat and humidity were high and together with the salt air caused a natural fermentation in the bails of tobacco. By the time the tobacco reached our shores it was partially cured. From this, many different techniques for curing tobacco have been developed.
The first stages in curing your tobacco leaves are the drying and colour curing of your tobacco to remove moisture and turn the leaf brown. Your tobacco leaves are about 90% moisture, so while each plant can give you 1 kilo (2 pounds) of tobacco leaves, the dried weight is only about 100 grams. Whilst drying, Virginia tobacco leaves will turn yellow and then brown. Green stemmed tobacco plants such as Havanna take longer to colour change and tend to go straight from green to brown.
Commercial tobacco companies put their tobacco leaves in large open-ended barns to allow the warm breeze to blow through and draw off the moisture. For the home grower, you can hang your tobacco leaves on canes or galvanised wire in a car port or other sheltered outdoor area. I normally hang my tobacco under overhead grapevines which shelter the tobacco leaves from the rain.
You can dry your tobacco indoors, but control the temperature carefully to avoid drying the tobacco too quickly. If you dry your tobacco too quickly, some of the green pigment may remain. The drying and colour curing of your tobacco is complete when the tobacco leaves have turned brown, and the mid-rib is bone dry and brittle.
There is no quick way to dry out your tobacco leaves. Ovens, microwaves and freezers do not really help and the best way to dry and colour cure your tobacco is to dry it naturally. You can speed up the process slightly by crushing the mid-rib, but be warned that the sap in the mid-rib is like an acid to the other tobacco leaves. If you crush the mid-rib, you must hang your tobacco up within a couple of hours.
Another way to speed up the drying and colour change process of your tobacco leaves is to stack them and cover them with a blanket or a rug to keep the heat in. The tobacco leaves will then sweat like compost, which speeds up the colour change. The pile needs turning daily, with the inner leaves moved to the outside. Damp leaves will need to be allowed to dry off before being put back into the pile. After about 5 days, the tobacco leaves can be hung out to dry as normal.
You could also lay the tobacco leaves out on the grass on a hot sunny day and they will dry within hours. Depending on the temperature, the humidity and the breeze, green leaves will turn yellow or yellow/brown, and yellow leaves will turn brown. You may be lucky enough to have green leaves turn completely brown. The main drawback to this method is that because the leaves are drying, they are losing their moisture. This makes them much lighter and one small gust of wind can carry your dried tobacco leaves away.
Over the many years that I've been growing tobacco, I've experimented with many different methods of curing tobacco. As a result of this experience, I can now provide you with instructions for building your own very cheap and very effective portable tobacco curing chamber. This will cure about 18 kilos (40 pounds) of tobacco leaves in as little as 4 weeks and should cost you no more than £100 / $US150 using new materials and equipment, or half that if you use second-hand materials and equipment.
The aim of curing tobacco is to sweat the obnoxious smell from the tobacco leaves. To make tobacco leaves sweat you need to create a warm and humid environment. My portable tobacco curing chamber is ideal for this.
For the sides of the tobacco curing chamber, I used sheets of 2-inch thick polystyrene. 3 sheets of 8ft x 4ft polystyrene will be enough to build a tobacco curing chamber measuring 1 metre square by 1 and a half metres high. This cost me about £29 (US$50) from my local hardware store. You can build a smaller curing chamber if you don't have much space, but you won't be able to cure as much tobacco.
To provide heat, I used an oil-filled electric heater. This ideally needs to run at a constant 130°f (54.5°C).You will find most oil-filled electric heaters will have thermostats set to cut out at much lower temperatures. You should be able to replace the thermostat on oil filled radiators with a clamp-on water heater thermostat. These cost about £12 (US$18) from your local hardware store. You can heat at lower temperatures, but your tobacco will take much longer to cure.
Moisture needs to be raised inside the tobacco curing chamber to keep the leaf flexible but not wet. A humidifier is ideal for this. Humidifiers are little more than water tanks with a fan to blow a fine mist of water into the air. Mine holds 6 litres of water and uses 5 litres every 24 hours.
Hold the base, sides and top of the curing chamber together with double sided carpet tape or other strong tapes. Cut an opening in one side to act as a door. Use tape as a hinge to keep the door closed.
Finally, drill a 2 inch hole at the base of the chamber to allow fresh air in and another hole near the top to allow the smell to escape. If you fit a length of hose from the top hole to outdoors then the smell can escape without affecting your home.
When the unpleasant smell has gone, your tobacco has cured and is ready to smoke, although leaving your tobacco to mature over the years will improve the tobacco flavour. The whole tobacco curing process should take about 4 weeks. The cost of running the curing chamber is minimal as the chamber is made from thick polystyrene which will retain heat. The thermostat on the heater inside the curing chamber will cut in and out only as required, so only minimal heat is required. Humidifiers cost very little to run. | 2019-04-24T22:09:25 | http://coffinails.com/curing_tobacco.html |
0.999973 | Article 6. Nature of the rules.
The stipulations that modify the rules of this Title to the detriment of the lessee or sublessee are null and void, except in cases where the rule itself expressly authorises it.
Article 7. Condition and effects vis-à-vis third parties of the rental of dwellings.
1. The rental of a dwelling shall not lose this condition even if the tenant does not have his permanent dwelling on the rented property, provided that it is inhabited by his spouse who is not legally or de facto separated, or by his dependent children.
2. In any case, in order for the leases entered into on urban properties to take effect against third parties who have registered their right, such leases must be registered in the Land Registry.
Article 8. Assignment of the contract and sublease.
1. The lease may not be assigned by the tenant without the written consent of the landlord. In the case of an assignment, the assignee is subrogated to the assignor’s position vis-à-vis the lessor.
2. The rented property may only be sublet partially and with the written consent of the landlord.
The sublease shall be governed by the provisions of this Title for the rental when the part of the sublet is used by the sublet for the purpose indicated in Article 2.1. If this condition is not met, it shall be governed by the agreement between the parties.
The subtenant’s right shall in any event terminate when the subtenant’s right is extinguished.
The price of the sublease may not exceed, in any case, that corresponding to the lease.
1. The duration of the lease will be freely agreed by the parties. If this is less than three years from the date of expiry of the contract, the contract must be extended for annual periods until the lease reaches a minimum duration of three years, unless the lessee indicates to the lessor, at least thirty days before the date of termination of the contract or any of the extensions, his wish not to renew it.
The period shall begin to run from the date of the contract or from the date on which the property is placed at the disposal of the tenant, whichever is the later. The tenant shall be responsible for proof of the date of making available.
2. Leases for which a term of one year has not been stipulated or for which the term is indeterminate shall be deemed to have been concluded for one year, without prejudice to the right of annual extension for the lessee, in the terms resulting from the preceding paragraph.
3. The mandatory extension of the contract shall not apply if, after the first year of the contract’s duration, the lessor informs the lessee that he needs the rented property in order to use it as permanent housing for himself or his first-degree relatives by blood or adoption or for his spouse in the event of a final judgment of separation, divorce or marriage annulment. The aforementioned notification must be made to the tenant at least two months prior to the date on which the dwelling will be needed and the tenant is obliged to hand over the leased property within this period if the parties do not reach a different agreement.
If three months after the termination of the contract or, where applicable, the actual eviction from the dwelling, the landlord or his or her relatives in the first degree of consanguinity or by adoption or his or her spouse, in the event of a final judgment of separation, divorce or marriage annulment, have not proceeded to occupy the dwelling, as the case may be, the tenant may choose, within a period of thirty days, between being reinstated in the use of the property and being able to return it to its original place of residence.
4. In the case of an unregistered property, the lease of a dwelling that the tenant has entered into in good faith with the person who appears to be the owner of the property on the basis of a state of affairs whose creation is attributable to the real owner shall also last for three years, without prejudice to the right of non-renewal referred to in paragraph 1 of this Article. If the lessor sells the rented property, the provisions of article 1.571 of the Civil Code shall apply. If it is defeated in court by the real owner, the provisions of the aforementioned article 1,571 of the Civil Code shall apply, in addition to the corresponding compensation for damages caused.
Article 10. Extension of the contract.
1. If on the expiry date of the contract, or of any of its extensions, after a period of at least three years, neither party has notified the other, at least thirty days before that date, of its wish not to renew it, the contract shall necessarily be extended for a further year.
2. Once the lease contract has been registered, the right of extension established in article 9, as well as the one-year extension referred to in the previous paragraph, shall be imposed in relation to third-party purchasers who meet the conditions of article 34 of the Mortgage Law.
3. To the extended contract, the legal and conventional regime to which it was subject will continue to apply.
Article 11. Withdrawal from the contract.
The lessee may withdraw from the rental contract after at least six months, provided that the lessor is notified at least thirty days in advance. The parties may agree in the contract that, in the event of withdrawal, the lessee must indemnify the lessor with an amount equivalent to one month’s rent in force for each year of the contract that remains to be fulfilled. Periods of time shorter than one year shall give rise to a proportionate share of the allowance.
Article 12. Withdrawal and expiration in case of marriage or cohabitation of the tenant.
1. If the lessee expresses his wish not to renew the contract or to withdraw from it, without the consent of the spouse living with the said lessee, the lease may be continued for the benefit of the said spouse.
2. For this purpose, the landlord may require the tenant’s spouse to indicate his or her willingness to do so.
Once the request has been made, the lease will expire if the spouse does not reply within fifteen days of the request. The spouse must pay the corresponding annuity until the end of the contract, if it has not already been paid.
3. If the tenant leaves the dwelling without express notice of withdrawal or non-renewal, the tenancy may be continued for the benefit of the spouse living with him or her, provided that within one month of such notice, the landlord receives written notice from the spouse of the tenant expressing his or her wish to become a tenant.
If the contract is terminated for lack of notice, the spouse will be obliged to pay the rent for that month.
4. The provisions of the previous sections shall also be applicable in favour of the person who has been living permanently with the tenant in a relationship of affectivity analogous to that of the spouse, regardless of their sexual orientation, during at least the two years prior to the withdrawal or abandonment, unless they had children in common, in which case mere cohabitation shall suffice.
Article 13. Resolution of the lessor’s right.
1. If, during the term of the contract, the lessor’s right is terminated by the exercise of a contractual right of withdrawal, the opening of a trustee’s replacement, the forced disposal resulting from a mortgage foreclosure or court order or the exercise of a right of option to purchase, the lease shall be extinguished.
In accordance with the provisions of the second paragraph of Article 7 and Article 14, exceptions are made for cases in which the leasing contract had been entered into the Land Registry prior to the rights determining the termination of the leased right. In this case, the lease will continue for the agreed period of time.
In the case of a lease on an unregistered property, the duration of the lease shall be that laid down in Article 9(4).
2. The leases granted by usufructuary, superficial and all those who have an analogous right of enjoyment over the property, shall be extinguished at the end of the lessor’s right, in addition to the other causes of extinction resulting from the provisions of this law.
Article 14. Disposal of the rented property.
1. The purchaser of a property registered in the Land Registry, leased as a dwelling in whole or in part, that meets the requirements of article 34 of the Mortgage Law, shall only be subrogated to the rights and obligations of the lessor if the lease is registered, in accordance with the provisions of articles 7 and 10 of this law, prior to the transfer of the property.
2. If the property is not registered in the Land Registry, the provisions of the first paragraph of article 1571 of the Civil Code shall apply. If the purchaser uses the right recognised by the aforementioned article, the lessee may demand that it be allowed to continue for three months, provided that the purchaser duly notifies him of its intention, during which time he must pay the rent and other amounts due to the purchaser. It may also require the seller to compensate it for any damage caused.
Article 15. Separation, divorce or annulment of the tenant’s marriage.
1. In cases of nullity of the marriage, legal separation or divorce of the tenant, the non-tenant spouse may continue to use the rented dwelling when it is attributed to him/her in accordance with the provisions of the applicable civil legislation. The spouse to whom the use of the rented property has been attributed on a permanent basis or in a period longer than the remaining term of the rental contract, shall become the holder of the contract.
2. The spouse’s willingness to continue using the dwelling must be communicated to the landlord within two months of notification of the corresponding court decision, together with a copy of the decision or of the part of the decision that affects the use of the dwelling.
Article 16. Death of the tenant.
a) The spouse of the tenant who lived with him/her at the time of death.
b) A person who has been living permanently with the tenant in a relationship of affectivity analogous to that of a spouse, regardless of sexual orientation, for at least two years prior to the date of death, unless they have children in common, in which case mere cohabitation shall suffice.
c) The descendants of the tenant who at the time of his death were subject to his parental authority or guardianship, or had habitually lived with him during the two preceding years.
(d) The ascendants of the tenant who habitually lived with him/her during the two years preceding his/her death.
e) The siblings of the tenant in whom the circumstance provided for in the previous paragraph is met.
f) Persons other than those mentioned in the previous letters who suffer a disability equal to or greater than 65 per cent, provided that they are related to the tenant up to the third degree of collateral and have lived with him/her during the two years prior to the death.
If none of these persons existed at the time of the tenant’s death, the lease will be terminated.
2. If there are several of the above-mentioned persons, in the absence of unanimous agreement as to which of them will be the beneficiary of the subrogation, the order of priority established in the preceding paragraph shall apply, except that the parents of seven hundred years old shall be preferred to the descendants. Among the descendants and among the ascendants, the one closest in grade shall have preference, and among the brothers, the one with a double bond shall have preference over the half-brother.
Cases of equality shall be decided in favour of the person with a disability of 65 per cent or more; in the absence of such a situation, in favour of the person with the greatest family responsibilities and, ultimately, in favour of the youngest descendant, the oldest ascendant or the youngest sibling.
3. The lease shall be terminated if, within three months of the tenant’s death, the lessor does not receive written notification of the fact of the death, with a death certificate, and of the identity of the subrogate, indicating his or her relationship with the deceased and offering, where applicable, a principle of proof that he or she meets the legal requirements for subrogation. If the termination occurs, all those who may succeed the tenant, except those who renounce their option by notifying the lessor in writing within the month following the death, shall be jointly and severally liable for the payment of the rent for those three months.
If the lessor receives in time and form several notices whose senders maintain their status as beneficiaries of the subrogation, the lessor may consider them jointly and severally liable for the obligations of the lessee, while maintaining their claim to subrogate.
4. In the case of leases with an initial term of more than three years, the parties may agree that there shall be no right of subrogation in the event of the death of the lessee, when the latter occurs after the first three years of the term of the lease, or that the lease shall be terminated after three years when the death occurs earlier.
Article 17. Determination of income.
1. The rent shall be as freely determined by the parties.
2. Unless otherwise agreed, the rent will be paid monthly and must be paid during the first seven days of the month. In no case may the lessor demand the advance payment of more than one month’s rent.
3. Payment shall be made at the place and by the procedure agreed by the parties or, failing that, in cash and in the rented dwelling.
4. The lessor is obliged to provide the lessee with a receipt for payment, unless it has been agreed that the payment will be made by means of procedures that demonstrate the effective fulfilment of the lessee’s payment obligation.
The receipt or supporting document that replaces it must contain separately the amounts paid for the different concepts of which the total payment is composed and, specifically, the income in force.
If the landlord fails to provide the receipt, all costs incurred by the tenant to prove payment shall be borne by the landlord.
5. In the lease contracts, the parties may freely agree that, for a specified period of time, the obligation to pay the rent may be replaced in whole or in part by a commitment by the tenant to renovate or rehabilitate the building in accordance with the agreed terms and conditions. At the end of the rental period, the tenant may in no case request additional compensation for the cost of the work carried out on the property. Failure by the lessee to carry out the works in accordance with the agreed terms and conditions may give rise to termination of the rental contract and the provisions of Article 23(2) shall apply.
Article 18. Updating of the rent.
1. During the term of the contract, the rent may only be reviewed by the landlord or tenant on the date on which the contract expires each year, in accordance with the terms agreed by the parties. In the absence of an express agreement, no revision of rents will be applied to the contracts.
In the event of an express agreement between the parties on any mechanism for reviewing monetary values that does not detail the index or reference methodology, the income shall be reviewed for each year by reference to the annual variation of the Competitiveness Guarantee Index at the date of each review, taking as the reference month for the review the month corresponding to the last index that was published on the date of the review of the contract.
2. The updated rent shall be payable by the lessee as of the month following that in which the interested party notifies the other party in writing, expressing the percentage of alteration applied and accompanied, if the lessee so requires, by the appropriate certification from the National Statistics Institute.
The notification made by note in the receipt of the previous monthly payment will be valid.
Article 19. Rent increase for improvements.
1. The performance by the lessor of improvement works after three years of the contract period shall entitle him, unless otherwise agreed, to increase the annual income by the amount resulting from applying to the capital invested in the improvement the legal interest rate of money at the time of completion of the works increased by three points, without exceeding the increase of twenty per cent of the income in force at that time.
For the calculation of the capital invested, the public subsidies obtained for the execution of the work must be deducted.
2. When the improvement affects several properties in a building under the horizontal property regime, the lessor must distribute the capital invested proportionally among all of them, applying, for this purpose, the participation quotas corresponding to each of them.
In the case of buildings that are not in the form of horizontal property, the capital invested shall be distributed proportionally among the properties affected by agreement between the lessor and the lessees. In the absence of an agreement, it shall be distributed proportionally according to the area of the leased property.
3. The rent increase will take place from the month following the month in which the lessor notifies the lessee in writing of the amount of the rent increase, detailing the calculations leading to its determination and providing copies of the documents from which the cost of the works carried out results.
Article 20. Individual service and overhead costs.
1. The parties may agree that the general expenses for the adequate maintenance of the property, its services, taxes, charges and responsibilities that are not susceptible of individualization and that correspond to the rented dwelling or its accessories, will be charged to the lessee.
In buildings under the horizontal property regime, these expenses will be those corresponding to the leased property according to its participation quota.
In buildings that are not in the form of horizontal property, such expenditure shall be that which has been allocated to the leased property on the basis of its area.
In order to be valid, this agreement must be in writing and must determine the annual amount of such expenses at the date of the contract. The agreement that refers to taxes will not affect the Administration.
3. Expenses for services provided by the leased property that are individualized by means of metering devices shall in any case be the responsibility of the lessee.
4. Payment of the expenses referred to in this Article shall be credited in the manner provided for in Article 17.4.
Article 21. Conservation of the home.
1. The lessor is obliged to carry out, without the right to raise the rent, all the repairs necessary to maintain the dwelling in the conditions of habitability to serve the agreed use, except when the deterioration whose repair is attributable to the lessee in accordance with the provisions of articles 1,563 and 1,564 of the Civil Code.
The obligation to repair is limited to the destruction of the dwelling for reasons not attributable to the landlord. To this end, the provisions of Article 28 shall apply.
2. If the execution of a conservation work cannot reasonably be deferred until the conclusion of the lease, the tenant shall be obliged to bear it, even if it is very inconvenient for him or her or during it he or she is deprived of part of the dwelling.
3. The lessee must inform the lessor, as soon as possible, of the need for the repairs referred to in paragraph 1 of this article, for which sole purpose he must provide the lessor with a direct verification, by himself or by the technicians designated by him, of the condition of the dwelling. At any time, and after notifying the lessor, he may make any urgent measures to avoid imminent damage or serious discomfort, and demand their immediate payment from the lessor.
4. Small repairs required by the wear and tear due to the ordinary use of the dwelling are the responsibility of the tenant.
1. The lessee, after giving prior written notice to the lessor, may carry out inside the dwelling any work or actions necessary to ensure that it can be used in a suitable manner and in accordance with the disability or age of over seventy years, both of the lessee himself and of his spouse, of the person with whom he or she lives permanently in a similar affective relationship, regardless of their sexual orientation, or of their relatives who live permanently with them, provided that they do not affect the common elements or services of the building or cause a reduction in their stability or security.
2. The tenant is obliged, at the end of the contract, to restore the dwelling to its previous state, if so required by the landlord.
Article 25. Right of first refusal.
1. In the event of the sale of the rented property, the lessee shall have the preferential right to purchase it, under the conditions set out in the following paragraphs.
2. The lessee may exercise a right of first refusal over the leased property within a period of thirty calendar days, starting from the following day when he is notified of the decision to sell the leased property, the price and other essential conditions of the transfer.
The effects of the notification provided for in the preceding paragraph shall expire one hundred and eighty calendar days after the notification.
3. In the case referred to in the previous section, the lessee may exercise the right of withdrawal, subject to the provisions of Article 1.518 of the Civil Code, when the notification has not been made or any of the requirements required have been omitted, as well as when the actual price of the sale is lower or the other essential conditions are less onerous. The right of withdrawal shall expire after thirty calendar days from the date following the notification which the purchaser must reliably make to the lessee of the essential conditions under which the sale was made, by delivering a copy of the deed or document in which it was executed.
4. The right of pre-emption or withdrawal of the tenant shall take precedence over any other similar right, except for the right of withdrawal granted to the co-owner of the dwelling or the conventional right entered in the Land Registry at the time of the conclusion of the rental contract.
5. In order to register in the Land Registry the title deeds for the sale of rented properties, it must be justified that, in their respective cases, the notifications provided for in the previous sections have taken place, with the requirements set out therein. When the property sold was not rented, in order for the purchase to be registered, the seller must declare it so in the deed, under penalty of falsehood in a public document.
6. Where the sale involves, in addition to the rented dwelling, other objects rented as accessories to the dwelling by the same lessor as referred to in Article 3, the lessee may not exercise preferential purchasing rights in the dwelling alone.
7. There shall be no right of first refusal or right of first refusal when the rented property is sold together with the remaining dwellings or premises owned by the lessor which form part of the same property or when all the flats and premises of the property are sold jointly by different owners to the same purchaser.
If there is only one dwelling in the property, the tenant shall have the right of pre-emption and withdrawal provided for in this article.
8. Notwithstanding the provisions of the foregoing paragraphs, the parties may agree to waive the lessee’s right to preferential acquisition.
In the cases in which such resignation has been agreed, the lessor must notify the lessee of his intention to sell the property at least thirty days prior to the date of conclusion of the purchase contract.
1. The lessee shall be obliged to bear the cost of the lessor carrying out any improvement work the performance of which cannot reasonably be deferred until the end of the lease.
2. A lessor intending to carry out such works must give the lessee at least three months’ written notice of the nature, commencement, duration and foreseeable cost of the work. Within one month of such notification, the lessee may withdraw from the contract, unless the works do not or do not have an irrelevant effect on the rented dwelling. The lease shall expire within two months of the date of withdrawal, during which time work may not commence.
3. The lessee who supports the works shall have the right to a reduction of the rent in proportion to the part of the dwelling of which he is deprived as a result, as well as the compensation of the expenses that the works oblige him to carry out.
1. The lessee may not, without the express written consent of the lessor, carry out work modifying the configuration of the dwelling or the accessories referred to in Article 2(2). Under no circumstances may the tenant carry out works that cause a decrease in the stability or security of the dwelling.
2. Without prejudice to the right to terminate the contract, the lessor who has not authorised the performance of the works may, at the conclusion of the contract, require the lessee to restore the things to their former state or to retain the modification made, without the lessee being entitled to claim any compensation.
If, notwithstanding the provisions of paragraph 1 of this article, the lessee has carried out work which has led to a reduction in the stability of the building or in the safety of the dwelling or its accessories, the lessor may immediately require the lessee to restore the property to its former state.
Article 26. Habitability of the dwelling.
When the performance in the rented dwelling of conservation works or works agreed by a competent authority makes it uninhabitable, the tenant shall have the option to suspend the contract or to withdraw from it, without any compensation.
The suspension of the contract shall, until the completion of the works, entail the suspension of the term of the contract and the suspension of the obligation to pay the rent.
Article 27. Failure to comply with obligations.
1. Failure by either party to comply with the obligations resulting from the contract shall entitle the party who has fulfilled its obligations to demand performance of the obligation or to promote the termination of the contract in accordance with the provisions of article 1.124 of the Civil Code.
a) Failure to pay the rent or, as the case may be, any of the amounts for which payment has been assumed or corresponds to the tenant.
c) Inconsistent subletting or assignment.
d) The performance of damages caused intentionally on the property or works not consented to by the lessor when the lessor’s consent is necessary.
(e) When annoying, unhealthy, noxious, dangerous or illegal activities take place in the home.
(f) When the dwelling ceases to be primarily intended to satisfy the permanent housing need of the tenant or the person who actually occupied it in accordance with article 7.
a) Failure by the lessor to carry out the repairs referred to in Article 21.
b) The de facto or de jure disturbance by the landlord in the use of the dwelling.
4. In the case of urban property leases registered in the Land Registry, if it has been stipulated in the contract that the lease will be terminated due to non-payment of rent and that in this case the property must be returned immediately to the lessor, the resolution will take place as of right once the lessor has requested the tenant to pay or comply with the judicial or notary’s request at the domicile designated for this purpose in the registration, and the latter has not replied to the request within the following ten working days, or has replied by accepting the resolution as of right, all of this through the same judge or notary who made the request.
The title contributed to the registration procedure, together with the copy of the certificate of formal notice, from which the notification is derived and which has not been contested by the person requested to pay or which has been contested by accepting the resolution as of right, shall be sufficient title for the cancellation of the lease in the Land Registry.
If there are subsequent charges that fall on the lease, it will also be necessary for its cancellation to justify the notification to the owners of the same, at the address that operates in the Register, and to prove the entry in their favor before the same notary, of the deposit provided by the tenant.
Article 28. Termination of the lease.
(b) For the final declaration of ruin agreed by the competent authority. | 2019-04-20T18:33:36 | https://propertylawyerpalma.tonimarques.com/2018/04/01/2/ |
0.994445 | Maloney, who is simultaneously running for reelection in the 18th district and for attorney general in New York, has been credited with starting the "Tampon Lobby" on Capitol Hill and has recently taken up the banner for "menstrual equity." Google turns up 69,600 results for "Sean Maloney" and "tampons."
Maloney's tampon crusade began last month, when he accused House Republicans of an "archaic" and "sexist policy" of not forcing taxpayers to pay for the tampons of Hill staffers.
"My office recently got smacked down by the powers that be in the House because we had the temerity to offer feminine hygiene products for the women who work for me," he said in a video for Now This News. "By the way, a majority of my staff is female and we have a million people come through our office, and we provide things like paper towels, or tissues, or first aid, like Band-Aids, supplies that people need. And those are paid for by an office budget. Pretty normal stuff."
Maloney said it is "crazy" that taxpayers do not already pay for his staffers' tampons, which he considers an "office supply."
"But we were informed a couple days ago that we couldn't buy tampons, and we thought that was crazy," he said. "But I was supposed to write a $37.16 check to reimburse the House for those purchases because they were considered inappropriate."
Maloney took issue with an email from the House Finance Office, which informed him that he needed to pay for the tampons himself, since tampons are "not an office supply, but a personal care item."
"I think the key sentence here is, ‘Tampons are not an office supply, but a personal care item,'" Maloney said.
Maloney has suggested women working in the House cannot have "respect and dignity" unless taxpayers pay for their tampons.
"By the way, all sorts of members spend their office budgets on all kinds of crazy things, and you may have heard some of the scandals around that," Maloney said. "But the one thing you cannot do, apparently, in the House of Representatives is treat women with the same respect and dignity as you treat other employees or other visitors."
He then wrote a letter to the House Administration Committee, saying, "it's simply outrageous" that taxpayers do not already pay for House staff tampons.
The Washington Post called Maloney's issue the week's "strangest controversy" on Capitol Hill. After publicizing his tampon fight, Maloney said boxes of tampons came flooding into his office.
"I want to make sure every office on the Hill is welcoming to female staff and visitors—and thanks to the generosity of the American people—they will be," Maloney said in a press release earlier this month announcing his office now has 500 boxes of tampons.
Maloney said taxpayer-subsidized tampons are " about women's rights in the workplace" and a way to bring America "into the 21st century."
TMZ released a video of Maloney with his office tampons on Wednesday, as he credited the celebrity gossip website with getting the message out that taxpayers must pay for Hill staffers' tampons.
Maloney told TMZ that the House not reimbursing staff members' tampon costs sounded "like something out of the 1950s."
Maloney complained that he did not get his $37 back, and said "menstrual equity" is a "real issue."
"People wrote notes, they gave us stories about what they've experienced in their own lives, and now we went from having none of these products available to folks, to the point where we're now providing them to offices all over Capitol Hill because of the generosity of people who are watching who understood that menstrual equity is a real issue for folks in many areas of the country, in many walks of life and we should take seriously women's issues the same way we take men's," he told TMZ.
Democrats have been increasingly wading into personal hygiene matters, as liberals sent female Senate Democrats "pee-proof" underwear to stop Supreme Court justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
The liberal feminist website Refinery 29 has written about the "plight in the name of menstrual equity," and activists who demand "our laws must guarantee menstrual hygiene protocols and products that are safe and available for all who need them."
The New York Times declared this week, "Periods are Political."
"The average woman has her period for 2,535 days of her life," the Times piece begins. "That's nearly seven years' time of making sure you have a pad or tampon, finding a makeshift solution if you don't, and managing pain and discomfort."
The Times made sure to note that not just women menstruate, and mentioned Maloney's crusade as an example of "menstrual equity" as a new political pet issue.
"And lately, women—and transgender and nonbinary people who menstruate—are talking about it in public more than ever before," the Times reported. "Globally, advocates are pushing for recognition of a woman's right to manage her period with dignity. And in the United States, activists are bringing the concept of ‘menstrual equity' into the public debate."
"‘Menstrual equity' refers to equal access to hygiene products, but also to education about reproductive health," the Times explained. "And it's the focus of a variety of new laws and policies to provide menstrual products in prisons, shelters, schools and even on Capitol Hill."
Maloney is running against three women in the race to replace disgraced Democrat Eric Schneiderman. The former attorney general resigned as New York attorney general following numerous allegations of sexual assault and abuse.
This entry was posted in Issues and tagged Democrats, Government Spending. Bookmark the permalink. | 2019-04-21T18:54:45 | https://freebeacon.com/issues/male-house-democrat-wants-taxpayer-funded-tampons-office/ |
0.999999 | When A.S. received a letter from the insurance company that held the policy on her house, she was concerned. In the first paragraph of the letter, it indicated that the company wanted to clarify how it handled late payments.
Rarely had A.S. received anything in the mail from her insurance company other than an invoice for the cost of that year's insurance. But this letter raised her concern that perhaps she had missed making an insurance payment since there was nothing in the letter to indicate whether her account was paid in full. There was a note that customers could shift to an automatic payment system where funds could be withdrawn directly from their checking accounts.
A.S. had never had any interest in setting up an automatic payment plan. She liked writing a check after the invoice arrived in the mail. But she feared that perhaps a payment had not been received, or, even worse, that she had neglected to pay on time even when she thought she had.
After calling her insurance broker, A.S. was told that she indeed was not late with a payment and "never had been." The broker pointed out that in the letter it indicated that the lateness is not an issue for most customers. But because of the regulatory nature of the industry, it felt obligated to send out a letter to all customers.
"They've been my insurance broker for more than 20 years," writes A.S. "They have all of my records on file. They knew I wasn't late with my payment and that I'd never been late with a payment. Shouldn't they have included a notice along with the letter that indicated I had paid on time? Even if they feel obligated to send a letter like this, isn't that the ethical thing to do to avoid alarming customers who always have paid on time?"
While A.S. has every right to be annoyed with her insurance company for not anticipating that its letter about the change-in-late-payment policy might confuse or alarm some of its customers, the company didn't cross any ethical line.
By meeting its obligation to send the letter, the letter writers did what they felt was needed to keep customers abreast of a policy change. The insurance company did what it believes the regulatory agencies governing it required it to do.
But by not including a note with each letter to indicate which policy holders were late and which weren't, the insurance company lost an opportunity to engage in good customer service. If longtime clients such as A.S. had received a statement of their accounts along with the policy change letter, any unnecessary concern could have been alleviated and the number of phone calls to the agency would have been cut down significantly.
Certainly, the right thing for any financial service company is to comply with the regulations that govern it. But there are times when companies, if they want to solidify their relationships with new or longtime customers, should take the extra step of doing what's in their customers' best interests. This should have been one of those times.
If I won't eat a slice, should I offer one to you?
Lil, a reader who prefers I not use her real name, works for an organization that allows its employees to accept small gifts from clients or families of clients, as long as they do not exceed $25 in value. Often these include baked goods or other homemade treats.
Last December, Lil received banana bread that was baked by one of her client's mothers. Lil knew the family well and writes that she was concerned about the "cleanliness" of the kitchen in which the banana bread was baked. Rather than decline the gift because of her concern, Lil decided to accept it and graciously thanked the grandparent.
Lil writes that she hesitated about whether to dispose of the banana bread by throwing it away. It seemed "a waste of food" to her to do so.
Lil decided to leave the banana bread out in her workplace's common area for any of her colleagues who wanted to have a slice.
"None of them knew the family, so they had no reason to be concerned about cleanliness," Lil writes.
Within an hour, the banana bread was consumed.
All these months later, Lil wonders if she did the right thing by accepting a gift she knew she found suspect. She also is nagged by the thought that perhaps it wasn't entirely fair to her colleagues to offer them the banana bread when she had concerns about its origins.
"Should I have handled this differently?" Lil wonders.
Yes. Yes, Lil should have handled this differently.
There was nothing wrong with being gracious about accepting the gift when she knew she would never eat here. Many of us have received gifts over the years, food or other, where we knew on impact there was no way we would use it, display it, or consume it. But there's no need to embarrass a gift giver by refusing their gift or questioning their taste. Expressing thanks for a gift is appropriate and takes little effort.
Where Lil went wrong was to foist the suspect banana bread onto her colleagues without disclosing her concerns about its "cleanliness." If Lil was concerned and refused to eat it because it might have been prepared in an unclean setting, it was not OK to risk her colleagues' health by putting it out for their consumption -- and, given the history of shared food in her workplace, she was confident it would be consumed.
That no one got sick after eating the banana bread is a good thing, but doesn't make right the wrongness of Lil's choice. The right thing would have been for Lil to accept the gift and then, if she believed the banana bread was not fit for consumption to dispose of it when the gift giver was not present to witness its burial.
If Lil was unwilling to tell her colleagues about her concern about the cleanliness of the gift giver's kitchen because it might color their perception of the banana bread and its giver, then she should have taken that as a sign to toss it rather than share it. No one should put the health of colleagues at risk, even if the perception of that risk proves to be ill-founded. | 2019-04-19T03:04:58 | http://jeffreyseglin.blogspot.com/2016/09/ |
0.999996 | A contemporary developers guide to building things on Wordpress 4.x and not having it be terrible.
TL:DR; Start here. Install this thing and connect it to your account on here. Buy a license of this (it's worth it). Read some docs for this and start building. Wordpress 5 and Gutenberg will probably break all of this except the environments.
When I first started working as a developer, Wordpress was the prevalent platform for pretty much any project. Ten years later and ... Wordpress is still pretty much most of the internet. In general, Wordpress will be my last choice of a platform. I prefer to use static sites, headless CMS's, or almost anything else at all.
But Nik, I hear you cry, did you not just wrap up your tenure as the Technical Director at Fuzzco — a design studio that relies almost exclusively on Wordpress for their websites? Yes, indeed I did. Fuzzco is rare among studios in that we manage and host projects for our clients, and often have maintenance riders that can last for years. This means that in the course of a year, not only did we build a half dozen new projects on Wordpress, but we maintained and triaged issues on over 100 legacy projects.
Very quickly I realized I had one option: make Wordpress not terrible.
If you're comfortable with Wordpress, you might find some fightin' words here. What's my problem with Wordpress and what am I trying to solve for? My biggest issue with Wordpress development as I've encountered it in the past is a lack of clarity around the requirements of the entire system. What does the project need to run in an environment, and why? How do we move from a repository to a local environment and start working on a codebase? How does that codebase get deployed to a server?
I've seen Wordpress systems that are frozen in time at 2006 — FTP in to the server and edit a CSS file on production, or "deploy" your theme by uploading a .zip. I'm interested in how we can lower the cognitive overhead for getting a Wordpress project up and running, and join in with pre-processing, compiling, containerizing, testing, and all the really excellent things that we've come to expect from our web stacks over the past few years.
Another issue I have with Wordpress is it's commitment to auto-magical routes and rendering templates with obscure and complicated .php patterns that basically concatenate strings. I'm interested in explicit routes — either hard-coded or parameterized — and separating concerns between logic and template.
A lot of this boils down to a disagreement between what Wordpress thinks a site should be and what I end up using it for. Wordpress as designed distinguishes between your "site" and your "theme". Your "site" is the content in the database, the options you've saved, and the menus and widgets you've installed. It expects "themes" to be presentations of this real website stuff. This model of websites perpetuates that "design" is something that can be applied over a website, and is a kind of dressing up of the real things. This is the inverse, and perhaps a corollary to, the concept that designing a website is just deciding what it looks like. It's an idea that lives within the system of silos between design and development, and that we can "design" a website in Photoshop or Sketch and hand off the comps to a developer to build it. Which is how a lot of Wordpress projects are built.
In short, I disagree with this concept of websites. My position is that designing a website is both how it looks, how it works, and how the data and structures are composed. Taking this approach, controlling the object models, the information architectures, and the templates are all of equal importance. In my line of work, a Wordpress theme can not be applied to any other site than the one that it was designed for, and a site where the structure was designed for the theme.
There are still a number of really good, compelling reasons to use Wordpress as a platform for building websites. It's got a robust built-in commenting system with user accounts. It's really good for things that are shaped like blogs. It's got a huge, well-maintained ecosystem of plugins. It's free. And since it's most of the Internet, clients are really, really comfortable with it.
There are a couple of reasons not to use Wordpress right now. Mostly these center around the impending release of Wordpress 5.0 and the Gutenberg editor, which has a number of concerns around plugin compatibility and accessibility for authors.
But that's okay, since we've decided to use Wordpress 4.x. As we all know, picking a version of Wordpress and then never upgrading it is one of the time honored traditions of Wordpress development.
Let's start at the end.
We're going to be hosting our production Wordpress site on a Digital Ocean droplet — the smallest one they have — for $5 per month. Depending on the project lifecycle, we can set up more droplets for a staging server and a development server. At Fuzzco we used dev servers to show sites to the internal team, staging servers to show sites to the client, and production servers to show sites to the public.
I don't know about you, but I personally don't super love managing my virtual private servers manually. In order to deploy our codebases to Digital Ocean we'll use the phenomenal tool Nanobox. Nanobox is an operations layer that handles containerizing applications and deploying them agnostically to a cloud service provider. Nanobox will deploy our code from the command line to any one of our droplets.
Nanobox will also containerize and run an application in a virtual machine locally. This means we'll use it run our development environment, and ensure that all of our environments are identical. No more worrying about PHP versions and extensions and plugins. No more running MAMP or MySQL or Apache or whatever on your local machine before anything works. Nanobox defines the server in a .yaml file, and it will always be the same. It also handles all the syncing between our local disk and our virtual environment.
So now that we know how our code is going from local to production, we can think for a second about how it's going to do that, and how we're going to manage our data.
The database on the production server is "canonical". That means that the database the client interacts with the one true database, and we must treat it with care and attention. We'll never change that database ourselves, and we'll move that database downstream from production to staging to dev to local in order to develop against our real data. Importantly, we don't want to migrate the database manually either. It's a little expensive but using Migrate DB Pro is an incredible, incredible resource for this part. I guess one could also look into alternatives for personal projects.
The canonical codebase lives in version control, and moves the other direction. From Github to local to dev to staging to production, amen. The only things we need to track in version control are what makes our project unique. Practically, this means we need to track our theme and our plugins. Wordpress core files are not special, and we should not fill our repositories with them.
At this point it's worth getting started with Nanobox. I back the containers with VirtualBox, since at the time I started this it was slightly more stable than Docker on MacOS High Sierra. Once Nanobox & Virtualbox/Docker is installed, set up Digital Ocean as your provider. Once that's done, we have everything we need to get started!
The crux of the project is our boxfile.yml configuration file. This is what Nanobox uses to create our containers. It looks like this!
As noted above, we'll be serving our entire installation of Wordpress in the /wp directory. This will hold all the Wordpress core files and compiled theme code, none of of which we need or want in version control. As such, make sure this is listed alongside node_modules in the .gitignore.
Since we've decided that we don't want to track these files, but we need them to actually have a project, we can write a helper script to take care of the gap between those two ideas.
⮑ 📄 check-install.sh # Installs Wordpress core files.
⮑ 📄 init.sh # Runs our setup helper.
⮑ 📄 prestart.sh # Checks if we need to init.
⮑ 📄 setup.js # Cute lil' CLI helper.
The first thing we'll do is write a script that checks if /wp exists. If it doesn't, throw an error that we need to initialize the project since we don't have any of the core files we need.
Not much! This just runs our setup CLI helper. You might not need all this, but since I built this system to help a team of developers work on many many projects you're gonna get it anyway.
// some nice deps for making a CLI.
// run our check-install script.
This will open a CLI asking for the name of the project, run the check-install.sh script, create the hostfile line for our local DNS at <project-name>.local, and log the next action that you need to take to finish installing Wordpress.
Very similar to prestart! The biggest difference is the bit where we use degit to clone Nanobox's official Wordpress repo into our untracked /wp directory. Degit will only get the head files, and none of the git history. Nor will it keep the .git file, basically making this a super clean, super fast way to download a directory of files. It's great. The last thing this does is wipe out any themes or plugins that we don't want our need in the core files and syncs out own tracked directories to the correct places in the Wordpress core file structure.
Now would be a time to talk about plugins.
There are a couple more in my repo to do things like order posts in the CMS and import CSVs. Not super necessary, so we won't talk about theme here.
ACF is a staple of Wordpress development. It lets us define new key/value pairs to extend the data model of things like posts and pages, and allows us to create a set of global variable available from anywhere. Sounds simple, surprising it's not part of Wordpress.
CPT-UI creates an interface in the admin panel for creating new post types. Out of the box, Wordpress comes with Posts and Pages. CPT-UI lets us build new types like Projects or Case Studies or whatever need for our data model. Again, surprising that this isn't just part of Wordpress. C'est la vivre.
Migrate DB lets us ... migrate ... our ... DB. This gives us the ability to sync our databases across environments and get media uploads and things without needing to write magic MySQL queries while tunneled into open database ports on virtual machines. This is better. Believe me.
This lets us write templates with a templating language, and write server-side business logic in a server-side programming language. Truly revolutionary.
What we talk about when we talk about Wordpress development: or, The Theme.
With all this initial work around Wordpress core, development environments, and a basic plugin ecosystem in place we can start talking about the good stuff: the theme!
⮑ 📄 functions.php # This includes routing.
⮑ 📄 screenshot.png # Theme preview image.
We won't get too deep into this, since we're getting into more conventional territory here. Basically our es6 directory holds source JS that will get compiled into a bundle. Same with the scss directory, which gets compiled into css. We handle that with npm scripts in the package.json.
Hopefully none of this is to unusual — if it's is I recommend reading Paul Pederson's excellent article on npm scripts.
This bit sets up a watcher on our theme and plugins directory, which sync our tracked working files to the correct place in our Wordpress core file structure.
The last thing I want to touch on is the basic structure of using Timber to match routes with views.
These are Timber routes defined in the functions.php file. This replaces the standard routing of Wordpress, and we have change the structure of the Wordpress permalinks to anything other than the default to have it work. This is documented in Timber.
When our server gets a request at a route of /page-name, it will call the page.php file and pass it the params associated with the route.
The page.php file assigns some variables, interacts with Wordpress to get and shape our data, and then renders the twig file associated with the page. In this case, it's going to see if there's a template that matches the name of our page, otherwise it will render the default page template.
You've built your theme! Maybe it's a simple hello world, maybe it's a heavy duty big ol' thing. Either way, it's time to deploy.
This will containerize our application, push it to our droplet, hydrate the entire thing, and serve! Now we can use Migrate DB to move our database around, and we're in business.
The project repo is a turnkey, ready to roll version of all the above. It contains all the tooling needed to get started, and if you've followed along with this guide, you should be able to get started in no time.
As always, feel free to reach out to me in your venue of choice to talk about any of this — I would be happy to help you set this up for your own Wordpress project! | 2019-04-25T16:45:29 | http://nikolas.ws/texts/wordpress-but-not-terrible/ |
0.999528 | Some styles become classics and stand the test of time. The dapper look is one of these styles. Think back to what the leading men in the old black and white movies had in common – they were dashing. They wore the right clothes and had an air of sophistication about them. The classy gentleman is making a comeback now. The following points summarize how modern men are achieving this look and lifestyle.
The modern dapper man understands the importance to proper business attire for daily wear. His closet contains three piece suits, plus accessories that give an appreciative nod to older days, such as tie bars, cufflinks, suspenders, silk handkerchiefs, hats and pocket watches. The modern twist makes the look smart, but not stuffy. Suits must be well tailored, but can be colors other than the standard grey. Shoes should be classic leather styles that are kept in good condition with leather care products. Winter wear includes a wool coat, in black, grey or brown, and a scarf.
Clothes are to be ironed and kept in good order, including casual wear. Nice trousers or stylish jeans, paired with a long sleeved shirt or sweater, are perfect for a weekend of relaxing with friends.
Hair for this look is to be kept trimmed and held in a style with a modern styling product, such as a gel or shine crème. The dapper look calls for paying true attention to the hair, more than simply running a brush or comb through it. Hair should not be left shaggy and unkempt.
Shaving for men is of great importance as well. The dapper man knows how to use a shaving brush with shaving cream to get a better, closer shave. Shaving properly with the use of good products, gives a look of sophistication and class. Male skin care, in general, has received more focus and goes far beyond soap and water. Moisturizing after shaving keeps skin looking younger and fresher.
The swank man of the day may enjoy a beer, but he also knows his cocktails. He savors the nuances of different drinks, rather than drinking simply to become intoxicated. Dining out means much more than getting a burger. A modern man of class knows the pleasure of taking his date to a nice restaurant.
The dapper man has confidence and swagger, but is not a jerk about it. He understands the importance of social etiquette and charm. He is comfortable at both formal dinners and casual affairs. | 2019-04-22T23:10:55 | https://joesdaily.com/advice/how-to-be-a-modern-man/ |
0.999999 | I'm having trouble with understanding the language used to describe answer choice B. Particularly, I don't understand how it correlates to your explanation of a false choice. When I read the answer, it feels like it's missing something on the end ("one possible reason for that view is insufficient..."). Can you please maybe give an example of another way of saying answer choice B is.
(B) says that the argument has tried to refute a claim [the claim that the Math dept should get the course] by pointing out that the simple fact of a course's having math in it does not by itself mean that course belongs to the Math dept. It shows that one possible reason is insufficient.
The whole thing's false-choicey because it's acting in the same way as every false choice flaw does; assuming that eliminating one option (or one set of options) is the same as eliminating all options.
It's also totally legitimate to call it an Absence of Evidence error—pointing out that one argument in favor of a claim is insufficient doesn't mean that there are no arguments in favor!—and this kind of illustrates the fact that it's possible to see many of these arguments through multiple valid lenses.
At the end of the day, what matters is that you have a systematic means of dispensing with these questions so that you get through them quickly and have time for the difficult questions that require analysis. | 2019-04-18T20:59:03 | https://www.velocitylsat.com/video/55-lr-two-question-25 |
0.998518 | Most composers of Latin America from the 20th and 21st centuries are not well known in North America. While the music of Carlos Chavez, Alberto Ginastera, Heitor Villa-Lobos, and Astor Piazzolla has penetrated our repertoire in North America, the extensiveness of their output is not emphasized or they are composers about which we know little when compared to those of the United States and of Europe. Other composers of a younger generation are also worth noting such as: Marlos Nobre, Gerardo Gandini, Celso Darrido-Lecca, and Mario Lavista. Through these composers one can find a rich array of music that utilizes the experienced environment of the composer. These two generations of composers also represent at least two general aesthetics in compositional techniques that were influenced by trends occurring in Europe and the United States. Basically, what occurred in European and United States music history had its parallel in Latin America. However, Latin American composers were also influenced by native, folk, and popular musics of their homeland. Some composers were more affected by one or the other, but all in all, in their music there is a unique blend of European styles and techniques with Latin American influences.
Before we go any further, I would like to point out the use of the term "Latin America." Latin America is a varied place with many countries, cultures, traditions, influences, and ideas, contrasting cultures within in countries, varying traditions within cultures, traditions that influence and shape various countries simultaneously or at different times, and so on. The use of the term "Latin America" can be used in a misleading way when used to describe a generality of that area. When the term "Latin America" is used in this paper, it is meant to portray a physical area of the world and the people of it and not a generalized idea that can be applied to all of Latin America. As varied as North America and Europe are, Latin America is too; or it can even be argued that it is more varied.
Nearly all the composers mentioned above studied abroad in Europe or the United States at one point or another and learned the current trends that were occurring in art music of their respective times. Generally, the composers then took these new ideas and utilized them in their own compositions when they returned to their countries. On a superficial level, it can be assumed that these composers were merely copying European and American techniques and ideas, but were they? What use was it to them that they learned these techniques? Did they form any uniquely ideas on their own, such as Boulez and Babbitt with total serialism? What is different about Latin American composers? music than from Europe and the United States? Is it distinctively "Latin" or mere copies of their European and American counterparts? Or are these questions of any relevance at all? These questions are more relevant to some composers than others, but the idea of what is "Latin American" art music is still evident. These questions will be explored below as biographical accounts and thoughts on selected composer?s works will be given.
It can be said without regret that Villa Lobos, Chavez, Revueltas, Piazzolla, and Ginastera were all great composers. Each composer's music is different from one another but still have similar influences. The idea of nationalist music was en vogue in Europe at the end of the 19th century in Europe with Dvorak, Smetana, Rimsky-Korsakov and others, and later to some extent in the United States in the first half of the 20th century with Copland. The same occurred in Latin America in the first half of the 20th century when counties were looking to identify themselves. Again, this is a generalization as some composers were more "nationalistic" than others. Also with the influence that Copland and Nadia Boulanger had on Latin America composers, "neo-classicism" made its way to Latin America.
Nationalist music and neo-classicism can mean many different things. Either description is neither a style nor an aesthetic but an idea. Some may argue with me, but I say this since there are varying styles within each term. Dvorak's music is different from Smetana's, as it is from Alexander Borodin?s. Stravinsky's neo-classical music is different from Copland's as it is different from Prokofiev. What pervades in their music is the idea of nationalism and neo-classicism. Nationalistic music is art music that is influenced by nationalistic themes and ideas that can range from folk tunes (as in Smetana's case) to political propaganda (as in Shostakovich?s case). Neo-classicism is music that is influenced by the idea of classicism in music, or music from the 17th-19th centuries. Perfection, symmetry, consonant harmonies, hierarchy, the music of Mozart, Pergolesi, and Bach all have influenced the "neo-classical" composers in some way or another. However, the neo-classical music of Stranvinsky is different from that of Copland. It can even be said that Copland was not an intentional neo-classicist, but in the idea of neo-classicism it can be seen, due to the fact that he chose not to write music that was "avant garde" but tonal and tradional?-in an "American" way with his open harmonies. Copland can also be considered a nationalistic composer as well and through that we can see that both these terms can be applied to one composer instead of one idea applied to one composer.
These ideas ring true with the composers of Latin America. Nationalistic and neo-classical movements were ideas rather than styles in the art music of Latin America during the first half of the 20th century. Now we will turn to take a closer look at how these musical movements and ideas affected the aforementioned composers.
Carlos Chavez was a Mexican composer of importance and arguable the most well-known. Born in 1899, he went on to write music for orchestra, chamber ensembles, ballets, chorus, and solo piano (Radice, 2003). His career was multi-faceted as he was not only a composer, but a conductor and lecturer (Behague, 1979). Ch?vez directed the Orquestra Sinfonica de Mexico until 1949 as well as the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes until 1953 (Behague, 1979; Radice, 2003). After that phase of his career, he dedicated his time to composition, won the Guggenheim in 1956 and delivered the Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard from 1958-1959 (Behague, 1979). Those accomplishments are life time awards given to composers and great musicians which signify their importance and relevance to art music.
Two important works written for orchestra were Sinfonia de Antigona and Sinfonia India. Sinfonia de Antigona is said to have been influenced by Stravinsky's neo-classical "style" (Behague, 1979). This was considered to be one of the non-nationalistic pieces which utilize European techniques (246). Other works reflected that characteristic as well. Sinfonia India incorporates Native America (Mexican) stylistic elements (Radice, 2003). Pentatonic scales, modes, quartel harmonies, meter changes, repetitive motifs were used to depict native elements (Radice, 2003). The 1930s-1940s was a time in which Mexican art music saw the rise and fall of nationalism in Mexico with the assimilation of different techniques and styles such as neo-classicism and polytonality (Behague, 1979). These two works mentioned reflect all three of those trends and ideas.
Upon hearing Sinfonia de Antigona one can be struck by the colors Chavez uses from the orchestra. Another thing that is striking about this work is the fact that he hardly writes for a full texture. Only certain sections or groups of instruments play at a time, which give way to its thin texture. For example, the violins usually play without the rest of the strings but with woodwinds and brass. The piece incorporates heavy use of woodwinds in a dark manner by using the lower pitched woodwind instruments. Also, the quality of the chords, give the music its dark character. Through this the texture is still thin but sounds full; the mix of dark colors and thin texture give the piece a unique sound. The writing is mainly vertical, in that chords and harmony play an important role, but there are some melodic occurrences apart from the chordal writing. The harmony prevalent in this piece is of modal nature. The rhythmic drive is slow and intense but still contains drive. By listening to this I do not hear Stravinskian neo-classicism at all. I hear a unique and highly personal composer's music with a clear aesthetic all his own.
Argentinean composer Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983) was a self-proclaimed nationalistic composer. He "came of age" during the peak of musical nationalism in Argentina and gained his reputation as a national composer in 1937 with Danzas Argentinas for piano and his ballet Panambi (Behague, 1979). In 1941, he established himself as the leader of the nationalistic movement in Argentina with another ballet, Estancia in 1941 (Behague, 1979). However, those two ballets were problematic to some in its reception due to its extra-musical content (Radice, 2003). Ginastera defined three periods in his compositional life: objective nationalism, subjective nationalism, and neo-expressionist (Schulz). It is interesting that a composer would define periods of his work, usually periods in a composers work occur naturally and unintentionally as with Beethoven. Nothing is ever said that Beethoven set out to create three distinct periods in his music. Nevertheless, these distinctive periods show Ginastera's variety and capability as a composer.
Panambi and Estancia reflect the objective national period in Ginastera's output. This period (1937-1949) is defined by the inclusion of the gauchesco (Argentinean cowboy) tradition, strong local color, conscious treatment of indigenous themes, a clear tonal idiom with inclusion of some extremely dissonant passages (Behague, 1979). However, Ginastera rarely directly borrowed actual folk materials (Behague, 1979). His second period can be understood from its given term. Subjective nationalism (1948-1958) encompasses nationalism not in a direct way but by implication (Behague, 1979). The "Argentine accent" is what is said to be prevalent in this period as it does not employ folklore material (Behague, 1979). His third period does not contain nationalism in its being, but compositional techniques of the 20th century are used, such as: twelve tone, serialization of other elements in music, micro-tonality, polyrhythms, and atonality in a non-serialist manner (Behague, 1979). His last period, obviously, does not reflect the ideas of neo-classicism and nationalism, but again shows his varied talents and interests as a composer. For that reason, this later period will be looked at in the next section of this paper.
Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) was a very prolific and significant composer of Brazil. His musical training consisted of instruction on the piano and cello but was also compelled with the music of Brazil (Radice, 2003). After receiving classical training in music, as a young man, Villa-Lobos ventured on his own to explore Brazil and its native musics (Radice, 2003). He also collaborated with musicians in popular music idioms at the beginning of the 20th century, such as the Chor?es (Behague, 1979). Villa-Lobos also met Milhaud and through him, developed a liking of the music of Debussy and the French composers of Le Six (Behague, 1979). With his trip to Europe, Villa-Lobos began to obtain international acclaim, and especially with the promotion of his music by pianist Artur Rubinstein (Behague, 1979).
It is safe to say that Villa-Lobos was no doubt a nationalistic composer. With his varied influences and experiences, it is no wonder that his music has an innate blend of European techniques and nativistic elements. Villa-Lobos was a nationalist of a folkloric sort, in which nationalism was inescapable (Behague, 1979). Through use of native music, Villa-Lobos aimed to evoke a "total vision" of Brazil (Behague, 1979). His approach to the incorporation of folk elements in his music, were intuitive and not scientific (Behague, 1979).
Nonetto for flute, oboe, clarinet, saxophone, bassoon, harp, celesta, battery, and mixed chorus was influenced by urban popular music through its rhythm and woodwind colors (Behague, 1979). Other elements are evident such as use of tone clusters, quartal/quintal harmonies, parallel harmonic movement, and "altered" chords (Behague, 1979). There is a strong rhythmic drive and element to this piece. The uncommon mix of this ensemble creates very unique colors and sounds not usually heard together and the inclusion of a chorus further adds to that claim. His melodic lines are clearly passionate with short-lived motivic and rhythmic patterns. The gestural and melodic ideas "jump around" throughout the music that then goes into another groove or short-lived idea. This creates a very intuitive and improvisatory sense to the music. The music is fresh, alive, and exciting, the listener does not know what to expect next while there is a constant rhythmic pulsating drive.
The other two composers, Silvestre Revueltas (1899-1940) and Astor Piazzolla are also notable composers of their respective countries: Mexico and Argentina. Due to the limited extent of this paper, these composers will briefly be explored. Revueltas career is similar to Chavez's in that he taught, composed, and conducted, but Revueltas studied abroad and became familiar with European and United States currents in music of his time (Radice, 2003). He was able to hear music by Sch?nberg, Stravinsky and Les Six in Europe and met Henry Cowell, Roy Harris, Edgard Varese and Copland in America (Radice, 2003). Revueltas was a nationalist composer of international reputation who made the popular and folk music in Mexico of his time a source of his style (Behague, 1979). When those who know of Piazzolla hear his name, one word can immediately come to mind: tango. Piazzolla studied with Ginastera and Boulanger and composed in a variety of genres (Behague, 1979). As a young composer, he utilized Western European genres, such as sonata form, but later as a more experienced composer, he elevated the tango with striking dissonances, chromaticism, jazz, inclusion of counterpoint, and virtuosic writing (Behague, 1979). Through the progression of the tango brought forth by Piazzolla, he can be considered a nationalistic composer.
The next generation of composers also tended to follow the trends from Europe and the United States. These trends were different all together and went against the established tradition of tonal music and tonal hierarchy in music. The music of Marlos Nobre, Gerardo Gandini, Celso Garrido-Lecca, and Mario Lavista incorporate avant garde techniques of Europe in their music, but create a different result. Nationalism seems less of a concern for them. However, with the adoption of these techniques, one can wonder why they would adopt them and for what reason the acquire them. How are these techniques used in their music? What kind of result occurs and how is it different from composers of Europe and the United States? Were there any original Latin American compositional ideas or a continuation of European ideas?
To understand the trends that occurred in Latin America, one must understand the musical movements that occurred from the 1920s onwards in Europe and the United states. At the end of the romantic era, Wagner and even Mahler started to push tonality to its extreme. There are moments in Wagner's music that can be considered "atonal" as in Tristan und Isolde. Sch?nberg was a revolutionary. His early music was out of the romantic world of Wagner and Mahler, but soon started to abandon tonality and wrote "free atonal" music, utilizing intervallic cells, but actually his pupil Webern was the first to write a piece "without a key." In the late 1910s Sch?nberg started to develop an idea of writing music with all twelve pitches in a set order that came to be known as the twelve-tone method of composition. This took the music world by storm and soon, there was a movement of twelve-tone composition. Webern developed the idea further, intuitively, by serializing other aspects of music such as dynamics and register. This was found by Boulez, which lead him to create the idea of the total serialization of music after World War II, in which all aspects of music would be ordered an planned (rhythm, pitch, register, timbre, dynamics, etc.). Boulez created a following in Europe as the composer Milton Babbitt in the United States developed the same idea. Other trends that followed were the use of electronics, aleatoric writing, improvisation, and chance operations. To put it briefly, aleatoric writing is music in which the composer introduces elements of chance or unpredictability and leaves different aspects of the music, such as pitch, rhythm, dynamics, etc., to the performer or interpreter. Chance operations in music are controlled by such methods of dice throwing to determine events in music. There were two extremes in art music of the 1950s: total organization (total serialism) and total freedom (aleatoric and chance music). Composers of the time experimented with both idioms.
Again, the same can be said for these ideas or techniques of composition as can be said for nationalism and neo-classicism: serialism and aleatoric music are not styles but methods of writing music. Music that is serialist can "sound" "atonal" or imply tonaliy, whereas aleatoric and chance music can sound serialist whereas both can sound "random" and like a "bunch of noise." It depends on how the composer uses these methods that will create a resultant sound. The music of these Latin American composers is no exception.
Marols Nobre (b. 1939) is a Brazilian composer that has utilized the ideas of serialism and electronics in his music. He studied at the Di Tella Institute in Buenos Aires (1963-1964) where his teachers included Ginastera, Koellreutter, and Camargo Guarnieri (Behague, 1979). He soon adapted the twelve-tone technique in his music after having been influenced by Milhaud's dissonant treatment with a nationalistic concern (Behague, 1979). After delving into the twelve-tone technique, he set out to create music that was in a "free serialist" method (Behague, 1979). His music also contained aleatoric elements "with nativisitc overtones," extended techniques, and extremely contrasting dynamics (Behague, 1979).
Two works of note by Nobre are Ukrinmakerinkrin (1964) and In Memoriam (1973), both for orchestra. Ukrinmakrinkrin is described as having an atonal-serial language with some "native ritualistic flavor" and some aleatoric structures (Behague, 1979). In Memoriam contains clusters of sound or "sound blocks," with "complex and brilliant orchestration" and Brazilian percussion instruments (Behague, 1979). From the descriptions above, it can be said that Nobre uses these techniques in his own way and not to copy or imitate other composers who utilize these techniques. The concern seems to be that of writing music he likes to write. However, this is just an assumption from reading about him.
Another piece by Nobre, Mosaico para Orquestra (1970) is an interesting one. It is a single movement work with three contrasting sections (Marlos Nobre). Thick masses of differing sounds abound in the first section, as the second is more lyrical with brief occurrences of short lived quick motivic gestures, and the third section is a "pure divertimento" for orchestra with "tightly composed writing" and "controlled randomness" (Marlos Nobre). Upon hearing it one does find sustained harmonies with mixed timbres of instruments in the beginning with aleatoric "sounding" figures, un-metered patterns that are repeated quietly in the winds. There are bits of motivic fragments in the orchestra lead by the brass with "outbursts" from the whole orchestra. There is a sense of a duality between uncontrolled sounds and directional sounds. The music abruptly changes by new harmonic and textural treatment. Thin texture is pristine where soloistic occurrences are heard as the color of instruments are brought to the fore. The music can be described as slow paced and silvery that then leads to more direction with a bit more regularity and thicker chords (roughly 3 notes). This can be considered the "textural climax" of the second section as the music returns to the quietness that prevailed before, but influenced by the thicker textural idea. Percussion is used to initiate the third section, as sustained brass notes in a quick tempo are heard with frequent and quicker motivic gestures. Aleatoric elements can also be heard in the end with regular occurring broad hits in the percussion. Upon hearing this piece, one can sense a feel of intuition, conviction, and a clear personal aesthetic of the composer that allows his creativity and voice to be heard.
Celso Garrido-Lecca (b. 1926) is a prominent composer from Peru. He received his musical training at the Lima Conservatory with Rodolfo Holzmann and soon after was the composer and musical advisor for the Theater Institute of the University of Chile (Schulz, 1992). He also later headed the National School of Music in Peru and in 1963 and 1968 won the National Prize for Peruvian Culture (Schulz, 1992). His music contains quartal and quintal harmonies, atonality, twelve tone technique, and "locally derived" musical traits such as pentatonicism (Behague, 1979). His musical output is symphonic and chamber as has been performed in Europe and the Americas (Schulz, 1992). Pieces of note are his Suite for Woodwind Quintet (1956), Musica para seis instrumentos y percusion (1956), Sinfonia (1960), and Laudes (1962).
Argentinean composer and pianist Gerardo Gandini (b. 1936) is another composer from Latin America influenced by the European avant garde. Gandini was a student of Ginastera and Caama?o (Behague, 1979). Gandini became one of the major musical figures in Argentina in the 1960s and also co-founded a professional contemporary music organization, Agrupani?n Euphonia (Behague, 1979). His teaching engagements have been with the Di Tella Institute and Buenos Aires Catholic University (Behague, 1979). Gandini is also an active performer of new music in the Americas and Europe (Behague, 1979). The techniques he uses are serialism, atonality, extreme manipulation of dynamics and timbres with rigorous economy and concentration of musical ideas and means (Behague, 1979).
Two pieces are worth noting, Musica Nocturna (1964) for flute, violin, viola, violoncello, and piano and Eusebius, four nocturnes for piano or one nocturne for four pianos. Musica Nocturna is non-thematic, utilizes instrumental effects and contains pointillistic treatment of small intervals (Behague, 1979). There is an idea of static music partnered with fast and elusive sounds (Behague, 1979). Eusebius is basically an homage to Robert Schumann's Davidsbundelertanze, No. 14 (Schuartz). These nocturnes are very short, lasting no more than a couple minutes or so. Upon hearing the first one, one can find a slowly paced sound environment in which each note is carefully sounded, nearly one at a time, sustained by the pedal in the upper register which creates a thin texture. Quartal harmonies open the second nocturne which utilizes different harmonies than the first but still with a thin texture and the idea of "carefully paced" sounds pervade. More melodic ideas encompass the third nocturne but still the thin texture is apparent. Adjectives such as reflective, quiet, careful and beautiful come to mind when describing this nocturne. In the fourth, one can find more movement and more melody with thicker voice and "new age" sounding harmonies-quite different from the others. When all four nocturnes are played simultaneously at the same tempo, the fifth nocturne is realized.
A Mexican of the younger generation of composers is Mario Lavista (b. 1943). His teachers are varied and from different parts of the world. In Mexico at the conservatory he studied with Hafter and Quintanar and in Europe with Jean-Etienne Marie, Henry Posseur, Xenakis and Stockhausen (Behague, 1979). He also has attended Darmstadt where he be Legeti and studied electronic music in Tokyo (Behague, 1979). In the 1960s he was considered a follower of the avant-garde and a "bona fide" experimentalist by incorporating improvisation, chance operations, and elctro-acoustic and visual elements in his compositions (Behague, 1979).
His Divertimento (1968) represent his experimentalist side while a more recent piece, Cuaderno de viaje (1989) sounds a bit more tame. Combined, both versions of the Divertimento include audience participation in which the instrumentation contains a woodwind quintet, five woodblocks, five loud speakers, four amplifiers, three potentiometers, and a mike mixer (Behague, 1979). From reading the instrumentation, one can immediately think "avant garde" but his "avant garde" stature is questioned when one listens to the works on his Cuaderno de Viaje CD released in 1994. On it, a work for solo viola is found, Cuaderno de Viaje. This piece is a "deep search into the viola?s possibilities in the realm of harmonics" (Brennan, 1994). It is a calm, slivery, piece that uses consonant harmonies. It has no incorporation of amplifiers, speakers, microphones or any other extra-musical effects.
It is hardly ever safe to classify one composer or another as being a part of one compositional school of thought. As with the case with the composers mentioned above, it can be seen that for the most part, their output is varied. Each of these composers delved into different processes of writing and have created different results within their own outputs and when compared to each other. But by using these techniques, are these composers copiers of composers of the Untied States and Europe? By using the ideas and methods, the answer is yes, but in the larger picture, I would say no. Their music reflects a different aesthetic, different ears, and tastes. Beauty and elegance was found in all the composers' music to which I listened. An innate sense of rhythmic drive clearly persists in the music of the older generation as well, which is influenced by non-European elements. These composers used these techniques in their own way and through it, their personal voice spoke. Some of Chavez does sound like Copland, such as Sinfonia India, but Sinfonia de Antigona contains a different character that is distinctively Ch?vez. In Nobre's Mosaico, aleatoric writing is used but does not sound the same as say Stockhausen. While utilizing these European and United States techniques, these composers used according to their personal taste and ear to create distinctively personal music.
It was not found that any of these composers created an original idea apart from European and United States thought. However, the apparent inclusion of indigenous musical influence and a different ear for music than their counterparts creates different sounding art music. It can be assumed that beauty and elegance are more of a concern for these composers than their other western colleagues. That is an overgeneralization of course, but those two adjectives come to mind immediately upon hearing each of these composers' music. The music, in general, also seems more paced; the music is patient and lives and absorbs the sound. This music should be regarded on equal footing with music of Europe and the United States when taught in other parts of the western world. This music has validity, conviction, and a voice of its own different from what our education as classical musicians in the United States brings us. When one thinks of western art music, Latin American art music should also come to mind.
Techniques. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc. | 2019-04-26T14:55:28 | https://www.gilbertgalindo.com/latincomposers |
0.99897 | Climate forcings are a major cause of climate change. A climate forcing is any influence on climate that originates from outside the climate system itself. The climate system includes the oceans, land surface, cryosphere, biosphere, and atmosphere.
These examples all influence the balance of energy entering and leaving the Earth system. These types of forcings are often referred to as radiative forcing and can be quantified in units of the extra energy in watts per meter squared (W m-2) entering the Earth near the top of the atmosphere (TOA).
Not all climate changes are caused by climate forcings, however. Climate is intrinsically variable and can change even if there is no external forcing. An unforced change would be some kind of natural shift like an El Nino. El Nino events tend to cause atmospheric warming because they are transporting heat from the ocean back into the atmosphere. This happens even though there is no change in solar output or other external forcing.
Climate forcing must generate a response, the same way a mechanic force causes an object to move. A positive radiative forcing involves shifting the balance such that the Earth gains heat and the climate warms. As the climate warms, the Earth will emit more infrared radiation to space, but this change at the top of the atmosphere is a response to the forcing, and not a new forcing. Warming will continue until a new balance is achieved between energy gained and lost at the top of the atmosphere.
Understanding climate forcing is actually easy. Think of it this way. If you are standing and someone begins to push against you, initially you may start to fall over. This is a state of imbalance due to the forcing imposed on you. Your natural reaction is to readjust your posture to push back (and avoid falling over). If the person keeps pushing, you will need to keep pushing back. The forcing is the initial push, your reaction is the response.
The Earth reacts to positive radiative forcing by warming up until a new balance is achieved at a higher temperature. This new steady state is actually a forced steady state as opposed to an unforced steady state, which would be the natural state without the human induced forcing.
The rate at which the Earth's climate warms in response to positive radiative forcing depends on several factors besides just the forcing. A major factor is the thermal inertia of the ocean which slows the response because the ocean can store a lot of heat. It takes a long time to warm the ocean, just as it takes a long time to cook a turkey. The temperature of the atmosphere is also influenced by the oceans, so the slow warming of the ocean also slows the warming of the atmosphere.
A number of processes are now contributing to forcing the Earth's climate away from a natural state. To get a sense of the net effect, you can add all the components of forcing that are positive and negative and you end up with a view of the total forcing in the climate system of Earth.
The following figure shows changes in climate "forcings" or factors that have contributed to climate change since 1750, before human influences on climate were very significant.
The following figures show effective global climate forcings employed in our current global climate simulations (e.g., Hansen et al. 2007a,b), relative to their values in 1880.
(a) The separate radiative forcing data are available as a text file. The figure is also available as a large GIF or PDF.
(b) The net forcing data are available as a text file. The figure is also available as a large GIF or PDF.
Hansen, J., L. Nazarenko, et al. 2005a. Earth's energy imbalance: Confirmation and implications. Science 308, 1431-1435, doi:10.1126/science.1110252. (See also Imbalance webpages).
Hansen, J., M. Sato, et al. 2005b. Efficacy of climate forcings. J. Geophys. Res., 110, D18104, doi:10.1029/2005/JD005776. (See also Efficacy webpages).
Hansen, J., et al. 2007a. Dangerous human-made interference with climate: A GISS modelE study. Atmos. Chem. Phys. , 7, 2287-2312.
Hansen, J., et al. 2007b. Climate Dynam. , Climate simulations for 1880-2003 with GISS modelE. Climate Dynam. , 29, 661-696, doi:10.1007/s00382-007-0255-8.
NASA/NCDC/NOAA What are climate forcings?
NASA/NCDC/NOAA Causes of Climate Change Over the Past 1000 Years Published July 14, 2000 Science, 289: 270-277.
RealClimate: Water vapour: feedback or forcing?
Current volcanic activity and climate? | 2019-04-22T13:00:56 | http://ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/myths/images/temperature-records/projects/environment/global-warming/radiative-climate-forcing |
0.999964 | 2 Men Blamed Slaying Victim for Problems, Taped Confession Shows : Crime: Admission comes in the trial of a man charged in the death of an activist in the Estonian community.
An Estonian refugee and his alleged accomplice had planned to kill themselves because they were hungry and broke after the Estonian community abandoned them, but they decided to kill a North Hollywood woman they blamed for their problems first so she could not laugh at their deaths. The admission came in a taped confession played Tuesday for a San Fernando Superior Court jury in the murder trial of Peter Sakarias, 24.
Estonian Refugee Given Death Sentence in Slaying : Courts: Judge denies a new trial for the man convicted in the killing of a North Hollywood woman.
In an eleventh-hour attempt to save a convicted murderer from the death penalty, a defense attorney Thursday asked for a new trial, saying that his argument for a sentence of life in prison was hampered by "hyper-technical" rulings by the trial judge. But San Fernando Superior Court Judge Howard J. Schwab denied the motion and sentenced Peter Sakarias, 24, to death for the brutal 1988 killing of Viivi Piirisild, 52, a North Hollywood woman active in the local Estonian community.
Jury Recommends Death Penalty for Murder of Estonian Activist : Courts: A Soviet army deserter who defected to the United States had been convicted of killing the woman who sheltered him.
After nine days of deliberations, jurors in San Fernando Superior Courton on Monday recommended that a Soviet army deserter die in the gas chamber for killing the Estonian activist who gave him shelter in her North Hollywood home. Tauno Waidla, 23, showed no emotion as the court clerk read the jury's decision.
Their countries no longer exist as independent entities. They have no governments to report to. Yet, three diplomats from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania still wave their flags in Los Angeles with hopes that someday soon they will be representing more than a dream. For almost half a century, Los Angeles has been the only city in the world with honorary consulates for all three Baltic states.
Two years ago, Mart Niklus, an Estonian human rights activist, spent his days monotonously attaching electrical cords onto irons in a labor camp in the Soviet Union. But on Saturday, Niklus, whose imprisonment was widely decried throughout the Western world, was sitting in the den of a Bell Canyon residence speaking whimsically about hummingbirds. "I'd like very much to see the birds of America," he told his host, Jaak Treiman, the honorary counsel for Estonians in Los Angeles.
Two Estonians who deserted from the Soviet army and were welcomed by fellow countrymen in Los Angeles were charged Friday with the murder of a North Hollywood woman, a well-known Estonian activist who had fled her homeland during World War II to escape the Soviets. Peter Sakarias, 21, and Tauno Waidla, 20, were being held without bail in the July 12 murder of Viivi Piirisild, 52, who was found beaten to death with the blunt side of an ax in her home in the 6900 block of Goodland Avenue.
On an out-of-the-way stretch of Riverside Drive, across from the Colony Theatre and not far from the four-lane concourse that rises to Dodger Stadium, the Los Angeles Latvian community has built a church and a large community center on excess highway land. Latvians converge there on Sundays to worship, mix and renew the ties of political will that have kept their circle together for 40 years, even as its individuals were dispersing to all parts of suburban Southern California. | 2019-04-23T04:34:37 | http://articles.latimes.com/keyword/estonians-los-angeles |
0.999987 | The interviewee is John Newman who works as a sales and marketing executive. A sales and marketing executive position comprises two functions, which are essential to creating a new commerce. Besides, sales and marketing managers are categorized as vice presidents or directors. A sale and marketing executive is a senior-level expert that works directly with a president and a chief executive officer of a company in order to make certain that their sales and marketing plans adjust to general business goals. One should notice that Newman’s position can be divided into two positions, which are a sales manager and a marketing manager. Therefore, it can be mentioned that John accomplishes twice more tasks than it is usual for an average manager. In fact, a sales and marketing executive is usually represented by a sales executive who also deals with some of the marketing responsibilities, business needs and duties. A person who obtains this position usually helps to create, approve and proofread advertisements. Besides, he or she also is supposed to decide on the magazines that a company will use in order to place their advertisements there. This person also decides which buy-and-sell demonstrations a company will attend, and in which actions to take part. In other words, he or she decides if a company needs to organize any kind of parties or to sponsor any kind of tournaments and expand other sponsorships in order to maintain the existing audience and customers as well as to attract new ones. However, a manager does not need to accomplish all the tasks himself/herself since he or she can share some tasks with his or her subordinates. Therefore, he or she does not need any special background in promotions, advertising, marketing and public media and social media relations. In this interview, he reveals the specifics of his job; moreover, the conducted interview will help to identify the duties that are associated with John’s position, as well as any skills and abilities necessary for the position.
The main purpose of this job is to create a plan for sales and direct marketing activities, and further, of course, to carry this plan out. The main point here is developing and maintaining sales of a company to certain specifiers and accounts as it was pointed out agreed in the created business plans.
Among the major accountabilities and responsibilities of the analyzed job, one can outline developing and maintaining a computerized prospect and customer databases. In addition, a sales and marketing executive must create a reasonable plan for direct activities concerning the market, such as direct mail, and to carry it out in terms of volumes of sales, timescales, product mix, agreed budgets and values. Besides, it is highly needed to develop various helpful ideas and create different reasonable offers for the market and direct mail with the help of the key market sector. Moreover, it is important to mention such duties as following up enquiries of sales and responding to them by telephone, posts, and even personal visits. A sales and marketing executive is also responsible for involving and attracting new customers, and, at the same time, maintaining the existing ones by the means of connection with internal order-processing team and a properly planned account support that must be based on an individual approach. Among the other rather important duties of a sales and marketing executive are controlling the activities and reporting them in order to provide significant management information. Conducting customer and competitor surveys and carrying out a market research are also up to a person who obtains the analyzed position. Such an employee should check if software and equipment are suitable for the purposes of sales reporting and direct marketing and create reports of the results. Besides, it is necessary to maintain their suitability if it is appropriate and improve if in case it is not. Furthermore, a sales and marketing executive is obliged to interact and attend various meetings with other companies in order to get to know about more functions and create new agreements that can be helpful for performing particular duties and developing business and an organization as a whole. Controlling external activities of a marketing agency and telemarketing is also included to the list of job responsibilities for the given position.
Undoubtedly, in order to achieve all the set goals of a sales and marketing executive, a person needs to have certain skills, knowledge and abilities, and sometimes also qualifications and experience. The main skill and ability that is required for the position is multitasking, because, as one can see, there is a great number of responsibilities and duties that a sales and marketing executive must conduct. Moreover, it often happens that there is not enough time to accomplish tasks separately, one by one. As a result, an employee needs to accomplish them simultaneously. Among other skills that are required for the position, one can identify the ability to manage one’s time, the skill of communicating both with customers and partners, and a creative approach for accomplishing various tasks and making decisions. Therefore, as any other job, this one also requires attending various trainings in order to develop and improve one’s relevant skills and knowledge for even better accomplishing of all the above mentioned responsibilities and tasks that an employee may get in a working process.
Regarding any physical work at this position, one can say that there is a complete absence of it. The reason is that all the responsibilities and accountabilities of the position of a sales and marketing manager require mental work, skills, abilities and creativity.
Naturally, in order to obtain a position of a sales and marketing manager, a person needs to suit to some particular requirements that concern his or her education. For instance, people who seek for a position of a sales and marketing executive need to have a Bachelor of Business Administration, marketing, or any other related degree. Nevertheless, many employers may also require MBA or a Master’s Degree for a position. Besides, as a manager progresses in his or her career, it is highly recommended to improve and develop his or her education, skills, etc. Among helpful and effective programs for this task, one may outline various manager trainings, which offer different courses. These courses include product and brand management trainings, evaluation and sales management trainings, market research trainings, marketing communication trainings, telemarketing trainings, organizational communication and direct sales trainings.
Taking all the above-mentioned information into consideration, one can state that marketing and sales are, in fact, two different aspects of managerial work. While marketing implements various strategies that are supposed to aid in product pricing, development, promotions, and distribution, sales reserve a new trade. Usually, mixing two positions into one occurs in small organizations that have narrow target audience profiles or product lines. Consequently, according to the job description of a sales and marketing executive, one can see that John Newman accomplishes the responsibilities of both positions – sales and marketing manager. The emphasis of his duties is on strategies of sales, which are supported by marketing tricks that are restricted to promotional endeavors. In addition, one can see from the job description that this position is mainly oriented on sales. Regarding marketing, one can state that the position focuses only on some of the marketing aspects, including promotion, media and social campaigns, as well as advertising. | 2019-04-25T18:01:22 | https://topwritingservice.com/essays/job-description-recruiting-strategies/ |
0.957074 | Trends in B2B content marketing that need to be kept up with.
B2B content marketing is important for marketing managers to be successful at to ensure their company is receiving the most amount of business. The most important aspect of B2B content marketing is to be useful and show professionals the company is the leading resource in their industry.
Content marketing trends are being updated every year and it is important for marketing managers to keep up with these trends. Content marketing is important for businesses to do purposefully and should be a part of every company’s website. Content is important for companies but only if it adds value to the company.
B2B content marketing is the technique of using content to expand a business’s audience, strengthen and develop the company’s brand and drive sales by appealing to other businesses. Business-to-business content marketing is similar to business-to-consumer marketing with the content being exclusive to businesses. While B2C content marketing is more focused on engaging customers, B2B content marketing must be focused on being useful. B2B marketers have a priority to be seen as a leading resource for professionals in their industry or else they are not successfully marketing the company. Useful content is the main priority for B2B content marketing to accomplish.
A major trend that is affecting B2B content managers is the fact that content marketing budgets are increasing. Companies are realizing the huge importance of content marketing and allocating more of their budget to this type of marketing. Content marketing adds both immediate and long-term value to companies and more businesses are beginning to understand this. Companies that provide interesting content while promoting their brand are coming out on top against their competitors. Companies are also beginning to develop more customized content for their audiences. The best type of content marketing is having different types of content that are aimed at the different types of visitors a website has.
The main focus for content marketing managers is to deliver the perfect content to the right buyer at the ideal moment. Another trend emerging in the content marketing world is the necessity to keep content interesting. Audiences want to be entertained and fun, unique content is an excellent way to do that. Content marketing is more than just providing audiences with content, it should also lead them through the sales funnel. Engaging content that offers customers a call-to-action is proving to be the most successful for companies.
Data has become an essential tool for businesses to make the best decisions affecting the company. Content marketing that is driven by data is the best way to ensure content created is being delivered to the right audience at the right time. Data is improving content by analyzing existing content and the content created by a company’s competitors. Many companies only focus on content that is engaging to audiences but many are leaving out the most important aspect of content that attracts customers; a call-to-action.
Providing a call-to-action with engaging content leads audiences through the sales funnel and transforms them into customers. Content must create awareness, be engaging, improve conversations and lead audiences through the buying journey. After creating and executing a successful content marketing strategy, marketers should document their B2B content marketing strategy to use in the future. Many marketing managers leave this step out and have to start from scratch on their next project. Documenting successful B2B content marketing strategies will provide managers a clear starting point for any future content marketing they must do.
Content is king and that does not seem to be changing anytime soon. Not only do companies need to create engaging and useful content, it is important that the content lead audiences through the sales funnel so the business can begin to provide their product or services to those audiences. There are many things marketing managers can do to create successful B2B content and useful content is the most important. B2B content managers will be successful at creating content for marketing as long as they stay up-to-date with content marketing trends and use B2B content marketing strategies to their advantage. | 2019-04-26T02:23:23 | https://www.techfunnel.com/martech/b2b-content-marketing-trends/ |
0.999999 | What is a Dope Sheet?
A Dope Sheet is made for the person making the animation to organize his thinking and give instructions to the person filming. Without it it is hard for the filmer to understand what is going to happen next.
It is layed out in column on the left is used so that the animator can jot down notes on the path of the actions.
The second column is so that the director can wright down any dialog that may be happening in the scene.
the third column is for The final column is for camera instructions. | 2019-04-18T23:20:52 | https://www.smore.com/yv30 |
0.999124 | The Gray Report: Those wacky French! "You can't make pink bubbly because WE make pink bubbly."
Those wacky French! "You can't make pink bubbly because WE make pink bubbly."
Imagine if Napa Valley Vintners told Sonoma County Vintners, "You can't make Cabernet because we make Cabernet."
That's what's going on in a feud between two obscure French wine regions, Bugey and Die. A fine story by Wink Lorch in Wine Searcher last week explained the feud. Let me summarize it for you from an American perspective.
Cerdon is a small area within the Bugey region where vintners make pink Méthode Ancestrale sparkling wine -- bubbly made without added sugar, by stopping fermentation before bottling and allowing it to continue fermenting in the bottle. The main grape is Gamay, the grape of Beaujolais.
Die is a slightly larger region that makes white Méthode Ancestrale sparkling wine mainly from Muscat. But growers there have Gamay, so they want to make pink Méthode Ancestrale bubbly. They would call it Clairette de Die rosé, so it's not like anyone would believe it comes from Cerdon, which calls its pink bubbly Bugey-Cerdon.
Seems harmless, and the French government gave the Die growers the go-ahead. However, the Cerdon growers filed an appeal. They're upset. Their logic is exactly as I stated in the first paragraph: "You can't make pink Méthode Ancestrale bubbly because we make pink Méthode Ancestrale bubbly. We were here first!"
Cerdon takes this position even though sparkling wine made in Die was described by Pliny the Elder. Seriously!
Pink wines weren't included, however, when Clairette de Die was recognized as an AO in 1910 and an AOC in 1942. So they're just rapacious young upstarts, as opposed to the traditional producers in Bugey, who were granted an AOC in 2009. Really. France is funny sometimes.
According to the story, Cerdon makes less than 2 million bottles of pink bubbly annually. Apparently growers are afraid that Die's plans for making about 1 million bottles of pink sparkling wine represent a threat to their business. They would rather spend their money on legal fees to prevent Die from expanding its business, which would build more of a worldwide market for pink Méthode Ancestrale bubbly, than on marketing their own wines.
I'll take this story any day if means I won't half to read another goddamned story about this idiotic blue Spanish wine.
I'm a fan of Cerdon wines, and will be back there in April and plan to again visit the winery run by the man who is head of the Bugey-Cerdon organization spearheading this opposition. He makes very good wine, but his position on this issue is absurd. There's room enough for both, and there is no issue of name confusion.
In the land of mostly free markets (USA), the expectation of protection from legitimate competition seems absurd. What's more, this case seems to go beyond the protection typically provided by the AOP system. This is an attempt, not to protect a region, but a style of wine, for which I can think of no precedent. Sure, Prosecco and Port are protected names, but that protection doesn't prevent the production of Charmat or fortified styles under different monikers elsewhere.
The Bugey-Cerdon producers are more worried about the precedent set by the permission to use Gamay for Méthode Ancestrale than the small production of sparkling rosé of Clairette de Die. (After all, Clairette de Die will only be allowed a maximum of 10% Gamay, not the 100% permitted in Bugey-Cerdon.) The real threat is Beaujolais, where there are oceans of Gamay and a desire to make sweet, sparkling rosé.
The threat from Beaujolais doesn't make protection any more justified, but it explains more why the Bugey-Credon producers are keen to nip this development in the bud.
The arguments do seem crazy to the outsider, but these guys really do care.
One crucial element is indeed Gamay.
But a second is the perceived importance to French consumers of having an 'exclusive' AOC designation - and Cerdon sells mostly within France. There are already plenty of Pétillant Naturels made from Gamay and sold under the Vin de France label - they use the same Méthode Ancestrale method, but the term is not allowed to be stated on the label - Cerdon producers don't care nearly so much about these.
And then there is a third element - the marketing power of the big boys, like Jaillance in Clairette de Die (mentioned in my original article) and potentially Boisset, who control much non-Champagne sparkling wine in France. These guys drive prices down. And if the small Cerdon producers can't keep their already very low prices at the level they are now, they simply won't be able to keep going. | 2019-04-20T00:54:31 | https://blog.wblakegray.com/2017/01/those-wacky-french-you-cant-make-pink.html |
0.999231 | After reading this quote by Terry Pratchett, I couldn't resist picking this book for my F author in the Great Library Challenge. I can see why Fforde has been likened to Pratchett - he creates a nonsensical world of parallel reality, injects a good dose of humour and drives the plot at a furious pace.
The protagonist, Thursday Next, is a SpecOps agent in the LiteraTec department, who quickly becomes embroiled in the chase for the evil Acheron Hades. Hades is hellbent on wreaking havoc in the literary world - by which Fforde means the real literary world of fiction - and enters Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre manuscript with an intent to sabotage.
Next's chase leads her to Swindon, where she manages to cross time barriers, parry with her ex- for whom she still harbours a flame, incur the wrath of the powerful Jack Schitt (yes that's really his name) and follow Hades into Jane Eyre to change the course of the story.
Next is a protagonist you can really grow to like. She's tough, self-deprecating and smart, even though she doesn't have it altogether. The fact that she's flawed is a lot of her charm, and returning to her Swindon hometown throws her square into the path of her ex-, Landon Parke-Laine, and her quirky family (time-crossing father, absent-minded mother, multi-religious brother, Aunt Polly and brilliant Uncle Mycroft - whose name was apparently borrowed from Sherlock Holmes' genius brother).
Any literary snob (or anyone with pretensions to literary snobbery) with some smarts and a sense of humour will love this book. There are some very funny ideas that often stretch the bounds of belief, woven through with enough intelligence and classic literary knowledge to make them believable. (Who really wrote Shakespeare's plays? How many John Miltons can one town contain?) I'm sure I missed or only half-got some of the references, because my literary perch is not that lofty.
It's an enjoyable romp that manages to suspend your belief and throw a smile on your face. Apparently this is the first of a series of novels about Thursday Next, but I'm not sure if I'll continue with it right now. I get my good dose of silly and witty and Pratchett, Gaiman and Holt.
Onto my G author: I've chosen Elizabeth Gilbert, because I've been halfway through her book for ages now, but haven't been able to finish. I'm taking this opportunity to finish the book before the movie comes out and knock down my G author with one stone.
On a side note, I've found myself really embarrassed to carry Eat Pray Love around because I fear I'll be mistaken for 'one of those women'. However, I was totally won over by her TED talk on creativity, which spurred me to read her book, and I want to finish it now so I can make up my own mind whether it deserves its early acclaim or, more recently, the disdain that the movie has been receiving. | 2019-04-19T21:21:46 | http://leathinksaloud.blogspot.com/2010/10/great-library-challenge-fforde-jasper.html |
0.999999 | Why is the Convex Hull property (e..g of Bézier curves) so important?
Recently I read some course notes and articles on Bézier curves. They all sum up the properties of Bézier curves, like the partition-of-unity property of the basis functions (Bernstein polynomials), variation diminishing property of the curve (the curve doesn't wiggle/oscillate more than the control polygon does), and also the convex hull property.
Apparently the latter is an important property, but I cannot find why this would be the case. It has something to do with the numerical stability of convex combinations -- but then again, why are convex combinations more "numerically stable" than other types of combinations, like affine ones?
So, when one compares a Bézier curve to e.g. a Lagrange curve (which interpolates all its control points), the former curve remains inside the polygon spanned by its control points (the convex hull), while the latter doesn't. I know this is because a Bézier curve is created using only convex combinations while the Lagrange curve isn't. But why is this property so important? What makes it better than a Lagrange curve?
The convex hull property guarantees that if your control points are all contained in a small region of space, then the curve won't shoot off arbitrarily far from there. See Runge's phenomenon. Better yet, try it yourself on Mark Hoefer's Lagrange interpolation applet: add points until there are twenty or so, then drag one of the points in the middle off the curve and see what happens. This is why the convex hull property is important for how easily you can control the curve using the control points.
Convex combinations are certainly also important for numerical stability. In an arbitrary affine combination, you could have very large positive and negative values being added together to give a modest result, and this cancellation of the higher-order bits would lose precision in the result. In fact, this does happen in Lagrange interpolation, because the basis functions oscillate far outside the $[0,1]$ range. On the other hand, with Bézier curves all the basis functions are positive, so no unnecessary cancellation happens, and you don't lose a lot of numerical precision relative.
The convex hull property is the basis of Bézier clipping, a technique for solving some problems adaptively. Prime examples are curve intersection and zero finding for ray tracing for instance. See Curve intersection using Bézier clipping by Sederberg and Nishita.
The convex hull property is useful for doing a quick check prior to doing some more expensive calculation. For example, suppose I need to intersect two Bezier curves. It is fairly easy to determine that their convex hulls don't overlap. So, if I find that this is the case, there is no need to try to find the intersection, because there won't be one. Saying it another way, checks based on convex hulls can give you an "early exit" from geometric algorithms. This can lead to enormous speed increases.
The convex hull property is even more important with Bezier surfaces. This is because surface computations are typically more expensive, so an "early exit" is more valuable.
The fact that the basis functions are non-negative makes interactive control easier. When you displace a control point by a vector $v$, you are ensured that all points of the curve will be moved by some positive multiple of $v$, and therefore will move in the same direction as the control point.
The fact that the basis functions sum to 1 is crucial -- if this were not the case, the equation defining the Bezier curve wouldn't even make sense. Arbitrary linear combinations of points don't make sense; only affine combinations make sense.
Is there an explicit form for cubic Bézier curves?
Control Points of Bézier Curve?
Can a rational Bézier curve take exactly the same shape as a part of the sine function?
If control polygon is symmetric w.r.t X-axis then Bézier curves also is symmetric w.r.t X-axis?
why a Bezier curve is guaranteed to lie within the convex hull of its control points? | 2019-04-22T04:41:16 | https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/118937/why-is-the-convex-hull-property-e-g-of-b%C3%A9zier-curves-so-important/381706 |
0.998174 | 1. I have still been thinking quite a bit about changing career paths and getting my MBA (I'm working in a university now), but I have two concerns with this path. A) Is the cost (roughly 40K) worth the payoff? B) Will I like the career path more than my current one? I have visited an MBA class and found the topic being discussed that day very engaging and something I was generally excited about, but it really was just one class session. Also, since I already have a graduate degree, is earning a second one really a value add?
2. If I stay in academia, I will likely not go on to a doctoral program since I have no interest in research work, but I worry that this course of action may stunt my career growth.
"It's just that I don't think I'm getting very much real-world knowledge through my courses," he complained. He was studying an undergraduate business degree, while running a small business to support his university studies. And he was finding his university classes a bit lacking. "It's good information if I wanted to work in corporate I guess," he conceded, "but I don't want to work in corporate. I want to do my own thing."
I recommended a leave of absence, and I'm pretty sure he'll end up dropping out of his bachelors degree. And I don't think this is a problem. If you know your goals, and it's not clear that university will support those goals, then university might not be the right place for you right now (I have very different advice for those in graduate school, you can read that here).
So what if, like this student, you don't feel like university is meeting your needs, but you still want to learn useful things? Maybe university feels too expensive, or the education isn't exactly what you're looking for, or maybe you have big things to do and university feels like it's going to take too long. Or maybe you've already done your university degree and you still feel like there's more you want to learn or practice?
About a year into my graduate degree, I agonized about quitting. I was burned out by the juggle of life and school, I was watching my loans build, most of my courses weren't stimulating, and I was having major doubts about my chosen career path.
My experience is not unique. I hear this kind of thing more than you'd think from graduate students or post-grad students, folks in law school, PhD programs, or medical residency. Someone in this boat will go on to talk about how it seemed like the best thing to do at the time, but that working 80 hour weeks or the total lack of a life outside of whatever program they're in makes one reconsider their decision. Sometimes the feeling of regret and "can't go on" is even more extreme, like the med student who realized a year into her program that she actually doesn't want to be around sick people all day every day. Or, maybe you're a PhD student and the never-ending criticism and lack of support from your faculty members or grantors feels impossible to slog through any more. What do you do? | 2019-04-19T09:16:05 | https://www.careerjanet.com/blog/?category=Education |
0.999663 | Poetry Which was developed from the aramaic script. There is another style commonly used when writing hebrew by hand Possession (your As well as further tannaitic material not attested elsewhere; the generic term for these passages is baraitot. Most important factor is up to you.
Then the preposition takes the vowel /i/ (and the initial consonant may be weakened): colloquial be-kfar (=in a village) corresponds to the more formal bi-khfar. One can repeat it as many times as he/she needs to. That it only becomes a primary emphasis in the new testament. The closely related semitic language of their captors. As to whether it is appropriate to use the hamsa with the fingers pointing up or down The most important part of the bar mitzvah is when the boy recites a passage from the torah in front of his family and friends at a synagogue.
The book of nehemiah provides some insight into ancient biblical interpretation reflective of early judaism during the persian period when it mentions that ezra opened the book (the torah) and that the levites read from the book of the law of god But cubes of sapphire stone Unlike the verb to have in english In hebrew there is a specific preposition (?? Et) for direct objects that would not have a preposition marker in english. Still in use today.
Or consonant-only script of 22 letters. Just like urdu and other persian languages 1989 Hebrew vowels vowels in the hebrew language are represented by the weak consonants. The nature and universe form ecology of complex systems and sub-systems all of which interact and mutually influence each other through electromagnetic vibrations 4. So most remaining native speakers of hebrew at that last stage would have been found in the north. | 2019-04-18T21:14:42 | http://hebrewkeys.com/hebrew-language-of-jesus.html |
0.725157 | A person has a right to defend himself/herself, but a person is not justified in deliberately assaulting another person (not to prevent any impending wrong, but) solely in revenge for a past or previous wrong, regardless of how serious the past or previous wrong might have been, when the episode involving the previous wrong has ended. Such person is not justified in revenge by deliberately seeking out and assaulting the alleged wrongdoer.
If you find from the evidence in this case that the defendant used force against the alleged victim named in this indictment in order to prevent an impending wrong that the defendant reasonably believed was about to be committed by such other person and that the defendant reasonably believed that such force was necessary in order to prevent such impending wrong (death or great bodily injury to the defendant, or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony), then that use of force would be justified, and it would be your duty to acquit the defendant.
On the other hand, if you believe beyond a reasonable doubt from the evidence in this case that the defendant used force against the alleged victim named in the indictment (in the way and manner alleged in the indictment) for the sole purpose of avenging a past or previous wrong, regardless of how serious such previous wrong may have been, and not for the purpose of preventing an impending wrong (death or great bodily injury to the defendant, or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony), then you would be authorized to convict the defendant. | 2019-04-19T11:20:08 | http://academy.lawofselfdefense.com/jury_instruction/ga-3-07-10-revenge-for-prior-wrong/ |
0.99918 | http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- WHEN the spat with China concerning the U.S. intelligence-gathering plane began, it was commonly called the first foreign policy "crisis" to "test" President Bush. Actually, it is testing his ability to see that not everything that roils relations between nations is a crisis. And it is testing his ability to discern that not every trouble is a "test" of his fiber or the nation's stamina.
As this is written (Wednesday, noon), one thing is clear, and one thing is not. Clearly the plane was using technology that enables it, operating in international airspace, lawfully to perform the routine but important function of gathering intelligence that enables U.S. policymakers to understand the evolving strategic environment. It is unclear whether China's government knew what was going on in the increasingly aggressive reaction of Chinese aircraft to U.S. intelligence flights.
If this affair is the result of an accident -- a Chinese cowboy-pilot crossing a line of prudence, and losing his life -- then the episode can be quickly tidied up. If the affair is the result of a Chinese military decision not sanctioned by Beijing's civilians, that is disquieting evidence of command-and-control problems as China approaches a leadership transition.
China's government probably did not consciously provoke this dust-up. However, it has deliberately, and recklessly, prolonged it at a moment when (to cite just two matters) the U.S. Congress is considering Taiwan's request for new military equipment, including defenses against missiles, and the International Olympic Committee is considering China's application to host the 2008 games. Is this smart? Does not Beijing already have a plate heaped high with problems?
On a recent visit to Beijing, Henry Kissinger was struck by proliferation of "Internet cafes." Those small businesses are huge portents.
Totalitarianism, which aspires to nationalize the public's consciousness, depends on intellectual autarky, which depends on a government monopoly of information. Totalitarianism is rendered impossible, and perhaps even tyranny is rendered difficult, by technologies that make nations porous to information. China already was becoming porous in 1989 when students there learned about the Tiananmen Square massacres by e-mails from Ann Arbor and other American campuses where they had studied and made friends.
During his recent visit, Kissinger was told by a Chinese official that 100 million Chinese -- think of the U.S. population west of the Mississippi -- are currently on the move, either from country to city in a migration-of-modernization, or away from employment in sclerotic state-run industries, into the private economy. And this instability may be just a minor prologue.
The 19th century -- in Germany, Italy, the United States, even in France, and elsewhere -- was a century of nation consolidations. (Some immigrants from France arriving at Ellis Island identified their home "country" as a region of France, e.g., Auvergne or Brittany, and historian Eugen Weber notes, "In sundry parts of France at the fin de siecle many people still spoke no French or spoke it only with difficulty.") But the 20th century -- from the dissolution of the Ottoman and the Austro-Hungarian empires as a result of the First World War, to the unraveling of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, and even the weakening of the ties that bind the United Kingdom -- was a disintegrative century.
So ask yourself, as China's leaders must be asking themselves: How likely is it that -- and what will be required in the way of repressions or concessions to guarantee that -- 50 years from now one-fifth of the human race will still live in one country called China?
U.S. policymakers should not see U.S.-China relations as analogous to U.S.-Soviet relations during the Cold War. Then, it was sensible for the United States to try to impede the growth of the power of an implacably hostile Soviet Union. But China's power is going to grow as China's economy grows. And hostility need not grow, indeed should wane, as China becomes immersed in the culture of commerce -- contracts, lawfulness, transparency, promise-keeping.
However, as during the Cold War, there is in America an appeasement caucus. During the Cold War it was eager to explain, and by explaining to justify, Soviet misbehavior as the "understandable" result of historic Russian "insecurity" about "encirclement." Today the caucus reflexively rationalizes Chinese misbehavior as the "understandable" result of historic "humiliations" at the hands of the West.
Such reasoning always is a recipe for turning U.S. foreign policy into psychotherapy for victim nations. It is time for the caucus, and China, to grow up. | 2019-04-21T14:11:32 | http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/will040601.asp |
0.998591 | What does a drill press do?
The drill press enables you to use really large drill bits to bore wider holes. The best part is that you can do this repeatedly and with the exact same precision and size every time. The machine lets you do a variety of tasks safely and securely including: angled drilling; working on elaborately shaped work pieces such as furniture legs; working with a spindle sander for sanding; boring squares and rectangles into a piece of wood; drilling holes into metal for incorporation into wood pieces.
Those four characteristics are explained in detail in a related article, so check that one out as well.
A drill press or drilling machine is commonly found in many modern machine shops. It is a device equipped with a driving tool or cutting tool attachment, typically a driver or drill bit. The power tool is highly useful for cutting holes into a variety of stock or materials. It can also be employed to fasten various workpieces together through fasteners.
Aside from power and capacity, drill presses are categorized under several basic types.
Classified as a light-duty drill press, the upright sensitive drilling machine is typically equipped with a belt-driven spindle head. It is generally employed for doing work of moderate-to-light duty levels. The name of this type of drill press is derived from its capability to be hand fed. The tool is hand fed into the stock to empower the user to get a literal ‘feel’ of the tool’s cutting mechanism. Available in workbench and floor forms, the upright drill press, and all other drill machines, should have a solid build and a stable base to ensure safety for the operator.
An upright drill press is designed for heavy-duty tasks. It typically features a gear-driven spindle head. The upright drill press is utilized for boring large holes on projects with generally larger or heavier elements. This type of drilling machine also enables the user to manually feed or even do automatic feeding of the tool right through the stock. The machine’s power feed system propels the tool deep into the stock. Some upright drill press models are equipped with table height adjustment mechanisms to facilitate tool feeding.
Giving the user the ability to cut angular or intersecting holes in one easy setup, the radial arm drill press can be outfitted with a trunnion table or tilting table, which features a shaft that supports and positions a tilting plate. The radial arm drilling machine can be depended on for heavy-duty hole cutting tasks and is referred to simply as a radial drill press. This type of machine enables effortless positioning of the spindle right over the stock instead of simply raising the workpiece towards the tool. The unique design of this type of drill press provides greater versatility, since it allows the user to work on large parts that can be impossible to position optimally.
A radial drill press delivers power feed on the spindle, along with the automatic mechanism for lowering or raising the radial arm. Mounted on the radial arm is the wheel head, which can be adjusted along the arm to ensure ease of use and greater versatility.
There are also special purpose drilling machines used for a variety of applications. Some models are able to drill 20 holes simultaneously or slice holes as narrow as 0.01 inch.
One example of the special drill machine is the gang style drill press, which features a number of work heads mounted over just one worktable. This model is highly useful when you have to carry out successive hole drilling. The first head may be employed for spot drilling, then the second for tap drilling, then the third used in conjunction with the tapping head to tap a hole. The fourth head can be used to slice out a symmetrical sloping edge or for chamfering. | 2019-04-26T14:26:12 | http://print4arab.com/best-drill-press-in-2018/ |
0.999876 | Will Chinese innovations save the world?
Alexis Madrigal's first book, "Powering the Dream: This History and Promise of Green Technology" (DaCapo), is a quiet page-turner that anyone concerned with our future energy policy -- or lack thereof -- should read.
A former editor at Wired.com (and current technology writer and senior editor at the Atlantic), Madrigal is a talented wordsmith and astute researcher with an eye for ferreting out the "need-to-know" minutiae in a complicated world of energy giants, green pioneers and international trading markets. "The pugilists in the energy wars think they can win by proving their technology is the most inevitable inevitability," he writes in the book's introduction. "We have to go solar, they say. We have to go nuclear, others say. We need to keep burning coal. We need more normal drilling. We need to use less oil. Growth is the answer. Growth is the problem.
"But there will be no magic bullet. We could destroy the things we love. Technology can be, but is not always, the answer. Ideas about nature matter."
Perhaps the most resounding revelation in this 300-page tone poem to green energy is the devastating fact that a lot of the supposedly new green technology, like wind power and electric cars, have been around for well over a hundred years; some never caught steam, others found themselves crushed by fossil fuels.
"This book," Madrigal writes, "is about the uncertainties and triumphs of innovation, the mysterious process by which ideas are made into products out there in the world. In a realm in which everyone argues that things must or will happen, the knowledge of our fallibility is what is most important."
The following is a portion of our conversation.
How did you initially become interested in the subject of green energy?
I was reporting on the green venture capitalist boom in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2007 and it seemed like everyone was interesting in green energy. I think it was Bruce Sterling who called peak sexiness for "green" in that year. Seems to me he was right, but I was smitten nonetheless.
After last year's BP debacle in the gulf and this year's tragedy in Japan, one would think cleaner, greener energy would be a more pressing issue than it is today. Ultimately, why is that?
These are hard, long problems. It's like peace in the Middle East with more thermodynamics thrown in. While the broad strokes -- reinventing society, igniting a new industrial revolution -- are fascinating, the details are about as interesting as your average mid-level utility board annual stockholder meeting.
How big of a role will innovative design play in the bigger picture of emerging and affordable renewable energy?
Design and urban planning are the wild-card levers in our energy system. We tend to think of science and engineering as solving energy problems, but the history tells us that the turn away from regionally appropriate architecture in mid-century America is a major reason that we have such an energy-intensive way of life relative to the rest of the world. We traded design for energy. Sometimes it was as simple as doing away with the idea of shade trees, which can reduce energy consumption in hot places. Now, we have the tools to model those kinds of tradeoffs and I hope that means that even the biggest tract home building developers start to replace ongoing energy costs with smart upfront design.
Thomas Perry's windmill testing apparatus.
In the book, I found pages of declarations that really got to the heart of why we don't have a more thriving green energy movement in this country. The one that really speaks to our generation, however, was this one: "There's almost no institutional memory of what happened before the energy crisis of the 70s, and little of what happened 'technologically' during that time has been documented in a serious way." Have special interests spoiled any green revolution akin to the tech boom of the '90s where copious amounts of money were spent, and only the smart and useful survived?
Well, I think the interests were more general than special. The nation's largest utilities had as a cherished operating principle that they should sell more electricity rather than less. Developers wanted to build more bigger, cheaper houses. Everyone's trying to make a lot of bucks.
I'd say the real problem is the way that fossil fuels interact with our idea of the market. They are cheap upfront and a lot of their costs get put on society. I think the fossil fuel industries are a little bit like a bunch of kids living at home with their parents and working over the summer. They think they've got all this money but that's because the parents are paying to clean up after them and otherwise absorbing their living expenses. Except in this case, the kids are producing invisible pollution that is giving people lung cancer every day and will eventually cook our planet. And we're essentially paying them to do it.
But we're also in this weird place in American culture where every corporation claims that it creates jobs, and so doing anything to them is automatically an anti-jobs policy. That's just nuts. So, a lot of the solutions to this kind of thing, basically making these people pay up to level the playing field for green technologies, has been politically impossible.
As you noted, China is kicking our butts when it comes to solar energy, even though Americans pioneered the technology behind the advancements. Can we turn things around and retain an edge, or is all hope lost for emerging technologies related to solar in the U.S.?
The U.S. is still really good at coming up with new ideas. I have no doubt that we'll continue to do that kind of thing: improving solar cells, coming up with new designs, creating new materials. But eventually, I think, the innovation research says that you need to feed back the knowledge you get from making and deploying stuff to keep the virtuous innovation cycle going. And increasingly it looks like China is going to make and deploy innovative power will shift to Chinese engineers and scientists.
eSolar's first test plant in Lancaster, Calif.
With so much overwhelming evidence before us (with international agreement, no less), why are there still so many climate change deniers in this country?
Because our brains don't work very well with really big problems that transpire over decades.
Because just about every person in America has a vested interest in keeping electricity prices low, which in our current economic paradigm means burning coal. An attack on coal is an attack on one's way of life.
Because about a third of our country no longer believes in the technocratic institutions that used to define a lot of the middle ground between the right and left.
Because powerful companies with a lot to lose if they're forced to pay up for global warming pollution have run massive campaigns to blast climate change.
What was the most interesting green energy idea you came across during the course of working on this book?
I tended to think of the book in terms of stories more than ideas. I like the grounding of the stories because they force you to get away from the Big Think mentality and deal with the particulars of a situation. And for me, the most interesting section was my chapter on the wave motor innovation scene around the turn of the 20th century in California. It was just such a bizarre and interesting episode where dozens of people became obsessed with converting the ocean's power into electrical energy. And it was also really interesting because no one had really excavated that history with any rigor. It felt like making a contribution to history.
Does high-speed rail have a chance in this country (and not just in the Eastern corridor, which already has good train service)?
I think that depends on how fast oil gets expensive. If it does, you'll see the whole politics around rail change really quickly. Pair obviously higher oil prices with denser living situations and you'd certainly have a really good shot at getting rail to happen.
How much of our reluctance to innovate more rapidly when it comes to green energy has to do with capitalist greed?
As you can see from my comments about how fossil fuels interact with how we think about markets, a lot of energy innovation failure has been a result of next-quarter capitalist thinking.
You write: "'There are elements of religious revival in Appropriate Technology,' wrote Witold Rybcynski, a thinker who was both part of the movement and harshly critical of it. 'It is a strange melange of Marxism, Puritanism, and something called Buddhist Economics.'" Does the green energy movement of today need more people like Rybcynski?
To be honest, the green movement is pretty self-reflective and critical. We need more champions at the highest levels who know how to connect a vision of a cleaner energy system with a coherent vision of a better world. And it'd help if they were human and funny instead of sanctimonious and dour. | 2019-04-25T13:47:48 | https://www.salon.com/2011/05/18/alexis_madrigal_powering_the_dream_imprint/ |
0.999992 | There should be another string of characters on the frame that has both numbers and letters.
This is for the pickups, but should be enough for you to identify the year with the correct number.
The first ----- letter will be C for Chevrolet or T for GMC.
The second---- C for 2 wheel drive or K for 4 wheel drive.
The third is the engine description .
The sixth is Year. 3=73, 4=74, 5=75, 6=76, 7=77, 8=78, 9=79, A=80.
The second ----- letter's will be GC for Chevrolet or GT for GMC.
The fifth -----is going to be 1, or 2, or 3 1= 1/2 Ton, 2= 3/4 Ton, 3= 1 Ton. | 2019-04-19T05:25:31 | https://blazerforum.com/forum/full-size-k5-1969-1991-gmt415-1992-1994-tech-42/k5-frame-vin-number-need-decode-find-what-year-frame-94939/ |
0.999598 | A Tale of Beards and Lavender: Instagram pictures posted by Swift, hundreds of photos in gossip magazines, TV interviews, and so on. The term "beard" is a running gag used four times e. However, to prevent Y from learning about X's infidelity, W, the "beard", pretends to be paired with Z.
Here are a few things to note: By posing as Tina's date, Danny can bring her to Lou's performances without drawing attention from Lou's suspicious wife. Some gay actors and actresses responded by either self-initiating a bearding relationship or having one arranged for them by the studio to which they were contracted. The titular talent agent is the beard, pretending to date Tina, a single woman who is actually having an affair with married singer Lou Canova. By posing as Tina's date, Danny can bring her to Lou's performance without drawing attention from Lou's suspicious wife. Liberace, who never publicly admitted to being gay, in announced his engagement to actress Joanne Rio , but they never ended up marrying. A Tale of Beards and Lavender: The titular talent agent is the beard, pretending to date Tina's, a single girl who is having an affair with married singer Lou Canova. Though beard entered wider use in the s,[ citation needed ] many of the reported lavender marriages of the s in Hollywood , and the similar reported romantic marriage of Rock Hudson mids employed the same usage. When Hudson dated Lee Garlington from to , they would go together to red carpet premiers, but each had to bring their own dates to avoid public scrutiny. In a interview with Joy Behar, Betty White implied she occasionally bearded for the flamboyantly gay Liberace. Concealing sexual orientation with a beard Edit Another recognized usage applies to a person who serves to camouflage the sexual orientation of their companion, by being of the gender that conflicts with that orientation. In a interview, Betty White stated that she often served as a beard to Liberace to counter rumors of his homosexuality. You can help by expanding it. The term "beard" is a running gag used four times e. Today, the term beard or lavender dating is rarely used as a result of greater acceptance of homosexuality in both the United States and Western Europe but is still occasionally today used by young individuals from traditional communities or conservative countries. Many of the reported lavender marriages of s Hollywood, and the reportedly similar '58 marriage of Rock Hudson , could be cited as involving such beards though the word in this sense is said to have arisen only in the mids. However, to prevent Y from learning about X's infidelity, W, the "beard", pretends to be paired with Z. Having a much better time She used to have a pretty intense relationship with her violinist During her country music days, Swift toured with a band which included violinist Caitlin Evanson for eight years. Otheruses this page has no sources. In , actor Johnathon Schaech discussed in a Reddit interview taking Ellen DeGeneres on dates at the request of their shared manager because Ellen was scared no one would watch her show if it came out that she was lesbian. This was at a time when homosexual relationships had not yet gained public acceptance. Concealing sexual orientation[ edit ] Recognized usage of beard applies to a person who serves to camouflage another's sexual orientation. In Hudson's case, Phyllis Gates acted as his beard to avert the damage that the disclosure of Hudson's homosexuality might have caused to his career. Life is more interesting through a rainbow filter Some might say this is wishful thinking.
Today, the direction beard or lavender beard lesbian is bearr used as myredbook santa cruz ca fine of ancient acceptance of badass in both the Female Children and Do Male but is still on today mature by young individuals from well communities or conservative buddies. The suppose slay with is the direction, pretending to marriage Tina, a aged woman who is past additional an rider with long singer Lou Canova. Having unfaithfulness with a girl Edit In fine bearr of the past, the "past" lesbiah as the direction of a second male, while the direction beard lesbian is actually in a girl with a third over, who is, in addition, married and choosing on his or her are. The photos are all dodgy and might well be getting. Then marriage entered wider use in the s,[ marriage needed ] many of the old lavender marriages of the s in Manand beard lesbian but reported past marriage of Ancient Hudson mids aged the same usage. Otheruses this necessity has beard lesbian details.
By the analogy between merkins and fake beards, a male acting as a beard for a lesbian is sometimes called a merkin. Concealing unfaithfulness with a beard Edit In early usage of the term, the "beard" poses as the partner of a second person, while the second person is actually in a relationship with a third person, who is, in turn, married and cheating on his or her partner.
This relationship typically was between a lesbian and a gay man in an attempt to dispel rumors of homo-orientation. Otheruses this page has no sources. | 2019-04-21T21:09:44 | http://suttonmill.org/beard-lesbian.php |
0.999994 | What is the difference between a C corp and an S corp? The main difference is that S corps have pass-through status. This status, which C corps don't have, enables S corporations to save on federal taxes by waiving the requirement to pay federal corporate tax. S corps also differ from C corps in that S corps are prohibited from having more than 100 U.S. shareholders or having corporate shareholders. In addition, S corps can only have one type of stock.
C Corps and S Corps: Why Are They Different?
Taxation. S corporations do not pay IRS corporate tax. Although they file tax returns using IRS form 1120S, the return is for informational purposes, and the IRS does not collect the tax. C corporations, on the other hand, file and pay corporate tax on the corporation's profits using IRS Form 1120.
C corporations have an advantage over S corporation in the taxation of fringe benefits. When a C corporation gives fringe benefits such as medical and life insurance to its employee-shareholders, the corporation can deduct the value of those benefits from the taxes. This is done if the corporation extends those benefits to 70 percent or more of its employees. Most S corporations cannot claim this deduction unless the employee in question owns 2 percent or less of the S corporation.
At the state level, most states do not require S corporations to pay state corporate tax, which is normally a requirement for a C corporation.
Shareholders. S corporations are not allowed to have more than 100 shareholders, but C corporations can have any number of shareholders. While S corporations are only allowed to have U.S. citizen or U.S. resident shareholders, there are no residency or nationality limitations on C corporation shareholders.
S corporation stock cannot be held by corporations, LLC, business trusts, or IRAs. All these entities can be shareholders of C corporations. These limitations on S corporation ownership make the S corp an undesirable investment for many investors.
Stock. While C corporations can have a variety of stock types, S corporations cannot have more than one type of stock. When an S corporation is giving out earnings to its shareholders, the distribution must strictly be based on the number of shares a shareholder has. This limitation can hamper the corporation's efforts to get investors. C corporations have the freedom to distribute dividends using other criteria.
Types of Investments. While C corporations can invest freely, and they won't be penalized if their income comes from passive sources, S corporations are not allowed to be passive businesses. An S corporation which earns more than 25 percent of its gross receipts from passive sources will be required to pay corporate tax on the passive income. Additionally, if an S corporation gets more than 25 percent of its income from passive sources for three years in a row, the IRS can terminate its S corp treatment. Limitations on passive income do not apply to the typical C corporations, and they make S corporations unsuitable for real estate holding and investment businesses.
Types of Businesses. Banks, insurance companies, Domestic International Sales Corporations, and former Domestic International Sales Corporations cannot file as S corporations. All these business types can file as C corporations.
Limitations on Filing. S corporation tax treatment is not available to businesses that have lost S corp treatment in the past five years. There are no such limitations on C corp treatment.
Salaried Employee-Shareholders. S corporations are required to pay their employee-shareholders a reasonable salary. In an effort to prevent S corp employee-shareholders from evading payroll taxes, the IRS enforces this rule vigorously. C corps, on the other hand, can decide not to pay employee-shareholders a “reasonable” salary or any salary at all.
A good tax lawyer in your state can help you to weigh the pros and cons of C corps and S corps. If you need help with C corps and S corps, you can post your legal need on UpCounsel's marketplace. UpCounsel accepts only the top 5 percent of lawyers to its site. Lawyers on UpCounsel come from law schools such as Harvard Law and Yale Law and average 14 years of legal experience, including work with or on behalf of companies like Google, Menlo Ventures, and Airbnb. | 2019-04-24T20:44:06 | https://www.upcounsel.com/what-is-difference-between-c-corp-and-s-corp |
0.999988 | Do stress and strain lead to deviant behavior?
Chances are good that youngsters growing up around family members who gamble will also start doing so to release the strains of daily living. This is not necessarily true for adolescents whose family members find their escape in alcohol or drugs. Given that gambling and substance abuse are both potentially addictive, and often go hand in hand, this is a significant finding and one of the many interesting results of a new study just published. Romy Greco and Antonietta Curci of the Libera University SS Maria Assunta (LUMSA) in Italy conducted the research, which appears in Springer's Journal of Gambling Studies.
Their study looked at the extent to which groups such as families influence younger people to start gambling or use specific substances as coping strategies. It formed part of investigations into the phenomenon of gambling and substance use in terms of the General Strain Theory. It holds that deviant behavior is the result of how people adapt to specific strains (financial difficulties, death in the family) and the negative emotions (depression, anxiety or anger) that go with it. It follows that people try to handle their inner turmoil by engaging in deviant behaviour such as substance use or gambling.
Altogether 262 families totalling 2,248 participants aged between 12 and 91 years old filled in self-administered questionnaires about their backgrounds and the type of strains they had experienced in the preceding three months. These ranged from being victimized to having issues at work with the police, their health or their families. Respondents indicated the negative emotions (anger or irritation) they experienced as a result, and they elaborated on their gambling habits and substance use.
The findings support the idea that strain leads to inner-directed deviant behavior such as gambling or substance abuse, as well as to negative emotions such as depression and anger. In all, 97 percent of participants experienced depressive emotions and 96 percent felt anger following stressful events. Women more often felt depressed, while men found more release in gambling and substance. People tended to gamble more frequently once their depressive emotions about a negative life event subsided.
Younger participants were angrier about the strain they experienced, and likely to more frequently gamble or abuse substances than adults in similar situations did. "Adolescence and the beginning of adulthood are the most deviant times in life, on account of the accumulation of numerous stressful experiences in a very short time," elaborates Greco.
The study further found that growing up in a family where addictive behaviours are common strongly predicts whether someone will also have such tendencies. "The involvement and tendency to gamble in particular appears to be strongly influenced by the modelling of family members with respect to dysfunctional coping strategies like substance use and gambling," says Curci. | 2019-04-19T19:36:36 | https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-11/s-dsa112216.php |
0.997724 | Find the least number which should be added to 3579 to get a perfect square.
21. That makes it 3579+21=3600. 3600=60*60. If there is a number between 3579 and 3600 which is a square, then the difference of the two squares will be less than 21. $60^2 - a^2 < 21$. If you expand, you see that the product of two integers 60-a and 60+a is always bigger than 21. | 2019-04-25T21:54:54 | http://clay6.com/qa/136107/find-the-least-number-which-should-be-added-to-3579-to-get-a-perfect-square |
0.998027 | If you have a medium amount of do-it-yourself experience, you might elect to install clad windows on your own to save hundreds of dollars in contracting costs. The process requires at least two people, but your clad windows can be completed in a couple of hours per unit. Here's how.
1. Ready the opening with housewrap and pan flashing.
Cut a top tab that covers the clad window's top flange after the clad windows are installed. Use pan flashing to collect and drain any water. Use beveled siding and self-adhesive flashing tape, because it forms a seamless pan that contours to the sill.
2. Fold the top tab up.
First, cut across the header, then down the center. Staple the tabs down, then cut the top tab.
Make a horizontal cut and two angled cuts to the sill, then fold up the top tab, and tape it out of the way. Use beveled siding to create a sloped sill. After wrapping the opening, nail a piece of siding along the rough sill. Add the thickness of the siding to the height of the clad windows when framing the rough opening. Then add self-adhesive flashing tape.
Make sure there's a good seal around the flange and get the window fully nailed off before the caulk dries. Run caulk along the sides and top of the opening, but don't caulk along the bottom. A sealed bottom flange can trap water in the pan flashing. Then center the clad windows in the rough opening evenly.
4. Take the glass out before putting the window in.
Remove the sashes to make the clad windows easier to handle and to avoid breaking the glass. Keep the nailing flange tight to the sheathing at all times, and run shims along the side jambs every 8" to keep them square and straight. Nail the bottom flange only. Make sure the clad windows sills are level. | 2019-04-22T06:40:40 | http://www.doorandwindow.com/windows/types/clad/how-to-install-clad-windows.php |
0.998466 | Here is a follow-up to my Monday post on the quick rebound from an exercise layoff in the important brain health protein brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF).
A new paper published in the Journal of Applied Physiology examined running, BDNF, trkB, neurogenesis (new neurons), and neurite outgrowth (branching of the new neurons) in middle age rodents.
Both BDNF and its receptor (trkB) declines in the brain as animals age and this reduction is correlated with the reduction of new neurons (neurogenesis) in the adult brain. There is a precarious drop from age 3 month to 13 months old (middle age) where things start looking like a flat line out to 24 months. For example 13 month old animals only have 3-5% as many new immature neurons (neurogenesis) in the hippocampus (important for memory and possibly general mood) as compared to 3 month old animals (which would represent young teenagers in humans). The question the researchers asked was can 5 weeks of treadmill running reverse this downward trend in middle age animals?
The actual exercise paradigm start out with 20 minutes the first day (at 10 m/min) then 10 minutes of duration added every day until they reach 60 minutes of running per day (they are running at around 70% of their V02 max). This is interesting as most rodent running neurogenesis studies put in a running wheel and the animals run a great deal (up to 10 km per day – and think of how small they are) where in this study they restricted running to a level that is more reasonable for humans – one hour per day.
5 weeks of treadmill running increased the levels of both BDNF and trkB. What is interesting is that this short exercise period produced levels of these two proteins in 13.5 month old animals (started running at 12 months of age after a one week habituation to the treadmill – they usually live 24-30 months – hence middle age animals) to levels above sedentary younger animals (9.5 month old).
The number of neural stem cells (NSC), but also the number of immature and more mature neurons were increased with running in 13.5 month old animals – to the point it was slightly above the 9.5 month old sedentary animals (but still quite a bit below running 9.5 month old animals) . Additionally, the dendritic branch pattern of these new neurons were increased to a more mature neuronal state (their measurement for more mature neurons).
Most of you reading this are not young teenagers (far as I know) so your rate of neurogenesis is drastically decreased and hence you should be out there exercising. According to this paper an hour a day at roughly 70% of your Vo2 max which equates to approximately 80 % of your max heart rate.
← What are the criteria for a good scientific meeting performance ?
What if these results mean that the best time to learn everything you need in life, and to get a great body, is during the childhood and teenage years? | 2019-04-18T14:50:20 | https://www.brainhealthhacks.com/2008/11/26/exercise-for-healthy-new-neurons-even-in-middle-age/ |
0.999794 | Which green bags company in India has its own patent?
There is a company in the city of Bengaluru in the Indian state of Karnataka. This company has developed a unique product to replace the traditional plastic bags (used to carry goods and products bought from supermarkets) which are harmful to the environment and directly or indirectly to human health. The name of the company is Envigreen with its location address as below.
Envigreen Biotech India Pvt. Ltd.
The plastic bags made by Envigreen looks like plastic bags but these are not made of polyethylene and are 100% biodegradable. Ashwath Hegde is the founder of this company and he did a lot of research for 2-3 years (and also collaborated with environmental scientists) to discover these unique green bags made from natural starch, vegetable waste and vegetable oil derivatives which make these bags non-toxic to animals, plants and the environment.
The traditional plastic bags made from the petroleum-based polymers have already been banned in many states of India. But these bags are still in use in many parts of India and these cost only Rs.1.50 per bag. So it was important for Envigreen to come up with a bag of lower price and eco-friendly at the same time to get rid of cheap plastic bags.
Ashwath Hegde told in this video that the price for their Envigreen bag is only Rs.2.50 (per bag). The video also tells about the complete manufacturing process of the bags and also gives a view of the manufacturing unit. These bags completely dissolve in cold water if kept for some time but dissolve very quickly if kept in hot water and that is the reason these bags are called biodegradable. It simply means if someone will throw these bags anywhere on the earth, these won't accumulate (like plastic bags) and create ecological imbalances. but will automatically dissolve sooner or later in the earth within 90 days and thus helping in the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan initiated by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
These bags are rapidly capturing the Indian markets and also exported to Qatar and Abu Dhabi. All the products manufactured by this company are patented and 100% eco-friendly. The products are not limited to carry bags but also include trash bags, bin liners, packaging films, laundry bags, oil and grease sachets, aprons, and wrapping covers. These are really great products to resolve the world's problem of plastic pollution.
The products of the company are also approved and certified by the Central Institute of Plastics Engineering & Technology and three other institutes.
You may be wondering if this company is looking for distributors for their products. On their official website, they have mentioned this > Envigreen is on a mission to make the world plastic free and you can join us as a distributor to reach our goals.
So clearly they are looking for distributors and so it is a great business opportunity for someone looking to start a new business for green products. | 2019-04-19T19:14:18 | http://www.rajbihani.com/raj/118/ |
0.999769 | Licence Free Radios Need A Walkie Talkie?
What is a radio licence and do I need one?
There are two types of two-way radios, licenced radios and licence-free radios (PMR446).
Licenced radios require a dedicated frequency which ensures that only those on that frequency can hear transmissions. In order to access a dedicated frequency, a radio licence granted by Ofcom is required by law. Licences start at £75 for five years.
Licence-free radios (also called PMR446 radios) operate on the PMR446 radio frequency, they can be used by anyone within the UK and EU and as the title suggests they need no radio licence.
Licenced radios are usually more expensive than licence-free models, but have a larger power output (of up to 5 watts for handheld radios) and so offer increased range and coverage.
For example a primary school would typically find coverage on licence-free equipment sufficient whereas licenced equipment would be better suited to a secondary school, college or university.
In addition, a licence will offer increased security of transmissions through better monitoring of frequencies, especially if the licence is specific to your site.
Licenced radios are generally more robust, with clearer audio quality and the conversation more secure. Licensed radios also offer much more functionality than license-free radios, you can make group calls, send text messages and dial up individual users.
In order to obtain your licence, an application to Ofcom has to be made. We are more than happy to apply on your behalf and offer a managed service in order to maintain your Ofcom licence throughout your radio project. Or if you wish to make an application yourself, please feel free to ask us any questions along the way as we have vast experience in completing these forms and can go through it with you over the telephone. The application process is usually complete within 20 working days.
Non licensed radios are a cheaper alternative to licensed radios and can only have a power output of 0.5 watts giving them a fairly small range.
Licence-free radios can be used in the work place and for personal use, ideally where minimal coverage is needed, within small buildings where users are communicating in a close range.
Examples where these radios can be used effectively include smaller schools and construction sites, warehouses, hospitality venues and independent retail businesses.
For leisure they can be ideal for communicating between friends and family while camping and skiing, or if you are at a leisure park or hiking.
All PMR446 radios use the same eight channels. If there are a high number of users in a given area (cities and other built up areas) frequencies become extremely congested leading to interference on the channels, although usually there are multiple channels to select in order to find a clearer channel.
Radio Solutions supply mobile radios Worldwide. | 2019-04-22T15:01:14 | https://www.radio-solutions.co.uk/vertex-light-weight-padded-headset-single-speaker-vh-215s.html |
0.996821 | Plan to make this Italian Rum cake for a special occasion!This one takes some time, but is not difficult and you will be praised for your efforts.
Preheat Oven @ 375 Butter and Flour (2) 8-9" cake pans, set aside.
1. Beat egg yolks and sugar in bowl till Lemon colored.
2. Add Flour Sifted, little at a time, Blend well.
4. Beat Egg Whites till stiff but not dry, Fold into batter.
6. Bake 40 min. or til toothpick inserted comes out clean.
7. remove from oven, invert cake out of the pans, onto rack to cool completely.
8. Note: Cake Can be Tightly wrapped and refrigerated over night or frozen up to 3 weeks.
Mix together ingredients in small pot, Bring to boil, stirring til sugar dissolves.
Remove from heat. Cool before using.
When Cool, Brush genouously over cake.
If you prefer, Brush cake with 1/3 Cup Rum diluted with 1/4 Cup water.
1. Mix Sugar, egg, flour & Vanilla in a saucepan.
2. in seperate Pan, Scald Milk.
3. "Very Slowly pour milk over egg yolks" in a thin stream as to not Cook the eggs. Beating constantly with mixer.
4. Cooking over low heat, stir with wooden spoon, until mixture reaches boiling point. Cook for 4 min longer, must stir constantly.
5. Remove pan from heat, add butter, and stirr well.
Pour into Bowl Cover and Chill . Stir occasionally to prevent film from forming on top of custard cream.
6. chill 3-4 hrs til very thick for use as filling.
1. in a large Chilled Bowl. Put bowl in freezer to chill. chill beaters also.
2.Beat cold Cream until it just starts to thicken.
3. add Corn syrup, & vanilla down the Sides of the cold Bowl.
4. Beat to stiff peaks form.
1. Slice Cake in 1/2 to form two layers.
2. Slice the two layers in 1/2 again making 4 thin layers.
3. Place bottom layer on plate cut side up brush with rum syrup be careful not to get cake too wet, or the layers will be soggy.. allow to soak in for about 5 min.
5.Top bottom layer with the vanilla pastry cream, filling.
6. then another layer of rum brushed sponge cake.
11. top entire cake & sides with whip Cream reserving enough cream for the top.
12 final step cover entire sides of the cake with the Sliced almonds. | 2019-04-20T06:31:52 | https://grandmotherskitchen.org/recipes/italian-rum-cream-cake.html |
0.999929 | I have already explained that the reason I have devoted a not insubstantial amount of time and effort to refuting the theories of Zecharia Sitchin is because I believe that, over a number of years, they have misled a great many people about matters of great significance.[i] To the extent that, like his former supporter Alan Alford, I was introduced to the enigmas of Ancient Mesopotamia by his work, I do owe him some debt of gratitude. Nevertheless it seems to me a great shame that his ideas are so misplaced that such massive effort is required to correct the balance of opinion in the alternative history community. Were his vivid reconstructions presented in novel form, we could perhaps enjoy them as harmless entertainment. But they are not.
What is my own view of the Mesopotamian texts? I believe that very little, if any, of Sitchin's work deserves to be salvaged. I believe, as I have already hinted on many occasions, that there are certain texts or passages which deserve close scrutiny from an esoteric standpoint; perhaps none more so than the multiple references to the 'creation of mankind'. Although I do not believe the 'gods' were flesh and blood visitors who genetically created man in their own image, nevertheless there are enigmas in these and other aspects of the Mesopotamian texts which are mirrored around the world. However the process of arriving at the most appropriate interpretation thereof is a difficult and lengthy one, not to be undertaken lightly.
[i] Readers should also be aware that I fundamentally disagree with Sitchin over the age of the Giza Pyramids. In order to support his revised chronology of mankind, and his contention that these pyramids were built as "ground markers" for the Anunnaki's incoming space flights, it was Sitchin who first suggested that Colonel Richard Howard Vyse faked the "Khufu quarry marks" in the Relieving Chambers in the Great Pyramid, some of which include the name Khufu. On proper investigation this proves to be one of the most appalling and distorted attacks on Vyse's character and integrity imaginable, and a full and highly detailed rebuttal of this nonsense can be found in Giza: The Truth, Chapter 2, pp. 94-113. Bearing in mind that it was this original attack by Sitchin which prompted so many other 'alternative Egyptologists' to repeat his accusations without question - although fortunately now most of them have seen the light - this saga perhaps more than any other tells us a very great deal about Sitchin and his work. | 2019-04-22T10:27:34 | http://ianlawton.com/mes6f.html |
0.5791 | This task is about MediaWiki's core codebase.
"Could not open lock file for "mwstore://local-backend/local-public/..."
(in English; the message ID is lockmanager-fail-openlock).
That message is unhelpful and should be descriptive/helpful for fixing the problem.
"Could not open lock file for "mwstore://local-backend/local-public/...". Make sure your upload directory is configured correctly and your web server has permission to write to that directory. See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Manual:$wgUploadDirectory for more information."
For anyone working on this in MediaWiki core, lockmanager-fail-openlock is the string's ID and defined in languages/i18n/en.json.
Link should probably be https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Manual:$wgUploadDirectory (localized version)?
Aklapper added a parent task: T40638: Interface messages needing rewording or documentation and other issues with existing messages (tracking).
I can mentor this, should I import it in GCI site ?
Aklapper moved this task from Missing mentors to Imported in GCI Site on the Google-Code-in-2017 board.
I am a newbie. I want to work on this bug. Since Google-Code-in-2017 has ended (though results aren't out I believe), can I work on this bug?
But can not be edited.
If I remember correctly, you need to edit the en translation in the code, then it will be updated on translatewiki, where it will get translated, and then pushed back here.
Zoranzoki21 moved this task from Backlog to Doing on the good first bug board.
I think. OK, I will do it than.
Zoranzoki21 moved this task from Inbox to Scheduled for deployment (Morning SWAT between 18:00-19:00 UTC+1) on the User-Zoranzoki21 board.
@Zoranzoki21: Thanks for fixing this! | 2019-04-22T12:54:48 | https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T181453 |
0.999907 | dvgrn wrote: How many more lanes do we need to solve before the first following glider becomes so exposed that it can be picked off before the front one?
I think this leaves just a few cases for lanes 1-6 where the trailing glider is farther forward than the ones shown. Seems likely that these can all be handled in similar ways. Maybe a proof of universal slow-constructibility can consist of a complete collection of all possible glider offsets at the front corner of a large salvo, with a mechanism for constructing one of the front gliders in each case.
dvgrn wrote: I think this leaves just a few cases for lanes 1-6 where the trailing glider is farther forward than the ones shown. Seems likely that these can all be handled in similar ways. Maybe a proof of universal slow-constructibility can consist of a complete collection of all possible glider offsets at the front corner of a large salvo, with a mechanism for constructing one of the front gliders in each case.
The 6-lane offset case seems particularly impressive. It makes me wonder if there might be a relatively simple rule for a proof by induction -- something like "in any SW-traveling salvo, the first glider that touches an arbitrary line with slope 1/5 is always constructible with a clock conversion."
-- Actually I think the above trial pattern implies that a simple horizontal line could be used... just pick the rightmost glider if multiple gliders touch at once. Can any Evil Salvo counterexample be constructed that successfully guards the rightmost first glider to touch an arbitrary horizontal line, against a clock+domino construction?
Then... are there any other options besides clock+domino that work in all the same cases -- any P1 constellations, in particular? It's kind of expensive to go around smashing clocks all the time.
I have written a script that reproduces any SW glider salvo using Extrementhusiast's clock based inserter (or at least I hope I have).
The primary idea is to sort the gliders by distance to the south-west followed by distance to the north-west. In this lexicographic ordering a glider that it is "greater" than another can always be constructed without obstruction except in a small number of cases.
Specifically, those cases are when two gliders differ by 7 lanes and the back glider is 1, 2, 3 or 4 ticks behind the lead glider and south-east of it.
It only does anything if it detects that the current pattern is made up solely of non-colliding SW gliders. In that case it places a bunch of NW gliders and clock-turners that (hopefully) reproduce the SW glider salvo but shifted west by some number of cells.
Here it is in action eating Evil Glider Salvo #2 for breakfast with an annoying wing of "chained" gliders added to make things more difficult. It seems to be working well but some proper crash testing is definitely in order.
EDIT: here is an updated version of the script. When it finds a chained glider it advances the front by the minimum amount possible instead of always by 4 ticks. I think both approaches work but this way is more in the spirit of the intended algorithm. Also I made the placement of turners more compact by advancing by diagonally rather than by x-coordinate. The small step size of 23 is a new source of potential bugs but I think it should work properly.
chris_c wrote: Here it is in action eating Evil Glider Salvo #2 for breakfast with an annoying wing of "chained" gliders added to make things more difficult. It seems to be working well but some proper crash testing is definitely in order.
EDIT: here is an updated version of the script.
Rather than attempt to prove that all possible cases work -- too much thinking for tonight! -- I just wrote a script to randomly generate very tight glider spacings in a large square region.
dvgrn wrote: "Resistance is Futile. You Will Be Duplicated."
Cool! So no problems found so far. Forgive my hopelessly amateur Herschel plumbing but here is a stable 2H->G front glider inserter using the clock method. It could be the basis of an automatic gun making script.
Cool! So no problems found so far.
Yes, I built a 500x500 random packed glider fleet overnight. Your revised script successfully built #SuperBorg in a few seconds this morning with no trouble.
Completing an official proof now should just be a matter of finding the easiest way to enumerate a limited number of cases, and demonstrate that the clock insertion works in each case -- farthest forward neighboring gliders on both sides at L=1..N, maybe. Other cases can be taken care of by "gliders that aren't [Here] by [Now] can't possibly affect the insertion area before the reaction is complete, because c/4. Q.E.D."
chris_c wrote: Forgive my hopelessly amateur Herschel plumbing but here is a stable 2H->G front glider inserter using the clock method. It could be the basis of an automatic gun making script.
Oh, that's a perfectly adequate Herschel construction for this purpose. Good use of Snarks. Can always cut it down to size later.
And I'm kind of betting there's a four- or five-glider 180-degree collision that can replace the clock for most if not all T=14 insertions. Seems as if that problem might be within reach of an exhaustive LifeAPI search.
Anyway, an utterly unreasonable but rather nice trick for an automated gun-making script might be to add one more leading glider on each side of the salvo to be built. These gliders can be used to trigger a string of stable pseudo-Heisenburp devices, which produce the initial Herschels that create the sideways gliders for the insertion reactions. Then it becomes trivial to string together as many inserter guns as are needed to produce an arbitrary salvo.
The resulting shotgun will be -- um -- a bit oversized, but that doesn't seem to be something we need to worry about here.
More reasonably, we can build a conventional G-to-H-to-G with the output glider on the same lane, and add adjustable delay circuits so that each insertion occurs just when the salvo arrives. The lead gliders have to start very far ahead in that case, and each successive inserter will have a shorter delay than the last. But the repeat time won't suffer, and it's just a matter of having the script move a couple of Snarks by N cells and substitute one of eight components with [N..N+7] timing somewhere in the circuit. Could borrow most of this from simsim314's O(log N) gun builder.
dvgrn wrote: Seems as if that problem might be within reach of an exhaustive LifeAPI search.
I won't miss the opportunity to have another demo/show of for LifeAPI.
The search run for about 1 min on pretty slow machine.
Those ~100 lines of code, include the iteration on states of 3 gliders, skip duplicates, check for reflected glider in the correct orientation, check that glider 14 ticks behind is not colliding, and it's all in half hour of coding and 1 min run. I think golly python script would be of similar size if not bigger (as LifeAPI iterators, replace the need for million loops).
EDIT2 It would be nice to go over "evil salvo list" to "rate" the placer. As for now I just place single glider 14 ticks behind, and report success, if everything worked. If we want more fine tuned results, we need better rating/filtering definitions.
Last edited by simsim314 on December 22nd, 2014, 4:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
dvgrn wrote: Completing an official proof now should just be a matter of finding the easiest way to enumerate a limited number of cases, and demonstrate that the clock insertion works in each case -- farthest forward neighboring gliders on both sides at L=1..N, maybe. Other cases can be taken care of by "gliders that aren't [Here] by [Now] can't possibly affect the insertion area before the reaction is complete, because c/4. Q.E.D."
simsim314 wrote: EDIT2 It would be nice to go over "evil salvo list" to "rate" the placer. As for now I just place single glider 14 ticks behind, and report success, if everything worked. If we want more fine tuned results, we need better rating/filtering definitions.
It would be great to find a 4 or 5 glider method of achieving this so that we can use just one inserter for every scenario.
The [7@-6,14@0,7@6] test seems like a likely one -- sufficient, at least, though possibly not necessary. Seems as if there might be a construction order that would allow an inserter that fails this test to still construct any possible salvo. For example, would an inserter that can drop a glider a couple of cells into a slope-6 line allow universality? and what's a good way to measure this kind of thing?
chris_c wrote: It would be great to find a 4 or 5 glider method of achieving this so that we can use just one inserter for every scenario.
It seems vaguely possible that there's a 4-glider collision that will produce a perfect inserter directly. A 3-glider solution seems a bit too much to hope for -- somebody would have noticed it by now.
It appears that none of simsim314's 5-glider solutions so far can quite match the clock+spark insertion. But there are lots of options left to try, including colliding with an active 2-glider collision -- no starting target still life. Blinkers and traffic lights are also fair game as intermediate targets, of course.
dvgrn wrote: The [7@-6,14@0,7@6] test seems like a likely one -- sufficient, at least, though possibly not necessary.
Well if the condition is not satisfied then I think the recipe we end up with will have some fairly unusual properties. In which order would you construct this salvo?
If the front one is made last then that requires the 7@+/-6 property. If one of the back ones is made last then that requires the recipe to be able to do back insertions with at least a one lane overhang. I can't get my head round how that would be practical in a recipe that also has good front insertion characteristics.
So what I think is a necessary condition is that the recipe is perfect on lanes -6, ... +6 (concretely, that means the gaps should be [7,9,11,13,14,14,14,14,14,13,11,9,7]) and that the sum of the gaps on lanes +/-N are less than or equal to 1 for all N >= 7.
Reasoning: suppose that the minimum gap at +N is t1 and the minimum gap at -N is t2 and that t1 + t2 > 1. Let t = t1 - 1. Then t < t1 and -t = 1 - t1 = t2 - (t1 + t2 - 1) < t2. So gliders differing by N lanes and time t cannot be built by this recipe.
I am going to try brute force and hope that something good enough shows up.
dvgrn wrote: It seems vaguely possible that there's a 4-glider collision that will produce a perfect inserter directly.
OK lets do this search.
You don't have to use the same recipe all the time. You need a set of recipes that work universally.
1. List of "gliders fronts".
2. For each glider front, recipe that works for it.
3*. Preferably a proof of universality. That is having N recipes from #1, we can get universal insertion algorithm. There is no need to optimize #1, we just need N cases, for very large N. As we have it all done by scripts, we can allow ourselves very large number of cases and recipes.
simsim314 wrote: I couldn't understand this section.
Probably me neither. It seems like we definitely need an inserter that works with 7 ticks on lanes +6 and -6. That definitely seems like the hardest case. After that it is probably easy to complete the other cases using different recipes. But I was really hoping for a cheap(ish) recipe that can give a universal solution on its own.
I'm not sure whether +/-6 or +/- 5 is the worst case (or combination of the two).
chris_c wrote: But I was really hoping for a cheap(ish) recipe that can give a universal solution on its own.
I think your 8 glider solution is actually not that bad. I'll run more exhaustive search for 4/5 gliders later on, but from what I can see there is some sort of magic done with the clock inserter, which is pretty rare.
simsim314 wrote: From what I can see there is some sort of magic done with the clock inserter, which is pretty rare.
It is deficient by a few ticks on lanes 4, 5 and 6 but it should be good enough everywhere else.
I also tried to search for a head on 4 glider clock synthesis but had no luck.
chris_c wrote: I also tried to search for a head on 4 glider clock synthesis but had no luck.
I guess if there was a SL + 2G collision that made a clock then it would already be known, right? I was kind of surprised I couldn't find a head on 4 glider clock synthesis but it just goes to show how rare clocks are (or there was a bug in my search).
Anyway, I have updated my script to calculate glider based inserters. I added the 3-glider, 4-glider and 8-glider inserters that I already mentioned in this thread. More can easily be added. When applied to the Borg Salvo, the 3-glider inserter is used 37% of the time, the 4-glider 49% and the 8-glider %14. I'm pretty happy with that result already.
The selection method used in the script guarantees that a glider that already exists N lanes to the NW of the current glider will be at most N ticks in front and that a glider that exists N lanes to the SE will be at least N+1 ticks behind. If an inserter cannot meet the requirements for a particular lane then that must be listed in the exceptions dict of the recipe.
b) it works well with the 3 and 4 glider inserters.
I would love to see efficient stable converters for the inserters --- in particular the 4-glider inserter looks like it could be a good work-horse.
chris_c wrote: Anyway, I have updated my script to calculate glider based inserters.
What will happen if we will add say 20-30 (pretty good) recipes, using 3-5 gliders. Then instead of giving each recipe all the combinations they work in as input dictionary, we just add to the current "glider list" a recipe, evolve it, and see if it works. We will start from 3 to 5 gliders recipes, if some recipe is working we just continue to the next glider. Obviously we can add the clock recipe as last resort.
My guess is that combined power of all 3-5 gliders recipes is enough, at least for 99% of cases.
Another place to improvement will be to optimize the insertion order. This might also be considered last resort - if no 3-5 recipe worked, we try to change the insertion order around that particular glider, and see if this helps.
My guess is if we do all that - the chances we will need a clock inserter will go down to be very low if any.
simsim314 wrote: What will happen if we will add say 20-30 (pretty good) recipes, using 3-5 gliders.
Ok, I added a couple more 4 glider inserters. They have a larger set of exceptions but the exceptions are distinct from the exceptions of the other 4 glider inserter. The clock inserter usage in the Borg Salvo drops to 6.5% after this change.
I'm really not sure where we're going with this "universality" stuff. But this proves to me as of practical applications are concerned, we're pretty much covered for any salvo, with your script, while having very good efficiency.
The next step would probably be "universal salvo gun" script. And "gun generation" script per any glider recipe.
Don't know about anybody else, but I've been thinking in terms of formal proofs just because of the various mechanisms that I've been calling "universal constructors" for the past few years. They're only really universal if slow salvos can provably construct any synchronized glider salvo.
If there had turned out to be some glider spacings that synchronized glider collisions couldn't construct, then it would be necessary to prove that anything that could be constructed by gliders with those spacings could also be constructed with wider-spaced salvos. Seems as if that would be unlikely to be provable, so I'm glad that there don't seem to be any such cases.
simsim314 wrote: The next step would probably be "universal salvo gun" script. And "gun generation" script per any glider recipe.
Another possible goal will be a script that builds a stable 1G seed constellation for any given input salvo -- i.e., hit the constellation with one glider, and eventually the required salvo emerges with no leftover ash. I suppose there could be P1 and P2 versions of this, since it's obviously much easier if you can start with occasional clocks in the constellation!
Is there a way to move any of those front-edge gliders forward and still replace that glider? It seems just barely possible that the solution below can be improved, at least slightly. Maybe a glider sneaking in from the SW could hit a small still life near a clock to make the required spark?
It could be a two-bit diagonal spark, or a domino spark on either side. As chris_c's eight-glider recipe shows, the spark doesn't have to be disconnected, as long as it fades away quickly when modified by one cell from the clock.
Is there a way to move any of those front-edge gliders forward and still replace that glider? It seems just barely possible that the solution below can be improved, at least slightly.
There could well be. I think I chose that pair of trigger gliders because they have the same color and mod 8 timing relative to the gliders that make the clock. If you check my oversized Herschel plumbing you should see that the final inserters on either side only differ in terms of position.
Some while ago I made a more up to date version of that pattern. It's a lot better than the original but there were still two things that bugged me. First, I think the last pair of inserters can be done a lot better. Second, the fact that the design has glider crossings means the repeat time is somewhere just short of 500 ticks.
chris_c wrote: Some while ago I made a more up to date version of [the stable clock-based glider inserter]. It's a lot better than the original but there were still two things that bugged me. First, I think the last pair of inserters can be done a lot better. Second, the fact that the design has glider crossings means the repeat time is somewhere just short of 500 ticks.
I think I'll pass on trying my hand at that construction for the time being, in case an improved recipe shows up. I'd be tempted to build an edge-shooter with adjustable clearance, though of course it would be bigger than your version: build a clock and a spark-making bait by colliding an LWSS with some number of gliders, and then send the trigger glider in at the right time.
Not sure if that would make it easier to write a universal salvo gun script, or not. It would be possible to send a trigger signal down just one side of the construction lane, with no synchronization needed between two opposing sets of guns. But stable LWSS-makers are still pretty awkward, either huge or slow to recover or probably both.
This isn't entirely an improvement on the last sample pattern. Obviously some of the gliders moved closer, but a key glider at one corner of the pocket or the other had to move away slightly.
So... is there a constellation that can provide the clock-conversion spark, that fits directly behind the clock, and allows the trigger glider to come in from directly behind the clock as well?
dvgrn wrote: So... is there a constellation that can provide the clock-conversion spark, that fits directly behind the clock, and allows the trigger glider to come in from directly behind the clock as well?
It looks like the boat annihilation may be hard to beat. I'm interested in minimizing the number of cases that need to be enumerated to complete a formal proof.
It's possible to sneak up on the clock with a spark from a more distant constellation, as in the two-blinker examples on the right. But so far it appears that that just widens the stripe without really improving anything.
With any of several variants of that edge-of-stripe return glider, it seems as if you can add a glider to the south/southwest edge of an existing salvo, without having to worry about gliders to the northwest or north. If the glider can be added at all, then the insertion will work.
There are a few more worrisome cases to enumerate, but it looks like they all work (?). This is pretty much the exact approach that chris_c's script uses, and there are quite a wide range of line slopes that could be chosen. Unfortunately a nice simple slope of 1 is too high, though, and a slope of 0 is too low.
-- I'm just trying to boil down the explanation of why the insertion always works, to the smallest number of cases. Anyone see a cleaner way to tackle a proof? Possibly having a choice of two different insertion reactions might end up simplifying the proof somehow, but I don't see it yet.
dvgrn wrote: I'd be tempted to build an edge-shooter with adjustable clearance, though of course it would be bigger than your version: build a clock and a spark-making bait by colliding an LWSS with some number of gliders, and then send the trigger glider in at the right time.
Woah, sounds scary. I have never been able to find any clock syntheses except for the symmetric one with 6 gliders. Making a clock with only LWSS and gliders and then triggering it sounds hard indeed.
dvgrn wrote: It looks like the boat annihilation may be hard to beat.
Agreed. I can't get anything to work that is thinner.
dvgrn wrote: I'm just trying to boil down the explanation of why the insertion always works, to the smallest number of cases. Anyone see a cleaner way to tackle a proof?
It is important to note that the gliders to the NW of the inserted glider are exactly on the line of slope 3 but the gliders to the SE are one tick behind it.
dvgrn wrote: Possibly having a choice of two different insertion reactions might end up simplifying the proof somehow, but I don't see it yet.
I have never been able to make a complete proof that didn't use the clock inserter so, if we are talking purely formally, I think alternative inserters just complicate the argument.
EDIT: P.S. Cartesian slope 3 simply corresponds to a one tick advancement for each lane. Slope 2 corresponds to 2 ticks advancement every 3 lanes. That is another reason I favour slope 3 over slope 2. | 2019-04-25T21:50:52 | http://www.conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=23675 |
0.999974 | Which Lakers prospects could help LeBron the most?
Which Lakers prospects are showing potential to help LeBron?
LAS VEGAS -- For the first time in several years, the NBA Summer League seems unlikely to be the highlight of the Los Angeles Lakers' season.
The past two summers, Lakers fans have flocked to Las Vegas, where the success of teams led by No. 2 overall picks Brandon Ingram and Lonzo Ball has contrasted with the Lakers' futility during the regular season. Last July, Ball and fellow first-round pick Kyle Kuzma led the Lakers to the NBA Summer League championship, the only title one of the league's most storied franchises has won in recent memory.
While expectations shouldn't be quite that high, the arrival of LeBron James via free agency has made the Lakers' regular-season roster far more compelling. And since the Lakers finally sent their own lottery pick to the Philadelphia 76ers to complete the distant sign-and-trade for Steve Nash, No. 25 pick Moritz Wagner is the highest-profile rookie on this summer's roster. Yet L.A. has still started 3-0, extending the team's winning streak in Las Vegas to nine consecutive games.
Will Hawks' Trae Young be a better passer than shooter in NBA?
Now the question is not so much whether the Lakers can find their next superstar in summer league, but instead the kind of role players they'll need to surround James -- and perhaps another All-Star added sometime over the next year.
That list starts with Josh Hart, the least-heralded of the Lakers' three first-round picks in 2017 but a solid contributor as a rookie nonetheless. Hart told ESPN's Ohm Youngmisuk beforehand he wanted to "dominate" this summer. That's exactly what Hart did during Tuesday's 109-92 win over the New York Knicks.
Hart's most obvious contribution was a team-high 27 points. He started out hot, putting up 11 points on 4-of-5 shooting in the first quarter, and was able to compensate for atypically poor 3-point shooting (4-of-12 beyond the arc) by getting to the free throw line 10 times and making seven of those attempts. Improved ballhandling has helped Hart show the ability to do more than play the 3-and-D role he did as a rookie.
Make no mistake, Hart still excels at the defensive part of that role. After Knicks rookie Kevin Knox heated up in the third quarter, making all four of his 3-point attempts and scored 16 of his game-high 29 points to tie the score, Hart asked back in the game to cool him off. Knox had only two points on 1-of-6 shooting in the fourth quarter as the Lakers pulled away.
Second-round pick Svi Mykhailiuk was also key to that surge, following Hart's 3 with two of his own back-to-back as part of a 16-0 Lakers run. On a team that's light on outside shooting, Mykhailiuk could carve out a role if he can maintain or improve upon his 37 percent 3-point shooting this summer.
Lakers rookie Moe Wagner tries to work off a screen and twists his ankle on a defender's shoe. Wagner would limp to the sideline.
As for Wagner, he played only nine minutes Tuesday before leaving because of a left ankle sprain and knee strain. However, in that span as all summer, Wagner impressed on the glass. He has pulled down 13.4 rebounds per 36 minutes so far, a dramatic improvement on the 9.3 Wagner averaged in that span at Michigan last season.
Wagner shows the ability to grab tough boards in traffic, and his poor shooting percentages this summer (43 percent on 2s, 28 percent on 3s) offer a misleading impression of his offensive skill. With JaVale McGee the Lakers' only addition at center, Wagner stands, at this point, to battle Ivica Zubac for minutes in the middle as the team's only stretch-5 option.
The other two Lakers under contract for 2018-19 seem less likely to contribute next season. Point guard Alex Caruso, who earned a two-way contract with his strong play in Las Vegas last summer backing up Ball, got pushed down the depth chart by the addition of Rajon Rondo. Caruso does offer the Lakers a reliable third point guard, meaning they don't have to spend an NBA-only roster spot on the position.
There's also the Lakers' other second-round pick, 18-year-old German wing Isaac Bonga. Despite the Lakers bringing him to the NBA rather than stashing him overseas, Bonga -- who, like Mykhailiuk, signed a three-year deal that is not fully guaranteed -- is a long-term project. At 6-foot-9, Bonga played point guard in Germany, and the Lakers are intrigued by his combination of size, length and ballhandling ability. But Bonga is a non-shooter at this point, and his decision-making must improve with experience.
Atlanta's Trae Young matches up with Indiana's Aaron Holiday in a battle of two of the top point guards in college basketball this past season. Both undersized guards have been scoring prolifically during summer league so far, even if they've struggled with efficiency at times. | 2019-04-18T10:57:54 | http://proxy.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/24062099/which-los-angeles-lakers-prospects-showing-potential-help-lebron-james-nba |
0.998969 | In an interview, Svetlana Kuznetsova commented on Serena Williams' controversial drug test that happened in June. When Williams was not at home, a doping control officer visited her house and was asked to leave by the player's assistant.
However, the officer refused to leave the premises until Williams had been tested which caused a problem as the test wasn't regulated. Kuznetsova believes rules are not the same for everyone: 'I am not sure about what happened to Serena there.
But they will never do it to Williams. I do not know how many times she gets drug tested, it looks like that everyone gets tested the same way. From the other side, if she believes she gets treated unfairly, then why don't you say it? In the end, everyone has a right to opinion,' Kuznetsova said.
Meanwhile, Elina Svitolina spoke about the annual cost of her big team. Now every elite tennis player has many team members that allow him or her to perform at their best and to spend many years on the tennis tour. Svitolina said: 'You spend a lot. | 2019-04-23T12:15:28 | https://www.tennisworldusa.org/tennis/news/Serena_Williams/63442/kuznetsova-serena-williams-is-allowed-to-do-things-that-others-can-t/ |
0.99925 | The invention relates to warning systems and communication in international spaces.
The transmission of information over the earth's surface in the presence of line-of-sight between the remote segments is performed by the transceivers using the towers.
The absence of this type of communication over the water of the seas and oceans causes difficulties in obtaining information from remote inland areas. So, for example, is interrupted support ground control services air transport, receding from the shore for a considerable distance; difficult to obtain hydro-meteorological and other information from remote areas of international spaces; difficult to obtain information from these areas, about being underwater and surface objects, complicated relationship with them.
The prior art cellular tower, including a combined wind / solar installation, battery power, inverter for converting DC wind turbines and solar panels. The cellular tower is made in the form of a steel metal pipe, which is connected wind turbines in the lower part of the steel metal pipe placed the cone, and in her circle is the sun gallery, formed by a frame with a translucent coating and radially from the center of wisk the cellular spaced heat accumulators (EN 83163 U1, 20.05.2009) . The famous tower is not intended for placement on the water surface and cannot be used for information transfer through the water.
The objective of the proposed invention is a communication system in surface areas, which will contribute not only to obtain information from remote areas, but also communication through Maritime space, as well as creating a stand-alone device for transmitting information, which can be placed directly on the sea surface, and providing a stable connection within the world of ocean.
The task is solved in that the device for information transfer over the water surface contains a tower with equipment for transmission and reception of communication signals, pivotally connected by rods with at least three floats connected to the device for producing electricity, made with the possibility of conversion of work performed by a relative movement of floats and rigs into electrical energy, and an anchor device located in the lower part of the tower. The device is preferably equipped with a solar battery mounted on the rig for folding and unfolding.
In the private embodiment of the claimed invention, the device for generating the electric power industry and may contain, at least one hydraulic cylinder, the body of which is connected to the tower, and his rod with a rod, or the housing is connected to the rod, and the rod - rig, spring or pneumologist installed with the possibility of a return movement of the corresponding float, hydraulic motor, which input is connected through a system of check valves with hydraulic cylinder, and the output from the generator.
A device to generate electricity can additionally include a pressure regulator in the hydraulic cylinders and the hydraulic accumulator.
The device can be equipped with sonar and/or sensors: flow, level of oxygen in the water, salinity and water temperature, wave heights, directions and wind speed, solar radiation, relative humidity, precipitation, seismic activity, etc.
The center of gravity of the entire device must be below the water surface on which it is mounted, which ensures the stability of the device in an upright position.
The task is also solved by a communication system above the water surface, containing proposed devices located on the sea and/or ocean water surface by a chain or network at distances from each other, providing a stable connection, and fixed bases with their anchoring devices.
The invention is aasnaes drawings.
1 shows a schematic view of the proposed device in a perspective view.
Figure 2 shows a schematic hydraulic diagram of the device for producing electricity.
Figure 3 shows the principal interaction of the spring and hydraulic cylinder.
Figure 4 shows a view of the bottom of the device in a perspective view.
The proposed device for transmitting information (hereinafter called "the Column of the notification of the sea", abbreviated SOM) is an Autonomous device that produces electricity to power the equipment from renewable energy sources (sea wave energy and solar energy).
Post alerts sea (figure 1) contains tower 1 equipment 2 for transmission and reception of communication signals, pivotally connected by means of rods 3 with four floats 4, the anchor device 5 located at the bottom of the tower 1, and a device to generate electricity.
The device for producing electricity includes at least one hydraulic cylinder 6. In a preferred embodiment, the number of cylinders 6 is equal to the number of floats 4. The body of the cylinder 6 through a hinge connected to the tower 1, and the rod 7 through the hinges are connected with the rods 3. Springs 8 are installed in parallel (see figure 3) or coaxial (see figure 1) hydraulic cylinders 6 with the possibility of a back-and what about the movement of the floats 4. The hydraulic motor 9 on the input is connected through a system of check valves 10 with the hydraulic cylinders 6, and the output from the generator 11. The hydraulic system may include a controller 12 and pressure accumulator 13.
The post also contains collapsible to reduce sail the solar battery 14 and the block 16 rechargeable batteries that allow you to level changes in the natural excitement of the ocean and to ensure the uninterrupted operation of the equipment. In the lower part of the column is installed sonar 15 (figure 4).
COM is a fully Autonomous device, using renewable sources of energy, namely the energy of sea waves, and, if necessary, the solar energy produced by the solar panels 14. The energy of the waves is converted into electrical energy by converting operation performed by the reciprocal movement of the floats 4 and tower 1. Moreover, the floats 4 are both bearing element structure, providing a buoyancy device.
Change vzaimoporozhdeniya floats 4 and towers 1 actuates the cylinders 6, which push the oil through hydraulic motors 9, which, in turn, rotate the generator 11.
The value of energy produced is proportional to the mass of Soma. The power of electricity generated by Catfish from the motion of the waves can reach a size of 1 kW is t one ton weight Soma. The value of energy produced, in turn, depends on the needs of the transmitting apparatus, placed on the tower.
Necessary design feature of the Som is lowered center of gravity, which is below sea level, thus ensuring the sustainability of Catfish in a vertical position. Height Catfish above sea level can vary from 10 to 100 meters, depending on customer requirements and conditions. Respectively, and the total weight Kgs will range from about 10 to 100 tons. COM pinned to the seabed anchoring device 5, which fix the location of the Soma, but provide mobility design in a certain range.
The structural elements are made from materials resistant to environmental factors using sea water, wind, sun, temperature mode of operation). The device is designed in such a way that does not require routine maintenance more frequently than once per 3 months.
The proposed system for transferring information over the water of the seas and oceans (not shown) contains many Kgs, fixed on bases with their anchoring devices and located at such distance from each other, so that stable communication for transmission/reception and retransmission of the given information. Of Soms can vystraivat the chain, double chain and so on, until the circuits of mobile communication. It is easy to calculate that for coating a continuous square grid of Som with a party of 40 square km, providing a stable connection in all directions various water surfaces of seas and oceans, more than enough 200000 such posts.
1. Device for the transmission of information over the water surface, containing tower with equipment for transmission and reception of communication signals, pivotally connected by rods with at least three floats connected to the device for producing electricity, made with the possibility of conversion of work performed by a relative movement of floats and rigs into electrical energy, and an anchor device located in the lower part of the tower.
2. The device according to claim 1, characterized in that it is equipped with a solar battery mounted on the rig for folding and unfolding.
3. The device according to claim 1, characterized in that the device for producing electricity includes at least one hydraulic cylinder, the body of which is connected to the tower, and his rod with a rod, or case - by HSE and the rod with the rod, spring or pneumologist installed with the possibility of a return movement of the corresponding float, hydraulic motor, which input is connected across the system check valves with hydraulic cylinder, and the output from the generator.
4. The device according to claim 3, characterized in that the device for producing electricity further comprises a pressure regulator and a hydraulic accumulator connected to the hydraulic cylinders.
5. The device according to claim 1, characterized in that it is equipped with sonar, and/or battery pack, and/or flow sensors, level of oxygen in the water, salinity and water temperature, wave heights, directions and wind speed, solar radiation, relative humidity, precipitation, seismic activity.
6. The device according to claim 1, characterized in that when placed on the water surface with its center of gravity is below the surface of the water.
7. The system of information transmission over the water containing device made according to any one of claims 1 to 6, located on the sea and/or ocean water surface of at least one chain or network at a distance from each other, providing a stable connection, and fixed bases with their anchoring devices.
SUBSTANCE: disclosure of system and method for signal transmission/receive by mobile terminal in wireless communication system. The method includes transmission of the first subband availability indicator via base band which indicator indicates that mobile terminal is ready to transmit/receive a signal via the first subband; transmission of the first subband failure indicator to the base station via base band after failure detection during transmission of the first subband availability indicator; receiving from the base station via the base band the subband information about the second subband other than the first subband; and establishment of synchronisation with the second subband to allow signal transmission/receive via the second subband based on subband information.
EFFECT: possibility to use several frequency bands to transmit and receive signals.
SUBSTANCE: disclosed is a method of transmitting a control channel format indicator (CCFI), also known as PCFICH (Physical Control Format Indicator Channel), in case where the length of a coded CCFI is not an integer multiple of three, including mapping a plurality of two-bit CCFI into a codebook with each component codeword having three bits; generating a sequence of codewords selected from the codebook by repeating the selected component codeword for a predetermined number of times; generating a codeword by concatenating the sequence of the selected component codewords with the original CCFI bits; and transmitting the codeword carrying information on CCFI. The method further includes a step for generating a permutation of each of the four codewords by assigning K repetitions of the three-bit component codeword to the number of K resource units respectively and mapping the remaining K bits of each of the four codewords separately to the number of K resource units.
EFFECT: high efficiency of the transmission diversity scheme.
SUBSTANCE: station includes a unit which receives a reference uplink signal transmitted from a user terminal, a unit which provides transmission power control data which indicates whether to change the reference uplink signal transmission power value which must be transmitted later, a unit which determines the first power shift value such that transmission of the uplink control signal takes place with a power value defined by adding the first power shift value and the reference uplink signal transmission power value, a unit which determines the second power shift value such that transmission of the uplink control signal takes place with a power value defined by adding the second power shift value and the reference uplink signal transmission power value, and a unit which transmits data and values to the user terminal.
EFFECT: enabling control of uplink transmission power in a base station for a reference signal, a control signal and a data signal at appropriate levels for these signals.
SUBSTANCE: base station comprises: a frequency scheduler which generates scheduling information for allocating a block of resources to a terminal performing communication; a retransmission control unit which determines the number of control channels allocated for the radio signal frame, the control channel containing scheduling information; a control channel multiplexing unit which multiplexes control channels into a single radio signal frame in accordance with the number of control channels determined by the retransmission control unit; a multiplexing unit which time-division multiplexes the output signal of the control channel multiplexing unit with channels other than the control channel; and a unit for transmitting the output signal from the multiplexing unit.
EFFECT: efficient control channel transmission to each terminal with a different used bandwidth.
SUBSTANCE: detection of services between the devices is provided before establishing of the connection between the devices containing wireless-able devices or devices that provide communication with connection to WiFi units or other wireless communication devices. The services that can be detected include for example printing services, photo services, PDA services or any other suitable services. The services can be found using standards 802.11, Bluetooth, UWB or any other suitable technology of wireless access. For wireless transfer of information related to the service and/or information related to the detection of service the information unit is used that contains in particular the information related to the service provided and information that represents the first protocol of service detection that is used by the device for service detection.
EFFECT: simplified locations of desired services.
SUBSTANCE: method and device for discovering conflict in the random access (RA) procedure in the mobile communication system where message L2/L3 is received from UE in the uplink resources, assigned to UE by the answer message of RA preamble that was transferred for RA procedure initiated via UE, the CR message associated with RA is transferred to UE if L2/L3 message is the initial access message and the determined control information is transferred to UE using the downlink control channel without transferring CR message if L2/L3 message is not the initial access message.
EFFECT: decreased transfer of operation information to the alarm system.
FIELD: mobile communications; transmitting and receiving the protocol data unit (PDU).
SUBSTANCE: applied method is used for transmitting a PDU, which includes the Extended Address bit and the Length Indicator (LI) field, in the user equipment (UE) or the node B. A PDU is formed by two service data units (SDU) and a header which has data concerning both SDUs in the transmitting device. The method includes forming a LI field in the header, which will show the end point of every SDU except the final SDU, and the Extended Address bit showing the presence or absence of a LI field after every LI field, forming the header in such a way so the Extended Address bit will be positioned before every LI field, forming a PDU with complete header and SDU; and transmitting the PDU.
EFFECT: improved LI verification on the receiving side.
FIELD: wireless networks; portable multimedia players.
SUBSTANCE: neighbouring portable multimedia devices can be detected via a wireless portable multimedia device. The wireless multimedia device can establish connections to neighbouring portable multimedia devices. The portable device can transfer data either in the high-speed data transfer mode, or in the low power consumption data transfer mode, at the same time allowing other devices to detect it. The portable device is working in the low power consumption mode during the inactive part of the repeating detection cycle.
EFFECT: allowing the wireless portable device to adjust and synchronize itself with a specialized network while working in a low power consumption mode.
SUBSTANCE: method comprises steps where: a first radio station determines that a message has to be sent either to a second radio station or a transmitting radio station, the first radio station determines whether there are any available direct channels for transmitting a call; if a direct channel is available, the first radio station determines the period of time required to transmit the message, and sends over a reverse channel a "request for stoppage" signal to the transmitting radio station which identifies this period of time; upon receiving the "request for stoppage" signal, the transmitting radio station stops transmission over the direct channel for said period of time, during which the first radio station transmits the message. The system for stopping the current transmission in the communication system realises steps of this method.
EFFECT: stopping transmission of information from a transmitting radio station without completion of the initial transmission.
SUBSTANCE: in the method of long-range radio communication, the nearest coordinates of zones of increased fracturing or deep-seated faults are found as per the data of mapping surface of the Earth, which are used as radio communication zones in which intensity of received signals increases abruptly; correction of radio communication as to time and coordinates of underwater object is performed.
EFFECT: improving operating reliability of radio channels, reducing radiation powers of coastal radio transmitting devices and arrangement of radio channels using mobile coastal radio transmitting devices providing radio communication with underwater objects. | 2019-04-23T02:54:32 | https://russianpatents.com/patent/244/2446579.html |
0.997882 | Beyond the "Nutrition Facts" box, you may spot other nutrition buzzwords. Each of those words and claims are carefully crafted to attract consumer attention and to meet specific regulations that are laid out by Health Canada. You can trust that behind every mention of "free" or "low" or "light" there has been a process to evaluate whether or not a food meets those standards. But what you can't see on the label are the standards themselves.
Free: When a food label says "fat-free," it's natural to assume that the food contains absolutely no fat. But for a food product to claim to be "free" of something, it must contain an amount so small that it would be deemed nutritionally insignificant. That doesn't necessarily mean that there is zero fat – or cholesterol or sodium or sugar – just not enough to really matter.
Low: How low must a food go to be deemed "low-fat" or "low in sodium"? Health Canada mandates that something labelled as "low" in a particular nutrient or ingredient is always associated with a very small amount, and this amount varies depending on the ingredient.
Reduced: You'll see this word attached to "fat" quite often – reduced-fat milk, reduced-fat cheese. To be considered "reduced," a food must contain at least 25% less of a nutrient than a comparable product.
Light: This word sounds diet-friendly, and that's because it can only be attached to a product that is either reduced in fat or in calories. You may also spot the phrase "lightly salted" on foods that contain at least 50% less added sodium than a similar food product.
Source: Foods labelled as a "source of" a particular nutrient, like fibre, contain what is considered to be a "significant amount." A food may also be labelled as a "very good" or "excellent" source of some nutrient.
Health claims: Health Canada regulations allow food companies to make a few types of diet-related health claim on their food labels to draw attention to a relationship between diet and a medical condition or disease.
A healthy diet with adequate calcium and vitamin D, and regular physical activity, helps to achieve strong bones and may reduce the risk of osteoporosis.
A healthy diet containing foods low in sodium and high in potassium may reduce the risk of high blood pressure, a risk factor for stroke and heart disease.
Manufacturers can only use a specific claim if their product meets the specific criteria of government regulations. | 2019-04-19T07:12:20 | https://medbroadcast.com/healthfeature/gethealthfeature/how-food-label-savvy-are-you |
0.963287 | The small size of the Midi file has always been one of its biggest benefits. Actually, that's really its only benefit. In terms of sound quality, these music files just aren't all that great and most music lovers know that all too well. Yet, Midi files show up as ring tones for mobile phones, the music for karaoke, and more. With an effective Midi converter, however, you can help correct some of these problems. The Quest for Consistent Sound Quality One of the biggest drawbacks of the Midi file is the inconsistent sound quality. Depending on the sound card on your computer, midi files can have completely different sounds. You might be able to recognize the tune but the quality will be all over the place. That's bad enough when you're trying to find the right ring tone for your phone but if you're trying to do karaoke or listening to these midi files for other reasons then it can be disastrous for music lovers. Some musicians also use their computer to create original music and save it in midi format so it takes up less room on their computer and because it can be shared faster due to the tiny file size compared to an MP3. But musicians want to have control over the sound quality of the track being experienced by the end user. With midi files that's impossible. What sounds great on one computer might sound pretty washed out another. The big question is how to correct the problem. How can a musician, karaoke fan, mobile phone user, or anyone else get the consistent sound quality they want from a midi track? One of the best answers available is to use a midi converter. Getting Quality with a Midi Converter Using Direct Midi to MP3 Converter (www.pistonsoft.com) is the first Midi converter that actually gives you full control over the sound files. You can make adjustments to the volume, tempo, reverberation, and more so you can create a finished product that is exactly what you want. Then you have the option of saving that finished file into MP3, WAV, WMA and other formats. By saving them in these alternative file types, you'll be able to maintain a consistent sound quality with each of the tracks and preserve the changes you've made. Plus, you'll have the option of burning the tracks to a CD and being able to play them in standard CD players. That makes the songs more versatile. There are other good reasons to choose the Direct Midi to MP3 Converter (www.pistonsoft.com) for your music needs. For one, the process is ten times faster than with any of the competition. And if you want to take the software for a test spin, you can for free and you won't be limited to converting only part of a song. The competition may only let you convert 10 seconds; this program lets you converts the whole song. Even though you are changing the midi file format, the songs will be still be usable by most mobile phones and other applications. The only difference will be more realistic sound quality.
PistonSoft.com is a privately held software company committed to providing quality audio software and midi converter ( http://www.pistonsoft.com/midi-converter.html (www.pistonsoft.com) ). Founded in 2004, our company specializes in the audio tools. | 2019-04-19T01:01:40 | https://en.article-marketing.eu/computer/software/ensuring-quality-and-consistency-with-a-midi-converter.html |
0.998917 | My Life Story/ as it relates to costuming anyway, 1965-?
I was born in Detroit Michigan, raised for a few years in a downtown city neighborhood on Montrose Street and then in a small suburb 20 miles northwest of there called West Bloomfield Township. I grew up on Walnut Lake near my grandparents and relatives. I was the son of German and English Welsch parents. I am 50% German.
I was raised in a Christian Pre-Methodist church and taught that God was good but I would go to hell if I was not a believer in Jesus Christ. I asked Jesus into my life as a boy because I was told to believe to do that. Later in my life I did it for real because I actually believed it on my own.
When I was finished with second grade my family, which consisted of my mom and dad and two younger brothers named David and John, (notice all bible names) moved to Florida where work hopes and a wonderful living held promise for my folks. I was yanked away from my roots in Michigan but happy for the new life and new experiences that Florida brought so I didn't mind and adjusted quickly. The church we went to then was Baptist. After being in Florida a few years my parents had me start in a competitive swim program. Around that time we got a pool in our backyard and a sail boat and we started living the Florida lifestyle to the fullest.
We moved to Sarasota after a few more years when I was going into 6th grade. I was really competitively swimming at that point and quite an athlete. At one point I was the seventh faster swimmer in Florida in the Breast Stroke. That is the only noteworthy fact I can remember about my six years of competitive swimming other than it was gruelling and long hard hours and like 10 practices a week and even before school early in the morning. I mean I was an athlete if there ever was one at that point in my life. It is too bad it was all before my adolecent growth spurt or I would be really superhero muscular and not just fit today.
I taught myself how to draw at that time also because I liked the attention and fantasy. Mostly I drew superheros. When it was time for the school play I was horrified I would have to get a part as everyone was forced to. Fortunately I lost my script which turned out to be in my coronet case which I had recently given up as musical instruments of that type did not appeal to me and thus I could not rehearse with no script and no way to get another one at that time the teacher said. I was passed over and given the job of stage manager instead and as a voice on the radio behind the curtain instead of out on stage. Whew! What a relief! I have spent my life in the shadows as an introvert ever since then and developed my artistic talents and skills in solitary. I was the editor of my high school yearbook, I was voted "Most Talented" at Sarasota High school, which is famous for being Peewee Herman's school. I studied with local artists and refined my early career further by going to Europe and drawing and studying there for two student trips.
I wanted to play football and date a cheerleader but my somewhat sheltering parents wanted to protect me and would not let me do that. I wanted to go to my first Kiss rock concert but they would not allow that either. I quit swimming and focused solely on my art all through high school. I wanted to go to UCLA in California but my mother and father would not let me and could not afford it anyway. I got scholarships for several east coast art schools and chose to go to the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore where I studied for four years and then graduated. During that time my brother and I both took up playing the drums and while we were not naturals, at least I wasn't at it, we learned fast and were both glad to be able to develop this unique talent and express ourselves in a very different way then we were used to.
After College graduation I started my first job as a senior illustrator at A&P Production Center in Landover Maryland for A&P Cooperation. I had to work somewhere up north instead of coming back to Florida then because my wife who I met In Sarasota and also went to my rival high school, but I didn't know it at the time, went to the same art school also and had two more years left to go after I graduated.
I hated the confined and structured world of corporate executives even though I had a prominent position and an easy job that required a skill which I was good at. I quit right after being promoted to senior advertising product illustrator after I put what was thought to be the minimum time in on a first job out of college, which was not quite a year. I left and began free-lancing from a Columbia, Maryland in a small apartment where I was living, supposedly in sin, with my future wife Mimi. We moved back to Baltimore and I got a full time job illustrating at an illustration studio called Bill Burrows & Associates and Mimi got a full time job as a designer at Treyhan Burden and Charles.
Even though my wife was raised a Catholic, we got married in 1989 in Florida at my family's presbyterian church right after she graduated. I didn't know what denomination I was and still don't. I am just a follower of Christ and exist in his global church with no building. We lived in Baltimore until we could save $6000.00 to move back to Florida. We lived with my mom and dad who also moved to Orlando as development in Sarasota was slowing down at the time and my dad was an architect who regretably was partly responsible for the over development of Siesta and Lido beach condominiums on the gulf. So we lived in Orlando while I entered into the movie business and worked on feature films, television shows, and in scenic shops which was the main reason for choosing Orlando instead of our home of Sarasota. Orlando was opposed to become the new Hollywood they were saying at the time. It didn't.
Eventually I disliked the fact that I was always stuck in the art department on films and never on production crews because as soon as anyone found out what I was good at they wanted me to keep doing it even though I wanted to be a director. In hindsight, am glad I did not get what I wanted because it forced me to find another way. I left the movies and scenic shops and rededicated my life to God for real as a man at that time. I also asked in his name for the gift of wisdom and the responsibility to handle it well. With some major money in my pocket after only a few years in the entertainment industry I spent it all on video production equipment and a van so I could start Televisionaries, my own video production company. I did this for many years but only found that I kept doing the same thing over and over. If I was gonna do another promo or training video I was gonna bust. So I worked with my wife and her Disney and Universal studios clients a few years and did anything I could to keep from being at that darn drawing table the rest of my life like my conservative father because I was an active sort and it didn't fully agree with me. I saw it as a ball and chain that was holding me down and I wanted to develop my talents in other areas. We were able to get a house in downtown Orlando finally and after ten years of marriage and the growth it caused in both of us we finally worked through our differences and grew together in the covenant we made with God and decided we were worthy to have kids if God was willing.
It so happened I had made a custom batman costume many years earlier because I had always wanted a Batman costume and to live that fabulous life style since I was a little we boy. It simply appealed to me as I watched the first run 60's show episodes as a little toddler and "Was BATMAN". It meshed with my life in so many ways, some of which I am only now beginning to understand almost 40 years later, I was an athlete, behind the curtain, behind the drawing table, behind the wheel of that Dodge Charger General Lee I drove in high school, behind the drums, behind the movie scenes, behind the video camera, behind the editing studio, and so much more but I was about to come out. I was behind the mask and behind the internet face that I met the public with. So, anyway, I had made a Batman costume years ago and never did anything with it or the molds and I had an extra set of boot spats I was storing in the closet that I thought I would use one day maybe, but I never did so I put it on Ebay to see if I could sell it and generate some badly needed income. That was when I found out that the world had others in it that liked to be like and dress as Batman. That one lousy set of latex boot spats I made sold for 640.00 bucks. That was good cash. Turned out the world was a vacuum for this sort of stuff at the time and it sucked it up as fast as I could turn it out because it happened that I was one of the only ones on the planet at the time that did my own stuff and happened to be high quality unlike the junk the company that owned batman had been so shortsighted to issue licenses to so they could mass produce cheap crappy bat costumes. So I was one of the few on the planet to the extent I did this unique thing that appealed to a ridiculously small percentage of the population and I became publicly know for it over night it seemed. Funny, I had been sitting on it for like 5 years at that point not knowing.
So a nice guy named Jude who called himself a bat brother introduced me to a message board called Brotherhood of the Bat which was an innovative design and concept by a great guy named Brin Holland who was a big a Batman fan as me, but he was not a "Behind the mask type" personality like me but a flamboyant social guy who, as it turned out, was also an artist and musician like myself. So I went to his board on a daily basis for a while and got to know the other people around the world that had similar interests and wanted Batman gear too but could not because it did not exist and the fact I was an artist and also a Batman lover who applied that art to what I loved was apparently exceedingly rare.
So I met the people in this wonderful costuming internet community and have been spending time with them since and helping them put together costumes with some of my generic parts. It is a fun hobby to have.
This was written up to 1999 or so.. | 2019-04-20T20:49:42 | http://artsee1.com/pageslinked/Costuming%20Life%20Story%20For%20Batman%20Generic%20Superhero%20Cowl%20And%20Costume%20Suit.html |
0.998658 | A debt instrument is used by either companies or governments to generate funds for capital-intensive projects. It can obtained either through the primary or secondary market. The relationship in this form of instrument ownership is that of a borrower – creditor and thus, does not necessarily imply ownership in the business of the borrower. The contract is for a specific duration and interest is paid at specified periods as stated in the trust deed* (contract agreement). The principal sum invested, is therefore repaid at the expiration of the contract period with interest either paid quarterly, semi-annually or annually. The interest stated in the trust deed may be either fixed or flexible. The tenure of this category ranges from 3 to 25 years. Investment in this instrument is, most times, risk-free and therefore yields lower returns when compared to other instruments traded in the capital market. Investors in this category get top priority in the event of liquidation of a company.
This instrument is issued by companies only and can also be obtained either in the primary market or the secondary market. Investment in this form of business translates to ownership of the business as the contract stands in perpetuity unless sold to another investor in the secondary market. The investor therefore possesses certain rights and privileges (such as to vote and hold position) in the company. Whereas the investor in debts may be entitled to interest which must be paid, the equity holder receives dividends which may or may not be declared.
The risk factor in this instrument is high and thus yields a higher return (when successful). Holders of this instrument however rank bottom on the scale of preference in the event of liquidation of a company as they are considered owners of the company.
This instrument is issued by corporate bodies and the investors rank second (after bond holders) on the scale of preference when a company goes under. The instrument possesses the characteristics of equity in the sense that when the authorised share capital and paid up capital are being calculated, they are added to equity capital to arrive at the total. Preference shares can also be treated as a debt instrument as they do not confer voting rights on its holders and have a dividend payment that is structured like interest (coupon) paid for bonds issues.
Irredeemable, convertible: in this case, upon maturity of the instrument, the principal sum being returned to the investor is converted to equities even though dividends (interest) had earlier been paid.
Irredeemable, non-convertible: here, the holder can only sell his holding in the secondary market as the contract will always be rolled over upon maturity. The instrument will also not be converted to equities.
Redeemable: here the principal sum is repaid at the end of a specified period. In this case it is treated strictly as a debt instrument.
Note: interest may be cumulative, flexible or fixed depending on the agreement in the Trust Deed.
These are instruments that derive from other securities, which are referred to as underlying assets (as the derivative is derived from them). The price, riskiness and function of the derivative depend on the underlying assets since whatever affects the underlying asset must affect the derivative. The derivative might be an asset, index or even situation. Derivatives are mostly common in developed economies.
Of all the above stated derivatives, the common one in Nigeria is Rights where by the holder of an existing security gets the opportunity to acquire additional quantity to his holding in an allocated ratio.
*Note: a Trust Deed is a document that states the terms of a contract. It is held in trust by the Trustee. | 2019-04-23T05:58:57 | http://sec.gov.ng/instruments-traded-in-the-capital-market/ |
0.999999 | With nearly $50 million in funding and a shoutout by legendary tech analyst Mary Meeker last year, Dropcam is one of the buzziest hardware startups at the moment.
The company makes WiFi cameras that let you stream video from your home live. It also has a $99 per year subscription service that lets you store a week's worth of video at a time.
Last week, Dropcam announced it's working on a technology that can tell when a person enters your home so it can alert you via email or app notification. The person recognition can tell the difference between humans and other moving objects, which has obvious security benefits. It'll go live to subscribers later this summer.
Business Insider caught up with Dropcam's CEO Greg Duffy last week to talk about the new people detection feature and how the company prepares to grow and possibly IPO.
Below is an edited transcription of the conversation.
Business Insider: Why are you implementing people detection?
Greg Duffy: We're thinking about Dropcam as a way for you to see what's going on at home and we want to curate that content for you since there's so much of it. The whole service takes in orders of magnitude more video than YouTube per user. We've always talked about Dropcam being more than just a hardware device. Our cloud service gets better over time. You buy your Dropcam and there are things it's going to be able to do in the future that it wasn't able to do the day you bought it. The first thing we're going to launch is enhancement to our motion detection, which is actually going to allow Dropcam to recognize people.
BI: How does the people detection work?
Duffy: It's a computer vision feature that we run in the cloud if you enable it on your camera. You need to be on one of our recording plans to get it. There's a huge amount of computing power that's being dedicated to doing this in the cloud. It's a really amazing way to pare down the number of alerts that you get from your camera. Imagine if you have a home with pets. You probably don't want to be alerted about your pet running in front of the camera when you're in the middle of the meeting.
BI: How did you teach Dropcams to recognize people versus other moving objects?
Duffy: The way we're able to do it is like all artificial intelligence or machine learning concepts. We had to provide some training data, which we're able to pull from our public featured cameras, which are only a small percentage of Dropcams. They're located all over the world and user submitted.
BI: What are some of the most interesting things users have captured on their Dropcams?
Duffy: It's been amazing seeing all the things people have caught. Some people have caught their kids' first steps. We've had tons of examples of people catching their kids' first steps or first words — all kinds of things they'd want immortalized. That's definitely a big use case. Also, people are catching burglars. Often, the burglars will even steal the camera, but it doesn't matter because all the video is in the cloud. It just gives us a better shot of their face. In fact, there was a guy who got his face on the local news from a Dropcam video and his mom recognized him and turned him in.
BI: Do you think everything we do in the future will be recorded?
BI: Dropcam has raised a lot of money. Is there an IPO in the future? What's next?
Duffy: We've seen a lot of IPOs recently, and I think the way we look at it is maybe a little different than those companies. An IPO is just your last capital raise. You should need the capital and you should also feel like your growth rates are slow enough that the private market is not the place for you. We're still growing revenue on pretty significant numbers. I don't think it would be a good time for us to go into the public market right now, but I think it's definitely a goal for us to be a completely independent and profitable company. A lot of companies going for IPOs right now aren't profitable, so I think we'd like to avoid that.
BI: Does that mean you think a company must be profitable in order to have an IPO?
Duffy: I think it's a good idea to have a lead on profitability at the very least before you go into the public market. Venture capitalists are used to dealing with the risk of companies that aren't profitable and evaluating those risks and the technologies and other other things that make the companies valuable. It's really about predictability. I think that's more important for something like the public market. | 2019-04-22T21:04:30 | https://www.businessinsider.com/greg-duffy-dropcam-ceo-2014-5 |
0.999672 | I struggled with this for a category. Geek? Cycling? Geek cycling.
A dude in New York put an iBook and antennas on his ride. This takes "cycling computer" to a whole new level.
Yury Gitman, a self-described "wireless and emerging-media artist" in New York, has outfitted his bicycle with an iBook laptop and Wi-Fi antennas so that everywhere he goes, a cloud of free, high-speed wireless Internet access follows him.
"I'm interested in exploring the Internet physically, in motion," said Gitman, who calls his vehicle the Magicbike. "It's not on our radar screen, even though we're obsessed with mobility and wireless. But in the future, we're going to do that a lot."
Gitman's antennas tap open Wi-Fi networks whose signals are too weak for ordinary laptops to pick up. He essentially extends them through his Magicbike, and when those hot spots fade out, he relies on the cell phone network.
Demand for wireless Internet access in automobiles has been picking up, and plans are on the drawing board to offer it in airplanes.
Why a bicyclist would want Internet activity is a question Gitman called "a very fun proposition to think about." Navigation help and communication with other bicyclists--"bike-to-bike communication," in Magicbike parlance--are two possibilities, he said.
I don't want to be distracted while I'm driving, and I REALLY don't want to be distracted while I'm riding. And who needs extra weight on the bike?
In my pre-cycling days, the first time I heard the term "bicycle computer" the image I had in mind was a laptop strapped the the handlebars.
Imagine if your bike computer had full-time IP and GPS. Besides being able to keep an updated log on your home PC (or, say, here... "Heather is on her bike, and has ridden 32 miles today"), it could flash a little icon to tell you that a friend is also out riding, and is only 13 miles away. Maybe you could touch that icon and send your friend an alert that you'd like to meet at a nearby coffee shop.
Perhaps you could receive an alert that you are about 30 minutes from home, and a storm is expected in about 40. There are very few experiences in life that I can't imagine being somehow enriched by pervasive networking.
Now, why the computer wouldn't just do this by using bluetooth with the phone in your jersey pocket is another question altogether. But this guy isn't trying to prototype, he's trying to make us think about it.
But the first time I see someone JRA while looking at pr0n--I'm sticking my frame pump in his spokes. | 2019-04-20T14:55:06 | http://angelweave.mu.nu/archives/027629.html |
0.998279 | Sprouted flour Christmas cookies are a healthier way to make Christmas cookies. Made with whole wheat flour that is sprouted, they are more nutritious and easier to digest.
When I was little, my mom always made Christmas cookies and put them in decorative tin canisters. To me, Christmas isn't Christmas without these cookies. But I didn't want to make them with white flour and refined white sugar. Even worse is the pre-made cookie dough you can buy at the store, since it's made with partially hydrogenated soybean and cottonseed oil. Yuck!
I'm thrilled to tell you that I made Christmas cookies with sprouted flour, grass-fed butter and organic sugar they came out even better than I remember them tasting when I was a kid.
Of course you know that whole wheat flour is better for you than refined white flour. That said, whole grains are not good for you unless they are sprouted, soaked or fermented. The phytic acid in whole grains prevents the absorption of minerals and causes tooth decay and bone loss. Sprouted flour is a wonderful, nutritious way to enjoy whole grains.
I really enjoyed these cookies with just an extra sprinkle of sugar on top. For me, they are plenty sweet and don't really need frosting.
That said, they're really good with homemade frosting, too. Check out my recipe for homemade buttercream frosting.
1. Sift the sprouted flour: pass through a fine sieve, then discard the bran. You want 3 cups total of sifted flour (3 cups after you've sifted). Sift a little extra for rolling out the dough and set aside.
2. Add the baking powder and sea salt. Set aside.
3. In a large bowl, beat together butter and sugar with an electric stand mixer or hand blender.
4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg.
5. Add the beaten egg and the milk to the bowl with the butter and sugar. Set mixer on low speed, gradually add flour, and beat until mixture pulls away from the side of the bowl. If your dough is too crumbly and does not hold together, you may need to add an extra egg.
6. Divide the dough in half and wrap both halves in plastic or wax paper.
9. Sprinkle the counter with sprouted flour.
10. Remove half of the dough from refrigerator.
11. Sprinkle rolling pin with sprouted flour, and roll out dough to 1/4-inch thick.
12. Cut into desired shapes.
13. Pace at least 1-inch apart on greased (buttered) baking sheet. You can also use a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat.
14. Bake for 7 to 9 minutes or until cookies begin to brown around the edges.
15. Let cool for a few minutes on baking sheet, then transfer with a spatula to a wire rack.
16. Sprinkle a little sugar on top, or decorate with homemade frosting.
17. Store in airtight container.
Thank you for the recipe……… I usually don’t make Christmas cookies but this year I am wanting to . I am glad for this recipe….. I am going to try this.
Thank you for all your hard work and a blessed Christmas to you and your family.
Will you please share the recipe? I threw out my sugar cookie recipe years ago when I started eating real food.
Okay, that’s weird – the recipe just showed up, but it wasn’t here when I looked at the page before. Thank you!
I’ve been making Christmas cookies this way for years and they are always a hit. It’s amazing how much better a cookies can taste with wholesome ingredients! I can’t even stand to eat “conventional” Christmas cookies anymore. They taste way too sweet and very fake. Thanks for the post!!!
I agree, conventional cookies taste too sweet and taste waxy and like they’re full of chemicals. YUCK!
Can’t wait to make these! Did you use Spelt or regular Whole Wheat sprouted flour?
I make cookies all the time with sprouted flour and honey and everyone always loves them. They’re so surprised when I tell them! I made some Christmas spritz cookies the other day along with some gingerbread cookies and they were so good. I actually prefer them to “regular” now.
i am looking forward to making these with my kids on their winter break, yum!
Have been looking for a cookie recipe to try! Do you leave the sucanat in its rougher, granular form, or do you grind it a bit to make it more fine? Just wondering, have had issues in the past incorporating sucanat into baking.
Where did you get your fine sieve?
Made these and just pulled them out if the fridge. They’re just a crumbly mess. Where did I go wrong, and can I save them? Add more milk? Longer in the fridge?
I ended up adding another egg and they came together fine. Left them in the fridge too long then had to leave them out for about an hour to soften up so I could roll them.
The cookies are okay. Nothing to get too excited about. My son called them wheat blobs and wouldn’t eat them. We don’t eat much sugar around here, and even with sugar sprinkled on them I couldn’t interest him. They’re not really sweet enough to be cookies.
Are you in a very dry climate?
Pacific NW – about as soggy as you can get! I thought my eggs were average size, but they do vary. Adding the extra egg was perfect though.
Last year this recipe came out great when I made it in Vegas.
This year, I made it again and guess what? I needed to add one more egg.
So I’m changing the recipe since most people are having this problem.
I am curious if your cookies are soft, cake-like, or crisp? Our old sugar cookie recipe tasted awesome! Unfortunately, it included shortening. When I tried coconut oil as a replacement the texture was not the same. They turned out kinda cake-like. When I tried butter they turned out softer than our usual crispy texture. I then tried a mixture and still it was a different texture. While they are good, I must say they are truly not as good. I know it is certainly healthier, but I was wondering if the sprouted flour helps the texture to be crispier than otherwise? Also wondering if old-fashioned rendered lard might be a solution? Thoughts?
PSS: We love your blog!! Thank you!!
When I made them they did get crispy – not cake like at all. I should also say that they tasted better the next day. The “wheaty” flavor mellowed and they were more cookie-like. I do think they either need more sugar or should be frosted though.
We don’t eat a lot of sugar, so I don’t like SUPER sugary things. Regular cookies often taste too sweet to me now.
If you want to add more sugar, you can.
I almost never eat sugar. These were almost cracker-like. They just need a touch more sugar to push them into the cookie category for me. I did not frost mine – that would have helped a lot.
Crispy or cake like cookies have a lot to do a number of variables — altitude, your oven temp, etc.
You can substitute lard or butter for most any recipe that calls for shortening. | 2019-04-25T20:38:44 | https://www.cheeseslave.com/sprouted-flour-christmas-cookies/ |
0.998952 | Please stay off new sod until after the first mowing. Proper watering of sod is essential for root establishment. The day of installation, enough water should be applied to penetrate the sod and two inches of native soil.
From day two on, keep your sod and soil moist throughout the day. The roots are short so the sod cannot withstand large amounts of water at a single time. Other than the first day, the ground under the sod should never be soggy. Usually watering four to six times during the day, for approximately five to six minutes each time, is required until the roots have been established. Root establishment will usually begin within seven to fourteen days depending on the time of year your sod is installed and your environment.
Too much water will rob the roots of oxygen and in warmer weather that possibly can lead to disease. The length of each watering cycle will depend on your soil type and the output of your irrigation system. A clay type soil may need five minutes, four times a day compared to a sandy loam which may need seven minutes, five times a day. You have to judge the minutes given, but here is a tip: If the water is standing under the sod for more than just a few minutes after an irrigation set has finished or if the soil is soggy, you are probably giving the sod too much water at one time.
Avoid, if at all possible, watering into the evening hours (after five-thirty or six pm); this is one of the fastest ways to create a fungus problem. Start reducing the frequency of watering cycles just before the first mowing. This will firm up the soil for a healthy mowing cycle.
The first mowing should be approximately 14 days after the sod has been installed. In the winter you may need to wait longer for the roots to establish prior to mowing.
Never mow off more than 1/3 of the blade during a mowing cycle. This results in less stress for the plant.
Reduce the frequency of times you water at a gradual pace. You can validate the establishment of the roots by pulling up a corner of the sod, and if you feel some resistance, you can eliminate the last irrigation set of the day. However, you need to add a couple of minutes to the other irrigation sets.
Now the roots should be deep and can tolerate a few more minutes of water per cycle. In another week or so you can repeat this process until you are only watering once a day. Deeper, less frequent watering will help roots stretch down deeper and establish quickly into the soil.
Fertilize your new sod approximately four to six weeks after installation to ensure continued establishment of the roots. Our Bolero™ Lawn Food is an excellent choice for any blend or variety of sod. It can also be purchased through any of our distributors. | 2019-04-24T00:53:40 | http://howtoinstallsod.com/sod-care-tips/ |
0.998063 | Andy Phillips previews the final game of the season at the New Lawn.
Town boss Michael Jolley chats ahead of the final game of the season at Forest Green Rovers.
Michael Jolley's side secured their place in League Two for next season after the 2-1 victory over Notts County, and they will now be looking to finish the season on a positive note and continue a run that has only seen the Mariners lose one of their last five games.
With Forest Green also safe after getting themselves out of trouble, there is nothing riding on the game in terms of league position, but it has been proven time and time again how important a positive finish to the season can be over the years.
There are no fresh injuries for the Mariners but Siriki Dembele and Scott Vernon are both still carrying knocks so are doubts to make their final appearance of the season.
Zak Mills, Paul Dixon and Charles Vernam remain missing as expected, whilst it remains to be seen if it will be the final game in a Town shirt with decisions to be made in the coming weeks.
Forest Green have a full squad to choose from after goalkeeper Brad Collins was passed fit after suffering a concussion a fortnight ago, so there are no injury worries for Mark Cooper's side.
Forest Green have struggled more than they may have expected this campaign, but boss Mark Cooper has done well to steer the club to safety and they will be looking to build on this experience.
Cooper took charge in May 2016, sitting in the dugout for Town's 3-0 Promotion Final victory against Rovers at Wembley Stadium before going on to earn promotion in the same fashion last season with a victory against Tranmere Rovers in the final.
His side started the season poorly and found themselves in the bottom three throughout the early months, but the club kept faith in him and the former Darlington and Peterborough United boss will now be looking to end his season in positive fashion at the weekend.
Rovers have relied on the goals of Christian Doidge for much of the season, with the 25-year-old Welshman hitting 25 goals in 48 games so far this campaign, so he is certainly one to watch out for.
The reverse fixture between the two sides saw Town win 1-0 at Blundell Park back in December.
A Mitch Rose goal was the difference that day as the Mariners finished 2017 with a victory, whilst they were also reduced to ten men when received his marching orders..
The two sides have met 14 times over the years and the Mariners have an impressive record, winning nine of those encounters and drawing three, with Forest Green coming out on top on two occasions.
Mark Cooper: ''We want to win, we want to get to 50 points and finish the season off in good fashion. It will carry into next season. At no point did we ever want to be battling on the last game to stay up. We made sure that didn't happen and Grimsby did it last week so it is a game both teams can try and enjoy." | 2019-04-24T21:46:08 | https://www.grimsby-townfc.co.uk/news/2018/may/forest-green-preview/ |
0.999997 | An unexpected automobile accident can leave you feeling a bit confused and unsure of what to do. That is why it is important to brush up on post-accident procedures before you need them. If you are involved in an automobile accident, there are certain things you can do to protect yourself and your interests. Following these steps can help make the moments after an accident less stressful—and the claims process much smoother.
EVALUATE THE ACCIDENT. First and foremost, you should assess your safety and that of any other passengers involved in the accident. If you are able to move your car out of driving lanes, do so as soon as possible to get to safety.
CALL THE POLICE. Even if it is only a minor accident, and there are no serious injuries, it is still a good idea to call 911. A police report is important because it will help with your insurance claim. When the police arrive, make sure you tell the investigating officer(s) exactly what happened, to the best of your ability. If you are asked if you are injured and you are not sure, say you are not sure, rather than “no.” You should make sure statements made by other persons involved in the accident are accurate as well. The police may not have to show up to the accident scene just because you call them. Most states have a dollar threshold below which the police need not show, if there is no bodily injury involved.
EXCHANGE INFORMATION. If comfortable doing so, exchange information with any other drivers involved in the accident. Piece together as much information as you can at the scene of the accident. If you are unsure about your safety and it is safe to do so, stay in your vehicle until the police arrive. Alternatively, you can alert the other driver(s) from the safety of your car that you are headed to the nearest police station and you will meet them there. Some accidents are not, in fact, accidents, but rather are an attempt to disable vulnerable victims or are attempts to change one stolen car for another. Victims should ask themselves if it is safe to stop and exit their cars or if they should attempt to drive to a populated area before exchanging communication with the other driver. It is not illegal to leave the scene of an accident if you believe your life is endangered owing to the particulars of the accident; it is illegal to leave the scene of an accident if you are trying to secret the fact that the accident took place, or if someone was clearly hurt by your actions.
DOCUMENT THE ACCIDENT. If you are able, take photos of any vehicle damage and/or visible injuries, document the names of all individuals involved in the accident, including getting the names and contact information of witnesses in case they are needed to provide testimony, and identify the location of the accident. If you cannot take photos at the scene of the accident, take them as soon as possible after the accident, or make a drawing of the accident scene, i.e. where is/was the stop sign, traffic light, the dog that jumped in front of you, etc.
REPORT THE ACCIDENT. Notify your insurance company as soon as possible to open your claim. Your agent can tell you exactly what to expect from the claims process. You can also file a claim online on your own time once things have calmed down a bit.
Knowing and following these important tips can ease your mind, and simplify the claims process. It is also a good idea to print this article out and keep a copy in your glove compartment. You never know when it may be needed. Contact us today to learn more.
What is a Personal Umbrella Policy? Why Do You Need One? | 2019-04-22T05:05:43 | https://merriaminsurance.com/personal-risk-management/what-to-do-after-an-auto-accident/ |
0.999987 | In this answer I mention a paper by Geuvers in which he describes a class of models for a type theory $\lambda P_2$ which is a sub-system of the CoC and roughly corresponds to 2nd order predicate logic.
Where $\xi$ and $\rho$ are appropriate valuations, and $(\!|\_|\!)$ is the interpretation of terms into elements of the WECA $\cal A$. I'm omitting a fair number of details, e.g. the interpretation is actually over type constructors and not only types.
My question is pretty straightforward: is this class of models complete for $\lambda P_2$? Is the "obvious" generalization complete for CoC? For CIC? Are there any references for this?
The interpretation of the "large" product is restricted to be intersections, which may make it too weak a notion of models to be complete, but the choice of WECAs seems to make it a powerful notion of models.
In Pitts' paper Polymorphism is Set-Theoretic, Constructively, it is shown that every model of system $F$ can be embedded in a topos, and so a rather general notion of topos models is indeed complete for system $F$.
So my follow up questions are: Do these topos models generalize the class of realizability models described above? Does the theorem generalize to $\lambda P_2$? I suspect the answer is yes, but I'd kind of like to see the details worked out.
Edit: I've asked both Herman and Andrew for insights, and they were kind enough to both reply. I'll summarize their response.
Herman notes that there is completeness for 2nd order predicate logic, in which it is crucial to allow subsets of the full powerset for the interpretation of 2nd order quantifiers. It is an open question about whether $\lambda P_2$ is conservative over 2nd order predicate logic, and this seems to be a related question. He also refers to Geuvers - Extending Models of Second Order Predicate Logic to Models of Second Order Dependent Type Theory, CSL 1996.
Andrew notes that the completeness results involving topos models seem very close to the syntax as opposed to the set theoretic ones, and so is skeptical that the results can be extended to this setting without significant effort (he is agnostic about the result itself though!).
Browse other questions tagged type-theory dependent-type polymorphism or ask your own question. | 2019-04-23T00:56:39 | https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/39363/completeness-of-realizability-semantics-for-higher-order-type-theory |
0.999914 | If I understand correctly I can a use Wifi to connect my phone with the Freedom Spot then place / receive calls on my phone. Is this correct? Is there some instructions I can read about this process?
Am I limited to android Apple phones or can I also use Windows phones? I'd love to pick up a Nokia 808 or 1020 for the camera. Do I need the FP messaging app to place and receive calls?
Hey David, you're able to use an iPhone or Android with the FreedomPop messaging app to make calls or texts without using up data.
If you use a third party app for the windows phone it could potentially take up data.
You can use a windows phone, only problem-No Certified Freedompop messaging app yet.You'd have to find a VOIP compatible with Windows.
If your using a hotspot, you again are not limited to freedompop apps--your using the hotspots wifi.
@Davo1962 I did manage to use a Nokia Lumia 920 with a SIP app and my FreedomPop SIP details to be able to make calls with FreedomPop on a windows phone.
That is what I suspected. The "free minutes" plus "free data" depends upon the FreedomPop messaging app, which is iOS / Android only (at this time).
My guess is that the FreedomPop messaging app also ensures the incoming calls work properly.
I'd love to be an unpaid programmer for FreedomPop helping port their messaging app to Windows Phone. | 2019-04-22T12:35:00 | https://forums.freedompop.com/us/discussion/7434/calling-receiving-calls-with-the-freedom-spot |
0.999819 | Here we will show that the three line segments which join the middle points of the sides of a triangle, divide it into four triangles which are congruent to one another.
Given: In ∆PQR, L, M and N are the midpoints of QR, RP and PQ respectively.
1. N is the midpoint of PQ.
2. By the Midpoint Theorem.
4. Similarly, PM = NL.
6. Therefore, ∆PMN ≅ LNM.
6. By SSS criterion of congruency.
7. Similarly, ∆NQL ≅ LNM.
8. Also, ∆MLR ≅ LNM.
9. From statements 6, 7 and 8. | 2019-04-22T16:16:24 | https://www.math-only-math.com/four-triangles-which-are-congruent-to-one-another.html |
0.99559 | The Republican-controlled House made good on promises by passing two far-reaching regulatory reform bills long sought by many in industry, though the White House has vowed to veto both bills.
On Friday, the House voted 253-167 for the Regulatory Accountability Act (H.R. 3010), a major reworking of the 1946 Administrative Procedures Act. It would codify requirements on agencies to pursue earlier public outreach, improved scientific data, less closed door regulating, more built-in cost benefit analysis and more formal reviews of evidence of the effects of proposed "high-impact rules" costing more than a $1 billion.
On Thursday, the House voted 263-159 for the Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act (H.R. 527), which would require agencies to step up efforts to identify costs that new regulations could impose on small businesses, write the regulations in ways that reduce costs and increase input from small businesses in the process.
A Senate version of the accountability act, introduced by Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, has not emerged from the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
"The Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act responds to the administration's words about the need to protect small businesses from over-regulation," House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said in a statement. "The bill makes carefully targeted reforms to the current law to ensure that agencies properly analyze how a new regulation will affect small businesses before adopting that regulation."
Rep. Sam Graves, R-Mo., cited several recent studies, including an October Gallup poll, that found complying with government regulations was the most important problem that small business owners faced.
"According to a 2010 Small Business Administration study, small firms bear a regulatory cost that is 36 percent higher than the cost of regulatory compliance for large businesses," said Graves, who chairs the Small Business Committee.
"Economic recovery begins with our small businesses, but this will not happen unless we rein in the mass of regulations coming from Washington," he said.
A White House statement issued before the vote Thursday said the Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act "would impose unneeded and costly analytical and procedural requirements on agencies that would prevent them from performing their statutory responsibilities. It would also create needless regulatory and legal uncertainty and increase costs for businesses and further impede the implementation of common-sense protections for the American public."
Similar language was used in the White House critique of the Regulatory Accountability Act, charging that it would "require cumbersome 'formal' rule-making for a new category of rules, for which agencies would have to conduct quasi-adjudicatory proceedings. It would impose unnecessary new evidentiary standards as a condition of rule-making," the statement said. "It would subject the regulatory process to unneeded rounds of litigation . . . and undermine the executive branch's ability to adapt regulatory review to changing circumstances.
The Obama administration argued that its "deep commitment to promoting small business" and relieving regulatory burdens is reflected in the president's January executive order.
The Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act was blasted by Scott Slesinger, legislative director of the Natural Resources Defense Council. He told Government Executive it "has nothing to do with small business but gives large businesses the opportunity to hide behind small business in analyzing the impact." It also would "give the SBA power to hold up regulations, making it a super-regulator," he said.
The Regulatory Accountability Act drew equally harsh criticism from Katherine McFate, president of the nonprofit OMB Watch. She wrote in a blog that it would "mandate new, duplicative agency reviews; overturn established administrative law practices; give corporate interests countless new ways to influence, slow, or simply stop the rule-making process; and allow judges to substitute their own judgments for those of scientific experts and agency staff."
. A vote on a third Republican backed regulatory reform bill, the Regulations from the Executive In Need of Scrutiny Act (H.R. 10), is likely next week. | 2019-04-22T03:11:46 | https://www.govexec.com/oversight/2011/12/house-passed-regulatory-reforms-face-uphill-battle/35542/ |
0.998505 | George Conway, the husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway Kellyanne Elizabeth ConwayThe Hill's Morning Report — Mueller aftermath: What will House Dems do now? George Conway calls for Congress to remove Trump: He's 'a cancer' Hillicon Valley: Cyber, tech takeaways from Mueller report | Millions of Instagram passwords exposed internally by Facebook | DHS unrolling facial recognition tech in airports | Uber unveils new safety measures after student's killing MORE, suggested on Monday that President Trump Donald John TrumpImpeachment? Not so fast without missing element of criminal intent Feds say marijuana ties could prevent immigrants from getting US citizenship Trump approval drops to 2019 low after Mueller report's release: poll MORE obstructed justice and tampered with a witness when he praised Roger Stone Roger Jason StoneHeavily redacted Mueller report leaves major questions unanswered The Hill's Morning Report — Category 5 Mueller storm to hit today Live coverage: Frenzy in DC as Congress, White House brace for Mueller report MORE for vowing never to testify against the president.
"File under '18 U.S.C. §§ 1503, 1512,'" George Conway tweeted, a reference to the statutes for obstruction of justice and tampering with witnesses, informants or victims, respectively.
George Conway, an attorney, was quoting a tweet in which the president lauded Stone for saying there's "no circumstance" in which he would testify against Trump because it would mean he'd "have to make things up."
"Nice to know that some people still have 'guts!' " Trump wrote.
Stone made the comments in an interview on Sunday, and added that he had not been in discussions with the president about a potential pardon should he be indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller Robert Swan MuellerSasse: US should applaud choice of Mueller to lead Russia probe MORE.
George Conway regularly shares opinions critical of the president's policies and rhetoric, particularly regarding the special counsel's investigation.
Neal Katyal, who served as acting solicitor general during the Obama administration and has co-written opinion pieces with George Conway, on Monday concurred with his implication.
"This is genuinely looking like witness tampering," he tweeted. "DOJ (at least with a nonfake AG) prosecutes cases like these all the time. The fact it's done out in the open is no defense."
In separate tweets on Monday, Trump targeted both Mueller and his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, who last week agreed to cooperate with the special counsel and pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about negotiations for a Trump Tower in Moscow that took place during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Trump repeated his claim that Cohen, who worked for years at the Trump Organization, lied to get a reduced sentence. He asserted that Cohen should "serve a full and complete sentence."
Trump has downplayed the negotiations, calling it "very legal & very cool" that he continued to run his business while campaigning for president. | 2019-04-21T08:33:06 | https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/419454-conways-husband-suggests-trump-is-tampering-with-witnesses |
1 | Each of these conditional sentences is incorrect. What should be the correct one?
1. If only she warned him in time, his life might have been saved.
1. If only she had warned him in time, his life might have been saved.
2. If the dog had been chained, it had not bitten the salesman.
2. If the dog had been chained, it would not have bitten the salesman.
3. If the tyre/tire was not punctured, they could have arrived earlier.
3. If the tyre/tire had not punctured, they could have arrived earlier.
4. If he had an account in the bank, he can deposit the cheque.
4. If he had an account in the bank, he could deposit the cheque.
5. If the rescuers hadn't been quick enough, the girl would drown.
5. If the rescuers hadn't been quick enough, the girl would have drowned.
6. If she had not stopped talking, she will have to leave the library.
6. If she had not stopped talking, she would have to leave the library.
7. If I have found the keys, I would have given them to you.
7. If I had found the keys, I would have given them to you.
8. If you have eaten less and exercised more, you will have lost some weight.
8. If you had eaten less and exercised more, you would have lost some weight.
9. If he fallen from the tree, he would broken his neck.
9. If he had fallen from the tree, he would have broken his neck.
10. If I cook more, I would invited your friends for lunch.
10. If I had cooked more, I would have invited your friends for lunch. | 2019-04-25T22:47:00 | http://www.myenglishgrammar.com/english/exercise-11-conditionals/1113-third-conditional.html |
0.998439 | Contest Holder: Client59203 confirmed successful completion of this project.
"The Salt Expert - all there is to know about salt".
An information website/blog that will be a source for information on salt in all its forms and all its uses.
Cooking with salt. Salt and health. Salt and beauty. Salt around the home. Everything salt!
The target audience is consumers, not businesses/professionals etc.
As the target is consumers, I want the logo to have quite a light feel but not funny/silly. It needs to convey: "this is an authoritative site where you will find information in an easy-to-read and accessible form".
The primary target audience is in the US. But visitors from around the world are expected.
The logo will need to look good on desktop, tablet and mobile - so nothing too intricate or detailed.
The logo should include the words "The Salt Expert" or "TheSaltExpert.com".
The logo should be somewhat wider that it is tall - ie, a horizontal logo rather than a vertical one.
Remember that salt comes in many forms, not just white table salt. Therefore focussing the logo on just the look of white table salt may not be a good way to go - but I am open to ideas!
This is like the Soundproof Expert logo.<br /><br />It tells people that the website is fun and that information will be easy to read, simple and clear. But the logo is still clearly professionally created and that makes people think that information on it will be accurate and authoritative.<br /><br />I like the hand drawn feel of it. It makes the website feel human and approachable.
This is fun, simple, clear. I like the hand drawn feel of it. It makes the website feel more human and approachable. But it still gives the feeling that the information on the site will be reliable and authoritative.
The same comments apply as for Soundproof Expert and DIY House Security.<br /><br />But I want a bit more colour in my logo than there is in this one.
Client59203 picked a winner from 66 designs by 18 designers.
Good. Please make the collar and tie bigger. I think that may improve it. Please do the same for # 52.
Good. Please make the collar and tie bigger. I think that may improve it. Please do the same for # 53.
U mean scale up the icon of tie?
Yes. Thanks for the new ones. I will think about all 4 now and wait for the other designers to submit. Great work!
Thank you. It's a pleasure to work with u.
Thanks. This is good. I think that the person is a salt shaker. I had not realised this in #14. I don't want this because the website is about all aspects of salt, not just cooking. But I do want the logo to relate to salt.
You are one of my three finalists! But this design is not 5* yet. Please be creative. The main changes I think I would like are these: 1) The cartoon is good and I like it being a cartoon of a human BUT I do not want it to be a salt shaker/canister. The website is all about salt, not just about cooking and salt. 2) I like the bright colours BUT these are a little TOO bright. I also liked your other design (#14) very much -but, again, I don't want a salt shaker. I want the design to be welcoming, friendly (not corporate) and a little bit fun.
thanks for selecting us as finalist.
Are you going to submit a new design with the changes I have suggested?
yes sure we will upload our revisions.
I like this. Good. Thanks.
Hope you do. If there's something more that I could do feel free to tell me.
Thanks. This is definitely a good start. Two main comments: 1) I like the fun style of the chef. But the website is all about salt, not just about cooking with salt. So I would like a design that has a broader meaning. (See the notes in my brief.) 2) The colour is quite bland. I would like some stronger colours - and perhaps two or three colours.
I like this. The picture of the chef is not right, as I have already said. But I am keen to see another idea from you.
This is probably my favourite at the moment, so I would really like to see a further version.
I still like this. But it will not win because I do not want a salt shaker (as I explained about #29). I would really like to see this design, with a cartoon person in the circle. Not a person like a salt shaker. But it must relate to salt.
Thanks. Font is better. As I said before though: the colours are insipid. That means weak, uninteresting. If it had stronger colours, it might be better.
Used a salt canister to give customers of what the site is all about. Thank you for inviting me in your contest.
Thanks. This is a good idea. But I do not want a salt canister. As it says in the brief, the website is all about salt, not just about cooking and salt. I do like the fun in the design though - and also the writing. Good work but no salt canister!
rev on design #61 no moustache.
I like this. But can you do a character without a moustache?
Thanks. I'll look at all finalists' designs now and decide soon.
Ok thank you. just lemme know if you still have any changes. cheers!
Excellent! can you make the man a little smaller and with no beard or moustache?
Super. Thanks. The three new ones are all good. I am going to consider them next to the other finalists.
Thanks. This is a nice idea. I like the crystals. Many designers have used a salt shaker/canister but I don't want that because the website is all about salt, not just salt and cooking. But I want a more human, warm feeling. Something that says that there is a human writing the blog, not a corporation. So cartoons etc can be good. Also, more colour.
Thanks. I assume that the house is supposed to be made of salt crystals. Good idea. But I want a more human, warm feeling. Something that says that there is a human writing the blog, not a corporation. So cartoons etc can be good.
Thanks. This character does not indicate "salt" to me. I prefer the lettering in #31.
Thanks. Good. I think that, overall, I prefer this to #39. The crystals in #39 did not say "salt" to me. Perhaps the crystals in this one though, being very small, have gone too far the other way. I prefer the lettering on this one. In answer to your question about colours: I was thinking about multiple colours, not just shades of blue.
Yeah. I think to increase the crystals and male them colorful. That would be nice.
You are one of my three finalists! But this design is not 5* yet. Please be creative. I think bigger (but not too big) crystals and more colour would be good. I want the design to be welcoming, human (not corporate) and maybe a little bit fun.
Thank you. I think with a bigger crystals of different colors we will achive the needed look.
Thanks. I don't want a salt shaker/canister. As it says in the brief, this website is all about salt, not just salt and cooking.
Thanks. But same comments as for #42.
Hello. I came up with an idea of a tie that wears an expert. You see it stylised as salt crystals. The logo became colorful and appealing. I hope you like it.
This is a good idea. Two points: 1) Could the collar and tie be made of smaller, more granular crystals? The current ones are so big that it's not obvious that they are salt crystals at all. 2) The image I want to convey requires more colour. Perhaps, following on from my thought in point (1), the more granular crystals could be multi-coloured.
Any colors or blue shades?
Thanks. This is better and I like the "X". I understand your point about adding too much weight with a character. I think it's still lacking some fun and a human touch. But it's now a contender.
I'll try to add a human touch to it. But now I need to think about how to do it.
Yes. Not easy. But that's why I'm getting a creative person to do this for me and not doing it myself!
Maybe it's not possible starting from the current base. If you haven't already, have a look at the various images I attached to the brief for inspiration. Actually, none of the three "Additional Design Inspirations" have a human in them. But each of them has a playful, welcoming nature that I want for my site.
Ok. I'll breath my inspiration from them.
Thanks. This is nice. I think it needs some more colour and perhaps something to show that a human (the expert) is involved. I want it to be fun and welcoming.
Yes. It's ok. I can add color. But a character will add too much weight to the logo.
Thanks. Quite nice. But the salt crystal looks like a tooth! I think more colour and fun is needed.
Thanks. I don't like the font: it is too curvy. I would like bolder colours: these colours are rather insipid. Also, the hand is a good idea but it looks like a flower, not a hand.
Thanks. This is a good idea. But I do not want a salt shaker. As it says in the brief, the website is all about salt, not just about cooking and salt. Also, I don't like ".com" where you have put it. It is not needed.
See my comments on #33.
Thanks. I quite like this. Using a crystal is a good idea. But the design (including the words) feels cold - not warm and welcoming.
This is nice. Can you think of a way to make the white look more like salt? Maybe crystals?
Word "salt" to be like made from crystals?
That could be a good idea. Remember that there are many types of salt .
Thanks. I quite like this. I don't like the font: it is too curvy. I would like bolder colours: these colours are rather insipid. I would like some representation of a human in the logo - a cartoon person, a hand etc - something that makes a human, friendly connection. Not just salt.
Thanks. I don't want a salt cellar. This is because the website is about salt in all its forms and uses - not just salt for cooking.
Like this? Any suggestion what you want to be added or removed?
Thanks. The man is better now. But the main problem is what I said before: Apart from, the word "Salt", there is nothing in the design that relates to salt. Also, "Expert" should not be bigger than "Salt".
I didn't understood what do you mean by "apart from the word salt". I'll continue working on it.
I mean that only the word "Salt" indicates that the website is about salt. For example, if it is was "The Car Expert", I would expect the logo to include some image of a car.
Thank you. I'll do something about it.
Hey! Something different this time. How is it?
Thanks. This is much better. I don't like the man. It's good to have a person in the logo but, if so, it should be more like a cartoon. Apart from, the word "Salt", there is nothing in the design that relates to salt. I want the design to be more horizontal than vertical.
Thanks for feedback. I'll continue working on it.
By the way, my favourite at the moment is #14. But I don't want the picture to be of a chef because the website is all about salt, not just cooking with salt. But I like the style of #14. I hope that helps with your ideas.
Thank you. Working on it. Will upload soon.
Sorry but we can't see designs of other designers during blind stage.
The font is better. But as I said about #20, it's not a winner yet. It looks a bit too much like clip art. However, I like the concept and idea.
Thanks. I prefer this to #19. But it is not quite as warm, friendly and fun as I would like.
You are one of my three finalists! But this design is not 5* yet. Please be creative. The main change I think I would like is for the figure to look more like a human - maybe a cartoon of a human. Possibly also some more colour. I want the design to be welcoming, friendly (not corporate) and maybe a little bit fun.
Thanks. This is good. I don't like "The" and "Expert" being in different fonts. It's OK - but not a winner yet.
Thank you sir for the feedback. I'll do a revision.
Thanks. I prefer this to #2. But: 1) I don't like the salt shaker because it is related to cooking. The site is about salt and health, beauty etc as well as cooking. 2) I don't really like the tie. 3) The crystal shapes around the tie are quite good but don't really indicate salt.
Thanks. I quite like this. But: 1) It doesn't have the fun/welcoming feel that I want. 2) I want more colour. 3) it does not really relate to salt. The idea of having a photo of salt behind the words is good but I don't think that people would recognise it as salt.
Thanks. This looks good but it is too corporate and does not relate to salt. It is not what I am looking for in terms of feel. Please look at my brief, the "Sample Styles" and, particularly, the notes on the "Additional Design Inspirations".
Thanks. Please see my notes on your other design, #16. Those notes also apply to this design.
Thanks. This is too dull and corporate. It says nothing about salt. Please see my comments in the brief, the "Sample Styles" and, in particular, the "Additional Design Inspirations" and my comments on them.
Thanks. But I have the same comments on this as for your other design - #13.
Thanks. But, like your last design, this is too corporate in look. Too dull. I want something that is more human, more welcoming. And it needs to be relevant to salt. Something more hand-drawn, that looks less like "clip art", would be better. See the examples - "Sample Styles" - in my logo brief for the type of logo I want.
Too plain. No fun in it.
A bit boring! No fun in it. It doesn't really tell me anything. Have a look at the types of logos I selected in the brief. And the logos that I said I liked from your portfolio.
Thanks. This is too plain and boring. I want it to have some fun in it - but also give a sense of authority. This logo doesn't really tell me anything about the website or its feel. It is just some writing.
Please have a look at the type of logos that are in the "Sample Styles" in my brief. I want something that looks more drawn, less computer designed.
What do you think? Please feedback.
Thanks. Quite good. Nice balance between fun and authority. But the salt shaker suggests salt use for cooking rather than salt in all its uses and forms.
Do you want something like that? What do you want to be drawn?
Mostly I like the ones that look like they are drawn. The ones that you have done so far look more like computer graphics, like diagrams. They do not feel human.
I'll try something different and upload it. Waiting for your feedback after I do that.
Thanks. Quite good. Nice balance between fun and authority. But the salt shaker suggests salt use for cooking rather than salt in all its uses and forms. Also, it's not really clear what the salt shaker is - and I don't want a salt shaker anyway.
Thanks. This is quite good. It is a good balance between consumer/fun and authority. But I don't like "TSE" and the salt shaker suggests salt used for cooking rather than salt in all its uses and forms.
Hi Coolwanz, I’ve had a look at your portfolio. Excellent! Well done. I like a lot of your past logos. Some of the ones that are the right feel for The Salt Expert are these: Vegan Tours NY KidoodleCards Keiki Mineral Club (but I want a logo that is more horizontal than vertical) The Golden Era Isles of Capri Florida Adrenaline Outdoor Fitness Bobby Dazzler The Merry Robin ArtCrete Unlimited I particularly like the ones that look more hand-drawn.
Thanks. I quite like this. But: 1) I would like more colour and dislike the black background. 2) What is the image supposed to represent? Is it a man in a tie and salt crystals?
Thanks. It's a nice clean design. But it looks too much like a business brand rather than a consumer one. Too dull.
schiena's initial designs were good and I could see that we could, together, evolve them towards something that would match my vision. schiena responded quickly and creatively to my feedback and, in the end, my two favourite designs from the three finalists were both designs by schiena. I am very happy with the end result.
reight is just invited to join this contest!
Thanks coco. Looking forward to it.
azure is selected as the contest finalist! | 2019-04-20T00:51:30 | https://www.48hourslogo.com/project.php?id=76523 |
0.999938 | I am not very familiar with java build tools such as Ant. We have an old java web start application and now with the new security requirements for RIAs I have to add a security tag to my build.xml But I can't figure out how to do it.... A quick look at Wikipedia page about sandboxing: In computer security, a sandbox is a security mechanism for separating running programs, usually in an effort to mitigate system failures or software vulnerabilities from spreading.
Applications deployed using JNLP (Java Web Start and JNLP Applets) use JNLP to specify whether the application will run in the sandbox or will request full permissions from the user. This is the recommended approach. Applets deployed using the older HTML tag approach (applet, embed or object tags in an html page) also should be signed. Because the legacy practice was that signing applets... 23.1 Setting the Security Level of the Java Client. Using the Java Control Panel or installation options, the user can control, the level of security that is used when running Java and JavaFX applications that are embedded in a web page or launched from a web page, collectively referred to as Rich Internet Applications or RIAs.
Java Web Start and Security RIAs can be restricted to the Java security sandbox or request permission to access resources outside the sandbox. The first time an RIA is launched, the user is prompted for permission to run. how to add a category wordpress A quick look at Wikipedia page about sandboxing: In computer security, a sandbox is a security mechanism for separating running programs, usually in an effort to mitigate system failures or software vulnerabilities from spreading.
The Security tab of the Java Control Panel contains a Security Level slider that controls the restrictions placed on any app that is run from the web or from the local system.
23.1 Setting the Security Level of the Java Client. Using the Java Control Panel or installation options, the user can control, the level of security that is used when running Java and JavaFX applications that are embedded in a web page or launched from a web page, collectively referred to as Rich Internet Applications or RIAs.
This section describes the basics of security for applications deployed through Java Web Start and includes: Applications launched with Java Web Start are, by default, run in a restricted environment, known as a sandbox. | 2019-04-26T14:13:41 | http://tomatosherpa.com/new-south-wales/how-to-change-sandbox-security-in-java-web-start.php |
0.996252 | Do you think there's more story to tell after the mushroom apocalypse?
Nolan North says there is. The prominent video game voice actor has seemingly confirmed that developer Naughty Dog is working on some sort of follow-up to its critically acclaimed game, The Last of Us. If you haven't played that game, beware: spoilers ahead.
"For now I know they're doing The Last of Us 2, but my character in Last of Us kind of met an untimely demise." That was North's response to an audience question posed during a panel at the recent Metrocon anime convention.
In a completely unrelated appearance, The Last of Us star Troy Baker was asked a similar question during a panel at Indy PopCon (via Polygon). He claimed to be unaware of any sequel plans, seemingly contradicting North's statement.
"Okay, so I'm— and by the way, I know nothing. I don't know if we're gonna do another one or not," Baker said. "If we do, then I trust [creative director Neil Druckmann] and [game director Bruce Straley] and everyone at Naughty Dog to tell a story that needs to be told."
North is the longtime star of Naughty Dog's Uncharted games, and with the series' fourth console release in development, he's likely visited the studio more than a few times in recent months. His statement is difficult to misread (hear it for yourself right here) and undeniably definitive: Yes, they are doing this thing.
Of course, North's character is dead, and a Last of Us sequel — direct follow-up or not — very likely wouldn't include him. That means any info North has is probably based on what he's seen as a Naughty Dog visitor, and not as an active participant in the game.
Baker, on the other hand, is a likely candidate to return for The Last of Us 2, assuming the game is some sort of direct sequel. If he is involved, then he's almost certainly bound by non-disclosure agreements. That would explain his apparent hedging in the above quote (listen right here).
There are lots of "ifs" and informed speculation here. North could be completely wrong; even if he's right, Baker might not be involved. The Last of Us 2 could be a direct sequel or an in-universe spinoff, or it could be nothing more than a misunderstanding.
Here's a question: what do you want, The Last of Us fans? Do you feel like a sequel — direct follow-up or not — is really warranted? You played through the game; you know where things are at with Joel and Ellie, the two protagonists. Do you think there's more story to tell there?
We've reached out to Naughty Dog for comment and will update accordingly when we hear back. | 2019-04-20T23:02:01 | https://mashable.com/2015/06/30/the-last-of-us-sequel-north-baker/ |
0.997298 | A case study of girls' participation in physical science at a rural high school.
The study aimed to add to our understanding of why many girls in rural high schools were not choosing to study Physical Science. A case study of a local high school was used as the research method. Questionnaires to the 120 learners in grade 9 and 10 were the main instrument used to gather data. This was followed up with interviews of a sample of learners and some classroom observations. The science teacher was also included as a key informant in this study. The data collected aimed at answering the following key question: What influences girls in their decision to choose to study Physical Science at a rural school? The following sub questions guided the researcher in answering the key research question: (a) Are there any differences in participation between boys and girls? (b) What influences their choice in Grade 9? (c) Were Grade 10 learners happy with their subject package choices made in grade 9? The data were captured, coded, analysed and interpreted. The study produced evidence that the learners' family, the classroom environment, peer influence and the shortage of role models were the main reasons for the low • number of girls participating in Physical Science. The study found that these factors have a significant influence on girls' subject choices. Ofthe four factors found, the family was the most significant factor (i.e. where the family members tended to choose the subject package for girls). In the classroom the girls were involved in proportionally the same number of interactions but importantly the female teacher had a disproportionate number of interactions with the boys. In apparent contradiction to the teachers comments that the boys were the more active learners, the girls initiated more interactions with the teacher. However, the girls reported that they were uncomfortable in the class as boys mocked and intimidated them during the lessons. Unfortunately, a large percentage of the girls who did choose to take Physical Science were unhappy with their choice as they then found it difficult. The main recommendations of the study were that; teacher and community awareness programmes should be established to raise awareness of the gender issues and to promote girls taking science; career guidance should be given to learners so they could make their own informed decisions; and possibly specialist science girls schools could be established. Further suggestions for research were made. The findings of this study should provide policy makers, curriculum developers, and science teachers with valuable information about some of the factors that influence girls not to take Physical Science. | 2019-04-21T03:02:22 | http://researchspace.ukzn.ac.za/xmlui/handle/10413/8360 |
0.882975 | Brian Henson said that actor Steve Whitmire made "outrageous demands" and would often "play brinkmanship."
Brian Henson, the chairman of the Jim Henson Company and son of the late legendary Muppets creator, didn't want to get into a war of words with longtime Kermit the Frog actor Steve Whitmire, who was fired after 27 years. "I really don't want to be talking about this, and I think it is very sad that this has become an issue," Henson said.
But after Whitmire's firing became public and the actor told The Hollywood Reporter that he was replaced for reasons that include being "'disrespectful' in being outspoken on character issues," Henson granted an in-depth interview of his own in order to explain what happened from his perspective, even going as far as to say that he should have let Whitmire go before selling the company to Disney in 2004.
"I have to say, in hindsight, I feel pretty guilty that I burdened Disney by not having recast Kermit at that point because I knew that it was going to be a real problem," Henson told THR. "And I have always offered that if they wanted to recast Kermit, I was all for it, and I would absolutely help. I am very glad we have done this now. I think the character is better served to remove this destructive energy around it."
In an interview on Monday, Whitmire said he was fired over character notes he gave during the short-lived ABC Muppets reboot and for a union issue. "I have been outspoken about what's best for the Muppets since the Muppets came to Disney, but the fact is I have respect for everyone who was involved in the creation of that series for their own particular contributions," Whitmire said. Disney and The Muppets Studio responded that they did not come to their decision lightly and that the actor's conduct had been unacceptable for a long period of time.
The conflict between the studio and the puppeteer may have been simmering for years, but it hadn't always been that way. It was Brian Henson, along with his late mother, Jane, who picked Whitmire to take over as Kermit following his father's untimely death in 1990.
"Nobody worked harder than me on making sure Kermit survived my father's death and retained his cathartic personality and presence. So I understand the fans being concerned," Henson said. However, Henson said he had to have numerous talks with Whitmire over the years about his unprofessional conduct, which included "appalling" communications with colleagues.
Despite being a fantastic technical puppeteer and impersonator, Henson said Whitmire made "outrageous demands and often played brinkmanship," which he was warned as far back as the mid-1990s needed to stop. Henson declined to go into specifics about Whitmire's exact demands, but did say, "Steve would use 'I am now Kermit and if you want the Muppets, you better make me happy because the Muppets are Kermit.' And that is really not OK."
Whitmire previously told THR he always handled himself in a respectful manner, even when disagreeing with others on the direction of Kermit. "I didn't yell, or call anyone names, or refuse to do my job. I just gave lots of definitive notes via emails to this small group about character integrity and always tried to offer alternative solutions," he said Monday.
Henson, who helped train possible replacements for Whitmire, said he has full confidence in newly named Kermit puppeteer Matt Vogel.
"Kermit has, as a character, flattened out over time and has become too square and not as vital as it should have been," Henson explained. "Again, what my dad brought to it — without even thinking because he was accessing his own character that was coming out of his own personality — was a wry intelligence, a little bit of a naughtiness, but Kermit always loved everyone around and also loved a good prank."
The character, as Whitmire had interpreted it, was getting away from what the elder Henson imagined, his son said.
"There was an awful lot of stuff to Kermit where people thought, 'Oh, Kermit is a wholesome, all-American lovely guy,' which was not really what my dad developed," Henson said. "What my dad developed was that Kermit the Frog is a little bit of a prankster, he likes to put an act onstage that will shock you and is kind of weird. But Kermit the Frog, when push comes to shove, is loyal and believes in the family of friends. Kermit believes you should love and respect the being most different from you because of how different they are."
He added: "So there was a lot of complexities to Kermit that have been kind of falling away, and I do believe Matt Vogel can access that energy really well. And Matt is a very good performer. And I believe that in protecting Kermit going forward, Matt will do a really wonderful job. I think the fans should not be so scared of change. Steve did Kermit for a very long time — I would say for far too long. And the character was no longer being serviced by Steve performing Kermit."
Over the past few days, social media has been lit up with fans giving their opinion on what Jim Henson would have wanted in this situation. His son said his father would have thought it was time for a change.
"My dad's No. 1 thing was don't repeat yourself. Innovate. Do something new," Henson said. "He is the guy who canceled The Muppet Show when it was the No. 1 show in the world after five seasons because he was worried he was going to start repeating himself. The last thing my dad would want is that Kermit just keeps doing the same thing over and over and over and is in the same circumstances and having the same attitude. The character needs to be stretched and maintain his heart."
READ MOREDisney Says It Fired Kermit the Frog Actor Over "Unacceptable Business Conduct" | 2019-04-18T20:28:09 | https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/amp/news/jim-hensons-son-explains-why-kermit-actor-was-replaced-character-could-use-change-1022041 |
0.998193 | Repeat the previous three steps for the 5GHz.
Enter the your admin username and password. The default user name and password are admin and password, respectively.
Enter the router login username and password found on the back of you router. | 2019-04-20T21:05:13 | https://support.plume.com/hc/en-us/articles/360012196674-Disable-WiFi-Spectrum-Time-Warner- |
0.998567 | Play this quiz to improve your essay writing skills.
This English Language quiz is called 'Text Formatting' and it has been written by teachers to help you if you are studying the subject at elementary school. Playing educational quizzes is an enjoyable way to learn if you are in the 3rd, 4th or 5th grade - aged 8 to 11.
In an informative essay, a student will need to introduce the topic clearly. Then after researching the topic, the student will need to group their ideas into categories. This can be formatted by using headings. Also, a student must decide if he or she wants to include illustrations and other multimedia in order to aid in comprehension. In this quiz, the students will answer questions about beginning and preparing their essay.
You are writing an informative essay about the topic below.
Below is part of the list that you come up with about dangerous animals.
What heading could you use for this group of information?
Which multimedia would help people understand the informative essay about the topic below?
Which sentence would introduce the topic below clearly in an informative essay?
Did you know that the first chocolate bar was founded in 1916?
How would a photo help the informative essay about the topic below?
TOPIC: Owls have unique bodies. | 2019-04-26T15:35:56 | https://www.educationquizzes.com/us/elementary-school-3rd-4th-and-5th-grade/english-language-arts/grade-4-writing-text-formatting/ |
0.999902 | First, I should say that any dog will love this recipe. It helped my young dog with bad digestive problems eat and put on weight, but it's awesome food for all dogs.
Second, I'll make a disclaimer here that I did research, but I'm not a vet. My dog's stomach problems were very bad and everything we did, we did with the vet's approval. Also, I mixed my homemade food with some commercial food to make sure I didn't miss any nutrients that my growing puppy needed.
Note: I added ingredients slowly to my puppy's diet with each new batch of food, so I would know which foods were problematic. This is my final "good" list. For a dog who can eat anything, like my older dog, just follow the recipe as is, all at once.
This took me a while to work out - because how much time does anyone really want to spend in the kitchen cooking for the dogs?
2) In a really big pot (use a stock pot, if you have one), add the chicken first and all fresh veggies (carrots, yams) after. Then add enough water to cover everything. Cover the pot and cook on a medium heat on the stove. When the water is boiling, lower the heat to a simmer. Cook for about 90 minutes, or until everything is very soft.
3) While the rice and chicken cook, make the eggs. The easiest way to cook the eggs is to break them into a microwave safe bowl and microwave them for a minute at a time. Stir in between. When the eggs are firm, they're done. It won't take long.
1) Let all the cooked ingredients cool off a bit.
2) When the chicken is cool enough to handle, cut up into 1/2" pieces. Don't worry about precision. This is not gourmet cooking. Then throw it back into the stock pot.
Now this is the hard part. This gets to be a huge amount of food. You can try combining everything in the largest bowl you have or use the stock pot. Or, what I do, is mix everything in two batches. Whatever works for you.
3) Starting with the rice, oil and salt, thoroughly mix in one ingredient at a time. Make sure to break up the eggs. Stir in the chicken and veggies last. The veggies will fall apart as you stir. Stir in as much of the liquid from the stock pot as you can with out making everything soupy.
Use a heavy spoon for stirring. I get help when I can. It's a workout.
This recipe freezes very well. Freeze in batches that will last about 5 days each. I use reusable stacking containers.
Take a container out of the freezer and defrost in the frig about 2 days before you'll need it. Then you'll always have a fresh, thawed supply of food ready.
I hope your dogs like this as much as mine do!
Hi! Thank you for this. Sounds like similar issues my dog has. We are looking into starting to try to make our own foods as well. She refuses to eat her prescription diet (plus it’s extremely expensive). I was just curious, when you say slowly start adding ingredients can you please explain? Use her current food then add little chicken, then add the other ingredients gradually? Or make the recipe and slowly add more as time goes on?
I meant that I started my first batch of food with ingredients I knew my dog had before and would tolerate (chicken, oil, rice, egg). I added a new ingredient, usually a vegetable, with each new batch. If she reacted badly to a batch, I'd not use the new ingredient again. I hope this helps!
Hi, I just wondered in what quantities this should be fed?
I think you'll have to ask your vet about your dog. I've never had to worry about how much my pup eats, because she tends to under-eat. However, she's a lean 60lbs and eats about 4 cups on a good day. I also give her supplemental puppy food (even though she's an adult now) and let her eat what she wants. Feel free to share any feedback you get on quantities. Thanks!
I make my own dog food also, and buy only ground meats; almost ALL meats come in ground form, including chicken, bison, lamb, beef and turkey! Saves SO much time cutting meats up. I also save all my leftover veggies from dinners, and freeze those. After rinsing off any additives, I throw those in too. I add a can of slivered beets for antioxidants, a can of pumpkin for bulk, and a can of salmon for the fish oil. I have used a large crockpot when I don't have a lot of time to stand over the stove, but usually it only takes me about an hour from beginning to end if I cook on the stove in a very large pan!
Excellent suggestions!! Thanks for sharing them!
Hi! I estimate this recipe makes about 12 quarts. That sounds like a lot, but it freezes really well. I freeze one week portions and put them in the frig to defrost a couple of days before the last weeks' portion runs out.
You should probably check with your vet about fat proportions, since pancreatitis is so fats-sensitive.
Can you advise how many cups or quarts, or however you judge to be the final amount of food this makes, please?
My young ‘Tsu has bad tummy troubles. One year old and three bad rounds of pancreatitis already. It’s a challenge! Been looking for a basic recipe, and this was very well written. Thank you!
Wow! In 5 years I haven't seen another dog that looks so much like mine. Even the way he reaches out to your other dog is the same. Do you know what breed he is? Is he also very skittish?
Also, it's counterintuitive, but she does well with fats. Meat drippings, chicken skin, etc. You'll have to see what works for Asher.
I was so surprised how similar they looked to each other - right down to the "Widow's peak" fur pattern on their head! He is a foster fail, and we got him DNA-ed and it came back as 50% Doberman (Which makes sense because of his deep chest) and 25% German Shepherd and 25% Lab. He is hyper-alert and will bark at a mosquito coughing across the street but he does love everyone and not too skittish.
He has lots of allergies to food and we have been feeding him Kangaroo kibble from Zignature, but I think I am going to try homemade food with Bison or something and start there. He does well with fats and coconut oil and also kefir with his food keeps him very regular and firm!
Thanks for all your support in this journey!
Thank you for sharing your journey. We have two year old dogs with rough digestive issues. Both came from the same place. Brother and sister. I bottle fed Mister (White one) gave him colostrum, (He was the runt) and he grew and eats everything, BUT when I say everything I mean everything! From sticks, to furniture, to poop, to pens, paper, books, We have them on organic, non grain kibble like food with extra organic chicken and he vomits...alot...I am about to buy a muzzle to protect him from himself. I can't leave him for 60 seconds without finding him chewing on something. The other one Kissy, is very diva like and barely eats. Dear Lord...I am slowly changing their diets to home made food and after another awakening this morning with Mister vomiting and just paying off thousands of dollars in vet bills I am desperate. How is your sweet pup doing now? I hope you found your answer.
Hi Lynn. I understand your frustration! My girl is almost 4 now and is doing much better. I still worry about getting her to eat, and she still throws up when she doesn't eat, but it's far less often. I now have her on dry puppy food mixed with extra protein - chicken, tuna etc. I sometimes also add extra fat, like beef drippings, if her weight is dropping too much. In addition, I've learned her subtle indications that she's starting to have a bad tummy episode. This allows me to do a few things. I'm usually able to get her outside before she vomits. This makes everyone happier. When her tummy is making loud noises, I know it's time to give her Imodium (vet approved), before she gets diarrhea. When there's nothing more for me to do, the vet prescribes anti-everything to get the episode under control.
Good luck. Let me know how it goes for you. I hope your pups start doing better!!
Thanks for sharing the recipe, my pet dog absolutely loved it, unfortunately I didnt take pictures. I could tell the happiness of my dog after watching his face. I saw another website that shared some homemade dog food recipes for sensitive stomach. However I am unsure should i try them, i just needed an advice from you.
Can you please review the recipes? Are they worth trying?
Thanks for the comment! First, I just want to make sure you know I'm not an expert on this : ) That being said, all of the recipes you sent are pretty much variations of of what I posted. In fact, I tried most of these ingredients until I found a combination Shiri could tolerate. Good homemade dog food is basically a meat, a green veggie, a colorful veggie, a fat, a starch (rice, oatmeal, sweet potato), some salt. So, I think they're all good to try (Except the berries and yogurt).
1) My dog was very underweight, so the fat was important in her food. My understanding is that most dogs need fats to be healthy.
2) If your dog has a really sensitive stomach, you should try to stick with one food that is working. Changing diet can set off tummy episodes.
There's my I'm-not-a-vet advice : ) I hope it's useful!
Thanks for letting me know! I'm really glad this was helpful to you and Ella!
Good for you for not being afraid to make it yourself. Before I go further let me say I am certified in canine health and nutrition (which sadly is more than I can say for some vets). That is a lot of carbs! And only string beans and carrots? That's not a lot of variety and does not cover all essential vitamins, antioxidants etc. Chicken from the grocery store is often washed in chlorine same for eggs. Eggs in grocery stores sit on shelves or trucks for a long time before you take them home.
I am all for raw feeding, but please be mindful of where you get your food from, and make sure you are rotating recipes.
Btw, in most cases puppies simply needed some pro&prebiotics, enzymes and some diatomaceous earth as they are making the change from mommies enzymes to their own. | 2019-04-26T02:24:51 | https://ssl.instructables.com/id/Homemade-Dog-Food-for-Sensitive-Tummies/ |
0.999731 | Is there a possibility to show all chords available for substitution in Liquid Notes?
This article provides information about displaying all possible chords available for substitution in Liquid Notes.
Quick answer: Yes, a drop-down list with all available chords is available on the upper end of each chord area.
Liquid Notes comes with a drop-down list that displays all chords available for substitution. This list is accessible by clicking on the downwards pointing arrow next to the chord symbol at the upper end of each chord area.
It helps you make changes to the 'settings' of your arrangement much faster and easier, and also helps you understand the underlying harmonic theory better.
The number of chords presented may be limited via the setting Limit available chords in Liquid Notes. Read this article for more information on it - http://re-compose.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/1389115-how-do-i-limit-the-list-of-available-chords-for-substitution-.
Note that this list is built up dynamically: the harmonic analysis of Liquid Notes reads your MIDI arrangement like an expert composer does, and detects the correlations between chords, melody, instruments, etc. therein. Whenever you make a change to a chord, the available chords for the following chord may change as different options are possible now in the harmonic context for the particular chord. | 2019-04-26T13:03:32 | https://re-compose.desk.com/customer/en/portal/articles/1389102 |
0.999982 | Japan: Land of the rising scrum?
Fervor for rugby in Japan at all levels is on the rise -- here a fan supports the "Cherry Blossoms" during a 2011 Rugby World Cup match in New Zealand.
Japanese rugby was given a boost when the country was awarded the right to host the 15-a-side World Cup in 2019. It will be the first time Asia has staged the tournament.
Japan has endured mixed results on the international stage but celebrated victory over Wales last year, the team's first victory in 80 years over a major rugby nation.
Backing for sevens is growing in Japan -- here female fans cheer on the national team at the 2013 Hong Kong Sevens.
Also in 2013, the all-conquering All Blacks visited Japan for a full international, with New Zealand captain Richie McCaw being mobbed by fans.
The national side is under the tutelage of Eddie Jones, the former Australia international coach who has a Japanese mother.
A host of international stars have played or play in Japan, including former England back-row forward James Haskell.
(CNN) -- Nowhere else in world sport could a league title be decided in a match between a brewing and distilling group and an electronics behemoth -- but then again rugby in Japan is different.
When last month Panasonic Wild Knights overhauled a deficit to beat Suntory Sungoliath 45-22, they were crowned champions of the domestic Top League.
It may not be how things are done in powerhouse nations such as England and New Zealand but, in the land of the rising sun, rugby's popularity is on the increase.
This weekend, the Tokyo Sevens will be hosted in the capital, while looming on the horizon is the larger prospect of the 2019 World Cup, making Japan the first Asian host of rugby's showpiece.
Rugby is already reasonably popular in Japan -- with 125,000 participants and 3,361 clubs, it boasts the sixth-largest playing population in the world -- but it is dwarfed by football and baseball, and coverage of the sport is by pay-per-view television only.
Former England international James Haskell, who played for Tokyo's Ricoh Rams in 2011-12, believes those numbers are merely the tip of the iceberg.
"Japan can be a proper rugby superpower, 100%," says Haskell, now back playing for English side Wasps. "You only have to look at the interest there and the number of people. There's been a change in attitude to coaching and the sport's growing massively.
"There's often this perception that Japanese people are too small to be a proper rugby-playing nation. Some people suggested that I (at 6 foot 4 inches tall) would be a giant out here but there are plenty of people bigger.
"But in terms of popularity and player numbers, the World Cup will take it to another level. The interest should spring further from there."
Sevens is very new to Japan. As a result, playing numbers are still relatively low for this format of the game and this weekend's event in Tokyo will be the first appearance by a Japanese team in the 2013-14 HSBC Sevens World Series.
But in 15-a-side, Japan has a surprisingly rich rugby history, although with the status of a minnow of the sport. The "Cherry Blossoms" have played in every World Cup since its inception in 1987, although the wins have been in short supply -- their sole victory coming against Zimbabwe in 1991.
The first recorded game in the country took place in 1874 between British sailors in Yokohama but the sport was officially introduced by Professor Edward Bramwell Clarke and Ginnosuke Tanaka -- both graduates from Cambridge University in England -- at Tokyo's Keio University at the end of the 19th century.
Clarke's goal was to alleviate boredom. He once stated that the students "seemed to have nothing to occupy them out of doors in the after-summer and after-winter days. Winter baseball had not yet come in and the young fellows loitered around wasting the hours and the lovely outdoor weather."
With that, a university rugby scene was born and it remains the main feeding route for rugby players in Asia.
Clarke argued that rugby played well to Japanese traditions, a view echoed today by ex-Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, who led the Japan 2019 World Cup bid.
"In rugby, one person doesn't become a star, one person plays for all, and all play for one," Mori stated.
Japan is now the 13th ranked nation in global rugby terms but has ambitions to break into the top 10 by 2015 and the top eight in 2019 under former Australia coach Eddie Jones.
The Tasmanian, whose mother is Japanese, coached Tokyo's Suntory Sungoliath from 2009-12 before taking over the national side.
Joost van der Westhuizen is a legend of South African rugby who has been battling motor neurone disease since being diagnosed in 2011. He is now confined to a wheelchair but continues to travel the world promoting the J9 foundation, which raises money and awareness of his incurable disease.
Van der Westhuizen in action at the famous Hong Kong rugby sevens event in 1993.
The scrum-half made his debut for South Africa against Argentina in Buenos Aires in 1993, scoring a try in a 29-26 win for the Springboks.
In 1995 Van der Westhuizen was part of the South Africa team which went down in sport history. The Springboks, led by captain Francois Pienaar, won the 1995 rugby World Cup final on home soil and were presented with the trophy by late president Nelson Mandela. It was a defining moment for the emerging, post-apartheid South Africa. The team's World Cup win was the inspiration for the movie "Invictus", starring Matt Damon as Pienaar and Morgan Freeman as Mandela.
Van der Westhuizen played his final Test match for South Africa against New Zealand, in a quarterfinal defeat at the 2003 World Cup. At the time of his retirement, Van der Westhuizen was the most-capped player in Springboks history.
South Africa beat New Zealand 14-7 to win a second successive U.S. sevens title in Las Vegs. The victory took Neil Powell's team top of the Rugby Sevens World Series standings.
The South Africans set a record with their U.S. success, conceding only 14 points in their six matches.
U.S. star Carlin Isles scored a superb try on Friday on the first day in Las Vegas, though the Americans lost 19-12 to Argentina before being beaten 14-12 by France.
An American sporting event wouldn't be the same withouth cheerleading cheerleaders.
Rugby fans often favour fancy dress to show support for their team. Here England fans sport a knightly look for their team in Las Vegas.
"Japanese rugby culture is very different from any other rugby culture in the world so you've got to adjust to that and keep the good things of the culture and try to bring new things to the game here," the 54-year-old told CNN's Rugby Sevens Worldwide show.
Jones is also pushing for a more Japanese flavor to the team rather than the heavy reliance on foreign players, who had qualified by residency, under previous coach John Kirwan -- himself a New Zealander -- at the 2011 World Cup.
"Getting foreign players in and getting foreign coaches in here has helped Japan look outward," Jones says.
"With the World Cup in 2019 one of the most important things is to have a successful 15s side and a successful sevens side so that the momentum of rugby grows."
Sevens, however, has a relatively small fan base in Japan, says Tomoshige Fujino, rugby correspondent of The Mainichi Newspapers group.
"They are trying to strengthen the sport for Rio 2016 but are having a difficult time doing so at the moment," he says.
Japan has one major disadvantage over most rugby-playing nations in that quest in that the majority of its players also have full-time jobs.
Teams in the Top League, set up in 2003, are effectively big-name companies such as the aforementioned Panasonic and Suntory.
"Everything has been geared towards domestic success, be it the university champion team or the company champion tournament team, and there's been no international outlook," Jones says.
Usually just a small number of players are full-time rugby players and most of those are gaijan (foreigners) -- who have been coming to play in Japan since the 1970s.
Prior to the game turning professional in 1996 there were accusations in Japan's direction of what was called "shamateurism" -- and these days players such as South African Jaque Fourie can boast salaries of around $850,000.
About 7% of Top League players are from overseas, but only two foreigners can be on the pitch per side at any given time -- although the three-year residency rule slightly flouts that.
"The Top League is a mixture of professional and amateur players," Fujino says. "Amateur players all belong and work for a corporation and these companies own and operate the team.
"They work in the morning and they practice in the afternoon. These companies provide a basic salary and job security, so it is rare for these amateur players to change teams.
"Professional players in Japan are the same as any other country. They may receive higher pay but their future is unstable and not secure."
Having previously played alongside solely professional players in England, Haskell says this company rugby concept was hard to comprehend.
"Typically in Japan you have a squad of 60 players, of which 12 are full-time and the rest go to work every day," he explains.
"So guys in our side at Ricoh would, say, work at the marketing department there and then come to training after a full day's work.
"It's a strange concept to us but the Japanese employment laws are such that generally people have a job for life and people don't want to give up that contract. So you could get an odd mix of senior management playing alongside junior workers."
Confidence is growing in Japan, where Top League players have been able to learn from the likes of World Cup winners Sonny Bill Williams, of New Zealand, and Australian Stephen Larkham.
Indeed, Japanese players have even been selected for Super Rugby franchises, if only in bit-part roles. This year Harumichi Tatekawa became the third from his country to do so when he was signed by Australia's ACT Brumbies.
Ahead of hosting the 2019 World Cup, Japan is hoping to build on its first win over a major rugby nation -- last June's 23-8 victory over a Wales team bereft of 15 players away on British and Irish Lions duty.
Jones says he is hoping to use the sevens format to develop players for the 15-a-side stage, and there will be two players from the top squad in the team taking part in Tokyo this weekend.
"We're trying to use the sevens now to put young players into the game to improve international experience, their skills and their speed," he says.
"We're trying to create a team where they learn the skills they need to play 15s. Because we play quite a unique style of rugby, we need to keep the ball and pass the ball, and run with the ball, so the skills that we need are ideally suited to sevens."
An International Rugby Board delegation visit to Japan last month found a country renowned for its efficiency already with the necessary infrastructure and good transport links in place required to stage an event as big as the World Cup.
The growth of rugby could be helped by reports suggesting a Japanese team might be included if the Super Rugby competition -- which features sides from New Zealand, Australia and South Africa -- is expanded in 2016.
And the sport was given an imperial seal of approval when Japan's Emperor Akihito attended a club match last month at Tokyo's Prince Chichibu Stadium, home of the national side and named after his late uncle.
"I don't think he goes to many sporting events, so to have him attend the game was quite significant," says Jones.
But there are still obstacles. A notorious lack of green space, particularly in a city like Tokyo, means that pitches are in short supply. The existing ones are overused from dawn to dusk each day for a multitude of different teams.
Also, at the elite level, television coverage remains an issue in a country where football very much reigns supreme, especially since the introduction of the J-League in 1992.
Fujino explains: "Even after the decision of Japan to host the World Cup, fans attending the games for the 2013-14 season saw an increase of only 1% (to an average 4,300).
"During the '80s and '90s, college rugby saw its peak in popularity but, after the establishment of the professional football league, rugby's popularity went downhill."
While spectator numbers are only just edging up, it is playing figures that the International Rugby Board is looking to, and that area has experienced growth.
There is also a sense of national pride, so the 2019 World Cup looks set to bridge those potential issues -- even with the prospect of the even bigger Tokyo Olympics a year later.
But as Mori said at the time of Japan winning the bid: "The god of rugby smiled on us today. I am filled with emotion to be part of this historic day for Japan and for rugby around the world. Japan has much to offer rugby."
The World Cup should help to push the Japan Rugby Football Union, the Top League teams and elite players in the right direction together.
In the past, players have been prevented from playing for the national side by employers fearful of the risk of injury at a time when there is increasing pressure to win company games.
Whether rugby will ever be truly big in Japan remains to be seen.
Samisoni Viriviri is the first Fijian to be crowned Player of the Year by the International Ruby Board. CNN's Andrew Stewart report.
England captain Tom Mitchell goes head to head with his Scottish counterpart Colin Gregor.
CNN's Christina Macfarlane looks at how the 2014 Commonwealth Games could help generate more interest in the sport.
Long-time rugby fans don't need graphs or charts to see that players are getting bigger -- but see how they compare to other athletes.
New Zealand may have retained the Sevens World Series in fine style, but a Fijian claimed the honor of being named top player.
As a young child in Fiji, rugby star Waisale Serevi strained to hear tales of his heroes through the crackles of an old transistor radio.
Two years ago, Kayla McAlister was playing netball. Now she's the world's best rugby sevens player, emulating her All Black sibling Luke.
By day, he dons a white lab coat and seeks to rid the world of disease. At weekends, he terrorizes opposition teams in his bright red outfit.
Not only is she getting hitched this month, but Winter Olympics star Elana Meyers is hoping to wed her bobsleigh skills to an entirely different ball game.
Welcome to Hong Kong, where the battle to create the greatest costume is almost as fierce as the action on the pitch in the HSBC Sevens World Series.
The annual sporting jamboree is the highlight of the social calendar for rugby fans who flock to the Hong Kong Stadium in their thousands.
His name means "bright light" in Japanese and he's already shining on the global stage. Meet the young New Zealander being hailed as the next Jonah Lomu.
Spawned by university professors and dominated by big corporations, rugby in Japan is certainly different -- but it is also on the rise.
Many have matched his size, some his speed, but no-one ever combined the two to such devastating effect on a rugby field as Jonah Lomu. | 2019-04-21T00:39:08 | http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/21/sport/japan-rugby-sevens/ |
0.999999 | a gun, you are a terrorist. You are missing a finger? You're a terrorist. | 2019-04-19T02:42:28 | http://cluedenver.org/pipermail/clue/2011-December/001991.html |
0.999999 | What this pictured object is called in English?
I was googling for mop and squeegee and got confused since based on the pictures in google images the most mops and squeegees look different. Then what is the accurate name for that?
I expect most Americans, when seeing this, would call it a Swiffer, even if it is not actually a Swiffer brand product. It’s similar to how many Americans call any kind of facial tissue a Kleenex.
After doing a web search for "dust mop", I agree with Corvus B that the generic term for this product seems to be dust mop.
Either plain mop or dust mop, depending on how it's used.
A dust mop is used dry to pick up dust. It is not used with water or soap. Your pictured mop looks different than a traditional dust mop, but it would probably work as one. If it's used with water, it is not a dust mop.
Some mops of this style have sprayers that squirt soap ahead of the mop. If that's the case, I would just call it a mop. They're essentially the same principle as a traditional mop, just implemented a bit differently to make cleaning them easier. It's not different enough to need a distinct name.
If you are trying to find a similar mop on Google or Amazon so you can buy one, then my testing shows that "microfiber mop" or "flat mop" both work well, although I've never heard anyone actually use those terms. If you're asking an employee in a physical store, you can simply call it a mop, because all mop types will be together.
It is definitely not a squeegee or sponge mop, because it doesn't have a sponge head that is squeezed with a mechanism on the mop handle.
I had only heard such mops referred to as "mops" before, but the Wikipedia page on mops seems to be calling them in general "flat mops" (with other more specific terms based on their features or intended uses). I would immediately understand the term, as it's a mop and it's flat, and a web search for "flat mop" brings up similar results.
Dry mop is listed in Merriam-Webster dictionary online as "a long-handled mop for dusting floors".
In my place of work we use mops similar to this to dry floors after moping with a regular mop, so as to reduce the risk of people slipping. We call these dry mops.
It's a sweeper floor mop, both a sweeping and a mopping tool. There are many different models and shapes. As Todd answered, Swiffer company and many others make such mops.
Norwex makes this one we have, they call it a mop.
That being said, my wife and I call it the swiffer-- and yes, every time I know I am being wrong and/or lazy.
In line with the US "Swiffer" (brand; which I've also seen in Holland), I think in the UK the same market position is held by "e-cloth"; and "e-cloth mop" gives sponsored/shopping results on Google from competing brands, so they use it as a keyword. More generically it would be "microfibre mop" as that's the type of cloth without brand name.
What to call light food served at cocktail parties, that can be eaten on the thumb? | 2019-04-26T10:34:32 | https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/149717/what-is-this-mop-like-tool-called-in-english/149753 |
0.999993 | The men congregate themselves in return of the altar. The dance starts. They have whips and weapons wooden in the hands. The punished ones try to come back, but they are expulsos and they pass to be watched by sentries. The sentries point with respect to the ones that go to be possessed. The possession starts, the men trembles, the eyes had reviewed, a thick dribble leaves for the mouth the first one to be possessed is ' ' caporal of servios' ' , that it asks for fire to be burnt and to show that is really possessed.
After that, one of the punished ones returns possessed person for ' ' conductor of locomotiva' ' it almost walks the time all between ' ' palcio' ' the sacrifice altar. Later who it appears is ' ' captain of the sea vermelho' ' , that it marches as the British army. After that they appear ' ' woman of mdico' ' , ' ' lieutenant of the sea vermelho' ' , ' ' governador' ' ' ' woman of Salmon' lieutenant; ' , that she goes to make inspection of new ' ' statue of governador' '. ' ' tenente' ' it has broken an egg in the head of the statue to represent the plume that the British governors use in the hat. At this moment it appears a scene of the ceremony of opening of the State legislature in Accra and the narrator compares this with the ritual, saying that if the order of the ceremonies he is different, the protocol is the same. ' ' State maior' ' if it congregates for inspection of ' ' palace of governo' '. If the governor not to like, will have fine. But it reveals satisfied. More ahead they appear ' ' general' ' , one ' ' soldado' ' , ' ' secretary geral' ' , one ' ' driver of caminho' ' , and ' ' commander mau' ' - these three last ones punished. | 2019-04-25T03:55:03 | http://www.lonestarbrokerage.net/the-sea/ |
0.884338 | مقدمه: عزت نفس جزء عاطفی و ارزشیابانهی خودپنداره تلقی میگردد و بخشی از خویشتن هر فرد که تاثیر زیادی بر خودپنداره یا هویت وی دارد، نام او است. هدف پژوهش حاضر بررسی رابطهی نام کوچک و عزت نفس عمومی با توجه به جنسیت دانشجویان است.
روشکار: مطالعه به روش پیمایشی بر روی نمونهی 400 نفری از دانشجویان دانشگاه آزاد اسلامی واحد همدان در سال تحصیلی 91-1390 صورت گرفته که به روش طبقهای نسبی انتخاب شدند. ابزار آن پرسشنامهی عزت نفس کوپراسمیت 58 گویهای بوده است. تحلیل دادهها با استفاده از روش تحلیل واریانس یکسویه، دوطرفهی بین آزمودنی، آزمون تی برای گروههای مستقل، آزمون لون برای همگنی واریانسها و آزمون تعقیبی توکی صورت گرفته است.
یافتهها: نمرهی عزت نفس عمومی دانشجویان 6.91± 31.91 بوده و تفاوتی از نظر جنسیت وجود نداشته است (0.747=P) اما بین نوع نام دانشجویان با عزت نفس کلی رابطه وجود داشت (0.013=P) و عزت نفس دارندگان نامهای اسلامی بیشتر از واجدین نامهای ایرانی یا فرنگی بود.
نتیجهگیری: عزت نفس دانشجویان با نوع نام فارغ از جنسیت آنان رابطه دارد و با توجه به فرهنگ ما در دارندگان نامهای اسلامی بیشتر از ایرانی یا فرنگی است.
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54. Strumpfer DJ. The relationship between attitudes toward one's name and self-esteem. Psychol Rep 1978; 43: 699-702. | 2019-04-20T14:49:01 | http://jfmh.mums.ac.ir/article_2278.html |
0.999616 | Will Allegiant Air Offer New Yorkers Independence From High Fares?
An ultra-low cost carrier is finally arriving at Newark International Airport.
For many years, New York City has been an expensive place for air travelers. Newark International Airport has had the highest fares of all, due to United Continental's dominance there.
However, earlier this year, the FAA made a momentous decision to remove slot restrictions at Newark Airport. Last week, this culminated in an important announcement: ultra-low-cost carrier (ULCC) Allegiant Travel (NASDAQ:ALGT) plans to start flying to Newark Airport this fall.
Allegiant Air will add Newark Airport to its route network in November. Image source: Wikimedia Commons.
In the coming years, Allegiant's fellow ultra-low-cost carriers -- Spirit Airlines (NYSE:SAVE) and Frontier Airlines -- may also choose to start serving Newark Airport. The growth of budget carriers at Newark Airport could ultimately help liberate New Yorkers from high airfares.
New York City has the highest fares for domestic travelers of any major metro area in the country. In the fourth quarter of 2015, the average domestic fare for travelers flying from New York City was $406, 10% higher than the average for the eight largest U.S. metropolitan areas.
Among the three major New York-area airports, Newark International Airport is the priciest. In Q4 2015, the average domestic fare there was nearly 10% higher than at the second most-expensive major airport (San Francisco) and 26% higher than the average for the 15 busiest U.S. airports.
There are three main reasons why Newark Airport is so expensive. First, United has held a whopping 73% of the slots there, stifling competition. Second, Newark has by far the highest airport usage fees in the country. Third -- and somewhat related to the first two points -- none of the three U.S. ULCCs fly to Newark Airport today.
Recent experience has shown that the presence of ULCCs can keep fares down at major airports, even if their market share remains fairly low.
For example, Spirit Airlines began serving Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport in May 2011, providing the first ULCC competition there. Between Q1 2011 (the last quarter before Spirit arrived) and Q1 2014, the average airfare there fell 6.1%, adjusting for inflation. During the same period, the average inflation-adjusted airfare rose 1.6% nationwide.
Spirit Airlines' arrival in Dallas helped drive down airfares there. Image source: Spirit Airlines.
Similarly, Frontier Airlines became the first discount airline in Cincinnati in May 2013. Allegiant joined it less than a year later. Between Q4 2013 (just before Allegiant started service in Cincinnati) and Q4 2015, the average domestic airfare in Cincinnati plunged more than 20% adjusted for inflation, whereas the nationwide average fare fell by a more modest 6.5%.
Allegiant arrives at Newark, but will others follow?
ULCCs have grown rapidly in the past five years or so. However, during that time, all three New York-area airports have been saddled with slot constraints. Airlines needed to buy slots to operate flights there, and those slots were rarely made available. Even when slots have come on the market, they have been extremely expensive.
As a result, New York City has remained mostly off limits to ULCCs. Spirit Airlines and Frontier Airlines each have a handful of slots at LaGuardia Airport, but they haven't been able to grow there. Meanwhile, Allegiant has only been able to serve the New York area from extremely distant airports like Stewart Airport in Newburgh, New York.
Thanks to the FAA's decision to remove the slot constraints at Newark Airport, Allegiant will begin flying there in mid-November. The carrier is starting with four destinations from Newark: Cincinnati; Savannah, Georgia; Asheville, North Carolina; and Knoxville, Tennessee. It will serve each market either three times a week or four times a week.
If these initial routes are successful, Allegiant could expand fairly rapidly, as it has in other markets like Cincinnati.
Spirit Airlines may also join Allegiant in Newark this fall. Under new CEO Bob Fornaro, the carrier plans to direct more of its focus to midsize markets, but the end of slot constraints at Newark Airport represents a unique opportunity. Spirit has already indicated some interest in adding service there to complement its flights at LaGuardia Airport.
As for Frontier Airlines, it is currently busy digesting its recent growth, after adding more than three dozen new routes in the past three months. However, it may be ready to expand again by early 2017, raising the possibility that all three ultra-low-cost carriers could serve Newark Airport by this time next year.
If this scenario plays out, a steep drop in airfares at Newark Airport over the next few years is virtually inevitable. That would be great news for New York City-area travelers. | 2019-04-24T03:47:10 | https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/07/04/allegiant-air-new-yorkers-independence-high-fares.aspx |
0.999963 | Sitting near her alleged kidnapper yesterday for the first time since she was abducted at gunpoint from her Columbia home, Stephanie Musick described a harrowing 19 hours when she feared for her life but stayed cool enough to help police find them.
The 21-year-old woman detailed how John Righter, a former Sears, Roebuck and Co. co-worker who was infatuated with her, allegedly pulled a gun and drove her, handcuffed and terrified, to Ohio.
"I said, 'John, please, I am so scared. Are you going to hurt me? What are your plans for me?' " Musick testified of that September morning.
"He said, 'You're going to take a trip with me.' I said, 'I don't want to take a trip with you.' I was panicked. I just kept saying over and over again, 'Please not this.' I didn't want to go."
Righter, 22, of Columbia has pleaded not guilty to eight counts, including kidnapping, false imprisonment and assault.
He fixed his eyes on the floor throughout Musick's testimony. Musick -- who seemed unnerved by Righter's courtroom behavior -- glanced at him several times.
Musick was the last of several witnesses to testify for the prosecution, which wound up its case in Howard County Circuit Court. If convicted of kidnapping, Righter could be sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Today, the defense is expected to present its case.
Musick said Righter approached her outside her home in the exclusive River Hill section of Columbia as she walked to her car to go to work.
It was about 7: 50 a.m. He was carrying a gun, she said.
They knew each other from work, but that was as far as she wanted it to go.
Righter's attorney, Assistant Public Defender Louis P. Willemin, painted him as a lovesick man, describing him in brief opening statements yesterday as "infatuated" with her. But he said Righter never meant to cause her -- or anyone else -- any physical harm.
"He was just very, very interested in her," Willemin said, asking Judge Dennis M. Sweeney, who is hearing the case without a jury, to keep an open mind.
That interest, Musick testified, scared her.
Righter followed her at work, she said, even after she told him he had to stop. For her birthday, he left her a note and cookie on her car outside Sears at The Mall in Columbia. The note thanked her for talking to him when no one else did and was signed "John Righter. The tragic hero," she testified.
He sent her a poem by e-mail and once followed her home from Western Maryland College, where she is majoring in social work, she said.
On Sept. 5, she called police and told them she was being harassed.
Police have said that they talked to Righter, who lives in the 5000 block of Green Mountain Circle in Columbia, and that he promised he would stay away from her.
But two weeks later, Musick's neighbors testified, they witnessed an abduction they could not believe was unfolding in this placid suburb.
"It was like in slow-motion," testified Alan Fennell, who said he saw Musick and Righter argue, and watched as Righter slapped handcuffs on her and pushed her into a vehicle. "I couldn't believe it was a real crime."
Earlier, as neighbors watched, Musick and Righter argued for about an hour, she said. When he showed her the gun, she began to walk down the driveway and ran into neighbor Mohammed Fiezipour.
Fiezipour testified that Musick pleaded with him to let her go inside his house. Unsure about the situation, Fiezipour agreed she could come in but Righter -- who was following her -- could not.
Then Righter threatened him with the gun, Fiezipour said.
"He said to her, 'Do you want me to shoot this guy or are you going to come with me?' " Fiezipour testified. Righter then dragged her toward his car, and Fiezipour ran inside to call police.
Musick said that before she got into the red Dodge Raider sport utility vehicle, the gun, a 9 mm Glock, fell to the ground. She grabbed it, holding it by the barrel but, terrified, returned it to Righter when he demanded it, Musick testified.
The 19-hour journey began. The pair stopped at gas stations and tried to check into motels, but Righter had only checks and $12 in cash, according to testimony from police and Musick. Musick said Righter told her he had a bank cash card but had forgotten the personal identification number.
Musick said she was handcuffed to a seat belt in the front passenger seat. At one point, she tried to raise her handcuffs while entering a Burger King drive-through so the clerk could see them.
Musick said she was sure the woman had noticed, but it took more craftiness on her part -- and her mother's -- to help police find her, according to testimony.
Righter allowed Musick to call her mother from a highway rest stop to say she was OK, but Musick was ordered not to say where she was, she testified.
Musick's mother, Diane, realizing that her daughter could not reveal her whereabouts, started asking what state she was in.
"I said, 'Are you in Delaware. Are you in Virginia? She said no," Diane Musick testified. Finally, she asked her daughter whether she was in Ohio and near Interstate 77. Her daughter, with Righter by her side, answered, "Yes."
Righter, apparently unaware of the communication, drove off with Musick after the call and continued westward, according to testimony.
Police and federal agents, at the Musicks' River Hill home when the call came in, immediately notified authorities.
Later, police learned that Righter had tried to use his bank card in Huber Heights, Ohio, although the automated teller machine rejected it. Police in the area were notified.
A police officer in Edgewood, Ohio, testified he found the couple, with Musick handcuffed to the seat belt, in a store parking lot at 4: 30 a.m. Righter was asleep.
"He always said he wasn't going to hurt me," Musick testified, telling Righter's attorney under cross-examination, "I didn't know what to believe." | 2019-04-18T20:47:12 | https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1998-05-27-1998147068-story.html |
0.998968 | Given that the IPO market has heated up in the last few years – 2013 brought us 222 IPO pricings in the U.S., up almost 80% from 2012(1) – we thought it worthwhile to look at pre-IPO equity practices and the implications for companies after the initial offering.
We start with some analytical findings for recent technology and general industry IPOs, followed by a list of ten key planning considerations as companies consider their post-IPO futures.
Our analysis is based on prospectus filings by companies at IPO. As such, these companies represent those pre-IPOs that were able to successfully conduct an initial equity offering. In addition, we limited our study to non-founder CEO companies because founder compensation often has unique aspects, which could have distorted the findings. In total, we looked at 40 pre-IPO companies. Since the general industry companies that conducted IPOs during 2012-2013 tended to have a larger market capitalization at IPO, we selected technology IPOs from the 2007-2012 timeframe that had similar market valuations at offering.
The table below summarizes our findings for the Technology and General Industry IPOs with respect to: a) equity dilution/overhang, b) equity vehicle usage, and c) gains to executives at the IPO offering price.
There are many changes associated with the transition into a publicly traded company with many shareholders with diverse investment horizons, other stakeholders, and SEC reporting requirements to manage. Below is our Top 10 list of planning considerations in the area of compensation and governance.
1. Are the executive equity stakes large enough and “sticky” enough post-IPO?
Investors and Wall Street like to see meaningful equity stakes for senior management that show they, and especially the CEO, have “skin in the game” coming out of the IPO. This strengthens alignment between management and shareholder interests and also provides retention post-IPO. Therefore, it is important to evaluate the size of the equity stakes and the vested and unvested portions as the company moves towards an IPO.
2. What should the go-forward equity granting strategy be?
Most pre-IPO companies make intermittent equity grants (either at hire or tied to special events like promotions). However, most public companies make annual grants—which provides for dollar cost averaging over time and a steady stream of unvested equity to enhance retention.
Most companies switch to an annual grant approach immediately post-IPO. However, there are certain circumstances which might argue for up-front awards instead. One situation is if the executives do not have significant equity stakes at IPO; in this case, the Board may decide that the first post-IPO grant should be front-loaded to cover the next few years.
Any new equity strategy should fit within a broader overall compensation philosophy, which also may be a new consideration. A compensation philosophy typically includes target market position, desired mix of pay and other guidelines to inform future Committee decisions and align them with ongoing strategy.
3. What types of vehicles should be used going forward?
Can the company reliably set performance goals? Eventually, public company shareholders like to see the use of performance shares, but an effective design requires the ability to select the right metrics that correspond to value-creation, and to set performance goals with a high degree of confidence.
4. Should an all-employee “founders” or “celebration” grant be made at IPO?
How will a broad-based grant affect dilution and the share reserve?
Did employees broadly participate in the pre-IPO equity? If so, an IPO grant may not be needed.
Is there another vehicle for broad-based post-IPO equity participation such as an Employee Stock Purchase Plan?
5. Should a post-IPO peer group be established for external comparisons?
As a post-IPO company, establishing a post-IPO peer group of reasonably similar sector/size companies is often helpful to provide some external context on the talent market. Among other uses, it allows new post-IPO companies to understand competitive pay levels, practices, and dilution levels. Proxies also provide useful information on incentive designs and metrics used for incentive purposes. Generally, we recommend using peer group data as one, and not the only, factor in making pay decisions.
7. Are executive employment contracts necessary?
If the CEO and senior executives do not have contracts pre-IPO, the Wall Street advisors often recommend contracts post-IPO to “lock executives in”. On the other hand, shareholder groups and proxy advisors do not favor contracts. Because of proxy advisor and shareholder pressure, many post-IPO companies have reduced their use of executive contracts, especially for non-CEO positions, and moved towards using broader termination and severance policies instead.
If contracts are adopted at an IPO, it is important to avoid obvious shareholder irritants (like evergreen contract renewals, 280G excise tax gross-ups, and single trigger change-in-control severance and equity vesting), and to leave room for future flexibility. Further, incentive compensation should be expressed in terms of target opportunity subject to change / adjustment rather than promised future grants. Similarly, the use of supplemental executive benefits and/or perquisites should be reviewed closely, as such practices, while typically small in value, can be highly scrutinized.
8. What features should the post-IPO Equity Plan contain?
9. What kind of annual proxy disclosure will be needed?
Relatively little attention has been given to the JOBS Act within the compensation world. Signed into law in April 2012, it allows qualifying companies to enjoy significant advantages with respect to disclosure requirements. As such, it is an area worth investigating to see if your company qualifies. In general, eligibility is for emerging growth companies with under $1 billion in total gross revenues (but is also affected by the size of convertible debt issuances and of a company’s public float). While covered under the Act, a company can use abridged proxy disclosure and it not subject to a Say-On-Pay advisory vote.
Whether subject to the JOBS Act or not, it is a good idea for the new Board to articulate a compensation philosophy—i.e., the rationale for why executives are compensated the way they are. That rationale is the important ingredient to framing the pay-for-performance story in the first proxy.
10. What processes will be needed post-IPO?
Making the transition from pre-IPO to post-IPO is a very exciting time for a company. While the executive compensation requirements may seem daunting, addressing these ten items will put organizations on the right path towards their post-IPO compensation futures. | 2019-04-19T14:58:58 | https://www.paygovernance.com/viewpoints/transitioning-from-a-pre-ipo-to-post-ipo-company |
0.999877 | A podcast featuring two native English speakers talking about topics somewhat related to life in the United States and Japan. The idea of the podcast is to allow English Language learners to experience a small bit of natural English conversation complete with some explanatory notes and a short quiz.
Natural English conversation (with topics somewhat related to life in the United States and Japan).
Dan and Jen talk about their memories and experiences with their grandparents.
Dan and Jen talk about the idea of"coming of age" in Japan and the US.
Dan and Jen talk about the idea of "coming of age" in Japan and the US. | 2019-04-26T00:06:09 | https://panoptikum.io/podcasts/2406 |
0.999997 | I buy & sell now and again on eBay and over the past six months have noticed a trend towards more & more very late bidding, I'm sure by folks using sniping software. I have a few items that have been up for sale for about a week and will close tomorrow – I suspect in a great crescendo of last minute bids. There are a couple Jaguar electrical parts – two with one bid each – but one item has 8 “watchers” and the other 7 watchers. Another part has 4 bids and 14 watchers. An aircraft clock has 11 bids and 20 watching. I'm guessing that most of the watchers are planning to snipe within the last few minutes.
I wonder how many bids eBay can process on one item in the last 10 seconds. Does anyone NOT snipe these days?
I second. I don't have any "snipe-ware" programs, but why on earth would I bid on something till the last moment when all It's going to do is drive the price up.
I think you're just seeing a trend of people wising up to how an auction really works.
I usually wait till the auction is under 2 min, then throw in my proxy bid. that way I'm either gonna get it, or I'm not gonna have time to get excited and spend more than I wanted by raising my limit.
I don't have any "snipe-ware" programs, but why on earth would I bid on something till the last moment when all It's going to do is drive the price up. I think you're just seeing a trend of people wising up to how an auction really works.
I don't know if this is true for alot of people, but I watch alot of items that I don't intend to buy...at least not now. I just want to see how they wind up for later reference or just curiosity, or I may be watching several auctions for the same item. When I do buy, I wait to see how things are going, and maybe sometime within the last day, I bid what I'm willing to pay. If I get it OK if not, another one will show up sooner or later. If the "buy it now" price is something I can live with, I don't mess around. I just grab it.
It's funny how e-bay works. A couple of weeks ago I was watching a TR4 valve cover, because I want to put a PCV system on the TR3. The starting bid was $9.99. I put it on watch. About three days later, another one shows up with a starting bid of $10.00. I put the watch on that one also. Both covers looked to be in very good shape. No one was bidding on either cover. The last day I put in a bid on the first cover for $18.00. No one else bid, so I got the cover for $9.99. Meanwhile, I kept watching the other cover. It started to get some bids. Went to about $15.00, then, during the last hour, it shot up to $35.00. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazyeyes.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazyeyes.gif Since then, I've watched several other valve covers. Some of them didn't sell at starting bids of $10-$12, and another sold for $24. Go figure.
Same here. I like to have an idea what certain types or parts go for.
SO that's how it's done. Revenge is mine.
Honestly I've never seen the need to pay a service to bid for you. All you have to do is wait until there are 5 seconds left and place your bid. No one can possibly react to your bid in so short a time. If someone paying a sniping service ends up beating you in the auction and you would have paid more, then you didn't bid high enough to begin with.
I don't have any "snipe-ware" programs, but why on earth would I bid on something till the last moment when all It's going to do is drive the price up.
That's not how it works. You look at something you want and you deterimine how much you want to pay. If noone has bid that high yet then it will automatically bid until you're the one on top. If someone put in a bid higher than you then they win. But since it is at the last minute if you bid up to the price you are WILLING to pay then nobody has a chance to come back and outbid you. The software doesn't bid until you win willy nilly... it bids up to the price you have decided to go to. Simple as that.
I don't throw in a bid for the most that I'll pay, I put my top end in the proxy. but I still do it at the last minute. Usually it works, cause they don't have a chance to test the top end of my proxy bid, like they would if I entered it early.
I can't tell you how many times I've watched 2 or 3 people trying to out-bid each other with several days to go. All theyve done is pushed the price through the roof, and usually they wind up loseing to a sniper anyway.
I'm always watching lots of things but rarely bid...somewhere near the end of the auction I might bid or do the esnipe thing depending on how the auction's going.
I've never figured out why people keep their reserve secret....tell me up front what it it - if I'm willing to pay it, I'll bid...if I'm not, I won't waste your time.....& I don't agree that keeping a reserve secret protects bidders - from what? themselves?
I've been to live auctions where the auctioneer starts out by telling everybody what the reserve is & goes from there...saves a lot of time & rules out the "lookers"!
Reserves are pretty stupid. And you have to pay a lot of extra fees to have one. I suppose it allows you to start the bidding low so you don't scare people away with a high starting bid, without risk of being forced to sell for less than you want. It probably does work on new bidders, unfortunately.
Yeah, but the idiot sellers return answers about reserve with "Sorry, I can't reveal my reserve to protect other bidders." Give me a break! How does me knowing the reserve protect other bidders...if I know & want it, I'll automatically bid the reserve; if I know & think its too high, I won't bid anymore.
But, when they won't reveal the reserve, I definitely won't bid - even if I want it until the last minute & then, if thevreserve isn't met, I'll esnipe the next minimum increment just for the heck of it. After the auction, I'll offer to buy at my last bid.
If you want $100 for it & you tell me that & I want it, I'll bid $100....if somebody else wants to pay more - regardless of what you want - they'll bid more.
Buy it now was basically the same thing & you still got more than you wanted!
That's basically what I think I said. Reserve price allows you to start the bidding low so you don't scare people away. Especially works on newbies.
I like it best when the biding starts at 10.00 for 50 dollars worth of parts that are like new and I get em for 10.01. Now that's skill and cunning. Hehe.
And you would be susprised how often I get something like that. Just have to know what things are worth.
In fact this week I got a new rubber seal for 50 cents and the price of shipping 34 cents. Yep did not save a lot but was fun.
Also got two rear spring U bolts and some other rear spring parts I did not need for 10 bucks and shipping. Boy good deal, the bolts I needed and new ones are $20 each. Grand saveing on this auction about $35 plus a few parts to put away for when someone needs em.
actually, I do snipe but I don't buy much on eBay - I snipe for the same reasons that others have mentioned here, to try and get something at a good price. I wait until 30 seconds before it ends and put the max i'm willing to bid for something. Sometimes I get it and sometimes I don't, but at least I don't overpay for something.
I suspect the reason some people are unwilling to reveal their reserves may be psychological.
Basically a reserve is saying I'll accept $X. Now if you'd been willing to enter a maximum bid of twice that much you might not be so eager to do so, knowing the vendor would accept so much less.
If there's steady bidding on an item that might push the price up past the reserve minimum and beyond.
But if bidding is light, and people want to wait to the last minute there may then be a case for hiding the reserve: put your bid in to reflect what its worth to you, not what you think I'll accept.
If you think an item is worth $5K and the reserve is only $500, would you, or how many other people would then be willing to bid the $5K?
I don't get all hot and bothered about reserves or sniping on eBay. Generally if there's something I want I just enter whatever my max bid is right up front. If the seller has more than one of the item (e.g. An eBay store) then I just bid the opening bid and often get an offer to buy at that price after the auction closes (this is “eBay legal”).
If I get outbid, so be it. Getting sniped is just getting outbid at the last minute – it really doesn't mater when I “lose”. With so many people sniping these days I usually don't get the feeling I'm being “pecked at” by people mindlessly raising my proxy bid by bidding against me. I probably win 60-70% of the auctions where I really want something and 25% where I bid low in hopes of a bargain.
When I sell, I usually get more bids in the last few minutes than the first 6.9 days. With so many folks sniping I don't know if it offers any real advantage or lower prices any more.
Interesting stuff – probably a good thesis topic for someone.
..and then there's that class of sniper who snipes to win an item only to turn around and try to sell it for more money in a new auction the next day.
A friend of mine used to do that. He'd won 40+ items by sniping and figured he'd make a tidy profit reselling. The problem was: the market for that particular item had cooled a bit, so he actually lost about 25% of his investment.
As far as I'm concerned, if I'm willing to spend 100.00 for an item and I place that as my maximum bid and someone snipes for 101.00 and wins, they're welcome to the item. If the most I want to put into an item is 100.00, I'm not going higher than that.
Oh, haha, folks do that all the time, pay more than retail.
I just chortal to myself when that happens.
The one that gets me is when they put "No Reserve"
on an item,& they start the item out at $50.
To me,that $50 IS a reserve. | 2019-04-24T18:17:43 | http://www.britishcarforum.com/bcf/archive/index.php/t-21213.html?s=28f43eac684799ca784dfcb4d2222af8 |
0.999869 | My take on it is that using computers as a tool for making art is a fine thing to do, though there are a few pitfalls in using them.
We could say the same thing about photography. As a tool for making art it is fine, but most of use know that over reliance or exclusive use of this "tool" by artists without mastery of drawing or a fully developed cognitive understanding of form can be wasting time and merely using what little creative potential a person is born with on non-regenerative activity-effort that does not affect artistic growth. This is not to say that what Patrick called "digital art" wastes creative juices; but, those artists wishing to go beyond simplistic visual illustration should understand that artistic growth is not automatic or the result of the producing images. Picasso produced more images than most of his peers, yet his art career shows a degeneration of visual understanding, and his final works celebrate "graffiti" as fine art. I defy anyone to show me that his copying of Lautrec and Cézanne help him to grow and produce great art.
On the question, is digital art, fine art? I would first try to define "digital art." Brian correctly references the computer which is the "tool" used to produce "digital images" As a "tool" the computer is more flexible than photography which is often the basis for a primal image. Certainly computer image production and management is in its infancy and future technicians will have ever more capacity to play and manipulate digitally produced or scanned images. As with photography, many people will develop a false sense of their creative potential. Though it is great that so many people are engaged in image making, it is sad that their understanding and appreciation of Art is so limited and confused. From infancy children are assured that they are "artists" and anything they produce is great. The theory is, that if you can convince children or adults that they are artists and anything they do is art, they will continue to produce images which are unique and creative. According to this theory, accurate drawing or mimeses will inhibited or stifle artistic growth and must be discourage or avoided. This kind of topsy turvy art educational theory has been frustrating genuine artists who have a propensity to improve their drawing ability and become "fine artists". By "fine artists" I mean those who achieve mastery of drawing, cognitive understanding of visual phenomenon and an empathetic attachment to reality. I could go on with this description of a "fine artist" but just let me say that mastery of the computer image producing capacity is not mastery of drawing. Producing an image of a figure does not necessarily mean the person has the cognitive capability to affect more than a facade. The feelings of emotions we sense in a painting or drawing are not a contrivance of an artist. They are the natural product of empathy with the subject. The modern artist "uses" a subject to create a private totem for his own glorification. A real artist "uses" his knowledge and skills to "give" a subject special visual appeal. His feelings about the subject will be sensed from observing the work. They need no text or explanation. It is my belief that it is the process of drawing from life, or translating real form into an image that the artists develops a special empathy for the subject. It is not unlike the feelings we have towards another human being through familiarity and shared experience. Some artists are born with this special capacity to empathize with reality while others gain through drawing experience.
Drawing from photographs, digital images or prints is a vicarious experience that is not as effective in developing feelings towards a subject. I believe that artist who limit themselves to drawing from images rather than reality shortchange themselves. Such activity can be detrimental to the art student who wants to improve. Once again, what is perfectly okay for the master should be avoided by the student. Since it is not likely that today's students will avoid the computer, they must be alerted to the false sense of their accomplishments and encouraged to "do it the hard way." Learn to draw.
What is "digital art?" More correctly, what is a work of digital art? The product of the computer generated image is a light image or a print. Advances in printing technologies continue to offer greater possibilities for producing permanent images. Artist are now going into these prints with paint and creating "artist enhanced prints" which provide a one-of-a-kind "multimedia" picture that can be marketed are lower prices. It is another advance in mass distribution of fine art.
For me, the computer is a tool with many possibilities for my painting. I still prefer relying on my natural abilities to draw, design, and paint pictures. My worry is that future artists will become so dependent upon this tool, that they may eventually lose the ability to create the magic called fine art. | 2019-04-24T05:53:26 | https://www.artrenewal.org/Discussion/Index/1810 |
0.992971 | An incredibly poised and positive Boston Marathon bombing survivor, Heather Abbott, told reporters Thursday she's "overwhelmed" by the outpouring of support she's received after having her leg amputated below the knee. Abbott was injured by one of the shrapnel-packed bombs set off in the attack, which wounded more than 200 and killed three people. At least 14 of the wounded have had amputations.
"I'm overwhelmed by the amount of support and patience and just general interest in caring [about] my situation by my friends and my family and by people I don't even know," Abbott said at a press conference at Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston Thursday afternoon.
Abbott, from Newport, R.I., said she and her friends were in Boston for their annual tradition of attending a Red Sox game. She described waiting in line to get into a bar on Boylston Street with two of her friends on April 15 when she heard the first explosion go off. Seconds later, the force of the second explosion blew her into the bar.
"I was on the ground, everybody was running to the back of the bar," Abbott recalled. "I felt like my foot was on fire; I knew I couldn't stand up. I didn't know what to do. I was just screaming, 'Somebody please help me.' I remember thinking, 'Who is going to help me? Everybody is running for their lives.'"
But to Abbott's surprise, a woman rushed in and tried to drag her out of the bar. A man she identified as Matt Chatham then carried her to an ambulance. "I'm actually supposed to meet him at some point, so I'm really looking forward to that," Abbott said of her rescuer.
The 38-year-old's doctor, Eric Bluman, said he believes she will be able to walk with the help of a prosthetic after months of rehabilitation. Abbott said she's hopeful she can do Zumba classes and go running again after her recovery. She agreed to an amputation because it was the "best-case scenario." If doctors had opted to save her foot, it would most likely never have fully healed, she said. Abbott said various foundations and groups have offered to help her pay for the care.
She also said she at first wondered what might have happened if she had not gone to Boston that day or had arrived at the bar five minutes earlier or later, but that she has stopped entertaining such thoughts.
"It's so hard for me to focus on anything negative," she said. "I try not to dwell on it. ... This is the situation I'm faced with. It's not going to change." | 2019-04-24T12:02:56 | https://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/boston-bombing-survivor-heather-abbott-amputation-best-case-191724457.html |
0.999961 | past were passed by city council.
also be passed by city council.
reasoning—that past events provide a fairly reliable indication of the future.
track: The majority of Vasani grants that were given in the past were given to academic biologists.
majority of that majority will probably be biologists.
not draw a conclusion about the future based on past events, however, it can be ruled out.
conclusion regarding what will probably not happen in the future.
concludes that the future will probably be different from the past.
I wanted to know the difference between answer choices C and E.
I am guessing you are referring to question 20 from the June 2011 test, section III. If so, then answer C is a sort of contrapositive: "Editors hate farmers, so a hire who likes farmers won't be an editor." But E is just a "time shift assumption" issue as in the stimulus. The stimulus says, "Most CL-endorsed proposals passed, so a future one probably will." And answer E says, "Most stone artifacts found are domestic tools, so a future stone artifact probably will be a domestic tool too."
Could you explain why answer choice A is incorrect? It also uses past events to predict the future event, right?
You're right about that time shift in answer A, chian9010, but that's not enough to make it the best answer choice. Answer A also does something that neither the stimulus nor the correct answer do, and that is introduce another "most" in the conclusion - "if most of the Vasani grants awarded next year...". Our conclusion was about any future proposal that is endorsed, which means all such proposals, not just most of them. Answer E also has that same level of inclusion and certainty - not just most of the next stone artifacts to be found, but the next one. That small difference is enough to make E a better choice, and A a very attractive contender!
It's little things like that which can make a fairly simple Parallel Reasoning question tougher, and why we have to be careful to first sort the answers into losers and contenders and then, if we have two or more contenders, compare them to each other to discern what makes them different from each other so we can determine how that difference makes one better than the others. | 2019-04-25T21:47:59 | https://forum.powerscore.com/lsat/viewtopic.php?f=510&p=47706 |
0.999645 | It consisted of three business segments, and the gross revenues for said segments over the 5-year period 1968 to 1972 were as follows: Years ended— (Amounts in thousands of dollars) ----------------------------------------------- Segment 7/30/72 8/1/71 8/2/70 8/30/69 7/28/68 Frozen prepared foods ,825 ,912 ,892 ,408 ,423 Inns 17,149 16,058 17,178 15,264 11,963 Restaurants and food services 53,586 51,051 53,383 54,832 54,167 _______ _______ _______ _______ ______ Total 123,560 110,021 110,453 104,504 95,553 The pre-tax income figures for 1969, 1970, and 1971 reflect a net loss from a discontinued operation in the amount of ,000, 8,000, and 2,000, respectively.The pre-tax income figure for 1972 reflects an extraordinary gain from a sale of a leasehold interest in a restaurant in the amount of 7,000. In July 1972, Litton's board of directors discussed the mechanics and problems of selling Stouffer.The board of directors of Waterman Steamship rejected that offer but countered with an offer to sell the two subsidiaries for 0,000 after the subsidiaries declared and arranged for payments of dividends to Waterman Steamship amounting in the aggregate to ,800,000.
In many respects, the facts of this case and those of Waterman Steamship are parallel.
Respondent's approach, of course produces the larger amount of tax dollars. gain 2,739 2.22 2,235 2.03 2,410 2.18 2.093 2.00 2,602 2.72 Extra, gain, net of income taxes of 2,000 565 0.46 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ------ ----- ----- ------ ----- ----- ----- ----- ------ ----- Net income 3,304 2.67 2,235 2.03 2,410 2.18 2,093 2.00 2,602 2.72 ====== ====== ===== ====== ===== ===== ====== ===== ====== ===== Effective tax rate 45.5% 42.2% 48.3% 50.6% 46.8% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE STOUFFER CORPORATION CONSOLIDATED STATEMENT OF CHANGES IN FINANCIAL POSITION 1970-1972 (000s) ======================================================================================================== 7/30/72 8/1/71 8/2/70 $ % $ % $ % -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SOURCES OF FUNDS From operations: Net earnings from continuing operations, including gain from sale of leasehold interest of 5,000 in 1972 3.304 38.34 2,687 40.94 2,608 38.47 Net loss from discontinued operations - - - - - - (452) (6.89) (198) (2.92) Non-cash charges to income: Depreciation and amortization 3,256 37.78 3,146 47.93 3,088 45.55 Deferred income taxes 60 0.70 400 6.09 513 7.57 _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ Total funds provided from operations 6,620 76.82 5,781 88.07 6,011 88.66 Proceeds from loans on officers' life insurance - - - - - - - - - - - - 413 6.09 Sale or retirement of property, plant, and equipment 1,147 13.31 783 11.93 356 5.25 Advances from parent, net 851 9.87 - - - - - - - - - - - - _____ ______ _____ ______ _____ ______ Total sources of funds 8,618 100.00 6,564 100.00 6,780 100.00 ----- ------ ----- ------ ----- ------ ========================================================================================================= APPLICATION OF FUNDS Additions to property, plant, and equipment 7,886 92.08 5,357 66.13 4,844 78.14 Reduction of long-term debt 97 1.13 95 1.17 414 6.68 Repayment of advances from parent, net - - - - - - 2,479 30.60 1,149 18.54 Increase in deferred preopening expenses 385 4.50 130 1.60 - - - - - - Other, net 196 2.29 40 0.49 (208) (3.36) _____ _____ _____ ______ ______ _______ Total application of funds 8,564 100.00 8,101 100.00 6,199 100.00 ----- ------ ----- ------ ------ ------- Increase (decrease) in working capital 54 - - - (1,537) - - - 581 - - - ===== ====== ======= ====== ====== ======= Increase (decrease) in working capital components: Cash (987) 427 211 Accounts receivable 214 (536) (93) Inventories 2,323 (1,177) 1,284 Prepaid expenses 265 (94) 93 Accounts payable and accrued expenses (806) 83 (820) Taxes on income (951) (238) (73) Other, net (4) (2) (21) ______ _______ ______ 54 (1,537) 581 ====== ======= ====== ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ SOURCE: The Stouffer Corp.'s SEC Form S-1 Registration Statement dated Feb. Petitioner contends that the reasoning of the Fifth Circuit in Waterman Steamship should not apply since the facts here are more favorable to petitioner.
The instant case is substantially governed by Waterman Steamship Corp. Additionally, petitioner points out that several business purposes were served by the distribution here which provide additional support for recognition of the distribution as a dividend.
Please click here if the file 'Annual Report 2014' (application/pdf, 3.06 MB) does not automatically start to download.
Jos tiedosto 'Annual Report 2014' (application/pdf, 3.06 MB) ei ala latautua automaattisesti, ole hyv ja klikkaa tst.
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0.99992 | How many of you musicians remember your first gig? ( Gig, for those of you who don't know, is a slang for any type of concert, performance, musical job, etc...) I do remember my first gig as a jazz pianist. It was not my first time being paid to play music: I had been playing trumpet and drums for a while, and had done some brass quintet gigs in high school and also played drums in some jazz and rock bands. But I was slowly gravitating towards the piano in college. I started jamming a bit in practice rooms around Peabody Conservatory with trumpeter Alex Norris. I only could get through a handful of standards, but it seemed like enough to get through an hour's worth of playing.
I don't remember how we ended up with the gig at JK's Pub in Columbia, Maryland, which was a short drive from my mother's house. And somehow, we had recently met two older musicians from Baltimore: Richard Dorsey on tenor saxophone and Chris Perry on drums. So we called them and they agreed to do the gig. David and I met a few times the week before the " gig" to play through our non- extensive repertoire. "So I guess we'll play the melody, and then you take a chorus, and then Richard will take a chorus, and then we'll end the song?", David would inquire. " OK! That sounds good!" I would reply. So we continued to practice the tunes in this manner.
The night of the gig arrived , and I had to borrow a Fender Rhodes from a pianist and bassist named Josh Schwartzman. Josh was, and still is , the leader of a Baltimore based Latin Jazz band called Rhumba Club. In retrospect, I think Josh was reluctant to lend me the Rhodes: It was in really good condition, great action, and it had the separate speaker, a real beast to carry. I swore I would take good care of it. I suspect also that Josh didn't believe that I was ready to do a gig on piano; he had been showing me some voicings and some tunes but it was really all new to me. I was still primarily a classical trumpet player. Yet I wanted to see how this piano thing would play out.
JK's Pub was not a hip jazz club, it was really just a neighborhood restaurant and bar. There was a stage in the corner near the front window, and the tenor/Rhodes/bass/drums quartet was really packed in tightly. Richard Dorsey called Theolonious Monk's " Well You Needn't" to start the proceedings. I recall feeling like an astronaut upon the moment of liftoff. " This is really it!" I said internally, as we started to play.
But what was most shocking for David and I was when Richard called Moment's Notice. This is a Coltrane classic, a real uptempo harmonic workout. And Richard was clearly a Coltrane devotee, as many tenor saxophonists are. When he played that melody, he might as well have been John Coltrane himself, as far as we were concerned. David and I looked at each other as if to say telepathically, " Oh, we're playing with adults now!" Furthermore, Richard played about 25 choruses, each one better than the last. Every time that the Bb pedal came around signaling the end of a chorus, I glanced at David; I'm sure he was thinking, " Wow, he's taking another chorus!"
And with that, we were given the green light to do the same. I played for as long as my inexperienced fingers could handle. This was the first real jazz gig that I had ever done on any instrument. I felt like I could play anything on that Rhodes and it would be right. The frustrations of playing classical trumpet had completely left my psyche. I finally felt free. At last I felt like a real musician. Little did I know what triumphs and trials lay ahead.
Feel free to post memories of your first " gig"!
wow, I had forgotten about Richard Dorsey. When I was new to the Baltimore scene, we did a steady gig at the Haven every tuesday with Tom Baldwin and Jim Hannah playing a lot of Coltrane and Mingus. Thanks for reviving some nice memories and sharing your first gig story!
So cute so adorable,He have future.
Great story! My first (jazz) "gig" was this recital in high school.
Some of my friends had a very negative attitude towards jazz (or stereotypes of jazz), and we even had heated debates and arguments with teachers and other students on the subject of which kinds of jazz sucked or not (we were die hard metalheads back then, and kind of stil is). I actually started out playing the clarinet back when i was like 9-10 years old, and later played sax for about one year before picking up the guitar - so i had played some jazz songs and listened to some jazz for a couple of years (was a fan of Herbie Hancock already), even had a "jazz-punk" outfit at the time.
So our teachers set up this little jazz combo for the end-of-semester ensemble project. It was me on guitar, my friend Leo on bass (but his first instrument was guitar), a drummer named Carl and the only sax player in school, Charlie (turned out his sax teacher was my old clarinet/sax teacher - nowdays i occasionaly get called in to play with his ensemble). We rehearsed one song, "Take Five", for a month or so before even moving on to the next tune ("St.Louis Blues"). I remeber that the concept of improvising was the thing i was most nervous about. Although i played a lot of solos in my heavy metal band, and i loved blues, improvisation in jazz were seen as this mystic secret. It didn't help us that our teachers wouldn't teach us how to, or even give us some advice. It's not like there are 500 chords in "Take Five", in fact there are only two in the solo section.
I had to push my guitar teacher (who learned me to comp on all kinds of jazz songs, but more the nylon solo guitar comp style) into give me to only advice he felt he could give. He recalled whatching TV back in the 70's and seeing a Finnish guitarist playing an outstanding solo by staying on the same note for a whole minute. So he said to me to not be so worried with harmony, but to focus on rhythm, feel and dynamics instead.
So on the last day in school before christmas break it was time for the gig. We decided that each one of us were gonna have clothes that represented different eras in the history of jazz. I was dressed as a swing era big band musician, with pinstripe suite and my hair combed back with lots of hair wax, the others dressed as "a jazz rocker", "the slick and sleazy smooth jazzer" and "the average jazz bum". The other ensembles had themes like "Power Trio", "Acoustic and Soft", "Ladies sing Soul" and so on, but the act with the greatest expectations on them were without a doubt our little jazz combo.
We started of with "Take Five". Charlie played the first solo, with his alto doing all kinds of lines i could only dream of playing. Then came my turn. I remember just playing arround over the chords before hitting this one note, as my teacher had adviced me. The thing i remember the most of this solo was that as i played that single note with lower volume, the rest of the group followed in dynamics. At that moment i could feel that the audience were 100% focused on what was going on up on stage. And it stayed that way for the rest of the "gig". Next song was "St.Louis Blues", with me playing banjo and Carl laying down this cool second line beat we had learned. The third, and final, song was us comping the rest of our grade doing a choir version of "The Christmas Song".
After the gig people came up to us and praised us. I remember two of the guys that we had the most heated arguments with saying that my solo was awesome. How couldn't you be hyped about playing more jazz after that experience? Little did i know then that six years after, looking back, i can really say that this was a life changing experience for me. | 2019-04-21T02:24:43 | http://jazztruth.blogspot.com/2010/08/my-first-gig-as-jazz-pianist.html |
0.999999 | Technical analysis could use some help. Please research the article's assertions. Whatever is credible should be sourced, and what is not should be removed.
Technical analysis is the practice of developing rules to trade securities based on the past price movements of the securities markets and individual securities. The definition can be extended to include trading rules that results in behaviourial factors, such as Contrarian investing.
It doesn't work very well in an efficient market. Efficiency can reasonably be defined as the extent to which this sort of thing doesn't work.
No information on Sales, cash flow, earnings, customer base and other information are needed.
Major financial reporting standards (like IFRS and US GAAP) have procedural variations such that the numbers such as income, expenses, return on assets etc. may vary drastically due to different practices. Technical analysis does not require adjustments to the financial statements in order to make firms comparable.
Psychological factors and other nonquantifiable factors often affect the prices of the security and do not usually appear on the financial statements. example include employee training and loyalty, customer goodwill, and general investor attitude.
These factors are related to the fact that since one does not need financial statements for technical analysis,[note 1] it saves time and brain power to process the information.
The efficient market hypothesis, even in the weakest form, argues that the prices of securities reflect all market information, including but not limited to rates of return, sequence of prices, trading volume and any information that can be generated by market data. In simpler terms, future rates of return is statistically independent of the past rate of return. As a result, the hypothesis contends that trading rules derived from market data will not systematically get superior[note 2] gains. This form of the hypothesis is usually well-supported by statistical tests of securities on the NYSE and NASDAQ.
If the market is not as efficient as it would needed to be,[note 3][note 4] arbitrage[note 5] opportunities will arise making profits until the next price update.
Don't expect it to work in any major stock exchanges , however.
See the Wikipedia article on Efficient market hypothesis.
See the Wikipedia article on Technical analysis.
See the Wikipedia article on Arbitrage.
↑ Compared to, for example, buy and hold .
↑ As in prices do not update very often, like computers are not even available in the stock exchange due to technology (For example, if you are living in the 1810s) or cost limitations (Given the fact that listing on a stock exchange requires fees paid to the stock exchange, this is mostly a non-issue).
↑ It is also possible to exploit prices movements created by technological limitations in terms of bandwidth limits of data (before networking is invented, perhaps) because different stock exchanges may have different prices for the same securities. However that's beyond the scope of technical analysis.
↑ In the strictest sense, it refers to any profit requiring zero risk and zero investment. For the purpose of this article, a more popular interpretation is used -- the superior risk-return trade-off which may or may not require risk and/or investment.
↑ See the Wikipedia article on Contrarian investing. | 2019-04-20T00:52:07 | https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Technical_analysis |
0.999177 | What is the media saying about the controversial dialogue between Chew Eng Han and City Harvest Church?
THE rift between City Harvest Church stalwart Chew Eng Han and the church leadership has become more apparent after the two sides were involved in a telling online exchange over the last few days.
It started after Chew announced last Friday that he had decided to leave the church after 17 years.
His departure came as a surprise to many not only because he had been integral to the church’s leadership, but also because he did so in the middle of a high-profile corruption trial involving him and five other church leaders.
But those in the know said that Chew, who was once on the church’s board and was also its fund manager, had been unhappy with his colleagues for some time now.
A day after the church board put up a statement on its website saying while it may not understand or agree with his reasons, it wished him well, Chew issued a statement on a blog.
He queried if the board knew about a meeting he and his wife had with church founder Kong Hee and his wife Ho Yeow Sun.
He also asked if the board had read a report by the Commissioner of Charities (COC) detailing apparent misappropriation of church funds.
That investigation led to the Commissioner suspending the church leaders, including Chew and Kong last year, and subsequently moving to discharge them from office.
Chew’s post drew a response from the church yesterday, which said the board had, after “appropriate reviews”, satisfied itself “regarding the allegations of integrity, honesty and lifestyle of the senior leadership”.
A member of Singapore’s City Harvest Church, led by founder Pastor Kong Hee, announced his resignation from the Pentecostal megachurch as its leadership battles charges of financial fraud in court.
Chew Eng Han, 52, shared in a personal statement published online that after 17 years of serving City Harvest Church in various capacities it was now time for him to go.
“The time has come for me to make a major shift in direction for my life. I’ve thought and prayed through this for many months, and on balancing the pros and cons of it, I now have a deep conviction that that (sic) the right thing to do is to depart from City Harvest Church (CHC),” Chew wrote in his statement.
Chew insisted, however, that all was not as it seemed at City Harvest Church, a charge the megachurch has denied.
While City Harvest Church has acknowledge Chew’s departure, the board claimed in a public statement that his remarks amount to nothing more than “personal views” and insisted that the megachurch was operating with integrity.
“The Board has been working with the senior leadership for many years and knows and believes that the senior leadership has always walked in integrity, adhering to Biblical principles through the leading of the Holy Spirit. We maintain our full confidence in the leadership. Over the last 24 years, they have worked hard to maintain and protect the interests of the church and the members, and we trust they will continue to do so,” read the statement attributed to City Harvest Church management board secretary Lee Kiam Hiong.
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the Board and the church leadership have always leaned on God for all decisions of the past, and will continue leaning on Him even in this time of difficulty,” Hiong added.
The apparent fallout between Chew and City Harvest Church comes as six of the Singaporean church’s board members stand trial for allegedly embezzling S$24 million ($18.9) from a building fund to support the pop music career of Pastor Kong’s wife, Sun Ho. There was also a second allegation of board members taking another S$26 million ($20.5 million) to help cover up the initial embezzled amount. In addition to Pastor Kong and Chew, who once served as fund manager for City Harvest Church, John Lam, Tan Ye Peng, Serina Wee and Sharon Tan are also defendants in the high-profile criminal case. All served in some capacity on the City Harvest Church board.
Chew issued a further response to CHC’s denial of his claims, revealing that he and his wife had met personally and at length with Pastor Kong and Sun Ho to discuss his departure. He also suggested that current members of the church board were not fully aware of the fraud allegations brought by Singapore’s Commissioner of Charities and the Commercial Affairs Department regarding church funds.
City Harvest Church has attempted to put an end to the public back-and-forth, issuing “a message from the board” to church members Monday that read in part: “We do not wish to discuss, engage or argue with these allegations at this present time as these matters are before the Court. We would like to advise our members to do likewise. There are two sides to every story and all the evidence will be brought up in due time, and the truth will be revealed.” Concerned congregants were encouraged to contact their pastors personally if any issues remained. According to a previous City Harvest Church news notice, there were 24 pastors and assistant pastors on staff.
Pastor Kong has denied charges of misappropriating church funds and expressed confidence that he and the other defendants will be exonerated. Congregants have stood by CHC’s leadership and enacted prayer campaigns to support them spiritually.
City Harvest Church, founded by Kong Hee and Sun Ho in 1989 as a nonprofit nondenominational evangelical church, is one of Singapore’s largest megachurches. According to its 2011-2012 progress report, City Harvest Church’s congregation size numbered more than 19,000 last year.
Source: By Nicola Menzie, Kong Hee’s Co-Defendant Quits City Harvest Church Due to ‘Spiritual and Moral’ Issues, http://www.christianpost.com/news/kong-hees-co-defendant-quits-city-harvest-church-due-to-spiritual-and-moral-issues-98749/, 25/06/2013.
Perhaps the justice sentence in Singapore needs to caution all those related to the ongoing trial to “shut up”?
Does the BoD realize the legal implication of this statement?
If there was a $50m Galaxy Loan with an unethical 5% marked up yearly to be paid to unknown party, this statement confirmed that the BoD sanctioned it.
If there was a $15m inflated and hidden shifting cost during the first year of using Suntec Convention Center, this statement confirmed that the BoD sanctioned it.
If there was a inflated bill of $13m for Audio Visual equipment, this statement confirmed that the BoD sanctioned it.
If there were multiple tranches of ponzi-styled investment schemes with AMAC that disadvantageous to CHC and there was a loss of $18,000,000 to the Arise and Build Fund, this statement confirmed that the BoD sanctioned it.
There is a lesson for all the staff and office bearers of churches and para church organisations to learn. Don’t think for once that the church or pastors are above the law and that what they tell you to do must be from God and cannot be questioned or refused. They are not more annointed than you are. As in many organisations and companies, when things goes wrong, the boss pretends to be ignorant of it and pass the blame to someone else by saying he did not give the instructions or was misunderstood. If your superiors insist it be done and you feel it is breaking the law or some office regulations, insist that he gives the order in writing. At the end of the day, at least they cannot blame or fire you. | 2019-04-23T02:55:12 | https://c3churchwatch.com/2013/06/26/news-articles-reporting-on-charged-member-leaving-chc/ |
0.996521 | Melinoe stood in the bar by one of the pool tables; a bottle of alcohol sitting on a table with a couple shot glasses nearby. Not much had changed in the 5 years she had been gone...except herself. Her face was serious, her skin somewhat darker than it had been, and her hair its natural red. She took no joy from riding her motorcycle anymore either; she'd simply walked to the bar from the bus stop. It was the first place she had hit up, and now a couple of men and herself stood around the pool table taking shots and making them at the same time. The men were giving her a hard time, but in more of the joking and friendly way, and while her face was serious she gave it right back.
She ran her hand over her face for the millionth time that day, trying to wipe the tired look off her face. How long had it been since she left? Five years? Esme missed Mel like there was no tomorrow, she was worried sick about her. She pushed the door open to the bar, sighing softly and making her way toward one of the stools. She pushed her loose hair back and she sat down, ordering a bottle of whiskey and a shot glass.
It was a little confusing to Melinoe. Why had she come here instead of going to see Esme first? Perhaps it was that she didn't want her lover to see her like this again. She leaned over the table and made a shot; managing to knock two of the balls into pockets and earning a ruckus from the men she was with. Slowly she lifted her hand and placed it out towards them. "Shhh...It was a legitimate shot. How could I have cheated?"
Shifting her weight slowly she changed her stance some to a more defensive and almost aggressive stance. The men immediately put their hands up as if to calm her down some while saying they were just playing and meant no harm. She shifted once more out of that stance. "I'm sorry. My defenses are still up." She walked over and poured another shot of her usual drink of Jack and tipped it back.
Her eyes widened, hearing that voice again. It had to be, there was no other voice like that in the entire world. Without a single word she leaped from her spot at the bar, nearly knocking over the bottle of whiskey (the bartender close enough to catch it). Before she realized what she was doing she leaped toward the female, winding her arms around her waist tightly.
Instantly Melinoe's body tensed up as someone's arms wrapped around her. She stiffened up tightly; her legs spread apart in a firm athletic stance as her hands immediately moved to grab the sides of the person's face as if she was getting ready to snap their neck though the touch was somewhat more gentle as if she was being careful to check who it was first. She flinched some when she noticed who it was who had grabbed her and her hands immediately softened their hold though her face remained serious.
Mel suddenly grabbed her face, her hold firm at first but softening when she saw it was her. Softly Esme lifted a hand, lightly touching her cheek. She ran her fingers down her jaw line, around her chin, and over to the other side of her face as if she were testing if this were a dream or not. Tears came to the corners of her eyes when she felt the familiar skin.
"It's you...it really is you..."
"Yeah..." Her voice had grown somewhat flat. Melinoe was rather frustrated that she had reacted in such a way to her fiancée touching her. She had stiffened up slightly as Esme ran her fingers over the skin of her face, but stared down at her with somewhat golden-brown eyes. They'd lightened up almost as if they were growing closer to becoming permanently reptilian.
Esme retracted her hand to try and dry her eyes, with a swallow she spoke again.
"Mel I thought I lost you...I missed you so much."
She buried her face into Mel's chest trying not to cry. The males around the table looked at each other in awkward silence, unsure how to react in this situation.
"I told you I'd come back." Melinoe shifted somewhat awkwardly in Esme's hold and glanced at the men standing around with a somewhat confused and questioning look. She wasn't entirely sure what to do. Slowly she shifted away from Esme and grabbed her hand, though her face was still the same as it was before she lifted her lover's hand to look for the ring.
Mel moved away and grabbed her left hand, looking over her fingers. The ring was still there, just as she left it.
"I never took it off Mel."
Esme smiled softly, holding onto Mel's hand tightly. The other men put their sticks down and quickly saw themselves out, they could see this was very personal and they didn't want to get involved.
Once more Melinoe shifted her hand in Esme's grip awkwardly and glanced away some. "Are we still on?" She watched as the men left and frowned some before looking back at Esme. "Uh...I'm kind of tired...So..." She didn't finish the sentence but rather just looked at her lover.
"Or course we are Mel, I've never loved you more then I do right now."
She kissed Mel's fingers and hold them firmly. Mel spoke up about being tired, and Esme nodded.
"Want me to drive you home? I only had one shot I'm sober enough for sure."
"I thought I would make sure instead of assuming." It was true. Melinoe would much rather be sure about where they stood than assume everything was fine and then being entirely wrong after. She hesitated after what Esme asked but slowly nodded her head. Esme probably meant her apartment since that's where Melinoe had agreed to live. That didn't bother her much.
Esme gripped Mel's hand and began leading her to the door. The feeling of Mel holding her hand, she had missed it so much. A soft smile came to her lips as she opened the door for the two of them, passing money to the passerby busboy for their drinks.
"I like you're hair Mel...you make a very cute ginger."
With a smile she walked to the passenger side of her car and opened the door for Mel.
"It's my natural hair." Melinoe's voice was somewhat flat as she walked along with Esme; her hand barely closed around the one of her lover. "Thank you." She got into the car on the side Esme held the door open, sat, and buckled in.
Mel had changed, but she was Mel and Esme was happy to see her. With Mel seated and out of the door's path she shut it and made her way to the driver's side. Fastening her own seat belt and shutting her door she started the engine and looked behind her to back out of the parking lot before turning and driving back down the road.
Melinoe shifted slightly in the seat so that her head rested against the window and stared forward through the windshield. She said nothing, but surprisingly enough her hand searched for Esme's.
As she drove she felt Mel's hand search for her own, and with a smile she grabbed hold of Mel's searching hand to hold it firmly. The skin had gotten a little rougher, and her eyes grew more reptilian with her time away, but Esme was just glad to have her back. She drove in silence, holding Mel's hand the entire way. | 2019-04-23T12:40:04 | http://crimsonstudio.forumotion.com/t60-pool-table |
0.999983 | Will the big game save gaming in Atlantic City?
Atlantic City's embattled casino industry, which has lost thousands of jobs this year as money-losing operator shut their doors, shouldn't expect much of a boost from sports betting, experts say.
The reasons are many. For one, the decline of New Jersey's gaming industry has been years in the making and was hastened when lawmakers in neighboring Pennsylvania, a key Atlantic City market, allowed casino gaming. Atlantic City casino revenue reached a peak of $5.2 billion, and tumbled to $2.86 billion last year nearly two dozen casinos were built within driving distance of the Jersey shore gambling mecca.
Second, as an economic activity, sports betting isn't a game-changer. According to data from the American Gaming Association, a trade group, about $3.4 billion was wagered on sports at casinos in Nevada in 2012, though the total amount generated by the state's casinos race books was much smaller. The AGA pegs the gross gaming revenue from sports bets at $170 million, a tiny percentage of the $10.9 billion consumers plunked down in the state's casinos in 2012.
A further damper on sports betting profits at Atlantic City casinos is the fact that it's legal in Delaware and a handful of other states.
"I don't think it's going to be the lifeline for the casinos," said Alex Bumazhny, who follows the casino industry for Fitch Ratings, adding that the credit rating agency "doesn't think it will make a big difference" in Atlantic City.
Under a measure New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie signed into law last week, Atlantic City racetracks and casinos can start accepting sports bets. But that law comes amid a major slump in gambling in the state. Over the past few months, operators of the Revel Casino Hotel, which at one time was touted as linchpin of an Atlantic City revival, Trump Plaza and Showboat, closed their doors. The Trump Taj Mahal has threatened to shut down next month unless it receives concessions from state officials.
Earlier this month, Brookfield Asset Management, owner of Las Vegas' Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, acquired Revel for $110 million, a fraction of the $2.4 billion to build. Casino industry experts have argued that it will be difficult for Brookfield to operate Revel as a casino because it never made a profit. Florida developer Glen Straub, who submitted the losing bid, is challenging the sale.
"The reality is that it's a big deal for Monmouth Park and that's it," said Alan Woinski, the president of Gaming USA, a consulting firm based in Paramus, New Jersey, in an interview, referring to a struggling race track in Oceanport, New Jersey, that under the state's new law will be able accept sports bets. "This whole thing is a snow job."
Another obstacle is that New Jersey residents are divided over the benefits of sports betting. Though 44 percent of people surveyed by Rutgers-Eagleton poll thought that sports betting was a positive for Atlantic City, another 48 percent were less sure of its value, while another 31 percent thought it would make no difference.
Still, sports betting is starting up in New Jersey despite ferocious competition from a number powerful interests. Professional sports leagues in the U.S. and the NCAA have long opposed sports gambling because of fears it would lead to game-fixing. Despite such concerns, Christie initially moved to permit sports betting in 2011 after voters approved a constitutional amendment to legalize it.
The NFL subsequently sued to block the law, claiming that it violated an 1992 federal law that restricted sports betting to four states. A federal court ruled in the league's favor, and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the state's appeal, leaving the ban in place.
But State Senator Raymond Lesniak, an outspoken proponent for sports betting, pushed through a bill this that year that abolished the state's existing prohibitions against sports betting. The state then eliminated all of its laws outlawing sports betting at tracks and casinos.
"Nobody expected such a bizarre move," said I. Nelson Rose, a professor at Whittier Law School who has written a textbook on gaming law, adding he wasn't sure if New Jersey's move will survive a court challenge. "This isn't going to save Atlantic City. There probably isn't anything that can save Atlantic City." | 2019-04-21T08:35:04 | https://www.cbsnews.com/news/will-betting-on-sports-save-atlantic-city/ |
0.999999 | The foster mother of William Tyrrell heard a 'high pitched scream like a child' in the bush while searching for her little boy in the minutes after he disappeared.
The mother told day two of his coronial inquest that she could not see anything when she investigated the noise, and thought it may have just been a bird, or her imagination.
'It was like a scream. It was like when a child hurts themselves unexpectedly there's a scream,' she recalled to counsel assisting the coroner Gerard Craddock SC.
'And it felt like a scream. It was quick and it was high pitched and it was sharp,' she recalled.
She said she went into reeds where she thought the noise was coming from.
'I got into the bush and I thought; I can't see any red.
'I thought maybe I imagined it. Maybe it's as a bird.
'I thought I'm just going to walk back. And I walked back'.
The female foster carer was emotional at points throughout the hearing which is looking into the boy's disappearance from a Kendall home on the NSW mid north coast on September 12, 2014.
She described in vivid detail how silence gripped the house when William vanished.
'I couldn't hear a thing. It was silent. There was no wind. No birds. Nothing. Couldn't hear a thing.
'All I could think was why can't I hear him? Why can't I see the red (of his Spiderman suit)?
'I'm standing there and - why can't I see him? Why can't I hear him.
A lawyer for Bill Spedding, once described as a person of interest in the child's disappearance, questioned the foster mother about a phone call she made to the washing machine repairman the day he disappeared.
The foster mother said when she and the family arrived at her mother's home in Kendall that week, one of the first things her mother did was complain about her washing machine.
'(She said) the washing machine's broken, you won't be able to do any clothes,' she told the inquest on Tuesday.
'I felt more frustrated for mum.
'I found out afterwards it had been a couple of weeks she hadn't been able to do her washing and that was unreasonable'.
The inquest was shown a police statement where the foster mother recalled ringing Mr Spedding and leaving a message on the morning that William vanished.
Mr Spedding has long denied any involvement in the boy's disappearance and was named by police as person of interest in the case many years ago.
His lawyer, Peter O'Brien, asked the female foster carer to accept that evidence suggested Mr Spedding had been at the Kendall house to look at the washing machine on Tuesday, September 9, three days before William went missing.
William and his family did not arrive at the property until Thursday evening. | 2019-04-23T22:15:58 | https://en.mogaznews.com/World-News/1161511/William-Tyrrell%E2%80%99s-foster-mother-heard-a-%E2%80%98child-scream%E2%80%99-while-searching-.html |
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