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November 22, 2013 by Julie Leave a Comment I’ve always loved sunflowers; they are so bright and cheery. When was the last time you saw a sunflower? Outside my library is an outdoor nature area containing a crop of sunflowers. Today when I went to observe them, there were several plants in various stages of their life cycle. As we sat and studied these plants, my mind drifted to the different seasons of motherhood. I hope you will join me as we look at these sunflowers, as I believe there is something we can learn from each stage. The first sunflower was beautiful, stunning. It got the most oohs and aahs from my children. Standing up tall and straight, its vibrant yellow petals pointing to the sun. Yellow has always been one of my favorite colors because it exudes such joy and warmth. This flower was full of life and vitality. Beautiful colors contrasted against the crisp, blue sky. This flower reminded me of the seasons of motherhood that we go through that are full and robust. We are busy and satisfied. We see joy in the moments. We overflow with happiness. We feel vibrant and alive. Those are blessed times indeed. Of course during this time there is a potential pitfall, which of course is pride. We can easily look on others who may not be experiencing the same season as us with judgement or criticism. We can easily want to draw attention to ourselves: our success, our ministries, our fruit and away from the sustainer of our every breath. I know: I’ve been that flower! The second flower made me so sad to look at. Unlike the bright cheery yellow of the first sunflower, this flower’s petals were a crusty gold/green all curled up around the head. Instead of standing up tall, this flower was so weighed down it seemed as though it’s stem could snap off at any moment. One word came to mind as I looked at this flower- “Weary”. As moms we go through moments/days/seasons of weariness where the weight of having to care for the lives of our little seeds becomes too much to bear. The pressures of worry and fear, the real losses of children and family, financial difficulties, strained marriages, prodigal children, illness, and more can weigh us down so much we wonder if we will ever be able to hold our head up again. But just as the sunflower needs to go through this phase of its life cycle, so we must go through seasons of weariness. Moms, we need each other. We need to encourage and build up one another! We need to be sensitive to the “weariness” in each other. We may not always be able to see the hurt in each other (man, we are good at putting on happy fronts, aren’t we?). But God can reveal the needs of others to us- if we are open to see them. If you aren’t in a season of weariness right now, reach out to help a mom who is. Bring her a meal, take her to coffee, offer to watch her kids for the afternoon, pray with her, send her an encouraging note or email. And if you are currently that weary mom, weighed down like this sunflower, know you are NOT alone. You can read more about weariness here and here. Pray that God will show you what he wants you to learn during this season. God loves you, and He will sustain you. I know: I’ve been this flower. The last flower was a dark grayish brown with wrinkled up leaves and a bent stem. It’s head had lost most of its seeds that now laid strewn across the garden bed. My kids eagerly picked up one of the seeds to take home. This flower reminded me of this verse in John 12 24 Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. 25 Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. As moms, we are daily called to die to ourselves. Dying isn’t pretty. We don’t like to talk about it. Nobody would pick up the last sunflower and put it in a vase. But there is something quietly and significantly beautiful about this plant, dying so that it’s seeds (bursting with life) may go forth. I sometimes envision God calling me to die to myself in some BIG calling like going on the mission field or starting a new ministry. But God calls me to carry my cross DAILY. Right now. Today. In my own home. In the mundane tasks of everyday life. In cleaning up messes, kissing boo-boos, teaching lessons, and doing a LOT of laundry. I’m called to die to myself and that’s HARD. Well…because honestly, I’m REALLY selfish and stubborn. I don’t want to continually do the same task in joy rather than complaining. I don’t want to respond with gentleness when I’m filled with frustration. I don’t want to take the time to discipline in love and seize the teachable moment when I’m annoyed that MY day has been interrupted. In being reminded to die to myself, I come to the end of ME and fall before the throne of Christ. And that is why I want to be this last sunflower. Oh, precious old homely, daily cross, what deep, tender, far-reaching effects thou hast wrought through all these prayer-paved years- G.D Watson And moms, I would just like to point out that dying to self and carrying our cross, does not mean you neglect yourself in the care of your family. In fact, the health of the seeds depends on the health of the plant. Sink your roots deep into Jesus. Cultivate flourishing soil by striving for health in relationships and health in yourself! Fertilize your mind. Grow in your interests and soak in beautiful things. As it says in John 15, 2 Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.3 Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. 4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. 5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. Abide, mom. Take care of your plant, carry your cross, and trust God with the harvest! Galatians 6:9- Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up

Home School of Advanced Military Studies Monographs Building state capacity to achieve government victory during civil war. Title Building state capacity to achieve government victory during civil war. Author Ingels, Christopher A. Abstract Focusing efforts toward building security force capability without increasing state capacity is an ineffective strategy to achieve government victory in civil war. The purpose of this monograph is to advance and test the hypothesis that simultaneously building state capacity while expanding military capability is a more effective strategy for achieving government victory when conducting civil war. Developing state capacity to sustain Security Sector Reform (SSR) is also important to the current United States' strategy for increasing the likelihood of an Afghan governmental victory over Taliban rebels in Operation Enduring Freedom. Current United States' Army doctrine -- Field Manual (FM) 3-07, Stability Operations, and FM 3-24, Counterinsurgency Operations--attempts to address both state capacity and security force development by providing useful methods for combating insurgency while also addressing all aspects of state capacity building. However, flaws in this doctrine steer leaders toward focusing resources on troubled regions of conflict, thereby ignoring peaceful areas under government control. Since conflicted regions lack continuous peace, efforts to implement a stability strategy amount to little more than humanitarian relief, and fail to add capacity that strengthen a state's ability to achieve victory, and maintain peace once the war's outcome is determined. This monograph finds that a simultaneous effort to combat rebels, and provide humanitarian relief in conflict zones, while building state capacity in peaceful regions, is a more effective strategy for achieving government victory in civil war. Additionally, only when a state strengthens its institutions leading to a prosperous economy, is it able to move beyond self-sufficiency and stand a greater chance of achieving victory in civil war. To determine how simultaneously building state capacity and security force capability increases the likelihood of government victory in civil war, this monograph uses a qualitative case study analysis method of difference approach to compare subject characteristics that result in two different outcomes--government victory and government defeat. The two selected case studies--Colombia and South Vietnam--represent similar hybrid and compound war characteristics similar to the current conflict occurring in Afghanistan. The Colombia and South Vietnam case studies demonstrate how dynamic interaction between variables of state capacity, a nation's situational environment, and political leadership decisions, work to create strong state capability leading to government victory in civil war (Colombia), or adversely affected capacity's components resulting in weak capability and vulnerability (South Vietnam). Similar to Colombia's experience, Afghanistan's government has the possibility of attaining victory over Taliban rebels if foreign development aid shifts toward improving societal conditions and industry in peaceful regions of the country under government control. Simultaneously continuing humanitarian assistance and denying key areas to insurgent forces in the South will slowly increase the Afghan governments' ability to sustain a larger security force and provide responsive civil service institutions.

Handbook On The Law Of Real Property | by Earl P. Hopkins This volume is the result of an attempt to put the fundamental rules governing the law of real property into a form as easy of comprehension as possible, and so arranged that investigation of any part may be made with ease, promptness, and certainty. It will be found that many of the seeming technicalities of the subject disappear with the statement of the reasons on which they are based. These reasons are in many cases historical, and therefore as much of the history of the law of real property has been given as is necessary for an understanding of these reasons... By Earl P. Hopkins, A. B., Ll. M Author of Problems and Quiz on Criminal Law, Contracts, Criminal Procedure, Constitutional Law, eta St. Paul, Minn. To Emlin Mcclain, A. M., LL. D., Chancellor Law Department State University of Iowa, this volume is affectionately inscribed. This volume is the result of an attempt to put the fundamental rules governing the law of real property into a form as easy of comprehension as possible, and so arranged that investigation of any part... Chapter I. What Is Real Property 1. Real and Personal Property. 2. Real Property - Land. 3. Things Growing on Land. 4. Fixtures. 6. What Fixtures Removable. 6. Time of Removal. 7. Equitable Conversion. 8. Personal Interests in... Real And Personal Property 1. Property means things owned, and is divided into: (a) Real property, and (b) Personal property. Real and Personal Actions. For our present purposes, property Is divided into two classes,- real ... Real Property-----land There is also a difference as to taxation of the two kinds of property.13 Lands, Tenements, and Hereditaments. At an early period in legal history the two classes of property were distinguished as ... The word land is often used as practically synonymous with realty, and as such it includes not only the soil, but everything attached to it or growing or imbedded in it,18 extending upward 13 Coo... Running waters are not owned by those who own the land over which they flow. These riparian owners, as they are called, have only an easement in such waters. These rights in water are treated as real ... Water. Part 2 30 Black, Const. Law, 124; Weise v. Smith, 3 Or. 445; Wilson v. Forbes, 2 Dev. (N. C.) 30; The Daniel Bell, 10 Wall. 557. Cf. Veazie v. Dwinel, 50 Me. 479; City of Chicago v. Mcginn, 51 111. 266; Peop... Bam. & Adol. 105. Contra, Reiff v. Reiff, 64 Pa. St. 134; Evans v. Iglehart, 6 Gill & J. 171. But not growing grasses. Reiff v. Reiff, 64 Pa. St. 134. Nor young trees. Co. Litt. 55a. But turpentine s... Express Contract The parties between whom the question Is likely to arise may settle all doubts in advance by express contract.64 This is, of course, an instance of expressed intention. ... Statutory Regulation In some states the question of fixtures has been made a matter of legislative enactment, and certain classes of annexations are by statute declared to be real fixtures, and others to be chattel fixtur... Character Of Annexation The manner in which a fixture is attached or annexed to the realty is indicative of the intention with which it was placed there. It shows whether it was intended to be permanent or to be subsequently... Character Of Annexation. Part 2 81 See Williamson v. Railway Co., 25 N. J. Eq. 13; Stevens v. Railway-co., 31 Barb. 590; Beardsley v. Bank, 31 Barb. 619; Hoyle v. Railway Co., 54 N. Y. 314; Chicago & N. W. Ry. v. Ft. Howard, 21 Wis.... Same - Domestic Fixtures. Certain annexations may be removed as domestic fixtures, which comprise such things as stoves,110 wash tubs fastened to the house,111 gas fixtures,112 chimney-pieces,113 marb... 119 D'eyncourt v. Gregory, L. R. 3 Eq. 382; Cannon v. Hare, 1 Tenn. Ch. 22; Cave v. Cave, 2 Vera. 508; Lawton v. Salmon, 1 H. Bl. 260, note; Mc-gullough v. Irvine's Ex'rs, 13 Pa. St 438; Gledden v. Be... 130 Where a landlord enters on his tenant for breach of condition, and thereby puts an end to the tenancy, the right to remove fixtures is gone. Pugh v. Arton, L. R. 8 Eq. 626; Weeton v. Woodcock, 7 M... Chapter II. Tenure And Seisin 9. Tenure. 10. Seisin. Tenure 9. Tenure signifies the holding of lands or tenements in subordination to some superior, and the terms of the holding.1 The Feudal System The feudal system, which Wil... Incidents Of Tenure There were certain incidents, connected with military and with socage tenure, which constituted their chief importance, and continued to exist at a time when the services due on account of the tenure ... Statute Of Quia Emptores Prior to 1289 a tenant of lands could grant a part of them, to be held under him by feudal services. His tenant, thus created, could do the same. This process was called subinfeudation. In the year ... Chapter III. Estates As To Quantity-Fee Simple 11. Estate Defined. 12. Classification of Estates. 13. Quantity of Estates. 4-15. Freehold-estates of Inheritance. 16. Fee Simple, 17. Creation. 18. Right of User. 19. Alienation. ... Estate Defined 11. The interest which a person has in real property is called an estate. The term estate, in its technical sense, is used only in connection with real property. There can properly be no estates ... Classification Of Estates 12. Estates will be discussed: (a) As to quantity (p. 34). (b) As to quality (p. 169). (c) As to legal or equitable character (p. 251). (d) As to time of enjoyment (p. 278). (e) As to number of o... Quantity Of Estates 13. The quantity of an estate signifies its duration. As to quantity estates are: (a) Freeholds, which are: (1) Of inheritance, comprising: I. Fee simple (p. 35). II. Fee tail (p. 42). (2) Not of ... Freehold-estates Of Inheritance 14. A freehold estate is one which may last during a life, and whose duration is uncertain, but is not dependent on the will of another.3 2 See Sedgwick, J., In Cutts v. Com., 2 Mass. 284. 3 2 Bl Co... 16. A fee simple is a freehold estate in perpetuity. It is an estate limited to a man and his heirs, and is the largest possible estate in land. The word 'fee' originally signified land holden of a ... Voluntary Alienation One of the principal incidents of a fee simple is the right of the owner to dispose of it, and in this way exert a control over his land even after death. Subject to certain disabilities of the person... Involuntary Alienation A fee simple is also subject to alienation without the owner's consent, for it may be taken for taxes, and, at the present time, to 31 Post, p. 381, including the disabilities of aliens, corporations... Chapter IV. Estates As To Quantity-Estates Tail 20. Estates Tail Defined. 21-22. Classes of Estates Tail. 23. Origin of Estates Tail 24-25. Creation of Estates Tail 26. Incidents of Estates Tail. 27. Duration of Estates Tail 28. Tenant in Tai... Estates Tail Defined 20. An estate tail is an estate of inheritance which descends only to the heirs of the body of the donee or to some special class of such heirs. An estate tail is a freehold estate of inheritance, wi... Classes Of Estates Tail 21. Estates tail are divided into: (a) Estates in general tail, the donee being the only parent named. (b) Estates in special tail, both parents being named. 22. Estates in general and special tail... Origin Of Estates Tail 23. Estates tail were created by the operation of the statute de donis conditionalibus upon fees conditional at common law. In early feudal times, when estates first became hereditary, and were given... Creation of Estates Tail 24. For the creation of a fee tail there must be added to the words necessary to limit a fee simple other words which restrict the inheritance to the heirs of the body of the first taker: 25. An esta... Limitation Of Estates Tail For the creation of an estate tail words of limitation and procreation are necessary; that is, not only is the word heirs required, as in the limitation of a fee simple, but there must also be some ... Estates Tail-in Chattel Interests There can be no fee tail in personal property or in chattel interests, and an attempt to so limit an estate tail results in passing the donor's entire interest.* ... Incidents of Estates Tail 26. The rights of the owner of a fee tail are the same as the rights of one owning a fee simple, except as to alienation. As already seen, a tenant in tail can convey only an estate during his life; ... Duration Of Estates Tail 27. An estate tail endures until the particular heirs named in the gift are exhausted, and then reverts to the donor, unless it is sooner barred, which may be: (a) By common recovery (obsolete).. (b... Tenant In Tail After Possibility Of Issue Extinct 28. When there is a tenant in special tail, and it has become impossible for him to have issue who can inherit under the entail, he is called tenant in tail after possibility of issue extinct. If o... Estates Tail In The United States 29. In many states estates tail have been abolished by statutes, which have turned them into either (a) Estates in fee simple, or (b) Life estates, with remainders to the donee's heirs who would tak... Quasi Entail Estates tail, as created by the statute de donis, were generally recognized in the original states of this country.55 But great changes have been made by statute. In some of our states estates tail ha... Chapter V. Estates As To Quantity-Conventional Life Estates 32. Life Estates Defined. 33. Creation of Life Estate. 84-36. Conventional Life Estates. 37. Incidents of Life Estates. 38-39. Estates per Autre Vie. Life Estates Defined 32. Life estates are free... Creation Of Life Estates 33. As to mode of creation, life estates are: (a) Conventional, created by act of the parties (p. 56), (b) Legal, created by operation of law (p. 69). 1 2 Bl Comm. 120. 2 Hurd v. Cushing, 7 Pick. ... Words Of Limitation According to common-law rules, if an estate is granted to a man without adding any words of limitation, he takes a life estate. Therefore, no special words need be used to create a life estate,10 exce... Estates per Autre Vie An estate for the life of another15 usually arises by one who is tenant for life assigning his interest to another, who thereby becomes entitled to the land during the life of the grantor. It may, how... A tenant for life has power to dispose of his interest in whole or in part, unless there is a condition in restraint, in the terms of his grant;17 but he can give another no rights in the land which w... Interest On Incumbrances It is the duty of the tenant to keep down the interest on incumbrances, but he is not bound to pay off the principal;22 and, if he does, he is entitled to contribution from the reversioner or remainde... Apportionment Of Rent If the tenant for life makes a lease reserving rent and dies before the day the rent is due, the rent is apportioned, and his personal representative can recover the amount due when the lessor died.24... Incidents Of Life Estates Improvements and Repairs. The tenant for life can recover nothing for improvements which he makes on the estate; 25 but he may put buildings into tenant-able condition at the expense of the estate, o... Estovers A tenant for life has a right to cut timber growing on the land to use for certain purposes. This is called the right to estovers or botes, and comprises: (1) House bote, or the right to cut wood for ... Emblements The personal representative of a tenant for life is entitled to emblements,31 since the tenant's estate is one of uncertain duration.32 But the tenant himself cannot claim them if he forfeits his esta... Emblements. Continued 48 Clemence v. Steere, 1 R. I. 272. 49 Keepers, etc., of Harrow School v. Alderton, 2 Bos. & P. 86. 50 Pynchon v. Stearns, 11 Metc. (Mass.) 304; Clemence v. Steere, 1 R. I 272; Alexander v. Fisher, ... Merger is the absorption of a less estate into a greater where two estates meet in the same person. Thus, where an estate in fee simple and an estate of less duration, such as a life estate or an esta... Chapter VI. Estates As To Quantity-Legal Life Estates 40-41. Legal Life Estates-estates by Marriage. 42. Estate during Coverture. 43-44. Curtesy. 45. In What Estates. 46. Incidents. 47. How Defeated. 48. Statutory Changes. 49. Dower-definition. 5... Legal Life Estates-estates By Marriage 40. In American law all legal life estates are estates by marriage, except: Exception-with the possible exception of estates tail after possibility of issue extinct. 41. The legal life estates are : ... Estate During Coverture 42. The estate during coverture is the right which the husband acquires at common law to the chattels real of his wife which he reduces to possession, and to the use and profits of her realty. Qualifi... Equitable Doctrine-separate Estate As to chattels real and personal property of the wife in general, courts of equity adopted a rule that, when a husband sought their aid in reducing such property to his possession, they might compel h... Statutory Changes The importance of the equitable doctrine is, however, much lessened in this country by Married Women's Acts in all the states, which have made great changes in the law on this subject. In many state... Curtesy 43. By common law a husband is entitled to curtesy, which is an estate for the life of the husband in all the wife's realty, provided the following conditions concur: (a) Valid marriage. (b) Issue b... The first requisite of curtesy is lawful marriage. If the marriage was absolutely void, no curtesy will attach; but if it is only voidable, and is not annulled during the wife's life, then the husband... Death Of Wife-curtesy Consummate If the wife dies before the husband, his right to curtesy is at once consummate, and his estate vests immediately, without any assignment or other formality.44 Curtesy, having vested in the husband, c... Estates Of Inheritance A husband, as has been seen, has curtesy only in estates of which the wife is seised during the coverture. The estate of the wife v. Galloway, 1 Mclean, 476, Fed. Cas. No. 1,037; Den v. Wanett, 10 Ire... Curtesy-incidents, Estates In Expectancy The estate must have been one in possession during the wife's life. So there can be no curtesy in a reversion or a remainder,53 unless the prior particular estate determined before her death, and the ... Dower-definition 49. Dower is the provision which the law makes for a widow out of the lands or tenements of the husband for her support. In most states it is a life estate in one-third of the husband's realty. The re... Lands Capable Of Enjoyment The dower right attaches only to real property,107 and not to all kinds of realty even; for instance, in many states dower is not given in wild lands, because to clear them for cultivation would be wa... Determinable Estates Dower attaches to determinable estates,113 but is defeated by the happening of the event which terminates the estate.114 If this occurs before the husband's death, dower never becomes consummate; if a... Equitable Estates At common law, equitable estates are not subject to dower;115 but the rule has been changed in many states by statute.116 Dower attaches to estates executed by the statute of uses.117 In either case, ... Joint Estates In a joint tenancy,139 the possibility of survivorship in the co-tenants prevents dower from attaching.140 This, of course, does not apply when the husband has survived his co-tenants, or there has be... Joint Estates. Continued 151 Harrison v. Boyd, 36 Ala. 203. She cannot claim quarantine in the whole of a house held in common. Collins v. Warren, 29 Mo. 236. Except in states where such interests are made subject to dower, q... Dower-by Whom Assigned Mon.185 Sometimes, as in case of a mine, mill, or ferry, the only practical method of assigning dower is to give alternate enjoyment 186 or to divide the profits.187 When a division is impossible, or ... Dower-by Whom Assigned. Part 2 206 Whyte v. Mayor, etc., of Nashville, 2 Swan (Tenn.) 364. 207 Summers v. Babb, 13 111. 483. Cf. Matlock v. Lee, 9 Ind. 298; Stockwell v. Sargent, 37 Vt. 16. 208 See Talbot v. Hill, 68 III. 106. ... 231 Toomey v. Mclean, 105 Mass. 122; Stirbling v. Ross, 16 III. 122; Mc-clure v. Fairfield, 153 Pa. St. 411. 26 Atl. 446; Vickers v. Henry, 110 N. C. 371, 15 S. E. 115; Waller v. Waller's Adm'r, 33 ... 246 Fowler v. Shearer, 7 Mass. 14; Kirk v. Dean, 2 Bin. (Pa.) 341; Chicago Dock Co. v. Kinzie, 49 111. 289; Howlett v. Dilts, 4 Ind. App. 23, 30 N. E. 313; Ortman v. Chute, 57 Minn. 452, 59 N. W. 533;... Dower-how Defeated Widow's Election-testamentary Provision in Lieu of Dower. In nearly all states, if the husband by his will make provision for his wife expressly in lieu of dower, she must elect which she will take.2... A widow may be estopped to claim dower by covenants of warranty,273 or by her conduct, as in inducing a purchaser to take the land, representing it free from dower.274 2 Iowa, 551; Cain v. Cain, 23 I... 62. The homestead right is, in most states, an exemption to a debtor of a home free from liability for certain debts. Homestead did not exist at common law, but is wholly a creation of statute, and i... Homestead. Continued 291 Succession of Norton, 18 La, Ann. 36; Allen v. Manasse, 4 Ala. 554; Meyer v. Claus, 15 Tex. 516; Black v. Singley, 91 Mich. 50, 51 N. W. 704. 292 Thomp. Homest & Exemp. 476; Bateman v. Pool, 84 ... In most of the states, the right to claim land exempt as a homestead is acquired by occupaucy of the premises as a home.315 To create a homestead by occupancy, the occupancy must be actual,316 an urba... Recorded Notice In some states occupancy alone is not sufficient to create a homestead exemption. It is required, in addition, that there be a notice recorded that the premises are claimed as a homestead, or the word... Homestead-how Lost - Abandonment Like acquisition by occupancy, loss by abandonment is in all cases a question of fact,329 and, in determining this, intention to re turn 330 and duration of absence are material points.331 Leasing the... Homestead-how Lost - Abandonment. Continued 341 Piper v. Johnston, 12 Minn. Go (Gil. 27); Getzler v. Saroni, 18 111. 511; Huey's Appeal, 29 Pa. St. 219. 342 Mcdonald v. Crandall, 43 111. 231; Chamberlain v. Lyell, 3 Mich. 458; Hewitt v. ... Federal Homestead Act 72. The federal homestead act provides for the acquisition of title to public lands by actual settlers, and exempts the land from liability for debts contracted before the patent is issued. The feder... Chapter VII. Estates As To Quantity (Contlnued)-Less Than Freehold 73-75. Estates for Years. 76. Creation of Estates for Years. 77. Rights and Liabilities of Landlord and Tenant 78-79. Rights under Express Covenants. 80-81. Rights under Implied Covenants. 82. Rig... Estates For Years 73. An estate for years is an estate created for a definite time, measured by years or fractions of a year. 74. The grantor of an estate for years is called the lessor or landlord; the grantee is... By the early common law a lessee had no interest which the law would protect against third persons, nor, indeed, against the lessor, unless the interest in the lands rested on a covenant by deed. It h... Creation Of Estates For Years Commencement A term of years may be granted to begin in the future,28 provided the time is not postponed beyond the period allowed by the rule against perpetuities.29 An estate of freehold cannot be so limited at ... Creation Of Estates For Years Commencement. Part 2 41 Piggot v. Mason, 1 Paige (N. Y.) 412, Renoud v. Daskam, 34 Conn. 512; Blackmore v. Boardman, 28 Mo. 420; Kolasky v. Michels, 120 N. Y. (535, 24 N. E. 278. A covenant for perpetual renewal is good. ... 65 Barnard v. Godscall, Cro. Jac. 309. See post, p. 149. 66 Jones v. Parker, 163 Mass. 564, 40 N. E. 1044. 80. Rights Under Implied Covenants-the principal implied covenants in a lease are: (a) By ... 82 Except by statute. 1 Stim. Am. St. Law, 2042. 83 I Wood, Landl. & Ten. (2d. Ed.) 701, 709; 2 Wood, Landl. & Ten. (2d Ed.) 954; 1 Tayl. Landl. & Ten. (8th Ed.) 398, 477, 479; Cburcb v. Brown... 93 Kansas Inv. Co. v. Carter, 160 Mass. 421, 36 N. E. 63; Phelps v. Randolph, 147 111. 335, 35 N. E. 243. And see Bentley v. City of Atlanta, 92 Ga. 623, 18 S. E. 1013. Any right of re-entry in the le... Distress for Rent. At common law the landlord has a remedy, called distress. 114 for enforcing the payment of rent, by seizing personal property Mon. (Ky.) 619; Elliott v. Smith, 23 Pa. St. 131; M... Transfer by Lessor. Unless restrained by express covenants,126 either the lessor or the lessee may transfer his interest under a lease.127 The requirements of the statute of frauds are the same for a... Lapse Of Time Estates for years in most cases determine by mere lapse of time; that is, the period for which the lease was made expires, and the term is thereby at an end, without any notice by either party.146 ... When the continuance of a term is made to depend on a condition, or there is a reservation of a right of re-entry for breach of the covenants of the lease, an entry in either instance puts an end to t... A surrender159 will terminate an estate for years,160 but only when made to the holder of the next estate. Therefore an under(n. Y.) 530; Gomber v. Hackett, 6 Wis. 323; Newman v. Rutter, 8 Watts (Pa.)... Destruction Of Premises The destruction of the premises-for instance, where a room is leased, and the whole house is burned-puts an end to the tenancy, because the subject-matter of the lease has ceased to exist.163 This is ... Tenancies At Will 86. A tenancy at will is a letting of land to be held so long as neither party chooses to terminate it. Same - creation 87. Tenancies at will are created: (a) By a letting for an indefinite ... Tenancies From Year To Year 90. A tenancy from year to year is a letting of land for an indefinite number of fixed periods. 91. A tenancy from year to year arises whenever there is a reservation of rent in a letting which would... Letting Of Lodgings 94. A letting of lodgings, where the owner of the house retains possession and control, creates only a contract relation. The hiring of furnished apartments creates a tenancy from year to year; that ... Tenancies At Sufferance 95. A tenancy at sufferance is a holding of lands after the expiration of a previous right to possession. Same - creation 96. For the creation of a tenancy at sufferance, the tenant must have come i... Licenses Same - termination 98. A tenancy at sufferance may be terminated at any time, by either party, without notice, except: Exception-in some states a notice is required by statute. A tenant at sufferance is entitled to no ... 99. A license is an authority to do specified acts on the land of the licensor. A license is not an estate, and is not assignable. Licenses are created either by express agreement, or by implication.... Chapter VIII. Estates As To Quality-On Condition-On Limitation 101. Estates as to Quality. 102. Estates on Condition. 103-104. Conditions Precedent and Subsequent. 105. Void Conditions. 106. Termination of Estates on Condition. 107. Who can Enforce a Forfeit... Estates As To Quality 101. Estates as to quality are either absolute or qualified. Qualified estates will be treated under the following heads: (a) Estates on condition (p. 169). (b) Estates on limitation (p. 177). ... Estates On Condition 102. An estate on condition is one which is created or defeated, enlarged or diminished, on the happening of a contingency. 102a. A mortgage is an estate on condition (p. 180). Heretofore estates ha... Void Conditions General conditions in restraint of marriage are void. Partial restrictions on marriage, such as not to marry a named person, or any one of a named family, are generally sustained, even without a limit... Estates On Limitation 108. An estate on limitation is one which is created to continue until the happening of a contingency upon which it comes to an end without an entry. The phrase, words of limitation, has already be... Chapter IX. Estates As To Quality-Mortgages 110. Mortgage Defined. 111. Parties to a Mortgage. 112. Nature of a Mortgage, 113. What may be Mortgaged. 114. Form of a Mortgage. 115. Rights and Liabilities of Mortgagor and Mortgagee. 116. Na... Mortgage Defined 110. A mortgage is a conveyance of land as security, and is usually in the form of an estate on condition subsequent. The discussion of mortgages in this chapter includes only mortgages of real prope... Nature Of A Mortgage 112. There are two theories as to the nature of a mortgage recognized in the different states: (a) The common-law theory regards a mortgage as an estate in land, and the mortgagee as the owner of the ... The Common-law Theory In the United States there are two theories as to the nature of a mortgage: One is that the mortgagee has an estate; the other, that he has only a lien. This difference is the result of the history of... What May Be Mortgaged 113. Any interest in realty -which is subject to sale and assignment may be mortgaged. As stated in the black-letter text, any interest in realty which is subject to sale or assignment may be mortgag... Form Of A Mortgage 114. The ordinary form of a mortgage is that of an absolute conveyance with a defeasance clause. But a mortgage may be created: (a) With a separate defeasance (p. 186). (b) With a parol defeasance (... A deed of trust in the nature of a mortgage-that is, a conveyance of realty to a trustee to secure the payment of a debt-is in many states treated as a mortgage.69 The usual form of a deed of trust is... Equitable Mortgage An equitable mortgage does not refer to the mortgage of an equitable interest, but to instruments having the effect of mortgages, which are recognized only in equity. An absolute deed with a parol 64... Rights And Liabilities Of Mortgagor And Mortgagee 115. The rights and liabilities of mortgagor and mortgagee will be considered under the following heads: (a) Nature of mortgagor's estates (p. 195). (b) Possession of mortgaged premises (p. 196). (... Nature Of Mortgagor's Estate Same - nature of Mortgagor's Estate 116. The mortgagor is owner of the mortgaged premises, as to all persons except the mortgagee. As stated in the black-letter text, the mortgagor is owner of the estate, as to all persons except the m... Nature Of Mortgagor's Estate Same - nature of Mortgagor's Estate. Continued 125 Flagg v. Flagg, 11 Pick. (Mass.) 475. And see Hartshorn v. Hubbard, 2 N. H. 453; Flanders v. Lamphear, 9 N. H. 201; Lamb v. Foss, 21 Me. 240. 126 Wakeman v. Banks, 2 Conn. 445. 127 Morse v. Whit... Debits The mortgagee is chargeable with whatever he has collected as rents and profits of the mortgaged premises,156 or what he should have received if he had managed the estate as a prudent owner.157 150 R... A mortgagee in possession must make necessary repairs,163 and he will be allowed, in his accounting, to charge for any repairs made by him which are reasonable.164 He is also allowed the expense of an... Annual Rests Whenever the rents and profits are more than the annual interest, a rest is made; that is, the net amount of rents and profits in excess of the interest is deducted from the mortgage debt, and from th... Marshaling By the doctrine of marshaling,186 where a prior mortgagee is entitled to satisfaction of his debt out of two parcels of land, a junior mortgagee, who has a lien on only one of these parcels, may be su... Assignment Of The Equity Of Redemption 125. A mortgagor may assign his equity of redemption, but the assignment is subject to the folio-wring conditions, among others: (a) The equity of redemption cannot be assigned to the mortgagee at th... Assignment Of The Mortgage 127. A mortgagee may assign his interest, or part of it, on the following conditions: (a) It must be by deed. (b) The mortgage debt must accompany the mortgage. (c) The assignee takes the mortgage ... Priority Of Mortgages And Other Conveyances 130. No subsequent purchaser or incumbrancer can take priority over a conveyance of which he has notice. Such notice may be: (a) Actual (p. 213). (b) Implied (p. 215). (c) Constructive, which inclu... Implied Notice By the doctrine of implied notice, one who has no notice himself is presumed to have notice because of his legal relations with one who has notice. This arises most often from the relation of principa... What Instruments Recorded The registry acts generally require the recording of all instruments affecting real estate, except short leases, in a number of states.292 The laws in most of the states provide, also, for the recordi... Manner Of Recording To entitle a mortgage or other conveyance to be admitted to record, the requirements of the statutes as to execution 302 and delivery must be complied with.303 But a conveyance may be recorded after t... Manner Of Recording. Part 2 316 Barney v. Mccarty, 15 Iowa, 510; Lombard v. Culbertson, 59 Wis. 433, 18 N. W. 399. But see Lane v. Duchac, 73 Wis. 646, 41 N. W. 9G2. 317 Mutual Life Ins. Co. v. Dake, 87 N. Y. 257; Curtis v. ... 337 Holbrook v. Dickenson, 56 111. 497. As to who are bona fide purchasers, see Fetter, Eq. 95. 338 Martin v. Jackson, 27 Pa. St 504; Hulett v. Insurance Co., 114 Pa. St. 142, 6 Atl. 554; Porter v. ... Discharge Of A Mortgage 132. A mortgage may be discharged: (a) By performance (p. 227). (b) By merger (p. 231). (c) By redemption (p. 233). Same - performance 133. Performance of the condition in the defeasance discharg... Performance Or Payment A mortgage being an estate on condition subsequent, the mortgagee's estate is defeated by the performance of the condition named in the defeasance. Performance usually requires the payment of money, b... Whenever payment would discharge a mortgage, tender of payment 385 will have the same effect386 To have this effect, however, tender must be absolute and unconditional,387 and it must be for the whole... Tender. Continued 401 Lynch v. Pfeiffer, 110 N. Y. 33, 17 N. E. 402; Loomer v. Wheelwright, 3 Sandf. Ch. (N. Y.) 135; Aetna Life Ins. Co. v. Corn, 89 111. 170; Jarvis v. Frink, 14 111. 396; Loverin v. Trust Co., 113 ... Amount Payable The sum which must be paid in order to redeem from a mortgage is the amount of the mortgage debt and interest still due.434 But money paid by the mortgagee in discharging a prior incumbrance, together... When Redemption Is Barred The right of redemption is barred by foreclosure, and by lapse of time.447 Foreclosure, however, does not have this effect if the mortgagee subsequently recognizes the mortgage as still existing.448 N... 138. Foreclosure is the proceeding by which the mortgaged premises are applied to the payment of the mortgage debt, and the right of redemption barred. 139. Foreclosure will be treated under the foli... Foreclosure. Continued 482 Rothschild v. Railway Co., 84 Hun, 103, 32 N. Y. Supp. 37; Jackson v. Hull, 10 Johns. (N. Y.) 481; Hughes v. Edwards, 9 Wheat. 489; Torrey v. Cook, 116 Mass. 163. But see Felton v. West, 102 Cal. ... Foreclosure In Equity-parties Plaintiff As before stated, the most usual method of foreclosure is by a proceeding in equity. In such an action the rights of all parties in the mortgaged premises are to be determined. Therefore all persons i... Power Of Sale It is usually provided in a mortgage or deed of trust that the mortgagee or trustee, respectively, shall, on default of payment, have power to sell the mortgaged premises without going into court.549 ... Chapter X. Equitable Estates 141. Legal and Equitable Estates. 142. Use or Trust Defined. 143-144. The Statute of Uses. 145. When the Statute does not Operate;. 146. Classification of Trusts. 147. Express Trusts. 148-149. Ex... Legal And Equitable Estates 141. The various kinds of estates as to quantity and quality may be either (a) Legal, or (b) Equitable. We now come to a new principle upon which to classify estates, namely, their legal or equitab... Use Or Trust Defined 142. A use or trust is an equitable right to the beneficial enjoyment of an estate, the legal title to which is held by another person. At common law there were many restraints on the alienation of r... The Statute Of Uses 143. The statute of uses enacted that whenever any person should be seised of any lands to the use, confidence, or trust of another, the latter should be deemed in lawful seisin of a legal estate of a... Classification of Trusts 146. Trusts, according to the method of their creation, are divided into (a) Express trusts (p. 258). (b) Implied trusts (p. 264). A great deal of confusion exists in the books and cases on the sub... Express Trusts 147. Express trusts are those which are created by act of the parties. They are either (a) Executed, or (b) Executory. Same - executed And Executory Trusts 148. An executed trust is one in -which ... Limitation Of Trustee's Estate In limiting the legal estate to a trustee, the strict requirements as to the use of technical words in conveying legal estates are relaxed, and the trustee is held to take an estate sufficient to carr... Precatory Words In the creation of an express trust, It is not necessary to use the words use. confidence, or trust, or in fact any technical expression.47 It is sufficient if from the whole instrument an intention... The person creating a use or trust is called the feoffor. Any one owning land who has capacity to make a contract or a will can create a trust.59 For instance, a state 60 or a corporation, if the la... Implied Trusts 152. Implied trusts are those created by operation of law in order to do justice between the parties. They are either (a) Resulting trusts (p. 265), or (b) Constructive trusts (p. 269). Some of the... Implied Trusts. Continued Consideration Paid by Another. The third class of resulting trusts is where the purchase price is paid by one person, and the conveyance taken in the name of another. In these cases equity presumes t... Incidents Of Equitable Estates 155. A trustee is the holder of the legal title. The cestui que trust is the beneficial owner. 156. The rights and duties of trustee and cestui que trust depend, in each case, upon the nature and ter... Interest of the Trustee Trust estates are generally given to two or more trustees jointly. When the instrument creating the trust is obscure, such a construction would be favored.120 Joint trustees, however, cannot have part... Interest of the Cestui Que Trust When equitable estates were introduced; the feudal incidents attaching to legal titles were discarded, and with them the restraints on alienation which existed at common law.134 Under a passive trust ... 157. Charitable trusts are those created for the benefit of the public at large, or of some portion of it, and include benevolent, religious, and educational objects. 158. Charitable trusts differ fr... Beneficiary Indefinite Charitable trusts differ from private trusts, in the first place, in the fact that they are favored by the courts in the construction of instruments creating them, and less certainty of description in... Doctrine Of Cy-pres There is some confusion as to the real meaning of the doctrine of cy-pres. In many cases nothing more is meant than that courts are favorable to the establishment of charitable trusts, and will constr... Chapter XI. Estates As To Time Of Enjoyment-Future Estates 159. Estates as to Time of Enjoyment. 160. Future Estates. 161. Future Estates at Common Law. 162'. Reversions. 163. Possibilities of Reverter. 164-165. Remainders. 166. Successive Remainders. 1... Estates As To Time Of Enjoyment 159. Estates classified with reference to the time at which the owner is entitled to enjoyment in possession are either (a) Present, or (b) Future. ... Future Estates 160. A future estate is one which does not entitle its owner to the possession of the land until some time in the future. Future estates, according to the source to which they are to be referred, are:... Future Estates At Common Law 161. The future estates or interests possible under the common law are: (a) Reversions (p. 280). (b) Possibilities of reverter (p. 281). (c) Remainders (p. 282). Same - reversions 162. A reversio... The Particular Estate As already seen, there can be no remainder without a preceding particular estate; that is, a remainder cannot be limited after an estate reserved to the grantor. The particular estate must be a freeho... Freehold In Futuro At common law there was a rule that no limitation of an estate was valid which would put the freehold in abeyance; or, as it was otherwise expressed, a freehold could not be created to commence in fut... There may be a vested remainder subject to be defeated by a contingency; that is, a vested remainder may be limited as an estate on condition or on limitation.58 Vested remainders are de stroyed by me... Contingency on Which Remainder may Depend From the definition of a remainder, the contingency on which a remainder is to vest must in no case be in derogation of the preceding estate.74 And so a contingent remainder will be void if it is made... Contingency on Which Remainder may Depend. Continued On account of the liability of contingent remainders to destruction by the determination of the preceding estate, a device was introduced to prevent this result, as follows: After the limitation of a ... Future Estates Under The Statute Of Uses 175. Future estates created under the statute of uses are,(a) Future uses (p. 298). (b) Springing uses (p. 299). (c) Shifting uses (p. 300). As has already been seen, after the Introduction of uses... Future Estates Under The Statute Of Wills-executory Devises 179. Executory devises are future estates created by devise under the statute of wills, which cannot take effect as remainders. 180. Executory devises may be either springing or shifting. The statut... Incidents Of Future Estates 181. The rights of the owners of future estates are correlatives of the duties of the tenants of the preceding estates. 132 See Wilson v. White, 109 N. Y. 59, 15 N. E. 749; Taylor v. Taylor, 63 Pa. ... 186. A power is an authority to create some estate in lands, or a charge thereon, or to revoke an existing estate in the same way that the owner, granting the power, might himself do. 161 2 Bl. Comm.... Powers. Continued Same - creation 190. Powers may be created (a) By deed under the statute of uses. (b) By devise under the statute of wills. 191. Technical words of limitation are not required. 175 Phillips v. Br... Execution Of Powers But such powers survive, and, after the death of one of the donees, may be executed by the survivor,203 unless the power is given to the several donees by name, showing that personal trust and confide... Form Of Execution At common law no particular form of execution of a power was required. It might be by a simple writing.211 This, however, is now changed by statute in several states, and the execution must be by deed... Time Of Execution When, from the object for which a power is created, or from express direction in the instrument creating the power, it must be exercised within a certain time, any execution after that time will be vo... Defective Execution When a general power is defectively executed, equity will not aid the appointee, unless a valuable consideration has been paid,227 but, where there are defects in the execution of a special power, the... Compelling Execution The execution of a power can be compelled only where the power is mandatory, or is a power in trust;231 that is, a power held in trust, without any discretion as to its exercise, and in which the done... Excessive Execution The execution of a power may be excessive as to the object, as when, under a special power, estates are given to some who cannot 227 Schenck v. Ellingwood, 3 Edw. Ch. (N. Y.) 175; Bradish v. Gibbs, 3... Destruction Of Powers Same - destruction 201. Powers may be destroyed (a) By execution. (b) By death of one whose consent to the execution la required. (c) By alienation of the estate to which the power is appendant. (d) By release, ... Rule Against Perpetuities 202. No interest subject to a condition precedent is good, unless the condition must be fulfilled, if at all, within 21 years after some life in being at the creation of the interest.259 It has ... Rule Against Perpetuities. Part 2 268 Beard v. Westcott, 5 Taunt. 393; Cadell v. Palmer, 1 Clark & F. 372. But see Mayor, etc., of New York v. Stuyvesant's Heirs, 17 N. Y. 34. 269 Gray, Perp. 225; Low v. Burron, 3 P. Wms. 262.... It is often stated that a contingent remainder cannot be limited to an unborn child of an unborn person. But this is believed to be inaccurate. It was founded on the exploded notion that there could n... Rule Against Accumulations 205. At common law the rents and profits of land could be directed to be accumulated for the period allowed by the rule against perpetuities for the vesting of estates, but in a number of states ... Chapter XII. Estates As To Number Of Owners-Joint Estates 206. Estates as to Number of Owners. 207. Joint Estates. 208. Joint Tenancies. 209. Tenancies in Common. 210. Estates in Co-parcenary. 211-212. Estates in Entirety. 213. Estates in Partnership. ... Estates As To Number Of Owners 206. Estates are divided according to the number of owners who are entitled to possession at the same time into,(a) Estates in severalty, and (b) Joint estates. Joint Estates 207. Joint estates ... Joint Tenancies Same - joint Tenancies 208. A joint tenancy is an ownership of land in community in equal undivided shares by virtue of a conveyance -which imports an intention that the tenants shall hold one and the same estate. The ... Joint Mortgagees Many of the rules governing joint estates apply to those who hold land in the capacity of joint mortgagees. Under the common-law theory of mortgages, joint mortgagees are, after a strict foreclosure, ... Incidents Of Joint Estates 214. The rights of tenants of joint estates will be treated under the following heads: (a) Possession and disseisin (p. 340). (b) Accounting between co-tenants (p. 341). (c) Repairs and waste (p. ... Transfer Of Joint Estates All tenants of joint estates except those holding in entirety 72 may convey all or part of their interests to a stranger without the consent of their co-tenants.73 But they cannot, by such conveyance,... Actions Affecting Joint Estates For injuries to the possession of a joint estate or to rights growing out of possession, the co-tenants should sue jointly.79 Joint tenants at common law must join in an action affecting the title,80 ... 215. Partition is the dividing of land held by the owners of joint estates into distinct portions, so that each may hold his share in severalty. 216. There may be a partition of all kinds of joint ... Chapter XIII. Incorporeal Hereditaments 217. Definition and Kinds. 218. Easements. 219. Creation. 220. By Grant. 221. By Prescription. 222. Classification. 223. Incidents. 224. Destruction. 225. Specific Easements. 220. Rights of ... Definition And Kinds 217. An incorporeal hereditament is anything, the subject of property, which is inheritable, and not tangible or visible. 217a. Incorporeal hereditaments in the United States are (a) Easements (p. ... 218. An easement is a right in the owner of one parcel of land, by reason of such ownership, to use the land of another foi a special purpose not inconsistent with the general property in the latter.... Easements. Part 2 221. Ey Prescription-easements may be acquired by prescription by adverse user continued for the time required by the statute of limitations. At common law many easements were acquired by ... 34 Pearsall v. Post, 20 Wend. (N. Y.) Ill; Ackerman v. Shelp, 8 N. J. Law, 125. 35 Verona Borough v. Allegheny Val. R. R., 152 Pa. St. 368, 25 Atl. 518; Kelenk v. Town of Walnut Lake, 51 Minn. 381, 5... Rights Of Way Specific Easements 225. The folio-wing specific easements will be considered: (a) Rights of way (p. 359). (b) Highways (p. 361). (c) Light and air (p. 363). (d) Lateral and subjacent support (p. 365). (e) Party ... Incoupoueal Hereditaments (Ch. 13 or the municipality.85 It has already been said that highways are not easements proper, because they are held in gross, and not appendant to any dominant estate.86 When a highway is only an in... Incoupoueal Hereditaments. Continued 100 The inconvenience caused must be appreciable. Back v. Stacey, 2 Car. & P. 465; Wells v. Ody, 7 Car. & P. 410; Arcedeckne v. Kelk, 2 Giff. 683. 101 Gerber v. Grabel, 16 111. 217 (but contra, Guest... Partition Fences Partition fences are in many respects like party walls. They are usually erected one-half on the land of each, and the obligation to repair is the same as in the case of party walls.131 The duty to ma... Easements In Water - Subterranean Waters Underground waters, when not flowing in a defined course,148 but existing merely as percolations, may be diverted,149 although by so doing the wells of adjoining landowners may be injured.150 Upon the... Surface Waters Surface waters are such as do not flow in a regular channel.154 The cases are conflicting as to the duty of a lower owner to receive such waters onto his land,155 but it certainly does not exist in th... Eaves' Drip The right to have water fall from the roof of one's building onto the land of another is an easement, and is called the right of eaves' drip. 160 This right may be acquired by prescription.161 ... Artificial Water Courses As already stated, rights in water which has been brought upon land by artificial means differ in many respects from the rights which we have been discussing.162 For instance, an artificial water cour... Profits A Prendre 233. A profit a prendre is a right exercised by one man in the land of another, accompanied by a participation in the profits of that land. Profits a prendre have already been distinguished from ... 234. Rent is a profit issuing out of land, which is to be rendered or paid periodically by the tenant. Rents are of the following kinds: (a) Rent service. (b) Rent charge. (c) Rent seek. 235. ... At common law, franchises are heritable; but now they are usually held by corporations, and corporations can have no heirs. So, too, franchises are now usually granted for a term of years, and not in ... Chapter XIV. Legal Capacity To Hold And Convey Realty 237. Personal Capacity. 238. Infants. 239-240. Persons of Unsound Mind. 241-242. Married Women. 243-244. Aliens. 245. Corporations. ... 237. Personal capacity to convey real estate Is, in general, the same as capacity to contract. The power to take and hold real estate is greater in some instances than the power to convey it. ... 238. An infant's conveyances of his real property are voidable, not void. They may be ratified or disaffirmed by him after he reaches majority. At common law all persons were infants who had not ... Persons Of Unsound Mind 239. Conveyances by insane persons who are tinder guardianship are void, but, if not under guardianship, their conveyances are voidable only. 240. The same rules govern conveyances by intoxicated ... The disability of persons who are incapacitated to deal with their real property by reason of intoxication is much the same as that of insane persons. In fact, the rules to be applied are those which ... Married Women 241. At common law a married woman could not take land without her husband's consent, and her conveyances, except of her separate property, were absolutely void. 242. These disabilities have been ... By the common law a married woman has no power to dispose of her lands by will,45 but in equity such a power is recognized as to all property coming under the jurisdiction of the court.46 In many stat... 243. At common law, aliens could take real property, but their title could be divested by proceedings instituted by the officers of the government, called office found. 244. This disability has ... 245. The power of corporations to take and convey real property is regulated by their charters. The buying and selling of real property by corporations is a matter of corporate power, which in each ... Chapter XV. Restraints On Alienation 246. Kinds of Restraints. 247. Restraints Imposed by Law. 248. Restraints in Favor of Creditors. 249. Restraints Imposed in Creation of Estate. ... Kinds Of Restraints 246. Restraints on the power to alienate real property are of the following kinds: (a) Restraints imposed by law (p. 390). (b) Restraints imposed in favor of creditors (p. 392). (c) Restraints ... Restraints Imposed By Law These were changed into estates in fee tail by the statute de donis. The tenants were thereby prevented from aliening their estates, as against their heirs or the lord, until Taltarum's Case, which, a... Restraints Imposed By Law. Continued 18 Gridley v. Bingham, 51 111. 153; Waterbury v. Sturtevant, 18 Wend. (N. Y.) 353. 19 Van Wyck v. Seward, 18 Wend. (N. Y.) 375; Potter v. Mcdowell. 31 Mo. 62; Hunters v. Waite, 3 Grat. (Va.) 26. 20 ... Chapter XVI. Title 250. Title Defined. 251. Acquisition of Title by State. 252. Acquisition by Private Persona. 253. Grant from the State. 254. ... Acquisition Of Title By State Title Defined 250. Title is the means by -which the ownership of real property is acquired and held. This is either (a) By descent, or (b) By purchase. The fact which in any case gives or creates ownership over ... Acquisition Of Title By State 251. Title is acquired by the state (a) By discovery, conquest, and treaty. (b) By confiscation and escheat. (c) By exercise of the right of eminent domain. (d) By ordinary transfer from ... The acquisition of land by the state under the power of eminent domain is subject to the same rules as acquisition in this way by private persons and corporations, and will be treated of in that conne... Acquisition By Private Persons 252. Title is acquired by private persons (a) By grant from the state (p. 401). (b) By conveyance from individuals (p. 405). (c) By estoppel (p. 450). (d) By adverse possession (p. 456). (e) By ... Grant From The State 253. Land owned by the United States and the states is conveyed to individuals by instruments of conveyance called patents. Titles held by private persons are, of course, originally derived from the ... Public Land System The lands owned by the United States are surveyed and sold according to the following plan, and states which own public lands follow the plan of the federal government very closely:13 The lands are di... 254. The instruments by which title is conveyed are of four kinds: (a) Common-law conveyances (p. 405). (b) Conveyances operating under the statute of uses (p. 409) (c) Modern statutory ... Feoffment Feoffments, though little used in modern times, were at common law, in early times, almost the only form of conveyance used for 37 2 Bl. Comm. 310, 324. The transfer of estates in possession. Feoffm... Gift was the term applied to a conveyance creating an estate ;in fee tail. The only difference between a gift and a feoffment was that the former, while accompanied by the same ceremony :as a feof... Grant was the name of the conveyances which were proper for the transfer of incorporeal interests in land,43 which were said to lie in grant, and not in livery, the latter being the term used to... A lease is the instrument used to create estates less than freehold, and usually contains a reservation of rent. At common law, however, the term was applied to conveyances of particular estates as fo... An exchange is a mutual grant of equal interests, the transfer of one estate being the consideration for the transfer of the other. Exchange applies to transfers of estates in expectancy as well as ... Exchange. Continued Bargain and Sale. The conveyance called a bargain and sale was the same as a covenant to stand seised, except that a valuable consideration was required for its validity.70 Many of the cases hold tha... Certificates Of Title When a tract of land is registered, a certificate of title is made out and kept in the office of the registrar, and a duplicate given the owner. Each estate in the land is represented by a separate ce... Transfers Of Registered Land After land has been registered, any of the ordinary forms of conveyance purporting to transfer the title operate only as contracts to convey, and as authority to the registrar to transfer the title.90... Indemnity Fund When land is first registered, one-tenth of one per cent, of its value must be paid to the registrar, to provide an indemnity fund, out of which the county is to reimburse any person sustaining damag... Names Of Parties The name of the grantor should be stated In the deed, thongh some cases hold that the mere signing of the grantor's name is sufficient.101 If the grantor's name is mentioned in the deed, his signing t... Granting Clause In order that any deed may be operative, it must contain words of conveyance sufficient to transfer an estate from the grantor to the grantee.110 The technical words which are used in connection with ... An exception is something reserved from the operation of the deed; that is, it is something which would otherwise pass by the description of the lands to be conveyed.113 For a valid exception, 105 Th... A reservation is a right created out of the land granted, such as the reservation of a rent. The word reservation, however, need not be used if the intention is otherwise clear.116 An exception, so ... Habendum The habendum of a deed is merely formal, and is that part of the conveyance which commences with the words to have and to hold. 114 Thompson v. Gregory, 4 Johns. (N. Y.) 81; Thayer v. Torrey, 37 N.... Monuments are permanent landmarks, established for the purpose of indicating boundaries.147 They may be either natural or artificial.148 Examples of natural monuments are trees, rocks, rivers, etc. Ar... When the quantity of land to be conveyed is given in the deed, it will not control either monuments or courses or distances,167 though it may aid a description otherwise defective, and quantity may be... Appurtenances The old form of a deed adds, after the description of the lands or tenements conveyed, words like the following: With all the privileges and appurtenances thereto belonging or in any way appertaining... What Writing Necessary Deeds are to be written on paper or parchment,176 and should be written with ink, though possibly a deed written with a pencil would be valid.177 The chief desideratum is durability. Part of the deed ... No consideration is necessary for modern statutory conveyances.179 Bargain and sale deeds, however, require, as we have seen,180 a consideration to make them valid, though the requirement has been gre... A date is not strictly necessary for the validity of a deed,187 and, when used, may be placed in any part of the instrument. A deed takes effect from the time of delivery, and prima facie the date giv... A deed must be completely written when it is delivered, and for this reason any alterations or interlineations in the instrument must be made before delivery,195 though they may be added after the dee... A party to a deed, who can read, is conclusively presumed to know the contents of the instrument, though he did not actually read it before it was executed.202 If the grantor is blind, illiterate, or ... At common law a seal was necessary in the execution of a valid deed,204 but in many states this requirement has been abolished.205 A. seal is defined to be an impression on wax or wafer or some other... At common law it was not necessary that a deed be signed, though this is now required by the statute of frauds.214 Where the statute requires the deed to be subscribed, the signature must be written a... Requisites Of Deeds Same - Power of Attorney. A power of attorney to execute a deed is an authority given a person to act in behalf of the grantor in making a conveyance of land. Such a person is an attorney in fact. Fo... Delivery In Escrow A deed may be delivered in escrow; that is, into the keeping of a third person to be delivered to the grantee on the performance of some condition.265 When there is a delivery in escrow, and the condi... 280 Bass v. Estill, 50 Miss. 300; Manaudas v. Mann, 14 Or. 450, 13 Pac. 449. 281 l Devi. Deeds, 468. For method of proving deed where grantor is dead or refuses to acknowledge It see 1 Stim. ... When Broken As to when the covenant of seisin is broken the cases are conflicting, most courts holding that it must be broken at the time the 322 Mecuni v. Railroad Co., 21 111. 533; Clopton v. Bolton, 23 Miss. ... When Broken. Continued 343 Clark v. Swift, 3 Mete. (Mass.) 390; Cathcart v. Bowman, 5 Pa. St. 317; Boyd v. Belmont, 58 How. Prac. (N. Y.) 513; Mitchell v. Warner, 5 Conn. 497. But see M'crady's Ex'rs v. Brisbane, 1 Nott. & ... Special Warranty The covenant of warranty so far considered is one of general warranty, but the covenant may be limited in its operation to the claims of particular persons. A covenant of special warranty is many time... Special Warranty. Part 2 280) subsequently acquired by the grantor to the one entitled to the estoppel,389 and not merely to bind the title in the hands of the owner so that he cannot set it up. Some cases hold that ... Estoppel by Deed. No one can be estopped by deed who has not power to make a valid deed.402 When title arises through estoppel by deed, the grantor is estopped to deny that he had the interest which ... 281. One who disseises the owner of land, and holds it adversely for the period prescribed by the statute of limitations, acquires title to the estate of the disseisee. Acquisition of title by ... Constructive Possession-color Of Title The possession which we have been discussing in the last section applies only to the tracts of land which are actually held by the disy. 26, 33 N. E. 822; Murphy v. Doyle, 37 Minn. 113, 33 N. W. 220; ... Constructive Possession-color Of Title. Part 2 462 Word v. Box, 66 Tex. 596, 3 S. W. 93; Bailey v. Carleton, 12 N. H. 9. 463 Grimes v. Ragland, 28 Ga. 123; Morris v. Mcclary, 43 Minn. 346, 46 N. W. 238. 464 Humes v. Bernstein, 72 Ala. 546. 465 ... 482 Hall v. Stevens, 9 Mete. (Mass.) 418; Long v. Mast 11 Pa. St. 189; Clarke v. Mcclure, 10 Grat. (Va.) 305; Allen v. Allen, 58 Wis. 202, 16 N. W. 610; Gris-wold v. Little, 13 Misc. Rep. 281, 34 N. ... Length Of Possession Necessary The leng: h of adverse possession necessary to give title varies greatly under the statutes of the several states. In a few states an absolute limit is fixed, beyond which mental unsoundness will not ... The loss of title by abandonment applies strictly and only to incorporeal hereditaments, and in that connection has already been treated of.520 Title to corporeal property can be lost through abandonm... 282. Where soil is gradually deposited on the shore of a body of water, the land so formed belongs to the riparian owner on whose property the deposit is formed. This is called accretion. We have ... 283. The title to real property may be transferred by devise subject to the folio wing conditions: (a) The will must be properly executed by a competent testator (p. 473). (b) It must contain words ... Operative Words In Wills The words generally used in a will to dispose of real estate are give and devise, but any other words which show the intention of the testator are sufficient.540 The words of limitation which are ne... What Law Governs Devises Wills affecting real property are governed by the lex loci, not by the law of the place where the testator is domiciled at the execution of the will or at his death.552 The same rule applies to 544 R... Lapsed Devises By the rales of the common law, if a devisee dies before the testator, the devise lapses, and cannot be claimed by the devisee's heirs. It goes to the heir of the testator, and not to the residuary de... 284. The title to the real property of an intestate descends to certain persons designated by law, called heirs. The acquisition of title by descent is governed by the following rules: (a) Only ... Posthumous Children Posthumous children are those who, at the death of their father, are en ventre sa mere, that is, those who are conceived but not born. By the early common law such children could not inherit,585 but t... Illegitimate children are those who are born out of lawful wedlock. At common law such a child is the heir of no one, and can have no heirs save those of his body.590 Now, in most states, an 582 Ante... By the doctrine of advancements, when a lineal heir receives a gift or devise by way of portion or settlement in life, the amount so received is deducted from the share which that heir would otherwise... Canons Of Descent At an early period in the history of the common law certain rules of inheritance, called the canons of descent, were formulated by Lord Chief Justice Hale, and, though these canons have been much chan... Escheat We have seen what provisions the law makes for the division of the lands of one who dies intestate, there being in most states rights of dower or curtesy in the surviving wife or husband, and the rema... 285. Title to real property may be acquired by virtue of judicial process,(a) By conveyances under licenses (p. 486). (b) By conveyances under decrees (p. 488). (c) By tax sales (p. 490). (d) By ... Conveyances Oy Personal Representatives In the administration of the estate of a decedent it often becomes necessary, because of the failure of the personal estate, to sell part of the real property to satisfy the claims of creditors and pa... Conveyances Of Settled Estates Closely akin to sales of lands of persons under disability are sales of settled estates; that is, when the alienation of land in the ordinary ways is impossible because the whole ownership is divided ... Specific Performance When an owner of land has made a binding contract to convey real property, and then refuses to execute a conveyance, a court of equity will compel him to do so by a decree for specific performance.635... Sales On Execution At common law a man's lands were not liable to be sold for his debts,638 but now, in all of our states, lands can be sold for debts. Before this can be done, however, a judgment must be obtained,639 a... Ministerial Sale In most states summary methods of proceeding exist for the sale of lands for unpaid taxes which authorize the proper officers to advertise the land for sale and sell it after a certain period of delin... Judicial Sale In some states the method of selling land for taxes by summary proceedings is not employed, but the collector of taxes is required to bring an action in a court before any power is acquired to sell th... Tax Titles At the time of the sale the purchaser is given a certificate of purchase. The statutes usually provide that the rights of a purchaser under a certificate may be assigned.662 Until the period of redemp... The Hornbook Series Comprises elementary treatises on all the principal subjects of the law. The books are made on the same general plan, in which certain special and original features are made prominent. The Hornbook ... Eaton on Equity 1901. 734 pages. $3.75 delivered. By James W. Eaton, Editor 3d Edition Collier on Bankruptcy, Co-editor American Bankruptcy Reports, Eaton and Greene's Negotiable Instruments Law, etc. Table Of ... Hughes on Admiralty 1901. 504 pages. $3.75 delivered. By Robert M. Hughes, M. A. Table Of Contents The Origin and History of the Admiralty, and its Extent in the United States. Admiralty Jurisdiction as Governed by ... 1. The Mariner's Compass. 2. Statutes Regulating Navigation, Including: (1) The International Rules. (2) The Rules for Coast and Connecting Inland Waters. (3) The Dividing Lines between the High S... The Hornbook Series of Elementary Treatises On Subjects Of The Law The Hornbook Series of elementary treatises on all the principal subjects of the law. The special features of these books are as follows: 1. A succinct statement of leading principles in blackletter ...

Update on emissions and environmental impacts from the international fleet of ships: the contribution from major ship types and ports Stig Bjørløw Dalsøren, MS Eide, O Endresen, A Mjelde, G Gravir, Ivar S A Isaksen A reliable and up-to-date ship emission inventory is essential for atmospheric scientists quantifying the impact of shipping and for policy makers implementing regulations and incentives for emission reduction. The emission modelling in this study takes into account ship type and size dependent input data for 15 ship types and 7 size categories. Global port arrival and departure data for more than 32 000 merchant ships are used to establish operational profiles for the ship segments. The modelled total fuel consumption amounts to 217 Mt in 2004 of which 11 Mt is consumed in in-port operations. This is in agreement with international sales statistics. The modelled fuel consumption is applied to develop global emission inventories for CO2, NO2, SO2, CO, CH4, VOC (Volatile Organic Compounds), N2O, BC (Black Carbon) and OC (Organic Carbon). The global emissions from ships at sea and in ports are distributed geographically, applying extended geographical data sets covering about 2 million global ship observations and global port data for 32 000 ships. In addition to inventories for the world fleet, inventories are produced separately for the three dominating ship types, using ship type specific emission modelling and traffic distributions. A global Chemical Transport Model (CTM) was used to calculate the environmental impacts of the emissions. We find that ship emissions is a dominant contributor over much of the world oceans to surface concentrations of NO2 and SO2. The contribution is also large over some coastal zones. For surface ozone the contribution is high over the oceans but clearly also of importance over western North America (contribution 15–25%) and western Europe (5–15%). The contribution to tropospheric column ozone is up to 5–6%. The overall impact of ship emissions on global methane lifetime is large due to the high NOx emissions. With regard to acidification we find that ships contribute 11% to nitrate wet deposition and 4.5% to sulphur wet deposition globally. In certain coastal regions the contributions may be in the range 15–50%. In general we find that ship emissions have a large impact on acidic deposition and surface ozone in western North America, Scandinavia, western Europe, western North Africa and Malaysia/Indonesia. For most of these regions container traffic, the largest emitter by ship type, has the largest impact. This is the case especially for the Pacific and the related container trade routes between Asia and North America. However, the contributions from bulk ships and tank vessels are also significant in the above mentioned impact regions. Though the total ship impact at low latitudes is lower, the tank vessels have a quite large contribution at low latitudes and near the Gulf of Mexico and Middle East. The bulk ships are characterized by large impact in Oceania compared to other ship types. In Scandinavia and north-western Europe, one of the major ship impact regions, the three largest ship types have rather small relative contributions. The impact in this region is probably dominated by smaller ships operating closer to the coast. For emissions in ports impacts on NO2 and SO2 seem to be of significance. For most ports the contribution to the two components is in the range 0.5–5%, for a few ports it exceeds 10%. The approach presented provides an improvement in characterizing fleet operational patterns, and thereby ship emissions and impacts. Furthermore, the study shows where emission reductions can be applied to most effectively minimize the impacts by different ship types.

Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry: A Closer Look Psychiatric medications, science, marketing, psychiatry in general, and occasionally clinical psychology. Questioning the role of key opinion leaders and the use of "science" to promote commercial ends rather than the needs of people with mental health concerns. When to Say Sorry? In a recent post, Daniel Carlat apologized to Charles Nemeroff for nicknaming him "Bling Bling" in a prior post. So what? Who cares? Well, I think we need to take a look at what behavior requires an apology and what does not. I'm not saying I have the answers, but I think the issue is quite important. Let's look at some documented issues regarding Nemeroff: ARISE-RD 1: Nemeroff was an author on a study (called ARISE-RD) examining the use of risperidone as an antidepressant. The study results did not demonstrate that the drug worked, especially after the authors issued a correction indicating that one of the findings in the published version of the study was incorrect (oops -- sorry that we mentioned that the drug worked; we screwed up -- it really did not work). ARISE-RD 2: The study results were clearly not reported in full, leaving open the possibility that unfavorable data for risperidone was simply swept under the rug. ARISE-RD 3: The study was published in a journal of which Nemeroff was the editor. Strangely, he did not report that he had a financial conflict of interest in the study, though the journal requires such relationships to be disclosed. ARISE-RD 4: Authorship was switched around, leading one to wonder if the authorship line was an accurate reflection of who contributed significantly to the study or if it included an effort to stamp on the names of several "key opinion leaders" in order to improve the study's marketing value (1, 2 ). I strongly encourage readers to read the linked posts above in order to plumb the depths to which this study appeared to be flawed. But there's more... VNS: In his role of journal editor, Nemeroff again failed to disclose relevant conflicts of interest regarding a study that appeared in his journal and upon which he was an author. Read more on that tale here and here. Mifepristone/RU-486: Nemeroff wrote an article reviewing various treatments. One treatment he mentioned was mifepristone (Corlux/RU-486). Nemeroff serves in a paid advisory role to Corcept, maker of the drug. He concluded, based upon incredibly weak evidence, in the review, that mifepristone was "very effective" in treating psychotic depression. Lithium patch: In the same review article as mentioned above, Nemeroff mentioned that the lithium patch improved tolerability and compliance. So the patch made patients stick with treatment better and lowered the side effect burden. Oh, and Nemeroff did not cite a single source to back up these claims. Um, the entire point of a review article is to make claims and back them with sources. Nemeroff holds the patent for the lithium patch, by the way. David Healy: According to some sources (not entirely confirmed, though I believe it), Nemeroff was part of the effort to get David Healy ousted from his position at the Univeristy of Toronto. It's a long story, worth reading about here and here. As readers of my site know, I have cited Healy's work here many times due to his close knowledge of data regarding psychiatric medications (particularly SSRI's) -- he's a good scientist with, in my mind, a very strong conscience. If Nemeroff was involved in getting Healy's position rescinded, then I say shame on him. CME and Dr. Nemeroff: Dr. Nemeroff, like many key opinion leaders, is willing to set his name on journal supplement papers which are then used for continuing medical education. Daniel Carlat has a great post about a recent CME activity, upon which Nemeroff was an author, that seemed to magically transform unfounded ideas into "science" by just adding a sprinkling of money from the sponsor, Bristol Myers Squibb. Kinda made me think of a Chia Pet for some reason. Suh-Suh-Suh-Science! to the tune of Chuh-Chuh-Chuh-Chia! So looking at the above list of items involving Nemeroff, I ask readers: Is it okay to nickname someone "Bling Bling" or to nominate someone for a Golden Goblet award? Please chime in with a comment to let me know. Is it acceptable sarcasm or is it character assassination, or something else? The Point: I'm not in favor of name calling, nor am I in favor of being a jerk. But where does one draw the line? Where is the line drawn between acceptable reporting on controversial and important issues and being a bully? Over at the Drug Wonks blog, there are several posts that take aim at Steve Nissen and others, often using a nastier tone than nicknaming people "Bling Bling." Plenty of mudslinging occurs in blogs and in the "old media" -- watch most of the talking heads on so-called cable "news" networks and see what I mean. How often, and to what degree, is someone allowed to use sarcasm before it becomes rude and bullying? Part of writing is entertaining one's audience, and let's face it -- sarcasm can be very entertaining. How is a blogger to be entertaining, stick to the facts, and bring important information to readers without crossing the line into being offensive? I don't know. Perhaps you do -- again, leave a comment and see if you can shed light on this issue. HOW CAN MONY THAT I RECIEVED ON CLASS ACTION FROM ELI LILY ON ZYPREXA CURE MY LIFE TIME NOW BEING A DIEBETIC , SHOULD I EAT THE MONY AND SWALLOW IT AND GIVE ME A CURE WITH OUT RAISING MY GLUCOSE ???? If we can't even talk about mismanagement, conflicts of interest, and even corruption in health care, how will we ever fix these problems. See my post on Health Care Renewal: Nemoroff deserves all the name calling he gets on some of these blogs and a lot more besides as far as I'm concerned. He's one slimy character and while some of these guys are not deliberately unethical I think there's a good chance he is. Witness his failure to disclose his ties to Vagus Nerve Stimulation device manufacturers while penning an article lauding its benefits in a journal for which he was the editor. Just how many different conflicts of interest does that represent? In fact he didn't even write the article -- it was ghostwritten -- probably by the manufacturer. See ahrp.blogspot.com for more on this (Google Charles Nemeroff). What he's done to Healy is unspeakable. He's arrogant and patronizing and would never, ever admit the folly of his ways even when the evidence is staring him blatantly in the face. nab said... "[B]ut I place the responsibility of cleaning up this egregious mess and returning to the oath and ideals of your profession(s) into your hands. Cite and/or cull out the bad apples i.e. “Bling, bling” and as Liz Spikol likes to put it, ““It's not about being positive or negative -- it's about telling the truth.” Better educate your fellow practitioners and the soon to be new psych medicos. " Amen, herb. I place the responsibility where it belongs as well. Amen. The body medico is very sick indeed. @Roy Poses: Exactly the point here. If professionals have to keep "professional courtesy" while online on sometimes anonymous blogs--then why blog about it at all? I feel the point of exposing the crap behind the medical/pharma/psych world is to expose it, with truth and honesty and frankly "bling bling" is so benign, that it proves the point that the "big wigs" have far too much arrogance and probably a lot of pharma-funded dinners and freebies they don't want to lose, including money for "studies and trials". If a person such as Carlat speaks his mind and makes a few enemies as a result, it ultimately was for a worthy cause? right? It's like being a whistle blower and wanting to keep your job and circle of friends in tact. That doesnt always happen. Walking through fire is usually done alone. Personally, this is my suggestion for all of the professionals who blog: Stop reading each others blogs. Write what you want to write without hesitation, and see how good your work looks in a month. Character assignation? He's done a fine job of it on his own through his own actions. When caught with presenting bogus studies and articles by people who could actually CITE their proof, he and his cronies cry foul? I say let the chips and the names fall where they may. I have a name for someone who presents false studies and journal articles that could hurt people...yes, these studies involve more than data on a computer screen, they involve real human beings and these people can be hurt; and that name is much more accurate and less polite than "bling-bling" GET OVER IT. (yes, I know that was a run-on sentence; but I'm pissed off at a bunch of chicken shits who'd rather make nice than actually do some good.) Sickening.

Confessions of a Former Social Butterfly I thought that I needed a place in which to keep in touch with all my peeps so that they don't have to keep sending out search parties for me! Let's Talk.... Today, being Bell Let's Talk Day with 5cents from every tweet doing to mental health initiatives in Canada, I wanted to do my part. The problem is I didn't know where to start. In 140 characters, what can you say? How can you properly start the conversation? How do I explain that as a parent I had to take my child out of school because her anxiety was so bad that she considered taking her own life? Or how the friends that she once had, all abandoned her because they didn't understand and thought that she was just skipping school? How I was not only my daughter's advocate but became her best friend? Now years later, through knowledge and experience we can recognize her triggers, understand that she is worse during the winter months. She can see that it won't always be so dark, that there is light on the other side. She has learnt to forgive herself and look to the future. Recently, she graduated high school. It took longer than she had expected, but she did it and for that we are both so proud. Now, out of school and yet to find a job, I find myself worrying and keeping on her case about getting out of the house. That fear is still there for me as I'm sure it is for her, but I know that together we can get through this. Perhaps, I should discuss my own anxieties. Or about how a bully neighbour had me to the point that I constantly kept my curtains drawn and was afraid to leave my house. Afraid to actually live. Or how suddenly, following my 5th and final child, I suffered from overwhelming anxiety that required medication, and that now, 8 years later, I still have occasional panic attacks. Perhaps, I should mention how in my first year of university so many years ago, that I became incredibly depressed and simply stopped attending, while hiding it all from my own mother. Afraid of what people would think. I could also mention my other daughter that is on the Autism spectrum, whose anxieties and emotional disregulation cause her to need to miss school and are met with a very unsupportive response from her school. They lack the understanding to help and prefer to get rid of the "problem kids", as opposed to helping parents and students work through the mental difficulties. Now I realise that autism itself is not a mental illness, but the other disorders that she has (like anxiety and depression) are exacerbated by the way her brain is wired. And it is so hard to not be able to break through and reassure her that everything will work out in the end. I just couldn't explain that all in 140 character segments! You see, once the conversation is started, sometimes it is difficult to stop. And more than the conversation itself, which can be just words, my hope is for people to actually start LISTENING. Actively listen. Be empathetic. Don't judge. Invite those in trouble out for a coffee. Send them a text just to say hi. Be for them what you would want if you were drowning and needed a helping hand. Be a shoulder to cry on. Be a true friend. And finally, be aware...a person in trouble may not always be able to ask help, but will surely appreciate any help you have to give. Labels: #BellLetsTalk, #EndTheStigma "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." - William Shakespeare In my case, it doesn't feel that way. (Warning: I am actually seeking advice, though it may seem like I'm only ranting irrationally) Here is my predicament - almost six years ago, when I was married, I decided too hastily to hyphenate my name to reflect my maiden name and my husband's last name. Now my children also have hyphenated last names...predating the wedding, so I figured I would be all matchy-matchy with them. I quickly, in my post wedding bliss, reflected this name change on Facebook (because things aren't official unless they are on Facebook!). Fast forward a bit, and I realised that I really wanted to just keep it simple and stick with my maiden name. Years ago, I had been warned by one married woman of the hassle that is involved with legally changing one's name, so thankfully I never changed my official name. Thankfully. All correspondence reflected this epiphany, every RSVP to a wedding, Christmas Card, school form, email, etc. contained my original name. I figured that I had been a Henderson for 35 years, that's who I am and always will be. Yet, I still met with such resistance from people. Some people refuse to accept this fact. I find it so odd. I read in Emily Post's Etiquette, 18th Edition - Manners for a New World that women should be addressed by the name that they choose, yet some people STILL insist on addressing me by the name THEY choose - my husband's name. And I'm not talking people that don't know that I still go by my maiden name, I'm talking about people that simply don't care about my wishes. We're not playing house here people! I'm allowed to choose my own name! My absolute favourite is wedding RSVPs. It's almost like a game to see if people actually read the RSVP which clearly states my actual name....always an adventure to see what my name will be on the table plan. Now, I know I'm sounding bitter. I'm really not.....well, maybe a bit. Afterall, the fact that people are imposing their views on what I am called, though I realise does not reflect who I am, is still irksome. But that is not what this post is about. My predicament is that I feel like I'm sending mixed messages because my Facebook name is still the hyphenated name of my post wedding delirium. I need to change it, but I don't know how to do so without offending people, or without starting the rumour mill that a divorce is looming on the horizon. There is the alternate name feature, where a name in brackets appears below your actual name. I am wondering if that is a good option for me. Though my initial thought was to put "Not Mrs..so and so" in the brackets, that may be seen as offensive to the very people I am trying not to offend. Do I simply change my name and not put an alternative name, using the no fuss no muss approach? Do I use the alternate name feature and simply put the hyphenated name to keep my husband's family from gossiping about me? Do I just change my name to "Jane Doe" and run away to Costa Rica? This is seriously stressing me out! STRESSING. ME. OUT. BIGTIME. Posted by my five munchkins at 08:53 1 comment: Wordless Wednesday....Soccer Camp Fun and Andrew Haydon Park Three (or Four) Things I can't believe that it is already July 22nd. How did that happen? My children are complaining about the lack of excitement in their summer. My original plan was to give them a 1970's summer as advised by Melissa at 4boysmother, but that fell by the wayside as soon as summer actually began. Especially once I realised that my cable provider no longer carries TV Land (What the hell, Rogers? What the hell?). Of course, the children have done tons of things, but not enough apparently. Two of them currently have fevers, so I really have no idea what they are expecting, but I have learnt to not to question the delirious minds of feverish children, so I ignored the sleepovers, cottage, pool, park and ice cream trips. Though much to their annoyance I brought up, as exciting activities of the summer, my recent ultrasound, hospital appointments for two of them (dislocated/fractured elbow checkup for one and neurologist for another) and my check-up. They didn't find me very funny, though Kiki found me hilarious. Pre-fever, I came up with a brilliant idea. An evil brilliant idea to occupy some of their time AND to have them keep their brains working during the summer months. I asked the children to come up with three things that they wanted to know more about. It could be a person, a place, an animal, an invention...anything that they were curious about. Well, Kiki was busy with her World Religion online course and grumbled something along the lines of not having time. Whatevs...18 year olds that are taking a course that interests them in summer school are allowed to forgo research projects disguised as fun...I suppose. Mexi was sleeping and I'm pretty sure would find the idea less than appealing. Afterall, anything that she wants to figure out is as close as the Google home page. The three little ones were quite enthusiastic though. YAY! So enthusiastic that my aptly named "Three Things" project became not aptly named when all three chose FOUR interests. They are looking forward to heading to the library and finding books on their chosen subjects. I mean we could just go online, but the library is much more fun for them and it counts (at least in my mind) as a summertime field trip. So, I'm sure you're dying to hear their topics of interest! Here they are: Miss Hollywood chose Tigers, Amelia Earheart, Africa, and the Moon. Boy 1 chose Greek Mythology (which he already knows tons about), Egypt, the Sun, and Jackie Robinson. Boy 2 chose Albert Einstein, the Statue of Liberty, Koalas, and How The Earth Moves. Luckily we already have books on the people that were chosen, so they can have a head start while they hopefully make speedy recoveries....and as we await for Mr.O to become ill too. (We all know it's bound to happen). I find it cute that we have the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth involved. They inspired each other with those choices! I think it will be fun for them to tell each other what they have learned. Hoping everyone is well enough to get to the library later this week. By the way, all three books that we own are 5% off on the Chapters Indigo website for my Canadian Friends. I love this whole series of books. And more importantly, so do the children! Oh Anxiety, what would we do without you? Well, today, we wouldn't have had delicious sundaes from McDonald's! First let me take you back to last year. A local church was having an Egyptian Festival, which piqued the interest of Kiki and Boy 1. Both are interested in history and the Boy just loves Egypt in particular (though Greece is his absolute favourite). Unfortunately, last year Miss Hollywood was ill and we were unable to go. So, this year, when the flyer for the Festival arrived in the mail box, we were giddy at the prospect of finally going. Things didn't go quite as expected..... First of all, as I stated yesterday, my two eldest girls were off to their grandparents for Friday night and most of Saturday. This left today, Sunday, as our day to enjoy the Festival. Uh-huh. Well, that was the plan. After getting four of my children out the door a couple minutes later than we had hoped, we arrived at St.Mary's Church, the location of the Festival. Pulling into the parking lot, I first noticed a group of people, in the little yard. People that obviously knew each other. Hmmm, I thought. Then I glanced up at the back of the church, where the entrance was located. There were more people gathered....they all knew each other too. They all looked as though they regularly attend St. Mary's. They all looked Egyptian and that they were just attending their normal Sunday at church, which happened to be celebrating their culture this weekend. Now for a shy person like me, this was NOT cool. Perhaps, if I had brought a group of people, it would have been fine. I was interested in seeing all of the neat stuff that was advertised in the flyer, but felt very much like an outsider attending a church function. I took a deep breath was getting ready to park the car, when Kiki had the biggest panic attack. I mean, she slunk down in her seat and tried to hide, while constantly saying, "I can't do this, I can't do this..." And so I awkwardly, did a 3 point turn with curious eyes watching me, from both the back seat of my van and from the parishioners outside the car. Instantly, I went into quickly-let's-come-up-with-a-new-plan mode. I immediately thought about the free McDonald's ice cream cone coupons that I had at home. Then, I thought, screw it - let's go for ice cream sundaes instead! Now, Miss Hollywood never wanted to come to the festival, Boy 1 did not seem to mind after all, once he saw that the church had nothing Egyptian looking on the outside. Only Boy 2 was a bit ticked off.....until he heard about the ice cream. I then took the children to beautiful Andrew Haydon Park. It is gorgeous and peaceful there (future blog post to come shortly about the beauty of the park). The children didn't appreciate the view as much as I did. Boy 1 at one point exclaimed, "I feel like we're barbarians, out in the wild!". (Someone has had a wee bit too much computer time over the past few days!!) Within five minutes, the same child was yelling, "This is the best place in the world!!!", as he discovered the wonderful play structures on the grounds. Eating Sundaes on a Sunday What fun it was to watch my children run and giggle while playing tag and, later, Sandman. Of course, they squabbled during the games as well, but regardless, fun was had by all. Even my 18 year old was running and playing. It left me feeling grateful for my precious babies. It made me feel blessed to have this life. And extremely fortunate that we didn't go to the festival, but instead spontaneously made our own fun. Boy 1 & Kiki exploring the play structure. Blame It On Maggie.. Sounds scandalous, doesn't it? Well, it isn't really. Maggie is the name of our van. She is my faithful companion. I use her to chauffeur around my babies, to run countless errands, to travel to fun and adventurous places, and to go grocery shopping every Saturday morning. Every single one. Drop off hubby at work at 8:50 and then off to FarmBoy and to the supermarket. Every week is the same. Except this one. My eldest girls were off to their grandparents and it was just me and the three younger ones. I awoke early, as usual - stupid internal clock, and made the decision that I would allow my darlings to relax, Miss Hollywood could sleep in, and I would let hubby take Maggie to work, leaving me van-less for the day. It is amazing the amount of work that I could get done when I didn't have to shop or drive the children wherever they needed to be taken. By 9:15, I had caulked around the bay window sill, otherwise known as the Kitty Counter. The kitty counter had been tiled three months ago. Finally, it has been caulked. While in the kitchen I did general tidying and I even scrubbed the floor Cinderella style. Upstairs, in the boys' room, I hung a picture and a clock that had been waiting for me to pay them attention for quite a while. I moved responsibility charts that were too accessible to the babies I watch. I swept the stairs. I did laundry. It felt good to accomplish things, despite the children and pets trying to thwart my efforts every step of the way! I started not only reclaiming the house that has become overwhelmed since the children started summer vacation, but I got to cross some items off my long term to do list that I had been procrastinating doing. I accomplished so much that I may just let hubby take Maggie more often. Caulking is not the ideal pastime for those with OCD tendencies Boys' Room finally getting some finishing touches Really, I'm not sure that would be such a bad thing, because though these lovely words fill me with hope and determination, the craziness of day to day life cause me to quickly forget them. And I NEED the reminder that I am strong and capable and more than what I seem. I need that reminder to strive daily for greatness. To be the woman that I was meant to be in this one precious life I have. To seize each day. To practice patience. To forgive. To love myself. So, maybe I will choose some of my favourite quotes, get them printed and decorate my home with them, so that life doesn't get in the way of remembering to live each day to the fullest. And eventually, these reminders will become constant conscious thoughts. And I will be able to embrace the wonders of each day, and, more importantly, embrace the beauty that is my life.

Open File Report 113 Geochemical dispersion in the Olary District, South Australia: Investigations at Faugh-a-Ballagh Prospect, Olary Silver Mine, Wadnaminga Goldfield and Blue Rose Prospect. Skwarnecki, M.S., Li Shu and Lintern, M.J. The Olary Regolith Project was established in July 2000 as a jointly funded project between CRC LEME, Lynas Corporation Ltd and the Department of Primary Industries and Resources, South Australia (PIRSA). The principal objective was to conduct a regolith mapping and orientation geochemical sampling program that would provide targets for further exploration and a basis to conduct effective further geochemical exploration in the Olary region. Three principal areas were selected for study; the Faugh-a-Ballagh prospect (Olary Domain); the Great Eastern-New Milo mines in the Wadnaminga Goldfield; and the Blue Rose prospect (Nackara Arc). An orientation soil traverse was investigated at the Olary Silver Mine (Olary Domain). At Faugh-a-Ballagh (20 km northwest of Olary), Cu mineralisation occurs in magnetite veins (ironstones) and zones of magnetite dissemination in the upper part of the Quartzofeldspathic Suite of the Olary Domain. Most of the area belongs to an erosional regime, the dominant landforms being high hills formed by slightly weathered gneisses and schists. Soils are skeletal to colluvial, and little or no deeply weathered regolith is present. Although mineralised ironstones (magnetite-rich veins) are anomalous in Ag, Au, Cu, In, Zn, Al, Ga, Cs, K, Rb, Mg, Sr, REE, Th, Ti, U and Y, stream sediment sampling (<2 mm fraction) indicates that Cu is the only reliable indicator of mineralisation and that dispersion is very limited. Preliminary studies show that the <75 um fraction is the optimum sample medium and that Cu dispersion is probably greatest in this fraction. Similarly, orientation soil sampling across a mineralised ironstone vein suggests that Cu is the only reliable indicator of mineralisation. The finer fractions (75-180 µm and <75 um) are optimum fractions, although the bulk <6 mm fraction is an acceptable (average) compromise. Orientation studies on magnetic versus non-magnetic fractions in <2 mm soils, <2 mm stream sediments and 2-6 mm lags suggest that there is no advantage in using the magnetic fraction, since Cu is irregularly distributed between the fractions. Regional <6 mm soil sampling was carried out on a 400 m triangular grid, with infill at 100 m spacing on Faugh-a-Ballagh Hill. Only Cu and Au consistently delineate the mineralised zones. The most prospective areas are on the southern side of Faugh-a-Ballagh Hill, in an area of relatively intense ironstone veining, to the north of an east-west shear, and the shear itself. Copper is dispersed irregularly over an area 750 m by 250 m. The Au dispersion is much narrower and extends for about 1500 m along the shear. Other, less well-defined zones with anomalous Cu occur to the west and southwest, in zones of disseminated magnetite in albitic rocks. The principal targets are the southern side of Faugh-a-Ballagh Hill and the east-west shear. At the Olary Silver Mine (about 5 km north of Olary), sampling of the dumps suggests that geochemical indicators of the mineralisation are likely to be Ag, As, Au, Bi, Cu. Hg, Mo, Se and Te in fresh rock. The orientation soil survey indicates that Au and Cu are the best indicators of mineralisation and form an anomalous zone 40 m wide. The best response was in the <75 µm fraction but using the bulk <6 mm fraction would be acceptable. At Wadnaminga (about 30 km south of Olary), Au mineralisation occurs in sulphidic quartz veins in metasedimentary rocks of the Burra Group, along the northern margin of the Wadnaminga Anticlinorium. High-grade mineralisation at New Milo contains significant concentrations of Ag, As, Au, Bi, Cd, Cu. Hg, Pb, S, Sb, Se and Zn. Most of the area investigated belongs to an erosional regime; dominant landform units are hills formed by weathered siltstones, dolomites and phyllites, with thin soils and abundant lag. Calcrete sampling along the lodes indicates that anomalous Au is associated with As, Cu, Pb and Zn; the narrow hydrothermal alteration halo gives rise to anomalous Ba, Mg, Sr, K, Na, Rb, Tl, U and W. Using calcrete as a sample medium, geochemical dispersion along the lode horizons is very limited. In augered samples, dispersion halos are broader. The respective widths of dispersion are 25-50 m for ore-associated elements (As, Au, Cd, Cu, Pb, and Zn), and of the order of 150 m for elements associated with hydrothermal alteration (Ba, K, Mg, Sr, Th, U and W). Auger drilling and calcrete sampling are effective sampling techniques in this environment, although a sufficiently dense sampling grid (25 m) would be required for prospect-scale calcrete sampling. Other conventional sampling techniques, such as soil sampling, are likely to be valid. The Blue Rose prospect is located about 40 km south of Olary and 10 km south of the New Milo and Great Eastern mines, and occurs on the southern limb of the Wadnaminga Anticlinorium in metasedimentary units of the Burra Group. Most of the prospect area is covered by alluvium, with transported cover locally 42 m thick. Disseminated Cu mineralisation occurs in dolomitic rocks. The geochemical signature of the Cu mineralisation is Bi, Cs, In, K, Mo, Rb, S, Se and Tl. Copper dispersion haloes in saprock and saprolite are broader than in bedrock and extend into the basal 2 m of transported overburden. There is a vertical zonation in the upper 50 cm of the soil-calcrete profile. Arsenic, Au, Ba, Ca, Mg, S, Se, Sr and Y are most abundant at 20-40 cm depth, whereas Ag, A1, Bi, Co, Cr, Cs, Cu, Ga, Fe, Hf, In, K, Mn, Mo, Na, Nb, Ni, Pb, REE, Rb, Sn, Th, Ti, Tl, U, V, W and Zn are most abundant at 0-10 cm depth. Soil sampling (<2 mm fraction) over the mineralised zone on grid line 428820E failed to detect the mineralisation. Similar disappointing results were achieved by >6mm and <6 mm augered samples, 2-6 mm magnetic lags and partial leach analyses (water, potassium cyanide, sodium pyrophosphate, MMI), even though transported overburden is only 8-9 m thick over part of the mineralised zone. Auger drilling was carried out on six traverses. In general terms, samples with the greatest element abundances in soils and calcrete occur where transported cover is relatively thin (<6 m). A zone anomalous in Au and Cu was outlined by <6 mm augered samples at the southern end of grid line 427250E (to the south-west of the presently known mineralised zone), and later confirmed by <2 mm soil sampling. Two other geochemically anomalous zones were also identified at Blue Rose. At Wadnaminga, where cover is minimal, both auger drilling and calcrete sampling were effective sampling techniques. The geochemical suite for further exploration should include: As, Au, Ba, Ca, Cu, Fe, K, Mg, Mn, Pb, U, W and Zn. Although not used in this study, soil sampling would also be a valid sampling medium in this environment (erosional regime). At Faugh-a-Ballagh, soil sampling (<6 mm fraction) appears to be the most effective sampling medium in this environment (dominantly erosional regime). Stream-sediment and rock-chip sampling provide only limited Cu dispersion. There is no improvement using magnetic fractions of soil, lag or stream sediments. The geochemical suite for further exploration should include: As, Au, Bi, Ca, Cu, Fe, Mn, Na, U and W. At Blue Rose, which occurs in a dominantly depositional regime, soil sampling (<2 mm fraction) and auger drilling are effective techniques only where transported cover is thin (<6 m). Partial leach analyses failed to detect Cu mineralisation, even where transported cover was 8-9 m thick. This indicates that drilling is the only effective technique where cover is >6 m thick. However, broad Cu dispersion haloes in saprolite and basal parts of transported cover provide larger targets than the primary zones. The geochemical suite for further exploration should include: Au, Bi, Cu, Fe, K, Mg, Mn, Mo, Se and Tl.

Gem World Jewellers Facts and figures about Coloured Sapphires. Sapphires - Beautiful Beyond Blue: Sapphire is often considered to be synonymous with the colour blue: you can easily picture sapphire seas. However, sapphire is beautiful beyond blue, in every colour but red, because red is called ruby. The other colours of sapphire can be just as beautiful and rare - or even rarer - than the blue but they are usually priced less. Yellow, orange, lavender, and other pastel shades are especially affordable. Since our ancestors did not realize that ruby and sapphire are actually the same mineral, they left us with a dilemma: where should pink shades be classified? Long ago, people decided to call all gemstones of the mineral corundum as sapphire, except the red colour, which was called ruby. But pink is really just light red. The International Coloured Gemstone Association has passed a resolution that the light shades of the red hue should be included in the category ruby since it was too difficult to legislate where red ended and pink began. In practice, pink shades are now known either as pink ruby or pink sapphire. Either way, these gems are among the most beautiful of the corundum family. The most valuable other fancy sapphire is a orange-pink or pinkish-orange called "padparadscha" after the lotus blossom. Padparadscha sapphires are very rare and the exact definition has always been a matter of debate: different dealers and different laboratories around the world disagree on the exact colour described by this term. Some dealers even argue that the term should not be limited to the pastel shades of Sri Lankan sapphires but should also include the more fiery shades of reddish-orange from the Umba Valley in Tanzania. Padparadscha sapphires sell at a premium, nearing the price for a fine blue sapphire. Although the exact description is debated, the beauty of these rare gemstones is not, with their delicate blended shades the colour of fresh salmon and sunsets. Other very popular shades of fancy sapphires are yellows, bright oranges, lavender and purples, and a bluish green colour. Generally, the more clear and vivid the colour, the more valuable the fancy sapphire. If the colour is in the pastel range, the clarity should be good: because in lighter tones inclusions are more noticeable, the trade usually prefers the gemstones to be cleaner with fewer visible inclusions. In a lighter coloured gemstone, the cut is also more important: it should reflect light back evenly across the face of the stone, making it lively and brilliant. With darker more intense colours, the cut is not as critical because the colour creates its own impact. No matter what the colour, sapphires combine durability and beauty for generations of pleasure.

The anatomy of the king crab Hapalogaster mertensii Brandt, 1850 (Anomura: Paguroidea: Hapalogastridae) – new insights into the evolutionary transformation of hermit crabs into king crabs Keywords: Anomala,carcinization,circulatory system,evolutionary morphology,structural coherence,variability. The emergence of king crabs from a hermit crab-like ancestor is one of the most curious events in decapod evolution. King crabs comprise two taxa, Lithodidae and Hapalogastridae, and while lithodids have formed the focus of various anatomical studies, the internal anatomy of hapalogastrids has never been studied although this group might represent a more ancestral morphological condition within king crabs than lithodids do. To better understand the evolutionary transformation of pagurid-like hermit crabs into king crabs, we studied the hemolymph vascular system and associated organs of representatives of Hapalogaster and present here the first micro-computer tomography data pertaining to the internal anatomy of hapalogastrids. Our results for Hapalogastridae are compared with existing and new data on Paguridae and Lithodidae and are discussed in the light of the process of carcinization or evolutionary transformation into a crab-like habitus. Hapalogaster resembles both pagurids on the one hand and lithodids on the other, not only with regard to external morphological characters but also in terms of certain internal anatomical features. In this and other respects, Hapalogaster represents an evolutionary intermediate form that connects pagurids and lithodids. The theory of the transformation of ‘hermit crabs’ into ‘king crabs’ constitutes the most dramatic instance of the evolution into a crab-like habitus, called carcinization. Superficially at least, hermit crabs and king crabs do not seem to have much in common. A closer relationship between ‘hermits’ and ‘kings’, however, has been suggested already in the 19th century (Brandt, 1850; Boas, 1880a, b; Bouvier, 1895). It was Boas (1880a, b) who suggested a closer relationship of pagurid hermit crabs (at that time he used the genus name Eupagurus) and Lithodes and who emphasized the descent of Lithodes from an (Eu-)Pagurus-like ancestor. Bouvier (1895) also favored this close relationship and emphasized the importance of Hapalogaster as a ‘forme intermédiaire’ between pagurids and lithodids. More recent morphological studies supporting a closer relationship between pagurids and ‘king crabs’ (Richter and Scholtz, 1994, Reimann et al., 2011; Keiler and Richter, 2011) considered both sub-groups of ‘king crabs’ which are now categorized as Hapalogastridae and Lithodidae. Although the common name ‘king crabs’ is often restricted to certain species of Lithodidae (e.g. Stevens, 2014) we use the common name ‘king crabs’ for all representatives of both taxa. We reject to use Lithodoidea for a superfamily taxon including Hapalogastridae and Lithodidae because this classification camouflages the real phylogenetic relationships (Ahyong et al., 2009; Keiler et al., 2013; Anker and Paulay, 2013). Molecular analyses of king crabs and hermit crabs started with Cunningham et al. (1992), but like most of the following molecular analyses they did not include representatives of the Hapalogastridae. These analyses, however, have shown that Lithodidae and Paguridae are closely related (Morrison et al., 2002) or that the former is even nested in the paraphyletic latter (Cunningham et al., 1992; Tsang et al., 2008, 2011; Chu et al. 2009). It took more than a decade since the first molecular analysis when hapalogastrids were included in comprehensive molecular analyses on anomurans (Ahyong et al., 2009; Schnabel et al., 2011; Bracken-Grissom et al., 2013), confirming paraphyletic Paguridae and a monophylum Hapalogastridae + Lithodidae nesting in the former (see Fig. 1A). Though some authors dispute this phylogenetic hypothesis (McLaughlin et al., 2004, 2007), the majority of data supports the assumption that king crabs are derived from hermit crabs. The transformations, i.e. the evolutionary process of carcinization (Borradaile, 1916; Scholtz, 2014), in the lineage from the pagurid-like ancestor toward king crabs led to the characteristics of a crab-like habitus: a broadened, strongly calcified carapace and a pleon bent under the cephalothorax. Despite the significant differences in their habitus and overall appearance, hermit crabs and king crabs share several morphological characters (Schnabel et al., 2011; Reimann et al., 2011; Keiler and Richter, 2011; Keiler et al., 2013; Jaszkowiak et al., in press), most noticeably the asymmetrical pleon and single-sided left pleopods in females, a condition which has been interpreted as a morphological heritage from the pagurid-like ancestor (Boas, 1880a, b; Bouvier, 1895; Richter and Scholtz, 1994). In a recent comparative study we showed that the morphology of the hemolymph vascular system differs widely between Paguridae and Lithodidae due to morphological changes in the endophragmal skeleton (cuticular invaginations) in the lineage towards lithodids which affected the internal anatomy (Keiler et al., 2013). While Lithodidae, being more easily available, have formed the focus of that and various other anatomical studies, the internal anatomy of the smaller Hapalogastridae (Fig. 1B) has not been studied at all, though it probably represents in many aspects the plesiomorphic morphological condition within king crabs (Richter and Scholtz, 1994). Most prominent is the soft and rarely calcified sac-like pleon in Hapalogastridae which, apart from the lack of uropods, somewhat resembles that of the soft-tailed hermit crabs, first recognized by Brandt (1850). To better understand the evolutionary transformation of hermit crabs into king crabs, we studied the hemolymph vascular system and associated organs of representatives of Hapalogastridae and present here the first data ever published in relation to the internal anatomy of hapalogastrids. Our results for hapalogastrids are compared with existing and new data on pagurids and lithodids and are discussed in the light of the evolutionary transformation of hermit crabs into king crabs. Fig. 1. A. Hapalogaster mertensii, living adult specimen on human hand (photograph provided by Ch. Noever). B. Suggested phylogeny supported by molecular (Ahyong et al., 2009; Schnabel et al., 2011; Bracken-Grissom et al., 2013) and morphological data (Reimann et al., 2011) with paraphyletic Paguridae implying that king crabs (Hapalogastridae + Lithodidae) are derived from a hermit crab-like ancestor. Studied species The following species were studied: Paguroidea Samouelle, 1819 Paguridae Latreille, 1802 Pagurus hirsutiusculus (Dana, 1851) (San Juan Island, WA, USA, coll. 2010) Pagurus pubescens Krøyer, 1838 (Svaldbard, Norway, coll. 2012) Pagurus bernhardus (Linnaeus, 1758) (Gulmarsfjord, Sweden, coll. 2010) Hapalogastridae Brandt, 1850 Hapalogaster mertensii Brandt, 1850 (Sitka, Alaska, USA, coll. 2012) Hapalogaster grebnitzkii Schalfeew, 1892 Lithodidae Samouelle, 1819 Lithodes santolla (Molina, 1782) (Chile, coll. 2008) Lithodes aequispinus Benedict, 1895 Resin injection The acrylic casting resin Mercox 2-CL (Ladd Research, Williston, VT) or the polyurethane-based casting resin PU4ii (vasQtec, Zurich, Switzerland) was injected into the heart of specimens previously killed using CO2 - or Eugenol-saturated water. In a first step, the resin was mixed with the appropriate catalyst and placed in a 5 ml syringe (Luer Lock Solo, Braun, Melsungen, Germany) just before use. The resin in the syringe was injected via an injection cannula (diameter 0.3-0.6 mm, Sterican, Braun, Melsungen, Germany) through the carapace into the heart and the specimens were left for several minutes to allow the resin to polymerize and temper. Fixation and dehydration For MicroCT, specimens (injected and non-injected) were fixed in Bouin’s fluid for several days, washed and then critical point (EMITECH K850, UK) or freeze dried (Alpha 1-4, Martin Christ, Osterode a.H., Germany; UniCryo MC2L, UniEquip, Munich, Germany). Micro computer tomography (MicroCT) Dried or macerated specimens were mounted with hot glue on a specimen holder. X-ray imaging was performed with a Phoenix Nanotom 180 (Phoenix|x-ray, GE Sensing & Inspection Technologies) high-resolution MicroCT system in high resolution mode using the program datos|x aquisition (Target: Molybdenum, Mode: 0-1; Performance: ca. 8-13 W; number of projections: 720-1440; detector timing: 1000-3000 ms; voxelsize ca. 10-30 µm). Using the software datos|x reconstruction a volume file was generated, and a stack of virtual sections exported using the software VGStudio Max (Volume Graphics, Heidelberg). Xradia MicroXCT-200 X-ray imaging system (Carl Zeiss X-ray Microscopy Inc., Pleasanton, USA) at 20 KV and 4 W (10.0 scintillator-objective lens unit, 5-20 μm pixel size). For all 3D reconstructions, the software Imaris 6.4.1 and 7.0.0 (Bitplane) was used (for details of the process see Keiler et al., 2015). All figure plates were arranged using Corel Graphics Suite X3 (Corel, Ottawa). Bitmap images were embedded into Corel Draw X3 files and digitally edited with Corel PhotoPaint X3. Hapalogaster mertensii (Fig. 1B) and H. grebnitzkii have a carapace wider than long (proportions illustrated in Fig. 2DII). The pleon is bent under the cephalothorax (Fig. 2B, C, I), the fourth to six pleonal segments together forming the barely calcified sac-like posterior portion of the pleon (Fig. 2B, I), hidden in dorsal view (Fig. 2A). The overall body shape is fairly oval (Fig. 2A, DII). In females, the pleonal tergites (Fig. 2B) are arranged asymmetrically and pleopods (Fig. 2C) are present on the left side only. In males, the pleonal tergites are arranged fairly symmetrically (Fig. 2I) and pleopods are absent. The fourth to seventh thoracic sternites are fused into a sternal plate, the so-called plastron (Fig. 2F), which is roughly semioval in ventral view and has a markedly semicircular posterior emargination (Fig. 2F). The plastron is largely covered by the bent pleon (Fig. 2B). The calcification of the plastron is incomplete: the sixth and seventh thoracic sternites are distinctly delimited by a broad median and transverse suture; the third thoracic sternites, which are not part of the plastron, are likewise delimited by a suture (arrow, Fig. 2G), and bent dorsally. The eighth thoracic sternites are distinctly separate from the plastron (Fig. 2F). Ventral thoracic muscles. The ventral thoracic muscles (vtm) are extrinsic muscles of the pereiopods and are located directly above the plastron. The muscles of the fourth to seventh thoracic segments, which correspond to the chelipeds, p1, and the walking legs, p2-p4, are separated from each other medially (Figs. 3E, 6A). The muscles of the eighth thoracic segment which correspond to the grooming limbs, p5, are crossed, forming an X (Figs. 3E, 6A). Pleonal muscles. The pleonal muscles are largely reduced. The dorsal (dpm1) and lateral (lpm1) muscles of the first pleonal segment are pronounced and fairly symmetrical (Fig. 4D) while the muscles of the subsequent segments appear to be thinner and more scattered. The fibers of the ventral pleonal muscles (vpm) form a vague, rudimentary layer (Fig. 4F, G). Ventral nerve cord. The neuromeres of the mandibular, of the first and second maxillar segments and of the thoracic segments are fused with the first pleonal neuromere to form the cephalothoracic ganglion (cg; Figs. 4A, 6A), which is located in the anterior portion of the cephalothorax (thoracic segments th3 – th6, Fig. 7II). Anteriorly, the cephalothoracic ganglion is connected with the brain (br) via the circumesophageal connectives (cc; Fig. 4A, B). The paired neuropils of the anterior neuromeres (mp; which correspond to the segments of the mouthparts) lie close together, while the neuropils of the posterior neuromeres (tn4 – tn8; correspond to the pereiopods) are further apart (Fig. 6B, C, E). Posteriorly, the pleonal ganglia (pn2 – pn6) are connected to the cephalothoracic ganglion via connectives and lie close together within the sixth to seventh thoracic segment (Fig. 7II). Heart (Fig. 3): The heart is located dorsally in the cephalothorax, under the carapace and above the anterior portion of the gut, suspended in place by several ligaments (Fig. 3A). The heart is enclosed in a hemolymph-filled space, the pericardial sinus, which is framed laterally by the endopleurites of the endophragmal skeleton, ventrally by the pericardial septum and dorsally by the epidermis of the carapace (not shown). The heart is almost pentagonal in horizontal profile. The ventral side is slightly concave and the dorsal markedly convex. The heart is equipped with three pairs of ostia, slit-like openings which are arranged transversely to the anteroposterior body axis. Two pairs are located dorsally (anterodorsal and posterodorsal ostia) (arrows, Fig. 3A) and one pair is located ventrolaterally (arrows, Fig. 3C). Several muscle strands cross the lumen of the heart (not shown). Artery Systems: Five artery systems branch off the heart: the unpaired anterior aorta system, the paired anterior lateral artery system, the paired inferior lateral artery system, the unpaired posterior aorta system and the ventral vessel system. The latter consists of the vertical descending artery and the horizontal ventral vessel and its side branches. The proximal portion of all these artery systems lies within the pericardial sinus. Between the heart and each artery system there is a valve. Anterior aorta system (Figs. 3A, D, 4A-C): The anterior aorta (ao) emanates anteriorly from the heart, passes the posterior gastric muscles (pm) and runs in anterior direction above the stomach (stc) just below the carapace into the cephalic region, passing the anterior gastric muscles on the way (Fig. 3A). Above the brain, the unpaired brain artery (ba) branches off and descends ventrally into the brain (Figs. 3D, 4B, C), where it turns anteroventrally and bifurcates. Both branches then turn in a posterior direction towards the olfactory lobes of the brain (Fig. 4B). A myoarterial formation (maf) is observable as a slight widening of the anterior aorta directly posterior to the brain artery (Fig. 4C). The anterior aorta continues anteriorly and bifurcates horizontally at a 45° angle into the optic arteries (oa) which run into the eye stalks (Figs. 3A, 5A). Anterior lateral artery systems (Figs. 3, 4A, B): The paired anterior lateral arteries (ala) emanate from the heart directly laterally to the anterior aorta. They run (above the antennal bladder) in an anterior direction at a lateral angle of approximately 45° and then follow an almost parallel course to the anterior aorta (Figs. 3A, 4A, B). Medially, the anterior lateral arteries give rise to the gastric arteries (not shown) which supply the lateral muscles of the stomach. In the cephalic region, a distinct set of arterial branches (defined by their target organ or region) is present, and can be broken down as follows: Anterolaterally, a branch turns laterally backwards and gives off several smaller arteries which supply the external mandible adductor muscles (xm, Fig. 4A, B). It then continues in a posterior direction (fa, fringe artery) along the branchiostegites. Anteriorly, a side branch runs into the second antennae (a2a, antennal artery). Ventromedially, a branch (aga, antennal gland artery) runs into the antennal gland (Fig. 4A, B). Dorsomedially, a branch emanates and bifurcates into the arteries which supply the rostrum (ra, rostral artery) and the anterior gastric muscles (ama, anterior gastric muscle artery) (Fig. 4B). Distomedially, a branch runs into the first antennae (a1a, antennular artery) (Fig. 4B, C). Inferior lateral artery systems (Figs. 3A, C, E, 4A, B): The paired inferior lateral arteries (ila) branch off directly beneath the anterior lateral arteries and continue their course parallel to and just underneath them (Fig. 6B, C), giving rise to several branches which run between the lobes of the antennal bladder. These arteries correspond to the hepatic arteries described in other decapods, but as they do not supply the hepatopancreas in king crabs and pagurid hermit crabs, this new term is suggested. Posterior aorta system (Fig. 4D-G): The posterior aorta (pa) emanates from the postero-ventral portion of the heart and runs above the gut (g) in a posterior direction. In the eighth thoracic segment, it bifurcates into two equally sized but asymmetrical main arteries, the left (lpa) and right pleonal artery (rpa) (Fig. 4D). Between the first and second pleonal segment, the left pleonal artery bifurcates again into two arteries which are equal in size (arrows, Fig. 4D, E). The left one runs ventro-laterally into the left portion of the pleon, the right one takes a basically median course along the dorsal portion of the pleon. On the way, several small lateral vessels emanate from them which mainly supply the hepatopancreas, the gonads and the gut. Ventral vessel system (Figs. 3D, E, 6, 7): The ventral vessel system is made up of the descending artery (da), the ventral vessel (vv) and its side branches, and mainly supplies the ventral nerve cord (vnc), the legs (pereiopods p1-p5) and the mouthparts. The descending artery, which has the greatest diameter of all arteries branching off the heart, emanates from the left side of the posteroventral part of the heart, directly beside the root of the posterior aorta, and runs ventrally (Figs. 3B, 6A, B). In all specimens studied the descending artery crosses the gut on the left (Fig. 3B). The descending artery takes a curved antero-ventral course, pierces the ventral nerve cord between the sixth and seventh thoracic neuromeres (tn6+tn7) and merges into the ventral vessel below. On the level with the second leg arteries, the descending artery merges with the ventral vessel (p2a) (Fig. 6B). Taking the ventral thoracic muscles (vtm) as a point of reference, the merging point is located roughly between the fourth and fifth thoracic segments (Fig. 7II), under the two transverse thoracic bridges (Fig. 5B). The ventral vessel gives rise to the paired leg arteries (leg arteries, p1a–p5a) and to the arteries supplying the mouthparts (Fig. 6E). Before the leg arteries run into their respective leg, they proceed between the cuticular walls formed by the endosternites and endopleurites. The pattern of the leg arteries is variable and asymmetrical in some specimens (Fig. 6DI-III). However, in all specimens, the fifth leg arteries (p5a) emanate from the preceding fourth leg arteries (p4a; Fig. 6DI-III). Anteriorly, the ventral vessel bifurcates into the arteries of the mouthparts (Fig. 6F). Arterial supply to the mouthparts (Fig. 6E, F): The hemolymph vascular system in Paguridae and Lithodidae has recently been discussed in the context of carcinization, or evolutionary transformation into a crab-like habitus (Keiler et al., 2013). Our present investigations now reveal that the morphology of the hemolymph vascular system in Hapalogaster differs distinctly in several respects from that in Lithodidae, in some respects more closely resembling that in Paguridae. This is not unexpected, since hapalogastrids are hypothesized to be morphologically more ‘primitive’ within king crabs on account of their less pronounced carcinized shape and smaller size (Richter and Scholtz, 1994). Evidences of a close relationship between hermit crabs and king crabs The artery systems in the dorsal cephalothorax (anterior aorta, anterior lateral arteries and inferior lateral arteries) in Hapalogastridae exhibit the same pattern as in Lithodidae, which in turn closely resembles that found in Paguridae. The asymmetrical course of the pleonal arteries corresponds in pagurids and king crabs, likewise supporting the theory of a close relationship between both groups (for detailed descriptions of the hemolymph vascular system in Lithodidae (see McGaw and Duff, 2008 and Keiler et al., 2013; for Paguridae see Jackson, 1913 and Keiler et al., 2013). Remarkably enough, the sponge-like antennal bladder in Hapalogaster corresponds to the bladder in Pagurus (see Jackson, 1913; pl. 4, fig. 29) in both shape and extension (the condition is unknown in lithodids), leading us to assume that this state is homologous. Moreover, it is not present in any other anomuran so far studied (Keiler et al., 2015; unpubl. data) and therefore represents another potential synapomorphy of king crabs and pagurids. New insights into the evolutionary process of carcinization Previously, we were able to reconstruct the transformations of the internal anatomy as consequence of carcinization in one step only, from the last common ancestor (LCA) of Paguridae and king crabs whose external and internal anatomy was most probably pagurid-like (Keiler et al., 2013) to the last common ancestor of Lithodidae (represented by the lithodid genera Lithodes and Paralomis). The present study now allows including an intermediate step – the LCA of Hapalogastridae and Lithodidae (Fig. 8). Since hapalogastrids and lithodids have undergone the same period of evolution beginning with their calculated divergence 18 million years ago (see Bracken-Grissom et al., 2013), the exact morphology of this ancestor neither corresponds to one group or to the other. We consider all characters of Hapalogastridae which are either shared with Paguridae (plesiomorphies) or with Lithodidae (synapomorphies) as belonging to the ground pattern of the LCA of Hapalogastridae and Lithodidae. Characters which are neither shared with pagurids nor lithodids are autapomorphies of hapalogastrids. The process of carcinization proper was completed already in the lineage from the LCA of Paguridae and king crabs towards the LCA of Hapalogastridae and Lithodidae (Fig. 8). Internal changes which are coherent with (i.e. structurally dependent on) external changes into a crab-like habitus (see Keiler et al., 2013, 2015 for further details) logically appeared in the same lineage. Fig. 8. Simplified phylogenetic tree (note that Paguridae are most probably paraphyletic with respect to king crabs) displaying anatomical characteristics and evolutionary morphological changes in the different lineages. Abbreviations: LCA PK, last common ancestor of Paguridae and king crabs; LCA HL, last common ancestor of Hapalogastridae and Lithodidae. Due to the weak calcification in pleonal segments pl4-pl6, the pleon in Hapalogaster is rather sac-like and differs from the more compact and more calcified pleon in lithodids. In this, hapalogastrids still resemble hermit crabs, which possess a sac-like although markedly coiled pleon. In our view, the well calcified tergite plates (and nodules) in Lithodidae represents a secondary condition (contrary to McLaughlin et al., 2004). That the condition in pagurids is the plesiomorphic one is the necessary result of the nested position of king crabs within hermit crabs. McLaughlin et al. (2004) might be correct that the developmental sequence of the formation of tergite plates in king crabs might not be entirely congruent with the hypotheses of Bouvier (1895) and Boas (1924). What is shared by pagurids and king crabs, however, is the separation of tergite plates which in pagurids (summarized in McLaughlin et al., 2004) and apparently in hapalogastrids (Crain and McLaughlin, 2000) is the result of decalcification. As in species of Pagurus, the dorsal pleonal musculature in H. mertensii is substantially reduced and pronounced muscular bundles are restricted to the first pleonal segment. The ventral pleonal musculature in H. mertensii, however, is thin and arranged in a thin layer of fibers which appears patchy and disorganized (Fig. 4F, G) in comparison to the much thicker and more compact ventral pleonal muscle in species of Pagurus (see fig. 6A in Keiler et al., 2013), which is responsible for the rapid withdrawal into the gastropod shell (Stephens, 1986). Apart from this, the transformation of the internal pleonal morphology which took place in the lineage from the LCA of Paguridae and king crabs towards king crabs (or the LCA of Hapalogastridae and Lithodidae, respectively) was relatively minor. Based on the findings in Pagurus (Keiler et al., 2013) and Hapalogaster, the posterior aorta in the LCA of Hapalogastridae and Lithodidae bifurcated into two asymmetrical branches of equal diameter, the left and right pleonal artery, representing the situation in the LCA of Paguridae and king crabs. In the lineage from the LCA of Paguridae and king crabs towards the LCA of Hapalogastridae and Lithodidae, the left pleonal artery developed another bifurcation into two arteries of equal size (the ventro-lateral and the dorso-medial artery; arrowheads in Fig. 4D, G). This may be functionally interpreted as an adaptation which was needed to provide sufficient hemolymph to the broadened pleon. Our findings for Hapalogaster support the previously hypothesized homology of the branches of the posterior aorta system in pagurids and lithodids (Keiler et al., 2013). In terms of position and course, the distal portion of the ‘left pleonal artery’ in lithodids corresponds with the ventro-lateral branch in H. mertensii, while the slightly thinner ‘medial pleonal artery’ in lithodids corresponds to the dorso-medial artery in H. mertensii. Transformations of the ventral cephalothorax – coherences in the course of carcinization The transformations of the ventral cephalothorax which took place in the lineage from the LCA of Paguridae and king crabs towards the LCA of Hapalogastridae and Lithodidae basically affected five components which, in varying respects, are structurally dependent on each other (i.e. coherent). These are a) the sternites, b) the endosternites, c) the ventral thoracic muscles, d) the ventral nerve cord and e) the ventral vessel system. In the lineage from the LCA of Paguridae and king crabs (Fig. 9B) towards the LCA of Hapalogastridae and Lithodidae, thoracic sternites 4-7 fused to form a broad sternal plastron. The antero-ventral bend in the pleon gave the plastron its distinct concave posterior emargination. The endophragmal skeleton, which appears to have been particularly affected by the transformational processes of carcinization (Keiler et al., 2013, 2015), is relatively similar in hapalogastrids and lithodids but differs distinctly between pagurids and king crabs. The emergence of the broad sternal plastron resulted in an increase in the medial distance between the endosternites (Keiler et al., 2013; see Fig. 5D), and a successive reduction in the number of transverse thoracic bridges seems likely to have occurred in the lineage towards Lithodidae (Figs. 5A-C, 7). The size and spacing of the sets of ventral thoracic muscles also changed due to modifications in the sternites. On the one hand, the muscles moved closer together along the body axis due to the posterior emargination of the plastron. On the other hand, the medial distance between the muscles increased as a result of the broadening of the ventral cephalothorax (Fig. 5E). The most substantial modification, however, affected the ventral thoracic muscles of the fourth pereiopods (= vtm7). The fourth pereiopods evolved from short limbs providing grip in a gastropod shell in the LCA of Paguridae and king crabs to walking legs in king crabs (Richter and Scholtz, 1994; Keiler and Richter, 2011). The ventral thoracic muscles, changed from small bundles in the LCA of Paguridae and king crabs (Fig. 9A) to relatively large bundles in king crabs. The ventral nerve cord underwent a marked change in arrangement and position in the lineage from the LCA of Paguridae and king crabs (Fig. 9C) toward the LCA of Hapalogastridae and Lithodidae (compare schematic drawings I and II in Fig. 7). The cephalothoracic ganglion became more planar due to the planar inner surface of the plastron, the cephalothoracic ganglion became distinctly compact and the pleonal ganglia were shifted anteriorly. The transformation of the pleonal ganglia was apparently coherent with functional-morphological changes in the pleon and the pleonal muscles. In hermit crabs, the pronounced ventral pleonal muscles are responsible for rapid withdrawal into the gastropod shell (Stephens, 1986). This function and biological role were lost in the evolution of king crabs, whose pleons are bent and remain in an idle state most of the time. Although it was already compact and had shifted anteriorly, the transformation of the ventral nerve cord continued in the lineage from the LCA of Hapalogastridae and Lithodidae to Lithodidae. The cephalothoracic ganglion in lithodids is situated further anterior (the posterior margin is located in the fourth thoracic segment) and proportionally smaller (Figs. 5E, 7III). In the context of the changes in the fourth pereiopods it should be pointed out that, in contrast to the preceding neuropils, the neuropils of the seventh and eighth thoracic and first pleonal neuromer were tightly packed and rather small in the LCA of Paguridae and king crabs (as in Pagurus; Fig. 9C, see also Bouvier, 1889 plate 7; Stephens, 1986). This condition changed in the lineage towards the LCA of Hapalogastridae and Lithodidae, resulting in the distinctly larger and more separated neuropils corresponding to the fourth pereiopods. This, in turn, corresponds secondarily with the neuropil arrangement in other anomurans (Keiler et al., 2015, unpubl. data), whose fourth leg is developed as a ‘normal’ walking leg. The distinct left-handed curve in the course of the descending artery in H. mertensii (Figs. 5B, 6A, B) represents the condition in the LCA of Hapalogastridae and Lithodidae and corresponds with the course of this artery in Lithodidae (Marukawa, 1933; McGaw and Duff, 2008; Keiler et al., 2013). This distinct curve is most likely the result of the comparatively large proximal main ducts of the hepatopancreas and the gut, which the descending artery skirts (Fig. 3B). Variability notwithstanding, the fourth and fifth leg arteries in H. mertensii always possess a common root which emanates relatively close to the third leg arteries. The same pattern we assume for the LCA of Hapalogastridae and Lithodidae, meaning that a shift in artery roots appeared in the lineage from the LCA of Paguridae and king crabs toward the LCA of Hapalogastridae and Lithodidae. Remarkably, the branching pattern of the leg arteries differs significantly between H. mertensii and Lithodidae, suggesting a second transformational step in the lineage from the LCA of Hapalogastridae and Lithodidae towards lithodids which resulted in a fusion of arteries p2a-p4a. The pronounced curve of the descending artery in the LCA of Hapalogastridae and Lithodidae and the anterior shift in the cephalothoracic ganglion presumably both represented prerequisites for the subsequent condition in Lithodidae, in which the descending artery skirts around the cephalothoracic ganglion (Keiler et al., 2013). This in turn led to the gently sloping arterial course in lithodids, which presumably facilitated the fusion of the leg arteries and the descending artery. On the other hand, it could be said that the loss of the bottleneck in the form of the pierced ganglion made the new condition a prerequisite for the high level of variability in the branching pattern of the leg arteries seen in some lithodids (Keiler et al., 2013). The distance between the endosternites (i.e. the lack of ‘guard rails’), however, seems to constitute a more important prerequisite for the presence of variability (Keiler et al., 2013, 2015). Fig. 9. A-B. Pagurus bernhardus (Paguridae): A. Ventral view of cephalothorax revealing spatial relationships between ventral thoracic muscles and sternites (transparent overlay). Volume and surface renderings. B. Schematic drawings of ventral thoracic muscles (pink) and sternites (blue) as seen in A in dorsal view. C. Pagurus pubescens (Paguridae): dorsal view of spatially divided neuropils (dashed semi-transparent white circles) of cephalothoracic ganglion (horizontally sectioned); neuropil of first pleonal neuromer hidden between neuropils tn5. Abbreviations: tn1-5, thoracic neuromers; ts5-8, thoracic sternites; vtm5-8, ventral thoracic muscles. Hapalogaster – the connecting link between hermit crabs and lithodid king crabs? Hapalogaster resembles both pagurids and lithodids, not only in external morphology but, as we have shown here for H. mertensii, also in certain internal anatomical features (see Tab. 1). Compared to lithodids, hapalogastrids possess more anatomical characters that are plesiomorphic, meaning that these characters have not changed since the LCA of Paguridae and king crabs (e.g. the weakly calcified last pleonal segments or the piercing of the cephalothoracic ganglion by the descending artery). Furthermore, Hapalogaster exhibits anatomical conditions which can be interpreted as less derived than those in lithodids, e.g. the cephalothoracic ganglion, which is more anterior and more compact than in pagurids, but not as small or as far anterior as in lithodids. In this and other respects, Hapalogaster can be interpreted as representing an evolutionarily intermediate form, i.e. a connecting link between hermit crabs and lithodid king crabs. Brandt JF. 1850. Vorläufige Bemerkungen über eine aus zwei noch unbeschriebenen Gattungen und Arten gebildete Unter­abtheilung (Hapalogastrica) der Tribus Lithodina, begleitet von einer Charakteristik der eben genannten Tribus der Anomura. Bulletin de la Classe physic-mathématique de l’Académie imperial des sciences de Saint-Pétersbourg. 8: 266-269. Chu KH, Tsang LM, Ma KY, Ng PKL. 2009. Decapod Phylogeny: What can protein-coding genes tell us? Pp. 89-99 in: Martin JW, Crandall KA, Felder DL, eds, Crustacean Issues, Vol. 18: Decapod Crustacean Phylogenetics. Boca Raton: CRC Press. Crain JA, McLaughlin PA. 2000. Larval and early juvenile development in the Lithodidae (Decapoda: Anomura: Paguroidea) reared under laboratory conditions. 2. Hapalogastrinae: Placetron wosnessenskii Schalfeew, 1892, with notes on comparative development within the subfamilies of the Lithodidae. Invertebrate Reproduction & Development 37: 113-127. Cunningham CW, Blackstone NW, Buss LW. 1992. Evolution of king crabs from hermit-crab ancestors. Nature 355: 539-542. Jackson HG. 1913. Eupagurus. LMBC Memoirs on typical British Marine Plants and Animals 21: 1-79. Jaszkowiak K, Keiler J, Wirkner CS, Richter S. in press. The mouth apparatus of Lithodes maja (Crustacea: Decapoda) – form, function and biological role. Acta Zoologica. Keiler J, Richter S. 2011. Morphological diversity of setae on the grooming legs in Anomala (Decapoda: Reptantia) revealed by scanning electron microscopy. Zoologischer Anzeiger 250: 343-366. Keiler J, Richter S, Wirkner CS. 2013. Evolutionary morphology of the hemolymph vascular system in hermit and king crabs (Crustacea: Decapoda: Anomala). Journal of Morphology 274: 759-788. Keiler J, Richter S, Wirkner CS. 2015. Evolutionary morphology of the organ systems in squat lobsters and porcelain crabs (Crustacea: Decapoda: Anomala): An insight into carcinization. Journal of Morphology 276: 1-16. Marukawa H. 1933. Biological and fishery research on Japanese king crab Paralithodes camtschatica (Tilesius). Journal of the Imperial Fisheries Experimental Station 4: 1-52. McGaw IJ, Duff SD. 2008. Cardiovascular system of anomuran crabs, genus Lopholithodes. Journal of Morphology 269: 1295-1307. McLaughlin PA, Lemaitre R, Tudge CC. 2004. Carcinization in the Anomura – fact or fiction? II.Evidence from larval, megalopal and early juvenile morphology. Contributions to Zoology 73: 165-205. McLaughlin PA, Lemaitre R, Sorhannus U. 2007. Hermit crab phylogeny: A reappraisal and its “fall-out”. Journal of Crustacean Biology 27: 97-115. Morrison CL, Harvey AW, Lavery S, Tieu K, Huang Y, Cunningham CW. 2002. Mitochondrial gene rearrangements confirm the parallel evolution of the crab-like form. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B: Biological Sciences Volumes 269: 345-350. Reimann A, Richter S, Scholtz G. 2011. Phylogeny of the Anomala (Crustacea, Decapoda, Reptantia) based on the ossicles of the foregut. Zoologischer Anzeiger 250: 316-342. Richter S, Scholtz G. 1994. Morphological evidence for a hermit crab ancestry of lithodids (Crustacea, Decapoda, Anomala, Paguroidea). Zoologischer Anzeiger 233: 187-210. Schnabel KE, Ahyong ST, Maas EW. 2011. Galatheoidea are not monophyletic – Molecular and morphological phylogeny of the squat lobsters (Decapoda: Anomura) with recognition of a new superfamily. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 58: 157-168. Scholtz G. 2014. Evolution of crabs – history and deconstruction of a prime example of convergence. Contributions to Zoology 83: 87-105. Stephens PJ. 1986. The fused thoracic-abdominal ganglion of the hermit crab (Pagurus pollicaris): Neuromuscular relationships in the thoracic and abdominal flexor muscles. Journal of Experimental Biology 123: 201-216. Stevens BG. 2014. The King of Crabs. Pp. ix-x in: Stevens GB, ed, King crabs of the world. Biology and Fisheries Management. Boca Raton: CRC press. Tsang LM, Ma KY, Ahyong ST, Chan TY, Chu KH. 2008. Phylogeny of Decapoda using two nuclear protein-coding genes: Origin and evolution of the Reptantia. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 48: 359-368. Tsang LM, Chan TY, Ahyong ST, Chu KH. 2011. Hermit to king, or hermit to all: multiple transitions to crab-like form from hermit crab ancestors. Systematic Biology 60: 616-629. S1. Studied specimens. ZSRO#, collection number of the Zoological Collection of the University of Rostock; m, male; f, female; inj, injection: m2, Mercox2 resin; pu4, PU4 resin; fix, fixation: PFA, paraformaldehyde; ga, n.a., not determinedglutaraldehyde; kar, Karnofsky's fixative; CT, micro computer tomography; n.a., not determined. http://www.ctoz.nl/c/ctz/supp/8402a04_S1.xlsx S2. Lithodes maja (Lithodidae): A. Ventral view; pleon virtually cut to show sternal plastron (outlined in blue); red dashed line indicates pleon margin; uncalcified areas between sternites shown with dotted outlines. B. Anteroventral view; note the vertically oriented third thoracic sternites (st3); arrow indicates suture. Abbreviations: cp, Carapace; mxp3, maxilliped 3; p1-5, pereiopods; pl, pleon; pl3, third pleonal segment; pla, sternal plastron; st3-7; sternites; t, telson.

From the Editor: Building confidence By Heidi Marttila-Losure March 29, 2016 Do you know someone who is building a home in the rural Dakotas? That person is making both a sacrifice and a statement: The “common wisdom” would call their building project a poor financial investment. Yet they care enough about living how and where they choose that they are doing it anyway. Editor Heidi Marttila-Losure can be reached at [email protected]. I think people who live in suburban or urban America don’t understand that homeownership can be a complicated choice in rural places. Watch any of the house-flipping shows on HGTV and the common wisdom is clear: Invest some sort of sweat equity into a house, and upon completion, the value of the house will increase by more than the cost of whatever you did to it. That’s not how it works in the rural Dakotas. The cost of housing here has lagged far behind the cost of housing elsewhere in the country. The cost of construction, however, is the same or higher than it is in many urban places. That means that a person could, for example, spend $200,000 building a home that the market would value at $120,000 when it was done. Here’s the thing: There are still homes going up in our communities. What does that say about those homebuilders? Are they crazy?! Who would make that kind of sacrifice? People who really, really want to live here, that’s who. And that’s really a pretty awesome statement: A small but increasing number of people value the way of life in our communities enough to go against a system that doesn’t reward their choice. Of course, there are ways of financing housing here that can make it a smarter investment, and some funding is available. Read on for some of those strategies. But when you see a new house going up in a rural place, take a moment to be encouraged. Someone is giving that community a very strong vote of confidence.

Yugoslavian M48 Mauser This Yugoslavian M48 Mauser was my first military surplus rifle. It was purchased by my wife in December 2001 as a Christmas gift for me. What a great surprise it was! Little did she know at time but she was introducing me to my latest hobby. Yugoslavia produced quite a few of these rifles that now have been brought to the surplus market in excellent condition. These 8mm rifles are great shooters that are well made and inexpensive to shoot. Under Nazi control, the Yugoslav people suffered a holocaust, which, when measured on a per-capita basis, was greater than the persecution of the Jews in Germany, Poland and elsewhere in Europe -- a fact that is not generally well known in the West. The most infamous of the extermination camps was located in Jasenovac, where upwards of 1.2 million Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies perished at the hands of the Nazi-led Croatian Ustashe. When the Nazi's were finally driven out in 1944 and the war ended, the Serbs, like the Jews, said "Never Again!" To support that posture, they decided to arm the entire populace as an armed militia, even though they were then Communists. Normal gun ownership as we know it here was not allowed, but they knew that if the enemy came again, their basic defense would be the armed peasant. The Model 1948 98k Short Rifle or otherwise called the Yugoslavian M48 is based in design on the German 98k Mauser and the Yugoslavian Model FN 30 and 24 Carbines and Rifles. It is the last military Mauser rifle (not made from parts or a rebuilt) made and was produced in Yugoslavia at the Kragujevac arsenal from 1945 until 1952. The rifles were built on German tooling, but are of a more robust construction, because the Yugoslav factories did not experience the materials shortages that cheapened the later German production. The rifles and ammunition were dispersed to military storage facilities around the country in anticipation of WWIII. Semi-automatic infantry weapons such as the SKS and the AK47 soon made these Mauser rifles obsolete for modern combat. Even so, the Mausers were still kept in reserve and ready for service And so it continued for over fifty years. Then the Berlin wall came down, Communism died, the Bosnian war started, and Yugoslavia broke apart with five of its seven states becoming independent countries. The newly independent countries were able to take control of the military storage facilities in their territories and sell these rifles on the international surplus weapons market. Caliber: 7.92 X 57mm (8mm Mauser) Overall length: 43.5 inches Barrel length: 23.25 inches Weight (unloaded) 8.6 lbs. Magazine: 5 round, charger loaded, staggered column box Sights: Front: Inverted V-blade Rear: V-notch tangent leaf Yugoslavian crest on the receiver

Learning About Frogs Caring for Having a classroom pet can be a fun learning experience for both the student and the teacher. But it is also a great responsibility for everyone. Take the time to find out as much as possible about the animal(s) you're considering to ensure that you are able to keep your classroom pet healthy and happy. Click on the animal pictures below to learn about the basic care and needs of each species. South African Clawed Frog Animal Care Committee Signs of Pain and Distress Full Booklet

Deco Fireplace A grand catalogue cover for the Portcullis Gas Fires made by Bratt Colbran & The Heaped Fire Co Ltd of London. Their 'posh' address was in W1 but the works were in Wembley, north London. Labels: art-deco, design, UK Forgotten Gem Novosukharevsky Market Offices, Moscow Designed by Konstantin Melnikov Photographed on September 10, 2011 Labels: architecture, USSR Blue Mail By Roger Chapelet Labels: aircraft, art, communications, France, poster Czech Streamline 1937 Skoda Superb Type 913 Sodomka Labels: auto, CZ, design Italo-American Savoia Marchetti S.62P flying boat, American Aeronautical Corp. Labels: aircraft, Italy, US Radio Palace Berlin, Haus des Rundfunks (Radio House) Architect: Hans Poelzig Photo by Leuchtstoff @ Flickr Posted by Lord K at 3:08 AM 3 comments: Labels: architecture, design, Germany Tailless The H.P. 75 Manx was a British experimental aircraft designed by Handley Page that flew test flights in the early 1940s. It was notable for its unconventional design characteristics, being a twin-engine tailless design of pusher configuration. The Manx (which appropriately shares the same name as a breed of vestigial-tailed cat) was built to participate in a flight research program investigating problems associated with tailless aircraft. The partially-swept wings supported the vertical stabilizers of a twin tail, with elevons for pitch and roll control. Construction of the prototype was subcontracted to Dart Aircraft of Dunstable. There were serious issues encountered early in the development phase that caused a delay in the testing program. After it was delivered in 1939, redesigns had to be made because the Manx was too heavy, and there were also structural integrity issues with the main spar. An unorthodox aspect of the Manx design incorporated into the aircraft was that the main undercarriage was retractable, while the nose gear remained fixed. Taxi tests began in early 1940, but inspection revealed serious deterioration of the wing structures, which required extensive repair. These and further problems delayed the maiden flight until June 1943 (sources conflict as to whether it was 11 or 25 June.) The first flight was terminated early when the canopy was lost in mid-flight, but the pilot managed to land the plane safely. The Manx had only accumulated about 17 hours of flight time over approximately 30 flights when flight tests were finally terminated in April 1946. The sole example built was scrapped in 1952.

Development, validation and testing of a new sensor array for intra-articular pressure measurement: in-vitro human lumbar spine intra-articular facet testing DEVELOPMENT, VALIDATION AND TESTING OF A NEW SENSOR ARRAY FOR INTRA-ARTRICULAR PRESSURE MEASUREMENT: IN-VITRO HUMAN LUMBAR SPINE INTRA-ARTICULAR FACET TESTING Abstract There is a very high and increasing frequency of back pain in modern society with an estimate annual cost of $100 billion dollars just in the United States. The precise etiology of low back pain lacks a general consensus. However, the facet joints have been shown to be a significant source of spinal pain, and specifically low back pain. Despite being a significant source of pain, very little accurate data is available on the loads within the facet joints. ❧ This study’s primary goal was to provide improved data, thus facilitating a better understanding of lumbar spine intra-articular facet loads during movement. This was ultimately accomplished by the development, validation and implementation of a new method for direct measurement of intra-articular load. It was initially thought that a better understanding of lumbar spine intra-articular facet loads during movement could be accomplished with the application of existing technology. The preliminary phases of this study involved evaluating a large volume of literature related to previously published methods and techniques purporting to quantify intra-articular load, meeting and discussing design requirements with various manufacturers of potential technology, and finally bench top testing and evaluating the more plausible technologies. Despite a substantial volume of published literature utilizing many of these technologies for this task and similar measurements in other articular joints (both human and non-human), none of the existing technologies were found to have the necessary geometry and/or were capable of taking accurate measurements when curved to physiologically prevalent radii. These deficiencies in the existing technologies necessitated the development of an appropriate method to accurately measure intra-articular pressures. ❧ A new sensor array intended to accurately and directly measure both the spatial and temporal distributions of pressures within a highly curved intra-articular joint was developed and tested. To evaluate performance of the new sensor array for application within intra-articular joints generally, and specifically to fit within the relatively restrictive space of the lumbar spine facet joint, geometric constraints of length, width, thickness and sensor spatial resolution were evaluated. Additionally, the effects of sensor array curvature, frequency response, linearity, drift, hysteresis, repeatability, and total system cost were assessed. ❧ The new sensor array was approximately 0.6mm in thickness, scalable to below the nominal 12 mm wide by 15 mm high lumbar spine facet joint size, offered no inherent limitations on the number or spacing of the sensors with less than 1.7% cross talk with the sensors positioned immediately adjacent to one another. No difference was observed in sensor performance down to a radius of curvature of 7 mm and a 0.66±0.97% change in sensor sensitivity was observed at a radius of 5.5 mm. The sensor array had less than 0.07 dB signal loss up to a loading frequency of 5.5 Hz, linearity was 0.58±0.13% full scale (FS), drift was less than 0.2% FS at 250 s and less than 0.6% FS at 700 s, and hysteresis was 0.78±0.18%. Repeatability was excellent with a coefficient of variation less than 2% at pressures between 0 and 1.000 MPa. Total system cost was relatively small as standard commercially available data acquisition systems could be utilized, with no specialized software, and individual sensors within an array could be replaced as needed. The new sensor array had small and scalable geometry and very acceptable intrinsic performance including minimal to no alteration in performance at physiologically relevant ranges of joint curvature. ❧ The most limiting attribute of the sensor array is durability. Although this was improved during the study with judicious selection of sensor orientation and modifications of the individual sensor construction via discussions with the manufacture, durability remained less than ideal. This limitation was tempered by the fact that the componentized nature of the sensor array allowed easy replacement of the individual sensor elements within a given array if one or more sensors failed. This characteristic is beneficial especially when compared to other commonly commercially available arrays such as those from Tekscan (FSR-T) and Novel (FSC-N) which are constructed by the manufacturer in fixed configurations and do not allow either redistribution or replacement of individual sensor elements within an array. ❧ Preliminary in vitro data is presented demonstrating the utility of the new sensor array in quantifying temporal and spatial distributions of pressure within the L4-5 facet joint. Preliminary results are generally in line with singular peak pressure measurements from pressure sensitive film testing with peak pressures measured in the current study at between 1,210 kPa and 3,059 kPa. Additionally, the distribution of pressure matched prior studies in that the measured facet pressure increased in extension, decreased in flexion, and the center of pressure migrated inferiorly and medially under increasing extension moments. Initially, in vitro durability was problematic with very high initial sensor failure rates. Manufacturing changes and orientation optimization of each individual sensor relative to load direction improved durability. Durability was ultimately considered acceptable in light of the ease and relatively low cost of individual sensor replacement. ❧ The utility of the sensor in more accurately quantifying spatial and temporal changes in lumbar spine facet intra-articular pressure was demonstrated with testing six fresh-frozen human cadaveric lumbosacral specimens under pure moment bending (±10Nm). The new sensor was inserted in the L4-5 facet joints. L4-5 facet contact pressures were continuously measured at seven locations within the facet. Center of pressure at various phases of loading was calculated. The data demonstrated an increase in facet pressure with increasing extension moments and displacements. Facet contact pressure increased relatively linearly in proportion to applied bending moment up to approximately 2-3 degrees of L4-5 extension and approximately 7-8 Nm of extension moment. The highest average maximum pressures of 1,087 kPa were found in the midline sensor 2 mm medial of the midpoint and 973 kPa in the most inferior midline sensor. The most superior midline sensor always had the lowest average peak pressures during extension. The center of pressure started very near the anatomical center of the facet and migrated medially and inferior under increasing extension moments. ❧ The demonstrated functionality of the new sensors in the relatively small and sharply curved human lumbar spine facet joint should ensure viability and utility of the sensor array in other less geometrically demanding joints and surface interfaces such as the hip, knee and ankle joints. The sensors could also be used as a source of tactile feedback in prosthetic designs or for external measurement of a portion of the body, such as the foot interacting with the ground or other objects. Keyword facet; intra-articular pressure; lumbar spine; biomechanics; articular mechanics; joint contact pressure; center of pressure; facet loads; facet force; sensor; sensor design; sensor specifications; sensor validation; in-vitro; cadavers; human

Worker s Handbook. A guide to your workers compensation insurance. Nova Scotians safe and secure from workplace injury Milo Domenic Hawkins 1 Worker s Handbook A guide to your workers compensation insurance Nova Scotians safe and secure from workplace injury 2 Your Worker s Handbook at a glance Your care comes first: health care benefits Direct access to physiotherapy and chiropractic services... 3 Your privacy Returning to work... 6 Your responsibilities as you recover... 7 Re-employment benefits Earnings replacement benefits... 9 Temporary earnings replacement benefits Long-term benefits Permanent impairment benefit Extended earnings replacement benefit Survivor benefits Other services and programs Employment incentive program Vocational rehabilitation services On-the-job training What is workers compensation insurance? Who is covered? Differences for self-employed and family members A safe workplace is your right. And your responsibility Frequently asked questions 4 If you re interested in seeing more policy and legislative detail, please refer to the Workers Compensation Act or the WCB Policy Manual. Both the Act and the Policy Manual are available on our website, wcb.ns.ca, and at select libraries throughout the province. Your care comes first: health care benefits By the time you receive this booklet, you may have been seen by a health care professional about your workplace injury. Depending on the nature of your injury this may have been a physiotherapist, chiropractor, doctor, nurse, dentist, or other health care professional. Seeking immediate care as soon as possible after the injury is the first and most important step. In general, the cost of that health care, and any care you need during your recovery, is covered by the WCB. Most WCB claims involve only medical costs related to a workplace injury which does not result in time-loss from work. It s important to advise your health care provider that your injury is work-related. Your health care provider fills out a form which tells us that the service you received was for a work-related injury. We then pay the service provider. You have probably received a claim number, which identifies this transaction in our system, and links the payment to the health service provider to your injury. This way, if you need other care in the future related to this injury, the right paperwork is on file to help you receive the benefits and services that you need. Remember, any time you have health care services provided in relation to a workplace injury, it s important to check with us to ensure the service you are receiving is covered. 2 A Guide to Your Workers Compensation Insurance 5 Here is a list of some of the covered service providers. Doctors, hospital visits, and surgery Chiropractors Physiotherapists Dentists Any prescriptions related to your injury are usually covered, as are most other things you need during your recovery from a more serious injury. Be sure to discuss any questions you have about what is covered with your case worker. If the WCB requests that you travel for treatment, we may cover travel expenses. In some cases, workers may be entitled to travel expenses for medical appointments, such as chiropractic treatment or physiotherapy. Some travel expenses such as meals and taxis require approval in advance. Contact your case worker for details. Your employer is responsible for any costs related to transporting you to seek immediate medical care. This may range from a taxi to a walk-in clinic to emergency transportation by ambulance. Direct access to physiotherapy and chiropractic services Most workplace injuries in Nova Scotia are sprains and strains, or musculoskeletal injuries. If you believe you have experienced a sprain or strain injury at work, your employer or WCB case worker will send you to an approved physiotherapist or chiropractor for an assessment. You may choose to see your family doctor, but your assessment should not be delayed because you are waiting for an appointment with your doctor. The assessment is a series of activities that allows the physiotherapist or chiropractor to diagnose your injury and to find out what job tasks you can safely perform like lifting, carrying, walking, etc. This will help determine your capacity for returning to work, either to your regular job or to transitional duties. A Guide to Your Workers Compensation Insurance 3 7 Your privacy We are committed to protecting the information of those we serve, in accordance with our own policies and legislation. Please contact us if you have questions about how your information is handled, and protected, while it is in our care. When you have a claim with us, we understand that your personal information is in our care. We understand our responsibility in maintaining the privacy of those we serve and protecting the personally indentifying information we hold. We are committed to maintaining the accuracy, confidentiality, security and privacy of personal information. All employees including the WCB Board of Directors are required to complete annual privacy training. If breaches occur, our goal is to contain, remedy and learn from them to prevent reoccurrences. For more information about the WCB s privacy guidelines and practices please contact us at any time. You can review our policies and procedures related to privacy on our website: wcb.ns.ca. A Guide to Your Workers Compensation Insurance 5 8 Returning to work In most cases, workplace injury is minor, and you may not miss any time from work at all, other than to receive the first aid and medical attention that you need. But, all too often, it is more serious. When this type of more serious injury occurs and you do lose time from your regular job, staying connected and continuing to work, whenever possible, is a very important factor in your recovery. The longer you re away from your regular job, the more difficult it will be for you to return. So when an injury does occur, the best result for everyone is a safe and timely return to your regular duties. The WCB s goal is to work with employers, employees, unions and health care providers to ensure this happens. We know that a workplace injury has physical, emotional and sometimes financial implications for you and your family. That s why an effective Return-to-Work program can mean the following for you: Reduces or eliminates lost-earnings Helps you stay active, which speeds up your recovery Minimizes impact on you and your family Shifts the focus from what you can t do to what you can do Maintains your sense of confidence and value Helps you stay in contact with co-workers 6 A Guide to Your Workers Compensation Insurance 9 Your responsibilities as you recover As you recover from your workplace injury there are a number of things to keep in mind. The Workers Compensation Act outlines a few responsibilities of the worker, including: Filing a claim for compensation as soon as possible, ideally before leaving the worksite. In most cases, this process starts before you leave the workplace, when your employer sends the WCB Injury Report to us. It may also be started when your health care provider provides a form to the WCB. Cooperating and sending any information that we may require, ensuring it is accurate and complete. Doing what you can to minimize the physical and financial impact of your injury. Participating in health-care services or treatment to promote recovery. Notifying us immediately of any change that may affect your claim, including return to work. Seeing a doctor or other health care provider, if requested by the employer, the WCB or the Workers Compensation Appeals Tribunal. Advising your employer if you seek medical attention for a workplace injury. Actively participating in and cooperating with your Return-to-Work program. A Guide to Your Workers Compensation Insurance 7 10 Re-employment benefits In most industries, when you are ready to safely return to work, and your employer has 20 or more workers, and you have been employed for 12 consecutive months, your employer is obliged to re-employ you. Some employers, such as those in the construction industry, may be exempt. This obligation lasts up to two years after your injury but will end if you refuse an acceptable offer of re-employment. If you can do the essential duties of your pre-injury job, you are entitled to be offered: the same job upon returning to work. a comparable position, if your position is not available. suitable work, if there is no comparable position available. positions more like your pre-injury job as they become available. If you cannot do the essential duties of your pre-injury job, but you are able to do other work safely, you are entitled to be offered the first suitable position available, and positions more suited to your abilities as your recovery progresses. The WCB can help with workplace modifications that allow you to return to work. Some funding may be provided for these modifications. In addition to health and financial benefits, some other programs are designed to help you return to work in a safe and timely manner, and you can read more about these programs later in this booklet. 8 A Guide to Your Workers Compensation Insurance 11 Earnings replacement benefits In more serious workplace injuries, you may not be able to return to your regular job right away. This can create a financial impact for you. The WCB is here to provide support during this time through financial compensation. Temporary earnings replacement benefits Most injuries don t entirely prohibit you from working. But, you may be working at a different job, or for fewer hours per week during your transition back to your regular job. Work is an important factor in recovery. Earnings replacement benefits are based on your earnings loss the difference in your income before your injury, and after your injury. In more than 90 per cent of cases, when you have an injury at work, you will return to work at your pre-injury earnings. As you recover, you will receive Temporary Earnings Replacement Benefits (TERB). These benefits are usually paid every two weeks at the following rates for as long as you are unable to return to your regular job. The calculation works like this: 75% of your net earnings loss for up to 26 weeks after your injury occurs After 26 weeks the TERB increases to 85% of your net earnings loss There is a waiting period before you can begin to receive earning-loss benefits from the WCB. This period is twofifths (2/5) of your normal work week. The amount you would have earned during this period is taken off the first compensation cheque. For example, if you usually work five days a week you would have two days worth of your net weekly benefit deducted from your first cheque (2/5 x 5 days). If your loss of earnings is greater than 5 weeks, the deducted amount is reimbursed. A Guide to Your Workers Compensation Insurance 9 12 Long-term benefits In the vast majority of workplace injuries, there is either no time loss at all, or the worker returns to work within a few weeks at most. In some cases, the situation is more serious, and the impact of injury is more severe. There are two types of long-term benefits if the impact of your workplace injury is permanent. 1. Permanent Impairment Benefit (PIB) 2. Extended Earnings Replacement Benefit (EERB) Permanent impairment benefit (PIB) A permanent impairment benefit (PIB) compensates for permanent impairment due to a workplace injury. Eligibility for a PIB is determined by a review of your medical information and a medical assessment performed by an accredited WCB Medical Advisor. The assessment allows your case worker to set a Permanent Impairment (PI) rate. The PI is used to calculate the amount of your benefit. Your Permanent Impairment Benefit is calculated as follows: PIB = (PI x 30%) x (85% x net average weekly earnings) After 16 months, if you have medical information that shows a change in your condition, another medical assessment may be conducted. If this assessment results in a change in your PI, then your benefit amount would also change. Extended earnings replacement benefit (EERB) If your injury is so severe that you are unable to return to work at your pre-injury earnings, and there is medical evidence supporting a permanent impairment, you may be eligible to receive Extended Earnings Replacement Benefits (EERB). Extended Earnings Replacement Benefits (EERB) are paid monthly, in most cases, to replace a permanent loss of earnings but only if your lost earnings are greater than the amount of your Permanent Impairment Benefit. 10 A Guide to Your Workers Compensation Insurance 13 The EERB compensates an injured worker for a permanent loss of earnings, and is based on the difference between the worker s earnings before the injury and their earnings, or ability to earn, after the injury. This benefit is calculated at 75% of your net earnings loss during the first 26 weeks after your injury or illness and 85% of your net earnings loss after 26 weeks. This may be payable to age 65, pending scheduled reviews. When you reach the age of 65 this benefit is replaced by an annuity. As soon as you start receiving the Extended Earnings Replacement Benefit, we begin setting aside an additional 5% of your total benefits to replace lost retirement income. It s important to note that all benefits are paid based on a maximum amount set according to the Average Industrial Wage, which may change from one year to the next. Survivor benefits In the very tragic event a worker dies from a workplace injury, survivor benefits to the spouse and/or dependants are provided. The deceased s spouse and dependants may be entitled to various benefits. A one-time lump-sum benefit of $15,000 Funeral expenses up to $5,000 Survivor benefits for spouses and dependent children Benefits for other dependents, depending on the situation Survivor benefits are also only payable until age 65 then an annuity is payable. To learn more about survivor benefits, please contact us. Please note: Claims made before 1996 are based on the Workers Compensation Act, Regulations and Policy Manual in effect at that time. These documents have changed since As a result, there are differences in the types of benefits, benefit amounts and services for workers injured before and after A Guide to Your Workers Compensation Insurance 11 14 Other services and programs Employment incentive program Depending on the nature of your injury, you may not be able to return to your original job. To create opportunities for you, the WCB offers employers incentives to hire injured workers through our Employment Incentive Program. Employers benefit from hiring a skilled worker, and workers benefit by getting back on the job proven as an important factor in recovery. Vocational rehabilitation services Workers receiving Permanent Impairment Benefits who are unable to return to their pre-injury position due to their injury may be considered for Vocational Rehabilitation Services. Vocational rehabilitation involves assessing your skills and abilities and matching them to a modified set of job tasks at work, or to a new job with another employer. It may also involve skills development and job search assistance. We will work with you to find the right solution that fits your situation. On-the-job training If you are unable to return to the job you held prior to your injury, the WCB can help you obtain job experience. Our goal is to help you get back to work at a job with the equivalent salary as your pre-injury job. The On-the-Job Training Program provides you with experience at a new job, which will help you find employment. Your wages are subsidized during your work term. For more information on any of these programs, please contact your case worker. You can also find more information about returning to work at our website, wcb.ns.ca. 12 A Guide to Your Workers Compensation Insurance 15 What is workers compensation insurance? Workers compensation insurance protects you in the event of a workplace injury. Employers in covered industries pay a premium, at a rate based upon the costs of workplace injury in their industries and in their individual workplace. They pay a certain amount per $100 of payroll. In some industries, they also pay for a safety association to help promote workplace safety. When someone is hurt on the job, the WCB pays for costs related to that injury. No tax dollars are used to cover the cost of workers compensation. Employers are prohibited from collecting WCB cost from workers. Details around who is covered, how benefits work, and other details are set out in the Workers Compensation Act and Workers Compensation General Regulations. Who is covered? Some industries require WCB coverage, and others do not. In covered industries, workplaces are required to have workers compensation insurance if they employ three or more workers at the same time. For some workplaces coverage is not required either because their industry is not mandatory under the Workers Compensation Act or because they employ fewer than three workers. Banking is an example of an industry that does not require coverage. Although some workplaces are not required to have workers compensation insurance, they can purchase coverage voluntarily. When a workplace is registered with the WCB, everyone working there is covered under the Act. Full-time, parttime, casual/seasonal workers, workers hired through a Human Resources and Skills Development Canada grant, and subcontractors without their own coverage are all covered. This includes officers of corporations, as long as they are salaried employees of the business (receiving a T4). A Guide to Your Workers Compensation Insurance 13 16 Differences for self-employed and family members Employers who are self-employed or in a partnership are not required to have coverage for themselves, but they must provide coverage for their workers if there are at least three workers and the business is in a mandatory industry. The exception to this coverage is for family members living in the household of the sole proprietor, partners, active officers or directors of a limited company. These family members are counted as workers, although coverage is not mandatory for them. They are also not covered under the regular coverage. However, voluntary coverage is available. A safe workplace is your right. And your responsibility. As a worker, you have the right to a safe workplace. But you also need to take responsibility for your own safety and those around you. Under the Occupational Health and Safety Act, you are responsible for: Protecting your own health and safety, as well as that of your co-workers and others near your workplace. Cooperating with your employer and co-workers regarding safety. Using protective devices, equipment and clothing. Consulting with your Occupational Health and Safety Committee or representative, and complying with the Occupational Health and Safety Act and regulations. Notifying your employer of any hazard or injury as soon as possible. Under the same law, you have the following rights: The Right to Know You are entitled to information on issues that affect your health and safety or that of another person in your workplace. The Right to Refuse You have the right to refuse unsafe or unhealthy work. The Right to Participate You can participate on Occupational Health and Safety Committees or be a Safety Representative, report unsafe conditions, and voice concerns or opinions on any issue that affects your health and safety, or that of your workplace. 14 A Guide to Your Workers Compensation Insurance 17 Frequently asked questions Who pays for workers compensation? Employers pay for workers compensation insurance through premiums collected by the WCB. Workers do not pay for this insurance. No tax dollars are used to cover the cost of workers compensation. Employers are prohibited from collecting WCB cost from workers. If I develop an illness such as cancer or hearing loss as a result of my work, am I eligible for WCB coverage? Yes, if you have an occupational disease or illness that occurred as a result of your work you may be eligible for WCB benefits. If I m injured at work, can I sue my employer? No, not if your employer has WCB coverage. WCB coverage is no-fault insurance, which means you have access to compensation benefits if an injury occurs, and your employer is protected from legal action. What happens if a third party (someone other than my employer) may be responsible for my injury? You must decide, within 180 days of the injury, whether you will receive compensation from the WCB or take legal action against the third party on your own. If you decide to receive compensation, the WCB may sue the third party in order to recover the cost of your workplace injury. If you choose this option, you are entitled to the same benefits and services as those available to other injured workers during the WCB s legal action. Can I appeal a claim decision? Yes. If you disagree with a claim decision after discussing it with your case worker, you may file an appeal within 30 days of receiving a written decision. It s important to note that the appeal process is not intended as a second look at the entire claim. The process exists to review specific errors or oversights. It is important that appeals be as specific as possible. A Guide to Your Workers Compensation Insurance 15 18 More information about appeals may be found in the brochure When you have questions about your decision: a guide to the WCB appeals process which is available on our website (wcb.ns.ca, under Brochures & Publications) or by calling us directly at or After a claim is closed, can it be re-opened? Yes. If a healed injury flares up again, or turns out to be more serious than was originally thought, the claim may be reviewed. Any new medical information will be considered, and then, depending on the type of benefit requested, the claim could be re-opened. Can a worker receive compensation from more than one claim? Yes. The maximum compensation allowed is 85% of the worker s net earnings. If compensation from previous claims and compensation from the current claim total more than the 85% maximum, the benefits paid on the current claim are reduced accordingly. While I m receiving WCB benefits, do I continue to contribute to CPP, EI, pension, etc.? No, and that may impact benefits you may be entitled to in the future. Are my benefits taxable? No, but you do have to report your benefits to the Canada Revenue Agency for tax credits. A T5007 slip will be issued by the WCB early each taxation year. Are my benefits adjusted for the cost of living? Yes. At the beginning of each year, long-term benefits, some short-term benefits and some survivor benefits are adjusted by half of the percentage change in the Consumer Price Index in Nova Scotia for the preceding year. 16 A Guide to Your Workers Compensation Insurance 19 What about the cost of traveling to my WCB appointments? If the WCB requests that you travel for treatment, we may cover travel expenses. In some cases, workers may be entitled to travel expenses for medical appointments, such as chiropractic treatment or physiotherapy. Some travel expenses such as meals and taxis require approval in advance. Contact your case worker for details. Travel expense forms are available at wcb.ns.ca. Can someone help me during meetings and discussions related to my claim? Yes, anyone can help you with any part of the process presenting information, filing an appeal, etc. Can my spouse or family member speak on my behalf? Yes, a third party can speak on your behalf. However, to ensure your privacy, you must provide the WCB with written authorization in order for us to release any information to them. Can I drop in to see my case worker at any time? No. To ensure you receive the best service possible, we ask that you contact your case worker in advance to schedule an appointment. Where can I find more information about filing a claim, and the WCB s process for reviewing and accepting claims? For information about the WCB s claims process, visit wcb.ns.ca. The information included in this brochure adheres to the WCB s Corporate Information Protection Policy. Details about the policy can be found at wcb.ns.ca. A Guide to Your Workers Compensation Insurance 17 WORKPLACE INJURY INSURANCE: Worker s Handbook WORKPLACE INJURY INSURANCE: Worker s Handbook A GUIDE TO YOUR WORKERS COMPENSATION INSURANCE The following information is provided as a basic guide to your Workers Compensation Insurance. For more complete An Employer s Guide. Direct Access to Early Assessment of Sprains and Strains at Work An Employer s Guide Direct Access to Early Assessment of Sprains and Strains at Work An Employer s Guide to Direct Access Early Assessment of Sprains and Strains at Work Nova Scotians safe and secure from Direct Access to Physiotherapy Direct Access to Physiotherapy An Employer s Guide to Early Assessment of Sprains and Strains at Work An Employer s Guide to Early Assessment of Sprains and Strains at Work C Nova Scotians safe and secure InformatIon for Workers InformatIon for Workers InformatIon for Workers Employers, workers, care providers and the WCB must work together to prevent work injuries and, when injuries happen, get injured workers back to work as Information for Workers. Information for Workers Information for Workers Information for Workers Revised March 2015 Contents Overview... 2 Workplace Injuries... 2 Worker Responsibilities... 2 Employer Responsibilities... 4 WCB Responsibilities... 4 Returning WORKERS GUIDE YUKON WORKERS COMPENSATION HEALTH AND SAFETY BOARD. working together WITH YUKON WORKERS AND EMPLOYERS WORKERS GUIDE YUKON WORKERS COMPENSATION HEALTH AND SAFETY BOARD working together WITH YUKON WORKERS AND EMPLOYERS workers compensation WORKERS COMPENSATION Workers compensation is an employer-funded insurance Injured Workers Handbook Injured Workers Handbook The Commission is responsible for keeping your personal information confidential and secure, and we take this responsibility very seriously. We collect, use and disclose only information Benefits and Services a handbook for workers Workers Compensation Board of B.C. If you have difficulty reading English and have questions about your WorkSafeBC (Workers Compensation Board) claim, we will Comparative Review of Workers Compensation Systems in Select Jurisdictions SASKATCHEWAN of Workers Compensation Systems in Select Jurisdictions JURISDICTION: SASKATCHEWAN ENVIRONMENT Population Size Labour Force Demographic and Economic Indicators 1,015,600 (1995, Stats Canada) 494,000 (1995, A guide for injured workers. Returning to work. April 2011 A guide for injured workers Returning to work April 2011 Contents 1. Getting back to work 1 Ideas to help you return to work 2 Staying positive 2 Your employer s legal obligations 3 Anti-discrimination InformatIon for employers InformatIon for Employers Employers, workers, care providers and the WCB must work together to prevent work injuries and, when injuries happen, get injured workers back to work VISION MISSION VALUES WORKERS RIGHTS. Eliminate workplace diseases and injuries. Worker s Handbook VISION Eliminate workplace diseases and injuries. MISSION In partnership with stakeholders, we ensure workplace safety, and care for workers. VALUES Respect We demonstrate care, compassion, About us. Your injured worker s recovery and return to work is a team effort. It involves you, your WorkSafe Agent, your worker and their doctor. Legal Services for Injured Workers Workers Advisers Program Table of Contents Introduction... 2 Responsibilities of the WCB... 3 Responsibilities of the Worker... 4 Responsibilities of the Employer... RETURN-TO-WORK. Getting Started RETURN-TO-WORK Getting Started CONTENTS 1. RETURN-TO-WORK: AN INTRODUCTION 3. WHY YOU NEED A RETURN-TO-WORK PROGRAM 4. STEP 1: SELECT A RETURN-TO-WORK COORDINATOR 7. STEP 2: CREATE A RETURN-TO-WORK POLICY Benefits Guide. Information for the Injured Worker Benefits Guide Information for the Injured Worker The purpose of this benefits guide is to help you learn what to expect if you ever need workers compensation benefits. Recovering from a work injury can Getting help after an injury Getting help after an injury For more information ACC information online www.acc.co.nz Claim information freephone 0800 101 996 We have interpreters who can help you talk to us. If you re injured, ACC PREVENTING WORKPLACE INJURIES. It Takes Leadership PREVENTING WORKPLACE INJURIES It Takes Leadership NOVA SCOTIANS SAFEAND SECURE FROM WORKPLACE INJURY SAFETY IS A LEADERSHIP COMMITMENT Our work at the WCB to prevent injuries and return people safely to North Carolina State Government North Carolina State Government W O R K E R S C O M P E N S A T I O N E M P L O Y E E H A N D B O O K PURPOSE The contents in this handbook are designed to provide employees of the State of North Carolina TO THE EMPLOYEE: Long Term Disability coverage (more often known as "LTD") provides you with an income if you are disabled for an extended period. HEALTHCARE BENEFIT TRUST TO THE EMPLOYEE: QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ABOUT YOUR LONG TERM DISABILITY COVERAGE For Claimants disabled on or after April 1, 2004 under the: Aboriginal Services Collective Agreement Information for Employers. Information for Workers Information for Employers Information for Workers Revised March, 2015 Contents Overview 2 Coverage 2 Registration 4 Renewal 5 Rates 5 Industry Classification 6 Experience Rating Program 6 Payment 7 Occupational Workers Compensation: Making a claim Workers Compensation: Making a claim What are workers compensation benefits? Workers compensation benefits are payments for injuries or diseases that are related to the work you were doing. Workers compensation Working for business. Getting to know ACC. An overview of ACC for employers and the self-employed Working for business Getting to know ACC An overview of ACC for employers and the self-employed ACC provides 24/7, no-fault personal injury cover for everyone in New Zealand. This includes a comprehensive Injury Report Instructions Injury Report Instructions The numbers refer to question numbers on the form that may require additional explanation. Worker Details 1 Have your work duties been modified? Your duties have been modified MOTOR VEHICLE COLLISION SUMMARY ADVICE FORM MOTOR VEHICLE COLLISION SUMMARY ADVICE FORM Form 1.03 September 9, 2015 TO: (Name) (Address) FROM: KUBITZ & COMPANY Lawyers 1716 10 th Avenue S.W. Calgary, Alberta T3C 0J8 (City, Province, Postal Code) A guide for injured workers. Introducing WorkSafe A guide for injured workers Introducing WorkSafe September July 2013 2011 Contents 1. About us 1 2. Weekly payments (income entitlements) 2 3. Services to help you get better 4 4. Getting back to work Form 1.03 July 9, 2014 MOTOR VEHICLE COLLISION SUMMARY ADVICE FORM TO: (Name) (Address) FROM: KUBITZ & COMPANY Lawyers 1716 10 th Avenue S.W. Calgary, Alberta T3C 0J8 (City, Province, Postal Code) Home Member Handbook. Regina Civic Employees Long Term Disability Plan Member Handbook Regina Civic Employees Long Term Disability Plan Table of Contents About the Plan.. Eligibility and Enrollment.... Contributions Definition of Disability.. Applying for Benefits... Qualifying North Carolina State Government WORKERS COMPENSATION EMPLOYEE HANDBOOK North Carolina State Government WORKERS COMPENSATION EMPLOYEE HANDBOOK November 2015 PURPOSE The contents in this handbook are designed to provide employees of the State of North Carolina with an understanding What is Workers Compensation? Who Administers the Workers Compensation Program and Related Responsibilities? Who is Eligible for Workers Compensation? What Coverage is Provided? What is a Compensable Injury? Idaho Workers Compensation Facts for Injured Workers Workers' Compensation Benefits How to Obtain Them Your Rights and Responsibilities Additional information is available online at: What Happens After I Report the Injury? Introduction The Iowa Workers Compensation Act provides the only legal remedy against their employer for workers who are injured on the job. Workers Compensation law can be very technical. The law is administered Guide to. For Connecticut Private Sector Employees Guide to Workers Compensation For Connecticut Private Sector Employees NEW ENGLAND HEALTH CARE EMPLOYEES UNION DISTRICT 1199, SEIU 77 Huyshope Avenue, Hartford, CT 06106 860-549-1199 September 2009 Workers Comparative Review of Workers Compensation Systems in Select Jurisdictions PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND of Workers Compensation Systems in Select Jurisdictions JURISDICTION: PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND ENVIRONMENT Population Size Labour Force Demographic and Economic Indicators 136,100 (1995, Stats Canada) 69,000 Rights & Obligations under the Nebraska Workers Compensation Law Nebraska Workers Compensation Court Information Sheet: Rights & Obligations under the Nebraska Workers Compensation Law NEBRASKA WORKERS COMPENSATION COURT OFFICIAL SEAL What is workers compensation? Workers Utah Labor Commission Industrial Accidents Division. Employers Guide to. Workers Compensation 2015 2016 Utah Labor Commission Industrial Accidents Division E m p l o y e r s G u i d e Employers Guide to Workers Compensation Utah Labor Commission Industrial Accidents Division Employers Guide to SOUTH CAROLINA BAR. Workers Compensation and the Law SOUTH CAROLINA BAR Workers Compensation and the Law WORKERS COMPENSATION The South Carolina Workers Compensation Act provides a system for workers injured on the on the job to receive medical care and POLICY: 04-05 PART I Chapter: BENEFITS Subject: RETURN-TO-WORK SERVICES Authorization: BoD Resolution 2001/07/38 August 21, 2001 REFERENCE: Workers Compensation Act, RSA 2000, Sections 1(1)(f), 54, 56, 63, 89, and 137.1 POLICY: When a work-related injury results in compensable work restrictions that impair a worker s employability Long-Term Disability A GUIDE TO YOUR INSURANCE CLAIM Long-Term Disability A GUIDE TO YOUR INSURANCE CLAIM CANTINI LAW GROUP ATLANTIC CANADA S INJURY LAWYERS Table of contents 3 Background information about LTD insurance What is LTD insurance? How is LTD Revised May 2015. What Is Workers Compensation? This pamphlet provides an overview of the workers compensation system in the State of New Hampshire, including what is covered by workers compensation, what benefits are available, and what you should WORKERS COMPENSATION, ASSAULT LEAVE, DISABILITY LEAVE BENEFITS FOR MEMBERS OF THE Chicago Teachers Union 111 East Wacker Drive, Suite 2600, Chicago, Illinois 60601 312-861-1800; fax, 312-861-3009 understanding your workplace personal injury insurance policy A guide to your policy cover and conditions understanding your workplace personal injury insurance policy A guide to your policy cover and conditions WPIIPG September 2013 contents About WorkCover Queensland 3 About your workplace personal injury Voluntary Short-Term Disability Insurance Voluntary Short-Term Disability Insurance 817763 a 06/12 Developed for the Employees of Marion County - Oregon Protecting Your Family Securing Your Future As long as you've got your health. 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A personal Information for the New Claimant WORKER S COMPENSATION Information for the New Claimant WORKER S COMPENSATION Published by: Worker s Compensation and Human Resources University of Wisconsin Milwaukee P.O.BOX 413 Milwaukee, WI 53144-0413 Daim ntawv no muaj Comparative Analysis of Workers Compensation Systems in Select Jurisdictions Comparative Analysis of Workers Compensation Systems in Select Jurisdictions JURISDICTION: MANITOBA ENVIRONMENT Population Size Labour Force Demographic and Economic Indicators 1,144,000 (1996 Stats Canada) Ontario Car Accident Insurance Ontario Car Accident Insurance Car Accident Insurance in Ontario I was injured in a car accident. What insurance is available to assist me as I recover? There are possibly two main sources of compensation Comparative Review of Workers' Compensation Systems in Select Jurisdictions of Workers' Compensation Systems in Select Jurisdictions JURISDICTION: WASHINGTON ENVIRONMENT Population Size 5.5 million in 1996. Labor Force 2.8 million in 1996. Demographic and Economic Indicators The Long Term Disability Insurance Benefits Guide THE STANDARD LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY OF NEW YORK Long Term Disability Insurance Benefits Guide For The Employees of The State University of New York Answers to your questions about coverage from The Standard UNDERSTANDING WORKERS COMPENSATION This brochure was prepared by the Washington State Association for Justice (WSAJ) as a guide to help the citizens of Washington State understand their rights. Established in 1953, WSAJ represents attorneys Employees. Table of Contents Table of Contents 1. Introduction 2 2. Recruitment 2 3. Pay and Leave Administration 5 3.1 Pay Administration 5 3.2 Leave Administration 7 4. Benefits 10 5. Employee Assistance Program 12 6. Conflict Resolution Short-Term Disability Insurance Short-Term Disability Insurance Developed for the class 1 Employees of Research Triangle Institute Protecting Your Family Securing Your Future As long as you've got your health. If you're physically healthy, CANADA PENSION PLAN October 2005 Disability Benefits ISPB 153-10-05E This booklet on Canada Pension Plan disability benefits contains general information only. When questions arise, the wording and provisions The ACCG Claims Office staff is here to help you. Please feel free to call us with your questions and concerns. 1 WELCOME This handbook contains information prepared by the Association County Commissioners of Georgia - Group Self-Insurance Workers Compensation Fund (ACCG - GSIWCF) to assist employees and management Canada Pension Plan. Canada Pension Plan Disability Benefits Canada Pension Plan Canada Pension Plan Disability Benefits Contents Introduction... 1 CPP disability... 2 Applying for CPP disability benefits... 4 Receiving CPP disability benefits... 7 Children s benefits... Workers' Compensation in Oklahoma Employee s Rights & Responsibilities Workers' Compensation in Oklahoma Employee s Rights & Responsibilities Workers Compensation Court Counselor Program 1915 N. Stiles Avenue, Oklahoma City, OK 73105 210 Kerr State Office Bldg., 440 S. Houston, Workers' Compensation in Oklahoma Employee s Rights & Responsibilities The information provided in this pamphlet is general in nature and for informational purposes only. It is not intended to be a legal Table of Contents. A Message From Attorney Edgar Snyder 1. Eligibility for Workers Compensation 3. Types of Workers Compensation Claims 5 Table of Contents A Message From Attorney Edgar Snyder 1 Eligibility for Workers Compensation 3 Types of Workers Compensation Claims 5 Workers Compensation Benefits Payments 9 The Hearing Process 13 The WORKERS COMPENSATION: A Guide for New Brunswick Workers WORKERS COMPENSATION: A Guide for New Brunswick Workers Reprinted October 2014 DISCLAIMER New Brunswick law protects employers and workers rights under four pieces of legislation: the Occupational Health Workers' Compensation Act, 1981 (as amended), Sections 1(1)(d), 49,51,57, and 83 Benefits Handbook Date January 1, 2016. Basic Long Term Disability Marsh & McLennan Companies Date January 1, 2016 Marsh & McLennan Companies This Plan provides you with income in case you can t work for an extended period of time because of an injury or illness. Benefits under Marsh & McLennan Discover who can help you pay bills and how to appeal for more resources. CHAPTER 8 Paying the Bills In this chapter, you will: Discover who can help you pay bills and how to appeal for more resources. Find out about the different possibilities for managing the survivor s finances. YOUR WORKERS COMPENSATION BENEFITS YOUR WORKERS COMPENSATION BENEFITS 1 I M INJURED. NOW WHAT? No one ever plans to get hurt on the job. But when an unfortunate incident occurs, Montana State Fund (MSF) and your employer want to make sure understanding your household workers insurance policy A guide to your policy cover and conditions HHWPG August 2014 contents About WorkCover Queensland 3 About your household workers insurance policy 3 Short-Term Disability Insurance 817763 a 06/12 Developed for the Employees of Lake County Board of County Commissioners Protecting Your Family Securing Your Future As long as you've got your health. If Contents. Union Representatives Workers Compensation Handbook Contents Introduction......................................................... 4 Union Representative s role........................................ 4 Workers Compensation a new approach................................ All About Workers Compensation A Guide for Employees All About Workers Compensation A Guide for Employees Page 1 of 23 Table of Contents Disclaimer 4 Introduction 4 Who is this publication for? 4 What does the Fleetmaster scheme cover? 4 About Fleetmaster: THE SUPERVISOR S ROLE: THE SUPERVISOR S ROLE: Workers Compensation Information for CSU, Los Angeles Supervisors Human Resources Management (HRM) Workers Compensation Program August 16, 2010 Table of Contents Introduction..3 Information for the New Claimant WORKER S COMPENSATION Published by: Employee Compensation and Benefits Services University of Wisconsin Madison 21 N Park Street, Suite 5101 Madison, WI 53715 Daim ntawv Facts & Tips about Long-term Disability (LTD) Facts & Tips about Long-term Disability (LTD) Revised June 2008 Please keep this document handy for reference It offers general information about LTD benefits under an insurance policy or contract. It Migrant Workers and WSIB Benefits Migrant Workers and WSIB Benefits CLEO Webinar September 21, 2015 Jessica Ponting OVERVIEW The basics of WSIB in Ontario Why differences in migration programs are relevant for WSIB How to best protect WHAT CAN I DO WHEN I HURT MYSELF AT WORK? WHAT CAN I DO WHEN I HURT MYSELF AT WORK? This booklet is to help you when you are injured on the job 1 Name of WSIB Representative: Date of Injury: Supervisor: Witnesses: What happened (date and time, Workers Compensation. Inside this Brief. Background Brief on. History in Oregon 1990 Reforms. 1995 Reforms. Management-Labor Advisory Committee Background Brief on September 2012 Inside this Brief History in Oregon 1990 Reforms 1995 Reforms Management-Labor Advisory Committee Claims Process Medical Service Providers Fatality Benefits Staff and Workers' Compensation in Oklahoma Employer s Rights & Responsibilities Workers' Compensation in Oklahoma Employer s Rights & Responsibilities The information provided in this pamphlet is general in nature and for informational purposes only. It is not intended to be a legal Workers' Compensation in Oklahoma Employer s Rights & Responsibilities Workers Compensation Court Counselor Program 1915 N. Stiles Avenue, Oklahoma City, OK 73105 210 Kerr State Office Bldg, 440 S. Houston, Vermont State Employee s Guide To Worker s Compensation And Injury Prevention Vermont State Employee s Guide To Worker s Compensation And Injury Prevention TABLE OF CONTENTS General Information 2 Claims Team 2 The First Twenty-One Days 3 Workplace Safety 4 Medical Benefits and Expenses (a) 7-48 Workers' Compensation A. Purpose 1. The purpose of the Virginia Workers' Compensation Act is to provide compensation to employees for the loss of their opportunity to engage in work when their EMPLOYEE FACTS IMPORTANT WORKERS COMPENSATION INFORMATION FOR FLORIDA S WORKERS EMPLOYEE FACTS IMPORTANT WORKERS COMPENSATION INFORMATION FOR FLORIDA S WORKERS Please visit our website at www.fldfs.com/wc where you will find extensive information such as publications, a number of Injury cover for self-employed people Working for business Injury cover for self-employed people ACC CoverPlus As soon as you start self-employment, ACC CoverPlus, our standard 24/7 no-fault personal injury cover automatically applies to you. Workplace rehabilitation providers and WorkCover Workplace rehabilitation providers and WorkCover What to expect from your workplace rehabilitation provider This guide aims to provide workers and employers with information regarding the role of WorkCover Workers Compensation Board of Nova Scotia. Issues Identification Paper Chronic Pain: Causal Connection to Original Compensable Injury Workers Compensation Board of Nova Scotia Issues Identification Paper Chronic Pain: Causal Connection to Original Compensable Injury Date: April 16, 2007 Table of Contents Introduction.2 Background.4 What Self-employed Persons Voluntary Accident Insurance PRODUCT DESCRIPTION Valid as of 1 January 2013 Self-employed Persons Voluntary Accident Insurance Low-cost cover for self-employed persons in case of accidents Given that self-employed persons and entrepreneurs A Guide to Industrial Insurance Benefits. For Employees of Self-insured Businesses A Guide to Industrial Insurance Benefits For Employees of Self-insured Businesses Contents Introduction. 1 What Is Industrial Insurance?... 2 What to Do If You Are Injured at Work. 3 Your Benefits.. 4 A Layman's Guide To ICBC Part 7 Benefits A Layman's Guide To ICBC Part 7 Benefits Prepared for MADD Revised January 2015 This guide was initially prepared in February, 2005 at the request of MADD to provide a layman's guide to ICBC No-fault/Part NOVA SCOTIA WORKERS COMPENSATION APPEALS TRIBUNAL Appellant: [X] (Deceased Worker) Participant entitled to respond to this appeal: The Workers Compensation Board of Nova Scotia (Board) APPEAL DECISION Worker' Compensation and Reemployment Rights Worker' Compensation and Reemployment Rights The Federal Employee's Compensation Act provides workers' compensation for employmentrelated injuries and occupational diseases. Benefits include wage replacement, Who will these reforms benefit? Anyone who has auto insurance in Nova Scotia and who has been involved in an automobile accident. Questions and Answers for Consumers Automobile Insurance Reform: Phase 2 General Questions about Phase 2 Reforms Why is the government so interested in reforming auto insurance? Auto insurance had not Working as a government employee in Sweden benefits and terms Working as a government employee in Sweden benefits and terms ÄÄÅÅ of employment In the service of citizens Pay Working hours Holiday Work leave Pay and other benefits during sick leave Work environment A Guide to Workers Compensation Benefits. For Employees of Self-Insured Businesses A Guide to Workers Compensation Benefits For Employees of Self-Insured Businesses Contents Introduction...1 What Is Workers Compensation Insurance?...2 What to Do if You Are Injured at Work...3 Your Benefits...4 Guide. to Recovery Under The Illinois Workers Compensation Act. 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Dusted Features Composers Who Matter: Andrew Hamilton In this new series, Dusted tracks down the most original and compelling young composers of classical music and attempts to explain what their music has to do with our world. Andrew Hamilton - "Music For People Who Lose People" Even to adventurous listeners, contemporary classical music can seem like a mysterious netherworld, full of cloistered academics writing inaccessible pieces using arcane processes. The truth, though, is that contemporary classical music has a lot to say about the world we live in. This is the first in a series of profiles of young composers who particularly have a lot to say. Andrew Hamilton is a young Irish composer whose fantastically weird music is earning plenty of attention throughout Europe, much of it positive, some of it, well... "Every time I have had a piece done [at Gaudeamus New Music Week in the Netherlands]," Hamilton writes, "I always have a group of angry young Italian composers following me around asking 'Why? Why have you done this?'" Their confusion is understandable, since Hamilton's music doesn't sit comfortably with most classical music or, for that matter, with music of any kind. It's incredibly repetitive, but it's not comforting--the materials are arranged in intentionally jagged, uneven patterns. It's (mostly) tonal, but it's not pretty. It's familiar, and yet it's disconcertingly strange. And most young composers who use as much repetition as Hamilton does come from the Minimalist tradition, but Hamilton doesn't. "...[T]he early Minimalist works of [Philip] Glass and [Steve] Reich had a massive influence on me, but I realized, as my teacher Louis Andriessen did much earlier, that, for cultural and psychological reasons, it would be false for me to use repetition in the same way they do or did. So I suppose I use a lot of repetition to create a state of unease, ambiguity, and sometimes joy, and also to laugh at the world." Hamilton's music presents simple, familiar materials � what sounds like a pop song fragment here, a calypso pattern there--and molds them into something new, by twisting them around in every possible direction, or by repeating them to the point of absurdity. A friend recently described the experience of listening to a piece of Hamilton's by saying he enjoyed it for a few minutes, then became anxious after it continued poking at the same jagged fragments for ten or fifteen more minutes, then began to enjoy it for its sheer audacity. My friend�s experience makes sense � upon first encounter with Hamilton�s music, the degree to which it flies in the face of most people�s ideas of good taste can be shocking. But, after a while, there comes a point at which the listener stops thinking, �Wow, that�s hard to listen to� and begins to think, �How long can he possibly keep this going?� It�s at that threshold that Hamilton�s music really begins to work its magic. �I know I often want to push an aspect in a piece to its limits,� Hamilton writes. The idea of a threshold might be linked to the desire I have to transform the... material into something beautiful � the point at which you forget the material and the larger issues and structure of the piece become clear.� What�s especially strange about the audacity of Hamilton�s music is the way that audacity is achieved. Unlike a lot of contemporary classical music, Hamilton�s isn�t atonal. Instead, he uses mostly consonant materials. His music doesn�t introduce itself with a barrage of dissonant chords; instead, he presents bits of material you feel like you�ve heard before, then repeats them like a tune you can�t get out of your head. The idea to write in this style came to Hamilton at a fairly early age. �There was a turning point when I wrote a piano quintet when I was 22. The very beginning of the piece was a repeated staccato E major chord with an added seventh. Hearing this small opening section gave me a weirdly ecstatic physical sensation and it was the first time I really liked what I had written so it was through this type of experience that I started writing consonant/tonal material,� he writes. �I also think I use these types of material as they are familiar objects, in a way comforting, so that it makes the play with structure more audible� I want the listener to be concentrating on this instead of wondering how a sound was produced by an instrument.� Many areas of modern life feature repetitions of the familiar, from pop songs to commercial jingles to political talking points, and it�s tempting to read Hamilton�s music as some sort of commentary on how it feels to hear something so many times that it becomes absurd. But Hamilton claims this isn�t intended. �[�]I do not write from an ironic standpoint,� he insists. �Of course, how others perceive the result is totally open and I am happy if the listener comes to their own conclusion as to what the material is saying. This would be my only conscious social or political motivation, to make listeners think for themselves, to encourage inquiry.� Hamilton adds that the repetitions in Samuel Beckett�s work and in the �circular� speech patterns heard in his mother�s hometown in the north of Ireland both influenced his work. Still, it�s hard to imagine how Hamilton�s music could exist without the disorienting, disjointed repetitions of television and radio and the internet. His music is the soundtrack to a world where everyone wants to sell you something. Tellingly, though, there�s no analogue in Hamilton�s music to the endless polls and focus groups that characterize advertising and political campaigns. Rather than organizing his music around predetermined patterns of repetitions, �[t]here is no complicated technique at all,� he says. �I simply use my ears. I listen to everything over and over again until it sounds, in my mind, right. Sometimes I will use localized patterns and work with some numbers to create imbalance, but the final decisions are always based on instinct... I am too controlling to let a system make decisions for me. I have to get my hands dirty.� This quality � this dirty-handedness � is finally the most attractive characteristic of Hamilton�s music, because it ensures that it�s more than a mirror to the world. It has something to do with the crushing cynicism of advertising and politics, but it�s not the drudgery those things are because his music is also so deft and funny. Music for People Who Lose People (MP3) must have been quite an endurance exercise for Ensemble Klang, but it need not be one for us. Much of the color in the piece comes from Hamilton�s amusing use of steel drum and trombone, and the incredibly assertive stuttering repetitions in the piece are only really interrupted twice, about halfway through and near the end, with series of mournful, Beethoven-style piano chords. In between, Music for People Who Lose People is startlingly strange, jagged and convincing.

Composite Spec'ing Thread: Composite Spec'ing Does anyone know a good introductory to intermediate-level source of information on how to choose particular composite materials (as in the specific brand and model of fabric, epoxy, etc) for specific applications? Hillsboro, Oregon / USA AviationSpruce or Wicke's? I am looking for stuff more technically oriented than what they have to offer or more so how to interpret things that are more technically oriented than what they have to offer since the decision is coming down not "Do I use Kevlar or E-Glass here?" but to "What grade/type/etc of carbon fiber do I want for this particular application?". I have a lot of the technical specs for things but I have little specific experience in these particular aspects (my area of knowledge is injury biomechanics, not materials science at this level). Steve - take the Sportair composite workshop at IUPUI (or Versailles or whatever they are calling it now, on the north side of the big airport) next time they have it I took it several years ago, it was taught by an engineer that worked for Rutan (cant remember his name off the top of my head) & Troy Grover from Danville / Avon helped out some, pretty good, I learned a lot & it convinced me I did NOT want to use fiberglass composite construction for the structure on my project... My project will look a lot like a Long EZ but it will be tube & fabric...... I took it several years ago, it was taught by an engineer that worked for Rutan (cant remember his name off the top of my head) & Troy Grover from Danville / Avon helped out some Ah....OK. I think I have met Troy before. pretty good, I learned a lot & it convinced me I did NOT want to use fiberglass composite construction for the structure on my project... Why is that? Granted, I want to stay away from the standard foam core composite technique that a lot of homebuilders use since it's not the best thing for occupant protection but I would be interested in hearing your reasoning for choosing a more traditional method of construction. My project will look a lot like a Long EZ but it will be tube & fabric... Very interesting. Mine will look like a traditional aircraft. After a conversation with Rutan, I decided to ditch the idea of a pusher configuration although I might come back to it in a later design just for the challenges involved. While i wanted to be a design engineer for Ford, I couldn't because 1) my grades weren't real great & 2)the year I graduated they laid off 6000 engineers So I went to work for ADM, got lots of training as a maintenance engineer & went on to do that as a consultant for a lot of similar companies. Foam core composite is easy to build in your garage, but it is a real pain to ever fix in the future. It is also pretty much impossible to determine if it was constructed properly without doing destructive tests. With Tube & fabric, I can design all the structural elements, then add all the controls BEFORE I cover it, makes it real easy to work on, plus the guy that taught the composite class told me tube & fabric was the lightest construction method out there. And if it ever gets screwed up. get out the carpenter's knife, cut off the fabric, fix it & re-cover it. Edit - plus I'm scared of fire & I know what a foam core does when it gets hot.... Well....two things: 1. Ever seen a Piper Cub burn? Fabric isn't exactly something I would want to be riding to the ground on with a fire on board. Then again, there's a reason why parachutes would work 2. It depends on what you're using for the core. There are core materials available that are pretty resistant to burning or melting. They aren't as inexpensive as the glorified Styrofoam a lot of folks use so they aren't common, but they are available if someone is building with safety in mind. Taking that into account with my design. Welcome to the wonderful world of building a fire suppression system into the cowling as well as the landing gear wells. Foam core composite is easy to build in your garage, but it is a real pain to ever fix in the future. Yeah, it might be useful for skin panels (which could be designed in such a way to be replaceable; such a design would also make other forms of maintenance as well as the later stages of construction easier) but not for anything structural. plus the guy that taught the composite class told me tube & fabric was the lightest construction method out there It is....but there are some trade-offs just as with any other method. Personally, I love Piper Cubs, Aeroncas, etc but at the same time, I think I'm better suited to something a little more sporty. That said, my next design will be an LSA. It'll be a good way to figure out how scale down the things developed from a safety aspect for the first design to something to help protect a broader audience. 1. Ever seen a Piper Cub burn? Fabric isn't exactly something I would want to be riding to the ground on with a fire on board. Fabric coatings and finishes have come along way since the days of Grade A cotton and nitrate dope. I know but unless they've started making the stuff out of Nomex, P84 or something similar, I'm still not fond of the idea. Actually, regardless, if I were in something small enough to be made out of fabric the first sign of a serious fire, I'm bailing. There are three things that scare the crap out of me when it comes to flying: 1. Fire 2. Drowning after a ditching 3. In-flight breakup flyingriki Yeah, maybe Boeing should go back in time to caveman construction and use tube and fabric. I'll point out to them they are really off base with that composite stuff....... Maybe someone should tell Burt too? PS: foam core composite is the easiest structure out there to repair. Really easy.

Ebook: Detection and Prevention of Adverse Drug Events Studies in Health Technology and Informatics Régis Beuscart, Werner Hackl, Christian Nøhr 978-1-60750-043-8 (print) | 978-1-60750-455-9 (online) When someone enters hospital for examination or treatment, is given a doctor’s prescription, receives medication from a pharmacist or has his drugs administered by a nurse, he assumes that his health and welfare will benefit from this medical intervention. But the effectiveness of available therapies should also be viewed from the perspective of potentially negative consequences: adverse drug events (ADE). ADEs endanger patients’ safety and increase hospital costs, making reduction of preventable ADEs a crucial and challenging Public Health issue. This book presents papers from the workshop “Patient Safety through Intelligent Procedures in medication” focusing on the following topics: the identification of ADE and medication errors in hospital settings; the role of human and organisational factors on ADE and medication errors; Information and Communication Technologies to prevent or correct ADEs and medication errors. The papers in this book are the work of active scientific experts in the field and confront ideas and experiences arising worldwide, and in particular from several EU projects directed at resolving ADE problems. Here is an opportunity to find common ways for solving shared difficulties and make improvements happen. Along with the continuously increasing sophistication and refinement of diagnostic procedures and therapeutic processes, the risk of Adverse Events occurring during a patient's hospitalization is also steadily rising up. Most of the modern medications have a powerful therapeutic impact balanced by equally threatening poisonous potential side effects. Thus the risk of Adverse Drug Events (ADE) is rocketing, partly due to medication errors. That is why Quality of Care and Patient Safety have become a general concern shared by a large community of healthcare professionals and patients. Different strategies have been tried for tracking ADEs: reporting systems have proven to be useful but they are not exhaustive; records and chart reviews are effective in the detection of ADEs and for an evaluation of their prevalence, but these methods are time-consuming and their reproducibility is questionable. Automatic detection of ADE is still in the research domain. Nevertheless, at the bottom line, all the teams in the world are facing identical problems: how to reliably detect ADEs, how to efficiently prevent them. War stories about ADEs are all alike, whatever the country and whatever the setting: hemorrhage following an inattentive prescription of NSAID on a bleeding ulcer, renal insufficiency after heparin treatment, reactions to antibiotics and antiviral drugs, etc. Properly managing the modern therapeutic drugs requires mastering a large quantity of information and a high level of complex knowledge, both probably exceeding human capacities. Therefore Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are called in for additional help to access medical records, manage the data, enhance the knowledge, perform statistical analyses, and provide Decision Support. But despite this powerful technology support many problems remain. The characteristics of the Electronic Health Records (EHR) vary according to the suppliers, the hospitals, the countries. Coding systems can be different. Norms and standards vary from place to place. The extraction and exploitation of medical data from different sources then appear as a real challenge and cannot be solved without the definition of common data models, standard references, classifications and taxonomies. The classification of drugs is in itself a tower of Babel: brand names, commercial names, ATC codes, various dosages, regimens, routes of administration, pharmacological effects, potential ADE or allergies, etc. The knowledge is mastered by a limited community of experts while the complexity of the interactions and the frequency of the side effects would require that this knowledge be shared by a large number of health-care professionals and by the patients themselves. Moreover, hospitals are much more than a mere technological setting: they are organized by administrative managers, they are ruled by physicians and nurses who are not robots, they treat citizens unwillingly playing the patient role. That is why organizational and human factors must be carefully studied as they can be at the origin or contribute to the occurrence of an ADE. The new possibilities offered by statistical methods, data mining applications able to exploit large amount of records open a new era in the identification of abnormal hospitalization stays and detection of potential ADEs. Exploitation and screening of free-text documents such as letters and reports are now possible by means of semantic mining applications, providing new sources of patient information. When looking at the papers gathered in this book, it appears that the approaches used to identify and prevent ADE are diverse but confronted to similar problems of codification, data exploitation, statistical analysis, etc. The ICT bring in powerful resources but they have to be driven by clear scientific objectives. This workshop gathers knowledgeable and active persons in the domain, who are currently working at solving the problems. This is the opportunity to confront the ideas and the experiences stemming from various continents, and particularly from several EU projects financed to contribute to the resolution of the ADE problem. It is the occasion to find common ways for solving some of the difficulties everyone is sharing and make progress happen. Many thanks to Prof. David Bates, Prof. Johanna Westbrook for their participation and their keynotes; to Prof. Peter Elkin and Prof. André Kushniruk for their support and their clarifying interventions; to all the participants to the workshop; and to the European Commission which, by funding European Projects on this topics, allowed the organization of this workshop and the edition of this book. Part A. Keynotes on Patient Safety Measuring Patient Safety: the Need for Prospective Detection of Adverse Events David W. Bates 10.3233/978-1-60750-043-8-3 The Impact of Commercial Electronic Medication Management Systems on Errors and Clinicians' Work in Hospitals Johanna I. Westbrook $35.00 / €27.50 / £22.00 Patient Safety Through Intelligent Procedures in Medication: The PSIP Project Régis Beuscart, Peter McNair, Jytte Brender The European project Patient Safety through Intelligent Procedures in medication (PSIP) aims at preventing medical errors. The objective are: (1) to facilitate the systematic production of epidemiological knowledge on Adverse Drug Events (ADE) and (2) to improve the entire medication cycle in a hospital environment. The first sub-objective is to produce knowledge on ADE: to know, as exactly as possible, per hospital, per medical department, their number, type, consequences and causes, including human factors. Data Mining of structured hospital data bases, and semantic mining of free-texts will provide a list of observed ADE, with frequencies and probabilities, thus giving a better understanding of potential risks. The second sub-objective is to develop innovative knowledge based on the mining results and to deliver professionals and patients contextualized alerts and recommendations fitting the local risk parameters. This knowledge will be implemented in a PSIP-Platform independent of existing ICT applications. Human Factors Engineering for Computer-Supported Identification and Prevention of Adverse Drug Events Marie-Catherine Beuscart-Zéphir, Christian Nøhr 10.3233/978-1-60750-043-8-14 This paper addresses the question of the integration of Human Factors (HF) methods and models within projects aiming at (semi-) automatically identifying and preventing Adverse Drug Events (ADE). While more traditional methods such as voluntary reporting systems of medication errors tend to focus on HF causes of preventable ADEs, computer-based screening and mining methods tend to rely on a medical model of ADEs. As a consequence, HF methods and concepts are rarely considered in those projects. The paper describes the way HF methods have been incorporated in the PSIP (Patient Safety through Intelligent Procedures in medication) project lifecycle. It provides some examples of the results obtained and demonstrates their relevance to improve the entire detection and prevention process. Decision Support to Avoid Medication Errors – How Far Have We Come in Denmark and What Are the Present Challenges Annemarie Hellebek, Christiana Marinakis The number of medication errors reported to The Danish National Board of Health in Denmark exceeds 5000 per year. It is well known that computerized physician order entry (CPOE) with addition of decision support tools may reduce the frequency of medication errors. The primary scope of the work in Denmark has been to help health care professionals avoiding harmful errors. Using data primarily from The Danish National Board of Health, based on the reports of errors from Danish hospitals, and with our previous foundation in the international literature, we analyzed the errors which led to harmful conditions or death. In the process we developed a methodical consensus for identifying which medicines should have a warning attached, and we systematized the different kind of warnings. The following validation of the data resulted in a final list of 14 classes of drugs or drug substances, which all have been involved in serious medication errors. At present time there is a total of 136 different medicines with warnings found in the drug database for health professionals from Infomatum A/S (www.medicin.dk). In a parallel matter other decision support tools from Infomatum A/S Infomatum A/S is a company jointly owned by The Danish Drug Information and The Danish Medical Association. Infomatum A/S publishes drug information for health professionals and the public. are available or in progress e.g. ensuring use of correct dosage based on normal range, information about drugs used during pregnancy, etc. A major challenge when implementing decision support for medication processes has been to ensure useful coding of the medicines, A/S there does not exist one unique identification number for each drug substance. The ReMINE project aims at building a high performance prediction, detection and monitoring platform for managing Risks against Patient Safety (RAPS). The project will contribute to the optimization of RAPS management process in a healthcare system through the development of a platform allowing the (semantically based) fast and secure extraction of RAPS-related data and their correlation across several domains. In this respect the REMINE platform will promote early RAPS detection and mitigation by supporting the process of RAPS management both when a RAPS is foreseen, and the objective is the determination of the best set of preventive actions; and when a RAPS is detected, and the objective is the determination of the best possible reaction, the reliable distribution of the related action list to all involved parties, and the monitoring of the reaction effectiveness. These capabilities will be achieved by means of the establishment of an associated methodology and a framework/platform for integrated RAPS prediction/detection, analysis and mitigation. The overall platform structure assumes the presence of an “info-broker patient safety framework” connected with the Hospital Information System, which will support the process of collecting, aggregating, mining and assessing related data, distributing alerts, and suggesting actions to mitigate (or avoid) RAPS effects or occurrence. The underlying ontological system will support the semantic correlation of data with the hospital processes. The EU-ADR Project: Preliminary Results and Perspective Gianluca Trifiro, Annie Fourrier-Reglat, Miriam C.J.M. Sturkenboom, Carlos Díaz Acedo, Johan Van Der Lei The EU-ADR project aims to exploit different European electronic healthcare records (EHR) databases for drug safety signal detection. In this paper we describe the project framework and the preliminary results. Methods: As first step we created a ranked list of the events that are deemed to be important in pharmacovigilance as mining on all possible events was considered to unduly increase the number of spurious signals. All the drugs that are potentially associated to these events will be detected via data mining techniques. Data sources are eight 8 databases in four countries (Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom) that are virtually linked through harmonisation of input data followed by local elaboration of input data through custom-built software (Jerboa©). All the identified drug-event associations (signals) will be thereafter biologically substantiated and epidemiologically validated. To date, only Upper gastrointestinal bleeding (UGIB) event has been used to test the ability of the system in signal detection. Results: An initial ranked list comprising 23 adverse events was identified. The top-ranking events were: cutaneous bullous eruptions, acute renal failure, acute myocardial infarction, anaphylactic shock, and rhabdomyolysis. Regarding the UGIB test, a total of 48,016 first-ever episodes were identified. The age-standardized incidence rates of UGIB varied between 40-100/100,000 person-years depending on country and type of healthcare database. A statistically significant association between use of NSAIDs and UGIB was detected in all of the databases. Conclusion: a dynamic ranked list of 23 adverse drug events judged as important in pharmacovigilance was created to permit focused data mining. Preliminary results on the UGIB event detection demonstrate the feasibility of harmonizing various health care databases in different European countries through a distributed network approach. DebugIT: Building a European Distributed Clinical Data Mining Network to Foster the Fight Against Microbial Diseases Christian Lovis, Teodoro Douglas, Emilie Pasche, Patrick Ruch, Dirk Colaert, Karl Stroetmann The expansion of clinical information systems and the reduction in computing costs have led to an explosion of patient data available for reuse. However, this data is rarely combined and analyzed in an integrated manner. The DebugIT project is a large-scale integrating project funded within the 7th EU Framework Programme (FP7). The main objectives of the project are to build IT tools that should have significant impacts for the monitoring and the control of infectious diseases and antimicrobial resistances in Europe; this will be realized by building a technical and semantic infrastructure able to a) share heterogeneous clinical data sets from different hospitals in different countries, with different languages and legislations; b) analyze large amounts of this clinical data with advanced multi-modal data mining; c) apply the obtained knowledge for clinical decisions and outcome monitoring. The concepts and architecture underlying this project are discussed. Part B. Detection and Prevention of Adverse Drug Events Detection of Adverse Drug Events: Proposal of a Data Model Emmanuel Chazard, Béatrice Merlin, Grégoire Ficheur, Jean-Charles Sarfati, Régis Beuscart Our main objective is to detect adverse drug events (ADEs) in former hospital stays. As ADEs are rare, that supposes to screen thousands of electronic health records (EHRs). For that purpose, we need to define a data model that has two main objectives: (1) being able to describe hospital stays from various hospitals (2) being tuned so as to prepare the data mining process: as ADEs are not flagged in the datasets, the data model must be optimized for ADE detection. The article presents the phases of the design and the data model that results from this work. It is compatible with many hospitals. It deals with diagnoses, drug prescriptions, lab results and administrative information. It allows for data mining and ADE detection in EHRs. Detection of Adverse Drug Events Detection: Data Agregation and Data Mining Adverse drug events (ADEs) are a public health issue. The objective of this work is to data-mine electronic health records in order to automatically identify ADEs and generate alert rules to prevent those ADEs. The first step of data-mining is to transform native and complex data into a set of binary variables that can be used as causes and effects. The second step is to identify cause-toeffect relationships using statistical methods. After mining 10,500 hospitalizations from Denmark and France, we automatically obtain 250 rules, 75 have been validated till now. The article details the data aggregation and an example of decision tree that allows finding several rules in the field of vitamin K antagonists. Adrian Băceanu, Ionuţ Atasiei, Emmanuel Chazard, Nicolas Leroy An important part of adverse drug events (ADEs) detection is the validation of the clinical cases and the assessment of the decision rules to detect ADEs. For that purpose, a software called “Expert Explorer” has been designed by Ideea Advertising. Anonymized datasets have been extracted from hospitals into a common repository. The tool has 3 main features. (1) It can display hospital stays in a visual and comprehensive way (diagnoses, drugs, lab results, etc.) using tables and pretty charts. (2) It allows designing and executing dashboards in order to generate knowledge about ADEs. (3) It finally allows uploading decision rules obtained from data mining. Experts can then review the rules, the hospital stays that match the rules, and finally give their advice thanks to specialized forms. Then the rules can be validated, invalidated, or improved (knowledge elicitation phase). Application of the Apriori Algorithm for Adverse Drug Reaction Detection M.H. Kuo, A.W. Kushniruk, E.M. Borycki, D. Greig The objective of this research is to assess the suitability of the Apriori association analysis algorithm for the detection of adverse drug reactions (ADR) in health care data. The Apriori algorithm is used to perform association analysis on the characteristics of patients, the drugs they are taking, their primary diagnosis, co-morbid conditions, and the ADRs or adverse events (AE) they experience. This analysis produces association rules that indicate what combinations of medications and patient characteristics lead to ADRs. A simple data set is used to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the algorithm. Adverse Drug Events Prevention Rules: Multi-site Evaluation of Rules from Various Sources Emmanuel Chazard, Grégoire Ficheur, Béatrice Merlin, Elisabeth Serrot, Régis Beuscart 10.3233/978-1-60750-043-8-102 Adverse drug events are a public health issue (98,000 deaths in the USA every year). Some computerized physician order entry (CPOEs) coupled with clinical decision support systems (CDSS) allow to prevent ADEs thanks to decision rules. Those rules can come from many sources: academic knowledge, record reviews, and data mining. Whatever their origin, the rules may induce too numerous alerts of poor accuracy when identically applied in different places. In this work we formalized rules from various sources in XML and enforced their execution on several medical departments to evaluate their local confidence. The article details the process and shows examples of evaluated rules from various sources. Several needs are enlightened to improve confidences: segmentation, contextualization, and evaluation of the rules over time. Automatic Indexing in a Drug Information Portal Saoussen Sakji, Catherine Letord, Badisse Dahamna, Ivan Kergourlay, Suzanne Pereira, Michel Joubert, Stéfan Darmoni Objective: The objective of this work is to create a bilingual (French/English) Drug Information Portal (DIP), in a multi-terminological context and to emphasize its exploitation by an ATC automatic indexing allowing having more pertinent information about substances, organs or systems on which drugs act and their therapeutic and chemical characteristics. Methods: The development of the DIP was based on the CISMeF portal, which catalogues and indexes the most important and quality-controlled sources of institutional health information in French. DIP has created specific functionalities and uses specific drugs terminologies such as the ATC classification which used to automatic index the DIP resources. Results: DIP is the result of collaboration between the CISMeF team and the VIDAL Company, specialized in drug information. DIP is conceived to facilitate the user information retrieval. The ATC automatic indexing provided relevant results in 76% of cases. Conclusion: Using multi-terminological context and in the framework of the drug field, indexing drugs with the appropriate codes or/and terms revealed to be very important to have the appropriate information storage and retrieval. The main challenge in the coming year is to increase the accuracy of the approach. Implementation of SNOMED CT to the Medicines Database of a General Hospital A concept-based terminology that covers all features of healthcare is essential for the development of an Electronic Health Record (EHR). Since a significant percentage of the EHR can be drug related information, we decided to implement the controlled drug terminology provided by SNOMED CT to achieve the potential benefit to promote Patient Safety that a fully functional pharmacy system can offer. One of the expected advantages of our Project is to establish a bridge between reference terminology and the drug knowledge databases. There is also an economic advantage of implementing a “clinical drug product”, the one defined by the drug name, its strength and dose form, instead of the manufactured drug product. The Pharmacy economic management of stocks and response to the offers from the pharmaceutical companies is another expected asset of the Project. This Project is intended as well to give support to a more widespread objective of interoperability with the Primary Care systems. A Knowledge Engineering Framework towards Clinical Support for Adverse Drug Event Prevention: The PSIP Approach Vassilis Koutkias, George Stalidis, Ioanna Chouvarda, Katerina Lazou, Vassilis Kilintzis, Nicos Maglaveras Adverse Drug Events (ADEs) are currently considered as a major public health issue, endangering patients' safety and causing significant healthcare costs. Several research efforts are currently concentrating on the reduction of preventable ADEs by employing Information Technology (IT) solutions, which aim to provide healthcare professionals and patients with relevant knowledge and decision support tools. In this context, we present a knowledge engineering approach towards the construction of a Knowledge-based System (KBS) regarded as the core part of a CDSS (Clinical Decision Support System) for ADE prevention, all developed in the context of the EU-funded research project PSIP (Patient Safety through Intelligent Procedures in Medication). In the current paper, we present the knowledge sources considered in PSIP and the implications they pose to knowledge engineering, the methodological approach followed, as well as the components defining the knowledge engineering framework based on relevant state-of-the-art technologies and representation formalisms. Strategy for Implementation and First Results of Advanced Clinical Decision Support in Hospital Pharmacy Practice A.M.J.W. Scheepers-Hoeks, R.J.E. Grouls, C. Neef, H.H.M. Korsten Clinical decision support systems (CDSS) are the new generation clinical support tools that ‘make it easy to do it right’. Despite promising results, these systems are not common practice, although experts agree that the necessary revolution in health care will depend on its implementation. To accelerate adoption a strategy is handed for structured development and validation of CDSS' content (clinical rules). The first results show that the proposed strategy is easily applicable for creating specific and reliable rules, generating relevant recommendations. Inevitable Components of and Steps for ADE Management Systems: The Need for a Unified Ontological Framework (UOF) and a More Effective Collaboration in Medication Safety Esat N. Eryilmaz, Gül Dündar, Senem Özgür Sari In this article, we will try to address the most basic requirements for facilitating the knowledge management challenges through the elaboration of medical documentation/ record keeping with several implications on patient safety/medication safety and research quality aspects, the main purpose being the simplification of utilizing the usable outputs of ontology development efforts. This simplification is of vital importance from KM implementation in medical and healthcare domains. Because, as Ceusters et al [3] elaborate, reaching consensus on even the most basic concepts will become an intricate work in terms of the wide-scale implementation of ontology-based KM solutions in clinical practice and other healthcare related processes. EHR (Electronic Health Records) standards developed by various SDOs SDOs: Standards Development Organizations are not easy to implement in all circumstances. Any implementation effort, not complying with a UOF (Unified Ontological Framework), is likely to fail in terms of goal-oriented optimization and high quality safe medical practice. World- wide trend is to standardize medical documents focusing on the use of terminology systems covering care related processes. Computerised Physician Order Entry (CPOE) Anne Regitze Hartmann Hamilton, Jacob Anhøj, Annemarie Hellebek, Jonas Egebart, Brian Bjørn, Beth Lilja The purpose of this study is to examine how everyday use of the Computerised Physician Order Entry (CPOE) system in the Capital Region of Denmark has led to medication errors. The study is based on clinicians' reporting of patient safety incidents. It was found that the immediate causes of the patient safety incidents primarily relates to a) a mismatch between clinical work routines and the structure of the CPOE system, b) the complexity of the user interface, and c) lack of barriers against commonly occurring, severe errors in some areas of the CPOE system. The following was concluded: A well designed CPOE system should be intuitive, provide barriers against serious mistakes, and make the correct choice an easy one. Furthermore it was concluded that it is important that the CPOE system closely supports accepted clinical work routines and that risk assessment is performed prior to implementing new design or functionality. Part C. Human Factors and Adverse Drug Events CPOE, Alerts and Workflow: Taking Stock of Ten Years Research at Erasmus MC Ten years ago research of the impact of health information technology (HIT) on medical work practices started at Erasmus MC. The research is characterized by practice driven field research. From the beginning computerized physician order entry systems (CPOE) were a major topic. Research questions were how implementation of CPOE could be understood, how physicians were responding to reminders and alerts and how CPOE impacted professional workflow and collaboration. Studies of CPOE implementation aimed to understand why the adoption rate is so low and riddled with difficulties. Studies of reminders and alerts addressed the problem of alert fatigue. Finally, studies of workflow explored how CPOE influenced clinical workflow and how simplistic and linear models underlying CPOE may lead to poor designed systems and even compromise patient safety. Findings include the need for a shared understanding of medical challenges when implementing CPOE, conceptual models to understand alert fatigue and medical workflow and the impossibility of agreeing which alerts to suppress hospital-wide. The underlying research principle is the sociotechnical approach, which stipulates that technology, people and organizations should be studied from a single theoretical framework. This paper summarizes the results of ten years of research. Contribution of Human Factors for the Review of Automatically Detected ADE Nicolas Leroy, Michel Luyckx, Philippe Lecocq, Romaric Marcilly, Marie-Catherine Beuscart-Zéphir The European project PSIP (Patient Safety through Intelligent Procedures in Medication) aims at semi-automatically identifying and preventing ADE. Automatically detected Adverse Drug Events have to be reviewed and validated by human experts. Existing methods usually have the experts review the cases and document their rating in a structured form. One of the limitations of these methods is their poor ability to analyze and clear the disagreements between the experts and the system. This paper presents an innovative Human Factors based method to support the review by clinicians and pharmacologists of these automatically detected ADE. We use think aloud methods and portable labs to track and record the experts reasoning and their reviewing cognitive procedures. We present preliminary results obtained with this method, which allows identifying the key data and information used to characterize the ADE. This method provides useful feedbacks allowing a continuous refinement and improvement of the automated detection system.

Solheimar, Iceland Solheimar Ecovillage in Iceland Earthaven Ecovillage Earthaven Ecovillage in Black Mountain, NC Yogaville, Satchidananda Ashram Yogaville in Buckingham, Virginia Eco-Villages The name makes them sound new and revolutionary, part of a new movement toward sustainability and community. But in reality, this is the way humans have lived for thousands of years before we took a sharp turn toward unsustainable living. Eco-villages are glimpses to the past, to how humankind used to resonate with the natural environment. They are spreading and popping up everywhere where people are found. Here is an alphabetical list of ecovillages from the Fellowship for Intentional Community (FIC) website. Just think of how many aren't even listed! 1. 5th dimensional eco-village (northern NM or southern CO, New Mexico, United States) Forming 2. Abeo (Hobart, Tasmania, Australia) Re-Forming 3. ABRA144 Ecovillage - Amazonian Bioregional Village (Presidente Figuereido, Manaus, Brazil) Forming 4. ABRACADABRA Forming 5. Abundance EcoVillage (Fairfield, Iowa, United States) 6. The Alchemical Nursery Project (Syracuse, New York, United States) Forming 7. ALDEAFELIZ (San Francisco, Cundinamarca, Colombia) 8. Alderleaf Farm and Wilderness College (Monroe, Washington, United States) 9. Aldinga Arts EcoVillage (Aldinga Beach, South Australia, Australia) 10. Aleskam (684020 Razdolny Setl, Kamchatka, Russian Federation) 11. All Are Welcome: We Invite You (Olympia, Washington, United States) 12. Amazon Highlands Eco-Cooperative (Campamento Salto Yutaje) (Puerto Ayacucho, Amazonas, Venezuela) 13. Amity Highlands Ecovillage Cohousing (Woodbridge, Connecticut, United States) Forming 14. Anarres Ecovillage (Northampton, England, United Kingdom) Forming 15. ANCIENT SOCIETY OF EOCHAID OLLATHAIR, INC. (YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio, United States) Forming 16. Andelssamfundet i Hjortshøj (DK-8530 Hjortshoj, Denmark) 17. Aquarius Nature Retreat (Vail, Arizona, United States) Re-Forming 18. Arcosanti (Cordes Lakes, Arizona, United States) 19. ASL in Veg/an Ecovillage Communities (Cottonwood area, Arizona, United States) Forming 20. Aspenwood (Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States) 21. Astral City 22. Atamai Eco-Village (Motueka, New Zealand) Forming 23. Austin Area Ecovillages (Austin (area), Texas, United States) Forming 24. Avalon Community (Florida, United States) Forming 25. Avalon Springs (Middletown, California, United States) 26. Awaawaroa Bay Eco-Village (Waiheke Island, Auckland, New Zealand) 27. Awakened Life Project (Benfeita, Portugal) Forming 28. A-WAY-KIN ECOvillage (Gimli, Manitoba, Canada) Forming 29. Back-to-Nature EcoVillage (Trang, Thailand) Forming 30. "BahamaStar"-Eco Resort on a Private Island in the Bahamas (Cistern Cay Private Island, Bahamas) Forming 31. Ballintaggart on the Atherton Tableland (Malanda, Queensland, Australia) Forming 32. Base Camps Conservation Network (ARATULA, Queensland, Australia) Forming 33. Bay View Ecovillage (Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States) 34. Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage (Belfast, Maine, United States) Forming 35. Bellbunya Community Association (Belli Park, Queensland, Australia) (Sunshine Coast hinterland, Queensland, Australia) 36. Berea College Ecovillage (Berea, Kentucky, United States) 37. Bethel Suburban Ecovillage (Eugene, Oregon, United States) Forming 38. Betterfields (New Zealand) (United States) Forming 39. Betterway Farm and Ecovillage (Northeast Ohio) (Northeast Ohio - Wooster, Ohio, United States) Re-Forming 40. Between Two Cities (Portland, Corvallis, Oregon, United States) Forming 41. The Biblical Christian Community (Tonga, Tonga) 42. Big Island Cohousing and Ecovillage (Hawaii, United States) 43. The Blueberry Patch (Gulfport, Florida, United States) Forming 44. Boreal Farms (Duluth, Minnesota, United States) Forming 45. Brave New Mountain (Hoodsport, Washington, United States) Forming 46. Braziers Park (Wallingford, England, United Kingdom) 47. Breitenbush Hot Springs (Detroit, Oregon, United States) 48. Broken Earth Village (Santa Fe Area, New Mexico, United States) Forming 49. Brokenfoot Ranch (Carrollton, Georgia, United States) Forming 50. BTR Ecovillage (Dale (an hour outside of Austin, 15 minutes to Lockhart and Bastrop), Texas, United States) Forming 51. Camelot Cohousing (Berlin, Massachusetts, United States) Forming 52. Capital District Eco-housing (Albany region, New York, United States) Forming 53. Carolina Common Well (Hillsborough, North Carolina, United States) Forming 54. Casa da Ribeira (Coimbra, Portugal) 55. Catholic Ecovillage (Kentucky, United States) Forming 56. Cedar Grove (Hopkinsville, Kentucky, United States) Forming 57. Cerro Gordo Ecovillage (Cottage Grove, Oregon, United States) 58. Christian Ecovillage-Mid-Atlantic Region (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, United States) (Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, United States) (New York State, New York, United States) (Ohio, United States) 59. Church of the Earth (Haiku, Hawaii, United States) (Hilo, Hawaii, United States) Forming 60. Cinderland Ecovillage (Kapoho, Hawaii, United States) 61. CIRCLE P ECOFARM/VILLAGE (brunswick, Georgia, United States) Forming 62. CoHo Ecovillage (Corvallis, Oregon, United States) 63. Columbia Ecovillage (Portland, Oregon, United States) 64. CommonUnity (Mullumbimby, New South Wales, Australia) Forming 65. A Communeosho (Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India) Forming 66. Community Alive at Earthome (Pulteney, New York, United States) Forming 67. Community in Southern Saratoga County, NY (New York, United States) Forming 68. Community of Healers (Ash Fork, Arizona, United States) Forming 69. Comunidad Permacultural Na Lu' Um (San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico) Forming 70. Comunidad Planetaria Janajpacha (Bolivia) 71. Concord Ecovillage (Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, United States) (Newark, Delaware, United States) (West Chester, Pennsylvania, United States) Forming 72. Costa Rica Ecovillage (Costa Rica) Forming 73. Crystal Mountain Green (Queen Creek Foothills, Arizona, United States) Forming 74. Crystal Waters Permaculture Village (Conondale, Queensland, Australia) 75. Dallas Cohousing / Ecovillage (Dallas, Texas, United States) Forming 76. Dancing Bear Eco-Village (Cherokee County, Texas, United States) Forming 77. Dancing Bear Eco-Village 78. Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage (Rutledge, Missouri, United States) 79. Dapala Farm (Elk is located in Eastern Washington State Region, Washington, United States) Forming 80. Dedetepe eco-farm (Canakkale, Turkey) Forming 81. DFW Urban Ecovillage (Dallas, Texas, United States) (Fort Worth, Texas, United States) (DFW Ariport area--Mid-Cities/Irving, Texas, United States) (Oak Cliff, Texas, United States) (Waxahachie/Red Oak, Texas, United States) Forming 82. Dolphin Community (D-79737 Herrischried - Niedergebisbach, Germany) (Hausen im Wiesental, Germany) 83. Dom Druzej na prirode - common_house (Gus'-Hustlnyj, Vladimirskaja area, Russian Federation) Forming 84. Dragon Belly Farm (Pt. Ludlow, Washington, United States) Forming 85. Dreamtime Village (La Farge, Wisconsin, United States) 86. Earth First Australia (Hamilton, Victoria, Australia) Forming 87. Earth Kind Developments Corp. (Tofino, British Columbia, Canada) Forming 88. EarthArt Village (Moffat, Colorado, United States) Forming 89. Earthaven Ecovillage (Black Mountain, North Carolina, United States) 90. EarthFriends Ecovillage 91. Earthsong Eco-Neighbourhood (Ranui, West Auckland, New Zealand) 92. EARTHYACHT (Mazatlan Sinaloa Northern Mexico Area, Mazatlan, Mexico) Forming 93. Eco village Piracanga (Itacaré, Bahia, Brazil) 94. Eco Yoga Park (General Rodriguez, Buenos Aires, Argentina) (General Rodriguez, Buenos Aires, Argentina) 95. Ecoaldea Huehuecoyotl (Tepoztlán, Morelos, Mexico) 96. Ecoculture Village (Arcata, California, United States) Forming 97. EcoLetu (Beijing, China) Forming 98. ECOMMUNE (Paducah, Kentucky, United States) Forming 99. Economic Eco-Village (Glastonbury, Connecticut, United States) (Bellefonte Chestnut, Pennsylvania, United States) Forming 100. EcoReality (Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, Canada) Re-Forming 101. Ecotopia Romania (Stanciova, Timis, Romania) Forming 102. Ecotopia/Itkaka (Vathi/Ithaca, Greece) Forming 103. Ecovilla Asociación GAIA (NAVARRO, Buenos Aires, Argentina) 104. Ecovillage at Burdautien (Eire, Ireland) 105. The Ecovillage at Currumbin (Currumbin Valley, Queensland, Australia) Forming 106. EcoVillage at Ithaca (Ithaca, New York, United States) 107. EcoVillage at Ithaca - third neighborhood (Ithaca, New York, United States) 108. Eco-Village de la Paix-Dieu (Jehay, Belgium) 109. EcoVillage Detroit (Detroit, Michigan, United States) Forming 110. Ecovillage Dungeness (Port Angeles, Washington, United States) Forming 111. Ecovillage in planning (Georgia, United States) Forming 112. Ecovillage Network UK (Bristol BS99 3JP, England, United Kingdom) 113. Eco-Village of La Hermita (San Miguel de Allende, GTO, 37700, Mexico) 114. EcoVillage of Loudoun County (Taylorstown, Virginia, United States) Forming 115. Écovillage 2012 (Montreal, Quebec, Canada) Forming 116. ECOVILLAGE VIVER SIMPLES (Itamonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil) Forming 117. The Eden Project Forming 118. Edinstvo ecovillage (Edinstvo gardens, Kagalnitskiy rayon, Rostov Region, Russian Federation) 119. Eliopoli (Port Maitland, Nova Scotia, Canada) Forming 120. Enota Mountain Village (Hiawassee, Georgia, United States) 121. Esperanza de Finca Amanecer (Londres de Quepos, Costa Rica) Forming 122. Essene Eco-Village Maui (paia, Hawaii, United States) Re-Forming 123. Etherion Ringing Cedars Intentional Community (Guyra, New South Wales, Australia) (Upwey, Victoria, Australia) Forming 124. Factor 'e' Farm - Open Source Ecology (Maysville, Missouri, United States) Forming 125. FalconBlanco (San Lorenzo/Ibiza, Balearen, Spain) 126. Family Haven Project (Nelson, Nelson District, New Zealand) Forming 127. The Farm (Summertown, Tennessee, United States) 128. Federation of Damanhur (Baldissero Canavese, Torino, Italy) 129. Fedorovtsy (Staraya Tishanka, province of Voronezh, Russian Federation) 130. Findhorn Foundation and Community (Findhorn, Scotland, United Kingdom) 131. The Fire Circle (Russell or Heath, Massachusetts, United States) Forming 132. Flying Fish Organic Ecovillage (near Vuaki, Yasawa Islands Group, western Fiji, Blue Lagoon, Yasawa Islands, Fiji) 133. Footprint Acres (Lower Lake, California, United States) Forming 134. Forest Haven (Moyock, North Carolina, United States) Forming 135. Forest Moon Ecovillage (Polk County, North Carolina, United States) Forming 136. FOUNDATION (London, United Kingdom) (Tamil Nadu, India) Forming 137. Fox Housing Cooperative (Carmarthen, Wales, United Kingdom) Re-Forming 138. Frieden Haven (Steinbach, Manitoba, Canada) Forming 139. Friendly Haven Rise Farm Ecovillage (Battle Ground, Washington, WA, United States) Forming 140. Front Range Eco Town (boulder, Colorado, United States) (denver, Colorado, United States) Forming 141. Gaia Grove Ecovillage (near Gainesville, Florida, United States) Re-Forming 142. Gaia Sangha (LOS ANGELES, California, United States) Forming 143. Gaia University (The Americas) (Europe) 144. Gaiam One (Chimirol De Rivas, San Jose, Costa Rica) Re-Forming 145. The Gaian Fellowship (Eureka Springs, Arkansas, United States) Forming 146. Gaia's Green Village (Lonedell, Missouri, United States) Forming 147. Global Community Communications Alliance (Tubac, Arizona, United States) 148. Goodenough Community (Seattle, Washington, United States) (Tahuya, Washington, United States) Re-Forming 149. Govinda Gardens (Carriere, Mississippi) 150. Green Village Philadelphia (GVP) (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States) Forming 151. Greenplan (Berkeley, California, United States) Re-Forming 152. Greensoul (Klamath Falls, Oregon, United States) Forming 153. Grishino Community (Leningradskaya oblast', Russian Federation) 154. The Grove (Mesa, Arizona, United States) (Cocoroche Island, Belize) Forming 155. Guiana Highlands Ecovillage, Ecology Outpost (Ecoaldea: La Advanzada del Esequibo) (Merume Mountains, Cuyuni/Mazaruni, Guyana) 156. Hamster In The Sheets (Lake Placid, Florida, United States) Forming 157. HarmonyCollective (Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States) Forming 158. Haumoana Eco Village, Hawke's Bay, New Zealand (Hastings, New Zealand) Forming 159. Healing Earth New Amish (Granite Shoals, Texas, United States) (near Fredericksburg, Texas, United States) Forming 160. Heart and Spoon Community House (Eugene, Oregon, United States) 161. Heartland Ecovillage (Loveland, Ohio, United States) Forming 162. Hertha (DK-8464 Galten, Denmark) Forming 163. Hickory Nut Forest (Gerton, North Carolina, United States) 164. Home Ecovillage Project (Brighton, England, United Kingdom) Forming 165. Home Tree (Henniker, New Hampshire, United States) Forming 166. Homeland (Thora, New South Wales, Australia) 167. Hopewell Community (Lanesville, Indiana, United States) Re-Forming 168. Hudson Valley Ecovillage (Hudson Valley, New York, United States) Forming 169. Hummingbird Community (Mora, New Mexico, United States) 170. I-City (Burlington, Colorado, United States) (Kanorado, Kansas, United States) Forming 171. Idyllia West (California, Oregon or Nevada, United States) Forming 172. Imagine Seven (Progressive Communities Sharing One Property in One Community) (Olympia, Washington, United States) Forming 173. In Planning Ecovillage (Zuidbroek, Netherlands) Forming 174. InanItah (Ometepe Nicaragua, Ometepe, Nicaragua) Forming 175. INFINITY NV EXPERIMENTAL BUILDING FARM (Battle Mountain, Nevada, United States) Forming 176. Island Ecovillage (Victoria, British Columbia, Canada) Forming 177. Island Freedom Farm (Maui, Hawaii, United States) Forming 178. ISLOVE = infinite star light offering visionary ecovillages (Santa Cruz County, California, United States) 179. italyecovillage, Le Mogli farm (Pescosolido, Italy) Forming 180. Jamaica Plain Cohousing (Boston, Massachusetts, United States) 181. Jewish Eco Village (East Bay, California, United States) Forming 182. Juniper Hill Farm (Amherst, Massachusetts, United States) 183. Kailash Ecovillage (Portland, Oregon, United States) 184. Kakwa Ecovillage Cooperative (McBride, British Columbia, Canada) Forming 185. Kalikalos (Pelion, Magnesia, Greece) 186. Kanjini Co-Op (Australia) Forming 187. Katywil (Colrain, Massachusetts, United States) Forming 188. Kawai PuraPura (Albany, Auckland, New Zealand) Re-Forming 189. KEIMBLATT OEKODORF (Riegersburg, Austria) Forming 190. Kins Oases Foundation (Coonabarabran, New South Wales, Australia) Forming 191. Kitezh Children's Eco-Village Community (249650 Baryatinsky, Russian Federation) 192. Kivisalon yhteisökylä (Kuopio, Finland) Forming 193. Knoll Crest Farm (Amherst, Virginia, United States) 194. Kohatu Toa Eco-Village (Northland, New Zealand) 195. Komkelen (Buenos Aires, Capital Federal, Argentina) Forming 196. Kookaburra Park Eco-Village (Gin Gin, Queensland, Australia) (Bundaberg, Queensland, Australia) Forming 197. The Kuliana Group (Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States) 198. La Cite-Ecologique de Ham-Nord (Ham-Nord, Quebec, Canada) 199. La Paz Eco Village (La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico) (Baja California Sur - Mexico, Mexico) Forming 200. Lah lah land (Tucson, Arizona, United States) Re-Forming 201. Lake Chapala Mexico (Lake Chapala, Michoacan, Mexico) Forming 202. Lake Claire Cohousing (Atlanta, Georgia, United States) 203. Lammas (Pembrokeshire, Wales, United Kingdom) Forming 204. Last Place on Earth (Kilometer Ochenta y Dos, Guayana Esequiba, Venezuela) Forming 205. Lavender Falls (Fairfield Glade, Tennessee, United States) Forming 206. Law Of One Eco Community (Ontario, Canada) Forming 207. Laytonville Ecovillage (Laytonville, California, United States) Forming 208. Lebensgarten Steyerberg (Steyerberg, Lower Saxony, Germany) 209. LifeEssence (Beryl, Utah, United States) Forming 210. The Light Center (Baldwin City, Kansas, United States) Forming 211. Lightwork Ecovillage (Hope Point, Gambier Island, British Columbia, Canada) (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) Forming 212. LIVING EARTH ECO VILLAGE (Monroe, ME (Belfast area ), Maine, United States) (Cape ELizabeth, Maine, United States) Forming 213. Loh El (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada) Forming 214. Lórien (6730, Belgium) Forming 215. Los Angeles Eco-Village (Los Angeles, California, United States) 216. Los Visionarios (Vilcabamba, Loja, Ecuador) Re-Forming 217. Lost Valley Educational Center (Dexter, Oregon, United States) 218. The Lotus Community (Australia) 219. The Love Israel Family (Kettle Falls, Washington, United States) Forming 220. Lovetribe (Portland, Oregon, United States) Forming 221. LUBINKA (Moscow region, Russia, Russian Federation) Forming 222. Lupinwood Village (Greenfield, Massachusetts, United States) (Greenfield, Massachusetts, United States) 223. Mandala (Maryvale, Queensland, Australia) 224. Manitou Arbor Ecovillage (Kalamazoo, Michigan, United States) Forming 225. Maya Creek Ecovillage (Fulton, Missouri, United States) Forming 226. Me Lucky Farms (Burke Road, Blaine, Washington, United States) Forming 227. Medical Marijuana Grow Commune (United States) (Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States) (Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States) Forming 228. Metro Cohousing at Culver Way (St. Louis, Missouri, United States) Forming 229. Moonlight Meadows (United Kingdom) Re-Forming 230. Mosaic Commons (Berlin, Massachusetts, United States) 231. Mosaic Ecovillage (Vancouver/Camas, Washington, United States) Forming 232. Motherland Ecovillage (Portland, Oregon, United States) Forming 233. Mount Eden Ecovillage (Washington, New Jersey, United States) Forming 234. Mulvey Creek Land Co-operative (Slocan, British Columbia, Canada) Re-Forming 235. Namasté Greenfire (Center Barnstead, New Hampshire, United States) Forming 236. Native Way Eco (ardmore, Oklahoma, United States) Forming 237. Natural Island Dragonmill (Schweta, Saxon, Germany) Forming 238. Nature Island Ecovillage (Jacco Estate, Belles, Dominica) Forming 239. The Nature School Foundation Inc. (Greenville, New Hampshire, United States) Forming 240. Networking For Peace Multicultural Cohousing Resource Neighborhood (Portland, Oregon, United States) Forming 241. New England Farm Village Project (Vermont, United States) Forming 242. New Indian Reservation (CaliforniaWestern States, United States) Forming 243. New Talavana (Carriere, Mississippi, United States) 244. Newberry House (Portland, Oregon, United States) 245. NEXT EVOLUTION COMMUNITY (South Beaver Township, Beaver County, Pennsylvania, United States) 246. Next Step Integral (Winlaw, British Columbia, Canada) 247. North Coast Eco-Community Discussion Group (Bellingen, New South Wales, Australia) 248. Nsumi Collective (New York City, New York, United States) 249. NW NJ Ecovillage (Sussex County, New Jersey, United States) Forming 250. O.U.R ECOVILLAGE (Shawnigan Lake, British Columbia, Canada) Forming 251. Oak Grove (Round Hill, Virginia, United States) Forming 252. Oasis Eco-Village (Uhland, Texas, United States) Forming 253. Oceanic Ecovillage (c) (Louisiana, United States) Forming 254. Odonata (Newburyport, Massachusetts, United States) Forming 255. Olympia Eco-Village (Olympia, Washington, United States) Forming 256. OMROOTS Sanctuary (Aguas Buenas, Perez Zeledon, Costa Rica) Forming 257. Opihikao Ecovillage/Cohousing (pahoa, Hawaii, United States) Forming 258. Orange Twin Conservation Community (Athens, Georgia, United States) Forming 259. Oregon Working Group 2006 (Eastern Oregon, Oregon, United States) Forming 260. Osagewood Village 261. Otamatea Eco-Village (Kaiwaka, Northland, New Zealand) 262. Pagan Circle Eco-Village (Richmond, Virginia, United States) Forming 263. Pagan Intentional Community (Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States) Forming 264. The Paradise Builders (Malibu, California, United States) (Levuka, Fiji) (Jaco, Costa Rica) (David, Panama) (Byron Bay, Australia) Forming 265. PAZ Ecovillage (Terlingua, Texas, United States) (Texas, United States) Forming 266. Penyon Bay Ecological Village (Alhoceima, Morocco) Forming 267. Pheasant Run 268. Piñon Ecovillage (Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States) 269. Plants for a Future (Ashwater, Beaworthy, Devon, England, United Kingdom) (The Field, Higher Penpol, Lostwithiel, Cornwall, England, United Kingdom) Forming 270. The Point of Infinity Retreat Center and Community (Greenfield Park, New York, United States) Forming 271. Port Townsend EcoVillage (Port Townsend, Washington, United States) Forming 272. Possibilica (Pullach, Germany) Forming 273. Pot Luck Farms (Westtown, New York, United States) Forming 274. Pot Luck Farms 275. POWER-FARM (Eco-Tent-Village) (Bakersfield, California, ENEA) Forming 276. Prairie Creek Settlement (Lebanon, Missouri, United States) Forming 277. Prairie's Edge Eco-Village (River Hills, Manitoba, Canada) 278. Praterra (boa vista roraima, Brazil) Forming 279. Primitive Self-Sufficient World-Saving Enlightencamp (oregon city, Oregon, United States) Forming 280. The Priorities Institute (Denver, Colorado, United States) Forming 281. Project Nuevo Mundo (Santiago Atitlan, Solola, Guatemala) 282. PROJETORGONE (Neuilly sur marne, France) Forming 283. Queer Ecovillage (Gainesville, Florida, United States) Forming 284. Querencia Experimental Center for Carbon Neutral Communities (San Pedro, San Jose, Costa Rica) Forming 285. Raices (Santa Ana, San Jose, Costa Rica) Forming 286. Rainbow Cottage (Phoenix, Arizona, AZ, United States) Re-Forming 287. Rainbow Peace Caravan (Mobil, Mexico) 288. The Rainbow Ranch (colorado Springs, Colorado, United States) Forming 289. Ravenwood (Marshfield, Wisconsin, United States) Forming 290. Red Earth Farms (Rutledge, Missouri, United States) 291. Réseau des ÉcoHameaux et ÉcoVillages du Québec (Wotton, Quebec, Canada) Forming 292. The Revolution Project (Chimirol de Rivas, Costa Rica) Forming 293. Rhiannon Community (Malchingui, Ecuador) Forming 294. Ringing Cedars BC Garden Paradise (Fraser Valley, British Columbia, Canada) Forming 295. Rivendell (New South Wales, Australia) (Queensland, Australia) Forming 296. Rosneath Farm (Dunsborough, Western Australia, Australia) Forming 297. Rosy Branch (Black Mountain, North Carolina, United States) 298. Salka Vida (Costa Rica) Forming 299. San Francisco Backyard Neighborhood and Learning Center (San Francisco, California, United States) Forming 300. San Mateo Ecovillage (San Mateo, California, United States) Forming 301. Sandhill Farm (Rutledge, Missouri, United States) 302. Santosha Solar Hot Springs Retreat & Community (Between Longmont & Lyons on Hwy 66, Colorado, United States) Forming 303. Savita Community Ashram (Uruti, Taranaki, New Zealand) Forming 304. Sawyer Hill EcoVillage (Berlin, Massachusetts, United States) 305. SE-ADK-coCamping-coHousing (Clemons, New York, United States) Forming 306. Sharing Circle Gypsy Garden-eers (Cincinnati (Northside), Ohio, United States) (4261 Kirby Rd, Northside, Cincinnati, Ohio, United States) Re-Forming 307. The Shire (Hilo, Hawaii, United States) (Hilo, Hawaii, United States) (Pahoa, Hawaii, United States) Forming 308. Sieben Linden Ecovillage (Beetzendorf, Germany) 309. Sirius Community (Shutesbury, Massachusetts, United States) 310. 611 Ecovillage (Oakland, California, United States) 311. Skyhouse Community (Rutledge, Missouri, United States) 312. SomerVille Ecovillage (Chidlow, Western Australia, Australia) Forming 313. The Source Farm Ecovillage (Jamaica) Forming 314. South Jersey Ecovillage (Burlington, Camden, Gloucester County; Maybe Cumberland County; Maybe rural SE PA?, New Jersey, United States) Forming 315. Southwest Sufi Community (Silver City, New Mexico, United States) 316. Sovereign Christian Patriot Mission (ABOVE BAÑOS, Ecuador) Re-Forming 317. St Croix Valley Highlands (Prescott, Wisconsin, United States) Forming 318. Star*Light Retreat, South Africa {Vegetarian. clean sober smoke-free = no drugs/alcohol/smoking} (rural savannah called veld. high elevation above Malaria level. within couple hours drive of 2 major international airports of 2 of the largest cities in South Africa., South Africa) (Santa Cruz, California, United States) 319. Still Spirit Community Project (Floyd, Virginia, United States) 320. Stony Brook Cohousing (Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, United States) Forming 321. Suderbyn (Visby, Gotland, Sweden) Forming 322. Sun Sea Temple Eco-village (Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico) Forming 323. Sundog Ecovillage (Potomac, Montana, United States) 324. Sunflower Ecovillage (Bangor, Michigan, United States) Forming 325. Svanholm (DK-4050 Skibby, Denmark) 326. Sydney Coastal Ecovillage (New South Wales, Australia) Forming 327. Sydney Coastal Ecovillage Inc 329. Tamarack Knoll Community (Fairbanks, Alaska, United States) 330. Tamera - Healing Biotope I (7630 Colos, Portugal) 331. Tapestry Cohousing (Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada) Forming 332. TBA (Gulf Islands/Discovery Islands, British Columbia, Canada) Forming 333. TerraVie (Saint- Sauveur-des-Monts, Quebec, Canada) Forming 334. TheRabbit'sHoleVillage (Granby, Colorado, United States) Forming 335. Thomas Farm Community (Rindge, New Hampshire, United States) Forming 336. Three Groves Ecovillage (West Grove, Pennsylvania, United States) (West Grove, Pennsylvania, United States) Forming 337. Tir Tairngire (Corner Brook, Newfoundland And Labrador, Canada) Forming 338. Tir Tairngire Project (Corner Brook, Newfoundland And Labrador, Canada) Forming 339. Toronto Ecovillage Project (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) 340. Torri Superiore Ecovillage (Ventimiglia, Imperia, Italy) 341. Touchstone Farm (Easthampton, Massachusetts, United States) Re-Forming 342. Tranquility's Way (Alabama, United States) (Georgia, United States) Forming 343. Tree of Life Ecovillage and Resource Center for Nonviolence (Athens, Ohio, United States) Forming 344. Tribe of Likatien (Füssen, Germany) 345. TRINITY Christian PRIORY (Spain) (Argentina) (Vera Cruz, Mexico) (Uppsala, Sweden) (Crawley, United Kingdom) (Bebra, Germany) (RENNES, France) (Chicago, Dallas, Texas, United States) (Institutsupérieurdethéologiesaintthomas théologie, Congo) (PARIS, France) (Selignac, France) (THIERS 63300, France) (Welkom, South Africa) (New Mexico and Mexico) (Wisconsin, Wisconsin, United States) (United States) (Mpumalanga Province, near Badplaas, South Africa) (Newark, Notts, Chile) (Newark, Notts, Venezuela) (Newark, Notts, Argentina) (Newark, Notts, Brazil) (Newark, Notts, Ecuador) (Newark, Notts, India) 346. Tuscaloosa Cooperative Association (Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, United States) Forming 347. Tweed Valley Ecovillage Project (Scotland, United Kingdom) Forming 348. UHURU (Rice, Washington, United States) 349. Understenhodgen (Stockholm, Sweden) 350. Unijaima Ecovillage (Gilroy Santa Cruz, California, United States) Forming 351. usavillages (Richland, Iowa, United States) Re-Forming 352. Utah Valley Commons (Provo, Utah, United States) Forming 353. Utubia EcoVillage (Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States) Re-Forming 354. Valle de Sensaciones (Alpujarras, Granada, Spain) 355. Valles de Nanzal (Nanzal, Rep. of Panama, Panama) Forming 356. Ventura Urban Homestead Cooperative (Ventura, California, United States) Forming 357. A Village Full of Coops (South Bronx, New York, United States) Forming 358. Village Terraces Cohousing Neighborhood (Black Mountain, North Carolina, United States) 359. the Villages at Crest Mountain (Asheville, North Carolina, United States) 360. Vine & Fig Tree Farm/Community (Lanett, Alabama, United States) Re-Forming 361. Vital Village (Comisaría Emiliano Zapata, carretera Xul km 12 , Oxkutzcab, Yucatán, Mexico) (Vital Village, Yucatan, Mexico) Forming 362. Vlierhof (Millingen, Netherlands) Re-Forming 363. Walden Farm (Saskatchewan, Canada) Forming 364. Wellspring Eco-village and Learning Center (Kingston, Arkansas, United States) (Kingston, Arkansas, United States) Forming 365. Weltsmertz Ranch Cooperative (Kyote, Texas, United States) Forming 366. WHISPERING ECO-WIND FARM COMMUNITY & INSTITUTE (Berwick, Maine, United States) Forming 367. White Buffalo Farm (Paonia, Colorado, United States) 368. White Hawk (Ithaca, New York, United States) (Danby, New York, United States) 369. Whole Village (Caledon, Ontario, Canada) 370. Wholistic Community Network IRC (British Columbia, Canada) Forming 371. Wild Cat Creek Ecovillage (Calhoun County, 6 miles east of Bluntstown on highway 20, Florida, United States) Forming 372. The Wild Homestead (Louisiana, United States) Forming 373. The Wild Horse Ranch Association (Onoway, Alberta, Canada) Forming 374. wild solutions farm Forming 375. Wind Walker Eco Village (Spring City, Utah, United States) Forming 376. Wyomanock (stephentown, New York, United States) Forming 377. Yarrow Ecovillage (Chilliwack, British Columbia, Canada) 378. Yoga Eco-Village (Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, Canada) Forming 379. The Yoga Farm (Punta Banco, Costa Rica) 380. Gaija Ecovillage (Finland) 381. Vainola Community (Finland) 382. Keuruun Ecovillage (Finland)

Follow the northward migration of Monarch Butterflies on a map of North America The URL for this highly-interesting map was sent to me by Andrea Burke. View it at: More detail is obtainable from Annenberg Learner.

On Science Fiction History I have read the symposium on science-fiction the Winter 1949 issue with great interest. Since you have summed up so ably in your editorial the main deductions to be drawn, I will content myself with a few footnotes, so to speak. For one thing, it struck me that most of the contributors (Dr. Keller excepted) failed to emphasize sufficiently the historical aspect of the theme and were too exclusively preoccupied with its contemporary development. Yet surely, for the proper understanding of the genre and of fantasy in general, some consideration should be given to its roots in ancient literature, folklore, mythology, anthropology, occultism, and mysticism. I was quite surprised that no one mentioned Lucian, Apulcius and Rabelais among the forefathers of the genre, since all three are of prime importance. Lucian was a satirist and skeptic who, in the form of imaginative fiction, endeavored to "debunk" the religious superstitions and contending philosophies of his time; being, one might say, somewhat analogous to Aldous Huxley, who in turn has satirised modern science. Apuleius, borrowing a plot from Lucian in The Golden Ass, expressed, on the other hand, the power and glamor of a sorcery that was regarded as science by the moiety of his contemporaries; and his book, in its final chapter, plunges deeply into that mysticism which is seemingly eternal and common to many human minds in all epochs. The omission of Rabelais is particularly surprising, since he was not only the first of modern satiric fantaisists, but also one of the first writers to develop the Utopian theme (so much exploited since) in his phalanstery of Theleme—which, I might add, is the only fictional Utopia that I should personally care to inhabit! Another thing that struck me was the ethical bias shown by some of the contributors, a bias characteristic of so many science-fiction fans, as opposed to the devotees of pure fantasy. Such fans are obviously lovers of the imaginative and the fantastic more or less curbed in the indulgence of their predilections by a feeling that the fiction in which they delight should proceed (however remote its ultimate departure) from what is currently regarded as proven fact and delimited natural law; otherwise, there is Something reprehensible in yielding themselves to its enjoyment Without entering into the old problem of ethics plus art, or ethics versus art, I can say only that from my Own standpoint the best application of ethics would lie in the sphere where it is manifestly not being applied: that is to say, the practical use of scientific discoveries and inventions. Imaginative literature would be happier and more fruitful with unclogged wings; and the sphere of its enjoyment would be broader. What pleased me most about the symposium was the prominence given to Wells and to Charles Fort, and the inclusion of your anthology, Strange Ports of Call. I could mention books, out of my own far from complete reading of science-fiction, that were missed or slighted by the contributors. Of these, Huxley's After Many a Summer Dies the Swan is perhaps the most salient from a literary perspective. It is a gorgeous and sumptuous satire on the results of self-achieved immortality. Leonard Cline's The Dark Chamber could be mentioned, too, since it depicts with singular power the retrogression of a human being to the primal slime. Incidentally, one ought to mention Lucian's True History, for it contains what is probably the first inter- planetary tale, a fantastic account of a voyage to the moon. And sometimes I suspect that Freud should be included among the modern masters of science-fiction! But one could multiply titles without adding anything of permanent literary value and significance.

Facebook algorithms 'will identify terrorists' Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has outlined a plan to let artificial intelligence (AI) software review content posted on the social network. In a letter describing the plan, he said algorithms would eventually be able to spot terrorism, bullying and even prevent suicide. He admitted Facebook had previously made mistakes in the content it had removed from the website. But he said it would take years for the necessary algorithms to be developed. In his 5,500-word letter discussing the future of Facebook, Mr Zuckerberg said it was impossible to review the billions of posts and messages that appeared on the platform every day. "The complexity of the issues we've seen has outstripped our existing processes for governing the community," he said. He highlighted the removal of videos related to the Black Lives Matter movement and the historical napalm girl photograph from Vietnam as "errors" in the existing process. Facebook was also criticised in 2014, following reports that one of the killers of Fusilier Lee Rigby spoke online about murdering a soldier, months before the attack. "We are researching systems that can read text and look at photos and videos to understand if anything dangerous may be happening. "This is still very early in development, but we have started to have it look at some content, and it already generates about one third of all reports to the team that reviews content." He said AI promised to identify problematic material more quickly than humans and could also "identify risks that nobody would have flagged at all, including terrorists planning attacks using private channels". "Right now, we're starting to explore ways to use AI to tell the difference between news stories about terrorism and actual terrorist propaganda." Personal filtering Mr Zuckerberg said his ultimate aim was to allow people to post largely whatever they liked, within the law, with algorithms detecting what had been uploaded. Users would then be able to filter their news feed to remove the types of post they did not want to see. "Where is your line on nudity? On violence? On graphic content? On profanity? What you decide will be your personal settings," he explained. "For those who don't make a decision, the default will be whatever the majority of people in your region selected, like a referendum. "It's worth noting that major advances in AI are required to understand text, photos and videos to judge whether they contain hate speech, graphic violence, sexually explicit content, and more. "At our current pace of research, we hope to begin handling some of these cases in 2017, but others will not be possible for many years."

What Do YOU Really Want? (Part 2) by Elizabeth Spevack Last time, we discussed a couple of ideas for how you can really listen to your inner voice and determine what YOU really want. Here are some more strategies you can use to listen to that voice inside: Pay attention to your physical responses. When you're trying to make a decision, does one option give you the nervous excited feeling of butterflies in your stomach, and you start smiling just thinking about it even if there may be challenges along the way? Or is it more like a knot of fear and dread that feels like a rock deep within you? When you imagine yourself years down the road looking back at right now, how would you feel if you had chosen option A? And how about if you had chosen option B? Looking at your choice in this way will allow you have a longer term perspective on the choice you are trying to make right now. Is there an excitement or a sense of emptiness? These are important clues that are not to be ignored. Pay attention to your emotions and let yourself feel them. It is so easy and common to try to pretend those feelings don`t exist or to try to numb them through too much food, mindless TV watching or Internet browsing or any other means of distracting yourself from your feelings. If you feel angry, for example, don't try to rationalize or talk yourself away from the feeling. I`m not telling you to act in anger or to always be angry. What I am saying is allow yourself to feel the anger and accept that you're allowed to be angry sometimes. Also allow yourself to feel excitement and passion. What invigorates and energizes you? What makes you feel like this is what you were born to do? What will keep you moving forward even when it may be difficult? Speak with someone who will, without judgment, allow you to share your deepest thoughts and who will reflect back to you what she heard, perhaps surprising you with the insights you have kept hidden, even from yourself. Sometimes they can help you gain clarity that might be more challenging to reach on your own. When trying to decide about starting my own business, for example, speaking to a coach allowed me to pay more attention to my own heart's desires and have the strength to make the choice my inner voice was screaming at me to follow. Look at the pros and cons you have listed for the various options. Even if there are more cons than pros, are those cons realistic considerations, or are they primarily based in fear and self-doubt? If they are more negative, it may be your negative self-talk trying to limit you and your growth. Remember that it doesn't matter if there are 15 pros and only one con; it is the importance of each that counts, not the number. For example, on paper you and your boyfriend may be a perfect match, and these attributes all line up under pros. There is only one con: When you are around him, you find yourself questioning yourself and feeling like you are inferior. As a result, you keep things from him so that he won't judge you. This may just be one con, but one con can be a deal breaker if it is important enough. On the other hand, maybe there is only one pro and 15 cons. The same logic applies here. When I was trying to decide whether or not to start my own coaching business, I prepared a list of pros and cons. On the con side: no job security (at least in the traditional sense), no stable income right away, different career path than people I knew, not what I had planned for myself, etc. Under the pros: My heart was screaming at me that this was something I needed to do. Three times when I had found myself moving away from coaching, I was nudged back by being let go from my job, in two cases completely unexpectedly. I felt like this was what I was created to you, and the message from my heart was so clear. So there was one pro telling me to start my own business with many logical cons telling me not to. I followed my heart and the pro on my pros/cons list, and Heart and Soul Living was born. http://EzineArticles.com/?What-Do-YOU-Really-Want?&id=7818368 by Lindsay Abrams, The Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/06/study-stressing-about-stress-is-bad-for-you/277254/ People who thought stress was negatively affecting their health were twice as likely to have heart attacks, regardless of how much stress they actually experienced. Is this article only making the problem worse? Benoit Tessier/Reuters "Constant stress puts your health at risk," warns the Mayo Clinic. Meanwhile HuffPo not-helpfully chimes in with "10 Scary Things Stress is Doing to Your Body." Does anyone else get the feeling that stressing over the health impact of how stressed you are just might be counterproductive? Back in 1991, 7,268 London-based civil servants were asked how much the thought the stress they experienced impacted their health, on a scale from "not at all" to "extremely." 18 years later, researchers in France, Finland, and the U.K. looked back at their answers and compared them to how many of the participants ended up experiencing fatal or non-fatal heart attacks. Eight percent of the participants reported that stress affected their health either "a lot" or "extremely," and by the end of the study, those same people were over twice as likely to have suffered a heart attack as those who believed it didn't impact their health at all. This was independent of how much stress they actually experienced. To some extent, the results may reflect a self-fulfilling prophecy. The people who thought stress impacted them a lot were also more likely to report experiencing high levels of stress. And even though the relationship between perceived effects of stress and heart attacks remained significant after that and a wide variety of other factors were controlled for, they more likely to be have self-reported medical problems and psychological distress, more likely to smoke, and less likely to eat daily fruits and vegetables, get enough exercise, or have a lot social support. So psychological, biological, and behavioral factors are all probably in play here. Still, there are people who can handle stress better than others, and it's probable that those for whom stress took the largest physical toll just knew they weren't the type to thrive under pressure. If that's the case, the takeaway is simply that if you feel like stress is killing you, there's a good chance it is. The full study, "Increased risk of coronary heart disease among individuals reporting adverse impact of stress on their health: the Whitehall II prospective cohort study," is published in the European Heart Journal. Take It Seriously by Ankit S People take on so many jobs, tasks and responsibilities throughout their lives. These are anything from careers, part time jobs, hobbies, charity work or even helping a friend move. Many times, we just do a job to get our name out there, and that is okay. However, whatever job you take on, perform at it to the very best of your ability. It is important to know that whatever responsibility you take on, will have your name and reputation attached to it. Also, your performance will have an effect on whomever the job was done for; so take it seriously. Most of us in the modern world have multiple careers throughout our lives. Often times, a particular career may be a means to an end. For example, a person may start writing books in order to launch a speaking career. We may be part of a charitable organization that requires a number of tasks to be completed. This organization does a lot of great work and it relies heavily on its volunteers. We may also be doing a particular job as bridge between getting to our ideal calling in life. All of us take on many different responsibilities, both personal and professional, that we often don't focus on like we should. If we are only at a particular job on a temporary basis, we may not put in the effort that we need to in order to do a good job. We must not allow this to happen. For any job, task or responsibility we take on, we must give the best performance possible. Take anything you commit to seriously. Going back to the example of the writer; if he or she is so concerned about their eventual speaking career that they do a poor job with their writing, it can come back to haunt them in terrible ways. If someone is writing about their ideas, their name is attached to it. Potential opportunities for speaking engagements could be squashed due to the poor writing or badly discussed ideas the writer has presented. Another example, a dad may need to get a part time job to help make ends meet. The dad should take the job seriously, even if he doesn't plan to stay there long. He made a commitment to work there, and he may never know if he'll need a part time job again in the future. Why not keep a good reputation by doing a good job? Finally, let's say at a charitable event, you meet someone who is in the same line of work you hope to be in. What a great networking opportunity if they see you as a hardworking, reliable and generous person. Not only that, it is likely for a good cause and people are relying on you. Take every job, task or responsibility in front of you seriously. Not only is it the right thing to do, but your reputation is connected to it. We never know when doing a good job will lead to something bigger and better for ourselves. Be at your best always, no matter how minimal it may seem. by Susan K Loughrin Bouncing my ideas off of others in a coaching group. But each time I embark on a new journey of creating, I find myself becoming angry. Why does this happen? What is this anger about? What is going on? My mentor and I were discussing this. She wondered aloud this thought: "It sounds like the tender spots are where you are angry" ... yeah. Very tender. The anger is telling me something. Discovering that it is difficult to keep a project going with anger all around, I needed to find a way to work "through" or "around" the anger. So, I distract myself with painting, stories, dancing ... something creative, but more mundane and a bit mindless. This creative energy frees up my mind so that I can "trick" my anger into thinking I am busy with other things. When I do this I call it "spinning". Spinning reminds me of the stories of the spinning wheel where I can get busy creating (like the wool on the wheel). This opens the door to metaphor and takes me away from my need to "control" a project. New ideas flow in. In this way, I begin to create gold from straw. When I began drawing this image ... of a spinning wheel ... I thought of "turning straw to gold". I was reminded again of the story of Rumpelstilskin. You know the one ... the millers daughter, the father says "she can spin straw into gold" to the king ... and the king wants to see this ... and if she cannot, she will be put to death ...? Then, a strange little man appears. He tells her he can spin straw into gold ... but it will be at a cost to her. She will have to discover his name, or give up her child. I found the story and read several versions of it. It resonated with me. However, as I usually do, I attempted to logically "organize" the story. This caused me to be more frustrated, as I was not seeing or feeling what this story was trying to tell me. Listed out all of the characters Listed out the "key words" in the story that resonated with me Re-read each word and wrote what that word meat to me in my current situation And then ... I began to notice what the story was telling me. Here is what I discovered: The little man (Rumplestilskin) = anger/creative fire/naming The miller's daughter = rest/creativity/giving The king = accountability Spinning wheel = creating/spinning/asking for help The baby = creation (project, artwork ...) While each of these "characters" has an independent role, ALL of the characters create one "psyche" for me. We have all of these qualities within us. In order to create something, it takes much energy ... and much rest is also needed. We must give of ourselves and ask for help. In the end, a baby is born and we will not give it up. It is our "creation" and we are amazed at what we have made. Also, what it takes to get there. What did I learn? That this story resonates with me. Also, this story will repeat itself again and again as I continue to create, rest, ask for help and complete a project. Even though Rumpelstilskin stomps himself into the ground at the end of the story, that little man will be back ... and next time, I will know his name. If you are ready to learn how to bring creativity and wonder into your daily life, visit today and get your free Creativity Gift Pack. . Article Source: =Susan_K_Loughrin =7815612 Labels: Creative Visualisation, Creativity, Sense of Purpose Cycles of Creativity Do you ever notice that creativity has a cycle ... like in nature? Sometimes it is within moments, or days. Sometimes it is much longer. The gentle nurturing of the creative self means taking a look at this cycle of creativity. And taking time and energy needed to nurture the cycle. This cycle starts for me as a wonderful new idea, goes into a million directions, gets put out into the world in some form. Then, the idea is released, or let go moves into a meditative time to nurture and incubate... to return once again to the start of the cycle. The cycle of creativity looks like this to me when compared to the natural cycles of the earth: Seed (idea) Growth (building and creating on that idea) Blossom (the idea takes a form) Decline (the idea is completed in a form, and sent out) Death (the idea is gone, separated from the creator) Incubation (a new idea is preparing to arise) Observing the creative cycle in my own work has given me some valuable insights. Much of my creating is inspired by nature. Nature brings me peace, and healing. It is important for me to share this joy with others through a variety of means. Sometimes I write, sometimes I draw or paint, dance, sing, create melodies or act out the drama. I enjoy reflecting on the cycles of the universe and our earth through my work. What type of "creating" fits into this cycle for you? After I observe the creative cycle in my own life, I begin to notice the cycles within the cycles. Here is what I mean: Seed/Growth/Blossom/Death To me, whether the work is seen by another in the beginning stages of the cycle of creativity does not really matter. It is in working within the cycle itself that is important. So, I find that I cycle around by getting the "seed" idea, growing the seed idea, getting the seed idea to blossom ... then, many times the idea declines and death appears before I actually share my creative work with anyone else. That is alright. They process of the creative cycle is endless ... round like a seed full of life. Growth/Blossom/Incubating I can get lost in the re-creating of the beauty I see and experience in nature. One of the consequences of creating is getting lost in an idea and not knowing when to stop. Have you ever had that happen? You are creating and creating and it is just not quite the way you want it? Then, cycle goes round and round and you have to jump off and just call it DONE! This creating is usually full of energy and inspiration. It can also be overwhelming... but is always exhilarating! I can internally analyze my creative ideas and they can become overwhelming. At these times, I feel that my creative ideas are "incubating". Running around, piling up, too many ... too much! I need to take time to acknowledge them. Put them in a safe place to bring out later, when the time may be just right ... the ground more fertile. Decline/Death Occasionally, creating feels wonderful at the start, but it sometimes brings change or disruption which can be difficult and a bit scary. Emotions and past events are revealed when we create. Whether it is the "nasty" voice inside your head, real words that were spoken to you that were difficult to hear, or you tap into a subconscious thought which may or may not be articulated any other way but through creating. This can cause us to shut down ... a form of declining, or death. It can also bring in wonderful ideas for creating that lead to finished work. The fulfillment of getting the creation outside of ourselves leaves a new space to be filled. Death of an idea that is now ready to be shared with the world. We can move on to a new creative endeavor ... using the dried and dusty remains to create anew. There are many ways the creative cycle plays out. I have given a few examples based on my observations. I wonder what you think. How do you keep your creative cycle flowing and spiraling? Resentment. It's such an ugly word. You don't usually think of it when considering how to find happiness! But it's critical to the process! Let me show you how ... What causes resentment? Feeling taken advantage of! As moms, this could be considered a daily occurrence if we're not in the right frame of mind. We spend each and every day helping others and giving of ourselves. It's so easy to fall into the "What about me?" trap! What does that thinking tell us about how to find happiness though? It should be a red flag to let us know we're in a danger zone. If we're feeling taken advantage of, then we need to clearly acknowledge those feelings and determine where they're coming from. They're an indication that something needs to change and change soon! Do I need to set boundaries? Have you been busy playing lead in the martyr role for your family? If so, perhaps you need to take a clear look and re-evaluate what you've been doing. A very wise person told me once, "People will always treat you the way you allow them to." Take a minute and think about that one. Let it REALLY sink in. Is your husband not thanking you for making dinner? Have you asked him to? Are your kids leaving their toys everywhere? Have you made it clear they are to be picked up? Are you running kids in different directions every night? Did you ask anyone to help you? These can be hard truths to swallow. Trust me, I understand it may take more than just a comment! Some serious behavioral changes may be in order, but at least broaching the subject gets the ball rolling when you're wondering how to find happiness. Having I been neglecting myself? The other direction to look is inward. When you're giving all day long, you need to see it like a pitcher of water. Every time you give, you're pouring into someone else. Eventually that pitcher's gonna be empty if you don't take the time to fill it back up. Do you know what a bone dry pitcher gets you? Yep, you guessed it - resentment! That filling up process looks different for everyone. But you've got to understand the concept. The old standby of "There's just too much to do for me to sit down" is a trap. If you're empty, you become bitter, resentful and you're not able to give to your loved ones like you want to. So the next time you notice resentment, it's time to start asking yourself how to find happiness! What are your resentment indicators? Share below! Hiring a coach (life coach, spiritual coach, business coach, physical trainer) is a great way to receive one-on-one instruction, inspiration, and to be held accountable. 6) Read Reading books on subjects you're interested in or passionate about is an invaluable, low-cost, stimulating way to invigorate your mind while acquiring knowledge. 7) Learn self-healing techniques The cost of healthcare will only go up, it seems, so learn ways and techniques you can apply to maintain optimum health, resolve emotional issues, relieve or eliminate stress, and to help your family and friends. 8) Take walks in Nature Whether it's hiking trails, the beach, or the local Nature preserve, expose yourself to the mystical beauty and power of Nature. 9) Spirituality Spirituality means many things to many people so whatever it may mean to you, assuming that it's meaningful to you, develop a daily practice of it. You don't have to subscribe to any specific religious system either - you can create your own. Seriously! 10) Community Participating in a community of some kind, whether it's family, friends, or a gathering built around a shared interest, community enlivens and enriches the soul. 11) Volunteer By being in service to others you benefit in ways that will surprise you. The act of giving - your time, talents, energy - is also the act of receiving. 12) Entrepreneurship The job market is changing rapidly and it's not changing for the benefit of the hourly wage-earner. You have it in you to be self-employed or a business owner but you must get over any fear or false beliefs you may have built around this idea - and the only way to get over them is to take action! You have something to offer the market, which is now global thanks to the internet, and it's cheaper and easier than ever before to strike out on your own. My list offers 12 great ways you can begin to invest in yourself right now. It covers your entire Being - physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and financial. You certainly don't have to start doing all 12 at once. Try just one or two things first and then build from there. However, it's only 12 ways that I listed and everything on my list is not for everyone. There are many more ways to invest in yourself. See what else you come up with that you feel will work for you. The point here is to take action. The world needs you to take action! Do Your Promises Take Over the Commitment You Made to Yourself? Do you find yourself exhausted, working too many hours and still not getting things done? Are you constantly behind on your to-do list and the list keeps growing? Did you forget to add you to the list? The ever growing to-do list. It seems it is never done and each day gets longer and longer. What was revealed to me was to just relax because you are never meant to be done. Period. Instead, we are meant to grow, thrive and expand. We are here on this planet to create, express and share our divine gifts. It's all about our creative juices. And as you create, your list grows. You have new ideas, desires and wants ... the list grows. You think of new ways to play ... the list grows. You have a new business idea ... the list grows. Okay, you get the idea. And yet, the list is daunting and let's face it, you still have tasks to accomplish in the day or all hell breaks loose somewhere. After all the kids still need to eat, the dog still needs to go for a walk, the car needs gas, groceries to buy, bills to be paid and the clients need attention. AND have you ever noticed that most of your to-do list is about someone else or promises made to something besides yourself? Yep, I get it. There are things that MUST absolutely be done today. How do we handle all of this and still remember to add ourselves to that list? Not to mention, what about friends, family and connection? Where do you fit that all in? This very topic came up for discussion with a client in a recent coaching call. She had been on an extended business trip where, as a healer, she helps special needs children. Her work is in high demand as she has had great success in helping children with cerebral palsy gain more movement in their lives and children with autism actually talk for the first time. She travels all over the world and the United States to help those families who need her healing touch. This is very gratifying work for her and she gives her all when she is working with each child. However, her list of things to get done grows. As she travels and helps others, her own list doesn't get done or is put on hold and in the process she seldom, if ever, gets on that list herself. When she returns home she is drained and overwhelmed by the list of things she must accomplish and get done. As you may have guessed, she doesn't find the time very often to fit in friends and family. Her time and energy is given over to the powerful healing she does for others. In the process she has given over her time, energy and talents to others and seldom to herself. She calendars clients but not herself. This is very common with women and even more so for creative, entrepreneurial women. We are so busy doing it all for everyone else that we bypass ourselves. So what do we do instead? There are three things that I find work for me ... that is if I remember to take a moment and actually engage with these ideas. 1. Take a moment and notice your attachment There is a reason you are running around doing everything for everyone else and not for yourself. Stop and take a moment and allow the real reason you do this to come forth. Often it is an attachment to some sort of outcome and most times it falls into one of three areas. The first area is a deep need to be loved and accepted. The second, is a desire to feel safe and secure. And the third, is low self esteem. Once you notice the deeper reason you can practice being unattached in those situations which frees you to let go and have a different experience. 2. Let go of the desire to get to the destination It was an eye-opening revelation to me that I was so focused upon the end result that I was not enjoying the journey along the way. I realized I was meant to enjoy the journey not just get the list done. That made life way too hard along the way. It was time to let go of the attachment to my "to-do" list and learn to just enjoy the ride. In other words, enjoy the journey and stop focusing on the destination!. 3. Put yourself on the to-do list Have you ever noticed you do not put yourself on your list? Here's what I have found ... you will never enjoy life to the fullest if you do not consciously, purposely and strategically put yourself on your to-do list. Yes, take out your calendar and make an appointment for yourself. One final thought and then I hope you'll rush to your list or calendar and add yourself to it ... I didn't share with you that the concept of "you never get it done" really does free you up to just enjoy the journey. It allows you to relax and let go. After all if it never gets done then it's time to let go of the tight reins you have on the outcome and just simply enjoy the ride. Oh, and as to my client ... she emailed me today and said her client cancelled their appointment today and she had the rare opportunity to just pamper herself. She was emailing me from a local coffee shop, sipping and enjoying! Keeping a journal is a good way to plan ahead. In the past 2 years I have learned to plan my next day so I accomplish more. I wish I did the same thing back then. • Ask more questions How much more would you have learned, not to mention the amount of time you would have saved, if you asked more questions in school and college. Being worried what your classmates would think of you if you made that extra effort, shouldn't have been an issue. How many words of wisdom do you think our parents and grandparents could have given us if we had just asked the right questions? • Choose your own career My passion was always computers and what we can achieve with them. But my parents had other plans for me; they wanted me to become a doctor. I ended up taking the subjects in school to make my parents proud, only to realize 2 years later that that's not really what I enjoy doing. Then I applied for a bank job as it was considered as a secure job with decent pay. After 22 years the job has still not fulfilled me. Find what you're passionate about and focus on making that your career. Don't just follow the money, follow your heart. I know for a fact that if I could have known before what I know now, things in my life could have been a lot different. However I can't turn back time. What I can do however, is first pass my knowledge on to as many other eighteen year olds as possible, and also to use what I already know now, to mold the next 20 years of my life, and you can do the same, whatever your age is. When things are tough or you have a decision to make your first reaction will be 'which route is the easiest route to take'. It might be the easiest but if you take that road will you learn anything? Will it help you accomplish new things in your life? Will it help you come closer to your goals you have set yourself? The answers are probably 'no' because as long as you are in your 'comfort zone', things will always stay as they are. Do the unexpected and outperform yourself; you'll be amazed at what you can achieve. Labels: Accountability, Being Grateful, Changing Old Patterns When Life Throws You A Curve Ball, Hit It Out of the Park! Home Run (Keith Allison) by Charlene C Tops Feeling a bit discouraged, disorientated and disengaged, I was walking home from the store when suddenly a burst of inspiration popped into my mind. It was one of those days where I had a huge list of things I needed to accomplish, but could not focus. Each step I took my feet only felt heavier and heavier. The feelings of uselessness and futility were overtaking me; I felt like I was drowning in this murkiness. I was weary of trying to "talk myself" out of it. It had been two weeks since I was let go from my job due to downsizing, and I had already spent numerous days "talking myself" out of feeling down. Four years ago when I started to work for this high tech company, it was the place to be employed. The king of all the jobs! People were desperately trying to find employment within this growing giant tech company. It took me months to land this job. I loved being there! Day after day, I went to work excited to be there. Little did I know that the competition in this day and age would cause this well-known company to bow beneath the weight of the market? It would downsize merely to stay afloat. And yes, I was one of the ones tossed out. The day I was let go still haunts me. I was escorted out of the building to a taxi awaiting me. I wasn't able to go back to my desk and gather my things. I wasn't able to say goodbye to my colleagues or to exchange contact information. I was simply herded out like a cattle being prodded. Needless to say, this unraveled me! I was totally blindsided. I had seen many others lose their jobs and felt the pain of watching them being escorted out of the building. I thought that my position albeit was secure. They needed the services that I was providing. I was flabbergasted and numb in the same moment. When this type of thing happens, it is very overwhelming and it is easy to begin to lose your identity and self-worth. Although I realized that I was just one person in a huge amount of others that were going through the same thing, it still hit me hard. When I would talk to others about what they were going through, it was easy for me to tell them, it wasn't their fault and it had nothing to do with job performance and the like, but suddenly it was MY face in the mirror gazing in unbelief. It can be quite debilitating. For two weeks I had thought day and night about losing my job. Some days I functioned well while others I didn't get much accomplished. I would try to do all the right things to help myself. I was tired of this ongoing conversation. I didn't have the energy I needed to bring myself out of this funk. However, I figured I would just talk to myself one more time and reiterate to myself exactly "how" I felt. Give my emotions a name, acknowledge them as being real. I started the conversation with myself, beginning with the sentence "I feel like I have been thrown a curve ball yet again." No sooner did I say this to myself, when the answer came ever so boldly. So??? Hit it out of the park! Take the unexpected turn of events and use them to your good. Slam a smashing home run, right out of the park. Don't strike out! Don't foul ball, simply grip your bat and slam it baby! You can do it! My own words changed my life! I decided then and there that I would move outside my comfort zone. This unexpected turn of events was actually the catalyst I needed to take action to follow my dreams! Today I feel such a sense of fulfillment and gratitude for the opportunity to live the life I love! But what if you didn't want to be mediocre like most people? What if you just wanted to break free from the 'normal' life we are all programmed to live? Taking control of your own life and not settling just for mere existence requires you to have self respect and a passion to succeed in becoming something better than you already are. But it also means that you need to step outside the box and look at what you can change and what you should keep close in your life. Here are a few suggestions in taking those vital small steps that will make a difference to changing, and living life to its full: Everyone is unique in their own way, and that is a gift to us all. In this crazy world we live in, everyone is trying to 'mold' everyone else into something that they want. Just don't accept it. You are who you are and yes you are unique in your own way. Don't let people 'program' you into something you are not. Appreciate People who Care About You Sometimes we are so reserved by the lies that people tell us that we actually ignore the truth and honesty that we receive from people who actually care about us. You know who cares about you and who is jealous. Who are the people you would call if you were in trouble? Who would have nothing to gain from your downfall and who would take sacrifices to help you? We often take advice from the wrong people; usually people who are fun to be around instead of people who actually care for us. Embrace Change in Your Life People usually look at some form of change in their lives as a burden. Don't be afraid to experience change in any form since it has come to you for a reason. A new challenge or maybe a new opportunity you need to explore. You won't find out until you accept and tackle it making it work to your advantage. Life is a roller coaster with its ups and downs, and what you become is how you deal with it. Enjoy the Little Things in Life I am sure you have heard the phrase "the best things in life are free". Don't be materialistic and enjoy every moment with your loved ones. Look at the details and not just the whole picture. Don't take everything for granted and look at the small things because one day you might realize that they were actually the big things that made the difference. Listen to Your Inner Voice Choose to listen to your inner voice and not everyone else's opinions. Accept opinions but then you decide which road is best for you since it's your journey in life. Remember that the choices you make have an impact on your life. You will have good days that will give you great happiness and bad days that will give you experience. Let go of the Past and Live the Present Sometimes what holds us back from living the present and planning our future are the dreadful mistakes or consequences of our past. We all have regrets of the past but guess what; we are all given a 'present' of forgiveness which is called 'the present time'. Letting go can be difficult but sometimes starting all over again can be the best option, whether it's a career move, a new relationship, or just having a new perspective of life. Communication (Photo credit: P Shanks) by Cynthia Willis Sad to say, but most people do not realize the power of effective communication skills. Poor speaking skills can limit and paralyze career advancement or your ability to establish new relationships. Whereas, effective communication skills may lead to limitless opportunities, new personal-professional relationships, and improve your quality of life. Great communication is a human connection. Effectively communicating your thoughts and ideas gives you the ability to manipulate your environment. It allows you to transfer your thoughts and ideas to the people within your environment. Powerful communication is about stimulating the listener(s) and getting the listener(s) to understand your viewpoint. Effective communication is the power of persuasion. If you are an authority figure, powerful communication may allow your listeners to understand the message(s) you conveyed at the moment you spoke it. You may want to ask yourself, "how can I tell if I am an effective communicator?" The answer is simple; do people ask you for clarification every time you speak? If the answer is yes, you may not be an effective communicator. Keeping people keenly interested and attentive is an art, it has a lot to do with the emotion you exhibit when delivering your message. Your audience can detect your passion from the tonality of your voice and your nonverbal gestures. Verbal communication skills, is a social tool to expressing your thoughts within your environment. Choosing terminology that will best describe your thoughts and ideas is crucial to effective communication. Nonverbal communication is also a vital component and may be the most powerful component in your communicative performance. When used correctly, your verbal communication skills can exude the confidence you have in yourself and the belief you have in your product, services, or your message(s). Your personal appearance may enhance your believability if it's in-sync to what your message, tonality, and gestures conveys. Invest your time in enhancing your own speaking style. Creating an effective speech style may consist of honing your syntax, semantic, phonology, pragmatics and speech intelligibility. When you choose to engage in a change process, the journey may be filled with both opportunities and obstacles. But change is not impossible, you must obtain self-control, enthusiasm, and motivation in order to make change happen. Communication is also about perception, if you can get your listener or audience to hear, see, smell, and touch the objects in your message without the objects being in the room, you have developed the ability to stimulate the listener. The purpose of communication is to connect humans together and allow us to be of service to one another. Cynthia Willis has earned the Certificate of Clinical Competence (CCC) from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), of which she is a member. Ms. Willis holds a license from North Carolina State Board of Examiners for Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology. http://perfectlyspeaking.com Article Source: =Cynthia_Willis http://EzineArticles.com/?The-Power-of-Effective-Communication-Skills&id=7811946 Labels: Awareness, Communication, Creating community How Willing Are You To Change? Change (Photo credit: Sean MacEntee) by Cara Lumen You have to be willing to give something up - to release something, to make room for something new. Or you won't grow. You won't realize your dreams. You have to be willing to move out of your comfort zone. You have to be willing to change. Are you stuck in the past? What about all the "what-if's" in your life - do you still believe them? What if I'd studied this in college? What if I had taken that job instead of this one? Everything would be different - right? Wrong. Those crossroads have been reached and choices have been made and there is no going back. However, there is the insight that you had when you considered that choice in the first place. Why were you drawn to photography, or languages, or the idea of foreign travel? What longing would have been met, what skill would have been used, what experiences would have been gained? And how could you capture some of that right now from where you are this minute? There is nothing to say you couldn't take a class in photography, or a language, or even get some certification that would open up a new door. Let the past guide you with its tugs of interest, and see if you are ready to put them into play now. Are you still playing it safe? There is only one way to grow and that's to explore something new. Give it a try, see if you like it, and see if you are any good at it. See if it fits in with your overall plans. Or if it opens a new door or gives you any new ideas. Look at your skills. I'm a writer, an organizer, a lifelong learner and a teacher. I get excited about something, learn it, and then share it with others. But what I get excited about changes. What are you excited about learning or doing or understanding that you want to explore and then share/teach/explain to others? If some ideas pop up write them down. I've just recently moved to an area I lived in 35 years ago and I don't know my way around. I have a GPS whose warm voice is greatly reassuring but one evening shortly after I moved here I followed my son to his new house over a highway that had not existed before and then had to find my way home in the dark on my own. I will tell you that every intuitive antenna I have was alert. It was dusk and the signs were hard to read and the road unfamiliar and I was glad I had been so observant on the way over. I was greatly relieved when both the GPS and I recognized my turnoff. My arms were aching. I became aware of how I had been listening and feeling with my entire body. But I did it! I made it back by myself in the dark. Whether you have a GPS or not, you have to push forward into unknown territory in order to reap the reward. I was delighted to see my son's home. We had a great talk. If I hadn't been willing to trust that I could find my way home I might not have taken that particular opportunity. You have to trust. Trust that if the inclination is to do it you should. If the inclination is not to do it, look over your reasons carefully to be certain you are not standing in your own way, and if you are not then don't do it. Trust what other people see in you What do other people ask you to do? What do they see in you? You might want to make an Acknowledgement Book in which you write down the positive things people say about you. Then look at those for the signs that you have been missing. I remember a long time ago a friend saying, "You'd make a CEO of a different sort." It surprised me at the time. But it spoke to my leadership abilities as well as my creativity and outside the box path. Ask your friends and family what they see as your strengths. Listen, and then put those to work. When you focus on the needs of others you will step outside your comfort zone with little effort. Stop focusing on your own fears, your apprehensions, your reservations, and see where you are needed in this world. Then get yourself in service. Be willing to change, to seek, to explore and to commit. That's where the forward movement is. That's how you embrace change. Cara Lumen helps you stay passionately on purpose while you make a difference in your world. http://www.passionatelyonpurpose.com Labels: Changing Old Patterns, Comfort zone, Commitment What Are the 4 Things That You Want From Life, and Have You Thought of Your Plan to Achieve Them? Health (Photo credit: Tax Credits) by Michael G A Brown The setting of goals has been proven to be an effective key in achieving many great things in life. The fact is a written goal could be one of the greatest investments that you may make during your life. You could think of it as making a verbal contract with yourself; being written down gives you a visual method of seeing clearly the things that you desire to achieve. Indeed the idea of seeing pictures of yourself viewed as if you have already achieved the goal could be a very powerful tool to influence what is known as your subconscious mind. Things that many people want If you consider the things that most people want in life, you could find that there are a number of things that seem to come up often in the list. These could include good health, a happy life, a stable income, a good relationship to name just a few. Once a person has decided on the things that they want in life, the next task would be to work on a plan to achieve them. Let us look at these key things. 1. Good Health This could be thought of as the most important thing that a person would want and need in life. Without good health it could be very difficult to achieve most things in life. Indeed during the time when health is not good, it may be difficult to do things like work or study. So having good health is very important and is something that you should not take for granted. Health could be said to be something that you have a great deal of control over. This is due to the fact that you are generally responsible for the food that you eat and the exercise that you do. So it could be said that you have the power to greatly influence your health. 2. Happy Life There are a number of things that could be suggested that contribute to a happy life. Having a feeling of well-being could be one of the important factors. And to gain this feeling of well-being could be due to things like a good home life, a good work life, a good study life, living in a pleasant clean safe environment, living free from stress. It could be suggested that stress is the cause of a great many illnesses. So happiness could be influenced by many factors. 3. Stable Income Having enough income and sufficient cash flow could be key to ensuring a pleasant happy life. One of the sad things is that in a desire to work and earn enough money can often lead to a poor work-life balance. If a person is spending all their time working they might not find enough quality time to spend with their family. One of the things that has been suggested by some people is to develop multiple streams of income. This means that you should look at how you can earn income from sources other than working. 4. Good Relationship The fact with relationships is that it takes two people to make a relationship work. So in-order to have a lasting relationship it may be important not to blame the other person but take full responsibility to ensure that it works. So what are the things that you want to achieve in life, and are you working on a plan to achieve them? The progress isn't quick enough and you're overwhelmed with it all. You don't want to give up, but family and friends are used to it, and when you do start over, perhaps you don't feel their support. What will it take to keep you moving forward for where you really want to be? You can get out of your own way easily in four simple steps. First change your physiology. Notice especially, if you're standing or sitting with your head hanging and your shoulders stooping. Stand or sit as you do when you are confident - and if you're not there yet, act as if you are. Notice that even a small shift in your body, can make big difference in your energy level. Next change your language. When you say "I'm thinking about starting a new business ..." "getting a promotion", "I might start losing weight ..." that's all you'll probably do. While it's true that any change starts with a thought, at some point your language needs to suggest action. "I'm updating my CV for promotion next month ..." or "starting a business by the end of the year". Likewise, if you "might" start losing weight, "I must start managing my weight today". It's as if you are doing it already. The third thing you can do to keep you moving toward what it is you want is focus. It takes about seven seconds of focus on what you want to shift your emotional state. Imagine what seven seconds of focus on what you want, once every hour each day could do for keeping you in control of reaching your goal. Set your timer every hour and do it for one day - notice the difference! Finally, sharing even small steps you are taking is one sure way to reinforce your success along the way. Make sure you share with people who support you. People are often afraid to talk about their progress fearing disapproval. If you come up short in support from people close to you, social media is an excellent opportunity for you to share with the world. You only need to write one sentence, or a short phrase "I finished my CV for the manager position today" - then share or post your action, so you can connect to your new belief that "I can, and I am!" That's right, make it public. Change your physiology, your language and focus. Then share your progress. Reinforcing your action steps by sharing, are four simple steps to keeping you in control, with passion - for reaching your goal. Article Source: =Anita_Alleyne =7792914 Labels: Awareness, Changing Old Patterns, Commitment, Sense of Purpose, Success The Psychology Behind Why Music Helps You Work Out by LifeHacker: http://lifehacker.com/the-psychology-behind-why-music-helps-you-work-out-514265389 We know that music helps a lot of us through a workout, but the the psychology behind when music works and when it doesn't is still being investigated. The BBC Future has a few ideas about what's going on in your brain. In general, music has the greatest effect on self-paced exercise: The benefits of music are largest for self-paced exercise - in other words those sports where some of the work involved is in deciding when to act, as well as how to act. This means all paced exercises, like rowing or running, rather than un-paced exercises like judo or football. My speculation is that music helps us perform by taking over a vital piece of the task of moving, the rhythm travels in through our ears and down our auditory pathways to the supplementary motor area. There it joins forces with brain activity that is signalling when to move, helping us to keep pace by providing an external timing signal. Or to use a sporting metaphor, it not only helps us out of the starting blocks but it helps to keep us going until we reach the line. It makes sense. After all, music distracts us from fatigue, and at the right BPM music can improve a workout. If you need some help picking out the best exercise headphones, we've got you covered as well. Labels: Motivation, Physical exercise, Physical Health Brandy Was Right: Almost Doesn't Count English: Sailing to California for the California Gold Rush (originally published in 1850s) (Wikipedia) by Rico A Reed Today I was sitting down for a couple of minutes watching "Wipeout" with my family, enjoying the site of people trying to compete for $50,000. I normally don't watch TV because it's usually nothing of value on but I do enjoy a good laugh from watching the guys and girls on that show. On the last episode there was a guy that made it to the final round, when it's down to 4 contestants, and he was the third guy in line. He ended up making his way down next to the last obstacle with over 2 minutes left to beat the leader and he quit. Why did he quit at the last minute? I mean he was 2 minutes away from winning Wipeout. He was almost a winner. Brandy hit the nail right on the head with this statement. Almost in anything just means that the person that almost does something always loses. I recently read about a rancher, we'll call him John, back during the early days of the California gold rush. Back during those days people risk their entire lives to hunt for gold with the hopes of becoming rich. This rancher sold his ranch, convinced all his friends and family to loan him money, and took everything that he acquired to purchase a drilling machine to dig for the precious gold. "This rancher sold his ranch, convinced all his friends and family to loan him money, and took everything that he acquired to purchase a drilling machine to dig for the precious gold." What happened next is something that continues to happen to millions of people across the globe. The same thing has happened to myself numerous times too. John began drilling with all his hopes and dreams relying on his knowledge of mining. He continued to drill, and drill, and drill until the drill appeared to not be able to drill any more. It was almost like he ran into a concrete wall underground. So there went his dreams along with all his money. So in order to save a little dignity John sold the machine to a fellow gold hunter and returned back where he came. "John hit a snag and quit." However our new drill owner was educated enough to know that he didn't know everything there was about mining. No, our new owner was smart so he went out and found someone skilled in the mining business. The miner said that the previous owner had hit a fault line and all he had to do was drill three more feet into the ground. And that turned out the be the case, the new owner drilled pass the line, found gold and became incredibly wealthy. This story has two morals to it. One, John almost reached gold only to quit right before the finish line. Two, had John sought someone skilled in the mining business he would have learned that the gold was sitting right past the fault line. In business it seems so often that as soon as thing get going there's always walls that we run into. There seems to be something that knocks a person off course only to realize later that they were on the right track. All they had to do was break through the wall, or crowd, or whatever you want to call it. "3 Feet from Gold!" If only I would have sought after someone that knew about the subject I wanted to know about I would have reached that "gold" long ago. Sometimes all it takes is 3 feet to cross the finish line. Today, right now, don't stop 3 feet from the goal. Drive on in whatever it is you're doing until you cross that line. If you don't know something find someone that does and continue until you break through to your goal. Remember almost doesn't count, so don't settle for second best. My name is Rico and I found why some people succeed and other fail. The difference between winning and losing is so small it's almost difficult to detect. I've struggled with this before but not anymore. Visit . to learn more today about the thin line between the two. Because this attitude of “If you aren’t famous or rich, you’re nothing as a human being,” has become gospel truth, people try any and all possibilities to seek fame, lest they become failures by the world’s standards. And what’s the easiest kind of fame to get? Internet fame. Internet fame is evanescent and ill-defined, even at the best of times. Unfortunately, this doesn’t stop people from rapaciously trying to pursue it. This disgusting practice can best be seen on Facebook. People try to whore out their kid(s) or some other family member for worthless Facebook likes - one million likes and I take my kid on a vacation, one million likes and my husband will stop smoking! Maybe that mother should take her kids on vacation regardless whether a million people “like” it. Maybe that husband would live a healthier, longer life if he stopped smoking, even if the “like” button wasn’t clicked by one million strangers. But then those things - taking the kids on vacation and quitting smoking - wouldn’t be true accomplishments because these people wouldn’t become “internet famous” for fifteen minutes. The Internet created this behavior. In decades past, parents just took their kids on vacation. In decades past, people quit smoking without fanfare. Now, anything that might get likes has to be a pathetic, needy, production - a publicity stunt for 15 minutes seconds of the most inane, forgettable “fame” in human existence. Behavior like this isn’t exclusive to Facebook. Twitter users beg celebrities for retweets and cry out in nigh-orgasmic bliss when they get one. The brief instant of exposure to e-fame in the form of a PR intern mindlessly clicking a button is worth more than a firstborn child to some. Reddit has its karma whores who will do anything for an up vote. YouTube has the odious re-uploader who downloads popular videos and uploads them under their own account to steal some thumbs ups. We’ve forgotten that all of these things are ultimately just code in the backend of a website. We’ve forgotten that we can be happy without e-reputation. We’ve sold our collective souls to the “Like” button, and we’ll never get them back.

Korea's 1st Sunrise of 2013 at 7:26 a.m. in Dokdo Korea's first sunrise of the new year is expected at 7:26 a.m. over the easternmost islets of Dokdo, the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute said Wednesday. People on the mainland will see it about five minutes later, starting in the southeastern port city of Ulsan. The sun will rise over Seoul at 7:46 a.m. and over the southern port city of Busan at 7:31 a.m. Jeongdongjin Beach in the northeastern port city of Gangneung will see the first sunrise of 2013 at 7:39 a.m., and Jeju Island's Seongsan Sunrise Peak at 7:36 a.m. Jeju is further west than Gangneung, but the dawn comes earlier since sun rises from the southeast rather than directly from the east in winter. Each time of the sunrise was calculated on the assumption that the places are 0 m above sea level. On higher ground, it can be spotted a little earlier.

Uchinaguchi class of the Okinawa Association of America marks its 9th anniversary (From the left) Kimiko Goya, the head of Okinawa Association of America; Shinsho Miyara, professor of the University of the Ryukyus; Chogi Higa, teacher of the class; Moriyo Shimabukuro, associate professor of the University of the Ryukyus and the students in the Uchinaguchi class taught in the hall of the Okinawa Association of America. June 20, 2011 by Sadao Tome, correspondent of the Ryukyu Shimpo Nine years have passed since 2002, when Chogi Higa started up Uchinaguchi (Okinawan language) classes as one of the cultural activities of the Okinawa Association of America. Two-research scholars from the University of the Ryukyus went to observe the classes. In addition to their classroom visits, University of the Ryukyus professor Shinsho Miyara, the head of the Association of Okinawan Language Teaching, and Moriyo Shimabukuro, associate professor of University of the Ryukyus, conducted interviews with students and teachers and collected questionnaire survey sheets that had been sent to the class in advance. The course was created to help keep the Okinawan language alive in the immigrant community in the United States as the number of first generation Okinawan immigrants who can speak Uchinaguchi decreases with the passage of time. Content includes instruction in Uchinaguchi, Okinawan history, culture, customs and folk songs with humorous explanations used to explain the meanings of words. Most of the students are second and third-generation Okinawan immigrants to the United States, second-generation Okinawan immigrants to South America, and Americans interested in Okinawa. Some Japanese students also participated in the class. Each student brought some kind of Okinawan food along to the class and enjoyed each other’s company. University students majoring in Asian studies or linguistics also took the class during their summer vacation and linguistics scholars from various Japanese universities visiting the class give it a unique atmosphere. On the day in question, Higa taught the monthly Uchinaguchi class and had the students introduce themselves and give their opinions in a group discussion. Professor Miyara explained the Association of Okinawan Language Teaching, saying “We teach Uchinaguchi to young children, and recently think that they are becoming even more enthusiastic about learning the language.” Shimabukuro said, “We are making a textbook of Uchinaguchi in English, and plan to publish it through the University of Hawaii soon.” Ryoko Onishi, who teaches Japanese at Los Angeles Harbor College and studies Japanese in University of California, Los Angeles, and Nobutaka Takara, Ph.D. Candidate in linguistics of University of California, Santa Barbara, participated in the class as guests.

Your Pet's First Wellness Exam Your veterinarian will perform several services essential to the animal's immediate and long-term well being. A typical evaluation will include blood and fecal tests to check for parasites or diseases that might require immediate treatment. Your pet may also be started on medications to prevent pest and parasite infestations. Core vaccinations will also be administered, and spaying or neutering may be recommended for animals more than a few weeks of age. Make sure to schedule this first appointment as soon as possible. Adopting a pet brings great joy and excitement to individuals and families, but it also introduces new responsibilities and concerns. Your new family member deserves the same health and safety considerations you would want for the people in your life. Pet Proofing Before you even bring your new dog or cat home with you, take steps to "pet-proof" your home. Homeowners may need new strategies for dealing with household objects and situations that never posed to a threat to the home's human residents. Medicines or household chemicals, for instance, must be put away behind closed and secured doors to prevent the accidental poisoning of curious pets. Even ordinary food items such as citrus fruits, certain nuts, chocolate, garlic, onions, alcoholic drinks and coffee should be kept away from animals, because these products can cause violent illness or other reactions if ingested. Hide any exposed wires or cables so your new pet won't be tempted to chew on them, or place the cords in PCV pipe, and remove small objects that might pose a hazard if swallowed. Lilies are very toxic to cats, and ingestion of sago palm or oleander can be very serious for dogs. Schedule a Health Exam A visit to the veterinarian should be among the first stops for your newly-adopted animal. Veterinarians not only provide important initial care to check for existing health problems and guard against new ones, but they can also give you a wealth of advice from home dental care to proper nutrition, especially if you've never owned an animal before. Don't put this visit off; your pet may be vulnerable to serious ailments until vaccinations and other wellness services can be administered. Make Introductions Carefully If you already have other pets in your home, you may find that you need to introduce your newest addition to the family with discretion and sensitivity. Dogs tend to assume dominant or submissive pack relationships, so your canines may require time to figure out the new pecking order. (Ideally, you have already assumed the role of "top dog.") Cats can be particularly sensitive and stressed when their routine is disrupted by another feline presence. Keep your new cat in an isolated room at first, with his own food bowl and litter box, gradually letting him explore more and more of the home while both cats gets used to each other's smells and company. Enroll in Training Training is a great next step for a newly-adopted dog -- not just for housebreaking but also for simple commands such as "Sit," "Stay" and "Down." Obedience training helps you enjoy a peaceful, happy, well-socialized pet.

So yesterday-just to remind you in case you forgot what I said yesterday-yesterday I talked a bit about our intention, a kind of intention that would be useful for sesshin. Also, I talked about the intensity of sesshin. These things are difficult things to talk about, because, as I said, it sounds a little crazy. It's easy to misunderstand. It might sound like I'm asking everyone to run around being very intense somehow- eyes bugging out, being very intense. So it's difficult to speak of these things without being misunderstood. Actually, it's difficult to speak about anything without being misunderstood, because it's so easy to be misunderstood, whatever we say. In fact, probably most of the time we are all misunderstood because everyone is so used to seeing everything through the filter of self-clinging. And when we look at everything through the filter of our own point of view it's almost impossible for things not to get at least a little bit distorted. Still, knowing this, we try to say something and we try to understand something. And even though we might not understand something, that's OK because if we stay with our misunderstanding with complete sincerity, not judging it too much or wobbling in our body and mind too much, then eventually we will understand something. As Suki said last night, we will allow something to be understood nearby where we are. We will find ourselves at home somehow. It's important, 'though, to be ready at all times to be surprised, to learn something completely new and to be ready to change course. Also, yesterday, I went over various points of posture from Suzuki-roshi, and these are really important practical points for how to work with our zazen during sesshin, so I want, just very briefly, to mention some of them again. First of all the mudra--holding your mudra with a sense of great delicacy as if you were holding something precious in your hands. You might imagine that you're holding the entire world, the whole planet in your hands, or all the cosmos resting in your hands, or as I said yesterday, a beautiful bird, maybe a warbler. Teah and I saw a beautiful warbler the other day, with bright yellow eye-patches. Or a nuthatch like the ones we have around here which have black eye-patches and run up and down the trees upside down. You could imagine holding a bird like that in your hands. And the mudra you hold up against your belly, which is hard because it wants to fall away. And the position of your head- the back of your head is sort of reaching for the ceiling. And Suzuki-roshi mentions sitting as if your head were holding up the sky. So there's a sense of lifting up, being lifted from the back part of your head with your chin tucked in. Often you sit this way, which can get dreamy, so you tuck your chin in. And when you lift your head up that way your spine will be lengthened. So your shoulders come back and this, down right here, which is called the sternum, is lifted up. So there's a great feeling of being lifted up. So in zazen we're quite balanced between gravity, which prevents us from flying up, bumping our heads on the ceiling-which could happen if we were in space-we would all be-imagine. I think I might have mentioned before I have a friend who's a science fiction writer and once they called me up to consult about how you would do zazen at zero G's in outer space. So I guess that would happen-we would all be sort of bouncing. You know gravity doesn't exist everywhere-just happens to be here. But because of gravity we stay in our seats, more of less. But because of our Buddha nature we don't. Gravity could pull us right through the seat to the center of the earth, and we would all clump up there in one big mess. But we don't do that because our Buddha nature holds us up. So when we're sitting there's this balance between the gravity that keeps us earthbound and our nature that lifts us up. And this is all in the upper part of the body-in the sternum and the back of the head. This posture is a very alert and royal posture. They used to call all the disciples of the Buddha royalty or nobility-that was the epithet used for the Buddha and his disciples. So this posture is like being a king or queen, sitting this way, that kind of dignity and beauty. Being a king or queen in this posture doesn't mean that you're a king or queen and the other guy isn't. This is a very open and ready and flexible posture, a royal and noble posture that understands that each and every thing is also a king and a queen. I want to be clear that-don't think that I'm talking about the right posture and that you should let go of the wrong posture and find the right posture. It's not exactly a right posture and a wrong posture. It's just that we make an effort in this posture and making this kind of effort, we will be able to be aware of our body in a radically new way. And when we can be with our body in this way our true nature can shine through. So without thinking right or wrong, good or bad, just make an effort with these points of posture. So sesshin is a process. Many things happen, many changes happen. During sesshin there's one period of zazen only and that's this one. And we settle into sesshin. It takes some time. Maybe right now you're beginning to get the feeling for it, maybe having some moments or periods of zazen in which you can almost taste the concentration. As we practice in sesshin, little by little our natural self-clinging will loosen up somewhat and the body and mind will soften somewhat and then in the midst of that we'll feel concentration, thickness, or underwater-like sense of how things are. The world of concentration is a pure world.The bumps and bruises of the ordinary world are eliminated. In the world of concentration there is a wonderful flow to things, and there is a great beauty. This world is not something that only Buddhas know about. All over the world people have a way of indicating or speaking of it. I said yesterday that I was reading the Odyssey, and in the Odyssey this world of concentration is pure as the world of the gods and the goddesses. Plato called this the world of form, abstracted from the world of everyday bumps and bruises. And strangely, in Buddhist thought, it's also called the world of form--literally the Rupadhatu means the world of form, the meditation world, as distinguished from the ordinary world, which is called the Kamadhatu, the world of desire. So the world of form is purified--a purification of the world of desire. So in sesshin, as concentration develops our sense of desire and clinging smoothes out a bit and things feel cleaner and purer. And you can really get a feeling for this when you look at these wonderful helping Buddhas and Bodhisattvas that we have with us in the zendo on the altars--these figures whose iconography comes from centuries of contemplation of this realm. Manjushri, the figure of Shakyamuni Buddha himself, Jizo Bodhisattva, and now also Tara, who in one world is a Bodhisattva and in another world is a Buddha. All of these figures shine beautifully and smile. Every one of them has a little smile, a peaceful smile. And every one of them has a relaxed, an arrogant, smooth body without any kinks or aches--just sitting peacefully. So I was thinking about all this and it reminded me of a poem of Wallace Stevens about this. Wallace Stevens knew all about this stuff somehow. That's what selling insurance in Hartford Connecticut will do for you. This is a short poem called 'The Indigo Glass in the Grass.' Maybe you know this poem: Which is real-- This bottle of indigo glass in the grass, Or the bench with the pot of geraniums, the stained mattress and the washed overalls drying in the sun? Which of these truly contains the world? Neither one, nor the two together. Stevens was quite fond of images like the indigo glass in the grass, which for him was this world of Rupadhatu, the pure world of, in his terminology, the imagination. And the stained mattress and the overalls drying in the sun are the ordinary world of ordinary stuff--things that go wrong, things that aren't smooth, aren't beautiful. So Stevens' point of view here is really interesting. We would want to say--some people say--the world of the mattress, that's the real world. What are you people doing sitting here, you know, navel-gazing? But a pure Zen monk might say, Oh no, the world of concentration, that's the real world. That's truer, more real than the messy, ordinary everyday world. And then we'd really want to say both--we like everything. It's all real. But Stevens says neither one, neither one contains the world, nor the two together. So these days please enjoy yourself-sometimes in Kamadhatu, sometimes in Rupadhatu-maybe later on we'll talk about Arupadhatu, the formless realm, but not today. So wherever you are--sometimes you zip in and out quite quickly--enjoy yourself and don't wish for another realm or don't think that you have arrived in some realm that's somehow better or worse than any other realm. Just stay open to whatever realm you're in and don't dwell on anything. Better realms and worse realms, in fact any kind of judgment, which we see with some shock is so frequent in our mind, is just a trick way we have, from the beginningless past, of distancing ourself from ourself. And you realize in sesshin that to distance ourself in that way is painful, literally can be painful. So it's hard to survive sesshin being distant. We need to get close--very, very close. I've been trying to meditate with you a little bit on Buddha's enlightenment, the story of Buddha, which we are recreating in our sesshin. So to continue with that I want to bring up today an old case, number thirty in the Mumonkan. Here's the case: Ta-mei asked Ma-tsu, 'What is Buddha?' Ma-tsu said, 'This very mind is Buddha.' That's the case. Ta-mei asked what is Buddha. Ma-tsu said this very mind is Buddha. So I'm sure all of you know about Ma-tsu. He was one of the great Zen ancestors in the two generations after the sixth ancestor. He was one of the people who was responsible for the efflorescence of this new teaching of Zen in China. Zen, you know, eventually took over all the other schools of Buddhism in China. They all collapsed into Zen, which was very strong, and Ma-tsu was one of the pillars of that efflorescence. He supposedly had one hundred and thirty-nine enlightened disciples, or something like that, who went far and wide spreading the teachings. And it's impossible to talk about Ma-tsu and to be in sesshin doing zazen without remembering the story that I told many times about when Ma-tsu was in sesshin as a student under his teacher, Nan-yueh, or Nangaku, which is the Japanese way of reading Nan-yueh. So once upon a time Ma-tsu was in sesshin and it was late at night and he was doing night-sitting, sitting on the porch of the zendo in the middle of the night, maybe, because he was a really diligent student, intent on his zazen. Night and day zazen zazen zazen, you know. So he's sitting there and Nangaku was strolling around in the moonlight checking out the scene, seeing what was going on around the temple. And there he sees Ma-tsu sitting on the porch doing zazen. I mean, he's doing zazen--pretty obvious he's doing zazen, right. But still Nangaku says, Oh, what are you doing? And Ma-tsu says, Zazen. And Nangaku says, Oh, why are you doing that? And Ma-tsu says, Well, I'm trying to become a Buddha. They must have been doing a roofing job on the temple because there were some roof tiles lying around outside. Nangaku picked one up, whipped a handkerchief out of his pocket and started rubbing the tile. And, you know, Ma-tsu's probably sitting there getting annoyed at the distraction and he said, What are you doing? And Nangaku said, Oh, I'm just rubbing this tile, getting it really nice. And Ma-tsu said, Why are you doing that? And Nangaku said, Well, I'm going to make this tile into a mirror. If I rub it enough it will be a mirror. And Ma-tsu said, You can't make a tile into a mirror. And Nangaku said, You can't make a Buddha by sitting. Which, of course, blew Ma-tsu's mind. You know, What? So in this very open state Nangaku gave Ma-tsu some good teaching. He said, If you hitch an ox to a cart and you want to go somewhere what are you going to hit--the ox or the cart? Zazen, he continued, is not a matter of sitting or lying down. Buddha has no fixed form. In the midst of transitory things, don't grasp or reject. If you keep the Buddha seated, this is murdering the Buddha. If you cling to the form of sitting, this is to misunderstand sitting. So this is a very famous story, which was used for many years by Alan Watts to explain why zazen was unnecessary, and was not really part of Zen practice, which worked great for Alan Watts up to a point. So, what are we going to hit, the ox or the cart? What's going to work? Well, you know, we could whip the cart quite a bit, but we're just going to wear our arms out and nothing's going to move. If we sit with will and determination, this is whipping the cart. And if we don't sit with will and determination we feel critical of ourselves and this is also whipping the cart. And either way we're stuck on 'I'. 'I'. 'I' is the cart, see. 'I' is the cart. And the cart needs to be pulled along, but it's not the cart that drives our life. So that's what Nangaku was trying to say. 'I' can't become. 'I' can't improve. Because 'I' is the whole difficulty to begin with. If you ever have the experience of coming over and over again, nose up, to a very thick and impenetrable and impossible wall, you might try lots of different things. You might try to climb over it. You might try to get a hammer and break it down. You might try to hit your head against it for a while. None of those things will work. But if you open your eyes and have some perspective, all of a sudden you can notice that this big wall is standing there in the middle of a wide, empty field. So there's no need to break it down or leap over it somehow. All you need to do is walk around. That's what we have to do. Ma-tsu, I think, got this point, so he asked a further question. How shall I do zazen, then? And Nan-yueh said, Your practice is like planting seeds. My teaching is like moisture from the sky. Circumstances come together this way. You will see the path and become awakened. So it's very, very important for us to understand that fundamentally it is not necessary for us to do anything. We just need to be attentive and give ourselves fully to each moment of our practice.We don't need to try hard to do something, like we try to do something all of our lives. Because there's absolutely nothing that we need to accomplish. We never know what any moment of our lives will bring. If we're distracted and confused and completely spaced out, that's OK. And we need to be attentive and give ourselves fully to that state of mind if that's what arises. Giving ourselves fully and being attentive to whatever state of mind arises is like planting seeds. And that's our job in sesshin--to plant seeds, to be present, to be aware, regardless of Kamadhatu, Rupadhatu, distraction, concentration, just to give ourselves to our experience and be attentive. That's planting seeds. The Buddhas and the ancestors from the past have prepared the soil, and that's why we chant and remember them every day, all of the enlightened men and women of the past and the present who have made this strong effort on our behalf. They prepared the soil, which is great, but if we don't plant the seed absolutely nothing will grow. So we plant seeds with our mindfulness and our effort and our sincerity. And then definitely, by and by, teaching comes. It may come from words, it may come from all the objects of the six senses--something we hear or smell or see may teach us--or it may even be a thought arising within our own minds, or some feeling that we can't name. But something comes in, like rain, and the seeds sprout. And then it's very easy to simply stroll around that wall, maybe without even knowing we're doing it. No one in this wide universe, no matter how smart they are, can force a seed to sprout. And no one in this wide universe, no matter how scientific they are, can explain exactly how it is that a seed sprouts. A sprouting seed is a miracle. All we know is that when conditions are right this miracle happens. So, getting back to the main case, Ma-tsu now is teaching, himself, and Ta-mei is a student of his and says, What is Buddha? Ta-mei says, What is Buddha? And Ma-tsu says, This very mind is Buddha. Not I am Buddha or You are Buddha. These things are true but they may be a little harder to practice with than This very mind is Buddha. One detail about Ta-mei that you might be interested in is that, at the time of this story, he was a thoroughly new student but was a middle-aged person, because he came to practice well into his middle years. He had, before that, been a student of philosophy. That was not at all unusual. Many of the Zen stories are about people who had spent a long time doing something else, in or out of Buddhism, and came through their life experience of many years to Buddha Dharma. So those of you who are starting practice or have started practice in your later years, don't think that you have wasted your time and that you are coming to it too late. Because some of the greatest teachers also started later in life and brought everything in their lives to the Dharma and enriched it quite a bit that way. So this is Ta-mei, and he asks, What is Buddha? And Ma-tsu says, This very mind is Buddha. And Ta-mei thinks, What a good idea. This very mind is Buddha. Right. So off he goes with this precious gift, This very mind is Buddha, and he sits with it. He takes it as his practice. He grinds his whole life into it. He eats it, he sleeps it, he goes to the toilet with it, until he knows personally, in a very direct way, that every single thing that comes up in his life is just this, just now. It's not me, it's not I, it's not good, it's not bad, it's not better than someone else's. It's just Buddha. And practicing this way for a long time Ta-mei feels some ease and joy in his life and he says, I'm going to go off by myself now. So he goes off and lives in a little hermitage and most of the time Ta-mei is in a little hut somewhere enjoying himself, not too far away from the monastery. There's a further story. A while later, when he's still living in his hut, one of Ma-tsu's disciples chances on him, realizes who he is and greets him. And Ta-mei says, How's the old teacher, how's he doing, what's he teaching these days? And the monk says, Well now he teaches Not mind, not Buddha. And Ta-mei says, That old teacher is just confused. This very mind Is Buddha! The student goes running back to tell Ma-tsu about this. And Ma-tsu says, The great plum is ripening. Ta-mei means great plum. The great plum is ripening. 'If you can grasp the point directly, you wear Buddha's robes, eat Buddha's food, speak Buddha's words, take Buddha's role. That is, you yourself are Buddha. Ta-mei, however, misled quite a few people into trusting a broken scale. don't you know you should rinse out your mouth for three days when you utter the name Buddha? If you are genuine, you'll run away holding your ears upon just hearing the words, This very mind is Buddha.' So again, this could sound like master Mumon is castigating poor Ta-mei. But I don't know. I think Ta-mei would get a great chuckle out of Master Mumon's comment because he holds This very mind Is Buddha very delicately and with humor . Understanding words are just words Master Ta-mei is not propounding a doctrine here. He's just being Ta-mei, he's just singing his song, he's just playing his part, expressing his life in the best way that he can. Mumon's poem on the case: The blue sky and bright day- no more searching around. 'What is Buddha?' you ask. Hiding loot, you declare your innocence. So we really are Buddha, just the way we are right now. With all our judgment and fear and confusion and distraction and wisdom and samadhi power, we are just Buddha. We can't declare our innocence-the loot is too obvious. The sky is blue, the cloud is white, the cushion is black, sweet taste sweet, salty tastes salty, life is just life. We can let go of our struggles and just appreciate something very, very simple for our life. In order to do sesshin and to live as a human being it is necessary to be flexible--very, very flexible and soft. Which means that we have to stop holding on to our notions and views, stop holding on to our sense of identity--who we think we are and what we think is what and what we like and what we don't like-- and just allow our life to take place. When we exercise our body we have to be flexible and in order to be flexible we have to warm up--you actually have to get your muscles warm. Muscles are stiff if you don't warm them up. And it's the same way emotionally and spiritually, too. You have to warm up in order to become flexible. When we cling to a self as a fixed entity that we love or hate, a self that needs to be protected and justified then we're cold. Even if carrying this self in front of us we run around all the time being with other people and thinking about other people and trying to help other people, really all we're trying to do is get more food for our self, which is cold and wants to warm up. When we can relax and let the self go, just let it come and go, then we can warm up. And when we warm up we can have real warmth in our relations with others and with our world. I always think of the path of Shakyamuni Buddha as a path of true warmth. You know, Buddha started out practicing a very harsh and cold practice. For six years he literally almost killed himself practicing ascetic practices and being a good ascetic. He was definitely willing to sacrifice his life for the truth. Well, after a while he realized that this was not going to work. He ran out of ways to practice. He saw that nothing would work. He had studied with different teachers. He tried this, he tried that, and he finally said, It's none of it's gonna work. And all of a sudden he had this flash of a memory of being a little boy and his father was doing a ceremony for the spring planting for opening up the fields, or maybe it was a harvest festival in the fall. And his father was like (sometimes we do this, you know) Let the kids go play somewhere while we do this. So he was off playing somewhere and he didn't have anybody to play with so he kind of just sat down under an apple tree, under a rose apple tree. He just sat down and very naturally and spontaneously fell into a kind of meditation practice, just being aware, just being present, inside and outside. And now, as a grown man seeking his path he suddenly remembered that moment and he said, I'll try that. I've given up on everything else, maybe that will work--just that very simple natural meditation practice of sitting up in awareness. And just then--having resolved to give up his austerities, give up his cold way of life and find this natural and easy style of meditation--just at that moment a beautiful maiden appeared, smiling. And this is a guy who had been looking at a bunch of grubby ascetics, you know, for years. This beautiful maiden appeared in front of him, mistaking him for the river god, the fertility god, and offered him some delicious rice pudding. Sweet tasting rice pudding. This is a guy who'd been living on one sesame seed and one grain of rice for some time. So she says, Here--she makes an offering to the person she thinks is the god--please-you know- accept this offering of rice pudding. So, I mean, it must have tasted awfully good. He must have really enjoyed that rice pudding. He may not have let her know that he wasn't a river god. So he eats the rice pudding and he says, Now I'm ready. I'm feeling much better now. I'm gonna sit under this tree and I'm not gonna look back. The Buddha had some trials and tribulations under that tree. He had to face and work through many, many things that weren't so easy. Still, he had faith in his warm and natural, easy-going meditation practice, and he returned over and over again to that. And in the end he was liberated. What did the Buddha learn in the morning star? What did he awaken to? He let go once and for all of the coldness of self-clinging and opened himself to the warmth of the whole wide world. He saw that the self that he had been holding on to is no self at all. That self is many, many things coming and going and not a single one of those things can be possessed or judged in any way. He saw that he was like this, that his life had been like this for many, many lifetimes, and that you and I and everything in this wide world are also like this. So his experience was not, Oh, I'm awakened now, terrific. That wasn't his experience. His experience was how warm and free this wide world is. Nowhere can I see anyone or anything that is not already awakened. So today I have a few more little suggestions for how you could practice. If you'd like to take them up I offer them to you. But only if you really feel like they're your own. It's no good to practice someone else's practice. If some of these things that I'm offering you don't feel like your own, just let them go and find another way to practice. But here are some little practical things that you could do that I think would be beneficial: One thing is the hot drink. At night there's a big pot in the kitchen with some delicious hot drink. And if you like you can have some hot drink before you go to bed, and, you know, maybe prepare yourself for bed in some way. But then I would invite you to come back into the zendo before you actually go to sleep, and do a practice of nine bows to one of these Bodhisattvas of the Rupadhatu--Jizo or Tara or Manjushri or Shakyamuni. Nine bows, offering your whole life with each bow, and then go to bed. You could do that if you want, if that strikes you as something you'd like to try. It's quite beautiful at night. It's dark in the zendo. So you could do that. Another thing you could do is to take up the practice, religiously, so to speak, of washing your face and hands and your feet every time you return to the zendo after a break. And when you do this you wash your face and hands and feet very, very mindfully as though you were washing the face and hands and feet of Buddha or Tara or Manjushri or Jizo. That kind of delicacy and loving kindness. And as you do that you can recite a verse to yourself. There are many verses you can use but one is something like, As I wash these hands--or as I wash this face or as I wash these feet--I vow with all beings to attain the pure teaching and be free from obstructions. As I wash these hands I vow with all beings to attain the pure teaching and be free from obstructions. As I wash these feet I vow with all beings to attain the pure teaching and be free from obstructions. As I wash this face I vow with all beings to attain the pure teaching and be free from obstructions. And then when you come to the zendo you'll come with a very fresh and refreshed spirit, really brand new, for the next session of zazen or kinhin. You'll be surprised what a difference it makes it you do that after each break. So those are some things you could do if you like. And today I would also like to suggest that you begin practicing very strongly with your breath, really giving yourself to each and every breath, making each breath big and strong inside of you, pressing down on your diaphragm and feeling the feeling of the breath strong in your belly. Just breathing in and breathing out. Even if you're caught in thinking or judgment or confusion, if you can come back to the breath, if you don't lose the feeling of the breath in your belly you won't be so caught. Thinking can be fine, judgment is even fine. Even that painful judgment where you feel so oh god you know get me out of here. If you can really be in touch with your breath, judgment just floats by. Not a problem. And to help you, you can count. Every time you exhale you count, one. The next exhale, two. Up to ten. If you lose count, one. When you get to ten, one. And, you know, this is not a contest. We're not keeping track. You don't have one of those little counters. So if you lose count it doesn't make any difference whatsoever. You just start again at one. Don't worry about it. The important thing is that the breath is there for you and that you invest everything in your whole life in that breath, so that the breath is bigger than you and bigger than the whole world. And this is going to take everything you've got, all your energy and creativity. And it is creative because you really have to create that breath with your awareness. If you can do this, really establish yourself with the breath, then the breath will become alive and vivid and it will give you energy and you will find that the whole world is operating through you. And then you'll be able to practice in ways that you never imagined you could. And if you count for a while and you feel that counting is getting too much like a kind of pain, you can just forget about the counting and just stay with the feeling of the breath without counting, just following the breath in the belly. So you have to develop this. Please think about developing this, working on it. The breath is a precious treasure and a really beautiful thing. I want to encourage you some more about the breath. I want to read a wonderful passage from a book that just came in the mail to me the other day. It's a book of Zen teachings of Maurine Stuart, who is a dear friend and teacher of ours. It's a great loss to us that she's not with us any more. Her teaching was always bright and clear. So I would like to read you what she says about working with the breath: 'Someone came to me and said in disbelief, 'This is spiritual practice, sitting on a cushion and counting from one to ten?'' It is kind of stupid, you know. Someone asks, What did you do for a week? And you say, Well I sat there and counted from one to ten over and over again on my breath. And you paid for that? Sounds kind of stupid. So somebody came to her and said, Really? That's what you call spiritual practice? 'Those of you who are doing this strange spiritual practice of counting your breaths are discovering that it's exceedingly wonderful; it is incomparably the best way to take us into the ocean of samadhi .... Just counting: it's difficult to do, to count from one to ten, again and again. To reach a unified, single-minded state, this method has been used for generation after generation after generation. When you begin counting, there are many thoughts. Thoughts come in and thoughts go out, and eventually, the counting takes over and you are deeply engaged in vast-what? [That's what it says: in vast-what?] And then, just naturally, counting stops. And you're just watching the breath, breathing the in-breath, breathing the out-breath. And then even that falls off, and you're just purely being. The thought of practicing Zen is gone. The thought of successful practice is gone. Scattered mind is gone.There's just simply one-mindedness, and then no- mindedness: Mu-shin. Nothing seeking, or striving, or getting; just counting. Just breathing. Just being. Just this. 'Whatever else we do--and we may very well do all kinds of things besides counting our breaths as our practice goes on--the best way to begin each sitting is just this way. A dynamically still process, a simple, unaffected trust is what occurs. 'Last night I was dreaming; it was a very vivid dream. I woke myself up saying, 'Yes, yes, yes. Oh, yes, yes, yes! Say yes to it. Neither approving nor rejecting, whatever it is. Through the intensive practice of sesshin, we can face things more calmly. With our hearts full of strength and energy, we have a new sureness in our lives. We feel lifted out of the ego-self that says 'I, me, my, I, me, my' all the time. We feel freer to live in wholeness, not some split, childish self. 'This is what we mean by compassion. Being really present with everything, giving ourselves up completely, is compassion. Doing our work as we are asked to do it cleanly, quietly, inconspicuously, is compassion.' So that's Maurine's wonderful way and you can almost hear her strong, clear voice urging us on. So, I have come to the end of my lecture, and I just want to close with a poem, a short poem of Ryokan: Buddha is your mind And the Way goes nowhere. Don't look for anything but this. If you point your cart North When you want to go South, How will you arrive? Well, thank you very much for your kind attention today.

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Use moist wipes to clean up instead of toilet paper. If you experience hemorrhoids, keep the area clean. After each bowel movement, use pre-moistened towelettes instead of plain toilet paper. Also, try taking a hot sitz bath if the pain or swelling gets especially bad. Allow yourself to soak in this warm bath for a minimum of 20 minutes. One way to lower your risk of developing external hemorrhoids is to practice better bathroom hygiene. Toilet paper that is soft and does not leave behind residue is… Continue reading Having Trouble Dealing With Hemorrhoids? These Tips Can Help! Ease The Pain Of Hemorrhoids With These Tips Treatments that are recommended for hemorrhoids are increasing the consumption of fiber, drinking an additional amount of fluids, taking NSAID analgesics, rest, and soothing sitz baths. Surgery is rare and only used for very severe cases. In this article, you’ll learn more about your treatment options, and find a variety of ways you can relieve the pain of hemorrhoids. A long-term, effective solution to help prevent uncomfortable, irritating, painful hemorrhoids is to merely adopt a high-fiber diet. You should eat whole grain foods, pasta, oatmeal and a lot of leafy green vegetables. Fiber is known to “scrape” your intestines clean, and also retains moisture that keeps your bowel movements soft and reduces the straining that creates or exacerbates hemorrhoids. TIP! A good way to avoid hemorrhoids from forming is to eat plenty of fiber. Nutrients that are high in fiber can include leafy vegetables, oatmeal or breads made with whole grains. Good hygiene routines in the bathroom will assist in lowering your odds of getting hemorrhoids. Try using a wet wipe after every bowel movement and choose a clean soft tissue for regular wiping. 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Every so often I plan to introduce a question or discussion point to the forum for us to put our heads together over and thrash out on the boards. Please feel free to introduce your own questions or issues and let's see where this takes us! The first discussion point and series of questions I'd like to introduce surround Marie Antoinette's Austrian heritage:- How significant was Antoinette's early upbringing in influencing her later career as Queen of France? Was her mother Empress Marie Thérèse a source of support or an impairment to Antoinette's thinking? Would an Austrian, regardless of the woman herself, ever be accepted by the French as princess or Queen or was the whole idea poorly conceived? So, please share your thoughts and opinions! Location: Sardinia (Italy) I TRY TO TALK ABOUT THIS TOPIC As regards the first point I think that her early upbringing influenced her later career as Queen of France. I remember that in some biographies is told: when a waitress said "the last queen did in this way" Marie antoinette answered " you forget that I am an austrian arciduchess, she was only a polish princess; I don't think you want to compare me to her!". During the revolution she said : "I am very happy to be Austrian!" But marie antoinette had also her particular nature, so it is not only an influence by her environment. The second point I think they are both of them. Marie Therese was a support but also an agony for marie antoinette. as regards during the seven years that she hadn't sexual rapports with Louis XVI , the heir there is not yet... the third and last point I say YES: it was possible but there are some social and political features that influenced the vision of an austrian princess. marie antoinette was in the wrong place at the wrong moment. I thank Adrienne to try to go on with comments and discussions. Prince/Princesse Hi, dear Adrienne and Cry ! Of course, the Austrian origins of Marie-Antoinette were very important for her ! She never forgot she was an Austrian woman. She always refers to France by "ce pays-ci" (this country), while Austria forever was her homeland. I think it is what she really means when she writes to Mercy "feeling so well which blood runs in my veins". It's not her royal blood, it far more important than that ! It's her Habsburg blood she has in mind ! Habsburg she was, raised in this family pride she never dropped. In my view, it's an Habsburg archduchess who was led to the scaffold, and climbed the stairs with her head up. Bravado. She would never tremble in front of this people that had never accepted her. Never... They may have fallen in love with the young dauphine, so gracious and charming. They rapidly saw the Austrian enemy behind her smile. Even before she arrived, France was defiant. And her letal nickname "the Austrian woman" already was on their lips. In my opinion, Louis XVI was killed as a symbol of kingship by divine right, while Antoinette was murdered out of xenophobia. And mysoginy, but that's another point ! In this view, her relationship with her mother is very complex, I think. Antonia was sent to France to protect the alliance between the two countries, and to punctually serve Austrian interests. Which she tried to do the best she could, but never succeeded... She loved, admired and respected her madame mother. But she was annoyed by her repeated advises, too. Wasn't she a teenager, after all ? Furthermore, her mother always prevented her from really becoming French. She constanlty reminded her how German she was. Eventually, the example of this powerful empress never left Marie-Antoinette's memory. Like her mother, she tried to lead and make rules, but that was impossible for a woman in France. And she dramatically failled... till the guillotine, unfortunately, where a whole country reminded her of their traditional male domination... Well... in many aspects, that wasn't easy to be Marie-Thérèse's daughter... However, when Marie-Thérèse died, Marie-Antoinette deeply felt she had lost more than a mother. She had lost her best protection. A true friend, too. And she knew it. te voir encore me rappelle à la vie Yeah, I agree with you! In the family of Empress Maria Theresa and Emperor Francis Stephan, when they dined together with all of their children, everyone sat in a different place every time, there was no order of precedence at table, no assigned seats. In spite of the magnificence of the palaces, the Habsburg court was less rigid than the French court, and monarchs with the common touch were viewed as charming. The opposite was true at Versailles, and Marie Antoinette was not prepared for it and never fully accepted the stringent protocal, albeit she was regal and gracious in her manner and bearing. Antoinette's mother was a great support for her, in spite of the friction common between a mother and a daughter. When the Empress died, Antoinette closeted herself in her chamber for days, and grew so ill she spit up blood. Antoinette was hated by members of the French court and the royal family before she even set foot in France. The term "L'Autrichienne" was coined originally in the suite of Mesdames Tantes. Her Austrian upbringing, with the rococo churches, the music of Haydn, the approach to art and life which celebrated beauty and goodness all influenced the character of Antoinette, adding to her aura of enchantment and joie de vivre.

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AP Literature 2010 - 2011 December Literature Circle Posting Assignment (Round Two) Image: Louise Bourgeois in 1990 with her marble sculpture Eye to Eye (1970) Photo: Raimon Ramis. Taken from Telegraph.co.uk. This is a 100 point homework assignment. You need to make 4 posts in total. There is a Part A and a Part B to each post you make. All posts are due by December 23rd @ noon., though you should be posting within the next week. Keep in mind others depend on your comments to continue with their own. Please title your posts Post 1-5, Parts A and B, etc. Part A: Post your reaction to something specific and thought provoking in the book (though this is not a minimum, your post should be at least a couple hundred words.) Feel free to ask questions in this section as well, since everyone will be reading these posts. Part B: You should also respond by elaborating on another comment in the stream (about the same length--a couple hundred words as a minimum.) You will be graded on the Malden High School Open Response Rubric. The above prompts are vague because it is up to you as a group to start to develop your own focus. You can feel free to bring in outside research etc, just make sure you cite or give a link to your sources—but I’m most interested in your “philosophical” discussions about specifics in the books and your ability to discuss the writer’s technique and how he or she affects meaning. Labels: Agenda 2008, Class Discussions 2008-2009, Independent Reading and Lit. Circles At first glance, the most prominent object on page 302 of A Humument is, in fact, the only colored object on the page. Sitting in the center of the top of the page against a solid black background is an unnerving blood-red object. This irregularly-shaped spot extends about a third of the way down the page, terminating in a circular shape that oddly enough looks like a flow of blood pooling on a flat surface. The shape of this object both hints at the spilling of blood, and starts the downward progression of the observers eye which leads to the other objects in the image. Additionally, the color of the object (a dark blood-red), in combination with the black background of the piece, gives the entire piece a sinister tone. Phillips use of this specific shade of red is extremely important as well to the overall tone of the piece. Pure red is a vibrant color- used to show liveliness, energy, and passion. Blood-red, however, is a muddy and dark shade of red which hints at the corruption of this energy and passion. It symbolizes all of the darker passions that arise within human awareness, such as hatred, anger, and destructive feelings. Combined, all of these factors demonstrate that it is all of these darker emotions that contribute to the degeneration of the human mind into a hellish environment, which can be viewed as a method of self-induced quarantine. Directly below this red shape is the most prominent piece of text on the page. In the center, slightly above the horizontal midline of the page, is “CHAPTER XXX” written in all capital letters. This holds a symbolic biblical meaning, as the number thirty (XXX read as a roman numeral) equates to divine order in biblical numerology. Also, these words are surrounded by a parchment-colored oval, which is the only circular object on the page. Circles are also interpreted to have an extremely spiritual meaning, as they represent unity, infinity, and perfection. This further strengthens the religious allusions present in this piece. Divine order becomes the driving force behind the work as a whole, and is philosophically hinted at more prominently towards the end of the observers experience with the piece. This selection of words is connected by two extremely thin parchment-colored lines, reminiscent of a lightning bolts, that shoot both upwards and downwards in order to connect the oval with “sorrow/ materials” above it and “the emotions of men” below it. In context, divine order becomes the unifying concept between all “sorrow/ materials” and all of “the emotions of men”. This reveals to the observer that when viewed through the eyes of a higher power, it is his/her own human nature that causes their own pain and suffering. Diction is also important here, as the blame is only placed upon the emotions “of men”, or in other words, those emotions that correspond to the darker side of humanity. Interestingly enough, these are the same emotions that are connected to the color blood-red. Descending from “the emotions of men” is another off-white line which juts sharply downward into the black background before forking into two separate lines, each terminating at another piece of text. The eye’s descent down the page is both literal and figurative, as it also represents the descent into the darker realms of existence. One of the paths terminate in a simple phrase, which sounds more like an observation than anything else. Here, the observer learns that “hell is/ torments”, immediately being faced the horrible consequences of their darker “emotions”, which are prescribed by the divine order embodied by the number XXX. Ironically, the second pathway leads to a second observation, stating tersely “tongs, supplied”. Tongs are tools used by blacksmiths to manipulate metal at extremely high temperatures, like those associated with the burning fires of hell. The ironic message transmitted here is that thankfully, although a soul has found itself in hell, tongs are “supplied” so they do not burn themself. Finally, at the very bottom of the page, is a block of text that is completely isolated. Fittingly enough, this text is “separated/ once for all”, and indeed it is the only text in the entire piece that is not connected to any other block of text. It is the lowest object on the page, and the last thing that the eye is drawn to. It reflects on the divine order theme hinted at by the roman numeral XXX, as well as eliciting a tone of quarantine and preservation. It is here that a philosophical reason for hell is suggested at as well. When a person’s dark passions overtake them and they are sent down to hell, shown by the downward progression of the words on the page, they are effectively “separated/ once” from the rest of creation “for [the sake of] all”. Here is where the entire rest of the piece is put into perspective; where the cause (“the emotions of men” and all “sorrow/ materials”), the effect (placement into “hell”), and the reason interrelating the cause and effect (separation “for [the sake of] all”) is revealed. The brightest and most vibrant colors present on page 354 are shades of pinks and reds. These colors, dominate the major portions of the page, just as the most unforgettable memories may dominate the minds of its beholders. Such bright colors symbolize the most vivid experiences in one’s life. The color red possesses a dual meaning: with the brightness connoting joy but the redness connoting pain since it may allude to blood. With this duality in meaning, Phillips is able to portray the pieces that puzzle together to form the memories one holds: the feeling of happiness and pain. However, the bright colors Phillips uses is no doubt contrasted by the inking black that creeps up from the corner and is slowing engulfing the page. This contrast places emphasis on the two forces at hand. The force of the brightness of the piece, pushes for the prevalence of memory against the force of darkness as death slowly takes over. At the captured moment of the artwork, Phillips shows only a small portion of the page covered by the dead black color. Nonetheless, viewers receive an inevitable sense that the black color will soon overwhelm the art work as a whole, swallowing life and its memories along with it. In addition to the contrast of colors, Phillips contrasts images as well through his use of perspective. He is able to depict life through cartoon like images of drawn flowers on the wall with a vibrant use of color, but he is also able to allude to life using natural colors of life, green and blue, shown through the small window. The perspective Phillips uses to draw viewers’ attention to the outside creates a focus on the distance of life. The outside, portraying an impressionistic image with a blue sky and green hill seems out of place and rather surreal. With the ambiguity of the shapes in the images of the outside, Phillips tries to show the blurring of one’s memories as “night” or rather death, looms near. Phillips shows the engulfing of one’s life along with its memories through the ebbing of the black color on the page, but he also uses a subtle blurring and darkening in the sky to foreshadow nightfall. Phillips’s piece places words artistically to contribute to the sense of a fading memory of love as words trail listlessly down the page. Meant to illustrate the initial vividness of one’s memory, he groups together the majority of the words in his piece at the top of the page. However, the words soon become loose and separated just as one’s recollection of the past becomes vague and distant. Though death can envelop one’s memories, “loving [someone]…is contained in the record of the…night.” The “love” Phillips decides to incorporate in his piece suggests the immortality of the emotion despite physical death. The “love” is “recorded” despite the arrival of “night.” Phillips draws readers to the strands of words, as it protrudes through and contrasts the colors of the background. The speaker of the words seem to declare that since his memories has been swallowed by “night” he “can’t write anymore” and declares surrender as he “come…away”, departing from his memory. Since the words move off the page of the artwork, openings are created, leading to a leak of memories into the “night” the speaker refers to. The speaker surrenders his memories as the words “night” and “away” ventures off the canvas of the page. Like many of his other pages of artwork, Phillips uses the word “toge” to depict the separation of together. The memories of the past, whether it be emotions or experiences is now detached as death begins to overpower life. Through the words he selects, he creates a parallel between night and death. Phillips depicts the overwhelming power of death as he uses night to show its fall upon light, leaving a sense of gloom and darkness. The sunny facade that the picture portrays possesses an underlying and undeniable lingering darkness. Phillips utilizes both words and images to evoke the imagination of his viewers. As day turns into night, and as one’s life draws to an end, the memories one leaves behind must struggle against the darkness to be remembered. With clear distinctions between light and dark, contrasts between images of life and death, and diction placed to visually demonstrate the dominating struggle of the art piece, Phillips is able to develop the idea of not only life versus death, but the ability for memories of emotions and experiences to stay alive despite the death of its owner. As the title of the piece “A Human Document” suggests, Phillips’s art on page 354 represents a documentation of life and death along with the trail of memories left behind that struggles to be preserved. The Title of your essay should be the page number of A Humument hyperlinked. Kevin Ta.. gave a mini-lesson on how to do this below. Posted by R. Gallagher at 9:40 PM 21 comments: Links to this post Labels: Tom Phillips, Visual Art Tom Phillips: Writing About an Image OPTIC (Step 2) OPTIC. I find Walter Pauk’s theory quite useful when writing about an image.[1] The AP Art History Course also uses this Acronym as a successful approach to writing about visual art. I have adapted it here with further commentary and explanation in light of your specific goals. The point of the first two steps is pure description. What does your eye notice first? Then what? Think space, color, dimension, etc...Notice what you notice. You are doing this so that explicating will be easier and better. Pick and image that you can describe with words. Overview: Conduct an Overview of the visual or graphic. I recommend an extensive brainstorming process here. Parts: Key in on the Parts of the visual by noting any elements or details that seem important. The old cliché goes “a picture is worth a thousand words”, which translates to about three pages. I think this is a good rule of thumb, but by no means a fixed rule. Describe what you see. Where do your eyes go to first? Then what? Follow the natural progress of where your eyes go. Give as much detail as possible. Title: Explain the Title (if one is present) and its relation to the piece of art. Even an “untitled piece” may tell you about the artist’s aesthetic. Interrelationships: Use the title, or your theory, and the parts of the visual as your clues to detect and specify the Interrelationships in the graphic. In other words, this is where you develop your thesis about the image and connect ideas. Conclusion: Draw a Conclusion about the piece as a whole. If you go through this process, you will have plenty of writing to cull from to start explicating the piece. Finally, a not-so-subtle reminder for those of you who may have forgotten some “poetic truths”: 1. It is the speaker of a poem (not the narrator) who “speaks” the lines; it is also not the poet or the poem who speaks. 2. Indicate line breaks / with a slash. Indicate stanza breaks // with two slashes. There are a million ways to explicate this poem, so your explication should be different than all others posted before you. Post early if you are worried about this. "Hi Everyone, It was great to see everyone last Saturday and I hope your students felt it was worthwhile. Please let me know any feedback you've received, positive or negative. So I'm now planning the next one, January 24th. The students will take a full sample exam in the first 3 hour block. Could you please ask them (and weigh in yourself) on what comes in the 90 minute block after lunch: Option A: Student will review the multiple choice section of the exam they just took, using the student run discussion model we did at the prep session and that many of you use at home. Option B: Students will attend sessions on new topics - writing, close reading, etc." November Literature Circle Posting Assignment Image from the ICA at Boston's website. Tara Donovan Through January 4, 2009 All posts are due by December 5th @ 3:00p.m., though you should be posting within the next week. Keep in mind others depend on your comments to continue with their own. You can also use the comment stream to make some decisions among yourselves about what the posts should be on: topics, parts of the book schedule, or even (for those of you that prefer or think you need a stricter schedule—make one up.) Your group should have book # 2 chosen by Dec. 1st. You may want to do this as soon as possible, in case your book takes a while to acquire. Here’s a links to a solid discussion from last year: Madame Bovary. The requirements were a bit vague for the postings and there is a variety of effort and insight in these posts, but on the whole I thought it was quite nice to read. Labels: Agenda 2008, Book Club discussion, Class Discussions 2008-2009, Independent Reading and Lit. Circles Schedule of Poetry Presentations Image: Ryan Gallagher, "Persephone Eating Pomegranates" Oil on canvas. 16 x 20. You are responsible for: Bringing in a copy of the poem for everyone. Make at least 20 copies. Including me, we are 19. Reading the poem aloud to begin. Read the poem how you think it should sound (tone, speed, etc.) Practice please. You need to read this poem many times anyway to come up with an insightful thesis; it will probably help your understanding of the poem if you read aloud: (melopoeia). Orally Explicating the poem for us. In other words, you need to have a thesis. Then you need to show us HOW the poet accomplishes his or her purpose. Please refer to handouts. It would be entirely helpful if you photocopied your notes on the poem (maybe on the other side of the copy you provide us.) You only have ten minutes, so prepare your remarks; this is not something you can "wing" successfully. You will be scored on the MHS Open Response Rubric. Even though this is an oral grade, you are essentially explaining how you would write an explication--we are just hearing your mind work. Nov. 17th: “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” by W.B. Yeats: Carla “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning: Kayla “The Author to her Book” by Anne Bradstreet: Mary “The Unknown Citizen” by W.H. Auden: Jenny “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen: Stephen “This Is Just To Say” by William Carlos Williams: Andy “Anyone Lived In A Pretty How Town” by e.e. cummings: Matt “Root Cellar” by Theodore Roethke: Ashley “Metaphors” by Sylvia Plath: Sodaba “You Fit Into Me” by Margaret Atwood: Tzivia “Resume” by Dorothy Parker: Emily “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas: Mario “Sonnet” by Billy Collins: Cynthia “Sestina” by Elizabeth Bishop: Vanessa “Because Poem” Lisa Jarnot: Kristen “The Second Coming” W.B. Yeats: Alinne “I Know a Man” by Robert Creeley: Melissa “Spring and Fall” Gerard Manley Hopkins: Michaela Focus: Characterization & Historical Context (Ibsen's A Doll's House) 11.10.08: Class did not meet because of rotation. 11.11.08: Veterans Day, no school. 11.12.08: SLD on Act 1 of Ibsen's A Doll's House. Focus on characterization. 11.13.08: SLD on rest of play. Focus on "The Dr. Rank scene", "The tarantella scenes", and "the most wonderful thing (end of play) scene". 11.14.08: In-class Open Response on A Doll's House. For hints on how to prepare, look at Focus for the Week (above) and read introductory material in book. 11.15.08: Don't forget our Saturday class at Northeastern! Bus leaves MHS @ 7:30. Start looking for a poet to research. Poet due by Dec. 1st! Please see me for suggestions if you are interested. Finally, feel free to use this space as a "study guide" conversation with your peers as a place to work your ideas out. Reading Lolita in Tehran Image: "Two Orientalist paintings: Sir Frank Dicksee's Leila and William Clarke Wontner's Safie, One of the Three Ladies of Baghdad; Three colonial picture postcards of young Algerian women--staged, produced and bought by French colonial officers; The original picture from which the cover of Reading Lolita in Tehran was cropped." (Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM) Click link for image in context of an interesting article. Reading / Posing schedule TBA Posted by R. Gallagher at 9:42 AM 34 comments: Links to this post Monsters in Literature Looks like we can go with David Foster Wallace's Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. Here's a link to the online book, so you can read while you wait for the hard copy of your book. Posting schedule TBA. Comparative Theme Group, will change name when you pick... Book choice: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Paulo Coelho has a blog. I think it might be nice if you referenced it and maybe even framed some conversations around his topics--but make sure you also write about the book. This is a pretty quick and easy book to read, so you should also force yourself to search a bit for outside material to read and discuss--that way you can also build your theme. Spirituality and / or Philosophy in Lit Group I think a good place to start, to get some "philosphy" from Camus before you being, is his essay "The Myth of Sisyphus." You can wiki it to read about the essay as well. Schedule TBA. Japanese Literature (possible author study of Kawabata?) Looks like we are going to start with Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata. I think you'll enjoy it. There's some interesting background info here and you can also check out the wiki site. Peter Warshall "Two billion years of animal sounds" (melopoeia) Peter Warshall "Two billion years of animal sounds"(June 16, 1999) "A Peter Warshall lecture discussing animals sounds and the nature of music and speech. Warshall plays various animal sounds, talks about how sounds are created and the abilities of the human ear to hear sounds. He discusses a variety of related topics, including the evolution of vowels and consonants, sacred sounds and semantics." (Click here for source in the Naropa Archives.) This is a 20 point homework assignment. Listen to the lecture and take notes. Write down what you think might be interesting, important, etc. There may be things to which you do not "get" the reference or allusion and there may be things that spur your own thoughts. Write them down. Pay attention to your mind and document it. Prompt A: Post your reaction to something specific and thought provoking in the Warshall lecture (though this is not a minimum, your post should be at least a couple hundred words.) Feel free to ask questions in this section as well, since everyone will be reading these posts. Prompt B: You should also respond by elaborating on another comment in the stream (about the same length--a couple hundred words as a minimum.) Due Monday, November 10th @ noon. Since this is a discussion and your voice is important to the communal dialogue, late posts will lose 2 points a day. Budget your time accordingly, especially is you need the school computers to complete assignment. "A Robin Blaser lecture titled Where's hell? Blaser reads and discusses portions of his Great companion piece on Dante Alighieri, a poetic commentary on Dante's ideas and use of language. Blaser discusses the works and ideas of other writers including James Joyce, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Ezra Pound." (Click here for source in the Naropa Archives.) Prompt A: Post your reaction to something specific and thought provoking in the Blaser lecture (though this is not a minimum, your post should be at least a couple hundred words.) Feel free to ask questions in this section as well, since everyone will be reading these posts. What punctuation mark would you be? Here’s the link to her page for her audio archives at UPENN. Here’s the text to “If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso”: Text Here’s the audio to “If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso”: audio Picasso's Potrait (1906) Labels: Stein, Visual Art This weekend, in Lowell... THE MASSACHUSETTS POETRY FESTIVAL (click here for website.) (I designed the booklet, by the way.) Here is where I will be: SMALL PRESS FAIR (curated by Ryan Gallagher and Derek Fenner of Bootstrap Productions) 10 − 5 PM ALL Arts Gallery Meet the editors and publishers of 30 different presses and magazines, purchase their books and journals and “talk shop”. Many of the presses will be offering dis­counts and deals. I NEED VOLUNTEERS! I can probably kick down 10 bucks (or free tickets--only a couple events are not free) to sit at a press table and give them a break. SMALL PRESS PANEL 11 AM − 12 Noon The Small Press panel will examine the following two areas: 1. Investigating histories and lineages in the small press world. 2. The future of Small Press Publishing in the 21st Century. Panelists to include: Ed Sanders (Blake Route, and many other past ventures) Geoffrey Young (The Figures), Anna Moschovakis (Ugly Duckling Presse), Re­becca Wolff (Fence Books), Kyle Schlesinger (Cuneiform Press). Moderated by Joseph Torra (Pressed Wafer). Marjorie Agosín & Ed Sanders Emceed by Ryan Gallagher Lowell High School Freshman Academy 43 French Street (please use John Street side entrance) Urban Village Arts Series (UVAS): MUSIC & POETRY featuring Joe Torra, Eileen Myles & music by Frank Morey Emceed by Derek Fenner and David Robinson 4 − 5:30 PM Lowell National Historical Park Visitor Center Theater There are some other gems, details of schedule below: Mass Poe Fest Bios and Schedule Web - Upload a Document to Scribd Labels: Culture / Current Events Independent Reading Assignments (Memoir) Image: Painting Title: Study for a Portrait of Van Gogh V 1957 Francis Bacon (Even great artists imitate other great artists.) You must complete three out of five assignments. They are worth 20 points a piece. The meta-cognition will be worth 40 points—this is where you will be able to “explain a lot of your choices”, so develop all of your ideas completely. 1. Design a cover. You will be graded on the following items: 10 points: Your cover should show creativity, depth in thought, and visually represent important events, themes, or symbols throughout the book. The cover should look professionally and carefully constructed. You may draw or use the computer, but be careful not to commit the visual equivalence of plagiarism. If you use someone else’s images, change or collage them until they are your own. Make sure you have a front and back cover as well as a spine. Spelling the author’s name wrong would be about the worst thing you could do! 10 points: You should provide a 100 word description of the book on the back cover. WARNING: DO NOT PLAGIARIZE THIS!—you will risk a zero for an easy part of the requirements. Remember: the point of a 100 word description on the back of a book is to convince someone in a store to buy the book. Remember this when you write the blurb. Why should someone buy this? ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ 2. Write a “filler page”. In other words, write what happens in between two chapters or pages or rewrite a page. 10 points: The details and facts in your story are factually and contextually accurate in relation to the existing story. This includes the setting and historical time frame! 10 points: You successfully capture the tone and style of your author.[1] 3. Rewrite a page, but include yourself. In other words, use the author’s style to write your own memoir. 4. Passage Explication Assignment 20 Points. Please refer to Passage Explication handout. 5. Mix CD: The Memoir’s Soundtrack If you have another creative idea, propose it to me with criteria on which you would like to be graded. I must approve this first. [1] (which includes, but is not limited to: how author presents dialogue, appropriate word choice, symbols, etc.) Posted by R. Gallagher at 8:24 AM 2 comments: Links to this post

The past, the present, and the future. I didn't post as much about the things we did at three and four as I should have and this year I intend to chronicle more of our education journey. Math in the early years.... Some history first: Since I was about 20 and first learned about the Maria Montessori Method I knew I would eventually incorporate many of the methods or ideas into our future home. Twenty-three years later I can look back and see I have indeed; along with some other Waldorf ideas and some of the Reggio approach as well. Yeah, rather eclectic messes we are! *smile* A couple years ago we went through a period of time where I was in a lot more pain, our two- year old angel was now a three-year old live wire. A well meaning mom told me she thought our Bear was somewhere on the "Spectrum".... What the heck did that mean? It sent Hubs and I into a tail spin of questions. We were sent to Internet self test sites. I took the examination, my husband took it, we had grandma take it as well. I came away with even more questions, since by their standards I was Autistic as well. My husband and Grams found the same self diagnosis applied to them as well. I now suspect the subjectivity. I want to caution anyone taking an Internet self test for something like a learning disability or disorder like autism (or any test for a medical diagnosis). We eventually made an appointment with Bear's Pediatrician who has been her doctor since she was born. It had become that everything my barely three-year old daughter did was viewed with a slant to "does she have a spectrum disorder"...... Our doctor sat us down and listened to my concerns and in one visit made me face reality. Children have stages, children are children and for most children these are normal and passing stages, but needed stages nonetheless. He assured me that if I continued to have concerns we could pursue my concerns, but that he seen nothing in her behavior to indicate nothing more than an active and happy child. I had become concerned if she said something was itchy; did she have a sensory disorder? Children go through periods of sensitivity. A desire for order. They become absorbed, very absorbed, and the thing capturing their interest then might be the ONLY thing they feel like doing. A child may do something repeatedly that we have said they can't do, like picking flowers and examining them at length, and rather than being willfully disobedient or showing signs of an autistic behavior, they are learning. What is it, how does it work, why does it work, what happens if XYZ happens.... THEY ARE LEARNING. Children need to explore. I am not saying no child is on the "Spectrum" because some might be. My desire is to share my experiences. In my most humble opinion, and the opinion of our doctor, we are not. She is a normal active child with a are very rich personality and imagination. Nor am I saying you don't need to make sure your child is safe in the exploration. What I am saying is they need time and space to explore and understanding parents. My hubs was telling a story where his mother was told that if he got one germ on him he would die when he was a child... his mother kept him that clean and sheltered as a small child..... Kids need to play and explore, its vital to their learning. Keep them safe but not cloistered. 4 yrs and helping to pour and mix bread We fell into line with so many today and gave Bear a toy kitchen, and we were overjoyed with our choice. A wooden kitchen that did not create fake noise. If something beeped, she had to make an audible beep for it. We were so proud. It was natural and would encourage imaginative play..... with the kitchen came up teem play kitchen pots and pans and eating implements.... I still encouraged her help in our family kitchen during this time. She never fully fell in love with her "play" kitchen, she would much rather been playing and creating in the REAL kitchen. We used real knives, with supervision, to cut things like cheese, carrots, celery, bread. She was taught and encouraged how to make her own PB&J, spoon food into a bowl, mix bread... I didn't realize her peers weren't doing these things at three. Although, I will admit, Christmas baking is still a realm I should leave to me another year..... we still miss a few ingreidients. Our carrot cake, while still good, was missing the sugar this year. Hubs remarked it wasn't as sweet as years past and I discovered we forgot the sugar. Bear owns her own tool box and in the box she has a hammer, a flat head screwdriver, Philips driver, wrench, pliers, goggles, etc. We had to shop around a bit, getting real working tools, that were light weight enough for little hands, but we did find some, and not for very much money either. Home Depot carries a lot. Her dream now is her own battery drill. *grin* Play tools held very little appeal because they couldn't make things. She wanted, and still wants, to be able to help mom and dad, and create things beside us. Sorting is a wonderful early math game you can do with your child. We still do it sometimes. At three our homeschool studies consisted of sorting colors and then textures. We sorted all sorts of things. Sometimes using tongs to lift them from one bowl to another. We sorted cars, beads, noodles, pompoms, silverware, pattern blocks, etc. and we still do those things from time to time because we made it into a game. In fact as I write this Bear has her pattern blocks out and is sorting them by color and making shapes from the shapes. These were an item I got out recently after being put up for a few months. They were placed low on her shelf for strewing purposes. And she discovered them again and is new found love for the discovery they are again providing. Don't forget counting. Just plain old counting games. We still do these, a lot. They have just gotten to be bigger numbers. We started off counting to 5, then 10, and so on. Now we seem to be able to go on for ages, with a few reminders. Count steps you take on walks. Count rocks on walks. Count everything. This is how we are introducing concepts like adding and subtracting as well. You would be surprised how easy it is, and FREE. Bear was so small.... Next I will share some wonderful early geography games we did and enjoyed.

Stories about famous people and places in Washington, D.C. Amazingly Detailed Photo of Treasury Department in 1860 Dec 7, 2012 Notable People & Places 4 Take a look at this amazing photograph from 1860. You’re looking across 15th St. where Pennsylvania Ave. turns to cross in front of the building and the White House. Share this one on Facebook with your friends! Click on it … Library of Congress Under Construction [PHOTO] We came across this photo at the Library of Congress (how meta). Click on it for greater detail. Abraham Lincoln by Mathew Brady What an amazing photograph by Mathew Brady. Letter From Abraham Lincoln Nominating William Seward as Secretary of State The one thing I have against the National Archives is that is takes up so much of my time … I get completely engrossed in the images they post online. Here’s a great one, the letter from Lincoln nominating Seward … Letter From Kennedy Nominating His Cabinet Wow. This one is cool. We found this digging through the National Archives. Amazing. This is the letter John F. Kennedy sent on Inauguration Day 1961 (watch his amazing inauguration address), nominating his Cabinet. East Front of the Capitol During the Civil War Here is a wonderful photograph from the Civil War, taken by the acclaimed photographer Mathew Brady. February 21st, 1885: Dedication of the Washington Monument Nov 21, 2012 Historical Events, Notable People & Places 0 One of our more popular topics, and top Google search terms, is the Washington Monument. So, for the next post in our “In The Paper” series, we present to you, the front page from The National Republican on Saturday, February … Three Cheers for Coolidge Nov 16, 2012 Notable People & Places 0 This is a shot of President Calvin Coolidge at an event for the Boy Scouts of America at the White House. Jim Henson and the Birth of the Muppets Some of you may know this, but for those that don’t, it’s probably surprising. Kermit and Miss Piggy’s creator, Jim Henson, was raised here in the D.C. area. Henson’s father was an employee at the Department of Agriculture and moved … Lynching Averted in Washington City Nov 9, 2012 Guest Posts, Notable People & Places 1 Our buddy and early GoDCer John has an excellent book out on Frederick Douglass. If you haven’t checked it out yet, you should. He’s an excellent writer and he was kind enough to share an excerpt with the GoDC community. … Irony! Watergate Ad Welcomes Nixon’s Presidency Oct 30, 2012 Guest Posts, Notable People & Places 0 On the morning of President Nixon’s 1969 inauguration, several local businesses ran newspaper ads congratulating the new chief executive. Furniture stores, department stores, grocers… few are immune to inaugural excitement. But one local business had — in hindsight — a … Mosquito Nets As Tall As The Washington Monument A Washington doctor with an interesting name was among the first to suggest a link between mosquitos and malaria. Meet Albert Freeman Africanus King. Dr. A.F.A. King was a professor of obstetrics at Columbian University, precursor to the present-day George … 10/11/12: Werth It!! Historic Win for D.C. Baseball Oct 12, 2012 Notable People & Places 1 I’ve had the pleasure of witnessing some great moments in D.C. baseball history … opening day 2005 at RFK, opening day 2008 at Nats Park with Zimmerman’s walk-off, Strasburg’s 14K debut and Harper’s home debut. Last night’s game was, hands … D.C.’s Biggest-Ever Baseball ‘Scoop’ It was perhaps the biggest baseball ‘scoop’ in Washington, DC history: Ted Williams to return to baseball in 1969 as manager of the Washington Senators. The story behind the story is even more delicious. Russ White, a young baseball beat …

Pan-Seared Salmon Recipe One of our members, Mark Raisbeck, runs a blog for parents of children with special needs. Mark is also a chef and he's posted a recipe for crispy salmon filets that I'm told are of restaurant-quality. The recipe is easy and calls for a surprising ingredient. It can also be used with other proteins, like chicken. Let us know if you try it. Also, take a look at Mark's picks for great gluten-free pasta. Posted by Kirsten Carbone at 9:15 AM No comments: As a physical therapist I have seen firsthand the impact that gluten sensitivity and/or intolerance (be it Celiac or Non-Celiac) can have on the human body. Gluten can negatively impact not just the gut, but many other parts of the body including the nervous system, joints, muscles and skin. It can be very difficult for someone’s body to heal and repair, if they are consuming something that is keeping them in a perpetual state of inflammation. (I will go into this in greater detail in the upcoming news letter.) “Going Gluten Free is too hard!” - is generally the first thing I hear from someone who has just learned they need to go gluten free, not that removing gluten from their diet wouldn’t be helpful. Since I went gluten free last spring I understand. Here are some helpful tricks I found helpful when making the transition. 1. Focus on what you can have.and realize there is a lot you can have! 2. Take 10 minutes on the weekend to write out a quick menu for the upcoming week. 3. Prepare extra food on the weekend to have on hand during the week (eg. baked chicken breast, baked potatoes and rice) 4. Stock your pantry, swapping out wheat bread, bagels, bread crumbs, pancake mix and pasta with gluten free versions. 5. Keep some extra bread, bagels and waffles in the freezer. 6. Keep fresh fruits and veggies on hand. My kids love baby carrots and apples. 7. If you are cooking a meal, put aside an extra serving and have it the next day for lunch. 8. During busy weeks, make 1-2-3- Chili: -1 pound of ground meat browned, -1 jar of your favorite salsa, and -1 can of your favorite beans (2 kinds of beans if you don’t do meat). If you want to jazz it up, add cumin and cayenne pepper to your liking. I will make double batches during the school year to manage those meals on the fly, doing corn taco’s one night with lettuce, tomato and cheese, and then the next chili over rice or potatoes with a side salad. 9. Use your smart phone! There are lots of great gluten free sites that you can access as well as apps for recipes and finding a place to eat while you are on the go. 10. Don’t be afraid of the kitchen…………start cooking! Joining the support group and subscribing to on line blogs for me were a big help. I was able to get practical advice, restaurant tips, and information about gluten free products as well as learning different cooking techniques from those who had already been through the process.

Worried About Sea Sickness? Sea Sickness Remedies By Captain David Yumori Being in a smaller vessel, I see a lot of encounters with sea sickness. Most of my sea sickness casualties come on twilight and lobster trips due to sloppy seas and poor visibility. Here are some tips on how to prevent you from turning green. Here is my disclaimer; ultimately it is up to you and your doctor to find the proper sea sickness remedy for you. First thing you need to do is get a good night’s sleep. I have found that some anglers who partied too hard the night before or even worse, come on the boat hung over don’t do well. Even my seasoned deckhand Gus claims that once a year he will get sea sick when he works long hours on little sleep. Avoid eating rich and spicy foods before a trip. Heartburn on the water is just one more thing that can push you over the edge. Another misconception is that you shouldn’t eat if you’re prone to sea sickness. Nothing can be further from the truth. I have been known to get sick when I have an empty stomach and the movement of the boat makes things worse. Once you puke, a few times, you have to take in some fluids and food for two reasons. One is that dry heaves is one of the most miserable things to have. Secondly, you lose a lot of water when you up chuck and compound with extreme heat, you can put yourself in a dangerous situation. Nobody dies from sea sickness, but the dehydration from it can be fatal. That is why many life rafts, as part of their survival kits, have sea sick medication in their survival kits. Try fishing in the mornings instead of the afternoons. The seas are typically their calmest in the morning hours. Locally, at around 2 pm the wind picks up and the sea begins to roll. Also avoid fishing at night and in the fog. The poor visibility really messes with people your equilibrium. When it comes to sea sickness medications, there are over the counter kinds such as Bonine and Dramamine. Most people like the Bonine because it makes them less drowsy. With any oral medication, I recommend taking the pill several hours before the trip so the medication is already in your system before leaving the dock. There are some other medications but you need a doctor’s prescription to obtain them. One that has been around for years is the Transderm Scop patch. It is a round sticker that you place behind your ear. One of the downsides is that it’s a one size fits all. Some people like my dad have found that using a half dosage works best. He just carefully cuts the patch in half with a pair of clean scissors. A new medication that many are calling a miracle drug is called Scopace. You have to tell the doctor what to prescribe since the medication is fairly new on the market. It is an oral pill that comes in dosages based on your size. The last type of sea sick remedies are the homeopathic and natural varieties. One is ginger. For years Asian fishermen would have ginger in their lunch boxes and claimed it was a natural sea sick remedy. The Marina Del Rey Anglers Club passes out ginger candies on the kid trips and they have found that usually it was the kids that didn’t eat the candy that turned green. Anglers also find that ginger ale helps settle their stomach. Some people used the pressure point wrist bands to cure sea sickness but to be honest with you, I have not seen many of them used. I have heard a lot of good stuff about the electric wrist band but because of its high retail price, many people get sticker shock. With the electronic wrist band, you have to make sure you don’t get it wet. Make sure that you purchase the one with a replaceable battery. The last remedy I have heard of and Dick at Purfield’s really believes in are ear plugs. He says if you take the soft foam ear plugs and stick them as deep as you can to where they bottom out, you don’t get sea sick. I think it’s his way of not having to listen to me during a trip. Some things to remember: Fresh air is good but you want to stay low and to the stern of the boat. That is where you will encounter the least motion. The bow of the boat pounds through the waves, up and down the stern drags through the water. The ride is much smoother. The boat rocks from side to side. The higher you are the more movement you encounter. Think of a flagpole in the wind. There is very little movement at the bottom while the top may, sway severa1 feet. So, you want to be low and to the stern. Look at the horizon and try to get your balance. Take some deep breaths. Rock your shoulders back and forth. Realize that your body is probably tight and stiff. Try and roll with the boat instead of, sub-consciously, stiffening up and fighting the motion. It's called getting your sea legs. Sometimes it takes awhile. Sometimes a nap will help. Try to take your mind off how bad you feel and focus on something else. Remember, the first step to controlling seasickness is to realize what is wrong with you and deal with that, not concentrate on how sick you are. There are several good medications on the market. The best is probably the scopolamine patch by Transderm Scop. It is still a prescription medication but usually easy to obtain with a simple call. to your doctor. Dry mouth is usually the only side effect. but that is true with most all sea sickness medications. There are several over the counter medications but the one we like best is Bonine. Drowsiness is the side effect but less so with Bonine than with other brands. To be effective you should get this medication in your system 8 hours before you board the boat. If possible, sleep on it and take more when you board the boat and you tend to be less drowsy. That way, it's in your system and working when .you wake up. Smooth Sailing is a ginger drink that many people say works quite well especially to settle your stomach. Combining smooth Sailing and Bonine can work well also. Wristbands can work for some people but are not generally considered the best remedy. Severe sea sickness can be treated by using a combination of both the scopolamine-patch and Bonine and almost never fails. But you should check with your doctor. The side effect is hunger and more drowsiness. (A nice tuna on the end of your rod is a good cure for drowsiness!)

rebeccajackson September 6, 2017 4 Many parents and teachers have emailed asking for additional information about Balanced Homework Habits. Educating the whole child isn’t an easy task. That’s why it is necessary for both parents and educators to utilize a balanced homework routine. It is based on research and interviews with elementary and middle school teachers across the United States who have been actively involved in the development and implementation of their school’s Common Core Curriculum. The global solution to the homework epidemic is homework reform. However, changes to public policy can take time. Here is what parents and educators can start doing tonight! Long-Term Goal: Establishing Lifelong Learning Habits All activities are time-bound and are not based on completion. Research shows that children cannot sustain concentrated effort for prolonged periods of time. Small, incremental increases are developmentally appropriate. Additionally, there are many activities that a child should be engaged in during the week. Removing sports, family time, social events, or dance classes with the hope of improving the quality of academic homework or increasing GPA is a bad idea. When the routine becomes unbalanced, school performance declines, social skills decline, and students suffer from emotional problems. The Key to a Balanced Homework Routine: Changing our outdated definition of “homework” to include a variety of activities that contribute equally to academic, social, and emotional success in our children. A balanced homework habit is the foundation of my new book, The Learning Habit: A Groundbreaking Approach To Homework And Parenting That Helps Children Succeed in School And Life. Although the methodology is well-grounded in research and is receiving growing support from schools, some parents have voiced concern about changes to homework. “Some parents view academic work as the only way to cement educational skills. In fact there are many activities children can practice which improve academics.” said Dr. Robert M. Pressman, lead researcher on the learning habit studies. In fact, significant research shows that a balanced homework routine is positively correlated with a higher GPA in school. A Balanced Homework Habit Includes: Family Time: Our research looked at thousands of variables. Significant relationships were discovered between family time and grade point averages (GPA) in children between the ages of 5-18. As family time increased, so did GPA. Activities Include: Dinner, games, religious services, physical activity, clubs, games, reading, conversations and family outings. Chores: Research measured chores against both GPA and grit (resilience) scores. It showed a positive relationship between chores and grit scores in children. When children performed regular household chores, they were more resilient and less likely to quit difficult tasks. Additionally, household chores were positively correlated with higher GPA’s in all grades starting in Kindergarten and continuing through high school. Academic Homework: Research shows a point of diminishing returns on academic homework. (see guidelines) Grades 1-6: The research indicates children should spend 10 minutes a night / per grade in school on homework. Additional time spent on academic homework is correlated with a decrease in GPA. However, the research does not support no homework in primary school. Children who spent no time on homework had a decrease in grades. Grades 7-12: Between 60-90 minutes a night is the maximum recommended amount for a high school student. Children who spent additional time on homework beyond this point showed a decrease in GPA. Parental Limits On Screen Time: School night “safe zone” – Calculated at 45 minutes. The “danger zone” occurred slightly before two hours with a half point drop in children’s GPA. After four hours of accumulated screen time, the GPA of children dropped slightly more than a full point.

EV Explained Greenway Polska Image Pattern To make electric mobility a reality in Poland by constructing a network of almost 200 electric vehicle charging stations of different types Greenway planned charging network in the middle 2020 The network of electric vehicle charging stations, none more than 85 km apart, will make it possible to travel throughout all of Poland on electricity. It will also make Poland accessible to EV drivers coming in from neighboring countries. By providing the infrastructure EV drivers need to travel, we aim to make it realistic for people to choose an electric vehicle, to encourage zero emission transportation, and to help Poland meets its goal of 1 million EVs on the roads by 2025.

Baby Slings Rego Park NY Baby slings let the mother or father use both hands for others things. When it is worn properly, a baby sling relieves back and shoulder pain. Regines for Kids Moorish Goods 54 sedgwick ave Mini Jake Baby Slings: Are There Advantages to Wearing Your Baby? Author: David Cummings Baby slings are a convenient way to do other things while holding your baby. Your baby gets the nurturing she needs and you get things done. You can go shopping or clean the house. You can stop at a restaurant to eat and your baby can be happy in the baby sling. Baby slings are so practical and they just make it a lot easier to take care of the older brothers and sisters when you know your baby is well taken care of and very close by as well. Baby slings make it possible to breastfeed discreetly and do many other things at the same time. Some babies get tense or they arch their backs and baby slings make breastfeeding easier in those cases. The supportive headrest will help with breastfeeding. Studies have shown that babies grow better when they are touched and stay in close contact to their parents. This close contact helps them release certain hormones that have this growth effect, which is involved in developing their nervous systems and in proper weight gain. And being near mom helps them eat more, which is good for babies with problems gaining weight. Baby slings let the mother or father use both hands for others things. When it is worn properly, a baby sling relieves back and shoulder pain. Your baby also gets a better view of the world. Baby slings can help lessen arm pain if your baby is heavy for you. Your baby will tend to be less fussy and more alert and quiet because of closeness to her parent. Baby slings are easier to use in crowded public areas than strollers. The baby sling can be put in the diaper bag for storage when not in use as well. Babies, especially newborns, really want to be in the comfort of the womb. It is what they are used to and it makes them feel secure. That is why baby slings are so comforting to the baby. When worn in the front the infant can hear the parent's heart beat and the baby sling lets the baby snuggle up close to the parent. The infant can feel the mother or father's breathing too. All of these things make the baby feel comforted. The weightlessness and the womb like feeling are familiar to the baby. Carrying the baby in the baby sling often promotes the baby and you learning each other's cues and it helps bonding. It helps them learn to talk as they hear more conversations. They experience more, which helps their cognitive development. It may take some time for the parent's to get comfortable using the baby sling, but you'll want to overcome that issue, as baby slings are so useful and good for you and your baby. It takes patience and a bit of practice to learn how to put your baby in the baby sling securely. The operation will be more easily accomplished if your baby has had enough sleep and is fed before hand. Once you are used to using the sling then you can have fun trying the different positions of the baby sling. The different positions are chest-to-chest hold, the cradling position, sit up facing front, the hip straddle, back riding, and the kangaroo carry. Enjoy the many benefits of baby slings. Your baby will show you his or her happiness by growing and thriving.

Chilean Music frequencies updated April, 2001 Sometimes called Muzac or "elevator music" because it sounds just like elevator music. FM modulation wider than nbfm and sound better with >20+ kHz bandwidth. It has nothing to do with Muzac as we understand it. frequency in MHz (Updated March 2001): 47.730 N 47.887 S 48.300 N & S Santiago (verified from 3G0Z trip) 49.300 wide FM N = possibly more to the North of Santiago, Chile stations which are normally heard in Southern California...47.9, etc. Northern stations may accompany PY openings. S = possibly (FE48) 700 km to the south of Santiago, Chile. Some of these may drift around a little in frequency and we have noticed quite a variation in deviation as well. There are several 47.900 transmitters accounting for it being the best and most consistant frequency received in the southern latitudes of the United States. These frequencies listed above were heard in Southern California and there may be others. They may or may not be there every opening. Some of them may be spurious emmisions as well (?). They have been as early as 1600Z and as late as 0530Z They are usually propagated by equi-latitude (N & S) trans equatorial F2. They are heard from Europe to North America to the Pacific to Asia at times as shown by the OH2AQ cluster. and the 50 MHz prop logger A quick look at the TEC (Total Electron Count) page reveals good "prediction" of CE music openings into Southern California. Reception is usually at the northern boundry of areas of high TEC. The transmitters are located in and around Santiago Chile but also appear to be spread up and down the country of Chile as well. Look also for the LU9EHF/b beacon on 50.0155 as it's at the same latitude as Santiago. We shall try to get more info up here as it is gathered. Locally you will also hear Southern California FM business communications and cordless phone traffic (49 MHz) on some of these higher frequencies. Just because there may be CE music stations present doesn't necessarily mean there will be any amateur stations to work. In Southern California we do, many times get LUs and occaisionally some CE stations (they need to get on more) when CE music is present. These frequencies are a great aide in determining if the MUF (Maximum Useable Frequency) will rise high enough for 50 MHz propagation. We hear some of them virtually every day surrounding the Equinoxes. There will an ongoing effort to see if they are up here during other times of the year. CE3SAD page contains "CE music" info as well. Pat WA5IYX has an abundance of great propagation information on his web page.

Reusable Lined Snack Baggies Perhaps you already caught this tutorial when I shared it over at SevenAlive last week, but in case you didn’t, I’d like to show you a fun and simple sewing project that’s a great addition to any summer picnic basket set – a reusable, plastic-lined snack baggie. Not only can you make use of some of the plastic bags they push on you at the grocery store (seriously – I think the only reason they withhold paper bags is to get me to buy their reusable bags), but you can also cut down on buying disposable plastic baggies and change it up with something cute and personal with a very simple sewing project. That’s a win-win-win, right? ;) What you’ll need for each snack bag: 4-8 plastic grocery bags (I used 6) Fabric scrap at least 7″x15″ (optional, it just makes it pretty!) Sewing machine and general sewing supplies (scissors, rulers, pins, etc). Part One: Fusing your plastic. 20 minutes. A note about this. You will be giving your plastic a gentle melt. Yes, I said gentle, but I also said melt. That means you should get good ventilation going. I did not notice any fumes whatsoever (if you regularly use spray paint or any of the heavy-duty adhesives – those are far heavier on fumes) but when you’re talking about changing the composition of plastic, it comes with the territory that you should take common-sense precautions. I said it was a feel-good project, but I didn’t mean you should achieve the feeling by sniffing fumes, LOL. Flatten your bags and trim them down. To do this, just trim off the bottom and the handles. This will give you a tube-shaped sheet to work with. Additionally, you my choose to remove the printed portion (totally optional – but I did, just to have a plain white section of plastic). This will ultimately give you a decent-sized rectangular sheet once you open it up. If you’re using large enough bags, you don’t even have to cut it open, you can leave it doubled up. Trim two sheets of parchment paper. Ideally, they will be larger than your plastic, but if not, don’t worry. You can work with smaller sections at a time if you need to. You can also reuse your parchment for fusing, so trimming off big sheets won’t go to waste if that’s a concern. One goes under your plastic to protect your ironing board or whatever surface you’re ironing on, and the other goes on top of your plastic to prevent your iron from becoming a melted and burned mess. :) I started with three bags – three layers. Next time I will probably start with just two to make sure my initial fuse is nice and string before moving on. If your plastic is doubled, definitely just start with one bag/two layers. Because we’re sewing something small, it’s okay if every inch isn’t 100% perfect, but of course you want to do the best you can. So, heat up your iron to the nylon setting. You may need to end up going a little hotter (I had my best luck nearly to the polyester setting, but you can always go hotter if necessary. You can’t un-melt plastic that’s gotten too hot, so start lower). Iron it all over, moving your iron around a lot. There doesn’t seem to be any trick, like moving in a straight line vs. a squiggly one – all you want to do is make sure that you only stay on any one section for a couple seconds. Lift your parchment every 30 seconds or so to see if your plastic is fusing, or if it’s still in separate layers. I found that once it started to fuse, it started to shrink a little, and get slightly wrinkly under my parchment. So check it often once you start to notice that happening. Once your first two sheets are fused, add another, and iron it again, adding layers one at a time until you have your desired thickness. I used 6 sheets for a nice stiff plastic. If you plan to pack a lot of sandwiches, you may want to go with fewer layers so that it’s more flexible (basically, so you won’t squish your sandwiches closing stiff plastic). This worked out great for a first try, but ideally, we will all eventually be so good at this that we get nice smooth sheets. ;) You can see in the photo below that mine is a bit uneven and wrinkly – partially due to starting with too many layers, and partially because I ironed a few places just a little too long. (Like anything, though – practice makes perfect, right?) But once your plastic is fused – you can sew with it, just like fabric. (Cool, right??) This is why it’s OK for a less-than perfect sheet of plastic – we will be making sure all the edges are sewn into our baggie. Part Two: Sewing your baggie. 15-30 minutes, depending on your experience level. Trim your plastic down to a rectangle 7″ x 15″. You may certainly use any dimensions you like (and the ending size of your plastic piece may dictate how big you can make it), I just found that this was most similar to a sandwich baggie size and I like it really well. So, feel free to adjust, but I’m going to show you directions using 7″ x 15″. If you are covering your baggie with fabric like I am, trim that to 7″ x 15″ as well. Place your fabric patterned side down on top of your plastic. If there is a smoother and a rougher side to your plastic, place the fabric against the smoother side. You can pin it in place if you want, but I didn’t bother since this is a very simple shape to sew. Sew nearly all the way around. It will look like you are doing it wrong since you’re looking at the wrong side of your fabric. Leave a 3″ hole on one of the sides. It can be the side or either one of the ends – just don’t put the hole right by the corner, it’s more of a hassle to even it out if you do. (When I make my next one, I will probably leave my hole on one of the ends!) Once you’ve sewn nearly all the way around, stop. Trim the corners (being careful not to cut over the line you have sewn), and if you have a lot of excess fabric anywhere, trim that too. Now find your hole, reach inside, and pull the insides out through the hole. If this is the first time you’ve turned fabric, it can be a little alarming, because it can look horribly wrong. Just keep going until you’ve turned the whole thing right-side out through the hole! Pay extra attention to those corners – you may want to use a chopstick, a knitting needle, or a butterknife to press them out as square as you can get them. Resist the urge to poke your scissors in there… you don’t want to poke a hole in your project now that we’re so close to being done. Now, find your hole again, and turn the rough edges sticking out into the hole as best as you can. You may want to pin it shut, though I didn’t bother. Sew along one of your short ends, as close to the edge as possible. (They call this topstitching – it just keeps your piece as flat as possible after you have seams sewn inside like that.) If you left your hole for turning on one of your ends – then make that the one you sew shut here. I don’t feel like I got a really good photo pf what I mean, so take a look at this (ahem, low-tech) graphic, and sew along where I’ve put the dotted line. Now, fold up your baggie. You’re going to place your rectangle plastic-side up, with the line you’ve just sewn closest to you. Fold it up, and then form your flap by folding the sewn edge back down again. That sounds really confusing, I know, but take a look, here’s what it should look like. I left 1/2 inch distance from the back of the baggie to the top of the fold, then gave it a 2- 1/2 inch flap. If you had to cut your scraps a little short of 15″, you can make the flap 2 inches and it should still work well. Now finally, sew from the bottom fold, all along the edge, until you get to the bottom at the other side. Which, once again, sounds confusing, so I made another graphic to show you what I mean – sew along the heavier dashed line. (The lighter dashed line is the end you just sewed.) And you are done! Now, you have a baggie that can handle anything plastic can, that’s totally reusable – and pretty, of course! Oh, unless this is for your little mister, in which case it’s probably not “pretty” at all – but I’m sure you’ve made a cool one for him. ;) You can fill it up, and to close it, fold the flap over the back of the baggie to make a little pouch. What I love about this is that it can handle things that are damp or may stain (for example, delicious Michigan raspberries, mmm!) If that happens – you can rinse it right out. It is water resistant, but not totally waterproof along the seams. So if you fill it with water, it will of course drip a little. I would recommend hand-washing it in the sink and letting it air-dry – I’m not certain it will withstand something like the washing machine, though it will take quite a bit more abuse than a regular plastic baggie! So cool!! I could use some of these! Just not sure if I can do it, haha. – Jaime Danni Baird says Wow! Way to recycle in a realy cute way! Gail Purath says Great idea. Never thought of making something water resistant using plastic store bags. Thanks for all the great pictures as well. Gail (BibleLoveNotes.com) Whoa! That is amazing. I love upcycling. Stopping by from the blog hop. Hope to see you at True Aim! Thanks for sharing. Jessi Wohlwend says I love this idea! The fabric is so cute, and it's a great way to reuse plastic bags :-) Thanks so much for sharing this at The Fun In Functional! SewTara says This is awesome! I've been toying around with something to use to line snack bags and this is easy and something we all have on hand (no matter how hard you try not to get more plastic bags!). Can't wait to try it. Wow just wow! I love it and want to make one :) What a GREAT idea! Genius!! I lOVE THIS! Thanks for sharing. Sew Set says Love this!!! That you recycled a plastic bag is simply fantastic. I would love if you uploaded a photo of it into SewSet, a new on-line sewing pattern & tutorial search engine, so others can find it when searching! – Jess, SewSet.com Sumertime says Love the Tutorial!! What a great little project to get the scraps used up! I may whip some up before school starts… box the ends a little for the ones big enough for sandwiches? So cute, thank you!! marissa says Thanks so much for linking up this is a great idea. I just wanted to let you know that I'm featuring this today feel free to stop by and grab a button. I can't wait to see what you have to share this week. Thanks so much for uploading it! It is being featued as one of today's top patterns. – Jess Featuring YOU today! Thank you for linking up to {wow me} wednesday. Ginger @ gingersnapcrafts.com http://www.gingersnapcrafts.com/2012/08/take-look-at-you-my-favorites.html Katie Adams says This is such a smart idea and great easy tutorial! Thank you for sharing on Blog Stalking Thursday! I have featured you with this week's party. Don't forget to stop by and grab a feature button and wear it proudly! { HeatherK says I appreciate your step-by-step with fusing the plastic. This is the most detailed I've seen. I'll definitely try this as I get ready for back to school in the coming weeks. Thanks! Angie Ramirez says awesome project, Adrianne. Featuring your project today. Ashleyplus2.5 says I tried this but the plastic store bags I have I can not seem to get to work I tried my iron on many different settings and the bags either do not fuse together or just melt completely. And then I thought about you mentioning melting the plastic and to do it in a good room with ventilation. Do you know if it is really safe to put food on the melted plastic??? Just curious… Mary-Sweetwater Style says I pinned this….Wouldn't these make great “I'm glad you are my teacher” gifts. My teacher friends all pack lunches. And I envy your tutorial writing skills. Lovely post dear! I wouldn't microwave them. Even if the plastic can handle it (which I'm not 100% sure about?) that's how BPA's are released – by heating. You don't want to heat anything with food in it unless it's BPA-free (and this would include all plasticware that doesn't specifically say it's BPA free – like re-used cool whip tubs, butter dishes, any kind of plastic jugs). All of these plastic food storage items are fine in studies while refrigerated or kept at room temperature, but once you heat them up, that's when BPA's start leaching into foods. I love this tutorial, and I plan to try this, but not tonight, maybe in the next day or two, what a great idea. I think Walmart or grocery bags will be fine, they put food in them to send home with us. I see no problem, but I wouldn’t microwave food in it. Rachael says I just made 4 of these in less than an hour! I love this whole project idea. It just occurred to me that the inner plastic liner bags in cereal boxes are both thicker than the market bags being ironed together in the project to make a thicker sheet (which might save a lot of time and work!), and guaranteed food-safe. Might be a good short-cut! I had been thinking about using the stuff for a while, and your idea just made it all come together for me – thanks! Great idea, Susan. Shame I just threw one of these away a few days ago, I think it’s probably been collected with the rest of the rubbish by now! I just knew there had to be a use for cereal liners. Barbara xx I love this. I stumbled over your post when I searched for a small bag to keep my lunch cool when going to work, things like smoothies, yoghurt and so on. So another idea: why not use those cooling bags you can get at your supermarkt (I’m living in Germany so you can get them at Aldi or Lidl) instead of only plastic bags. You can clean it as well because of the plastic lining. I will definitely try that out ^^ Hi Adrianne, What a brilliant idea! I definitely need to make these and when I do I will show them on my blog (and link back to you). Well done and thank you for showing us how to do this! Barbara xx This has to be one of the best tutorials I have seen and read in a long time! Grea job! I’m looking forward to making some bags! Kathee Tooher says Woooow, I have been following you Adrianne for eons getting weekly segments of jewelry or hemp projects. Never knew you could sew, this project is super cool! Thanks you, I always want projects easy peasy if possible. You are THE BEST!!! Hello, and welcome! I'm Adrianne, an artist, author, designer, and blogger in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I work from home - with two young kiddos. I have a compulsion for daily creativity... sometimes it's jewelry-making, paper crafting, metal stamping, mixing and baking, or giving new life to recycled items. But with 2 young kids, time is short! My goal here at Happy Hour Projects is to share projects and tips that you can do in an hour or less. The ideas you find here are designed to add a little creativity in your day, no matter how much (or how little) time you have!

NVC – The Power to Motivate from Within in: Hong Kong, In Real Life, Personal Photo Credit To Patrizia Soliani We want people to do things because they see how it enriches life. That is power: when we have the ability to motivate people from within. Non-Violent Communication (NVC) is a language of and for life and inspires compassion through joyful relationships in all areas of life through the expression of feelings and needs. Beyond our habitual, automatic responses, is a compassionate connection away from and beyond judgment, criticism and blame. Marshall Rosenberg, author and Founder of the Center for Non-Violent Communication, became preoccupied most of his life with what connects and disconnects us from our natural compassionate nature. NVC’s goal is teaching us that power is with people, not over them. In the forward to Rosenberg’s book on NVC, Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson recounts his summer in India with his famous grandfather. Through his time there, he became aware of the insidious ways that passive violence fueled physical violence. This passive violence, in the form of rewards and punishments, judgement, shame, guilt and negative self-talk defines “violence” in the context of NVC. All are attempts to manipulate individuals and groups to make others do as they are told. Violence is not just physical acts such as fighting, beating and killings. As many individuals know, emotional violence can be as equally painful as the physical. Marshall asks two questions clarifying why punishment can be confused with an effective form of communication. What do we want the other person to do? What do we want the other person’s reasons to be for doing as we request? If the person does what is being asked out of guilt, shame, fear of hurting the other person, risk of losing connections/love, or to avoid physical or emotional pain, then the action isn’t being done out of consideration for our needs. Furthermore, using guilt tricks people into believing that they can create your feelings, and they are the cause of your suffering. What the other person does is a stimulus for our feelings but not the cause. How I feel about a situation depends on a whole range of factors from the choices I make, to the story I tell myself about the event, to the millions of filters created through my upbringing, my socio-economic status, color, gender, education and more. Using language such as, “I feel as I do in this situation because I need………” connects to our unmet need when the other person does or behaves in some way. Shame is a potent form of subversive violence towards individuals and groups. It invokes fear and self-rebuke to get what we want by using labels such as lazy, inconsiderate, rude, stupid, bad, selfish, naughty, etc. In NVC, any label that implies wrongness is a violent act. It’s trying to get people to do things out of guilt and shame. Any language that allows us to deny responsibility for our choices is also a catalyst to violence . This is the defense of Amtssprache that Adolf Eichmann used during the war crimes tribunal when asked why he sent the Jews to the concentration camps and the gas chambers. Dangerous words that deny responsibility for our choices include, had to superiors orders it’s company policy and But, what happens when we use this language of judgment, guilt, shame and denial? It creates the 3 R’s: resentment, retaliation and rebellion. Forcing a child, for example, to participate in an activity results in resentment towards the activity, perhaps retaliation in the form of arguing and protesting, and rebellion either immediately, over time or later in life. Conversely, NVC permits our needs to be heard as requests and not demands, where there is openness to discussion with the aim of a win-win solution. When an individual is truly heard (known as ‘active listening’), he/she does not feel criticised. Energy can be focused on problem solving and conflict resolution rather then a defense. Hearing criticism in what people say, or worrying about what people think of you has terrible effects on how we see ourselves. Real discussion begins by separating observations from evaluation with a sprinkling of feelings and needs for empathic connection. NVC is communication and learning where our own wellbeing and the wellbeing of others is paramount. Unfortunately most language in our lives from the beginning of school throughout our working lives is that of authority and the use of rewards and punishment. NVC teaches not to give power to ‘authoritative sources’. Next time, instead of hearing the actual words coming out of a person’s mouth, try to determine what is behind the feelings and needs underneath what is being said. It is often quite a different message. By bonding at that deeper level of understanding, or at least attempting to really hear what is being said, we can connect to each other’s humanness and deepest need for connection. It is from this point of mutual understanding that we can truly communicate, problem solve, resolve conflict and motivate each other to reach our potentials.

10 Potent Foods That Kill Pain Fast Pain is the main symptom that causes people to go to a doctor. It can be acute pain which is usually more severe and short-lived. This is the type of pain that results from an accident of some sort. Chronic pain is ongoing and can be mild to severe. It usually results from some underlying disease or condition like arthritis or bursitis. Substance P is a small peptide found in the brain and spinal cord that transmits pain signals from sensory nerves to the central nervous system. Substance P binds to a receptor molecule that actually relays the pain signal to the central nervous system. So if substance P detects joint pain, the feeling is transmitted to the brain with the help of a receptor molecule, is translated by the brain as pain and you feel pain. There are some compounds like capsaicin, found in chili peppers, that block the activity of substance P. So capsaicin is found in a lot of pain salves. This article discusses 10 different foods that can kill pain quickly. Some of the foods bring temporary relief from pain. The article points out other foods that contains substances that reduce inflammation, which can bring longer term relief for some conditions. Here is just one of the foods: Dark cherries contain vitamin C, potassium and fiber. There was a 2012 study that found that people with gout who ate dark cherries or cherry extract had a reduced risk of future gout attacks. They also contain anthocyanins which have an ant-inflammatory effect. As a result tart cherries help to reduce muscle soreness, and improved pain symptoms in patients who had osteoarthritis.

The Canonical Literature of International Communism: The British Case, 1920 Postat 25 februari 2014 av historian In November-December 1920, European communism took another step in consolidating itself as a movement after the Second International Comintern Congress in Moscow. The recently established communist party in Great Britain had formed information centers, places that functioned as distributive channels to spread the sanctioned literature of the Comintern. For the British communist movement represented London a crucial hub, where the ”B.S.P. Literature Dept. 21 Maiden Lane, Strand, London W. E. 2” and the ”Workers Soc. Fed., 400 Old Ford Rd., London E. 3” were the preferred locations to visit, or contact in order to find socialist and communist literature. The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) also had a center in Glasgow at the ”S. L. Press 50 Renfrew Str”, and in South Africa at the office of the International Socialist League in Johannisburg (P.O. Box 4179). To coordinate the distribution of this canonical literature, the Amsterdam Bureau of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI), an organisational body established in 1920 on Lenin’s personal instructions, organised and supervised this operation. The functions of the Amsterdam Bureau was to act as a connective administrative hub for the Comintern outside of the Soviet Russian border, involving the control and supervision over the communist movement in Western Europe after the Comintern’s foundation in 1919. In Amsterdam governed the Dutch communist and Comintern emissary Sebald Justius Rutgers the bureau, while in Berlin, the so-called ”partner”, the West European Secretariat, was run by Yakov Reich (”Thomas”). An examination of the Amsterdam Bureau collection (fond 497) in the Comintern Archive disclose a number of documents/lists that informs us about what kind of literature the communists should read and circulate among its members, or use while recruting new supporters. In the British case, one wonders therefore what was on the ”reading list”? Below follow, in alphabetical order, the canonical literature of British communism in 1920: Ch. Beard, Industrial Revolution; Bela Kun, Revolutionary Essays; T. Brady, Historical Basic of Socialism in Ireland; [?] Clarke, The Story of Robert Burns; J. Connolly; Labour in Ireland; [?] Déslinierès, Coming Socialism; A.C. Doyle and J. McCabe, Truth of Spiritualism; [?] Fairchild, Socialism and the League of Nations; [?] Gallacher and J. Campbell, Direct Action; [?] Goode, Bolshevism at Work; H. Gorter, Ireland: the Achilles Heel of England; H. Gorter, The World Revolution; [?] Hay, The Beardmore-Vickers Octopus; B. G. Horniman, Amritsar and our Duty to India; Lenin, Chief Task of our Times; Lenin, Collapse of the Second International; Lenin, Land Revolution in Russia; Lenin, Proletarian Revolution; Lenin, Soviets at Work; Lenin, The Proletarian Revolution; Lenin, Thesis: Democracy and Proletarian Dictatorship; Lenin, Towards Soviets; D. de Leon, As to Politics; M. Litvinoff, Bolshevik Revolution; N. Lenin, His Life and Work; [?] Maclean, Coming War with America; [?] Maclean, Condemned from the Dock; [?] Maclean, War after the War; Malone, Russia Republics; R. Marchand, Why I Support Bolshevism; [?] Money, Fifty Points about Capitalism; Rajani Palme Dutt, The Two Internationals; Sylvia Pankhurst, Lloyd George takes the Mask off; [?] Paul, Hands off Russia; [?] Price, Capitalist Europe and Socialist Russia; [?] Price, Origins and Growth of Russia Soviets; [?] Newbolds, Bankers, Bondholders and Bolsheviks; [?] Newbolds, Menace of American Capitalism; [?] Newbolds, Politics of Capitalism; Karl Radek, Socialism, Science to Practice; [?] Ransome, Six Weeks in Russia 1919; [?] Ransome, Truth about Russia; [?] Rickman, Eye-Witness from Russia; [?] Roebuk, Nationalisation of Women; [?] Sadoul, Socialist Soviet Republic; [?] Shumazki, Aims of the Bolsheviki; Boris Souvarine, Third International; [?] Stair, Worker looks at History; J. Stewart, An Appeal to the Young; [?] Tchitcherine, The Foreign Policy of Soviet Russia; [?] Tchitcherine, Russia’s plan for the League of Nations; Leon Trotsky, Bolsheviki and World Peace; Leon Trotsky, History of Russian Revolution; Klara Zetkin, Through Dictatorship to Democracy; [unknown] A Sketch of the Russian Trade-Union Movement; [unknown] First Code of Laws of Russian Republic; German Spartacist: Their Aims and Objects.

The People of St Saviour’s Church at Oxford Street & Acton by Research group South East Posted on / December 9, 2017 Tracking some of the names and families associated with St Saviour’s Deaf Church from London Metropolitan Archives. Patricia Collen: Normansfield Resident (1926-1997) by Ben McLoughlin Posted on / November 24, 2017 In this, the sixth and last in a short series of case studies, we look at a cross-section of residents of Normansfield Hospital, hoping to shed light on both the successes and shortcomings of this groundbreaking institution. Tony Hudson: Normansfield Resident (1945-1997) In this, the fifth in a short series of case studies, we look at a cross-section of residents of Normansfield Hospital, hoping to shed light on both the successes and shortcomings of this groundbreaking institution. Walter Ridpath: Normansfield Resident (1882-1909) In this, the forth in a short series of case studies, we look at a cross-section of residents of Normansfield Hospital, hoping to shed light on both the successes and shortcomings of this groundbreaking institution. Rising with the city: our exhibition about the Bristol Guild by Kate Smith Posted on / November 11, 2017 Our MShed exhibition about the Guild of the Brave Poor Things shows how disabled people advocated for themselves and survived in a changing society from the late Victorian period the 1980s. Irritated apprentices: empowering people, up to a point How Guild members got stuck for so long with a name that many did not like. Dorothy ‘Dolly’ Freeman: Normansfield Resident (1899-1920) by Ben McLoughlin Posted on / October 10, 2017 In this, the third in a short series of case studies, we look at a cross-section of residents of Normansfield Hospital, hoping to shed light on both the successes and shortcomings of this groundbreaking institution. Robert Belchamber: Normansfield Resident (1874-1887) by Ben McLoughlin Posted on / September 25, 2017 In this, the second in a short series of case studies, we look at a cross-section of residents of Normansfield Hospital, hoping to shed light on both the successes and shortcomings of this groundbreaking institution. Letting in the light: architecture for a Deaf Church by Research group South East Posted on / September 17, 2017 When London’s only church for deaf people moved from Oxford Street to Acton, the architecture was carefully designed for signed services. What goes up but doesn’t come down? digital game making at the Museum of Liverpool Edward Rushton’s brave and exciting life gets mashed up with quotes, nicknames and krakens as we develop a digital game about his life with young people from Liverpool.

Hungary Subway Map Region of Asia Minor that at its greatest extension spread from the Hellespont on the Propontis Sea of Marmara to the SE extremity of the Pontus Euxinus Black Sea, also including Honorias and Paphlagonia. Bithynia Pontus was the name of the province established in 65 64 BC, after the Roman conquest Tacitus, Annals I, 74. The witnesses to the apostolic glossolalia on the day of Pentecost included inhabitants of Pontus; Aquila was also from there Acts 2:9; 18:2. The rapid expansion of Christianity in that region is attested by 1 Pet, addressed to the exiles = Christians of the diaspora in Pontus and Bithynia. 1 Pet alludes to a state of persecution not unlike that referred to by Pliny the Younger, governor of the province in 112 Ep. 96, in his letter to Trajan; the letter is certainly later than Nero, perhaps datable to 80 95 DBS, VII, 1444-1453. In Pontus, the progress of the gospel is attested by the work of Gregory Thaumaturgus. In Bithynia, the era of the martyrs culminated in the massacre of Nicomedia, the imperial residence from the time of Diocletian, which occasioned Lactantius’s conversion. The first ecumenical council 325 and the last of the patristic era 787 met at Nicaea, rival of Nicomedia where Constantine was baptized as capital of Bithynia. The first phase of Arianism brought the episcopate of Bithynia into prominence due to Eusebius of Nicomedia. Chalcedon was the seat of the fourth ecumenical council 451, which confirmed Nicomedia’s precedence and, in can. 28, extended the jurisdiction of the patriarchate of Constantinople to Pontus, a region made illustrious by the Cappadocians and from which Evagrius of Pontus took his name.

Baring Your Sole – Benefits of Barefoot Running Barefoot running has once again captured our imagination. In the early 60’s it was made popular by Abebe Bikila of Ethiopia. At the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome Bikila was a last minute substitute in the marathon. So when he couldn’t find a pair of shoes that fit him correctly he decided to run barefoot, the way he trained back home. Bikila won in a record time of 2:15:16.2, becoming the first black African to win an Olympic gold medal. In the Tokyo Olympic Games Bikila did race in shoes and bettered his time setting a new world’s record of 2:12:11, to win another Olympic Gold Medal. In the early 1980’s Zola Budd, of South Africa also made barefoot running popular. I remember the barefoot Zola running the 3,000 meters and American World Champion Mary Decker taking a face plant then Zola’s left foot contacted Decker’s thigh. Zola now lives in South Carolina and still runs but now in shoes. So the question remains should you lace up or not? This is not an easy question to answer. First you have to ask what are the benefits of bare foot running? Running barefoot can improve a runner’s technique. If you are running in a corrective shoe you can make a lot of mistakes and pound the pavement. Overtime this can cause injuries. I am sure that you have run with someone who sounds like they are stomping grapes rather than running. Think of this as pumping the brakes on a car. This wears out the brakes and also slows you down. Listen to the sound a fast and fluent runner makes….swoosh! So running short periods of time barefoot or in a light weight shoe on soft surfaces can help improve a runner’s technique but only if they are paying attention to technique. Both Bikila and Budd grew up in African and as children never wore shoes. They were young at the time and didn’t have injuries. They also trained on soft surfaces. So if you are thinking of running with a light weight shoe or going barefoot you have to work up to it. Don’t just kick off the shoes and go out for a run or you might be hitch hiking it back! Barefoot running on hard surfaces is not recommended at all. If you have injuries, bunions the size of door knobs or flat feet , as I do, barefoot running is out of the question. The only exception might be running barefoot on a beach because the sand is like a custom orthodic with each step. Unfortunately, I don’t get to the beach very often. So what I do is lace up a pair of light weight trainers, with my orthodic in them, and imagine that I’m running barefoot. This allows me to think about my running technique – making a mid heel strike and smooth transition to the forefoot. I have personally found this to be very helpful. Sometimes, however, I like to run without thinking about anything. Ipod on, mind off and go. For those runs I wear my more corrective shoe. Like everything in life there is no one answer that works for everyone. So if you don’t have any foot issues ,and have a low body weight go ahead and bare your sole. Remember to focus on form and keep the distance short and on a soft surface. I would suggest trying it after a track workout and run on the grass field across the track. For the rest of us, I would suggest going down a category in stability and using that shoe for focused workouts. Due some sole searching and find a lighter shoes and mix it up. Imagine that you are barefoot – just have the shoe on for protection. Our bodies are great at letting us know if we are doing too much mileage or are getting injuried. Unfortunately, our minds and more often our egos lead us a stray. Then we breakdown! After each run listen to your body and make your honest ego free assestment. Happy trails. One thing that can help if you want to try barefoot running is to go on a barefoot walk outside to kind of “recalibrate” your soles to the idea of giving sensory feedback to your brain as you move rather than being shut off from that function by the wearing of shoes. This barefoot hiking article is very informative:

Sustainable certification stirs debate over programs The decision by the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute and at least eight major salmon buyers to pull out of the Marine Stewardship Council's sustainability certification program has caused a bit of a flap in the industry, including allegations by ASMI that MSC is making false accusations regarding the causes and implications of the action, and push-back by ASMI to counter the claims. Alaska wild salmon was up for re-certification by MSC for the sustainability label in October 2012, and the organization responsible for making that happen, the Alaska Fisheries Development Association, announced in January that it was no longer interested in participating, due to the pull-out of eight major buyers who accounted for 72 percent of the market for salmon in Alaska. At the time, the association cited the cost of the program and resulting flagging support in the industry. It explained that the processors were instead entering into a sustainability program with the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization whose budget is funded by voluntary contributions that are not passed on to the processors, unlike the licensing fees MSC charges to use its sustainability logo. ASMI has secured FAO certifications for Alaska salmon, halibut, sablefish and pollock with crab pending. MSC issued a statement blasting the FAO program, saying Alaska seafood marketing officials are incorrect, and even "misleading," in asserting that the FAO sustainability certification program is equivalent to the MSC program. "The ASMI scheme is repeatedly referred to as the 'FAO standard' or the 'UN standard' and references to Alaska fisheries passing this scheme have been said to be 'certified by the UN' or 'FAO certified.' This is incorrect," MSC said in a statement. "The United Nations and its Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) do not have a standard and do not certify fisheries." The Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries was developed by FAO in 1995, and although it by itself is not a certification standard, its content has been used to develop the ASMI program. FAO does have a third-party certification program which endorsed Alaska salmon in March of 2011. The certification is good for five years, with annual reviews. After ASMI and the processors pulled out of the MSC program, some Canadian environmental groups claimed at least partial credit for the move, saying that they had been pressuring MSC to withdraw its sustainability label for Alaska salmon fisheries that are partially reliant upon hatchery-released fish, blaming them in part for struggling wild runs in British Columbia as a result of competition for food in the ocean environment. Countries around the Pacific Rim, including the United States, Russia and Japan, release as many as 5 billion hatchery-raised fish into that environment each year. Watershed Watch called giving Alaska salmon MSC's sustainability label "highly irresponsible." In a recent email to stakeholders in Alaska, ASMI director Ray Riutta defended the hatchery system. "Recently, as part of the reaction to this withdrawal there has been a concentrated attack on Alaska's hatchery system, implying that without the MSC oversight, Alaska would not manage its hatcheries effectively with some going as far as to say that recertification would not happen based solely on Alaska's hatchery program," it read. Riutta sent out hatchery talking points that were distributed at the International Boston Seafood Show this month. Those points sketched out what it called the continuous improvement of the Alaska salmon hatchery program by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, reaffirmed under the FAO-based certification, and acknowledged the issues that MSC had during the 2007 re-certification, but said that the majority of them were satisfied by 2010. "Any suggestion that withdrawing from the MSC will in some way cause Alaska to mismanage its hatcheries is baseless and ignores the facts," Riutta said. "Alaskans take great pride in our hatchery system which is one of the best in the entire world and is an integral part of our sustainable salmon fishery." In the stakeholder email, Riutta said that ASMI's decision not to engage in a negative campaign in the press against those who challenge the FAO-based model is gaining advocates who appreciate the restrained approach. "We believe it does not serve the cause of sustainable seafood but rather detracts from it by arguing about who has a better program," he said. In the end, which program certifies the sustainability of Alaska wild salmon does not change the fact of its sustainability, he noted. In a speech at the Boston seafood show, Gov. Sean Parnell agreed, while pushing back against MSC. "Unfortunately, our effort to provide choice in credible certification alternatives became embroiled in the debate over who defines sustainability for the market," Parnell said. "This debate over who defines sustainability is evolving into an issue of market access and governance where one party seeks control, which concerns me greatly. The Community Education and Professional Development program at University of Alaska Sitka campus is offering an on-line marine hydraulics course, with three sessions left this spring. The course is self-paced and takes about six hours. It is designed specifically for people who use marine hydraulics on commercial fishing vessels. Students will learn the basic theory of common hydraulic systems, identify hydraulic components, learn the nomenclature associated with hydraulics, and basic troubleshooting techniques. Cost is $95.

Myopia(Nearsightedness): Nearsightedness, or myopia, is the common refractive fault of the eye, and it has become more common in recent years. Myopia happens while the eye grows too long from front to back. Alternately of focusing images on the retina—the light-sensitive tissue in the posterior(back) of the eye—the lens of the eye focuses the image in front of the retina. People with myopia have good near vision but poor distance vision. The specific cause for the increase in myopia is unknown, many eye specialists feel it has something to do with eye fatigue from computer usage and other prolonged near vision tasks, linked with a genetic predisposition for myopia. Myopia Symptoms And Signs Nearsightedness symptoms may include: Typically will have difficulty reading road signs and seeing distant objects clearly, but will be able to see close tasks such as reading and computer use. Eye fatigue when you try to see objects more than a few feet away. Feeling fatigued when driving or playing sports also can be a symptom of uncorrected nearsightedness. Other symptoms of Nearsightedness include squinting, eye strain and headaches. Causes of Myopia Myopia happens while the eyeball is too long, comparable to the focusing power of the cornea and lens of the eye. This makes light rays to focus at a point in anterior(front) of the retina, rather than directly on its surface. Myopic shifts seen through growth spurts of childhood and adolescence, as well as in acromegaly, shows a relationship between the timing of myopic development and the release of human growth hormone. Diagnosis of Myopia An optometrist or ophthalmologist has used a refraction, an autorefractor to give an initial objective assessment of the refractive status of each eye, then a phoropter is used to subjectively refine the patient's eyeglass prescription. Other types of refractive error are astigmatism, hyperopia, and presbyopia. Myopia Treatment Anti-muscarinic topical medications in children under 18 years of age may slow the worsening of myopia. These treatments include cyclopentolate eye drops, pirenzepine gel, and atropine eye drops. While these medications were shown to be useful in reducing the progression of myopia, side effects included light irritability and near blur. Nearsightedness can be corrected with glasses, contacts, or refractive surgery. Depending on the degree of your myopia, you may need to wear your glasses or contact lenses all the time or only when you need very clear distance vision. Good choices for eyeglass lenses for nearsightedness comprise photochromic lenses to protect the eyes from UV and to reduce your need for a separate pair of prescription sunglasses outdoors. If you're nearsighted, will be preceded by a minus sign (–). The higher the number, the more nearsighted you are. Eye surgery can correct your vision, you may not ever need glasses or contacts again. LASIK is the most popular surgery for myopia. The surgeon utilizes a laser to create a thin flap on the top of your cornea. The surgeon sculpts the cornea with another laser and moves the flap back into place.

A book of weight loss success stories from people who have lost weight and kept it off on every plan from Atkins to The Zone. Runners unite! Dr. Ron Eaker is an ob/gyn who practices in Atlanta. He has written many books, including Healthy Habits for a Fit Family. He also shared a story in my book Miracles & Moments of Grace: Inspiring Stories from Doctors. I get Dr. Eaker's e-mail newsletter regularly and really enjoyed his latest one. In it, he talks about running a marathon, and he shares some of his insights into the courage of people who enter marathons, even when they aren't in the best condition of their lives. "It takes a special brand of courage to lace up the shoes, knowing you are overweight, and vow to complete a race," he observes. I'll let him tell you the whole story. Enjoy his thoughts! "I ran and finished my 24th marathon this past Saturday. It was on the mercilessly undulating Atlanta course weaving itself through the hills and valleys of such spots as Virginia Highland and Druid Hills. You would think I would have had a premonition of the topography based on those neighborhood names, but I was blinded by catacholamines from training runs. There were about 12,000 runners, 10,000 in the half marathon and 2,000 brain-damaged body fat haters in the marathon, and I am always amazed at the relative diversity of folks running. There are people who you would see on the street and not immediately assume they were runners, some even you may suspect were taste testers at the Twinkie factory, but nevertheless, they were there and getting it done. It takes a special brand of courage to lace up the shoes, knowing you are overweight, and vow to complete a race. Many people stay out of gyms to avoid the snickers and stray looks from the Barbies and Kens who pride themselves at having 2% body fat, so it is especially heartening to see folks of all shapes and sizes at races. What I have also discovered is that, in differentiation from the health clubs, runners embrace these folks and see them as fellow strugglers on a path to wellness. There is a respect and acceptance of those who don't have the expected anorectic body habitus of a marathoner as runners understand you can't fake covering the distance. For most of us, it doesn't matter if you cover it in three hours or five hours as simply putting one foot in front of another for 26 consecutive miles is proof enough of courage, persistence, and a bit of lunacy thrown in. It is a unique breed that wishes and then accomplishes this, and it proves there is an outlet for us all." Tomorrow is just another day... in a way. January 1, 2013. Just one of 365 days in the year. But every year, thousands of people mark this day as a special one of resolutions. A time for new beginnings. And the #1 New Year's resolution? Weight loss. It's no wonder: We've just come through our annual orgy of eating and drinking, and we all feel a little guilty about the excess and its unwanted effects. To give you hope that you can accomplish this goal, I want to share with you one story from my book How We Did It: Weight Loss Choices That Will Work for You. It's the story of Lori Kimble, a woman who lost 105 pounds on a variety of weight loss programs, including Nutrisystem, Weight Watchers and the Zone Diet. No matter what plan she was using, one thing was constant: she counted calories and added exercise to her day. I'll let Lori tell you her story in her own words. It's contained in Chapter 4 of How We Did It. She's just one of about 30 people in the bookwho succeeded at weight loss using many of the popular plans, as well as plans of their own making. I wish for you the very same success! Lori's story: Remember the Looney Tunes character Wile E. Coyote? He was always rigging up a contraption to drop an anvil on the lightning-fast Road Runner. That cartoon image is embedded in Lori Kimble’s mind. “At my heaviest, I weighed 250 pounds,” says Lori. “I saw that number on the scale and I had this image in my mind of one of Wile E. Coyote’s anvils marked ‘250 lbs.’ It dawned on me then—250 pounds is halfway to 500 pounds and I could see myself weighing that much if I kept going the way I was.” But having that realization and acting on it was two different things for Lori. “I was frustrated because I thought, ‘I’m going to weigh 500 pounds because I don’t know what to do about it,’” she says. Lori recalls always being heavy—or at least chubby. She has no memories of ever being a healthy weight. From an early age, she was drawn to comfort foods like mac ‘n cheese, pasta, white rice, bagels and spaghetti. Hamburger Helper was a dinner staple at her house. The only vegetables she liked were broccoli and corn. She and her sister snacked at home, and they liked their sweets. Like many people frustrated with their weight, Lori was always trying one diet or another, but she failed every time. “I had in my head that I only had to put up with this diet for awhile, and then I could go back to eating the way I always had,” she says. “It was an all-or-nothing attitude that just wasn’t working for me.” In 2003, Lori read The Sugar Addict’s Total Recovery Program by Kathleen DesMaisons. The book made her realize that her previous weight loss attempts may have failed because she was simply replacing high-fat foods with seemingly healthy low-fat foods that were instead loaded with sugar. By weaning off of processed foods, refined carbohydrates, sugars and what she calls “white things” and replacing them with proteins and whole grains like brown rice, she lost 20 pounds in one year. This success spurred Lori on to address other problems with her diet, like portion control. She joined Weight Watchers and lost another 60 pounds but then hit a frustrating plateau. “I was eating very little point-wise, exercising hard and seeing no progress,” she says. “I cried every week weighing in. This went on for six months.” At the time, living in temporary housing without a kitchen, Lori and her husband began picking up food from a Mexican takeout place, and her weight started coming back on. “I tried eating right again, and I tried going back on Weight Watchers and several other things, like eDiets and the low-glycemic plan GI Impact,” she says. But by this time, Lori was exhausted. “I was tired of thinking about food all the time. I just wanted someone to tell me what to eat,” she says. Lori found relief by joining NutriSystem and ordering their packaged meals for a few months. She found it to be helpful in once again training her to recognize an appropriate portion size. She liked the balance of fats, proteins and carbs—the meals included more protein than she was used to having, and that helped her stay full longer. When she felt ready, Lori transitioned from NutriSystem to cooking her own meals. She combined some elements of NutriSystem and The Zone Diet to come up with meals that combined nutrients in a way that kept her from feeling hungry. Exercise also figured into Lori’s success. She and her husband John Vaughn are avid bike riders. They generally take one long bike ride each weekend—at least when the weather in upstate New York cooperates—usually about 40 miles. She is training for a 100-mile bike ride and has participated in her first triathlon. Gradually, Lori began to see success again. “It was a slow process, but that just made my weight loss feel more permanent to me,” she says. Within a few years, Lori’s total weight loss came to 105 pounds. At 5-feet, 2-inches, she wears a size 8 today, where once she wore a size 24. Although Lori’s success came from several different programs, one thing remained constant—calorie counting. Throughout her weight loss journey, Lori logged the caloric value of her foods. She either used the system provided by the plan, like Weight Watchers Points plan or NutriSystem’s calorie counter, and when she was on her own, she sought help from an online calorie counting program, LiveStrong’s DailyPlate. Determining her ideal daily caloric intake was a process of trial and error, Lori says. She eventually settled on about 1,500-1,600 calories a day for weight loss. “Anything lower than 1,400 and I get cranky,” she says. When she is in a maintenance mode, and on days when exercise has her body crying out for sustenance, she might up the calorie count to 2,000 a day. Logging calories and exercise choices isn’t a chore for Lori. “I’m a bit dorky that way,” she says. “I like seeing the numbers.” Another motivator for Lori has been tracking her progress on her blog Finding Radiance. Her blog is filled with photo after photo of her colorful and appetizing meals. “Once I began arranging meals on a plate to take photos, my food looked more appealing to me, and I began to get excited about food again,” she says. “I’m not afraid of food anymore. Cupcakes aren’t evil. If I really want something, I can make room for it and really, really enjoy it.” Today, Lori continues to track her calories, food choices and exercise. For her, it’s the key to success. “Now, I have the complete puzzle put together! I feel like I can live this way for the rest of my life,” Lori says. I know from talking with hundreds of people about weight loss that for many, dropping excess weight is as much about what's going on in their head as what's going in their mouth. Overeating can be a vicious cycle in which you feel so bad about yourself -- often because of comments or actions by others -- that you run to what comforts you the most: food. Then, of course, you feel bad again after the feelings of relief wear off. But I fear that Ms. Dorfman's statement that "gaining weight is a part of our modern life" lets us all off too easily. Yes, there are medical conditions and medicines that make weight loss difficult and even impossible. I get that. Aging and a slowing metabolism are a contributing factor -- that I know for sure! But most of us do not put on extra weight for these reasons. For the vast majority of us, excess weight is a combination of too much food and too little movement. I know that no one wants to hear that same old, same old, blah, blah, blah. But in my mind, there's no simpler way to put it. We know this in our hearts, yet we can't put it to work for us unless we embrace the facts and act on them. And here's where I question Ms. Dorfman. Cruel as people may be, I found that many people in How We Did It were shocked into action by thoughtless comments. Certainly no one wants to be the target of cruelty, but would these people have begun their weight loss journey without the jolt of reality that these comments provided? Most often, the comments weren't personal attacks, but statements of reality: "She weighs more than I do," one doctor said outside an exam room. "Mr. M. is fat," some students said about a substitute teacher. I wish there were another way, but I'm not sure what the alternative is. Well, I do know of one. Several people I talked with were moved to action when a spouse or friend lovingly told them that they were becoming concerned for their health. Putting the focus on health and not weight and body image may be the way to go. A few others saw or heard the words "morbid obesity" applied to them and became fearful enough of disability or early death to take action. Still, I'm not certain these softer messages -- or even the cruelest comments -- are strong enough to move most people to action. Even when thoughtless comments stung, people often needed something more in order to help themselves. Many credit seeing unflattering photos or a glimpse in a mirror with providing the final piece of the puzzle. For some, it was the inability to do the simplest daily task or having to ask for the seat belt extender on a plane. Diane's incredible weight loss story One of the weight loss blogs I've followed over the years is Diane Carbonell's Fit to the Finish. Diane once weighed over 300 pounds, but she went on to lose half her size on a three-pronged program of her own making. No one had to bully her into it, or jolly her into it -- Diane just set her mind to it and within a year had reached her goal. Diane has blogged about her weight loss on Dr. Oz's blog and television show, and been interviewed on the 700 Club. Now Diane has come out with her own book about her weight loss, 150 Pounds Gone Forever: How I Lost Half My Size and You Can Too. I appreciate Diane's approach to weight loss. She's not a cheerleader or a bully. Instead, she is a knowledgeable and inspiring guide. Her approach is one of quiet confidence: "I did it, and so can you." Hers is the perfect approach to weight loss, as it builds an inner desire to succeed, rather than relying on external motivators that will eventually fail. In her book, Diane tells stories of her years as an obese young wife and mother, the agonies of day-to-day interactions with others as well as the self-condemning inner dialog that kept her running to food for comfort, trapping herself in her burgeoning body. It takes a brave person to reveal so many embarrassing moments (not to mention before photos!). Along with her personal story, Diane includes useful information about nutrition, exercise and weight loss strategies, like how to grocery shop, read labels, and estimate caloric needs. She includes sections on the importance of planning and forethought when on a mission to lose weight. She even includes her favorite family recipes. But I think one of the features of the book that I most appreciated is one that characterizes Diane's blog -- Diane asks great questions that will get you thinking about your own weight issues. "What did you have for dinner last night?" "Does fear of failure stop you from trying to get healthy?" "Do you ever eat in the car?" These seem like simple questions, but they can get at the core of your personal dilemmas. (I don't eat in my car, so the question made me think, "Where do I mindlessly eat?") I would recommend this book to anyone wanting a sensible, surefire way to attack a weight problem. Long after "The Biggest Loser" lands in the junk heap of discarded television shows, this kind of book will live on as an inspiring guide from someone who knows that you can indeed do it, because she did. What I really appreciate about Jimmy's approach to weight loss is that while he succeeded on Atkins, he realizes that it's not the only plan with which you can find success. He fully supports people who choose another plan. He's all about success! He provided me with the quote that ends my book: "Dance with the one that brung ya!" In other words, if it words for you--whatever it is--stick with it. Jimmy has endless amounts of information on his website Livin La Vida Low Carb. As part of his blog, he posts podcasts with people involved in weight loss--including me! Click on this link to listen to our interview, which Jimmy ran earlier this week. It's the longest interview I've done for my book--36 minutes!--so I really had the chance to go into depth about the book and the inspiring people in it. I hope you enjoy listening in! Bye bye to back pain! At one time, I suffered lower back pain that was bad enough to land me in physical therapy... not once but twice. I finally got the message and did two things: started swimming laps and in doing so, lost weight. Losing 30 pounds and continuing my regular lap swimming (2-3x/week) has kept the ache away. I'd recommend swimming to anyone who suffers from lower back pain. It doesn't take much to whack that pain. I swim for just a half an hour and, if I have the time, I sit in the hot tub for a minute or two afterward. In the new Chicken Soup book, Say Goodbye to Back Pain, I write about my hassle with back pain and my solution. It's a funny story about how I got to the point of not being able to pick up my child because of the pain, and what I had to do one day when I had to get him, kicking and squalling, to the car when he didn't want to leave the park. There are some great stories, and great solutions, in this book. Maybe one will help you, too. Labels: back pain, chicken soup for the soul, lap swimming, weight loss Mindless eating... it's how we eat! One of the books I relied on for good -- and fascinating -- information for How We Did It was Dr. Brian Wansink's Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More than We Think. Dr. Wansink is called a "food psychologist." From his lab at Cornell University, he conducts experiments into the factors that lead us to eat what we eat. And you'd think that we eat what we eat because it tastes good, right? Wrong! In some of his crazy experiments, Dr. Wansink has uncovered the many misguided reasons we eat. Among them are these: The size and shape of a bowl can almost double the amount of food you eat. Restaurants can get you to eat more by describing their menu items with adjectives. You will eat more candy if you throw away the wrappers as you go along than if you let the wrappers pile up. If you have bread served with dipping oil rather than with butter, you'll consume less bread but more calories. Grocery store signs that read 3-for-$3 rather than $1/each can more than double our purchases. These are just a few of the fascinating facts Dr. Wansink has confirmed with his research. How can you apply this information to your food consumption? "By encouraging healthy, mindful eating, we can decrease obesity," Wansink says. "A keen awareness of all these hidden persuaders is an important step in controlling the amount and quality of food you eat." For me, "mindful eating" means this: I will not eat straight from a package. If I want some crackers, I'll put some on a plate. I will not eat something just because it's there. Most chocolate made in the U.S. tastes like wax. I've stopped eating my son's leftover Halloween candy. If I want chocolate, I'll eat just a little bit of really good chocolate. I absolutely do not shop when I'm hungry. The temptations are just too overwhelming. I'll have a small, healthy snack before I go, even if I'm in a hurry. If I eat while watching TV, I choose the snack beforehand and set it out on the coffee table. No trips to the kitchen during a show! How about you? What does "mindful eating" mean for you? Miracles and Moments of Grace: Inspiring Stories from Military Chaplains Make It, Shake It, Mix It Up: 44 Bible Stories Brought to Life with Science Even the Sound Waves Obey Him: Bible Stories Brought to Life with Science FREE Baby Stuff! Amazon Baby Registry Welcome Box Unboxing - Since we’re trying to save money for the baby’s medical arrival expenses, we’re not trying to overspend on “stuff” for the baby. That means I’m looking f... Believing it's Possible is half the battle Juicing, Karaoke & Armor of God - Thanks for the comment, Julie... I need to keep up with my blog here!! We are still juicing and loving it. Brent says that the green juices REALLY help h... A Great Video to Start the New Year - I just saw this video. Actually it was used in a sermon by John Ortberg. Its just a great inspirational story. And actually its been viewed more than a mil... Fat Girl Dives In New website! - If you haven't already heard/read, NY was a dream come true. So much so that I've launched a new website AND am writing a book. Visit my new site! www.fata... Finding Radiance Getting back to it - One of the things I wanted to put down as a goal for 2018 was to get back to blogging regularly again. Oops. Now it has been a week since I posted LOL! I... Healthy Chicken Paprika with Mushroom and Onion Sauce - I’m a fan of all kinds of chicken recipes because chicken is relatively inexpensive, can be prepared in a lot of ways, and if you use good ingredients, is ... GreenLiteBites Butternut Ginger Soup With a Side of Diet Tips - [image: ginger butternut squash soup with shrimp] This weekend I made the most amazing, simple soup and it reminded me of all the little things I do day-to-... Jimmy Moore's Livin' La Vida Low Carb Blog The Nutritional Pearls Podcast (Episode 3): BLOOD SUGAR – The Hormones And Organs Involved In Blood Sugar Regulation - INSURANCE JUST FOR KETONIANS NOTICE OF DISCLOSURE: Paid sponsorship Welcome to The Nutritional Pearls Podcast! Focusing on topics that include digestion... My New Ending New Year - Moving to Dot Com - Happy New Year! My health remains at the top of my goals for this year and the only big change I will be making is where I share about it all. After a lon... Merry Christmas! - The gifts are bought and wrapped and tucked under the tree, the neighbors’ gifts are going to be baked tonight and tomorrow, and this afternoon will start ... How I Spent My Summer Vacation - Alt title: What Prevented Me From Getting My Head In The Blogging Game I swear, this has been the craziest year! Not bad crazy, exactly, just filled with t... Physician, step on the scale! Time magazine recently offered up an interesting fact: Doctors who are a healthy weight are more likely to talk to you about your weight tha... At one time, I suffered lower back pain that was bad enough to land me in physical therapy... not once but twice. I finally got the message ... Shocking ad campaign: helpful or hurtful? A hospital in Georgia is currently running an anti-obesity ad campaign. The stark black-and-white images of obese children are shocking. E... Pastor Robert Hartwell: The Skinny on Sacrifice Most people make weight loss resolutions only after the annual holiday binge. But it was on New Year’s Eve 2007 that the Rev. Robert Hartwel... But isn't bariatric surgery cheating? How We Did It got a nice mention in my local newspaper yesterday, The Times of Trenton. It's an article about a local woman who underw... Faith and "excess avoirdupois" "Faith takes over when willpower fails." When my husband and I facilitated a support group for addictions recovery at our church, ... One of the weight loss blogs I've followed over the years is Diane Carbonell's Fit to the Finish. Diane once weighed over 300 po... Margene and Brent: Believing It's Possible In an earlier post, I encouraged readers to share with me their story of weight loss success. I got a reply from another blogger, Margene, w... The fat kid no more When I began How We Did It , I interviewed a New Jersey state senator, Bill Baroni, who lost 132 pounds at the Duke Diet & Fitness Cent...

The Jewish calendar follows not only the solar year, but lunar months, too. The Jewish new year starts at the beginning of autumn. The biggest feast, repeated from week to week is Saturday. It is particularly significant, because a religous Jew is not allowed to do certain activities between Friday evening and Saturday evening: do work, light a fire, touch electronic objects (no TV-watching), make phone calls and travel. In Hungary the Jewish communities are called hitközség (religious community), the members name each other hittestvér (brother/sister in belief). The traditional greeting is Salom during weekdays, Sabbat Salom is merely used Friday evening and on Saturday. The holiday of the Passover is the most important seven days in the year for the Jewry. The details of the holiday are strictly determined, as it is generally typical of the Jewish religion, and even the tiniest moves, the smallest gestures have a symbolical meaning. Two main motives characterize Passover: rememberance the bitterness, and celebrating happyness and the joy of liberty. Approaching to the holiday all chametz has to be removed from Jewish homes. Chametz covers all leavened products or those ones that has been in touch with leavened foods. Removing chametz from homes has a symbolical meaning: Jewish people believe in the commandment of God and obey them without any hesitation. The Seder Evening is an important part of the holiday. Seder is the Hebrew word (meaning order) for a special dinner, that is held on the eve of Passover, and repeated on the following evening. Every single gesture, element and food of the dinner tell and play the story of Exodus by means of symbols. On the Seder Plate specific dishes can be found in a determined order: three matzo lying on each other, symbolizing the three castes of Jewry, next to it a chicken-neck, commemorating the lamb sacrified before the 10th plague. These are followed by a boiled egg, in memory of the sacrifice brought in the Temple, a bitter herb representing the bitterness of the Egyptian slavery. The Charoses is a mixture of grated apples, nuts and wine commemorating the morter, prepared by Jews during their slavery. The last component of the Seder Plate is some kind of vegetables, referring to the holiday in spring, as well as to bitterness. Everybody has to place a glass of salted water next to the plate, where some foods are dunked in during the ceremony, referring to the tears, that were shed by the ancestors during the slavery in Egypt. Participants should make themselves comfortable at the ceremony, and they drink altogether four glass of wine: as it is the feast of joy and gladness in the same time. Meanwhile, children tend to ask questions, answering and explaining them everything in detail is a significant part of the evening. The Hannukah is one of the longest Jewish holidays, it lasts for eight nigths and days; it is also well-known as the Festival of Lights. The date of it is different every year, and this holiday is a reminder of a miracle. It is unique among the Hebrew feasts because it records a military event in people’s memory. Judas Maccabeus first defeated the army of Antiochus, then cleaned up the Temple in Jerusalem and achieved for the Jews to live freely while retaining their habits. From the first day of Hanukkah Jewish families light one more candles every night, and they put them a place where they can proclaim the godlike miracle. Meanwhile, the children play with dreidel (a four-sided spinning top) and sing Hannukah songs. What is more, for this celebration Jewish children often get gifts, and sometimes they receive something every day during the Hanukkah. Play with Dreidel The dreidel (in Hebrew: szevivón, dradel, Kreisel) is a special four-sided gyroscope, on which letters can be read (one letter by sides), and these letters determine for the players what to do. The four letters form a sentence: נס גדול היה שם (Nes gadol haya sham) – a great miracle occured there), in Israel: נס גדול היה פה (Nes gadol haya shin) – a great miracle occured here. The Day of Atonement (Sábát Sábáton). The name refers to a story that can be read in the Torah, in which God forgave a sin of the Israelites, namely their worship towards a golden calf, which was committed when Moses received those tablets from God that forbade any idolatries. According to the tradition, they stamp the judgement that was delivered by God at Rosh Hasana, at the beginning of the Jewish New Year. That is why the time between the two holidays is considered to be the day of repentance. At that dawn prayers apology for changing the promiscuous negative verdict for a positive direction. This is the only day on which the halakhah requires to fast. Apart from eating and drinking, it is forbidden having a wash, using parfumes, wearing comfortable leather shoes, and what is more, living married life. Rules are much more strict than for an average Saturday. One afternoon before there is a holiday feast for the families where the head of the family blesses his children. Feast of Booths, Feast of Tabernacles. It lasts for seven days with hilarious, religious ceremonies, and with a lot of singing and dancing. During this feast, many Jewish people move into a sukkah (booth) so as to remember the time when their ancestors were wandering in the desert; it lasted for forty years. A very important requirement is a lulav, their festive boquet, made of four different plants (Four species); aravah (willow), hadass (myrtle), lulav (palm frond) and etrog (citron). The last mentioned one, etrog is not in the bunch but it should be kept separately in the left hand. The Jewish express their faith and gladness towards God with this bunch. The seventh day of Sukkot is known as Hoshana Rabbah, meaning the ’Great Supplication’ – this day can be handled as a separate holiday, instead of its being part of Sukkot. On this day the verdict can be inluenced somehow that was stamped at Yom Kippur. A Jewish holiday that commemorates the deliverance of the Jewish people in the ancient Persian Empire from destruction in the wake of a plot by Haman, a story recorded in the Biblical Book of Esther. According to the Book, Haman, royal vizier to King Ahasuerus planned to kill the Jews, but his plans were foiled by Mordecai and Queen Esther. As a revenge – according to the Book – 80.000 Persians were massacred by the Jews. Some religious obligations (mikveh) can be linked to the Purim. The first is that the scrolls of Esther should be read aloud (for the community) in the synagogue every morning and evening before the feast. This is the only occassion all the year when their task is to be loud during the speech, it is an obligation to make noise when they hear the name Haman. Another provision is the so-called misloach manot, namely sending portions of food and presents to one another; gifts and donations to the poor, so as not to be in necessity this gladsome day. What is more, they ’kill the fatted calf’ where they have to drink so much, following the rabbis’ instruction that they cannot distuingish the damned Haman and the blessed Mordechai. As usual, they wear different costumes during this feast – symbolizing ups and downs – and they play Purim games and eat a variety of desserts like ’Haman’s ears’, flodni. Rosh Hasanah The ’Head of the Year’, the ’Day of Alarm’ or ’Horns’ Blare’ – says the Torah, because a very typical attachement of this feast is the shofar, an ancient Jewish instrument. This instrument is a simple sheep-horn and it works simply by blowing. According to the Talmud, this horn reminds the Jews to another one that Abraham sacrificed instead of his son. The whole month before Rosh Hashanah passes in terms of conversion. The shofar is traditionally blown each morning for the entire month of Elul, the month preceding Rosh Hashanah. The sound of the shofar is intended to awaken the listeners from their “slumbers” and alert them to the coming judgment and to recall the desire to some conversion in the hearts and call attention to the upcoming ’Awesome Days.’ The evening before means for Jews to wear ’kitli’ , a special, white lent dress; by the way, the white colour dominates in the synagogues as well, including curtains covering the art of the covenant, or the tablecloth of the Torah’s table. Superstitious-minded families spend the whole Rosh Hashanah with doing things that are wished to be done all year. In some places, people do not asleep, so as to avoid oversleeping the year. It is a usage to wish a sweet new year. At that time, people often dip apple in honey and eat honey cakes as well.

Meningeal derived cerebrospinal fluid proteins in different forms of dementia: is a meningopathy involved in normal pressure hydrocephalus? M W Riepe1, H-F Petereit2, A C Ludolph1, H Tumani1 1Department of Neurology, University of Ulm, Ulm, Germany 2Department of Neurology, University of Köln, Köln, Germany Correspondence to:
Dr H Tumani
Klinik für Neurologie der Universität Ulm, Oberer Eselsberg 45, 89091 Ulm, Germany; hayrettin.tumanimedizin.uni-ulm.de Objectives: In animal models and in vitro studies leptomeninges have been shown to be the origin of neurotrophic substances that support the survival and growth of neuronal cells. Because dementia is associated with neuronal loss, we investigated whether leptomeningeal dysfunction may be involved in the pathogenesis of dementia disorders. Methods: We analysed the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) concentrations of the leptomeningeal derived β trace protein, β2 microglobulin, and cystatin C. Results: There was a statistically significant difference of the CSF β trace protein levels among different groups. Patients with idiopathic normal pressure hydrocephalus (NPH) (17.5 (SD 4.3) mg/l) showed significantly lower CSF β trace protein levels than patients with Alzheimer’s disease (23.8 (6.2) mg/l), depression (24.2 (7.3) mg/l), and normal controls (25.3 (4.9) mg/l). To patients with vascular dementia (20.1 (5.6) mg/l) and frontotemporal dementia (21.9 (7.0) mg/l), the difference was not significant. There was no significant difference regarding the CSF and serum concentrations of β2 microglobulin or cystatin C among the different groups. Conclusions: We conclude that leptomeningeal dysfunction may be involved in certain types of dementia such as NPH and that reduced CSF β trace protein levels in patients with NPH may aid in differentiating this difficult to diagnose disorder from other syndromes such as Alzheimer’s disease. CSF and serum samples were obtained from 15 (8 female, 7 male) individuals approximately age matched to patients with Alzheimer’s disease, who were normal controls. On clinical examination, neuroimaging (MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) or CT (computed tomography)), and CSF analysis they did not show any signs of a pathological process affecting the central nervous system. Informed consent of all patients and the approval of the ethical committee of the University of Ulm were obtained. All CSF and serum samples were analysed in our CSF laboratory. β trace protein, β2 microglobulin, and cystatin C were measured using the test kit (immunonephelometric assay using polyclonal rabbit IgG antibodies) of Behringwerke AG (Marburg, Germany). Details on the assay procedure and validity data have been described previously by our group.18 Statistical analysis was carried out using a one way analysis of variance (ANOVA), followed by an all pair wise multiple comparison procedure (Tukey test) in case of a statistically significant difference. As a normality test, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was applied. In case there was no normal distribution, a Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA was applied. Values <0.05 are referred to as statistically significant. In routine CSF analysis all patients and controls revealed normal results for cell count, CSF/serum concentration ratio of albumin (QALB) representing blood–CSF barrier function, and oligoclonal IgG bands. Levels of β trace protein, β2 microglobulin, and cystatin C in CSF showed a positive correlation with age and QALB in controls and patients. There was a statistically significant difference of the CSF β trace protein levels among the different groups (p = 0.001, ANOVA). Patients with NPH showed significantly lower β trace protein levels than normal controls (p = 0.003, Tukey test), patients with Alzheimer’s disease (p = 0.005, Tukey test), and patients with pseudo-dementia caused by depression (p = 0.021, Tukey test) (table 1, fig 1). They were lower than in patients with vascular dementia (p = 0.817, Tukey test) or FTD (p = 0.582, Tukey test), although these differences were not statistically significant. Among the non-NPH patients, no significant difference could be found. Likewise, there was no significant difference regarding β trace protein serum levels (p = 0.53, Kruskal-Wallis test, data not shown). Meningeal markers in cerebrospinal fluid of patients with different subtypes of dementia Cerebrospinal fluid β trace protein concentrations in patients with different causes of dementia and normal controls, brackets indicate statistical significant difference (p<0.05). AD, Alzheimer’s disease; VD, vascular dementia; FTD, frontotemporal dementia; NPH, normal pressure hydrocephalus. Neither CSF (p = 0.687, ANOVA) (p = 0.228, ANOVA) nor serum levels (p = 0.538, ANOVA) (p = 0.083, ANOVA) of β2 microglobulin and cystatin C showed a significant difference among the different groups (see table 1). The CSF levels of the meningeal markers were not found to be different between patients with Alzheimer disease, vascular dementia, FTD, and normal controls. In contrast, patients with NPH showed considerably lower β trace protein concentrations. As an explanation, a dilution effect due to the enlargement of the ventricular spaces in NPH does not seem plausible as the other meningeal markers were not affected similarly. The leptomeninges are thought to be a main origin of β trace protein.8,18 Reduced CSF β trace protein levels could therefore mirror a pathological process affecting the meninges in NPH. As not all meningeal markers in our study were affected to the same extent, the function of the meninges may only be partially impaired. Furthermore, of the three investigated markers, only β trace protein seems to originate mainly from the meninges,3,8,18 while cystatin C and β2 microglobulin are released from non-meningeal structures as well. Their CSF concentration may therefore be less vulnerable to meningeal dysfunction than β trace protein. The reason for a possible meningeal dysfunction in NPH remains unclear. Leptomeningeal biopsies have failed to show19,20 an unequivocal association of leptomeningeal fibrosis with a disturbed CSF flow.16 A meningeal dysfunction as indicated by decreased CSF β trace protein levels may be involved in the pathogenesis of idiopathic NPH by contributing to a greater resistance to CSF outflow. However, this hypothesis requires further proof. Nevertheless, our data are in line with the notion that several types of dementia, including NPH and Alzheimer’s disease, may be parts of a continuum representing CSF circulatory dysfunction as hypothesised recently.21 As the CSF level of β trace protein was significantly lower in NPH than in Alzheimer’s disease and asymptomatic people, it might be useful to also test for a differentiation between NPH and Alzheimer’s disease. However, the test could not differentiate patients with NPH from those with vascular dementia, as concentrations of β trace protein in both groups were not significantly different. Because the important issue of NPH diagnosis is predicting shunt responsiveness, correlation of β trace protein levels with responsiveness after a shunt are warranted in future studies. JB and HT have equally contributed to the design, analysis, data interpretation of this study, and writing the article. MWR and HFP performed clinical investigations and were involved in discussions of the results. ACL was involved in discussions of the results. We thank Jan Vanneste and the unknown reviewers for their helpful comments. This work was supported in part by local university funding for HT. This paper is dedicated to the pioneer of clinical CSF research Professor Klaus Felgenhauer, who died on 8 July 2002. Ueda S , Tanabe T, Ihara N, et al. Immunohistochemical study of fetal raphe samples transplanted into the leptomeningeal tissues of 5,6-dihydroxytryptamine-treated adult rats. Cell tissue res 1989;256:457–63. Ishikawa K , Kabeya K, Shinoda M, et al. Meninges play a neurotrophic role in the regeneration of vasopressin nerves after hypophysectomiy. Brain Res 1995;677:20–8. Ohe Y , Ishikawa K, Itoh Z, et al. Cultured leptomeningeal cells secrete cerebrospinal fluid proteins. J Neurochem 1996;67:964–71. Canalis E , McCarthy T, Centrella M. A bone derived growth factor isolated from rat calvariae is beta2 microglobulin. Endocrinology1987;121:1198–200. Wisniewski H M, Wegiel J. β-Amyloid formation by myocytes of leptomeningeal vessels. Acta Neuropathol Berl1994;87:233–41. Bech RA, Juhler M, Waldemar G, et al. Frontal brain and leptomeningeal biopsy specisms correlated with cerebrospinal fluid outflow resistance and Beta-trace-wave activity in patients suspected of normal pressure hydrocephalus. Neurosurg 1997;40:497–502. Di Rocco C , Di Trapani G, Maira G, et al. Anatomo-clinical correlations in normotensive hydrocephalus. Reports on three cases. J Neurol Sci 1977;33:437–52. Urade Y , Katahama K, Ohishi J, et al. Dominant expression of m-RNA for prostaglandin D-synthetase in leptomeninges, choroid plexus and oligodendrocytes of the adult rat brain. Proc Natl Acad Sci 1993;90:9070–4. Blödorn B , Brück W, Tumani H, et al. Expression of the beta-trace protein in human pachymeninx revealed by in situ hybridisation and immunocytochemistry. J Neurosci Res 1999;57:730–4. Watanabe K , Urade Y, Mäder M, et al. Identification of beta-trace as prostaglandin D synthase. Biochem Biophys Res Commun 1994;203:1110–6. Tanaka T , Urade Y, Kimura H, et al. Lipocalin-type prostaglandin D sythase (beta-trace) is a newly recognized type of retinoid transporter. J Biol Chem 1997;25:15789–95. Starmans JJ, Vos J, van der Helm HJ. The beta 2-microglobulin content of the cerebrospinal fluid in neurological disease. J Neurol Sci1977;33:45–9. Abrahamson M , Buttle DJ, Mason RW, et al. Regulation of cystatin C activity by serine proteases. Biomed Biochem Acta 1991;50:587–93. McKhann G , Drachman D, Folstein M, et al. Clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease: report of the NINCDS-ADRDA Work Group under the auspices of Health and Human Services Task Force on Alzheimer’s Disease. Neurology 1984;34:939–44. American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – Fourth Edition (DSM-IV). Washington DC: American Psychiatric Association, 1994. Vanneste JA. Diagnosis and management of normal pressure hydrocephalus. J Neurol2000;247:5–14. Bradley WG Jr. Diagnostic tools in hydrocephalus. Neurosurg Clin N Am2001;12:661–84. Tumani H , Nau R, Felgenhauer K. Beta-trace protein in cerebrospinal fluid: a blood-CSF barrier-related evaluation in neurological diseases. Ann Neurol1998;44:82–9. DeLand F , James AE, Ladd DJ, et al. Normal pressure hydrocephalus: a histologic study. Am J Clin Pathol 1972;58:58–63. Bech RA, Waldemar G, Gjerris F, et al. Shunting effects in patients with idiopathic normal pressure hydrocephalus; correlation with cerebral and leptomeningeal biopsy findings. Acta Neurochir 1999;141:633–9. Silverberg GD, Mayo M, Saul T, et al. Alzheimer’s disease, normal-pressure hydrocephalus, and senescent changes in CSF circulatory physiology: a hypothesis. Lancet Neurol 2003;2:506–11.

Review of Guns, Germs, and Steel. Science Fiction authors who may not agree on much else (e.g. Orson Scott Card and Connie Willis), agree that understanding history is most important for an S.F. author. So, I undertook recently to read Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond. Possessing more hubris than sense, I’ve also undertaken a (very) general critique. Just because “Winner of the Pulitzer Prize” is emblazoned on the cover, doesn’t stop me from throwing in my reactions. First, let me say I found it persuasive. I was compelled to agree with almost all of Mr. Diamond’s arguments, seeing logic and connections where I hadn’t even thought to look. Of course, not being a historian, geologist, or linguist, most of this information was knew to me in any form. I’ll summarize the case here in the super duper cliff notes version. The differences in outcomes between the “races” is determined by the random chance of the geology and biology of their initial locale, nothing more nothing less. Agricultural started where it did because the most promising candidate plants happened to be in those locations (mainly the fertile crescent near the Mediterranean). By 11,000 B.C., when humans were potentially ready to settle down, virtually the only large, domesticable mammals that hadn’t yet been exterminated by humanity lived in Eurasia. The food package could spread wide in Eurasia due to its east-west orientation, as opposed to the north-south orientation of the Americas and Africa. (Weather and day length tend to be more similar at the same latitudes, essential for the easy transfer of many plants.) Thanks to humans living in close quarters with each other and animals, epidemic diseases developed, which – once the Eurasians were forced to develop resistance to survive – became a potent weapon, clearing their path once they started invading other lands. Additionally, the specialization and centralized governments made possible by agricultural food surpluses allowed for the development and use of technology (guns, and steel) that created devastating advantages. This is massively oversimplified, of course, but I’m not writing a book review here. Go read it yourself. I’ll wait here ‘til you get back. Back? Good. Now, I have two major complaints. My main complaint was with the repetitive style employed. The first mention of an idea would evoke a “wow” from me. The second mention would work to reinforce that idea in the context of the historical information that had just been presented. By the umpteenth mention of the idea, often in the exact same two or three sentence wording as the previous iterations, I was less impressed. I’m convinced this book could be many pages shorter without sacrificing a single bit of information or cogency of argument. On a more substantive note, I was somewhat apprehensive about sample size and hindsight bias. There is a certainty to Mr. Diamond’s prose that I don’t yet share. He cites the Polynesian islands as a set of past experiments that prove his hypothesis. Certainly, they support his hypothesis: the same peoples did develop societally in different ways seemingly depending on the geology of the island on which they alighted. However, we are looking at one group of people, among whom different individuals settled each island at different times. What looks like proof may be coincidence. Societal history, by its very nature, provides a relative paucity of test cases. In my opinion, Mr. Diamond doesn’t fully acknowledge this limitation to his arguments. There also is the problem of hindsight. We know Europe was most successful, therefore the hypothesis is fitted to the result. Not only is early development of agriculture essential, but – because Europe didn’t get agriculture first, after all – also a moderately fragmented society is important (not as fragmented as India, but much more fragmented than China; Europe-level fragmentation to be precise). To be fair, Mr. Diamond does a good job supporting each of his arguments with the evidence available, there’s just not enough to be nearly definitive, In the updated epilogue, Diamond repeats himself some more. Then, he says something new. To wit, his minor argument about the optimal fragmentation of society happens to apply perfectly to understanding optimal business organization. How do we know this? Because a business consultant told him so! Now, as an MBA myself, I can tell you just how probative flattery from a business consultant is, but we won’t get into old battle scars here. The general point is doubtless valid: some level of cooperation is necessary for progress to be made, else every group must reinvent each wheel, but healthy competition is also important. I have, however, some reservations about the specifics he uses to support that thesis in the business world. Mr. Diamond first talks about how spectacularly wonderful German beer is. It is great, I agree (almost as good as they make in Belgium). Then, he decries the horrible inefficiency that makes the German beer industry only 43% as productive as the American. The blame, he says, lies in the overly protectionist German government that creates isolated local monopolies who do not adapt each others’ (and Americans’) “best” practices. It is difficult to imagine, but Mr. Diamond evidently sees no problem with suggesting that German breweries should adapt American mass production efficiencies to improve their product. Let me state my dissent as clearly as possible: German beer is the (second) best in the world precisely because it is lovingly crafted in smaller-scale, “inefficient” breweries. (Belgium’s beer industry runs by similar principles.) They can make some money licensing Lowenbrau and Beck’s (which taste like American beers, by the way) on the side if they want to, but to sacrifice their competitive advantage in the name of progress would not serve German brewers well. Lower productivity and higher quality don’t come together by accident. He argues next that Japanese food producers are inefficient for many of the same reasons. His argument has more traction here, though here also it must be pointed out that Japanese beef is a gourmet luxury item (not for me, thanks). The exorbitant price is related to more than inefficiency: it’s also about lack of land, a deliberately high-end rather than staple market, etc. The Japanese, I suspect, are quite aware they would be more productive if they didn’t hand-feed their cows gourmet grasses. Mr. Diamond then compares internal cultures at Microsoft (good) and IBM (bad) to argue again the need for autonomous competitive units who freely share information, which again is fine so far as it goes. However, it bears mentioning that IBM was a several decades old monopoly with long traditions that had served it well in the past, but were not appropriate to the emergence of the personal computer. Microsoft is still a fairly new monopoly, full of the energy and massive competitive advantage that implies. It hasn’t been tested by the obsolescence of its very raison d’etre as of yet. (Despite what you’ve heard monopolies are perfectly legal under American business law. I’m not criticizing either company here.) By the same token, Route 128 had its day, and now it’s Silicon Valley’s turn, regardless of any differences of organization between the two technology hubs. This too shall pass. (A helpful perspective here may be Paul Kennedy’s The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, which points out that every empire has a life cycle, no matter how invincible it may seem at the height of its powers.) It also feels a bit disingenuous to laud Microsoft as the perfect model of (internal) competition leading to innovation and progress with nary a mention of how its stifling of external competition throughout the computer and internet sectors has slowed what had been the most dynamic explosion of innovation in history. (Yes, they lost the anti-trust case. That the government decided not to levy any penalties is besides the point.) Is Microsoft’s bundling and monopoly leveraging optimal practice? For the company, yes, for America, maybe not. Finally, Mr. Diamond stretches the analogy to include the competition among the fifty states in the U.S. Federal system. Maybe it’s just me, but I perceive somewhere between little and no competition between the states. Thanks to the laws of interstate commerce, even the business environments operate almost entirely under the same rules (without which national companies couldn’t emerge, which would put us back in the situation of the German breweries, minus the quality). I can see an argument being made for a broad sort of competition between regions, but even that is a minor factor at best. I had more nits to pick with these several pages of epilogue than with 400+ pages of text. Either I hit a critical mode in my brainspace, or just maybe, Mr. Diamond doesn’t understand business nearly so well as he does geology and the myriad interactions of historical humanity. I have this niggling worry in the back of my head that if I only knew as much history, geology, linguistics, sociology etc. as I know modern business, I might disagree with more in this magnum opus. Yet I don’t, so I don’t. Okay, at .5 cents each word (<$5 total) , I'm not quitting the day job (if I can find one) just yet. But still, for any of you out there who write or are thinking about it, these little tiny bits of validation (from strangers no less) can make a big difference. One acceptance is karmically worth 10-25 rejections. Since I've collected way more than that along the path to establishing myself, this one from AlienSkin is a blessing. (A nice rejection can compensate for some cold rejections too. I know it shouldn't -- rejectomancy is a fantasy trope not one based on science of any sort. However, the psyche of a writer ain't rational. That much shouldn't be in any dispute.) I haven't been around these parts much of late. Sorry about that. The gentlefolk of Chaos Theory, Tales Askew put together an attractive semiprozine/funzine/whatever it is. Check 'em out (and read my story). It's the one about Billy Goats, though still doesn't qualify me to join the goatpunk movement. Wouldn't even if it were a pro-level sale. Such the pity.

A Quick Ramble Around 'Making Money' I was just going to finish talking about Ole's 'Making Money' with my review of it. I covered quite a lot of ground in it, so thought it'd be enough. But as I was on a long drive yesterday a couple of thoughts kept popping back into my head. I'd had them while I was reading the book..... but because they'd have taken the review too far off the beaten path, I decided not to fully explore them, there. But I can't let them rest. I sort of veered toward them in the review when I said: "..he doesn't tackle the unconscious directly, but he does talk in philosophical terms about 'known unknowns' (which is a decent characterization of the unconscious) and he introduces Heidegger's notion of Seinsvergessenheit very early on in the book (this describes 'the forgetfulness of Being' - that our thinking takes place within a distinct landscape which is invisible to us). All this is to be commended." As has happened on more than one occasion, when I read anything that relates to how our thoughts seem to arise within invisible walls, my mind turned to something I read by the heretic biologist Rupert Sheldrake. In short, it's the idea that genetic assimilation (i.e. the process by which characteristics which were originally 'acquired' become 'inherited') involves canalized pathways, or 'chreodes'. The page below shows the four diagrams that seem to be lodged firmly in my head. Of course, Ole's ideas about how our thinking is guided by invisible or 'forgotten' walls or paths, and Sheldrake's ideas about the materiality of biological processes, appear to be taking place at two different levels. One in the mind, the other within the body (or at least, the body of a fruit-fly). But those of you who know Sheldrake's work will realize that it is precisely this duality between mind and body, or between the material and the spiritual, that he challenges. (I could mention here Alan Moore's ideascape which seems to me to share similarities to the notion that we think along defined pathways that its important to carve out new spaces to birth new ideas.) I share Sheldrake's view that mind body duality is a phallacy; ultimately thought and matter are in some form of unknown (maybe unknowable) unity. So I'm going to assume away the distinction between the biological and the psychological henceforth. [In the soon to be released The Money Burner's Manual Second Edition I've re-written the chapter on the ontology of money. In the second edition I have used a layering concept to explain my thoughts. Although I think linguistically this gives a better understanding of my ideas about money, it is dangerous because it inevitably frames things within a developmental, progressive or evolutionary context. These are conceptualizations that arise from, and exist within, spacetime and the psycho-sexual. And so the risk is that in explaining money this way, I drag it back down into a walled garden of thought, rather than show it where it really is..... which where neither words nor numbers can reach.] So. The psychological is the biological, and vice versa. How then can we understand these pathways - or chreodes? Especially as they relate to money? Well, here is where basic psychoanalytical concepts are especially helpful. We can think in terms of repression creating 'mental' pathways; of psychical energies being sent on repeating journeys from subject to object and back again and leaving an indented pathway in the mind. And this is a concept we can take; (1) toward metaphysical speculation and talk about the eternal return of the eversame, (2) toward the spiritual and talk about repetition and ritual or (3) toward the mundane and talk about my cat. Nelson creates little furrows across my lawn at the back and hard muddy patches across the borders to the front of my flat, where he follows the same pathways, day after day. Some of this is due to environmental factors. The hard muddy path through the borders winds through plants. But his winding pathway across the lawn seems much harder to explain in this way. It might make sense (or feel right) to him, but he could get to his favorite perching point on the table near the fence by a much more direct route. His choice of pathway is not 'economic', its guided by something else. I have to give the standard warning about repression, before I get into it a little more. Repression - in psychoanalytical theory is not a bad thing - or a good thing. It's the description of a process. As a process its ongoing, not static. Think about it like trying to push a football underwater, rather then burying something. I mentioned this little piece on Twitter the other day.... its got the video of Hayek making precisely this mistake in thinking about repression. Now having cleared the air about 'repression' lets get into the sticky subject of 'sublimation'. I'm never quite clear about what this word means. To me it seems to be taking the neutral term 'repression' - admitting that in fact it does have negative connotations - and then finding a new word 'sublimation' to describe those 'repressions' that we approve of (in a moral/value sense). Any attempt to describe differences in the processes of 'repression' and 'sublimation' seem to me to be tagged on after the fact. This fascination with the difference between the two terms occupied Norman O Brown's mind in Life Against Death. Rather than offer my own analysis - which I think might touch on theological 'value conception' issues - let me bring this ramble to a close and draw it back to money and Ole's book. One of the money wisdom quotes I put up was this; "Cash is the sublime object of the ideology of credit money." In line with the framework of Ole's book this draws explicitly on Zizek. And so inevitably (because of Lacan) it is grounded in psychoanalytical ideas. I urge you read Ole's book if you want to know what he means when he says this. I'm only going to talk now about the thoughts this phrase triggered in my head (and as they've developed they've de-contextualized from Ole's text and meaning - so read Ole's book if you wanna know what he means) One of the phrases I use about cash is that 'it's money's default setting'. [This caused the anti-cash campaigner Dave Birch to say this is clearly wrong (because Graeber/Debt etc).] But maybe you can see that what Ole says and what I say share 'a symmetry in opposition'. I read Ole's statement as saying the sublimation of the psychical flows extant within the financial system creates cash; or, the pathways through which 'desire' flows gives expression to the purest ideology of finance in the form of cash. What I'm saying is more in line with Ingham, that the whole thing works the other way around, that the sublimation of CASH creates the ideology of credit money. That CASH created our CONSCIOUSNESS of money. [This is an odd thing for me to argue because I always maintain that to understand money we have to work outside of time and space - we have to try to float above the psycho-sexual waters. So 'which way around' it happens is therefore not really important. I think the reason I want to argue it, might be to do with the Dave Birch comment, in that conceptualization of money that sees it as an emergent property of a financial system (and this is the thrust of Ole's book) tends towards a mythology that either, venerates or seeks to destroy, the financial system (or the political system, that supports it). I, of course, advocate destroying CASH. And by that I mean not CASH as a social object (I think that must be defended) BUT rather our own personal CASH. This, to me, is our best chance at carving out new possibilities in the mindscape and hence offering a new forms of sublimation.] Okay.... one more thing then. Just quickly. In my review, I mentioned the analogy Ole made about the earth and moon orbiting around the 'barycentre' and financialization being akin to an increase in the moon's gravitational pull. I loved this so much because of the experience I had when I first mooted this idea that money exists at a much deeper metaphysical level. I tell the story in The Money Burner's Manual about submitting an essay to my Philosophy of Science Professor exploring the idea that money is 'more like gravity, than it is anything else'. That was 1998 and I've modified this idea since - I call money 'an aspect of being' now, so its even deeper, even more fundamental. But back in 1998, at the time, even though I was just an undergraduate, I felt nervous about making the claim. The Professor was okay about the paper but commented that the central idea was 'plainly crazy'. So, it was nice to read Ole's analogy. "...in the Global South microcredit grew thanks to state welfare retrenchment, deregulation, and the globalisation of financial markets, but also due to the moral promise of mass empowerment through small enterprise. This promise was anchored in the public imaginary among other things through the Gandhi-esque presence of Muhammad Yunus, who promised a poverty-free world by ending “financial apartheid”, and argued that credit was a “human right” (Mader 2015, 62). In short, changes in the moral narratives around money and finance go hand-in-hand with changes in the forms and boundaries of money and finance." On one level this is because of a failure to explore the metaphysical commitment to the unconscious that underscores psychoanalysis, itself. Specifically, Bjerg fails to elucidate the proposition of a unconscious life as essentially a metaphysical commitment that can never be proved. This has epistemological implications (that the unconscious cannot be 'proven' makes all knowledge less certain). In Bjerg's defense, although his lack of consideration of the unconscious makes it difficult to work out what he thinks 'desire' really is, he does go much further than most in respect of 'money'. Here he doesn't tackle the unconscious directly, but he does talk in philosophical terms about 'known unknowns' (which is a decent characterization of the unconscious) and he introduces Heidegger's notion of Seinsvergessenheit very early on in the book (this describes 'the forgetfulness of Being' - that our thinking takes place within a distinct landscape which is invisible to us). All this is to be commended. However on a second level exists an even more fundamental problem which is about Value. I'll take a slightly circuitous route to explain why this problem is so fundamental and how not recognizing it impacts on Bjerg's work. A book I was surprised to find un-referenced in Making Money was John-Joseph Goux's Symbolic Economies. I was surprised because Goux's work draws directly on Lacan, and so uses the same theoretical framework of the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real. The critique of Goux's work by Mark C. Taylor is telling and can be applied to Bjerg too. Both Goux and Bjerg seem to rely on a conception of Value that is fundamentally Neitzschean: this says that nature is valueless, and that it is we who bestow Value upon nature. Taylor, conversely, is a theologian. My reading of his critique is that such a conception of Value is necessarily ideological. For the theologian the ultimate Value is extant within God; Value comes from above, not below. Of course, there is no way to know which is true. What is important is to recognize that both opposing notions of Value are ideological. If you choose to make a commitment to one or the other, you should do so explicitly so as to give exposition to your commitment's impact on your conceptualizations and arguments. Bjerg fails to do this. Ultimately this leads us to a final chapter that seems to assume the author and the reader share a unity of moral outlook. But we arrive there but without any explanation of how this unity - this conception of 'the good' or of some ultimate Value - has arisen. If Value is created a-fresh in each moment by our desires flowing from the imaginary through the symbolic to the real and back again, how does any enduring and universal morality arise? Bjerg provides no answer. If it's not God, then what draws us to this shared sense of morality. What makes morality self-evident? Bjerg's unwillingness to explore these questions of moral philosophy actually shows up quite well in what is otherwise a brilliant and elucidating thought experiment. He creates a story of an imaginary counterfeiter whose loans of fake currency nevertheless create real prosperity within his town. Bjerg uses this as a means to explore relations within the creation of credit money. What he doesn't do is explore the moral questions. This is frustrating because a brief encounter with Derrida's work on Baudelaire (which is about the morality of the counterfeit) may have opened up a vista for exploration which would have given Bjerg a moral or ethical subtext making the statements of his final chapter (about our revolutionary potential) even more powerful. Moving on from this lack of clear exposition around Value and his avoidance of moral philosophy, I find Bjerg could also - like most other writers on money - have better developed a distinction between money and currency. He does distinguish between various forms of money according to how they are created within the financial system. But the most basic and common of distinctions 'money & currency' isn't mentioned. He instead adopts Zelizer's approach of talking about 'monies' and so misses the opportunity to float money off into the Mind and allow currency to sink down into the material world. Making such a distinction might have enabled a more productive engagement with psychoanalytical ideas, and helped create a watershed between reason and desire. This brings me onto a point about 'circulation'; I felt that the idea of money flowing around the financial system wasn't really examined sufficiently. Money, as I'm sure Bjerg is aware, does not flow, it is emitted. This has psychoanalytical and temporal implications which were not drawn out, and so we fall back into the same economic metaphor (of money flowing around a system like blood through a body, or water in a Moniac machine.) "Just like language, the money system of an economic community works only because the members of the community have structured their social interactions around this money system. In this sense the beggar and the billionaire equally to the money system insofar as both act as if the token circulating as money in the community is in fact money. The beggar and the billionaire may differ in the amount of money they own as individuals, but they have an equal share in money as the system which structures their economic interaction. 'Most thing in life - automobiles, mistresses, cancer,' says John Kenneth Galbraith, 'are important only to those that have them. Money in contrast is equally important to those that have it and those who don't'. The point here is that the opposite is equally true: People who have it and people who do not are equally important to money. The money of rich people has value only insofar as even poor people accept this money as money." "What is so interesting about the discovery of the blockchain by banking and finance professionals however is that they envision it will bring new life to old ways of making money—exciting ways, too. Fees are boring. Critical theorists’ objections aside, finance professionals I spoke with just don’t see them as particularly compelling from a business standpoint or from an intellectual standpoint. These people did not get in the business to devise new ways of generating fee income. They got into the business to trade in risk, and to devise new ways of speculating on the future. They want to move away from rents. Fees are “weird” and “dumb” and “being regulated away”, anyway, they say. At least some of the people having these kinds of blockchain dreams want to get back to the business of finance. They want to get back to trading in risk. The blockchain is exciting precisely because it can permit a new, re-risking of finance. And a re-risking that is “safe” for the financial system. " Bill Maurer Re-risking in Realtime: On Possible Futures for Finance after the Blockchain in BEHEMOTH A Journal on Civilisation (2016) Vol 9 Iss 2 "I brought up Stephen J. Gould’s (1984) essay on the contingency of human equality with my programmer friend. This is the essay where Gould argues we humans are lucky that there is no other extant hominin species concurrently occupying planet Earth. Things would have turned out quite differently for our moral philosophy if there were. What if, I said, we create new consciousnesses in our experiments with smart contracts? Even if we didn’t, what if the law decided it needed to treat smart contracts as having promisees, promisors, and beneficiaries and thereby concocting for them legal personhood? Would we have to contend with whether those persons had the same rights as natural persons? But the corporation is a person, he said. And then trailed off. I was left to ponder whether the distinction between natural and legal person would be something that could be tracked in a blockchain. How would we account for that?" "Our watchwords will be real freedom and post-pilgrimage. Stuff the country, we want our souls back. Together and separately, we’re going to make empathy great again. So great. Let us explore this world made alien and conspiracy-theoretical, seek spaces where the gaps and voids and contradictions and cosmopolitan canopies afford a variegated individual an escape from malevolent gazes. Seek out these spaces and share their presence with other postpilgrims; try to expand those spaces where freedom is possible; where personal preference (harming no one) can be expressed without algorithmic exploitation, where spiritual identity (that is exclusive of no one else’s) can be explored without dogma, and where we are free of that fake ‘freedom’ (of the Brexit, miserablist, resentful kind) which ‘frees’ us from our responsibility for each other. Nothing new here, but instead of legislating this liberalism, we should inscribe localised sites with it. In Sidmouth (of all places) there is a “Dissenters Wall” outside an old protestant chapel, where people are invited to sit and share dissident opinions. Let us propagate such spaces invisibly; share maps of the less explicit and more accidental ones. To begin, nothing need change in these spaces but your understanding of them. Take your friends to visit them. I am talking here about the construction of a secret architecture, a giant glassy structure without glass, a structure of many imaginary structures, to all appearances transparent and non-existent, immense and wholly subjective, multiple in its forms – beginning with the Chapel Perilous of Robert Anton Wilson, with the giant invisible forms that appear at the end of Jeff Nichols’s movie ‘Midnight Special’, with the different kinds of ‘chorastic’ spaces described by Julia Kristeva and Elizabeth Grosz, and so on. One thing that held back the situationists in their opposition to the Spectacle was their hatred of art and image. The invisible post-pilgrimage that I am proposing, with its raising of a shared invisible architecture, is both more and less iconoclastic; for it is uninhibited about drawing on any art source, while shunning mimesis and leaving no exploitable trace of its own. This is not the poisoned and infected ground imagined by the conspiracy theory ruling class as beneath its dome; this is the imaginary and real terrain of a heaven in Earth, where the only god is an un-god (which remains godlike, a nothing or darkness within us from which all creativity comes). This heaven in Earth, where the abiding myth is of individual self-respect and realisation, is characterised by a quest, with excitement and self-discovery and queer treasures, and an obligation to the stranger; its sub-plot is the underpinning meshwork of empathy and care for others, hence the importance of the apparently un-magical world of democratic politics and national health and care services. Yet, whatever success there is in such planning there will always be cracks in which to begin building the invisible. This world is wholly different from the one you fear; it is wholly different from the dull and stodgy materials of conspiracy, repeating over and over; rather, it is the generous seat of your quest." "Translating Heidegger [Being and Time] into the study of money, we can say that 'the primordial ontological basis for the existentiality of money is temporality'. This means that the reconfiguration of the temporal horizon of money itself, created by the proliferation of derivatives trading, is a reconfiguration of the ontology of money itself." Ole Bjerg Making Money (2104) p.197 "An efficient interbank market has the ideological function of effacing the difference between commercial bank credit money and state-created fiat money. The unconditional willingness of the central bank to exchange central bank money for commercial bank credit money at the nominal value enables commercial bank credit money to circulate in the general economy as if it were indeed central bank money. The effacing of the difference between credit and fiat money is established through the myriad of ways in which the central bank accepts different kinds of credit and securities in exchange for central bank money. When the interbank market functions most efficiently, the central bank does not even have to actually perform these transactions. The mere commitment to doing so if needed is enough. The central bank's commitment to accepting credit money at the nominal value from any of the banks in the interbank network allows the banks to exchange credit among themselves at nominal value without considering the creditworthiness of each individual bank. As we have already noted, the central bank functions as a 'believer of the last resort', which allows each of the individual commercial banks to believe unconditionally in each other." "Fractional reserve banking is constituted by a fundamental lack. This lack is veiled by the imaginary fantasy of convertibility. And as we know from Zizek, fantasy operates by producing precisely those effects in the real for which it serves to compensate. In the case of fractional reserve banking, the fantasy of convertibility produces the effect that credit money comes to function as if it were indeed real money endowed with real value, thus making the need for actual conversion redundant." "The function of fantasy is to fill the opening in the Other, to conceal its inconsistency... ...Fantasy conceals the fact that the Other, the symbolic order, is structured around some traumatic impossibility, around something that cannot be symbolized." Ole Bjerg Making Money (2014) p.30 "Zizek often uses the terms 'imaginary', 'fantasy', and 'ideology' interchangeably. The function of the imaginary should not, however, be confused with the popular notion of ideology as a veil covering up the true state of reality. On the contrary, if we keep in mind the distinction between the real and reality, ideology is art of the very fabric of reality. In a key formulation, Zizek puts it this way: Ideology is not a dreamlike illusion that we build to escape insupportable reality; in its basic dimension it is a fantasy-construction which serves as a support for our 'reality' itself: an illusion which structures our effective, real social relations and thereby masks some insupportable, real, impossible kernel... the function of ideology is not to offer us some point of escape from our reality but to offer us the social reality itself as an escape from some traumatic real kernel. (Zizek The Sublime Object of Ideology p.45) The imaginary may indeed serve to cover up an underlying traumatic split, but the cover-up is an inherent part of the very functioning of reality. The imaginary is not a derivative form of ontological order, the neutralization of which would result in a state of truth. The truth does not reside somewhere behind or beyond the order of the imaginary, but in the very imaginary interweaving of the real and the fantasy of the market." Ole Bjerg Making Money (2014) p. 110-1 "The most curious thing about the contemporary philosophy of money is that it does not exist. This is perhaps a crude and arrogant postulate, since there are indeed a number of contemporary philosophers who write about money. Nevertheless, the philosophy of money is not an established field of research, and it is certainly not regarded as an obligatory part of a philosopher's education in the way that the philosophy of science, the philosophy of ethics, the philosophy of language, or the philosophy of art are. At best the philosophy of money resides at the margins of the discipline." "In the neoclassical account of financial markets, there is no gap between the symbolic and the real, between price and value. The market price is always already an accurate reflection of the value of the underlying asset. Since there is no gap between the symbolic and the real, there is also need need for the order of the imaginary to manage the gap. Neoclassical finance is, seemingly, a theory without fantasy..." Ole Bjerg Making Money (2014) p.54-5 “Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs ‘pass,’ so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them. But this all points to direct face-to-face verifications somewhere, without which the fabric of truth collapses like a financial system with no cash-basis whatever. You accept my verification of one thing, I yours of another. We trade on each other’s truth. But beliefs verified concretely by somebody are the posts of the whole superstructure.” William James Pragmatism (1907) p.207-8 "Defining money in terms of the four functions [medium, measure, standard, store] is as misleading as answering the question 'What is a gun?' by saying, 'A gun is a thing that promotes peace by protecting innocent people'. Ole Bjerg Making Money (2014) p.9 A Ramble around Ayache and Johnson in Finance and Society Susie Dent, Rachel Riley, Carol Kirkwood just prior to coalescing into the fearsome Countdown Goddess What made me decide to write this blog post? I once read that the 'best blogs' have infrequent posts. I have a tendency to reverse cause and effect, so naturally I thought leaving a six month gap between the last post and this one would be a good strategy for making this a 'best blog'. No. Not really. Even though it strikes me as a wholly reasonable strategy, it isn't why I've decided to write this post, now. And, as a matter of fact, I did do one post at the beginning of December. It was up for about 8 hours or so, before I took it down. The post took my new commitment to spontaneity a step too far, giving (near) stream of consciousness consideration to the dangerous territory of sex and money and how they are related to ideas about purity. In it, I consider Marc Shell's brilliant essay 'The Want of Incest in the Human Family'. Somehow, and I think rather appropriately, that post is now 'forbidden' and we shall talk of it no more. (It appears in sublimated form in the Epilogue to TMBM 2nd ed) So why, then? Why post now? I'm not going to fob you off with stories of how busy I've been. I could talk about; Ben Nevis with The Staff (All Hail, The Staff !) The Cockpit Burn, Burning Issue The Special Edition, my talk at Finance and Society Conference, Money Magic in the City (video writing), the writing of The Money Burner's Manual Second Edition, and much more besides - all of have which have happened in the six months between posts. But each of those events is surely a reason to post, rather than not to post. I was of course unfaithful to my blog too, posting a big piece on medium.com on the F23 Burning. (It handles images and videos better than Blogger and was just a better place to post a 'general reader' piece.) BUT WHY DO A BLOG POST NOW? Every now and then I get an urge to produce a finished piece that has a bit of polish to it. But, I also like to ramble on about money stuff, too. Those rambles were my favorite bit about this blog. Reading them might not have been an enormous pleasure, but writing them was fun. It's nice to have that sense of freedom and exploration. I'd noticed my rambles were tending to follow a similar pattern. They start off jauntily enough as I skip out of the car park looking forward with hope to a bracing walk through the metaphysics of money, but gradually they witness me get into difficulties on boggy ground. I'd veer off wildly, outside the specified landscape. I always struggled to give them any sense that I'd climbed a hill, or reached any sort of conclusion. Invariably, I just break the meandering narrative by claiming that we really should think a little more deeply about what money is - and that academics often fail to make the distinction between money and currency, and to do so might prove very helpful to them. I can't say this particular ramble will end any differently. But I do feel that because I've finished my book The Money Burner's Manual Second Edition I've shed a lot of weight. I certainly feel like I'm traveling more lightly, with less need to emphasize each point with a jabbing finger. We'll see how it goes. Oh. I see. Well, because #23. I was reading the articles that the post is about ('about' in a roundabout sort of way) and in one Tim Johnson suggests the 23rd November 2020 as a date for two possible future events - an asteroid hitting New York and Tim's daughter becoming a world famous artist. I asked Tim why he chose that date, he said he couldn't remember. Then I watched this video. It's Elie Ayache on 23rd March 2011. 18 seconds into it, after he says that his talk is going to be spontaneous, he tells us that 'this' all started 23 years ago when he became a trader. He also talks about his first day on the stock exchange on the 19th October 1987 - the day of the great crash. That was also my birthday. The first day of my 23rd year on Earth. A clustering of 23s within the place of this piece - within the landscape of the ramble - was why I decided to write this post, now. No BS. That is the genuine reason. This post exists in relation with those 23s clustered around the materials considered within it. (WARNING: you may not like this one) The 23s clustered around the materials considered within this post, would not exist, if this post did not exist. (If you really hate that last one try a softer 'space-time sensitive' version..... that this post is what gives meaning (VALUE) to the clustering of 23s, and without it, that meaning (VALUE) would not exist. I consider that VALUE is the ultimate reality, so the whole spacetime thing makes no odds to me.) The new cross-disciplinary journal Finance and Society just recently put out Vol 2, No 2 Art and Finance. I hooked into its first edition last year. It was the article by Angus Cameron that I really enjoyed Where has all the money gone? Materiality, mobility, and nothingness (anything with 'money' and 'nothingness' in its title is a winner with me). The journal has also included pieces by Noam Yuran, Ole Bjerg, Max Haiven, Martin Konings all of whom have produced excellent work that has fallen under my eye at one time or another. Its also freely accessible, which is a major bonus for me. My admiration for the journal was exponentially compounded when Max invited me to speak at their conference, back in early November just gone. The specific landscape of this ramble is three pieces that appear in the latest edition; a review by Tim Johnson of two books by Elie Ayache and Jon Roffe and their responses. There's a lot that's good to be said for cross-disciplinary journals, but one problem is that some of the time the reader (i.e. me) can easily get lost, bamboozled and befuddled. It's tricky to balance in-depth technical writing about a specific subject with the accessibility required for that writing to appeal more broadly. But it is easier to find the thread again these days. Especially for those (like me) who are outside not only of the particular academic niche but also outside academia itself. I can't pop along the corridor to find a friendly probability theorist when I get stuck, but I can use google and youtube to help me unlock the meaning of 'stationary ergodic processes' or other secret incantations of the probability wizards. Reading and understanding journal articles like these is hard work, but it can be done. Then, there's the deification of authority and the power of legitimacy. (Harris, 2017) Putting names and dates in brackets after a statement is a terrible idea and we should all stop doing it immediately (and thereby help undermine the valuing of knowledge in terms of its citation price). But more important is to realize the bankruptcy of the moral code which wraps itself around authority and legitimacy. The thrust of this says 'it is right and proper to recognize on whose shoulders we stand.' But this is always, at its core, a political action. An appearance of subservience. It certainly might feel like a moral action. We might fool ourselves that it is - that it recognizes some form of divine copyright over ideas. But it feels good because it enables us to bathe in the reflected glory of the Gods (whom we ourselves create with these very actions). Even when we challenge their authority, we are involved in a battle that empowers us. The Gods on whose shoulders we stand don't care. They've left the game and gave up their ownership of those knowledge nuggets long ago. Those cumbersome titles, numerical codes, and subservience to authority all serve to chisel the specificity and exclusivity of journals to a fine point - a crossing of spears between reader and the meaning. But the truth about journal articles - the wizard behind the curtain, the card up the sleeve, the angle of the con - is that they are imbued with as much sex and death as any tabloid expose. The dry technical exposition of intellectual positions is just the window dressing. And sometimes, as with the three articles mentioned here (and with the series of journal articles I mention later), sex and death are plainly visible. If we can't even imagine the possibility that some event will happen, then it happens, did its possibility really exist or not? It's impossible to give an example of what I mean. Whatever I imagine, will have existed as a possible imagining by virtue of the fact that I imagined it. (According to the usual 'spacetime cause/effect' way of thinking, anyway). We're not talking here about imagining impossible events, we're talking essentially about events that are impossible to imagine. But let's try anyway. See where it gets us. I imagine that Carol Kirkwood, Susie Dent and Rachel Riley are somehow transported from my television, where they're doing Countdown as I write this, to deliver a quiet knock at my front door. I imagine opening my door to find them in their slinky TV studio attire shivering in the cold, desperate to cup their hands around the base of something hot before placing it between their quivering red-lipstick lips and letting the warm liquid fill their eager mouths to satiate that most common of (British) desires. I wait. I even put the kettle on and warm the pot as a method of invocation. But there is no knock. I guess the event was very unlikely to happen. But very unlikely is not impossible. The clustering of 23s that persuaded me to write this ramble was very unlikely. And yet it still exists. Perhaps, I should try harder. Imagine something that's really impossible, rather than something that's practically impossible. How about something like Carol Kirkwood, Susie Dent and Rachel Riley coalescing to form a Goddess who reaches out through the TV, literally rips out my heart, and presents it to me still beating, as I die and orgasm simultaneously? Does that event exist as a possibility? And if so, how does its possibility compare to Carol Kirkwood, Susie Dent and Rachel Riley knocking at my door in want of a cup of tea? That massively unlikely event now seems almost 'reasonable to anticipate' compared to the manifestation of the Countdown Goddess. [I don't feel such a fool putting the kettle on now.] My choice of Carol Kirkwood, Susie Dent and Rachel Riley as mediators of the possible and impossible hopefully makes the point that all observed 'events' and their possibilities occur within a psycho-sexual landscape. This is true for the most distant collisions of the most distant celestial bodies, because our knowledge of them is necessarily mediated through our consciousness (which long before the Church of Reason was built was formed by the shifting tectonic plates of the psycho-sexual). As Bataille said, 'eroticism, could no more be isolated from the reflection of the universe in the mind, than [the mind] could be isolated from eroticism'. (Bataille like to distinguish between the erotic and the sexual, but let's skip over that bit.) The point that all three articles in Finance and Society seem to cluster around, is that probability is born from price and our attempts to understand it. Ayache is concerned with the price of derivatives; that is, the price of a contract that is abstracted from some underlying asset. Johnson is concerned with how probability arose from what were initially moral and theological attempts to understand price; because of the aversion to interest, medieval scholars tried to arrive at a concept of a 'just price' that would offer a fair return against any risks assumed by entrepreneurs. Later, as the scientific world view developed, the intellectual (and practical) challenge of defining fixed odds gambling games led to probability theory. Roffe is really concerned with digging down into the metaphysics. He is less concerned with the historical sequencing and more with the ontological positions of probability and price. Johnson, Ayache and Roffe all seem to be orbiting the same planet. As their thoughts close in on it though, they generate a lot of friction and heat. According to both Ayache and Roffe, Johnson cannot read their books without deep misunderstandings, and according to Johnson, both Ayache and Roffe make some very basic errors in their approach. How is this - to... er.... coin a phrase - possible? All are expert in theories of probability. Up in orbit, as their thoughts flow free of the planet's gravity, their three 'imagined probability worlds' coexist peacefully. As their orbits descend and those thoughts are more fully immersed in the media of written language they glow red and expand (!). And then finally when their feet are fully on the ground, when they make their displays and parade their positions, a violence (of sorts) erupts. The words 'limited scholarship', 'misreading, and 'failure to grasp' are hurled like rocks. What's going on here? Is one of the three an impostor? Someone who claims to have knowledge of probability theory but is actually a dunce or a chancer? Or is there something else going on? Has the gravity of the planet pulled them into a psycho-sexual landscape* which is effecting their thoughts and their interactions? Well, of course it has. It is the medium of our being. [Disclosure: I've been a fan of Tim Johnson's blog for a good few years now. We share an admiration in particular for the work of Joel Kay and Richard Seaford and (I think) we both believe it is very important in dealing with money and finance to try and properly understand the historical context in which our conceptions and theories about it arose.] In Confidence Games Mark C. Taylor considers the avant-guard art world's fascination with abstraction and considers its relation to the abstraction of financial products. 'Industrial and information technologies transform life by creating abstract economic processes and dematerializing financial instruments. Throughout much of the twentieth century, art follows a parallel course: as art becomes more abstract and progressively dematerialized, it becomes further and further removed from the everyday world. The aesthetic equivalent of religious transcendence is the autonomy of the work of art. This autonomy, we have seen, is expressed in the self referentiality of l'ouvre d'art, which mirrors the self-reflexivity of capital. At the moment when abstraction seems complete, however, everything changes. Just as the transcendence of God reaches a tipping point at which in inverts itself and becomes a radical immanence, so artistic abstraction eventually reverses itself and reengages the world'. (p.117-118) (Taylor then proceeds to point out that Simmel said as much in The Philosophy of Money back in 1907) The fifth of Alan Moore's five choices for creative writers is 'to create a narrative so complex and self-referential that it becomes to all intents and purposes alive.' Ayache argues that the price of the notoriously complex financial object 'the derivative' is, infact, the base 'material' for the mathematical machinations which orbit it. Isn't there a symmetry here? Something shared between the theological, artistic and econo-mathematical? That when something becomes sufficiently complex it passes some threshold of becoming*. Past that threshold is it no longer an abstraction or representation, it simply is (it's sovereign). This idea of increasing complexity giving rise to sovereignty is counter-intuitive. Being within the is, we experience this immense complexity, in the simplest of ways. Of all we do, simply being is the easiest. And yet, the moment we seek to understand being - or more specifically to have knowledge of being - that is outside of our own being, we are faced with a mystery of infinite complexity. The thing in itself is unknowable to us. [*obvs.... I could veer off here into biological conceptions of life and complexity, but I'm staying ramble focused.] Alongside 'sex and money', there has been another theme that has consistently eluded my abilities to write about it. It relates specifically to money burning and probability and its the idea that in burning money we create a certain moment of uncertainty. The thought and phrase 'a certain moment of uncertainty' popped into my head while I was watching the Bill Drummond interview with Gay Byrne (from about 12 minutes). It's never gone away, but I've never managed to give it proper exposition either. Bill and Gay were arguing about whether, when Bill & Jimmy burned a million quid, any loaves of bread or apples were lost. Bill says no. Gay say yes, because there could have been more. As I listened to them talk, essentially revisiting the Hayekian/Keynesian debate on men being paid to dig holes and then fill them in again (does this create economic value or not?), it occurred to me that what Bill and Jimmy had done by burning a million quid was create to a moment of certain uncertainty. In other words, money burning creates maximum (or maybe radical) uncertainty; a level of uncertainty so great (or pure?) that assigning a probability to any contingent event is impossible. [Actually, I'm going with pure radical uncertainty. I know financial economists have already collared radical uncertainty and no-doubt they've tried to specify its meaning, but I like it, and I gonna use it and define it myself. And pure I like, too. Its got a big link to sex and incest (sorry, that was in the forbidden post) and to currency, as well. I'll mention that later.] Let me ramble on the ridge between the literal and the metaphysical for a moment. Money burning literally creates pure radical uncertainty in the sense that there can no further economic knowledge attached to the currency destroyed; no further transactions can be recorded (around it*). At the metaphysical level money burning is a radical change to possibility (or maybe a radicalizing of possibility). The sacrificial destruction of currency is anathema to economic models of human behavior. Nothing in economic logic accounts for it. It opens up a metaphysical vista, that was previously in the shadow of nihilism. The fact of me burning my money every now and then, means that any credit report on me should - if it wanted to be accurate - account for the possibility that I might just decide to burn the lot. This is akin to imagining the impossible. The entire logic of capitalism denies the possibility of money burning. And yet. My musings on pure radical uncertainty - or certain uncertainty - generally stumble here as I start to cross between the metaphysical and the literal. Perhaps, I just don't know enough about probability and uncertainty to be sure-footed. Or maybe, it's something else. If I burn a note, the money is dead to me and anyone else who would have used it in exchange. But it is still alive on the books of the Central Bank. (I have contacted the Bank of England about various burnings to see what they'd do, but they never get back to me - I suppose what they should do technically is mark the debt on their books as paid, but of course this would require them to have certain knowledge that a note is destroyed and I guess my 'record of burn' in insufficient). Currency then, once burned, seems to exist in a quantum world of being both simultaneously dead and alive. All the conclusions I've drawn then about pure radical uncertainty seem undermined by this quantum state. The question arises, in burning money have I actually done anything? (Other than deprive myself of its use). This is where I have to defer to Ritual. It's where I accept the limits of knowledge and say, that my sovereign experience - my being - recognizes money burning as a profound event. This forms my perception of the world - it is my reality tunnel. And ultimately I believe that my metaphysical commitment to what I experience within ritual is why - despite the problems I have tracing a logical/rational path - I recognized within Bill & Gay's argument, and within money burning itself, there is some radical change in the possible; certainty and uncertainty are simultaneously 'expanded to their maximum' within the act of destroying currency. * this requires a little bit of explanation. We are experiencing an increase in the ability to record who pays how much to whom with the advent of digital technology. Cash is thought of as the most anonymous payment method. And yet, we could still, if we choose to, associate each transaction with each note. That possibility exists. There are historical examples of criminals being traced through the serial numbers of stolen notes. A state with sufficient resources, power and technologies has always had the ability to subvert the anonymity associated with cash. And its not difficult at all, to imagine a future where each note has a chip implanted that will create a data point each time it enters and leaves some defined financial system. But when we destroy cash, we destroy all those possibilities for knowledge. [The other thing about that video is that when asked 'Do you believe in God' by Gay, Bill says 'Of course' and Jimmy says 'Yes'. Jimmy seems to me a little less certain of his answer than Bill. I'm not actually very comfortable with the question being asked. Especially given that this was Ireland in the 1990's which was a good deal more religious that the UK. Its not the sort of question you should ask if it puts someone on the spot - so its not really a fair question to ask in a televised interview IMO.] Probability is the mathematical technology and/or medium of choice, for econo-mathematicians who seek to make predictions about, and/or acquire knowledge of, socio-economic processes. What is forgotten is the ideas about spacetime & cause/effect that underlie probability technologies have a reflexive relation with the socio-economic processes to which they are applied. Moreover, that relation sits at an ontological and epistemological depth that cannot be captured mathematically or linguistically. This unreachable, unknowable nether-world is the landscape of socio-economic processes. It is the mystery and magic of being itself. This act of forgetting the landscape, or of confusing map for territory, is then supported by denial when the landscape reasserts its immanent reality. This is when we find executives of financial firms talking about 7-sigma events and the like. Or, central bankers talking about 'Michael Fish' moments. In short, forgetting and denial leads to the following contraction: 'This is the best answer we have available, according to econo-mathematic reasoning, although socio-economic processes don't work according to econo-mathematic reasoning' becomes 'This is the best answer'. Various philosophies have sought to challenge the techno-scientific/material dominance in the production of knowledge of socio-economic processes. These philosophies cluster around the idea that there can be no clear distinction between observer and participant and, to put it more plainly, that as far as socio-economic processes go, there can be no objective position. We are all in the game. Postmodernism and pragmatic models generally though, tend in my view, to create a cumbersome and difficult-to-read map of the metaphysical territory of socio-economic processes. And, even though they are accepted as gospel truth within some humanities-based academic disciplines, they are still regarded with derision by the 'natural sciences', and so they ultimately fail in their challenge to techno-scientific/material dominance Running concurrently with problems of how we think about socio-economic processes, is the question of how we value our experiences within them, how academia values experience as it relates to knowledge production, and more broadly the position of empiricism in a reality that - at the most fundamental level described by physics - seems to declare our very perception of the world around us as a transient fantasy. As far as our debate about probability goes, both Ayache and Johnson clearly value their early experiences outside academia, and those experiences impinge upon and inform the views they put forward. Surely it is right to value experiential understanding in claims to knowledge about socio-economic processes? If so, as a consequence we must accept that science/academia's understanding of socio-economic processes exists within those social processes themselves - that science/academia's institutional experience is part of the value of the knowledge it produces. And, moreover, that the value of knowledge, and the knowledge itself, are inseparable - in other words, institutional experience resides within knowledge, itself. This is a problem not just manifesting at the surface where we hear academics complaining how grant allocation skews research interests, but it is deep down within the scientific/academic claim to knowledge, itself. The observer/participant problem always sits lumpy underneath any epistemological wallpaper. The important effect of this, is that each time academia redecorates, it just covers over the same lumps with a different philosophical wallpaper. Academia's answer to the question 'What do we do about the world? will always tend to return the world to the same state, the state which prompted the asking the question in the first place. Because being asked 'What do we do about the world' gives academia its reason to be. Without some connection to that question it is an irrelevance - academic in the worse sense of the word. Like all institutions, academia re-generates itself by attempting to create a reality in which it is valued. It does this subconsciously and well as consciously. That reality is one in which - above all else - the question 'What do we do about the world' will be asked of it once again. Therefore, academia is itself a recurring aspect of what's wrong with the world (as well as what's right with it). I've been meaning to publish a piece on the debate that took place in Sociology in the noughties around the conceptualization of money and currency (between, Nigel Dodd, Geoffrey Ingham, Viviana Zelizer, Costas Lapavistas, and Ben Fine). I devoted a chapter to it - Purity, Precision and Perfection - in The Money Burner's Manual. I think its a really important debate. So much so, that even given all the objections I've raised in this ramble, I'm thinking I should edit the chapter into a more straightforward academic account of the debate itself and publish it in my empty Academia.edu account. Aside from lack of time, one thing that's stopped me doing this (I actually wrote the original piece a couple of years ago) is that it's a real bruiser of a debate. Johnson Vs Ayche/Roffe looks friendly by comparison. So to really get into it - and to follow through with my metaphysical commitment to the unconscious and to recognize that the psycho-sexual impacts upon and is the medium of consciousness - I'd have to find a way to deal with the fact that the final showdown of the debate occurs between Geoffrey Ingham Professor of Sociology at Christ Collage Cambridge and his former PHD student Nigel Dodd, Professor of Sociology at the LSE. Then additionally, drawn into the final showdown directly is Dodd's other PHD supervisor the late David Frisby. The final battle takes place around Simmel's conception of money. Frisby was the foremost expert on Simmel. [I'll talk in a minute about how actually doing this - actually following through with my metaphysical commitment to the unconscious and recognizing that the psycho-sexual impacts upon and is the medium of consciousness - is impossible. Some things cannot be said.] While I'm reminded of that debate, it occurs to me there is a symmetry with the landscape I'm rambling through here. (Remember this is at the end of a debate that occurred over 6 years in various journals). The denouement centered around Simmel's conception of money. (Hence, you can see why Frisby's contribution was so important). Ingham claims that money (in Simmel's view) is a 'working fiction'. Dodd claims that money (in Simmel's view) is a 'conceptual fiction'. The important difference is that for Ingham 'working' means that money requires 'an authority' - it requires a social structure for its existence. Whereas Dodd claims that 'authority' is not essential - money requires merely 'an unconscious equivalence' (between the total amount of goods and the total amount of money). Perhaps I'm trapped within my own peculiar psycho-sexual grooves, but isn't that a little like the difference between Carol, Susie, and Rachel knocking at my door ('working') and the elemental Countdown Goddess ('conceptual')? 'Working fiction' (Ingham) seems more rooted in or constrained by material reality, whereas 'conceptual fiction' (Dodd) has a much broader scope of possibilities. For Ingham the possible is constrained by the actual, whereas for Dodd the actual is created by the possible. Money as a 'conceptual fiction' is certainly much more amenable to magical thinking and so it allows us to newly re-imagine the possible and so create the actual anew (in short we would have to find a way to unlock that 'unconscious equivalence' - I'd suggest burning money would be a good start.) [Disclosure: I'm a big fan of Nigel Dodd. I think his The Social Life of Money is the best book on theories of money ever written. He's also been extremely kind and encouraging to me, personally. In the Ingham/Dodd dispute over Simmel, I side with Dodd (although, I'd maintain that has to do with my commitment to the unconscious as much as it does any sense of loyalty/reciprocity). However, all sides in the Johnson/Ayache/Roffe debate would do well to consider Ingham's insight in The Nature of Money (it's my favorite line from his book) "The very idea of money, which is to say, of abstract accounting for value, is logically anterior and historically prior to market exchange." (p.25). I discuss this at length in Intent and Intentionality, Money and Currency where I point out that the universally accepted view (which is fundamentally a Hayekian view of money) is that the ontology runs markets>price>money. I think this is wrong (and of course I place money as primary). It is encouraging to see that this ontological categorization is central to Ayache and Roffe's exploration of probability. ]. What we (as in the human family) need much more than the next academic claim to knowledge about socio-economic process - more than another secret unlocked by behavioral economics or mystery solved by econo-mathematical speculation - is a new way of interacting and co-existing with socio-economic processes. We want that to happen now. Not later. We don't want it to be dependent upon or arise as a consequence of some apocalyptic struggle to overthrow/rearrange the current politico-military power structures. At an individual level we want to find a third option beyond either (a) stepping outside the socio-economic processes and then directing all our destructive energy back towards it, or (b) staying within the system and being co-opted by it. My choice - at the individual level - is to explore money through ritual. Sacrificial ritual, as has become apparent to me, is not a ritual of exchange. It is something else out of which exchange grew. If you really believe in the God of your Ritual (or simply believe in power of the ritual itself) then its very apparent that the notion that its an exchange is absurd. What the hell could God/the universe/Gaia want, that you have? Sacrificial ritual is not exchange. It is tribute. It's an offering without expectation of return. Such notions offend evolutionary psychology and economics models who would prefer to place us as self-interested agents within a defined system. But we don't want to be part of those models anymore. And to manifest that as a reality we must perform actions that puts us outside them.* Ritual is such an originating part of who we are a species of being, that not to explore it for its own sake (and, at an individual level, seek fulfillment through it) seems wrong. Money burning offers itself as a powerful connection to the sacrificial understanding which were the originating moments around which society, civilization and the subsequent socio-economic processes, formed. Understanding inheres within the Ritual itself. Ritual is the primary medium. Destruction of currency in ritual is undeniably adding a new dimension to modern economic life. [There is anthropological evidence of tribal societies who organised exchange, and relations more generally, around 'destroying currency' (in whatever form that took, cattle, canoes, etc). But this is not so for modern capitalist societies for whom currency is venerated and waste is demonized.] *Of course we are constantly taking actions that define us as something other than homo economicus my point is that those actions don't challenge or confront the socio-economic landscape - and our consciousness - in the way that ritualized money burning does. Years ago I was involved in an online experiment to do with 'organisational psycho-dynamics'. The idea was to create a space where we could interact freely. There was no set agenda, other than a general belief that everyone participating had an interest in psychoanalysis and/or psycho-dynamics. As the group progressed, and talked about this and that, people would psychoanalyze other's contributions. 'Fred said that because he was projecting etc.....' This drove people nuts. They would then psychoanalyze those, who'd psychoanalyzed them. And this would spiral into nastiness. In the end, the moderator (who'd been very keen to just observe) was forced to split the group into two - a group which talked amongst themselves about issues from a psycho-dynamic perspective, and then a second group which analyzed the first. The experiment ended soon after. 'You're only saying that because.....' is a verbal incendiary bomb. What use then is it for me to point out that the arguments that take place on the pages of academic journals are within a mindscape terra-formed by psycho-sexual energies? Nothing can be said about it specifically because once said, whatever is said, becomes part of the discourse. And, what is said inevitably opens up a vortex. It invites a psychoanalysis upon itself. The answer is of course, that its no use. However skilled, any psychoanalysis, of a heated debate like the one in the pages of Finance and Society or the Currency/Money Debate, would simply have added fuel to the fire. If you doubt this, I advise you to read some of the correspondence between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Or just, next time you have a row with your partner, say 'You're only saying that because......'. But an appreciation or realization of psycho-dynamics - rather than its use - is what's important. Whatever we do, whatever we claim to know, and however we are, all take place within a psycho-sexual landscape. It's this realization that's important. AND ULTIMATELY THIS IS A SELF REALIZATION. It is not only about Johnson and Ayche realizing how some particular claim they made has been molded by their unconscious, its about me realizing that in the act of reading I too am also chained to the psycho-sexual. We must weigh this SELF-REALIZATION more heavily in our claims to knowledge and at a greater ontological and epistemological depth, than any econo-mathematical reasoning that happens to supports such claims to knowledge. In our sense of who we are, our sense of sovereignty, we do this anyway. I wrote a line in The Money Burner's Manual: 'the paradox of sovereign knowledge is the base material of economics'. It approaches the idea that you can never know what it feels like to be me and I can never know what it feels like to be you. And it recognizes that knowledge and sovereignty are incompatible at a fundamental level. When we say 'I know myself', we are not placing that 'knowledge' above the sovereignty that recognizes it. Economics sets itself the task of bridging the divide between sovereignty and knowledge. The bridge is built with both material and aesthetic sensibilities. Real world economics (i.e. the application of academic economics) is both science and art. Perhaps this explains why economics produces such a huge volume of journal articles. It gives those who apply economic knowledge the broadest pallet with which to paint their picture of the world. But in all its forms economics casts sovereignty as self-interest, and then continually modifies itself to account for empirical evidence that we don't actually act as self-interested agents. It is understandable that people (younger folks especially) believe that the solution to this problem of resisting our naming as (and becoming of) homo economicus is first to re-imagine the discipline of economics itself and then to engage in political actions which seek to realize a society that reflects those values of resistance. I think that in doing this we are just repeating patterns of 'economic thinking' (by 'economic thinking' I mean 'that which has taken form in the human mind since sacrificial ritual created THE FIRST THING and since currency was born first as a psycho-sexual event and then as a material object). I prefer to imagine the day when 'political ends as sad remains will die' and to focus my energies on re-imagining civilization through the medium of its creation, namely sacrificial ritual. I have rather given academia and academic journals a hard time here, haven't I? I've said, basically that all journals are a fundamentally flawed con trick and that academia helps re-create all the bad in the world as a means to justify its continued existence. Sorry. You realize, of course, that my revulsion with academia is simply my desire restated. I do love academia, really. And - in all seriousness - my interactions with academics themselves over the years has been overwhelmingly positive. But the production of knowledge about money and money itself are utterly entwined, and so having a little pick at that knot seems fair enough in my book. Plus, I don't have a vice chancellor to fear. I can say what I like. I don't read journals and academic texts to seek out academic support to conceptualize my money burning activities. And I don't burn money to 'explore' an academic understanding. I try to do each for its own ends. Obviously this is an impossibility. And the real relation between the understanding that arises through ritual, and the understanding gleaned from academia is incestuous. Each informs the other. But - as is witnessed by the reason d'etre of this very post - there are ways of experiencing that incestuous relation that sanctify it. Writing this because of a clustering of 23's helps ensure that it doesn't become function of some other purpose or agenda. Money burning is a negation of function and so is a negation of the dominant conceptualization of money. I mentioned that Marc Shell piece earlier. You know medieval theologians had a terrible time of it. There they were setting the incest boundaries - deciding that second cousin was okay, but first cousin was a crime against God. When all along their faith told them that we are - literally - all brothers and sisters. All blood lines can be traced back to Adam and Eve. How are you supposed to square that with 'Go forth and multiply!' At the centre of all creation is not purity, but purification. (I know I don't approve of names in parenthesis but it was Walter Benjamin said that) Money burning is an action of forgiving, of purification. It is never pure. The ritual is never quite right. It always results from a series of conscious actions by the burner, and so its sovereignty can always be brought into question. But within the act, of giving without receiving, is contained the kernal of pure forgiveness (which is an impossibility). Whatever imperfections are woven into ritual to make it accessible to its participants, are forgiven by the act itself. I always used to end my rambles with a quote - usually after saying something like 'academics need to better distinguish between money and currency to help them properly conceptualize money's ontological depth'. Why change a wining formula? I'm a little way into Ole Bjerg's Making Money. I know a little Lacan (found him tricky to understand) and virtually no Zizek. As Ole's conceptualization of money, price and value is based on Zizek's metaphysics (which is based on Lacan), his book is already opening up new lines of thought for me. But I'll save review and analysis for a later time. '... this knowledge [that the market is ultimately made up of individual trades] is suppressed in order for us to conceive of the price fluctuations as expressions of the market'. Somethings must remain unspoken. '...the hypothesis of human monogenesis - the belief that all men and women are descended in common from a single couple - ..mean[s] that any and all sexual liaisons [are] incestuous. That kinship back to any known or knowable degree makes sexual relationships incestuous was thus a frequent view of the church.' 'The secular culture of Christendom... ...generally resists investigation of its own kinship structure as a hypostatic be-all. And certainly the temptation is... ...to forget the want [lack of, and desire for] of incest... ...implicit in the interrelated doctrines of universal siblinghood and the Holy Family ' '...the symbolic order [the fantasy of the market] is structured around some traumatic impossibility around something that cannot be symbolized.' 'Symbolism is polymorphous perversity' 'Ideology is not a dreamlike illusion that we build up to escape insupportable reality; in its basic dimension it is a fantasy construction which serves as a support for our reality itself; an illusion which structures our effective, real social relations and thereby masks some insupportable, real, impossible kernal...' 'The imaginary is not a derivative form of ontological order, the neutralization of which would result in a state of truth. The truth does not reside somewhere behind or beyond the order of the imaginary, but in the very imaginary interweaving of the real and the symbolic.' 'Pure token money [the ideal of money and the fantasy of modern finance] is not... ...reducible to sovereign [i.e. state] money of account. Pure token money is a conceptual fiction, not an institutionalised working fiction.' Money is the medium of magic. 'Knowledge is carnal knowledge, a copulation of subject and object'. Money is the AND between the ONE and the many.

Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Reduces Anxiety, Depression, and Suicidal Ideation in Veterans Serpa, J. Greg PhD*,†; Taylor, Stephanie L. PhD*,‡; Tillisch, Kirsten MD*,§ Medical Care: December 2014 - Volume 52 - Issue - p S19–S24 doi: 10.1097/MLR.0000000000000202 Introduction: Anxiety, depression, and pain are major problems among veterans, despite the availability of standard medical options within the Veterans Health Administration. Complementary and alternative approaches for these symptoms have been shown to be appealing to veterans. One such complementary and alternative approach is mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), a brief course that teaches mindfulness meditation with demonstrated benefits for mood disorders and pain. Methods: We prospectively collected data on MBSR’s effectiveness among 79 veterans at an urban Veterans Health Administration medical facility. The MBSR course had 9 weekly sessions that included seated and walking meditations, gentle yoga, body scans, and discussions of pain, stress, and mindfulness. Pre-MBSR and post-MBSR questionnaires investigating pain, anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, and physical and mental health functioning were obtained and compared for individuals. We also conducted a mediation analysis to determine whether changes in mindfulness were related to changes in the other outcomes. Results: Significant reductions in anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation were observed after MBSR training. Mental health functioning scores were improved. Also, mindfulness interacted with other outcomes such that increases in mindfulness were related to improvements in anxiety, depression, and mental health functionality. Pain intensity and physical health functionality did not show improvements. Discussion: This naturalistic study in veterans shows that completing an MBSR program can improve symptoms of anxiety and depression, in addition to reducing suicidal ideations, all of which are of critical importance to the overall health of the patients. In 2011, our VA medical facility also implemented MBSR classes for veterans with the goal of providing it to as broad a group of veterans as possible while assessing the program’s quality and impact for specific symptoms such as pain, depression, and anxiety, with a limited number of patient completing the assessments. In contrast to Kearney and colleagues’ previously described study that excluded veterans with thought disorder spectrum illness, active substance use disorders, borderline and antisocial personality disorders, and active suicidal ideation, the present study included veterans from all these diagnostic categories. The goal was to assess the utilization of this transdiagnostic approach to improve health and well-being in the setting of usual medical care and allows evaluation of the “real-world” benefits of MBSR in a complex patient population. We present here the results of a quality improvement effort in which we evaluate the effects of an MBSR course on several health outcomes: anxiety, depression, pain, physical and mental health functioning, mindfulness, and suicidal ideation. The results can be used to aid health care systems and their providers in determining whether or not to utilize MBSR as an adjunctive treatment for these health conditions. Ten to 15 participants met once per week in 2-hour sessions for 9 weeks, for each of the 9 times the course was provided. The course was taught by a clinical psychologist trained and approved to teach MBSR and having experience teaching 19 cohorts. The course curriculum was modeled after the original MBSR course designed by Kabat-Zinn16 and certified by a non-VA MBSR teacher trainer. MBSR training utilizes training in mindfulness, defined as paying attention in a kind way, on purpose, in the present moment and nonjudgmentally to reduce stress and its associated effects on the individual. MBSR implements a standardized approach to teaching mindfulness developed by Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in 1979. This standardization makes comparison across course sessions and instructors more feasible. MBSR is typically taught by doing sitting and walking meditations, body scans, loving kindness meditation, and gentle yoga in class, with daily home practice.16 For sitting meditations, participants were asked to bring attention to their breath for 30 minutes, and when thoughts came to mind, they were taught to bring awareness to that thought and then to return their awareness to the breath. In walking meditation, participants were asked to bring awareness to the process of walking and the contact of the feet on the ground. For body scans, participants were guided for 35 minutes to focus their attention on various parts of the body with their eyes closed. As with the sitting meditation, participants were asked to notice when the mind inevitably wandered and to redirect the attention, with kindness and nonjudgment, back to the present moment sensations in the body. Loving kindness meditations use images, feelings, and words to evoke a feeling of loving kindness and friendliness toward oneself and others. The MBSR program followed a standard 8-week protocol16 with the exception of an orientation week, which included the MBSR segment of the video “Bill Moyer’s Healing and the Mind” in an attempt to minimize the attrition experienced in other VA MBSR studies (David Kearney, written personal communication, 2010). For the present study, the orientation session included completion of the pretest measures, viewing the 40-minute video and a brief question and answer period. This was followed by a brief 3-minute grounding practice, which is simply intended to bring awareness into the body in the present moment. The subsequent 8 weeks followed the standard MBSR protocol. See Table 1 for protocol details. Our measured outcomes included mindfulness, anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, pain intensity, and mental and physical components of the SF-12 before the first class and at the end of the last class in the course. We used the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) to assess 5 facets of mindfulness with 39 items: (1) nonjudgment of experience, (2) nonreactivity to internal experience, (3) describing internal experience, (4) observing internal experience, and (5) acting with awareness. The FFMQ has demonstrated convergent validity and incremental validity in the prediction of psychological symptoms.17,18 Higher FFMQ scores reflect greater mindfulness. We used 1 item from the PEG scale to assess average past week pain intensity.19 We used the 9-item Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) to screen for depression, which has demonstrated good validity (r=0.89).20 Higher PHQ-9 scores reflect greater depression. To measure suicidal ideation as an exploratory outcome, we used item 9 from the PHQ-9: “In the past 2 weeks have you been bothered by thoughts that you would be better off dead or of hurting yourself in some way?”22 The item has response options: 0=not at all, 1=several days, 2=half the days, and 3=nearly every day. Each PHQ-9 response was briefly reviewed, and veterans reporting to have suicidal ideations were pulled aside and assessed for safety, in part by being asked questions to determine whether they had a plan and/or intent for self-harm. None of the participants were determined to be in need of a higher level of care to manage risk. All of those participants reporting suicidal ideations also indicated they were actively engaged in outpatient mental health care. We assessed literacy by asking respondents whether they needed help reading medical instructions on their prescriptions. Surveys for 2 of the classes were missing demographic questions, so demographic characteristics were available for 63 of the 79 participants being examined. We first conducted univariate analyses to calculate frequencies. We then calculated t tests to reflect the significance of changes between pretest and posttest scores. For mental and physical health status, we defined clinical change as a change of 10 or more,22 and for depression and anxiety we defined clinical change as a change of 5 or more.23 To assess changes in suicidal ideation we dichotomized the outcome to the presence (response>0) or absence of suicidal ideation (response=0) and used a McNemar χ2 test. We used Bonferroni corrected P-values given the multiple comparisons. We also conducted mediation analyses to determine whether changes in mindfulness were related to changes in the other outcomes (anxiety, depression, pain, and mental and physical health functionality). We did not conduct mediation analysis using suicidal ideation because the item is derived from the depression scale so was accounted for in the depression mediation. We used a standard approach for mediation analysis when a treatment condition (baseline and follow-up) is involved.24 That is, using ordinary least squares analysis, we regressed the Y difference in outcomes on both the X (mindfulness) sum and the X (mindfulness) difference between baseline and follow-up. Mediation is evidenced by the latter term (the mindfulness difference). The former term (the mindfulness sum), when centered, represents the portion of the change in outcomes that is not mediated by the change in mindfulness. The study was determined by the Institutional Review Board and Research and Development committees of the VA hospital to be a quality improvement effort, because the results of this examination were used to determine the future availability of MBSR within the local VA medical facility. As such, we utilized a deidentified dataset of subject responses for the analyses presented here, did not obtain informed consent, and did not offer financial compensation to the participants. We used Stata 11 (StataCorp LP, College Station, TX) for our analyses. The participants’ baseline characteristics are shown in Table 2. The majority of participants were male (89%) and living in their own home or apartment (69%), whereas about a third were retired (35%), divorced or separated (38%), and lived with a spouse or partner (33%). All but 2 participants completed the MBSR course, which we defined as attending a minimum of 6 of the 9 sessions. Table 3 shows the preclass and postclass scores. Significant improvements were seen in mindfulness, anxiety, depression, and general mental health functionality from baseline to the 9-week class conclusion. Accordingly, over a third of the sample met a priori definitions of clinical significance for these outcomes, as shown in Table 4. Also, the frequency of suicidal ideation decreased by almost half, from 24.05% to 12.66% (McNemar χ2 statistic=4.26, P=0.049). However, pain and physical health status did not improve significantly after MBSR. When we conducted the mediation analyses to determine whether changes in mindfulness were related to changes in the other outcomes, we found that mindfulness appeared to mediate changes in depression, anxiety, and general mental health functionality (Table 5). That is, the results showed that improvements in mindfulness played a specific role in reducing depression, anxiety, and mental health scores. In addition, the third column shows that a portion of the changes in depression, anxiety, and general mental health functionality were due to other nonmeasured factors above and beyond any mediation by mindfulness. MBSR has received significant attention over recent years as a modality not only to reduce stress but also to improve chronic medical symptoms. A growing literature exists on the physiological mechanisms of MBSR25–29 and its potential efficacy in anxiety, depression, and pain.13,14 Our examination of MBSR showed that it appears to have the potential to improve multiple health outcomes for veterans, specifically, depression, anxiety, and general mental health functionality with a marginal but significant effect on suicidal ideations. The improvements in health outcomes are notable in that only 1 veteran, because of advanced dementia, was excluded from the study. The present study sample included veterans with active psychosis, active substance use disorders, and severe personality disorders. About one quarter of the veterans in the study (24.05%) expressed active suicidal ideation. The present study may be the first to include these diagnostic categories in a naturalistic treatment setting approach. MBSR had no effect on pain or physical health. The positive benefits of MBSR identified are consistent with prior work within the VA, which examined the effects of an MBSR course on health outcomes or the effects of learned mindfulness skills on health outcomes,15,30–32 as well as multiple meta-analyses and systemic reviews of MBSR across a wide range of patient groups and medical conditions.7–11 The improvement in suicidal ideation has not been addressed in previous studies of MBSR in veterans but is particularly relevant as suicide prevention is considered a central target of VA clinical care. Although this study could not tease out the individual role of mindfulness in the decreasing suicide ideation, the results suggest that MBSR may have added value in addition to standard clinical care. This interaction should be a target of future study. The lack of improvement in pain scores shown here is in contrast to previous publications, including the recent meta-analysis.14 This discrepancy may have been due to the limited assessment of pain used (a single item of pain intensity) or to patient-related characteristics that may have made pain less responsive. For example, pain chronicity, presence of multiple comorbid pain disorders, or opiate dependent chronic pain in the veteran population may have led to lower MBSR-related improvements. Or possibly pain did not decrease because MBSR’s goal is not to eliminate pain but rather to reduce pain-related distress or move closer to the pain and work with it in the meditation to have a different relationship to chronic, uncomfortable sensations, which might not be well detected in a pain intensity measure. A more thorough evaluation of pain characteristics and comorbidities will be necessary in future studies. The mediation analysis showed that mindfulness skills learned in the course played a significant role in improved depression, anxiety, and mental health scores. The magnitude of this mediation was small in comparison to the nonspecific effects of the MBSR training (eg, the experience of a supportive environment, positive expectation of change, development of new coping strategies during the MBSR training), which is not surprising because the measurement of mindfulness remains controversial. The FFMQ is one of the most widely used scales for mindfulness and has generally been shown to have good psychometric properties18,33; however, questions have been raised regarding its factorial validity (particularly the “nonreact” factor) as well as an overrepresentation of women in many of its validation samples.34 Thus the FFMQ may underrepresent the increases in mindfulness observed in our sample. This study has a few limitations. Given that it was a quality improvement effort, we did not utilize richer information in the medical records on veteran characteristics that might have influenced the effect of the course, such as any relevant diagnoses or health care utilization data. As a larger number of veterans complete MBSR training, such a chart review investigation could provide important information as potential predictors of response and further guide our implementation planning for MBSR across the VA health care system. Also, this was an observational study only and did not include a randomized control group, so we might have masked any nonspecific effects of MBSR, including placebo effects. In addition, a longitudinal assessment of health care utilization parameters such as frequency of medical visits, no-show rates, medication doses, and physiological parameters (eg, blood pressure, heart rate, and body mass index) obtained before and after MBSR completion may be useful in determining the effectiveness of MBSR to alter health more globally. Finally, the symptom assessments presented were performed at the end of the MBSR course but without longitudinal follow-up. It is frequently found that response to MBSR, as in other behavioral interventions, continues on a positive trajectory when assessed at 3 or 6 months follow-up. To show practical clinical utility, transient effects associated with the active treatment could be avoided by using a measurement distant from the treatment period. Given veterans’ desires to receive nonpharmacological and CAM therapies, and the subsequent implementation of MBSR and other CAM modalities in much of the VA,1,2,6 this study assessed MBSR in the “real-world” transdiagnostic context of veterans who have a variety of health conditions. That is, veterans seeking health care at the VA have a greater incidence of mood disorders, posttraumatic stress disorder, and life challenges (eg, homelessness, unemployment, and disability) than the general population and this complexity may impact the benefits of a program like MBSR when implemented in a naturalistic setting.35–38 The implications of our results for health care systems and their providers and patients are that MBSR has the potential to be an adjunctive treatment for anxiety, depression and general mental health functionality. However, further work to assess MBSR either in comparison to or in conjunction with other available modalities for the treatment of anxiety and depression such as cognitive behavioral therapy and antidepressants is warranted. In addition, veterans in the VA have increased access to traditional mental health care through psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers compared with many Americans. Given this context, the added value of CAM treatments such as MBSR should be carefully evaluated in terms of both patient preference and medical outcomes. As MBSR appears to reduce anxiety and depression it might have the potential to reduce the need for antidepressants, thereby serving both the goals of many patients as well as potential reductions in long-term health care utilization. In summary, this naturalistic study of the effects of MBSR on symptoms in veterans shows that an MBSR program at an urban VA improves symptoms of anxiety and depression, in addition to reducing suicidal ideation, all of which are of critical importance to the overall health of the patients. Further work is needed in this population to better understand the role of MBSR in veterans with pain and to determine whether the benefits of MBSR allow for decreased health care utilization and better long-term outcomes. 11. Vollestad J, Nielsen MB, Nielsen GH. Mindfulness- and acceptance-based interventions for anxiety disorders: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Br J Clin Psychol. 2012;51:239–260. 12. Bohlmeijer E, Prenger R, Taal E, et al.. The effects of mindfulness-based stress reduction therapy on mental health of adults with a chronic medical disease: a meta-analysis. J Psychosom Res. 2010;68:539–544. 13. Grossman P, Niemann L, Schmidt S, et al.. Mindfulness-based stress reduction and health benefits. A meta-analysis. J Psychosom Res. 2004;57:35–43. 14. Goyal M, Singh S, Sibinga EM, et al.. Meditation programs for psychological stress and well-being: a systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA Intern Med. 2014;174:357–368. 15. Kearney DJ, McDermott K, Malte C, et al.. Association of participation in a mindfulness program with measures of PTSD, depression and quality of life in a veteran sample. J Clin Psychol. 2012;68:101–116. 16. Kabat-Zinn J. An outpatient program in behavioral medicine for chronic pain patients based on the practice of mindfulness meditation: theoretical considerations and preliminary results. Gen Hosp Psychiatry. 1982;4:33–47. 17. Baer RA, Smith GT, Hopkins J, et al.. Using self-report assessment methods to explore facets of mindfulness. Assessment. 2006;13:27–45. 18. Baer RA, Smith GT, Lykins E, et al.. Construct validity of the five facet mindfulness questionnaire in meditating and nonmeditating samples. Assessment. 2008;15:329–342. 19. Krebs EE, Lorenz KA, Bair MJ, et al.. Development and initial validation of the PEG, a three-item scale assessing pain intensity and interference. J Gen Intern Med. 2009;24:733–738. 20. Kroenke K, Spitzer RL, Williams JB. The PHQ-9: validity of a brief depression severity measure. J Gen Intern Med. 2001;16:606–613. 21. Spitzer RL, Kroenke K, Williams JB, et al.. A brief measure for assessing generalized anxiety disorder: the GAD-7. Arch Intern Med. 2006;166:1092–1097. 22. Ware J Jr, Kosinski M, Keller SD. A 12-Item Short-Form Health Survey: construction of scales and preliminary tests of reliability and validity. Med Care. 1996;34:220–233. 23. Kroenke K, Spitzer RL. The PHQ-9: a new depression diagnostic and severity measure. Psychiatr Ann. 2002;32:1–7. 24. Judd CM, Kenny DA, McClelland GH. Estimating and testing mediation and moderation in within-subject designs. Psychol Methods. 2001;6:115–134. 25. Zeidan F, Grant JA, Brown CA, et al.. Mindfulness meditation-related pain relief: evidence for unique brain mechanisms in the regulation of pain. Neurosci Lett. 2012;520:165–173. 26. Creswell JD, Irwin MR, Burklund LJ, et al.. Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction training reduces loneliness and pro-inflammatory gene expression in older adults: a small randomized controlled trial. Brain Behav Immun. 2012;26:1095–1101. 27. Creswell JD, Myers HF, Cole SW, et al.. Mindfulness meditation training effects on CD4+ T lymphocytes in HIV-1 infected adults: a small randomized controlled trial. Brain Behav Immun. 2009;23:184–188. 28. Kilpatrick LA, Suyenobu BY, Smith SR, et al.. Impact of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction training on intrinsic brain connectivity. Neuroimage. 2011;56:290–298. 29. Farb NA, Segal ZV, Anderson AK. Mindfulness meditation training alters cortical representations of interoceptive attention. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2013;8:15–26. 30. Omidi A, Mohammadi A, Zargar F, et al.. Efficacy of mindfulness-based stress reduction on mood States of veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. Arch Trauma Res. 2013;1:151–154. 31. Arch JJ, Ayers CR, Baker A, et al.. Randomized clinical trial of adapted mindfulness-based stress reduction versus group cognitive behavioral therapy for heterogeneous anxiety disorders. Behav Res Ther. 2013;51:185–196. 32. Kearney DJ, McDermott K, Malte C, et al.. Effects of participation in a mindfulness program for veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder: a randomized controlled pilot study. J Clin Psychol. 2013;69:14–27. 33. de Bruin EI, Topper M, Muskens JG, et al.. Psychometric properties of the Five Facets Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) in a meditating and a non-meditating sample. Assessment. 2012;19:187–197. 34. Tran US, Gluck TM, Nader IW. Investigating the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ): construction of a short form and evidence of a two-factor higher order structure of mindfulness. J Clin Psychol. 2013;69:951–965. 35. Cohen BE, Gima K, Bertenthal D, et al.. Mental health diagnoses and utilization of VA non-mental health medical services among returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. J Gen Intern Med. 2010;25:18–24. 36. Fargo J, Metraux S, Byrne T, et al.. Prevalence and risk of homelessness among US veterans. Prev Chronic Dis. 2012;9:E45. 37. Rosenheck R, Frisman L, Chung AM. The proportion of veterans among homeless men. Am J Public Health. 1994;84:466–469. 38. Zivin K, Bohnert AS, Mezuk B, et al.. Employment status of patients in the VA health system: implications for mental health services. Psychiatr Serv. 2011;62:35–38.

Human Vocal Attractiveness as Signaled by Body Size Projection Affiliation Clinic of Phoniatrics, Pedaudiology, and Communication Disorders, University Hospital Aachen and RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany Yi Xu, Voice, as a secondary sexual characteristic, is known to affect the perceived attractiveness of human individuals. But the underlying mechanism of vocal attractiveness has remained unclear. Here, we presented human listeners with acoustically altered natural sentences and fully synthetic sentences with systematically manipulated pitch, formants and voice quality based on a principle of body size projection reported for animal calls and emotional human vocal expressions. The results show that male listeners preferred a female voice that signals a small body size, with relatively high pitch, wide formant dispersion and breathy voice, while female listeners preferred a male voice that signals a large body size with low pitch and narrow formant dispersion. Interestingly, however, male vocal attractiveness was also enhanced by breathiness, which presumably softened the aggressiveness associated with a large body size. These results, together with the additional finding that the same vocal dimensions also affect emotion judgment, indicate that humans still employ a vocal interaction strategy used in animal calls despite the development of complex language. In the first experiment, 10 young male native speakers of English (average age: 23) heard a female voice saying the sentence “Good luck with your exams” in Standard Southern British English, and judged the attractiveness of the voice on a 5-level scale, with 5 being the most attractive. The stimulus sentences were pre-recorded by a female speaker in three voice qualities–normal, breathy and pressed, without any emotional involvement (Figure 1a–c). The sentences were then digitally modified in terms of median pitch, formant dispersion and sentence-final pitch slope, see Table 1, along the directions of signaling a small body size and happiness, or large body size and anger [27], [28]. The specific amounts of these modifications were based on previous studies on emotion [27], [28], [32], pilot testing, and specifications of the VocalTractLab software [33]. Further methodological details can be found in the Methodology section. Figure 1. The base setences. Spectrograms and pitch tracks (dotted yellow lines) of the base sentences in Experiment 1 (a–c) and Experiments 2–5 (d–f). In order, the three rows of graphs represent utterances in normal, breathy, and pressed voices. Table 1. Parameters and their changes applied to the base sentences for the preparation of the stimuli. The judgments were in the expected directions, as shown in Figure 2a. Attractiveness is monotonically increased as voice quality goes from pressed to normal to breathy (F2,18 = 73.71, p<0.0001). Upward pitch shift increased attractiveness, (F2,18 = 11.00, p = 0.0008), but the difference between the normal and raised pitch was not significant (Bonferroni/Dunn post-hoc), indicating that the pitch of the female speaker was sufficiently high in terms of attractiveness, but lowering it made the voice less attractive. Upward formant shifts also increased attractiveness overall (F2,18 = 21.31, p<0.0001), but the difference between the normal (ratio = 1.0) and the raised (ratio = 1.1) was not significant, indicating a lack of further benefit when the vocal tract was shortened beyond that of the original female speaker. There is no effect of final F0 slope, suggesting that this particular linguistic factor is not directly related to attractiveness. Figure 2. Judgment ratings. Judgments of voice attractiveness (a–c) and emotion (d–e), on a scale of 1–5, as a function of Voice quality, Pitch shift, Formant shift, Final F0 slope and Pitch range. Each row of the graphs (a–e) corresponds to Experiments 1–5 respectively. In each bar, the black figures represent mean rating score, while parameter values are in white. The error bars are standard errors. These results appear to be consistent with the size-projection hypotheses. In terms of pitch and formant dispersion, the original values, which may resemble the population mean, are apparently sufficiently attractive, which also agrees with the averageness theory [12]. But only deviations toward a larger body size (lowered pitch and increased formant dispersion) reduced attractiveness, which agrees better with the size-projection hypothesis. Furthermore, increasing breathiness monotonically increased attractiveness, as shown in Figure 2a. To make sure that the voice quality types were effectively produced by our speaker as intended, we performed a number of acoustic analyses. The first is an energy-band analysis of the vowel spectra, shown in Figure 3a, using a method found to be effective in detecting subtle voice quality differences from continuous speech [34]. The analysis produces energy profiles each consisting of signal energy values of fifteen overlapping spectral bands of 500-Hz bandwidth (see Methodology appendix for more details). These energy band profiles show that as voice goes from pressed to breathy, more spectral energy is concentrated toward the lower frequency. In addition, we took a number of measurements commonly used to characterize voice quality, as shown in the upper part of Table 2. As the intended voice goes from breathy to pressed, H1–H2*, H1–A1* and H1–A3* all show decreasing values (except H1–A3* of pressed voice), indicating an overall reduction of spectral tilt. Also the center of spectral gravity moves upward in frequency across the three intended voice types, again indicating decreased spectral tilt. Thus, with only a single exception, all the measurements indicate that the speaker produced breathy, normal and pressed voice qualities as intended. Figure 3. Band energy profiles. Band energy profiles of speech sounds. Each profile consists of fifteen signal energy values computed from overlapping spectral bands of 500-Hz bandwidth: 0–500, 250–750, 500–1000, … 3250–3750, 3500–4000. a, Mean band energy profiles of all 6 vowels in the three base sentences of Experiment 1, each with an intended voice quality. b, Band energy profiles of two sample files from Bruckert et al. (2010). c, Profiles of three synthetic sentences used in Experiment 2–5, each with a synthetic voice quality. Table 2. Measurements of voice quality. In Experiment 1, the sentences with different voice qualities had to be spoken by the human speaker in separate utterances. As a result, the sentences differed not only in voice quality as intended, but also in other prosodic dimensions, as can be seen in Figure 1a–c, and so possible confounds could not be fully ruled out. In Experiments 2–5 we thus used entirely artificial speech as stimuli where we had full control over all prosodic parameters. The base stimuli for these experiments were created using VocalTractLab – an articulatory speech synthesizer [33], [35] which allows us to synthesize arbitrary utterances based on a specification of the constituting elementary speech movements (gestures) in high-quality. As found in a recent study, the new two mass model of the vocal folds in VocalTractLab could generate voice qualities that were convincingly heard by listeners as breathy, normal and pressed, at a perceptual level much higher than the classical two mass model [33]. We created the sentence “I OWE you a yoyo” with an emphasis on the word “owe” (Figure 1d–f), which was manually modeled after an utterance by a male speaker of Southern British English. Three synthetic versions of the sentence were generated, each in one of three voice qualities–pressed, modal and breathy, while other parameters were kept identical. As shown in Figure 3c, an energy-band analysis of the three versions of the sentence shows similar profile separation as in the natural sentences in Experiment 1, with center of gravity values of 585 Hz for the pressed voice, 473 Hz for the modal voice and 353 Hz for the breathy voice, as shown in the lower right part of Table 2. Also shown in lower rows of Table 2 are values of H1–H2*, H1–A1* and H1–A3*. All these measurements indicate decreased spectral tilt as the intended voice goes from breathy to pressed (see Sound S9, S10, S11 for the base sentences with the three intended voice qualities). The female versions of the sentences were synthesized by increasing F0 median by 12 semitones (1 octave) and Formant Shift by 0.2, while other things remained equal. We then used the same method as in Experiment 1 to manipulate Formant shift, Pitch shift, and Pitch range (see Supporting Information for audio samples and the Praat script Script S3 that performs the acoustic manipulation), see Table 1 (column 6). Pitch range was tested instead of intonation slope as in Experiment 1 because it has been found to be relevant for the perceptual rating of friendliness and happiness [32]. Listeners (N = 32, 16 female) were played the stimuli of the opposite sex, and asked to judge the attractiveness of the speaker. The ratings of female vocal attractiveness (Experiment 2), as shown in Figure 2b, were in line with those of Experiment 1. Increased breathiness again monotonically improved attractiveness (F1.13,16.98 = 40.153, p<0.001). A post-hoc Bonferroni test confirmed that breathy voice was significantly more attractive than modal voice and pressed voice (p<0.001). Lowered pitch was heard as less attractive (F1.12,16.80 = 3.793, p = 0.065), though the main effect of pitch height was only marginally significant. The main effect of Formant shift (or any of the post-hoc effects), unlike in Experiment 1, was not significant, but on the whole the original Formant value was perceived as the most attractive. The new parameter, Pitch range, did not show a significant main effect either, but Figure 2b showed that normal and narrow pitch ranges were generally perceived as more attractive. It thus can be concluded that a female voice sounds attractive when it is breathy, moderately high-pitched, and with moderately dispersed formants and normal or narrow pitch ranges (see audio samples in Supporting Information). For male voice, there is a paradox for the size-projection hypotheses. If an attractive male voice is the direct opposite of an attractive female voice, it would have low pitch, densely distributed formants and pressed voice quality. But these attributes have been proposed to signal aggressiveness, because the large body size they project would help an animal or human individual to prevail in a confrontation [25], [26]. And they have been shown to signal anger to human listeners, thus linking anger to aggressiveness [32]. Would it really be the case that an attractive male voice is an aggressive and angry one? Or is there at least one attribute that is used to soften the aggressiveness? This puzzle was further studied in Experiment 3, in which we used the same base sentences as in Experiment 2 except that the overall pitch and formant dispersion values were adjusted to be male-appropriate. Then the same parameter modifications as in Experiment 2 were applied to generate the perceptual stimuli. Sixteen female listeners judged the attractiveness of these stimuli. As can be seen in Figure 2c, attractiveness of male voice was increased by downward formant shift (F2,30 = 66.788, p<0.001) and downward pitch shift (F2,30 = 14.493, p<0.001), both of which are consistent with anger and aggressiveness. However, attractiveness monotonically increased with breathiness (F1.21,18.19 = 8.221, p = 0.007) (Figure 2c), just as it did with the female voice. Also like with the female voice, normal and reduced pitch ranges sounded more attractive (F1.16,17.42 = 11.039, p = 0.003). Thus to a female listener, an attractive male voice is one that projects a large body size with lowered pitch and densely distributed formants. However, like its female counterpart, an attractive male voice is also breathy and with normal or narrow pitch range (see audio samples in Supporting Information). To further establish a link between vocal attractiveness and emotion, Experiments 4 and 5 examined how vocal anger vs. happiness were perceived by the opposite sex. The same procedures and stimuli were used as in Experiment 2, except that this time listeners (N = 32, 16 female) were to give ratings along a 5-level Angry–Happy scale. The rating of female vocal emotion by male listeners (Experiment 4), shown in Figure 2d, partly resembled those of female attractiveness (Figure 2a, 2b). The main effect of voice quality was marginally significant (F2,30 = 3.297, p = 0.051), a breathy female voice sounded happier, while pressed voice was always perceived as angrier. Happiness was also associated with greater formant dispersion (F2,30 = 7.468, p = 0.002) and higher pitch (F2,30 = 6.997, p = 0.003), although only raised pitch was significantly happier than the original (p = 0.004) and lowered pitch (p = 0.03), according to Post-hoc Bonferroni test. Unlike for attractiveness, however, it was the expanded pitch range that was perceived as happier (F2,30 = 8.648, p = 0.001). Experiment 5 showed that anger versus happiness in male voice shared similar parameters as in female voice. An angry voice also had more densely distributed formants (F1.34,20.11 = 11.422, p = 0.001), which signals a large body size. Also like in Experiment 4, the happiness of a male voice increased with pitch range (F1.13,16.97 = 54.529, p<0.001), and the ratings of the 3 ranges were significantly different from one another in a post-hoc Bonferroni test (p<0.01). Likewise, a happy voice is higher-pitched (F1.15,17.21 = 27.542, p<0.001), with the ratings of the 3 pitch heights being significantly different from one another. However, the main effect of voice quality was non-significant (see Supporting Information for auditory samples of synthetic happy and angry voice). The results presented here show that female voices rated as more attractive were breathy, high pitched (though not too high), with widely dispersed formants (again, not too dispersed), and all these qualities are consistent with the projection of a relatively small body size. In contrast, male voices rated as more attractive were low-pitched with densely distributed formants, both of which project a large body size. But male voice attractiveness also increased with breathiness, which projects a small body size. These results are largely consistent with the hypothesis that vocal attractiveness is achieved with the size projection mechanism also used in animal calls [27], [28], [36], [37]. But the breathiness in the male voice attractiveness rating is intriguing, as it could be a way of neutralizing the aggressiveness associated with a large body size [25]. These results, when taken together with the dimorphism between female and male vocal anatomy, suggest that what makes the voice attractive are mostly properties that enhance the characteristics already in the averaged voice of the sex: high pitch, dispersed formants and breathiness in female voice, and low pitch and long vocal tract in the male voice. These findings may therefore explain why averaged voices are more attractive than certain individual voices [12]. That is, the continued reproductive success of the human species means that the average individual attributes, including those of the voice, must have been sufficiently attractive to the opposite sex. But for any individual to stand a better-than-average chance, it would be desirable to exaggerate the characteristics that further enhance attractiveness. And the enhancement, based on the present findings, seems to be based on the principle of body size projection in the case of voice. The present results also show, for the first time, a clear effect of voice quality on vocal attractiveness. In fact, voice quality is by far the most important attribute, because a breathy voice, whether female or male, was always heard as the most attractive. Also, the fact that for female voice there seems to be a limit to the attractiveness-enhancing effects of raising pitch and dispersing formants (Figure 2a–b) (presumably because they have made the voice too child-like), may explain why breathiness is more important for female than male voice attractiveness [21], [38], and why breathy voice is the most relevant quality for male-to-female transsexuals [38], [39], and probably even why the posterior glottal opening, which leads to a breathy voice, is more consistent in young women than in both young men [23] and elderly women [40]. The importance of breathiness in increasing the attractiveness of female as well as male voice has clear practical implications for areas like speech-based technology, speech and voice counseling, voice surgery and voice therapy for transsexuals. Finally, although it is widely accepted that humans are genetically related to other animal species, direct scientific evidence that the human speech also shares similarities with information systems in nonhuman species is rare. The findings of the present study indicate that, despite the development of highly complex language capable of conveying fine subtleties in meaning, humans still use an encoding strategy similar to the one widely used by nonhuman animals for guaranteeing success in survival and reproduction. The present study has shown evidence that human vocal attractiveness is encoded along the same size projection dimension that has been suggested for encoding animal calls and human emotional expressions [25], [27], [28], [32]. That is, a female voice sounded attractive when it was breathy, moderately high-pitched, and with moderately dispersed formants, all of which signal a relatively small body size. A male voice sounded attractive when it was low pitched and with densely distributed formants, both of which signal a large body size. But a male voice also sounded attractive when it was breathy, which presumably reduced the aggressiveness associated with the large body size projected by the low pitch and densely distributed formants. In general, therefore, the current findings demonstrate the potential of the evolutionarily-based approach [25], [26] to link areas of research that have been so far quite separated, such as emotion, personal attributes, sexual behavior and dimorphism, and social interactions. The sentence, “Good luck with your exams,” was spoken by a female speaker of South-Eastern British English, aged 23 years, in three voice qualities: normal, breathy and pressed, with no emotional or attitudinal involvement. The three base sentences were then normalized in intensity and pitch contours with the Praat program [41]. Pitch contours were normalized by using an intonation modeling program [42] to extract the synthesis parameters from the normal-voice sentence and then apply them to all three sentences. Also using the synthesis program the F0 slope of the final syllable in the word “exam” was modified into normal, steep and shallow. The actual stimuli were then generated by modifying the base sentences in terms of Formant shift and Pitch shift, using a custom-written script that applied the “Change gender” function in the Praat program (see Script S2 in Supporting Information for the Praat script that performs the acoustic manipulation). Ten young male native speakers of English participated as listening subjects. They listened to the stimulus sentences through headphones in a quiet room, and judged the attractiveness of each sentence on a five-level scale. The base sentence, “I owe you a yoyo”, was created with VocalTractLab 2.0–a digital articulatory speech synthesizer [33], [35]. The sentence was modeled manually after an utterance spoken by a male speaker of Southern British English. Three synthetic versions of the sentence were generated by VocalTractLab, each in one of three voice qualities–pressed, modal and breathy, while other parameters were kept identical. The base sentences were then modified with a Praat script (see Script S3 in Supporting Information for the Praat script that performs the acoustic manipulation). Sixteen young males and sixteen young females participated as subjects. They listened to the stimulus sentences through headphones in a quiet room, and judged the attractiveness and emotion of each sentence on a five-level scale. Stimuli Experiment 1. The sentences were recorded in a quiet room with a head-mounted condenser microphone (Countryman Isomax hypercardiod). To check if the speaker inadvertently varied vowel formants with the voice quality, we measured the frequencies of the first three formants of all six vowels in each sentence and calculated formant dispersion (averaged distance between adjacent formants) with formula (1) [43]. (1) The mean formant dispersions were 1182, 1195 and 1138 Hz for breathy, normal and pressed voice, respectively, but the differences were not statistically significant (p = 0.279). The three base sentences were then normalized in intensity and pitch contours. Intensity was normalized by equalizing the maximum amplitude of all the sentences with the Scale peak command in the Praat program [41]. Pitch contours were normalized by using an intonation modelling program [42] to extract the synthesis parameters from the normal-voice sentence and then apply them to all the three sentences. Also using the synthesis program the F0 slope of the final syllable in the word “exam” was modified into normal, steep and shallow. The speech rates of the three sentences were similar (4.16–4.23 syllables/second) and were not further normalized to avoid possible phonetic distortion. The actual stimuli were then generated by modifying the base sentences in terms of Formant shift and Pitch shift, using a custom-written script that applied the “Change gender” function in the Praat program (see Supporting Information for the Praat script). In total, 81 stimuli were prepared (3 voice qualities × 3 formant shift ratios × 3 pitch shifts × 3 final F0 slopes). Experiment 2–5. The base sentence, “I owe you a yoyo”, was created with VocalTractLab 2.0 – a digital articulatory speech synthesizer [33], [35]. The sentence was modeled manually after an utterance spoken by a male speaker of Southern British English. Three synthetic versions of the sentence were generated, each in one of three voice qualities–pressed, modal and breathy, while other parameters were kept identical. The voice quality manipulation was done by a modified two-mass model implemented in VocalTractLab 2.0 [33]. The breathy, normal and pressed voice were created by setting the parameter “upper-lower rest displacement” of the vocal fold model at 0.30 mm, 0.10 mm and −0.10 mm, respectively. The synthetic sentences were then modified with a script that applied the “Change gender” function in the Praat program [41] (see Supporting Information for the Praat script). In total, 81 stimuli were prepared (3 formant shift ratios × 3 pitch shifts × 3 pitch ranges × 3 voice qualities). All the voice quality analyses were performed with a Praat script (see Supporting Information). The band energy analysis was adopted from the EQ15 analysis in Surendran (2008) [34]. It has fifteen overlapping bands of 500 Hz bandwidth between 0 and 4000 Hz : 0–500, 250–750, 500–1000,…, 3250–3750, 3500–4000. The energy of each band is measured in dB using Praat’s Get power function. H1–H2*, H1–A1* and H1–A3* were approximates of the previously proposed measurements H1–H2, H1–A1 and H1–A3 [29], where H1 and H2 refer to the amplitudes of the first and second harmonics of a vowel, and A1 and A3 refer to the amplitude of the first and third formants. Our approximations of these measurements are based on the power differentials taken at the median pitch of a vowel, its double frequency (H2), average of the 2nd and 3rd energy bands (A1) and average of the 11th, 12th and 13th energy bands (A3). See Script S1 in Supporting Information for the algorithms. Ten young males with an average age of 23 years participated as subjects. They were native speakers of English with no self-reported speech or hearing impairments. They listened to the stimulus sentences, played in randomised order, through Sennheiser HD 265 linear headphones in a quiet room, and judged the attractiveness of each sentence. They could listen to each stimulus up to three times, although in most cases they listened to each stimulus only once. All participants were paid a small remuneration for their time. Sixteen males (age: 19–48, mean age = 25.8) and sixteen females (age: 18–30, mean age = 22.5) participated as subjects. They were native speakers of English with no self-reported speech or hearing impairments. No subjects in these experiments took part also in Experiment 1. They listened to the stimulus sentences, played in randomised order, through Sennheiser HD 265 linear headphones in a quiet room, and judged the attractiveness and emotion of each sentence, in separate sessions. 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Species: Anean Name: anean(s) [ah-NEE-ahn(z)] Homeworld: Omaia Height/Length/Weight: Aneans range from 6-7' tall, with a nose-to-tailtip length of 9-11'. They weigh between 230-350 lbs. Physical Description: Aneans are furless, long-tailed, bipedal theropsids. They have broad, short muzzles with flared nostrils and long fangs; their teeth are mostly carnivorous in shape, with a few thick molars in the very back. They have large, slit-pupiled, reptilian eyes and long, extremely flexible ears reminiscent of bat wings. They have two spiraling horns that curl backwards, along the curve of the skull. Their hides are thick, somewhat wrinkled or pebbly in places, and of a leathery texture with no hair or scales. Aneans have strong bodies with long, muscular, digitigrade hind legs that end in large, clawed, three-toed talon-like feet. Their arms are humanoid in build and range of motion; their hands have four short, thick fingers with retractable claws, plus an opposable thumb. From base to tip, their tails are as long as they are tall, muscular and prehensile and tapering to a slender tip. Aneans have internal genitalia, but for an unobtrusive penile sheath for the males, and they have no sexual dimorphism in size or build. Senses/Capabilities: Aneans have good, well-rounded senses. Their eyesight is long-range and primarily focused on movement, with poor color vision but excellent low-light/night vision. They hear exceptionally well, due in large part to their ears' ability to funnel even faint sounds inwards. Their senses of smell are fairly good - better than a human's - and many of them have a decent magic-sense (able to detect and 'read' magical signatures on people, objects, and areas). Aneans are fast for bipeds, able to reach just over 30 mph in a bounding four-legged lope - they can run on two legs somewhat more slowly, around 20-25 mph. They are fairly strong, agile, and enduring, given their predatory heritage and nature, and can hone any of those traits with time and effort. They are also excellent jumpers, capable of making astounding vertical and horizontal leaps, and are rather good at climbing trees and rock faces, as well as swimming. Despite the length difference between their arms and legs, aneans are quite adept at moving about on all fours, especially on difficult terrain. Coloration/Clothing: Aneans are not brightly-colored; they tend to be a medium shade of a natural color, often quite dull/desaturated in hue. Most are one color, darker along the top of the body (head, back, shoulders, hips, along the spine) and lighter along the undersides (inner arms and legs, throat, belly, under the tail); some are mottled, and some fewer have indistinct dappling or patching along the top of the body and/or the flanks. Aneans are usually a shade of brown or grey, though some can be greenish, blue-ish, or reddish, while rare ones can be quite dark (usually dark brown, but occasionally dark grey or even black). Their eyes are typically very pale and reflective, slightly tinged with yellow or silver; their claws are often black or dark grey. Aneans have no need for clothing (unless in extreme climates), but many wear it in order to seem more acceptable to other races, especially humans. They prefer heavy (but not stiff), loose, somewhat oversized cloth that doesn't restrict their movements; cloaks are extremely common, as are half-leggings (leggings that lack an inner seam along each leg), tunics, and kilts. Form-fitting clothing is usually shunned as irritating, though gloves for hands and feet will be worn if temperature/terrain demands it. Races/Breeds: Aneans no longer have strong ethnic lines, though some bloodlines retain distinguishing features from old races. Language: Aneans speak laea, a surprisingly smooth and musical language with a throaty, liquid sound. Laea is well-guarded by aneans and very rarely taught to non-aneans; this fosters suspicion and paranoia among some races who view aneans as competition and/or a threat to their place in the galaxy, most notably humans. Laea does not have a complicated structure, but its vocabulary is extensive and intricately-nuanced. Laean songs are usually considered quite beautiful, in a markedly alien way. Technology: Aneans are fairly primitive when it comes to technology; they manage basic weaponry and buildings, but greater forms of transportation and architecture evade them. They rely on their own physical and magical abilities to sustain them, rather than manufactured tools and structures. However, they adapt well to other races' technology and civilization. Magic: Aneans are one of the top five magically-inclined and -talented races in the universe. Like humans, they do not have a particular magical affinity, but have an innate skill with magic of all kinds and alignments, including nature magic, elemental magic, arcane magic, Light-based magic, and dark magic. While aneans do not forsake their physical skills and prowess for magical training, body and magical skill often go hand-in-hand. Aneans typically follow the human magical castes, some few even becoming fully-trained Lightworkers. Until emerging into the greater interplanetary community, aneans thought little of their own magical skill and trained it to a point of functionality, rather than expertise; upon meeting other races, especially humans, many have begun training themselves to a point of mastery. Values: Aneans are quite individualistic in their values, and most of those values are based upon their chosen magical path / type of magic with which they work. In a more generalized sense, aneans value personality, physical and magical ability, individuality, and freedom (free will, free time, freedom of choice, freedom of movement, free speech, etc). They cooperate with other people when it's in their best interests, though they are not strictly self-serving and can often be generous or more selfless. They also value instincts and intuition, the more 'primitive' parts of their own psyches and heritage, and quietly frown upon those people who have forsaken animality for a purely intellectual, 'civilized' demeanor. Social Groups/Society: Aneans are loosely social. They cooperate within a tribal structure, with only a vague sense of hierarchy (if one is more knowledgeable or skilled, one gets more respect and responsibility) - but it is not tight-knit like an actual pack would be. Even individual families aren't always very close, depending on how independent the child grows to be and how committed/long-term the mated pair is to each other. Aneans are generally independent individuals, remaining self-sufficient and self-contained while cooperating in order to achieve bigger, community-based goals. (If halasshi hadn't come and lifted them off-world, they would have been a long time more in developing the technology themselves to make it off Omaia.) Aneans will still have smaller, personal social groups - a few friends here and there, some closer peers or fellow magic-users - but are quite capable of thriving on their own. Anean society is a somewhat haphazard thing - they will allow themselves to be directed with reasonable commands by a person they view as worthy of respect, but unquestioning obedience is not within their behavioral structure. An anean leader can experience great success in uniting and motivating its community, or it can be entirely frustrated as everyone goes their own ways. Reproduction/Aging: Aneans are normally not long-lived unless they employ magic to extend their lifespans. An anean child will spend six months in the womb, six months as an infant, enter adolescence at four years, and be a physical adult at five years. They don't show debilitating signs of aging until 45-50 years of age, and most don't live past 60. Aneans who work with arcane magic or healing magic can often live into their 70s if they are very careful and deliberately take care of themselves. As for reproduction, aneans do not have casual flings, but parents of a child do not always stay together once the child is three or four years old. Many aneans mate for life; many are long-term mates (being serious about the choice of mate and having only a few in their lifetimes); others mate for the express purpose of combining good bloodlines into a healthy child. Aneans are somewhat sexually dimorphic in their choice of mates; a male-female pairing will almost always result in offspring, while a male-male or female-female pairing cannot reproduce. Aneans who want the emotional and physical intimacy of matehood without the consequential children will usually seek out a mate of their own gender; aneans who want to reproduce on a fairly regular basis will seek out a mate of the opposite gender. While aneans do know a few herbal and magical ways to avoid conception, it is a rare male-female pair that never wants children; they use these contraceptives to plan for their offspring, rather than remove the possibility altogether. Aneans normally have only one child, though twins are not impossible; most will wait until the current child is grown before contemplating another, and some will only have one child every ten years. In order to expand their numbers somewhat rapidly as the species pushes farther away from its homeworld, many aneans are reproducing with non-mates, raising the child for about a year, and then letting another pair of parents foster it for the rest of its childhood. In this way, some families now have two or three children, instead of only one. Habitat/Settlements: Aneans are quite hardy and can be found in nearly any habitat, from very wet to very dry, very warm to very cold. Most prefer a more seasonal or temperate climate. As for settlements, aneans on Omaia live in fairly primitive town-like setups with a wide tract of unbuilt land around it for limited agriculture and hunting. Some aneans still live without a permanent settlement, roaming as nomads with nothing more than tents - if that - to suffice as a home. However, outside of Omaia, aneans have adopted more 'civilized' living conditions, conforming to human and halasshi housing standards. They remain quite adaptable, however, and rarely complain at 'harsh' living conditions. Religion/Beliefs: Aneans do not have a religion, though some follow the Light zealously. Most aneans balance a sense of respect for the living world, and the magic within it, with a strong rationality and logic. What happens after death, or whether non-talking things (animals, plants) have sentient spirits, does not concern them. Aneans understand how magic and qki work, and they work within those rules; they understand how their bodies work, and they work within that range. They study how the worlds, other races, and the universe in general work, and they use that knowledge. Some have cultural superstitions or personal beliefs (usually drawn from extended observation), but most have little to do with unfounded blind-faith beliefs. (For this reason, the fact that some aneans are Lightworkers is a credit to the validity of the Light.) Interaction w/ Other Species: Aneans are generally open and amicable towards other races. Most species receive them in kind, though some are slightly more wary of them due to their somewhat savage, carnivorous appearance. Humans, however, seem to view aneans as a threat to their supremacy as widespread magic-users in the universe, and many humans are hostile towards, nervous around, or suspicious of aneans. (Humans working with aneans as fellow magic-users seem to range the gamut in negative to positive reactions. Humans who don't care about magic are generally more concerned with anean teeth and claws than their magic ability.) Other predatory races tend to respect and like aneans, though aneans are generally careful to present themselves in a neutral, rather than predatory, light. Halasshi, in particular, are fond of aneans, and aneans return the affection towards the race who uplifted them.

Concept of White Privilege Creates Incompetent Administrators and Ignorant Students by michael on September 27, 2016 I just read this article. They key paragraph is the last paragraph: Now, let’s ask ourselves: who is the true liberal in this story? Heather Hackman will undermine everyone by her mandatory collectivism. Jaime Escalante and John Saxon say, no, you can bring out the best in yourself, you can reach higher, and that’s the intelligent choice for you and your society. The article is brief. Please read the entire piece. By Bruce Deitrick Price In 1974, Jaime Escalante took a job at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles, California. He found himself in a challenging situation: teaching math to Hispanic students at a rundown school known for violence and drugs. While many dismissed his students as unteachable, Escalante pushed them to reach their potential. He started an advanced mathematics program with a handful of students. He was so successful that a testing service accused his students of cheating. They weren’t. Hollywood made a fine movie out of the story called Stand and Deliver (1988). Escalante’s students were the last ones expected to succeed academically, but Escalante told them: “I’ll teach you math, and that’s your language. With that, you’re going to make it. You’re going to college and sit in the first row, not the back, because you’re going to know more than anybody.” He was harassed by the usual nitwits in the Education Establishment. They said he came to work too early, he stayed too late, his standards were too high, he was attempting the impossible, and what good could come of that? Escalante (1930-2010) is, to put it simply, one of this country’s finest teachers. He was a great man. It’s an honor to read about him. Everyone should know about his work. If you are moved by nobility, and steadiness of purpose, success achieved against overwhelming odds, this guy’s story will make you cry. Needless to say, the Education Establishment should have adopted his ideas and used them throughout the country. Instead, administrators tried to limit his influence and make him go away. Escalante shared a lot in common with that other great maverick, John Saxon. They had all the good ideas. The Education Establishment hated them for this. Anyone serious about improving a school should seek inspiration from Saxon and Escalante. On the other hand, left-wing education consultant Heather Hackman (real name) sees all of education as a chance to advance socialist and progressive attitudes. She speaks of “doing climate justice work through a social justice lens.” (Possibly, this means that if you live in a hot city, you get a higher grade on the theory that the city is hot only because of climate change.) Hackman argues that teachers shouldn’t even bother teaching (their ostensible job) if they aren’t committed to promoting social justice in school. Her website uses this slogan: “Deep Diversity, Equity And Social Justice Consulting For A Changing World.” Of course, “diversity” and “equity” could point at different goals, which suggests that her agenda is not well thought out. In Hackman’s telling, virtually everything associated with being a successful student is nothing but chains imposed by racist white supremacy. She argues that “Grades [and] Showing Up On Time Are A Form Of White Supremacy.” (How racist is that? Apparently non-white people can’t be punctual.) Hackman’s solution is “to train teachers to move away from all these aspects of white privilege in education. She routinely touted the benefits of collective assessments (measuring student learning at the class level instead of determining whether each student knows the material), as well as eliminating all school grades entirely.” Now, imagine a design school, flying school, or law school (i.e., any real school) trying these stunts. Hackman graciously concedes that “in the current white supremacist system, there is some expectation that teachers will know conventional English and possess other basic knowledge. As a result, she admitted modern activist teachers should try to learn those things sufficiently to get a job, but only for the purpose of infiltrating schools to change them from within.” If you want to emphasize ideological maneuvers, as John Dewey and his successors always preferred, then you will continually create inferior school systems and mediocre students. That’s a price that Heather Hackman is eager to pay. And she gets paid for recommending these priorities. However, the students themselves might prefer to move ahead in their chosen careers. The society needs people who can do a good job and want to, as opposed to an inferior job and a bad attitude. Heather Hackman serves her ideology ahead of the needs of society and students. In the 1990s, Reform Math included that most bogus of all programs, MathLand. It contained such questions as “If math were a color, what would it be?” and was explicitly based on the premise that girls and minorities cannot learn math. This was precisely the premise that Escalante and Saxon repudiated.

Getting ready for a new baby usually means preparing the nursery, stocking up on nappies and baby supplies, buying stacks of cute little outfits and waiting impatiently for your due date to arrive. For first time parents, there is no way to know exactly what to expect once baby joins the family. Even people with some experience around small children are often amazed at the things they learn once they become parents. Sleeping and Crying In the beginning, babies often divide their days between two activities -- sleeping and crying. Newborns sleep up to 18 hours a day, almost always in 1-2 hour stretches. What this means for mum and dad is sleep deprivation, since it is almost impossible to get any real rest with a new baby at home. Fortunately, within a few months, most babies are giving their parents longer and longer periods of rest and some babies sleep through the night by their third month of life. Parents can expect setbacks though when it comes to sleep patterns, even in babies who seem to be on a set routine. Teething, separation anxiety, ear infections and numerous other factors will undoubtedly awaken your baby at times. Crying can be an especially difficult behaviour for new parents to cope with. Tiny little people can produce quite a racket! Early on, crying is the only way that babies have to communicate, so they cry for a variety of reasons. Hunger or a messy nappy are the first things that come to mind, but sometimes babies cry for seemingly no reason at all. This can be very difficult for parents who are operating with very little sleep and want nothing more than to keep their baby happy. After a while, many parents learn to decipher what their baby is trying to tell them by a combination of the sound of their cries and the baby's facial expressions. Sometimes though, babies cry when they are overtired or feeling stressed and after a good nap, they return to being their cheerful selves. Expressing Opinions While newborns are typically happy to snuggle with their parents, older babies have definite opinions about what they want to be doing. Some babies are naturally active and will wriggle impatiently if they are held too long. Instead, they prefer to explore their environment, touching and tasting everything that they come across. Some enjoy relaxing in a swing or playing in their activity centre. One thing is certain - it won't take long for your baby to learn to express opinions! Teething and Separation Anxiety Two things that cause plenty of concern for parents during their baby's first year are teething and separation anxiety. Teething can begin in very young babies and can turn an otherwise happy baby into a grumpy baby pretty quickly. Fortunately, once the first few teeth have emerged (usually between 4-7 months), babies often fare better as additional teeth come in. In the mean time, parents can help teething babies by offering teething rings or frozen washcloths. In cases where the discomfort seems extreme, the GP may advise giving pain medication, such as acetaminophen or ibuprofen. Separation anxiety is very common in babies and usually makes its first appearance at around nine months. Babies at this age often show signs of distress when a parent or other caregiver leaves the room. While this is a perfectly normal behaviour, it can be difficult for parents who must sometimes leave their baby to go to work or for other reasons. The anxiety will pass in time, but is important for parents to cheerfully assure their little one that they will be returning soon. For some babies, snuggling with a comfort item, such as a well-loved toy or blanket, can help during this tough time. Games of peek-a-boo are often helpful as well, since they show baby that a person can "disappear" and "reappear." As babies become increasingly independent, it is perfectly normal for them to test their limits a bit. Many will hit or push and most will show some possessiveness about their toys and belongings. Fortunately, babies want very much to please their parents and will usually respond well to gentle guidance. It is important to show older babies how you expect them to behave, but it will take a number of months for them to begin cooperating with behavioural guidelines. Most often, simply redirecting a baby's attention toward a more acceptable behaviour or activity works best. In time, they will learn to share and take turns, but for now, babies do not have the capability to understand these concepts. Watching their baby take those first few unsteady steps is probably one of a parent's proudest moments. While most parents look forward to that day and try to encourage their baby's efforts at mobility, many wonder when their child will begin walking. The answer is simple -- babies walk when they are ready, and not a moment sooner. From a Crawler to a Walker Healthy, active babies find many ways to move about a room. Some roll, some shuffle, some are content to crawl long after their peers are running, and some are up on their feet and walking just when the baby books advise mum and dad that they can expect those first steps. As long as your baby is making progress, there is probably no cause for concern, even if they are slower than expected in getting up and about. If you read an assortment of baby books, they will likely tell you that babies take their first steps at approximately 12-14 months. In reality, however, your baby may be a proficient walker at nine months or may not take a single step until 16 months (or even later). Neither scenario indicates a problem, merely a natural developmental difference. Premature babies will typically take a bit longer to reach developmental milestones, walking included. Most doctors advise using a premature baby's due date, rather than their date of birth, in looking for milestones to be achieved. For example, if your baby was born five weeks early, you can expect a five week delay in reaching milestones such as rolling over, crawling, and walking. Steps Toward that First Step Babies develop physical abilities so quickly during their first year that parents are often amazed at the rapid transformation. While each step along the way is a milestone in itself, many of those first achievements are helping to prepare babies to walk. Holding their heads steadily, rolling over, finding the ability to rest on all fours, crawling, and reaching for furniture to pull themselves up to a standing position are all predecessors to walking. Each of those abilities helps to strengthen a baby's muscles and increases their confidence -- both traits that are necessary for walking. Encouraging First Steps While there isn't much that you can do to alter your baby's natural timetable, there are a few things that may help ready your baby for walking. Be sure to provide plenty of active play time to encourage the healthy development of muscle tone and coordination. Also, most experts agree that barefoot is best when learning to walk. Years ago, parents were encouraged to purchase "walking shoes" for babies, but now we know that babies do best when allowed to walk sans shoes. Babies are social beings and enjoy positive interaction with their parents and other caregivers, so be sure to engage your baby, both physically and intellectually, in order to help them to reach their highest potential. Baby Bravery Experienced parents will tell you that some babies forge through their developmental milestones fearlessly, while others are naturally a bit cautious. Sometimes, the difference between an early walker and one who waits a few more weeks (or months!) is simply a matter of caution level. Parents can help their babies to gain confidence by walking behind them and holding both of the baby's hands in the beginning. Most babies enjoy exploring their environment in this new, upright way, and will walk with a parent until mum or dad is suffering from an aching back! Worried Parents While books and baby experts can offer loads of advice, you know your baby better than anyone. If you are worried about your baby's developmental status, schedule a check up with the doctor. You can take that opportunity to discuss your concerns with the doctor and get individualised feedback. While there is usually no cause for parental worries, checking with the pediatrician not only eases a parent's fears, but in cases where there is a legitimate developmental delay, early intervention is always best.

Could hops help fight cancer? by Dee Dee Gatton, KVAL News CORVALLIS, Ore. - The Pacific Northwest grows the majority of the hops used to brew beer in America. And America's best India pale ale - a style of brew known for its hoppiness - comes from Oregon. Now researchers at Oregon State University say evidence is mounting that a flavorless chemical component of hops may have cancer-preventing properties. "This is Oregon. We are one of the Meccas for craft beer," said Jeff Clawson, the manager of the pilot brewing program at Oregon State. Hops lend beer its bitter flavor. Oregon, Washington and Idaho are the only states that grow the crop. Researchers are looking into the health benefits of a particular hop compound called Xanthohumol. "There are one or two other plants in nature that make that compound," said Dr. Fred Stevens, professor of medicinal chemistry at Oregon State. "It's really unique to the hops." Stevens isolated the compound in a petri dish model. Research found it can actually slow down the process that leads to cancer formation. "Xanthohumol is a flavonoid found in hops. We've known about it for a long time, but it never received any attention from beer brewers because it has no taste," Stevens said in a Q&A posted on the Linus Pauling Institute website. "I got interested in xanthohumol back in 1995 when I became a post-doc at Oregon State University with Professor Max Deinzer. We were investigating the chemistry of hops and focused on xanthohumol, which we were able to isolate. Professor Don Buehler, Val Miranda, and I investigated the activity of xanthohumol in cancer cells and found that it induces phase 2 enzymes - enzymes that detoxify carcinogens. That is good for cancer chemoprotection. We also found that xanthohumol inhibits phase 1 enzymes that activate pro-carcinogens. So the effect is two-fold: xanthohumol prevents activation of pro-carcinogens into carcinogens by phase 1 enzymes and helps detoxify carcinogens by the phase 2 process. We can clearly say that xanthohumol is a cancer chemoprotective compound in cell culture." A supplement containing the hops compound is already on the market in Europe. "There they showed that that particular supplement can actually decrease the frequency of hot flashes in women," Stevens said. But the research and the benefits don't stop there. Stevens is performing lab research to study the impact of a specific ingredient found in hops on your metabolism. "It could cause weight loss," he said. Researchers treated animals with the hop compound and it "caused the animals to lose weight, or they didn't gain as much weight compared to animals that were not treated." Stevens said it could potentially help prevent obesity and type 2 diabetes. "For those people, for a certain fraction of those people, it could have beneficial effects," he said. Unfortunately for beer lovers, there isn't enough Xanthohumol in beer to get the benefits just from quaffing pints of IPA. How much is enough remains to be determine. Researchers are still investigating how much of the Xanthohumol people would need to take to see a health benefit.

Why We Should Love 'null' null has been the cause for countless troubles in the history of software development. Today, 'null' and 'the billion-dollar mistake' are synonyms. Therefore some developers try to avoid null by using techniques such as 'return zero instead of null', the NullObject pattern or the Optional/Maybe pattern. Should you use these techniques in your source code? Do they lead to more reliable software? Or is there a better solution? These are the questions this article tries to answer. Book Review: Integration Testing from the Trenches The book posits early on that Integration tests are brittle and hard to diagnose, so they should not be used instead of unit tests, and that is the reason that continuous integration servers generally measure coverage of unit tests but not integration tests. Most of the time, Integration Testing is either crudely defined, wrongly understood or imperfectly used. In order to maximize the ROI, the most important guideline should be: the larger the SUT (System Under Test), the lesser the required code coverage Governance of Agile Delivery Critics say that Agile methodology is all about working in an unstructured way and for that reason, they believe that governing agile practices is always a challenge. While some of the Agile principles appear to support such criticism, there are many cases where organizations have successfully implemented processes and frameworks towards governance of Agile practices. Agile practitioners believe that because the agile methods are designed to be self-assuring, when practiced right, there exists built-in governance and accountability. Unique Scrum Practices for a Better-Quality Product Without making real improvements to software development practices, expecting a quality improvement is a sin. ... Do detailed design only for the code that you need to write for the sprint. There is additional effort spent on coming up with a generic design and generic reusable libraries. While they are good to keep for future use, it is critical to design only for the sprint's need. ... The team should be able to collectively own the entire code base. This means everyone on the Scrum team should know the code, to at least a certain level. It's OK to have an owner for the code, but it shouldn't be a black box for other developers in the team. Operational Efficiency Identity Management Metrics The idea behind this article is to discuss and classify specific metrics that indicate the need to adopt identity management practices and solutions. Although this list will not be exhaustive, it will provide most of the top identity management metrics that most companies will benefit from. Again we will break down the metric in the main drives for identity management as defined by my Top Reasons to Implement Identity Management. Note that for the purpose of this exercise we will cover drivers across identity provisioning as well as governance solutions, and the metrics are technology and platform agnostic. From Software-Defined to Metadata-Driven Software is eating the world! Every company is becoming a software company. If companies don’t, they cease to exist. Just imagine: you are a thermostat maker and suddenly you have Google as a competitor (via its Nest acquisition). This is just one of the many recent examples. Interestingly a lot of the innovations in the software industry are fuelled by abstraction and automation, concepts that are well-known in the Model-Driven Development (MDD) community. As the world is awakening to these concepts there is a clear opportunity (and need!) to bring MDD to a much broader audience. Google Dumps MapReduce in Favor of New Hyper-Scale Analytics System “We don’t really use MapReduce anymore,” Hölzle said in his keynote presentation at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco Wednesday. The company stopped using the system “years ago.” Cloud Dataflow, which Google will also offer as a service for developers using its cloud platform, does not have the scaling restrictions of MapReduce. “Cloud Dataflow is the result of over a decade of experience in analytics,” Hölzle said. “It will run faster and scale better than pretty much any other system out there.” It is a fully managed service that is automatically optimized, deployed, managed and scaled. It enables developers to easily create complex pipelines using unified programming for both batch and streaming services, he said. God-Mode in Production Code Takipi operates at the native JVM level, which allows it to detect and show you any form of exception or error in your code, regardless of whether it was thrown by the application code, the JVM, a 3rd party library, or how it was caught. You can see and sort through all the errors through Takipi’s dashboard which operates as a sort of spreadsheet for all the errors in your application. You can sort and filter them by the most recent ones, ones that have recently increased in volume, or by a specific type. When a new location in your code begins firing an error, Takipi will notify you by email. It also sends daily digests that summarize which new errors have been introduced into your code, and top errors across your cluster. What is the job of Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) in ISO 27001? ISO 27001 is written in such a way that it is applicable to companies of any size, in any industry, so requiring small companies to have a designated CISO would be overkill. Since ISO 27001 does not require the CISO, it does not prescribe what this person should do, either – so it is up to you to decide what suits your company the best. Generally, this person should coordinate all the activities related to securing the information in a company, and here are some ideas on what this person could do (divided by ISO 27001 sections): Engineering Velocity: Continuous Delivery at Netflix with Diane Marsh Netflix's Dianne Marsh told the story of the open source based tool stack supporting continuous delivery at Netflix. Very inspiring to see DevOps at work, although Dianne's remark that she "never had to argue a business case or think much about cost" caused some of us to wonder whether successful DevOps implemenations were dependent on unlimited budget availability... "Lead and inspire people. Don't try to manage and manipulate people. Inventories can be managed but people must be lead." —-- Ross Perot

Computer programming in schools… Can we avoid coding ourselves into a corner? The push for Swedish schools to teach students to code computers is now in full swing. This year, the Swedish government announced key changes to its requirements for the teaching of ‘digital competence’ in schools. This shift includes provision for programming to be introduced at all grade levels, becoming “a distinct feature of several different subjects in primary schools, especially in technology and mathematics”. Sweden is by no means alone in these ambitions. Indeed, countries around the world are rushing to introduce computer programming, coding and software development into the curriculum. Increasing numbers of teachers are being trained to teach computer science in primary and secondary classrooms. Well-funded organizations such as Code.Org and Code the Future are offering outside-school tuition and resources. There has been a surge of interest in low cost mini-computers such as the Micro:Bit and Raspberry Pi, alongside programming languages such as Scratch and Python. Coding has quickly become part of the global educational agenda. UnitedSoybeanBoard (CC BY 2.0) At first glance, it might seem that there is little to disagree with. After all, coding is fun, intellectually challenging and in tune with current educational preoccupations with all things ‘STEM’ (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). These are skills that one would expect to be important for future employment. Coding also fits neatly with the rising prominence of Silicon Valley thinking and ‘geek culture’. Crucially, coding offers a possible means of addressing the perennial ‘crisis’ of schools failing to meet contemporary economic and societal needs. For all these reasons, most people consider coding in the classroom to be a ‘no brainer’. Yet as these plans begin to be put into practice, there are signs that things are not quite as straightforward as we might like to think: First is the problem of what is actually being taught. There are various flavors and forms of ‘coding’, but the type that is filtering down to many classrooms is a rather bland, generic and simplistic form of engaging with the subject. As one IT industry insider recently observed, many schools are delivering superficial forms of ‘pop computing’, based around “watered down content and using simple coding apps” that only offer “quick experiences of drag-and-drop code entertainment”. Moreover, while there might seem to be much conceptual overlap between programming and other school subjects such as math, there is little empirical evidence for sustained transfer effects between learning programming and other domains. Similarly, as Laura Pappano recently noted, “there is no reliable research showing that computing makes one more creative or more able to problem-solve”. A recently published randomized control trial found that after-school coding clubs in the UK had no impact on computational thinking as measured by the BEBRAS assessment, but did significantly improve coding competency. Thus, concern is growing that the kinds of forms of coding being introduced may have little potential for developing general skills or creating learning transfer to other subjects, and that they may end up eating into the limited time for other core school subjects. Second is the problem of how coding is actually being taught. Some ‘new’ computer science subjects have been criticized as narrowly technical and procedural (echoing the distinction that Mike Trucano makes between ‘learning to code’ as opposed to ‘coding to learn’). There are growing reports of teachers and students struggling with coding and programming, particularly in primary schools. Many adults have been shocked to find students getting bored with what they find to be not such a ‘fun’ activity after all. As Mitch Resnick (the MIT professor involved in LOGO and the child-oriented Scratch programming environment) argues, “if you present just logic puzzles, it’s like teaching them writing by only teaching grammar and punctuation.” How ‘best’ to teach coding at scale across entire school systems is a challenging (and as yet unanswered) question that will require considerable time and effort to resolve. Third is the problem of securing the scale of funding and resourcing required to match the considerable hype. Achieving system-wide school change takes more than promises and enthusiasm, and policymakers have struggled to commit to coding in schools on a substantial level. Even President Obama’s much-touted promise in 2016 to commit $4billion of federal funding for computer science education in US schools was never realized. Countries such as Sweden need to learn from the mistakes made in countries such as England that drastically underfunded teacher professional development in how to teach new coding curricula. One year after England’s new computing curriculum came into effect in 2014, over 40% of primary teachers reported not having had adequate professional development and nearly one third reported lacking the ability to teach the new subject matter. Governments around the world are finding that rewriting their national curriculum documents is the easy part. Achieving genuine systemic change requires sustained resourcing commitments over long periods of time. So, what can be done? For us, this is an area of ‘digital education’ that is in urgent need of more open debate and realistic discussion. Most people, ourselves included, are not against the idea of coding being part of schools per se. Yet all the recent developments just outlined have certainly occurred with undue haste and little (or no) critical scrutiny. As such, it seems imperative to reclaim the topic of ‘coding in schools’ as a site of balanced conversation, consideration and choice – moving past the hype and fears that currently surround it. So what might be done? This is certainly a topic that needs to be better problematized, questioned and productively challenged. There are many different ways that coding might be part of schooling, many different rationales and approaches. One might propose, for example, a completely different version of ‘coding in schools’ that fosters critical understandings of the politics and social power of programming and algorithmic culture. Perhaps, as a recent article in Wired reasoned, coding classes should be seen as a vocational option likely to lead to the twenty-first century equivalent of a skilled job in a car factory, as opposed to a fast track to becoming the next Mark Zuckerberg. These are all debates that a country such as Sweden needs to be pursuing. It is time that some simple but direct questions are addressed – not least: Why exactly are we doing this, and what do we want to result? Most importantly, how might we initiate a more thoughtful, nuanced debate about the pros and cons of what is clearly not a straightforward development? Now the curriculum changes have been finalized, the challenge of coding in schools has only just begun. Träning av icke-tekniska färdigheter i simulatormiljö: Hur går det till i praktiken? Programmering på schemat (igen) – hur gick det till? #PopUpDig17 – A Research-led Conference on the Digitalization of Schools Algorithmic Accountability Three learning and IT themes from 2016 Is Ed-Tech research nearing its ‘Big Tobacco’ moment? Datalogiskt tänkande och formaliseringens fallgropar Programmeringens återkomst

Writing It Your Way by Ivory Soap “That subject has been done a lot, but never in that way.” There were two words in that sentence, spoken by my super-experienced agent, that made me want to jump up and down and call all my friends. “…that way.” Meaning, MY way. Meaning, I have a distinct way of handling a subject that is recognizable from one piece of work to another. A style. So, how does a new writer get one? In my experience, it’s not something that one does on purpose and almost never appears consistently in the early work. It develops over time and experience as the baby fat comes off the writing. STYLE is what remains after loads of critique and rejection and perseverance. It’s what remains after we learn and accept how people hear us on the page. There are several stages to developing, or more correctly, excavating a writer’s style. Stage One: Learning the Rules This is the stage when we re-learn how to punctuate, speak in active voice, form a three-step plot, and all of those other craft basics. For poetry, it’s about learning to hear the beat, stressed and unstressed syllables, perfect and near rhyme, etc. For novels, it’s about things like dialogue tags, communicating the internal thoughts of the character without standing them in front of mirrors every five seconds, eliminating redundancies and minimizing adverbs. We all pop in and out of this stage as we develop and explore our medium, but until we are reasonably fluent in this area, it will blind readers and editors to all else. Stage Two: Learning to see the world through another’s eyes This is we can write a decent, well-formed story, but it’s nothing new. Yes, our kids are cute, our granddads had great lives, or we can write a fun fish story, but unless there’s a lot more to it than that, it’s not something editors are dying to pluck from the slush. They have a million more just like it. To get through this stage, we must learn to pop into the heads of the audience and see things from their perspective, not ours. This is when we learn about layers. Writing stories that aren’t just coherent and cute, but work on several levels. This is when we learn the difference between our work and what’s being published. Just like the previous stage, we fade in and out of this one over time, but at some point, when our critique partner says, “I think you need to start this story earlier. For a kid, the experience starts with packing the car,” we should see what she’s talking about and be able to make it happen. Stage Three: Making Good Choices This is the fun part. This is where you are fluent and understand how to write something others want. You can choose YOUR topic and write it for BOTH you and the audience. This is the time when you will settle into a favorite groove. Some types of poetry will create the effect you like better than others. Some types of prose, perhaps. You approach the world with a distinct attitude and way of communicating and people can see “you” across your work. Stage Four: External Style Recognition For each medium in which we work, our style can be described in ten words or less. Deanna’s pb–Sparse, poetic childlike wonder, descriptive imagery. Ashburn pb–Bouncy, sassy, often adorably sicko. Wheeler pb– Seamless brisk rhyme. Punny, sweet stories. Editors think of YOU when they want something with a certain attitude. “I want a new baby story in Deanna’s style” or “Kelly is so good at such-and-such humor. Her treatment of this subject would be perfect.” That’s what we’re looking for. I thought in the beginning that I was a humor writer, since that’s how I am in person. But, after loads of rejection, critique, and practice, I see that my best-received work always has a highly sensory, “beautiful” element to it. My fiction ‘funny’ is caustic and boring without a 98% poetic setting. Huh, who knew? Certainly not me. Not until I’d had about 100 critiques and about double that many submissions. Let’s hope you’re a faster learner than I am!

Our Trip to Mississippi (Day 2) On Day 2 of our trip to Mississippi, we decided to spend the bulk of the day exploring the Civil War battlefield in Vicksburg. It was a little chilly and drizzly and rainy all day, and the grey day seemed fitting, given the horrible bloodshed and tragedy that happened there during mid-May through early July in 1863. When you first drive into the national park – (which is mammoth, by the way) – you see mounds of dirt that still remain, despite the rain and erosion for decades, that were used as cover for the soldiers. You also see many cannons, large and small. And monuments. Lots and lots of monuments. Despite the park being incredibly large and extremely hilly, it’s easy to see the entire, very large park – as shown below, as there is a good one-lane road that winds throughout. We stopped frequently of course, to take in the ambiance of the place, to say ‘hello’ to the souls that still live there, and of course, to photograph these images. The Illinois State Memorial is one of the most impressive monuments at Vicksburg, in terms of size and architecture. I deliberately shot this image out of focus and in the rain, trying to capture the forlorn feeling of the place. The rain reminded us both that the soldiers fought their battles in all kinds of weather. It is no surprise that more soldiers died of disease than wounds from battle. The USS Cairo gunboat and museum are also within the park. Fortunately, it was all under cover because it was pouring rain by then. This massive hunk of metal and wood was sunk on December 12, 1862. Many decades later — in the 1960’s and 70’s –the gunboat was cut into 3 pieces, raised from the water and silt at the bottom of the Mississippi River, and cleaned and restored. Much of the original wood can still be seen, but much as been replaced to give structural stability. As we were departing, I shot a few photos of some of the handiwork on the museum’s grounds. Fortunately, the rain let up and we were able to explore the acres of cemeteries. The little squirrel above reminded me of a quote I love which says that life goes on. I took this macro shot of some leaves that were lying beside the road. It’s yet another example that decay can be beautiful. We again got in our car and rounded a few more curves and there it was: this cannon with a view of the mighty Mississippi. By this point, we were both feeling a little quiet and somber. And hungry. And damp. So we ate lunch and then we headed to Natchez. We checked into the bed and breakfast that Mark chose and explored Natchez a little bit before nightfall. Before I end this post, however, I want to share some Photoshop creations that my very talented, professional photographer husband wanted to share of our special day in Vicksburg.

Love (...) In A Cold Climate Culture/Gatherer Zadie Smith: NW Recently, I won a contest on Twitter for an advanced copy of Zadie Smith's new book NW (thanks to @PenguinCanada!). I was ecstatic to say the very least and I would have posted a review here earlier ... if it didn't take me forever to get through it. I wasn't truly invested in the story or characters until p. 184!! The image of London (Britain) I grew up with was, as discussed in our earliest post, ancient and filled with (mostly) posh sorts running around in leather shoes and well fitted suits (so mostly men too). Or, I imagined Jane Austen's England - rolling country side, garden parties, elaborate group dances, and sewing in manorial salons. This image was entirely based on PBS/ AE (pre-Dog the Bounty Hunter) tv programming. As I explored British culture in my teens and twenties, I realized that English/ British culture was much grittier and erratic. Never in my television education of British culture (or even my first university survey course) did I encounter workers or immigration (post-colonialism). But, in fact, a whole generation of authors, academics, and artists had recuperated the life of ordinary Britons and declared it to be the more authentic experience/ identity. It was a badge of honour to speak with a thick Cockney/ Mancunian/ Scouse/ Geordie accent and terribly embarrassing to admit that one had a public school education. It's the reason, I believe, that shows like Eastenders, Coronation Street, Life on Mars, and The Only Way is Essex have such a prominent place alongside the depictions of Britain/ England that emphasize the gilded life of the landed aristocrats (Downton Abbey, Upstairs, Downstairs, Made in Chelsea). Interesting fact: in 2001, Foreign Secretary to the Social Market Foundation in London Robin Cook declared that Tikka Masala was the true national dish of the UK! Zadie Smith has been one of the young British authorial voices that have challenged readers to futher complicate their understanding of British identity by considering the experiences of the different immigrant communities that make their homes in every section of London. In NW, we follow best friends Leah Hanwell and Natalie (Keisha) Blake as they grow up on and each move away from the Caldwell council estate in North London. Both characters are held as examples of how one "successfully" makes something of themselves coming from disadvantaged circumstances. Natalie, unlike Leah, is determined to escape her humble beginnings. She doesn't waste time with romance or socializing. Like her boring first boyfriend Rodney, she's decided that the law will offer her refuge and nothing will deter her from her goal. This single-minded focus on fleeing a life of poverty, however, leaves her feeling empty and with a lingering fear that she doesn't have a personality. These feelings fester and keep her from enjoying the fruits of her labour (gorgeous posh husband, kids, and financial stability). Leah, in contrast, seems to drift effortlessly away from life on the estates but that doesn't mean she feels any more satisfied with her adult life than her friend. Alongside Natalie and Leah, we also meet car mechanic Felix Cooper who, unlike the other characters in this novel, is an example of someone who tries to leave the housing project through film making but doesn't quite make it. As the lukewarm review in the New York Times pointed out, Smith's latest effort asks readers to consider questions of luck and choices in one's fate especially as it pertains to class and identity. Unlike the dominant ethos of meritocracy of postwar British politics and society, reality is much more random and class barriers remain. This theme is especially pertinent to a Britain that last year weathered days of riots in the street and continues to hear David Cameron's Tories tell that that Britons "are all in it together." Smith's depiction of NW London is vibrant but it's also sordid and dangerous. The neighbourhoods in which these characters live are spaces in which the rich and poor (young and old) quite literally fight over space on the streets and in parks. The book opens with a young woman called Shar who knocks on Leah's door supposedly desperate for cab fare to get to the hospital. Only we learn that the story was an elaborate lie employed by the young (dirty) woman to fund a drug habit. This original meeting leads to a much more dangerous physical altercation. Later on, Natalie finds herself amongst a crowd of adults berating a pair of youths who decide to smoke on a playground. These youths are less threatening that those encountered by Leah but they are no less insistent on their right to occupy the public space with these yuppie mums. Smith's new book is challenging in structure as well as subject matter. She swaps between narrative voices and adopts a stream of consciousness technique for a substantial portion of the book. This method is effective in conveying the real way that people speak, think and live (haphazardly rather than in a clean perfectly organized and poetic paragraphs). It is not as clear, however, why Smith manipulates the text in certain spots to mimic a text or email message a character receives. It's not a method she employs enough (as in Jonathan Safran Foer Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close for example) to convince the reader that it's essential to the story that she sets out to tell. I can't decide if NW is a must-read. It was passed over by the Man Booker prize committee this year and I can't disagree. The story and characters feel half-baked. This is not Smith's most evocative portrayal of immigrant lives in London or modern British identity. However, Smith's insight into modern London life is unique and required reading for those who want a richer understanding of British culture. The "People's Games"? Reflections on London 2012 [Note: This is a similiar version of a post on my own blog, here. @IdleHistorian] Throughout London 2012 I have thought back to the similarities with Vancouver in 2010. They were also presaged by much-hand wringing over the exorbitant cost, doubts over whether it was really worth the trouble, grave predictions about traffic chaos and other doom-saying. This was followed by exhilaration, over-the-top patriotism, joy, triumph, and a long-lasting warm and fuzzy glow. London 2012 has already been all this. On speed. I follow a variety of Brits from different walks of life and political persuasions on twitter and have witnessed a roller-coaster of emotion since July 27th. It began with outright hostility, Olympic-sized portions of Eeyoreish worry and whingeing ["When Will This Nightmare End?"] about the cost, the G4S security debacle (remember them?), corporate authoritarianism, 81-year-old grannies being forced to withdraw Olympic hand-knitted dolls from church jumble sales and the like. But then, By Jove, the Opening Ceremonies arrived and Danny Boyle was arranging Freeborn Englishmen (and women) in the green and pleasant land and children were singing Jerusalem and there were dancing nurses in a tribute to the NHS and Mr. Bean being unbelievably hilarious with a Chariots of Fire spoof and, OMG, The Queen and James Bond, and my tweeps were tweeting fast and furiously. These jaded souls who had been complaining only a day before that it would all be "rubbish" were crying, cheering and declaring that Britain was the best country ever in all history [*] and that the Ceremony showed the nation's unbounded humour and individualism and creativity (read: "Take that, Beijing!") and they'd never felt happier in all their lives and Danny Boyle for a Knighthood *this instant* while we've got Her Majesty right here!!!! Danny Boyle's vision of pre-industrial England, before the"dark satanic mills" - reference: hymn Jerusalem and poem by William Blake And the waves of emotion haven't let up. Team GB has truly done brilliantly. Of course everyone needed to panic for a day or two that Britain wouldn't win any medals at all, but from the first gold to Dickensian-named Bradley Wiggins dear old Blighty has been running on happy fumes. Even the acerbic and performative-cynic Charlie Brooker has been caught up in the frenzy. There has been an uncharacteristic showing of collective emotion in Britain and among its athletes. As per one tweet: "@sarasheridan: Another gold! Only 7% of Chinese &amp; 17% of US athletes cry on medal podium @TeamGB win blubbing gold on 37.5% ". One British friend has proffered this explanation for the "blubbering": Chinese and American athletes largely expect to be on the podium. Brits generally, having bought into the national myth of being "rubbish" at sport and inevitable failures, greet victory with these wellsprings of emotion. There are stories aplenty to provide a backdrop for an inclusive, meritocratic Games - as modern Britain wishes to see itself. All this has left many asking: What does this say about modern Britain, national identity, or the national character? How do these reactions fit with history and received ideas of "Britishness" in this post-Imperial and multicultural landscape? Differing political factions have been able to read into the Games the narrative they wish. Conservatives like Boris Johnson trumpet the lessons (as they see it) for free enterprise, competition, and other assorted Big Society ideas. (Gratuitous link to Boris-stuck-on-zipline meme.) For The Daily Telegraph it was an opportunity for national regeneration and ascertaining where Britain's "genius lies." For The Guardian and more left-of-centre individuals the Opening Ceremony and the Games itself are a model of an egalitarian, integrated and less class-ridden nation they would wish to realize. As one twitter said after the Boyle opener: "Britain: slightly bonkers and more socialist than some would wish, for 2000 years." There was much chatter about this "socialist" vision in light of current British politics under the Coalition Government. It is perhaps only correct that there should be (not to sound too postmodern) "multiple meanings" of the Games. Perhaps Britain's "genius" lies in the direction of being able to equally combine both the pre-Games criticism, hatred of authoritarianism and being told what to think and do, and also a plurality of "meanings" inherent in sport and belonging. Britain has been doing its freedom-thing for awhile now. It can cope with contradiction and ambiguity - which strikes me as an exceptionally useful quality. Somehow these elements become spun into positive narratives of national identity. I do think the much-lauded British sense of humour goes a long way in this direction. The Games are now at an end, but one hopes their sense of national belonging and happy after-glow will also continue. * As of Day 6: Canada has medaled twice in synchronized diving (3 m spring board and 10 m), judo, weight lifting, silver medals in the men's and women's eight, and a bronze in the pool (100 M freestyle). The team went to London 2012 with a projected total of 22 medals, which according to commentators is not unreasonable given that Canadian athletes have gotten more funding and attention since we found out Vancouver would be hosting the 2010 winter games. Without the pressure of having the world on your home turf, I think Canadians are generally content to hang out around the middle of the pack. We know we can't compete with the likes of Team USA or China. Each country had 19 medals on day 3 with China leading in the gold medal count (10). And, to be honest, we're not pushing our athletes to challenge those superhuman automatons. We cheer on our athletes to "do their best." We're genuinely pleased when they come home with a silver (Gasp! That's almost gold!! ) or bronze medal. We are also guilty of salivating at what might have been in an alternative reality. Missy Franklin has Canadian parents, dual citizenship, and loves Nova Scotia. She's basically on Team Canada. right? I wonder what it must be like to be an athlete from Team Great Britain at these games. Surely, the crushing pressure to perform must be unbearable. How does a much-hyped athlete like Victoria Pendleton, for example, cope with disqualification?! And amid: confusion (from viewers in the New World mostly) about what went on during the Opening Ceremony as well as the organizational debacle of empty seats, the Brits don't need something else to grip over. This is how the Brits historically and currently sit: *On day 3 (when I started this post), Team GB has medalled in the pool (Rebecca Addlinton, bronze in the 200 m freestyle), in the road race( Lizzie Armitstead, silver), men's team gymnastics (bronze), and equestrian (silver, team that included Zara Phillips). Now day 6, the medal count has erupted to 16 with FIVE gold medals!! Sir Chris Hoy claimed in FIFTH gold medal in the velodrome and road cyclist Mr. Sideburns (Bradley Wiggins) won the individual time trials on day 5! There's no panic for Team GB ... yet. Though, sports commentators have noticed that the disparity in performance as compared to Beijing. The team still doesn't have a gold medal! And if we have learned anything about the British tendency/ nature to whinge about things, we should be able to see the wave of criticism about to crash into the shore. I can only this item of British pop culture (which is really how Canadians approach sport competition .... in every case except for the Stanley Cup finals between Vancouver and Boston...) at a moment like this: You know which Brit is winning big at London 2012? Boris Johnson I've been slow off the mark (sports pun there, har har) compared to my colleague, so the lack of gold medals for Team GB (previously alluded to) has been wiped away in 2-3 days of competition, standing at this moment at a glorious five. The first came from the Dickensian-named national hero Bradley Wiggins, who celebrated his victory by pursuing that other British national sport: "getting wasted." Team GB boosters have scaled back their predictions of 70 medals somewhat, but on the whole the Brits seem on track for a great showing at the Games. The British media and public have since breathed an almost audible sigh of relief and can now get back to the usual hand-wringing about all manner of other issues. Will the weather hold up? The transport? Is London running too smoothly? Did Bumbling Boris scare the tourists all away with his talk of metropolitan chaos and thus utterly ruin businesses? Canadians, meanwhile, as SloaneScholar1 noted, are pretty much content with a "respectable showing." Hey - Prince Harry visited Canada House ("everyone swoons")! What else does a nation need?? I believe that we still are basking in the reflected glory of Vancouver 2010 during which we *ahem* won more gold medals than ANY previous nation at a Winter Olympics (un-Canadian moment of boasting there). Not only that, but the final competition of the Games saw the famous men's ice hockey "golden goal" against the USA - the one moment that will live in the memory of Canadians of my generation. I was in the streets of Vancouver that day and it was, in a word, incredible. To put it in perspective for the Brits: It would be like scoring a winning goal in extra time. On the last day of competition. To win a football gold medal. In Wembley Stadium. Against the Germans. One truly wishes Team GB something approaching this ecstasy and a great remainder of the Games.

Click here to visit the Big Bend Website. Go exploring and take notes on what most interests you about the park. Click some of the links on the left-hand side and explore information about hiking, horseback riding, sight seeing, and more. Click on the picture to the left to watch a 5-minute video about Big Bend. Take notes on your favorite parts as you watch. When you're finished with the video, go back to the Research Bag. Click here to visit the Web Rangers site, where you can be Junior Ranger of the National Parks on the Internet! This website has information and activities about all of the National Parks. At school, please enter the site as a visitor. If you want to sign up to be a Web Ranger, please talk to your parents at home about making an account. Animal Track Identifier You should have already read through the books and pamphlets in the research bag about animals and plants. Now, you do some research online to find out more about the adaptations of desert animals and plants. You can use Google. A good search term would be "wind power pros and cons." As you're researching, check to see if the website is a good one. How do you do that? First, look for the author, either a person or a company. Is the person or company an expert in this area? Does the person or company have a bias toward or against wind power? Does the website seem to present a fair argument for AND against it? For example, a website that only lists cons and is also published by an oil company may be too biased, meaning they don't want to compete with the wind companies for business so they only present the bad side of wind power. Write down the websites you are going to use in your project. This is called "citing your sources," and is something all good researchers do. Click here to see how to cite your sources. You can also go back to Discovery Streaming and search for more videos about wind power. Or you can go back to World Book Encyclopedia online and research more there. No matter where you do the research, you must write down the videos, websites, articles, or books that you use to get information.

Dashner, James. (2009). The Maze Runner. New York: Delacorte. An amnesiac teenager awakes in a box in the middle of a colony of boys. Booktalk: What is a Maze Runner? maze runner. n. a fast shank who risks his shuck life everyday running through the ever-changing maze, escaping the grievers, in the hopes of finding an exit for all the gladers. Thomas wakes up confused and without a memory of who he is or what happened to him. He knows that he is currently surrounded by a large crowd of boys of all ages and that they don't looked surprised to see him. Thomas soon learns he is in a place called the Glade, a large area surrounded on all sides by massive walls. Beyond the walls is a massive labyrinth maze that changes every night. Thomas is immediately determined to find a way out, and he soon discovers that the only way he will succeed is to become a Maze Runner. Kentucky Bluegrass Award grades 9-12, 2011 VOYA Best Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, 2009 YALSA Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers 2011 Listen to a clip from the audio version courtesy of Random House Audio ©2011 . Posted by brie at 10:26 PM No comments: Labels: children, dystopia, fighting, friendship, identity, james dashner, murder, the maze runner trilogy, young adult Condie, Allyson. (2010). Matched. New York: Dunton. Image credit: Ally Condie In Cassia's society the Officials decide everything, including who you will be matched with for life. Within the Oria province the Officials control every aspect of life for the members of the Society. They are the ones who decide your job, when and who you marry, and when you will die. Cassia Reyes: A seventeen year-old good girl who believes in the Society and is anxious to see whose face will appear at the Matching Banquet. Xander Carrow: Cassia's thoughtful and caring best friend since childhood. The boy every girl dreams of being matched with. Ky Markham: A bad-boy who lives near Cassia. Outcasted by the community because of his father's actions. The lives and futures of these three teenagers will become dangerously entwined with one another. Unravel the secrets of the Society and find out the truth about being Matched. Every minute you spend with someone gives them a part of your life and takes part of theirs. AML Award, 2010 Publishers Weekly's Best Children's Books of 2010 Labels: ally condie, dictatorship, dystopia, forbidden love, love triangle, matched trilogy, young adult Duprau, J. (2003). The City of Ember. New York: Yearling. Residents of the City of Ember begin to panic when the electricity and generator begin to fail. They must figure out something quickly before the lights go out for good and the Emberites are left in dark, dark world. What is life like for a person in the City of Ember? For starters its pitch-black, all the time, except for the old lights strung across the city. You choose your job out of a bag filled with little papers with different jobs written on them. You stand in line for hours at the warehouse for supplies just to be told that the city has recently run out of the requested item. You are constantly worried that the lights will go out for good as rumors of the generator failing permeate the city. Lina and Doon, citizens of Ember, are intelligent, curious, and hopeful. Brought together by their shared concern about the eminent blackout, Lina and Doon work together to find out more about the inner-workings of the city. Doon's father gives them cryptic adivce to live by: "The main thing is to pay attention. Pay close attention to everything, notice what no one else notices. Then you’ll know what no one else knows, and that’s always useful.” Join them in their search for truth and a brighter future in a world consumed by darkness. Will Lina and Doon succeed in saving the people of The City of Ember? Bacigalupi, Paolo. (2010). Ship Breaker. New York: Little, Brown, & Co. Image credit: Powells A young boy lives a hard life retrieving part from broken down ships. When he discovers a young girl in one of the ships he will be faced with many hard decisions. What did the Ship Breaker find? Every person experiences a turning point in their lives. For Nailer that time came the day he discovered Nita among the wreckage of a ship. Before he found her his life was anything but great. His father was addicted to drugs and abusive. His mother is dead and the only people he has are his best friend and her mother. Nita changes everything. Nailer is unsure whether he should disregard her and strip the ship she came from or if he should rescue her and hope she offers him a better life. Will Nailer follow his heart, or will he continue to be a Ship Breaker? Amazon.com Best of Books of 2010 Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy Nominee, 2011 Booklist Starred Review Junior Library Guild Selection Michael L. Printz Award, 2010 National Book Award Finalist, Young People's Literature, 2010 Publishers Weekly Starred Review Labels: dystopia, paolo bacigalupi, young adult Rosoff, M. (2004). How I Live Now. United Kingdom: Puffin. Image credit: Perrot Library A young American girl is sent to England to live with estranged family at the onset of World War III. Daisy lived in Manhattan with her father. Her biggest concern was her evil stepmother who had recently revealed that she was pregnant. Daisy was sure the baby would be just as devilish as Davina. Daisy lives with her four cousins in the remote English countryside. Her aunt has been stranded in Norway due to the outbreak of World War III. For a while things are idyllic without an adult around. But, as the war catches up to them, Daisy and her cousins must face a new reality that is violent, hostile, and deadly. Find out what happens to Daisy and see How She Lives Now. Branford Boase Award, 2005 Der Luchs des Jahres Book Prize, 2005 Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, 2004 Julia Ward Howe Prize (Boston Authors Club), 2005 Labels: coming of age, cousins, death and loss, dystopia, england, family, love, meg rosoff, murder, orphans, relationships, sexuality, war, young adult The Forest of Hands and Teeth Ryan, C. (2009). The Forest of Hands and Teeth. New York: Delacorte. Image credit: Carrie Ryan In a post-apocalyptic world of zombies a teenager must find courage to protect the ones she loves. What lies beyond the fences in the Forest of Hands and Teeth? Mary is like any other teenager; she falls in love, she is rebellious, and she has had a best friend since she was little. But Mary's world is post-apocalyptic and overrun with undead cannibals who threaten her existence. When the village fences succumb to the relentless undead, Mary is forced to flee with a small group of friends. And so begins a journey for truth, safety, and a world long forgotten. Will Mary find what she is looking for in the Forest of Hands and Teeth? I think about how fragile we are here—like fish in a glass bowl with darkness pressing in on every side. ALA Best Books for Young Adults selection Borders Original Voices finalist Chicago Public Library Best of the Best Book Denver Public Library Best Teen Books, 2009 Georgia Peach Book AwardNomination, 2010-2011 IndieBound Kids' Indie Next List for Spring 2009, #4 New York Public Library Stuff for the Teen Age List, 2010 New York Times Best Seller North Carolina School Library Media Association Young Adult Book Award Nomination Texas Library Association TAYSHAS High School Reading list, 2010-2011 Labels: adventure, carrie ryan, death and loss, dystopia, friendship, identity, young adult The Last Book in the Universe Philbreck, Rodman. (2000). The Last Book in the Universe. New York: Blue Sky Press. Image credit: Goodreads.com A young fourteen year-old boy sets off on a dangerous journey through a post-apocalyptic world to save his younger sister who is sick. After a major earthquake, people are now using probes, needles that inject memories into the brain, to face the reality of their world. Society is divided into two classes: the scientifically improved humans, Proovs, who live in Eden and the poor, imperfect people who live in run-down crypts in the Urb. Spaz, an epileptic young boy, is on his own in the Urb until he meets an strange old man named Ryter. Spaz convinces Ryter to set out with him to find and save his sick younger sister. Along the way Spaz discovers that Ryter has a knowledge that few in their world possess. Will they save Spaz's sister? Will the story of Spaz's life become the Last Book in the Universe?

Solving Radical expressions roachbeats I think that I did this one correctly as well but I could not figure out the factoring. √x+2 + √3x+7=1 √3x+7 = 1-√x+2 √(3x+7)^2 =(1-√x+2)^2 3x+7=1-x = 2-2√x+2 3x+7 = -x+3-2√x+2 2x +4 = (-2√x+2) (2x+4)^2= (2√x+2)^2 4x^2+16x+16=4(x+2) 4x^2+12x-8=0 Originally Posted by roachbeats Now plug in these solutions into the original equation and check which is a correct solution: Therefore is a solution.

[SOLVED] finding equivalence classes Here's a problem I am trying to solve Find the equivalence classes of this relation now this is an equivalence relation. If we choose any rational number x , then we can see that so Q itself is an equivalence class of S. Now consider irrational number like pi if we subtract any other irrational or rational number from pi , it will not be in (is that correct ?) So similar conclusions can be drawn for any other irrational number. so other equivalence classes would correspond to irrational numbers where the set will contain only that irrational number. for example , since , the base of natural logarithm is an irrational number , so the equivalence classes are and set corresponding to each irrational number. is my reasoning correct ? emakarov Re: finding equivalence classes Originally Posted by issacnewton (is that correct ?) No, and are irrational, but and are rational. So, , and similarly for other numbers. There is no much easier way to describe the equivalence classes, AFAIK. If you pick exactly one point in [0, 1] from every equivalence class (so that any two points belong to different classes and thus their difference is irrational), you'll get a Vitali set, which is interesting because it is non-measurable. Sep 14th 2011, 12:42 PM #3 So since for all , it means infinite number of irrational numbers belong to this particular equivalence class. That means we can't come up with different equivalence class for each irrational number. So question arises , how many equivalence classes are there apart from ? So since for all , it means infinite number of irrational numbers belong to this particular equivalence class. That means we can't come up with different equivalence class for each irrational number. This does not follow. So question arises , how many equivalence classes are there I think the set of equivalence classes has the same power as the set of reals, i.e., continuum . Each class is countable, i.e., its cardinality is , and . since equivalence relation partitions the set, and since how can be different from ? Why do and have to be different? They are the same. I was thinking that we will need to come up with different equivalence class for each irrational number. But as you showed, infinitely many irrational numbers can belong to the same equivalence class. So which means , each irrational number doesn't have its own equivalence class. What I understood from your post #4 , is that even though this is the case, there are still infinitely many equivalence classes. Is that correct ? I have not yet studied about the alephs , so couldn't understand the last sentence in your post #4 Yes, each equivalence class is countable, i.e., has the same power as or . One class is ; all others consist of irrational numbers. The number of classes, which is the same as the number of reals, is vastly greater; it cannot be put into one-to-one correspondence with . makes sense ........ thanks

Polar Studies Meteoritics Through the study of meteorites we can learn more about their origins, their parent planets, and the formation of the solar system. Please check out our basic introduction to meteorites and their study (meteorite basics, studying meteorites). What are presolar grains and why do we study them? Presolar grains are minerals that are older than anything else in our Solar System (Podcast). They formed before the birth of our Solar System and a small fraction survived in primitive asteroids and comets. We extract presolar grains from fragments of these objects: unaltered meteorites, interplanetary dust particles and comet dust. We study the elemental and isotopic compositions of presolar grains to understand the presolar history of meteoritic matter. The interdisciplinary field of presolar grain research informally also called Astrophysics in the Laboratory is delivering a wealth of information on stars and our Galaxy that are not accessible through astronomical observations. One of our main motivations to study presolar grains, a surviving fraction of the source materials of our Solar System, is to improve our understanding of the history of our Galaxy. The delivery of extraterrestrial matter to Earth We are also interested in the history of the delivery of extraterrestrial matter to Earth. Therefore, we analyze the chemical compositions of meteorites and micrometeorites that were preserved in terrestrial sediments. On the other end of the size spectrum of extraterrestrial material that fell to Earth are asteroids and comets. These usually form impact craters and can cause local to global catastrophes for life. We study such impact craters to find and analyze impactor material. Such studies will help geoscientists understand how the extraterrestrial material affected the environment and life on Earth during various times in Earth’s history.

In this article, we'll show you how to create a table of contents (TOC) based on the grouping in a Crystal report. For example, if you have a report grouped on country, the TOC would list all the countries in the report, along with the page number that each country begins on. This could be a useful navigation aid for people working with printed copies of the report. Figure 1 shows how it might look. Figure 1: A table of contents, showing group names and page numbers The technique that we will describe has the advantage of being very simple - only three short formulae are needed. But it also has two important limitations. First, the TOC must always appear at the end of the report, rather than at the start where most people would expect to see it. That's because group names and page numbers are not available until all the groups have been printed. Secondly, the technique is only suitable for relatively short TOCs - typically those containing up to 20 to 40 entries. If the total length of the entries exceeds 254 characters (the maximum length of a string in CR), the surplus characters will not appear. If those limitations are too onerous for you, there is an alternative approach you could take, although this has drawbacks of its own. More about this later in the article. First build the TOC ... To create the TOC, you first need a formula which collects the group names and their corresponding page numbers and stores them in a pair of global string variables. The formula, which is placed in the group header band, looks something like this: global stringvar strTOC1; local stringvar strTemp; if not InRepeatedGroupHeader then ( strTemp := {customer.country} + chr(10) ; if len(strTemp) + len(strToc1) <= 254 then ( strToc1 := StrToc1 + strTemp; strToc2 := StrToc2 + totext(PageNumber,0) + chr(10) )) The formula declares two global strings variables. The first of these, strToc1, holds the group names (the country names in this example) separated by line-feed characters. The line-feeds ensure that each name will appear on a separate line within the table of contents. Before adding each new group name to this string, we check to see if it has reached the limit of 254 characters. If it has, no further names are added. The second string, strToc2, holds the page numbers, converted to text. These too are separated by line-feed characters. You might be wondering why we didn't choose to build a single string containing both the group names and the page numbers. This is a matter of alignment. Given that the group names vary in length, there would have been no way of getting the names and the numbers into two neatly aligned columns if they had been in the same string. Creating two separate strings solves that problem. After you have added the above formula to the group header section, be sure to suppress it to avoid spurious output appearing in the group header. ... Then display it To display the TOC, we need two further formulae, both of which are extremely simple. The first simply returns the contents of the group name string, like so: whileprintingrecords; strToc1 The other formula, which is almost identical to the first, returns the contents of the page number string: Place these two formulae in the report footer section. Position them side by side, and line them up along their top edges. Be sure to enable the Can Grow option for both formulae (do this from the Common page of the format editor). To improve the alignment of the page numbers, right-justify the second of the two formulae. Finally, add a suitable text object (such as 'Table of Contents') to label the TOC. And that's all there is to it. When you preview the report, you should see the finished table of contents, complete with group names and page numbers, all neatly lined up on the last page of the report. However, this method should be approached with caution. In general, it is not a good idea to write data to the database from a report, because a mistake could lead to invalid data and corrupted tables. You would also need to have the necessary permissions to create and update tables, permissions which database administrators might be reluctant to grant. Also, the ability to write SQL code to update a database was only added in Crystal Reports 9.0, so the technique would not work with earlier versions. If, despite these difficulties, you would like to know more about this table-based approach, you can find full details at . If you can live with the drawbacks mentioned earlier, you should find the technique which we have described in this article to be a simple and effective way of creating a table of contents for your reports. We have often found it useful in our own reporting projects, and we hope you will find a use for it in yours.

Child Wellness Tips Nutrition & Growth Skin Care & Allergies Younger Kids in a Grade More Apt to be Diagnosed with ADHD By Julie Linderman, MD, FAAP It is July and before we know it, another school year will be upon us. Over the last several months, I have had several discussions with parents in my practice regarding whether they should start their 5-year-old in Kindergarten or hold her back a year. It is a complex question with many points to consider. A recent article published in the Journal of Pediatrics showed an approximate 75% increase among the youngest kids in a grade and the receipt of an ADHD diagnosis. In fact, if you examine the data, you can see an increase in the chance of obtaining an ADHD diagnosis with each month younger a student is relative to his or her peers. In the elementary school years, perhaps more so than in later grades, a few months makes a significant difference with regards to social and emotional maturity, as well as overall development. This immaturity can impact the ability to stay on tasks, make and maintain friendships, as well as focus on assignments in parallel with other classmates. ADHD diagnoses are often determined based on parental reports and teacher questionnaires. Teachers have no choice but to compare younger children to older classmates in the same grade, and parents, perhaps more so with their first child, often have expectations above normality. NPR covered this issue as well, and the physician commentary notably discussed the concern that pediatricians may over diagnose and treat this age group when eventual maturity would eradicate the issue altogether. The NPR quoted pediatrician warned against holding kids back a grade citing data that kids that are held back are more likely to drop-out of school or be bullied. Unfortunately, I think she is dismissing an issue of greater scope and discussion. It absolutely depends on the individual child’s situation and the community in which they live. In my community, it is often better to err on the side of holding back a younger child; allowing him or her to start kindergarten at 6 for example (for spring and summer birthdays) than to push forward at age 5. One reason for this is multiple private schools exist in our community with robust kindergarten programs that allow a student to grow and mature in the year preceding their public school entrance. Among the private school kids, primer years are becoming the rule rather than the exception, and the baseline has shifted markedly because of this. Of course, delaying public school entry (or an additional year of private school) costs money and understandably for some of us, this route is not an option. But I would argue that in communities where it is an option for most, the youngest in the bunch, especially if they seem somewhat immature relative to their peers anyway, will be at a real disadvantage. I do agree that holding a child back a grade, especially in the later years, can be tough on his sense of self worth. I’d rather encourage parents to delay entry if there are concerns of any type, be it academic, social or maturational. I have lots of parents tell me that they fear their child will be bored if they hold her back. I have to tell you, even among my patients in the talented and gifted programs, not once have I witnessed this. Boredom because of intelligence assumes a completely academic experience. It minimizes the social intricacies of forging relationships with peers and teachers, building confidence in extracurricular activities and overall academic abilities. Some of my brightest patients are my most socially immature. Does that mean that an extra year will solve any issues regarding peer rapport? No, but I’m not convinced it could hurt if it is an option for a family. In fact, in my decade of practice, I have not had a single parent tell me that they wished they had started their child earlier, but I have had so many tell me that they wished they had waited a year. Maybe youth is more complex than it used to be. I joke with parents in my practice that I probably would have been diagnosed with ADHD by today’s standards. Kids are expected to achieve so much from an early age, while managing digital media and a robust extracurricular calendar in a way we never did. Delaying kindergarten entry is not the absolute answer, and of course some children will still experience learning differences and an accurate diagnosis of ADHD, but it is something to think about and consider. And maybe our first thought regarding this issue, is not the best one. Julie Klesse Linderman, M.D. is a pediatrician and a mother of three. She helps moms (and dads) gain more confidence in becoming the parents they were meant to be by taking expert medical advice and distilling it into easy-to-understand, usable strategies. Recognized amongst the top pediatricians in the nation, Julie has won accolades from Dallas Child 2013-14 Mom-Approved Pediatrician and Vitals.com Patients Choice Award 2010-13. She currently practices at Inwood Village Pediatrics, but her dearest patients include her husband Kevin, their three kids and two dogs.

Kidney Stone Size kidney stone genetic factors actual size 8mm kidney stone kidney stone and symptoms kidney stone pain in upper right abdomen kidney stone size of quarter kidney stones and sugar levels kidney stone operation cost in delhi cantt city stones kidney can sex the you and get from how to get rid of a kidney stone naturally medications that increase risk of kidney stones small kidney stone in lower pole normal kidney stone size 5mm kidney stone size 9mm glock do i have kidney stones 4mm how to get rid of a large kidney stone kidney stone genetic factors kidney stone home remedy brew A 61-year-old male patient was admitted because of chronic loin pain due to a kidney stone in the left renal pelvis. Often the urologist will place a small silicone tube called a stent into the ureter for several days after treatment to relieve swelling and facilitate healing. The outlook is best in those whose cancer is diagnosed when it is still confined within a native american cure for kidney stones kidney and has not spread, and who are otherwise in general good health. Suggestions for doses of magnesium and vitamin B6 in the treatment of kidney stones vary. This patient has a complete staghorn calculus involving the right kidney and was treated by percutaneous nephrolithomy in a single operation. Swiss chard, spinach and beet greens are examples of greens that are best eaten cooked. Coke alone will dehydrate you, which is not ideal in case you are experiencing kidney stones. Each of these stones has a different treatment, but surgery after kidney stone the essentials of the basic treatment of all kidney stones are to drink lots kidney stones after bladder infection of water and follow a DASH diet. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said 24 million fewer Americans would have insurance by 2026, and also predicts $337 billion in deficit reduction over the kidney stone genetic factors same period. A large area is drained by the left renal vein, which kidney stone genetic factors receives tributaries from the back, abdominal wall, diaphragm, suprarenal gland, and gonad. Earlier studies had downplayed the significance of calcium when compared to the levels of oxalate in urine, and even encouraged kidney stone patients to increase their dietary intake of calcium. When I was first told I needed it, I was very upset even native american cure for kidney stones though I knew that a person could lead a normal life with only one kidney. Some cases of constipation can be remedied with dietary changes by including high fiber foods. A study in Europe also showed that a shorter course than that normally used in the United States could eradicate the bacteria that cause the disease. The most common crystalline materials found in kidney stones are calcium oxalate, calcium phosphate, uric acid, and struvite. These herbs contain vitamin C, potassium, magnesium and B-complex vitamins which react with kidney stones after bladder infection calcium or dissolve calcium oxalate and calcium phosphate stones. Turns out he has a family history of kidney stones, his aunt says that hers were worse than being in labor. This amount of calcium is ideal for both protection against bone mineral loss from idiopathic hypercalciuria and reducing oxalate absorption. Badamilal G. Keep in mind, green vegetables are almost fifty percent protein, surgery after kidney stone and when you eat more vegetables it does not promote cancer or heart disease, like it does when you increase consumption of animal products. Orchitis may also occur along with infections of the prostate or epididymis, which is the gland behind the testicle that is responsible for sperm maturation. I did ask my Dr about my issue with pain if I do have an attack from those stones and he feels my sub dose kidney stone genetic factors is low enough that after 8 hours or so, the pain medication if I need it will work. The primary feature of nephrolithiasis-associated AKI is obstructive nephropathy; odds of recovery depend primarily on the extent and the duration of the obstruction. For instance, if during a pain attack occurs while fever may be signs of inflammation of the gallbladder, which presents with prolonged pain and fever and tenderness when you press on the abdomen below the right rib edge. Blood pressure measures the force of blood against the walls of the blood vessels. Studies found, however, that dietary phosphorus restriction increased calcium absorption and the risk of calcium oxalate formation, while higher levels of dietary protein reduced the risk of urolithiasis. In some cases, stone fragments can be retained, and these can be difficult to eliminate. Although NCCT involves a higher radiation dose than pain associated with kidney stones 3mm its advantages of faster diagnosis, the avoidance of additional diagnostic imaging tests and its ability to diagnose other causes makes it the study of choice for acute flank pain at Christchurch Hospital. But these acoustic waves can be focused and shaped to build a cage of pressure around the stone. Kidney Stones can be easily prevented by drinking up to 12 glass or more than 2-liter water. In a normal person, food is broken down into very small particles, then assimilated into the blood. There is little a person can do at home to control the debilitating pain and vomiting that can occur with a kidney stone other than to seek emergency care. This nutrient may help prevent calcium stones from forming in people who have a history of the condition. I've had a lot of women say the same thing that kidney stones are more painful than childbirth. One of the ways in which you can treat kidney stones in a natural way without any side effects is with the help of asparagus. About 70% to 90% of people who have lithotripsy for kidney stones are free of stones within three months of treatment. In the case of kidney stones, we want to minimize the difference between the contour marked by experts and that made automatically by the machine. I agree with Dr. But after third day little pain in urethra, a sort of low level fairly constant pain in lower left abdomen, and sometimes intense but brief pain in my kidney when urinating. The kidney stones can be as small as that of a grain of sand or rice and sometimes even to the size of kidney stone doctor in delhi ball. It involves the removal of a stone through a thin tube tunneled through a small incision in the back into the kidney. kidney stones urine color changes Prostatectomy is a medical term for the surgical removal of all or part of the prostate gland. I have had a stent in since Tuesday because I also have had a kidney stone that was 6mm. A general strategy involves reducing mineral concentration to discourage crystal and stone formation. Physicians at the UT Health Comprehensive Kidney Stone how do i know if i pass a kidney stone at home are certified by the American Board of Urology and have completed fellowship training in Endourology. Rough-riding coasters with quick turns are most likely to help stones move along, Wartinger said. Mitwalli A, Ayiomamitis A, Grass L, Oreopoulos DG. Hour later my boss comes by to pick me up for work, finds me squirming around on the garage floor trying to adjust my back. kidney stone symptoms message boards If you want to move very fast or even if your sleep in the cramped position, then you can experience abdominal muscle spasm. The doctor may want to get a picture of your prostate using either x rays or a sonogram. Visitors should be aware that when they click on links to other websites from The Kidney Stone Web Site pages, they could be directed what causes blood in urine when you have kidney stones other sites that are beyond our control. This breaks a large stone into smaller stones that will pass through the urinary system. This prevents your intestine contents from getting stuck, producing more comfort-challenging gas than necessary. At the end of the procedure, the catheter will be removed and pressure will be applied to stop any bleeding. how to flush small kidney stones You may try the 5 days procedure before going for operation if the largest stone size is less than 10 mm. When he got in the room with the doctor, they talked about his previous bout of kidney stones. Over the course of about an hour, we carefully direct up to 2,000 waves at the stone. Obesity is pth hormone kidney stones with increased intake of refined sugars, low fluid intake, and high intake of calcium, oxalate and purine rich foods. Now I have been in terrible pain for about a month i went down to under 7 stone have got back to 8 now. This information can be used to make dietary as well as medical modifications to help prevent future stone formation. Follow the Diet: To prevent the re-growth of kidney stones in the body, patients must make some required changes in their diet till they have recovered kidney stones uti pain C Measurement of the stone shadow using B-mode ultrasonography provides a much closer estimate to that estimated using CT imaging. But an ultrasound can show swelling of the kidney and/or ureter which indicates that the stone is obstructing urine flow. However, while rare, many physicians have reported seeing an increase in the number of pediatric kidney stone incidents in recent years. Unless kidney disease is present, most people will not get too much potassium from food sources, but they may if they take supplements. Unlike the small amount of satisfaction you get from regular coke your body may still crave sweets. While incomplete RTA may also be a risk factor for calcium phosphate stones, testing for it has not been shown to lead to better results than if hypocitraturia is treated with citrate supplementation, regardless of the results of urine pH responses to acid loads.26 If the stone is composed of the calcium phosphate crystal phases carbonate apatite or struvite, urinary tract infection should be ruled out. Kidney stones form within the collecting duct of the kidneys, where urine is first formed. The production of excessive volumes of urine for an adult, over 2.5 liters in 24 hours. Its gentle effect on the intestinal functions can help reverse a tendency for constipation, without irritating the intestinal mucous membrane. Salt intake is under everyone's radar nowadays, as it can contribute to hypertension, which can impact the heart. Once you have a possible diagnosis, you will likely want to follow the above guidelines, and you also might want to consider effective herbal treatments , or consulting with a dietitian to make sure you're on the right path to less pain and good health. You will be taken to the recovery room to be monitored for a couple hours after your procedure. Look for it along the course of his ureter, as this crosses the tips of the transverse processes of his lumbar vertebrae, runs over his sacroiliac joint, and descends in a gentle arch to a point just medial to kidney stone experiences jesus ischial spine, whence it turns medially to enter his bladder. That was the first and last time I requested to go to the ER since all they did was a CT scan, urine sample, determined I had six kidney stones in each kidney, and pumped me full of pain killers. If you want to use it for internal consumption, simply replace butter or vegetable oils with coconut oil in your recipes. Pyelonephritis can become chronic if an infection cannot be cleared easily, as in a person with a kidney stone or other developmental abnormality of the urinary system. Lieske et al.

motorcycle diaries Can Be Fun For Anyone January 13, 2018, 5:20 am / motorcycle-accident-yeste05933.ampblogs.com David L. Hough has cited possibility comparisons from the Harm Report showing riders who did not obtain Experienced or structured training, such as individuals that have been self-taught or discovered to journey from family and friends, to become two to three times bigger than people that experienced rider training. Present day dealer appreciates there is a lot of money to generally be built with used motor vehicles - unlike new cars, every used device differs and might command bigger margins most often. There's no much better source of cost-productive, higher-quality inventory than NPA, and we help it become quick for dealers to acquire what they have to have. Each month five live auctions are held in San Diego, Philadelphia, Dallas, Cincinnati and Atlanta. Your not too long ago considered things and featured suggestions › Look at or edit your browsing record The airbag may also deploy resulting from a strong shock caused because of the entrance wheel falling into a large gap or ditch, or in a collision with a suppress or other item. The British IAM with support from the FIA has proposed that from 2015, ABS need to be obligatory on all new motorcycles with a displacement greater than 125cc marketed in the EU.[63] Whilst motorcycle accidents come about at with regard to the similar frequency as passenger car or truck accidents, the seriousness of accidents is much bigger. Motorcycle accidents occur for most of the very same factors as auto accidents, but are a lot more likely to cause critical injuries or death. In line with a examine accomplished because of the federal government, motorcyclists are 35 times far more prone to die in an accident than passenger motor vehicle drivers. This is because motorcyclists have to bother with all the very same pitfalls as people today in automobiles, and a few extras which have been unique to riding a motorcycle. In the event you or a colleague employs a motorcycle, it truly is very important that you choose to browse up on these dangers to help you stay Risk-free. Be sure to understand the threats of driving generally (hyperlink to auto accidents web page) as well as the pitfalls exclusive to riding a motorcycle. Lots of individuals who ride motorcycles really like the feeling of freedom and independence that remaining open for the air offers them. But mainly because motorcycles are small and There is certainly so little padding concerning the driver and also the road, an accident with a motorcycle is much more perilous than on some other car or truck. Within a crash, a motorcyclist threats currently being crushed or operate around by other autos, skidding throughout pavement at freeway speeds, possessing their motorcycle pin them to the ground, and any number of other accidents which are amplified by their deficiency of protection. Licensing: 20-seven per cent of motorcycle riders who had been involved with deadly crashes in 2015 had been riding without a legitimate license, in contrast with thirteen per cent of passenger car drivers. Integrated pieces can be found in a few jackets. Yet another way to scale back impression is by carrying airbag protection. Hence there are predicaments when an individual may be impaired, but still legally allowed to drive, and becomes a potential hazard to themselves along with other road end users. Pedestrians or cyclists are afflicted in the exact same way and can in the same way jeopardize on their like it own or others when to the road. An RAC study of British drivers identified that most[quantify] imagined they ended up much better than common drivers; a contradictory consequence showing overconfidence of their capabilities. Again protectors in many cases are not included in the standard complement of armor Despite the fact that numerous jackets allow a back again protector to generally be mounted. Motorcycles are also Considerably more challenging to find out than other motor vehicles. As a result, greater than half of all motorcycle fatalities take place on account of head on collisions. These cases nearly always manifest mainly because a person driving a vehicle only did not begin to see the motorcyclist right until it had been also late. A further Hazard that offers itself to motorcyclists is other cars generating left hand turns. Typically a auto turning remaining will run appropriate Learn More right into a motorcycle likely straight from the intersection. As from the former situation, the individual driving the car or truck just won’t begin to see the motorcycle till almost nothing can be achieved. When the opposite motorist will often be at fault, cases like these end in Just about 42% of motorcycle fatalities. At the least twenty five% of motorcycle accidents are caused by preset objects and road situations. This suggests the driver hitting a pothole, an item in the midst of the road, a light-weight publish, or perhaps the road staying damp or icy. When these risks also have an impact on other kinds of drivers, individuals on motorcycles ought to be Specially conscious of factors while in the road or climatic conditions that should endanger them due to their unique vulnerability. In a wonderful world, there can be no motorcar accidents. Whilst driving in any kind of motor vehicle, car, truck, or motorcycle, will never be 100% Risk-free, There's Significantly that may be completed to help make transportation as Harmless mainly because it perhaps could be. Collisions migration refers to the scenario exactly where action to scale back road site visitors collisions in a single location might lead to Individuals collisions resurfacing somewhere else.[63] By way of example, an accident blackspot may possibly occur at a perilous bend.[64] The procedure for this may be to extend signage, write-up an motorcycle car advisory velocity limit, utilize a high-friction road surface, increase crash obstacles or any one of the number of other visible interventions. The speedy consequence might be to reduce collisions for the bend, nevertheless the subconscious peace on leaving the "risky" bend may well bring about drivers to act with fractionally less treatment on the remainder of the road, leading to a rise in collisions in other places to the road, and no Over-all advancement over the region.

Tem, whom I know to be an aficionado of weather conditions, noted several days ago on Facebook that the solar eclipse was on the Midheaven in Houston and eastern Texas, the site of Hurricane Harvey’s biggest impact. On Sunday morning, a spokesman for the National Hurricane Center said: “Everything that we had hoped wouldn’t happen but was forecasted is happening. We have a catastrophic, life-threatening flood event taking place over southeastern Texas, including the Houston metropolitan area. It’s bad now and it’s getting worse.” Torrential rains are forecast for days to come. I am writing this blog at the time of the above dire announcement — the Moon is in Scorpio and will square the North Node and Mars (24° Leo) and the eclipse degree (29°) early Monday morning (Pacific time). Transiting Mars has been conjunct the North Node (August 26-27) and will reach the eclipse degree (29° Leo) on September 3, followed by Mercury’s direct station on September 5 at 28°25′ Leo. Our thoughts and prayers are with all our friends and families — known and unknown — in Texas. Here are a few other early stories from the eclipse: On Science Alert site, How Did Animals React to the Solar Eclipse? includes this report from the Memphis Zoo (93% visibility): “Visitors and staff observed the black bears running around during totality, then calming down after the sun returned, the giraffes moving toward the barn like it was nighttime, and African black-footed penguins vocalizing.” For those of you who may have been on the internal prayer/ritual path and missed the excitement of watching the eclipse, here’s a well-done 5-minute video from Madras, Oregon. And these guys at Smarter Every Day caught the space station transit across the Sun from Wyoming — “There’s good people all across America, y’know.” They had great equipment, and at totality the photographer got so excited his “brain stopped working.” A reporter from N.Y.’s station PIX11 went to Oregon for the eclipse. Read his report and watch the video clip: The emotions and impact of seeing a total solar eclipse – a reporter’s first hand accoint. “I had heard, and seen on TV, my entire life, reports and dramatic images of total solar eclipses and the effect they can have on people fortunate enough to view them. And then I was one of the fortunate ones Monday … The 1 minute and 38 seconds of totality that I had was … again, there are no words for the emotions, the feelings.” And, from Richard Quinnell, editor-in-chief at Electronic Products website, here’s another account: Solar Eclipse 2017: My first hand account of witnessing totality “The moment has arrived. Solar glasses come off and the awesome spectacle of a black hole in the sky surrounded by a white nimbus becomes visible to the naked eye. The crowd around us cheered; small children shrieked and danced with excitement. People pointed out the brightest stars that suddenly appeared (“There’s Venus, the morning star!”). I felt like I was suddenly in another world, or at least on the set of a science fiction movie. Others simply grew profoundly quiet, perhaps contemplating how truly small we are and how vast our universe is.” Nick Anthony Fiorenza, creator of Lunar Planner works with the sidereal zodiac. He has a very detailed look at the sky configurations surrounding the solar eclipse. “In addition to the Total Solar Eclipse, another equally significant event occurs within this lunar cycle: the Ceres Jupiter-Haumea Eris T-Square.” He has a beautiful graphic ephemeris (from May 2016 through October 2017) of Ceres Uranus-Eris Opposite Haumea-Jupiter & the Jupiter-Pluto Square. Also, a 2-minute video of the angles for Harvey’s landfall in Rockport, Texas as “a ‘Grand Square’ forms on the location’s angles … Pluto-Midheaven (MC) opposite Ceres (IC) and Eris-Uranus rising (ASC) opposite Moon-Haumea-Jupiter setting (DSC).” (This is very easy to follow with his graphic.) And, from TMA‘s (newly formed) Planning Ahead department, here’s a short video that shows every upcoming solar eclipse until 2040 (created by Tech Insider). We look forward to hearing from more of you about your eclipse experience for a future blog. Until then, stay safe out there, everyone. And, in deference to Saturn’s direct station (August 25), enjoy the passage of time.

Switching Roles – My View On the social dance floor and in workshops, it has become increasingly common for ladies to act as leaders – but usually only in some dances. Not unlike jitterbug in the 1950′s and 1960′s, one can see women leading west coast swing, east coast swing, hustle and sometimes even some of the Latin dances. Occasionally – and often limited to dance competition events and workshops – there are male followers, but even this is usually limited to west coast swing and hustle. Even today, for the smooth dances, it is less common to see female leaders and pretty much non-existent to see male followers. And, for all of the above, I am referring to same-sex partners. We are now 18 years into the “new” millennium – why can’t leaders simply be leaders and followers simply be followers, without gender distinctions? S-o-o-o. . .why not trying switching roles in lessons and on the social dance floor? This can only improve your dancing! ‘Tis the Season for Dinner Dances Posted on December 14, 2017 by Diane Posted in Dance Tips Whether you are new to dancing or have attended many social dances, because the music is always playing – and, hopefully, you are always dancing! – there is little opportunity for dancers to actually get to know one another. On a personal note, not even counting the names that I have forgotten (many of which I forgot immediately), I never even knew the names (or anything about them) of the majority of my fellow dancers. Dinner dances provide this opportunity to mingle and to chat with others. This happens when you are standing in a line to get food, sitting at a table and/or between showcases, awards, speeches, etc. No-Fault Dancing Posted on December 8, 2017 by Diane Posted in Dance Tips excerpted from an article by Dr. Aria Nosratinia Never blame a partner for missed execution of moves. Regardless of who is at fault when a dancing mishap occurs, both partners are supposed to smile and go one. This applies to the better dancer in particular, who bears a greater responsibility. Accepting blame is especially a nice touch for the leader. But, at the same time, do not apologize profusely. My personal preference is the following: whenever something untoward happens, as a leader, I first see if my partner noticed. Sometimes, the follower may not be aware; for example, that a move was slightly off-time or that a fine point in technique was missed, in which case it is better to let it go. If the follower has noticed, I just smile and whisper “sorry…” and go on, regardless of whose fault it was. Sharing the Floor #2 Posted on November 30, 2017 by Diane Posted in Dance Tips Sharing the floor sometimes means leaving the floor! For example, if there are too many dancers to fit on the floor, then a considerate dancer would withdraw every few dances to let everyone dance. The same applies if there aren’t the same number of leaders and followers. Then there is a mismatch and, for each song, some people will be left without a partner. If there aren’t enough partners, it would be nice to voluntarily withdraw for every few dances so that everyone gets a chance to dance. Another aspect of sharing the floor is to match one’s speed to that of others. In a recent social dance, one couple was moving with great speed and skill across the floor. However, they were coming dangerously close to other dancers on the crowded dance floor and, many times, other couples came to a stop and moved out of their way. Have Fun with Dance – Try Something New If you are a social ballroom dancer, try country-western line dancing. If you are a swing dancer, experiment with hip hop. More “serious” ballroom dancers can try hustle or lindy hop dancing. If you participate in a lesson when you dance socially, but have not taken any regular group classes, this might be the opportunity you are seeking to learn a particular dance – or maybe some ballet, tap or jazz. Another choice is to switch your role from leader to follower or vice versa. Or, for any dance style, you might consider the one-on-one benefits of private lessons and/or competition. No matter what dance direction you choose, mix it up in order to keep it fresh and fun! Responsible usage of the floor requires that one stays out of the way of others. Some moves require a momentary movement against line of dance. These moves should be executed with great caution on a social dance floor, and only when there is no dancer of collision. Avoid getting too close to other couples, especially less experienced ones. Be prepared to change the directions of your patterns to avoid congested areas. This requires thinking ahead and matching your patters to the free areas on the floor (floorcraft). While this may sound complicated to the novice dancer, it gradually becomes second nature. Never Criticize Your Partner ON the Dance Floor If you feel that there is any reason to criticize (or make any negative comments to) your dance partner, never do so ON the dance floor UNLESS you or anyone else is endangered. Wait until the dance has ended and speak to your partner privately OFF the dance floor. Remember, too, that any criticism should be constructive, so try to be gentle rather than harsh. When a song comes to an end, leave the floor as quickly as it is gracefully possible. Tradition requires that the leader give his/her arm to the follower at the end of the dance. While this custom is linked to the outdated tradition requiring the gentlemen to ask ladies for dances, it is still a nice touch, although it may be impractical on the more crowded dance floors. In any case, remember that your partner may want to get the next dance. Don’t keep your partner talking after the dance is over, if he/she seems ready to break away to look for his/her next dance partner. At the End of the Dance Posted on October 26, 2017 by Diane Posted in Dance Tips After the dance is finished and before parting, thank your partner. If you enjoyed the dance, let your partner know. Compliment your partner on his/her dancing. Be generous, even if he/she is not the greatest of dancers. Be specific about it if you can: “I really enjoyed that double spin. You led/followed that beautifully!” If you enjoyed it so much that you would like to have another dance with him/her again, this is a good time to mention it: “This waltz went really great! I’d like to try a cha cha with you later.” Although, remember that dancing too many dances with the same partner and booking many dances ahead are both violations of social dance rules. Getting on the Floor / Leaving Entrances Free Some caution should be exercised when getting on the dance floor, especially if the song has already started and couples are dancing on the floor. It is the responsibility of incoming couples to make sure that they stay out of the way of the couples who are already dancing. Specifically, before getting into dance position, one should always look opposite the line of dance to avoid blocking someone’s way or, even worse, causing a collision. Also, on some dance floors, especially in country western dance establishments, have limited access space (most of the periphery is railed). Dancers and onlookers should avoid blocking these entrances. In particular, avoid stopping to chat immediately after exiting the dance floor.

Befriend you body, find your core balance Today I heard something new from my cleaning lady Georgia about weight gain and menopause. She said her doctor told her that with the increase in male hormones, women start gaining weight on the upper part of their body, from the waist up. I have experienced the opposite, everything flowing downwards. Maybe this is explained by genetics and body shape - apple being round on top, with thin legs, and pear shape tending to be heavier around the bottom and thighs. Whatever shape you have, your weight may change during menopause. I am actually losing weight, partly due to going gluten-free. Thyroid problems can also cause weight gain or loss, so I am definitely going to have this checked at my annual check-up in May. Whatever you do, first thing is to accept your body and love it - before you can make any changes, you need to stop being critical of yourself. It's an odd fact that when you begin to accept and love yourself, then changes can come, resistance is lowered. My favourite website for factual information on medical issues for menopause is . They recently sent me an interesting article about weight gain. "whether a woman is overweight or underweight, the first thing she can do for herself is befriend her body. Women are often too critical of the weight level that their bodies find most comfortable. Whether you look in the mirror and see yourself as “too much” or “too little,” obsessing about the extra curves (or the lack of them) is a major obstacle to finding your healthy weight." "We can hold extra weight — or be unable to gain weight — during periods of hormonal imbalance, adrenal fatigue, digestive disorders, neurotransmitter imbalances, toxicity, and inflammation, just to name a few. Weight gain or loss can also be related to imbalance in our life choices. Exercising too much or too little, over — or under — emphasizing specific food groups so that we don’t have a balanced diet — even imbalances in our relationships or emotional lives can affect our weight! Whether your goal is to lose weight or gain it, a key starting point is to recognize where your life and health are out of balance." So ladies, find your balance and your weight problems may be over. It is not as simple as just going on a diet - find out where in your life you need a make-over - what do you need less of? what do you need more of? are you stressed and over anxious? are you giving yourself any time alone, just to be still? are you living at a pace that's too fast? or too slow? take a few moments and write in your journal every day/week, about how you feel, where you are going, how you are doing, and maybe throw in some self-love, compassion and kindness instead of harsh self-criticism. See if a little self-love and befriending will help you find balance,

Short Biography of Anna Hazare Story of Army Driver becoming the Father of Nation Bigger than Bharat Ratna Name - Kisan Bapat Baburao Hazare known as Anna Hazare Birth date - 15 January 1940 Anna Hazare was born in Bhingar village in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra state in western India to Baburao Hazare and Laxmi Bai, an unskilled labourer family He was raised by his childless aunt in Mumbai but could not continue beyond VII standard and had to quit midway due to problems. He has two sisters. He is unmarried. Anna Hazare started his career as a driver in the Indian Army. During his 15-year tenure as a soldier, he was posted to several states like Sikkim, Bhutan, Jammu-Kashmir, Assam, Mizoram, Leh and Ladakh and braved challenging weathers. Anna was greatly influenced by Swami Vivekananda’s teachings. In the year 1965, Pakistan attacked India and at that time, Hazare was posted at the Khemkaran border. On November 12, 1965, Pakistan launched air attacks on Indian base and all of Hazare’s comrades became martyrs In 1978, he took voluntary retirement from the 9th Maratha Battalion After serving 15 Years in Army Anna took the voluntary retirement and returned to his native place in Ralegan Siddhi, in the Parner tehsil of Ahmednagar district. Ralegan Siddhi falls in the drought-prone area with a mere 400 to 500 mm of annual rainfall. There were no weirs to retain rainwater. During the month of April and May, water tankers were the only means of drinking water. Almost 80 per cent of the villagers were dependent on other villages for food grains. Residents used to walk for more than four to six kilometers in search of work Hazare came across the work of one Vilasrao Salunke, a resident of Saswad near Pune who had started a novel project of water management through watershed development in a joint venture with the Gram Panchyat. Hazare visited the project and decided to implement it in Ralegan Siddhi. He steered the villagers to begin working towards water conservation. At the outset, they completed 48 Nala Bunding work, contour trenches, staggered trenches, gully plugs, meadows development and of forestation of 500 hectares of land. Thereafter, they constructed five RCC weirs and 16 Gabion Weirs. This resulted in increase in the ground water level. Hazare’s Ralegan Siddhi became the first role model of an ideal village from the worst village to an ideal village. Anna rightly thought that Development is marred by corruption and started a new venture in 1991 called Bhrashtachar Virodhi Jan Aandolan (BVJA) or public movement against corruption. It was found that some 42 forest officers had duped the state government for crores of rupees through corruption in confederacy. Hazare submitted the evidences to the government but the latter was reluctant to take action against all these officers as one of the ministers of the ruling party was involved in the scam. A distressed Hazare returned the Padmashree Award to the President of India and also returned the Vriksha Mitra Award given by then prime minister of India Rajiv Gandhi. He further went on an indefinite hunger strike in Alandi on the same issue. Finally, the government woke up and took action against the criminal and corrupt officers as well as six of the ministers were forced to resign and more than 400 officers from different government offices were sent back to home. In 1995 Shiv Sena-BJP government came to power in the state Hazare raised the issue of alleged massive land purchase by Gholap's wife Shashikala in Nashik between April to September 1996. He forwarded the available documentary evidences in support of his allegations to then Maharashtra Governor P. C. Alexander On 4 November 1997, Gholap filed a defamation suit against Hazare for accusing him of corruption. On 9 September 1998, Anna Hazare was imprisoned in the Yerawada Jail after being sentenced to simple imprisonment for three months by the Mumbai Metropolitan Court all political parties, every one from Maharashtra except the BJP and the Shiv Sena came in support of him Later due to public protest, outcry the Government of Maharashtra ordered his release from the jail. The state government has opened cooperative societies, credit societies & urban banks everywhere in states. However, the directors of such societies do the corruption and failed to pay back the basic amount to the members of the societies. Thus poor people get cheated when Anna saw this he again began his agitation against this. Hazare agitated for over eight months. The result was that more than Rs 125 crore was recovered from defaulters and the members of such societies heaved a sigh of relief. Recovery of around Rs. 400 crores is in the pipeline. After this Anna started to fight for the Right to information act. Government ignored Anna. In 1997 Anna agitated in Azad Maidan in Mumbai to create mass public awareness about RTI amongst the youth. Anna started to travel across state. Government promised Anna they will pass RTI act but in reality they never did it. For this Anna agitated ten times for this law. When Anna saw that Government is not willing to pass this law Anna went on an indefinite hunger strike at Azad Maidan in the last week of July 2003. After 12 days of Hunger strike in Azad Maidan the President of India signed the draft of the Right to Information Act and ordered the state government to implement it with effect from 2002. The same draft was considered as the base document for the making of the National Right to Information Act-2005. In 2003 Anna Hazare raised corruption charges against 4 ministers of the Congress-NCP government Government ignored him Then Anna started his fast unto death agitation on 9 August 2003. He ended his fast on 17 August 2003 after then chief minister Sushil Kumar Shinde formed a one man commission, headed by the retired justice P. B. Sawant to probe his charges. The P. B. Sawant commission report was submitted on 23 February 2005, indicted Suresh Jain, Nawab Malik and Padmasinh Patil. Suresh Jain and Nawab Malik resigned from the cabinet in March 2005 Jan Lokpal Bill – Agitation and hunger strike at the age of 73 and great victory against powerful and rich government India against corruption movement N. Santosh Hegde, a former justice of the Supreme Court of India and Lokayukta of Karnataka, Prashant Bhushan, a senior lawyer in the Supreme Court along with the members of the India against Corruption movement drafted an alternate bill, named as the Jan Lokpal Bill (People's Ombudsman Bill) with more stringent provisions and wider power to the Lokpal (Ombudsman) On April 5 2011 Again Anna started second freedom struggle in India. Anna wrote to everyone regarding Jan Lok Pal bill but no one listened him After that on 5th April 2011 Started fast unto death to wake up the government for India. Anna started war against corruption in India. Hazare has started a fast unto death from 5 April 2011 at Jantar Mantar in Delhi, to press for the demand to form a joint committee of the representatives of the Government and the civil society to draft a new bill with stronger penal actions and more independence to the Lokpal and Lokayuktas (Ombudsmen in the states) In beginning Government of India ignored him, many people said many things, but as First day was over Anna got the support from every corner of India and No one has expected such a support Anna will get for this bill. Over night table were turned and after 4 days of discussion with government of India servants . Finally Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh realized that demand of Anna is right and government accepted all the demands of Anna. Thus Jantar Mantar saved from becoming another Tahir Square. Anna Hazare won the following awards – 1. Indira Priyadarshini Vrikshamitra award by the Government of India on November 19, 1986 from the hands of Prime Minister of India Rajiv Gandhi. 2. 1989 - Krishi Bhushana award by the Government of Maharashtra. 3. 1990 - Padmashri award, by the Government of India 4. 1992 - Padmabhushan award, by the Government of India 5. 2008 - On April 15 2008, Anna Hazare received the World Bank's 2008 Jit Gill Memorial Award for Outstanding Public Service 6. Care International of the USA, Transparency International, Seoul (South Korea) 7. He received awards worth Rs 25 lakh and donated the entire amount for the Swami Vivekananda Kritadnyata Nidhi (social gratitude fund). Out of the two lakh rupees received from the above amount, mass marriages are carried of at least 25-30 poor couples every year. Anna Hazare has given his life for the benefit of India. He got the home in his village but he has not entered in that house from last 35 years. Anna Hazare and Properties – Anna Hazare has declared he has got Rs68, 688 in bank balance and cash and three pieces of land Hazare's lands were either donated to him or family owned In his statement, Hazare said two land pieces measuring 0.07 Hectares and two hectares are in his native village in Ralegan Siddhi in Maharashtra while 0.46 hectare of land is in Pimpianer. one of the pieces of land in Ralegan Siddhi was donated by Army to him which he has donated for village use the Pimpianer land was donated to him by a villager.Hazare has further donated this land for village use. Anna Hazare never got any grant from Government of India.

JANUARY 28, 2015 by Press Progress Conservative think tank wants Stephen Harper to gut endangered species laws Who cares about a bunch of owls -- or monarch butterflies -- when we've got acres of forest that need clear cutting? Hot off the heels of calling for a rollback of "unnecessary" child labour laws, the right-wing Frontier Centre for Public Policy is now turning its attention to Canada's endangered species laws ahead of the federal election -- calling "for root and branch reform." "We are told that many millions of acres must be set aside for conservation purposes, and economic activity stilled," writes Frontier Centre research fellow Elizabeth Nickson. "This has happened across Canada's sparsely populated rural areas, especially where resource, industrial or business activity takes place." And why's that? Well, Nickson, a former National Post columnist, and more recently the author of the book Eco-Fascists: How Radical Conservationists Are Destroying Our Natural Heritage, believes endangered species science hasn't been "contested vigorously" and "the numerous failures of endangered species regulations in Canada have not been reported." But she also applauds the Harper government for not getting "on board... the train" towards unnecessary habitat protections that "curb economic activity." Little wonder then that the Conservatives endangered species' policies have come under criticism in the last three months -- both at home and abroad. For her part, Nickson dismisses the "hailstorm of criticism ... being launched against the Harper government’s failure on environmental issues." To make her case for policy reform, Nickson argues that "only 5 continental mammals and 6 birds have gone extinct" in the entire world over the last 500 years -- something she calls a "harsh" reality for enviornmentalists. Yet one of her own sources for these numbers includes a disclaimer pointing out species identified as "extinct" are "likely to be a significant underestimate" from the real number of extinct species due to a lack of survey data to definitively confirm their extinction. Of course, even extinction data misses the point: the list of endangered species is the real problem. You can't do much for a species once it's gone. Here's what Nickson's source, the UICN Red List, offers in terms of extinct, critical, endangered and vulnerable species (above) and a breakdown of threatened species by taxonomic group (below) in Canada alone: Nickson also writes that "the authoritative Nature magazine" published an essay on the effects of climate change on endangered species which said "it was increasingly clear" that climate change will not cause a "species reduction of between 11 and 37 percent." But that isn't exactly what Nature said. While Nature does say "uncertainty prevails" and notes the challenges , they also point out "researchers have so far sampled only a sliver of Earth's biodiversity, and most of the unknown groups inhabit small regions of the world, often in habitats that are rapidly being destroyed." But from what they can establish with reasonable certainty: "Among the groups that can be assessed, amphibians stand out as the most imperilled: 41% face the threat of extinction, in part because of devastating epidemics caused by chytrid fungi. Large fractions of mammals and birds face significant threats because of habitat loss and degradation, as well as activities such as hunting." And as for climate change: "The effects of climate change, which are hard to forecast in terms of pace and pattern, will probably accelerate extinctions in as-yet unknown ways. One simple way to project into the future would be to assume that the rate of extinction will be constant; it is currently estimated to range from 0.01% to 0.7% of all existing species a year. “There is a huge uncertainty in projecting future extinction rates,” says Henrique Pereira, an ecologist at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research in Leipzig. At the upper rate, thousands of species are disappearing each year. If that trend continues, it could lead to a mass extinction — defined as a loss of 75% of species — over the next few centuries." The Harper government's track record with endangered species has come under repeated fire recently. A study released late November showed that 86% of Canada's legally-protected species have remained at the same risk level -- or have seen their fortunes decline -- over time, putting "biodiversity in Canada at risk." On the international stage, in December it was revealed that in Canada opted out of almost every resolution to protect endangered species at a meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species in 2013. Meanwhile, it looks like Nickson and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy have at least some allies in reform. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers has asked the government to weaken aspects of Canada's Species at Risk Act, according to documents PressProgress obtained through access to information. Conservative Lobbyist Who Pushed to Abolish Ontario’s College of Trades Named to College’s Governing Board ‘I Love Her’: Jagmeet Singh’s Racist Heckler Praised Kellie Leitch at Conservative Leadership Event Lawyer for Alberta Conservative MLA Derek Fildebrandt Confirms Derek Fildebrandt is a ‘Fool’

Curriculum-Embedded Performance Task Strand III: Global Interdependence Laboratory Investigation This curriculum-embedded science performance task is related to the content standards and expected performances for high school, as described in the Core Science Curriculum Framework, under Scientific Inquiry, Literacy and Numeracy, Strand III – Global Interdependence. Targeted Content Standard 9.8 - The use of resources by human populations may affect the quality of the environment. Targeted Scientific Inquiry, Literacy and Numeracy Standards D INQ. 1 Identify questions that can be answered through scientific investigation. D INQ. 3 Formulate a testable hypothesis and demonstrate logical connections between the scientific concepts guiding the hypothesis and the design of the experiment. D INQ. 4 Design and conduct appropriate types of scientific investigations to answer different questions. D INQ. 5 Identify independent and dependent variables, including those that are kept constant and those used as controls. D INQ. 6 Use appropriate tools and techniques to make observations and gather data. D INQ. 7 Assess the reliability of the data that was generated in the investigation. D INQ. 9 Articulate conclusions and explanations based on research data, and assess results based on the design of an investigation. Learning objective: Students will be able to identify building materials that are resistant to the effects of acid rain based on their data. Listed below are the suggested materials for the laboratory exercise. You may use additional materials if they are available. containers with lids limestone chips graduated cylinder marble chips vinegar red sandstone chips pH paper/meter pea stone safety goggles access to a balance Teams of two students are ideal for laboratory work, but circumstances may necessitate teams of three students. Students will need a minimum of 90 minutes to complete this laboratory exercise if you expect their lab reports to be written during class time. You should allow about 60 minutes of instructional time for students to design and set up their experiments. Additional instructional time will be necessary for students to collect data for this activity as the change in the condition of the building materials will take several hours. If your schedule is such that class does not meet every day, then further adjustments for the activity will be necessary. Allow a minimum of 30 minutes for students to write about their results. As an alternative students can complete the lab report for homework. A sample scoring rubric is provided for your convenience or you may design your own. Suggested materials for students to test have been listed in the laboratory activity. You can change these materials based on the supplies available to you or ask the students to bring in other building materials to test. Any small container with a cover will work for this activity, including small jars or petri dishes. Vinegar with an approximate pH of 3 has been suggested as a substance to simulate acid rain. If the odor is too intense another weak acid may be substituted at the discretion of the teacher. Keep in mind safety considerations and the fact that average acid rain has a pH between 4.0 and 5.5. The quantity of vinegar that is introduced to the building material is not specified in the student instructions. You can control the maximum amount of vinegar available to a team of students (20 ml per material tested) to conserve supplies or direct all students to use the same quantity of vinegar and building materials to pool data and compare results. 0 Data are very poorly organized or presented in an inappropriate manner or missing altogether. 3 Conclusions are fully supported by data and address the hypothesis. Reliability of data and validity of conclusions are thoroughly discussed. 2 Conclusions are generally supported by data and address the hypothesis. Minor errors in interpretation of results may be present. Discussion of reliability of data and validity of conclusions is limited. 1 Conclusions are supported by data and address the hypothesis to a limited extent. Major errors in interpretation of results may be present. There is little discussion of the reliability of the data or validity of conclusions. 0 Conclusions are not supported by data, do not address the hypothesis or are missing. There is no discussion of the reliability of data or validity of conclusions. Excellent performance 10-12 points Proficient performance 7-9 points Marginal performance 4-6 points

Safe Sleep Tips Free Baby Box My parents didn’t follow these safe sleep guidelines when I was an infant and I turned out fine. Why should I use these tips with my baby? Sleep-related deaths, including SIDS and accidental strangulation or suffocation in bed, are the number one cause of death for children under 12 months old. You probably didn’t hear about SIDS deaths when you were a kid, but they happened and at a higher rate than today, in large part because of safe sleep practices. Why take the risk? If my baby is on his or her back to sleep, can’t he or she aspirate or choke? No, this is a myth: due to human anatomy and gravity, aspiration while sleeping on one’s back is virtually impossible. Consult your pediatrician if your child has reflux or other health issues related to eating. If my baby sleeps on his or her back, won’t he or she get a flat head? Flat head, or plagiocephaly, can occur when a child is on his or her back for an excessive amount of time. Avoid this by engaging in supervised Tummy Time, and moving your baby’s head while he or she sleeps so that his or her head is not always in the same position. My twins were next to each other in my womb for nine months: can’t they sleep together now? No. Just because they are twins does not mean that they have a special awareness of their surroundings: one twin can easily lay an arm over the face of the other, causing the other to suffocate. Every baby needs his or her own sleep environment. My lactation consultant told me that bed-sharing is a great way to improve bonding and promote breastfeeding. My lactation consultant also said that there are ways to ensure that bed sharing is safe. Is this true? While bed sharing may improve bonding and promote breastfeeding, nothing makes bed sharing safe. And while bonding and breastfeeding are very important, neither requires you to share a sleep surface with your baby. The supposed benefits of bed sharing simply do not outweigh the definite risks.

Red River Scrapbook: If elected ... By Edward Southerland If elected.... As we get ready to go to the polls, it seemed appropriate to recall the way voting used to be before machines took over. It was more personal at every level, more hands on, from actually marking the ballots to counting them. Much of that has changed. There is still a certain excitement of anticipation on election night, but it is not so close to home. Fannin County Courthouse in the 1950s The first Tuesday following the first Monday in November, Election Day all across the land, was no big deal in Fannin County in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The Democratic Party primary in the late spring had decided most of the state and local races, and the general election in the fall was just a formality. The big time for politics was in the spring. On the third Saturday in May, every two years, the voters went to the polls to select the candidates to carry the Democratic Party banner in the general election. The Democrats had run things since who laid the rails. I doubt that any Republican had ever won office in Fannin County; more than likely, the GOP had never even carried a precinct. Fannin was one of the staunchest “yellow dog Democrat” strongholds anywhere south of the line. Even Al Smith, the wet, Catholic, Yankee from New York, carried dry, Protestant, thoroughly Dixie, Fannin County in 1928, while much of the rest of Texas went for Herbert Hoover. No doubt Fannin folks liked Ike in 1952 and 1956, but they voted for Adlai Stevenson nevertheless. All over Texas during the weeks preceding the primary, governors, congressmen, legislators, judges, sheriffs, and all manner of local viziers, satraps, and potential poohbahs wooed their constituents with bluster, buttons, and barbecue. A seasoned camp follower, not restricted by too tight a conscience or too tight a belt, could wander the state for weeks living fat and happy on political pork, not from a barrel, but fresh off the hog or steer. These freeloaders, and there were many, were the bane of the losers, who would complain, “Somebody’s been eatin’ my meat and voting for the other guy.” The barbecues were a treat, the speeches and rallies were lively and diverting, but the real excitement came on election night. In the days before preference polls and entrance polls and exit polls, you had to wait until someone actually counted the votes to find out who won and who lost. Counting votes was not a simple matter. Smaller counties, like Fannin, did not use voting machines. They used big paper ballots, sometimes as big as a newspaper, and the voters marked their choices by hand. After the polls closed, the tally clerks—there were a half dozen or more in a large precinct—would lay the ballot sheets out flat on a table, five or six at time, using a yardstick or a piece of lattice molding as a guide to keep the sheets lined up row by row, race by race. The election judge would call off the races, the clerks would scan across their ballots and call out the votes, and other clerks would mark the count down on a tally sheet. After a few rounds of counting, the clerks would compare their counts. If all tallied, they would move on. If not, they had to count the ballots again. When they finished with all the ballot sheets, the clerks again checked their counts and again all the figures had to balance. Counting several hundred ballots by hand was not an easy task, and more than one election judge spent a long night trying to reconcile an errant tally. Counting was done at the polling place in each precinct when the polls closed. There were twenty or so scattered around the county. The city precincts had hundreds of voters, while some of the rural boxes counted only a couple of dozen names on the registration lists. Beset by the apathy that seeps into a society that has never had its rights seriously challenged, these small boxes often counted only four or five ballots for the day. Nevertheless, they rated an election judge and at least one assistant, both paid for by the party. The party didn’t mind. It is an axiom of all things political that you can never have too many jobs to hand out. Election night was a time for everybody to share in the excitement of the republic at work. To that end, the courthouse had a public address system with loud speakers aimed at all four sides of the square. In the fall, KFYN used the system to broadcast the out-of-town football games of the Purple Warriors. The station went off the air at sundown, so the play-by-play came back to Bonham over a telephone line and out over the P.A. system. People who could not make it to the game would park around the square, sit in their cars or on the broad courthouse lawn and listen to the game. On Saturday morning, a transcription of the broadcast played on the radio. On election night, the radio station set up a news service teletype in the courthouse and announced the local returns as the precincts reported in and the state tallies as they appeared on the ticker. In between, they played music and read commercials for the local sponsors of the service. Saturday night in the county seat was the big night of the week any time of the year. The farm families all came into town on Saturday to do their shopping, go to the movies, and visit friends and neighbors from around the county. To accommodate the crowds the stores stayed open until eight o’clock. At the American Theater, you could take in previews of coming attractions, a newsreel, a cliff-hanging serial episode, a selected short subject, a cartoon and a cowboy movie for sixty cents—thirty-five cents if you had a student discount card. Popcorn cost a dime. Top that off with a ham sandwich and an ice cream soda from the drug store or a chicken-fried steak with cream gravy from one of the cafés, and you had a Saturday night to hold you through the week. The even bigger crowds guaranteed on election night brought forth expanded offerings. Beneath the mantle of the big trees that shaded the courthouse grounds and under the steady bronze gaze of James Butler Bonham, the “back to the Bible” boys competed for the attention and the alms of the multitudes. They lauded the Lord, damned the devil, warned the wayward, and proclaimed the imminent arrival of the final reckoning. Despite the short time remaining before the glorious ascent to the ever after, they still pitched the onlookers for donations to carry on the good work here on earth. Between exhortations, they would break into gospel hymns, some plaintive, some joyously exuberant, accompanied by an assortment of banjos, guitars, accordions, and other musical instruments. Inside the courthouse, things were bustling. When the polls closed and the votes counted, the election judges from all over the county brought the ballot and stub boxes, tally sheets, and official return forms to the county clerk’s office in Bonham. The stub boxes and original certified returns went into the clerk’s vault. The sealed ballot boxes went upstairs to the district clerk’s big walk-in vault for safekeeping. They were kept for a year and a day in case someone challenged the election results. The task of toting the boxes and paper work up and down the stairs fell to three or four runners—teenage boys hired for five dollars a night and all the Coca-Colas they could drink. My father was a member of the Democratic County Committee that was in charge of the local primary elections, and I inherited a runner’s job by right of primogeniture when I was thirteen. I worked at least three election nights, becoming the chief honcho at the last one, able to pick my own crew. Copies of the official returns went to the district judge’s office on the second floor. On election night, those chambers were the command center for the county committee. Behind the clouds of blue cigar smoke, they watched over the democratic and the Democratic process. If the local races were tight, the crowd in the district judge’s office would be calling around the county trying to find out the vote counts in the outlying precincts. All through the evening, the winners climbed the stairs to this sanctum sanctorum to be congratulated, the losers to commiserate, and the hangers-on to pay their respects to the powers that were and soon would be. One and all they stayed around to imbibe the atmosphere of the place and embrace the bourbon thoughtfully provided by the sheriff from stocks confiscated from the county’s bootleggers and blind tigers. About nine o’clock Bernie Richie, the rotund manager of the state employment office, would bring over sacks of hamburgers from Keene’s Café, and right behind him were boxes of fresh doughnuts, still warm from the bakery. If the things ran smoothly the whole business was over by 10:30; if it did not, there were frantic calls trying to track down the last of the returns due in the clerk’s office. At one election, we waited until almost midnight for the East Bonham box to report. The polling officials had counted the ballots over and over, but still could not reconcile the tally sheets. Finally, in exasperation and with caustic side comments concerning the intelligence of the election judge, the county committeemen walked across the street to the city hall, where East Bonham voted, sent the poll officials home and counted the votes themselves. After the last precinct reported, and the state ticker slowed to a crawl, the committee and friends retired for coffee and political analysis, often lasting late into the night. Church attendance was generally light on the Sunday after election night. These days we watch the returns on television, and prognosticators announce the winners long before the actual votes are counted. There is not much drama to the night. I think I will see if there is a good black and white movie on television this year.

TED Studies: Religion - Understanding Islam. Teachers and students can use TED: Understanding Islam to enhance existing curricula in undergraduate. Introductory Essay. Read this essay on Understanding Islam. Come browse our large digital warehouse of free sample essays. Get the knowledge you need in order to pass your classes and more. Read this essay on Understanding Islam. Come browse our large digital warehouse of free sample essays. Get the knowledge you need in order to pass your classes and more. Bestessaywriters.com is a professional essay writing. Understanding Islam and the Muslim community Islam is a highly controversial and sensitive issue. Understanding Islam In this essay But it was also very limited in terms of the range of issues that it covered. So, for a while. The debate over Islam and science covers a wide range of issues and extends from political leaders and experts to the public at large. Revealing the ever-present. Understanding Islam and Muslims Essay. S. A. Nigosian believes that “the critical issue. A Cultural Studies Approach to Understanding Islam Essay. TED Studies: Religion - Understanding Islam. Teachers and students can use TED: Understanding Islam to enhance existing curricula in undergraduate. Introductory Essay. Contemporary Religious Issues in Christianity Essay Understanding the Differences Between Islam Get your custom essay sample. Contemporary Religious Issues in Christianity Essay Understanding the Differences Between Islam Get your custom essay sample. Introduction The literal meaning of Islam is peace. Because of many current world events, Islam is a highly controversial and sensitive issue that has many. The “role of women” in Islam is not. which is a collection of twenty-five essays on the “secret love-lives. including the issue of gender in Islam. The Salient Issues In Understanding Islam And Christianity In The Twenty-First Century - Essay Example. Thesis Statement: Women’s rights in Islam is rather still seen to be much more liberated according to the Quran yet subjugated under Sharia Law since the. “Understanding Islam” by. Islam is a highly controversial and sensitive issue that has many. Essay about Understanding Nourishes Belonging. a Lack. “Understanding Islam” by. Islam is a highly controversial and sensitive issue that has many. Essay about Understanding Nourishes Belonging. a Lack. Islam, the Modern World, and the West: Contemporary Topics Table of Contents General Considerations Islam, Peace, Jihad, Violence, and Terrorism. UNDERSTANDING ISLAM Understanding Islam Sharain Jones DeVry University We are in a rapidly changing society. Especially on this day known as 911 I think more about. Introduction The literal meaning of Islam is peace. Because of many current world events, Islam is a highly controversial and sensitive issue that has many. Understanding Islam In this essay But it was also very limited in terms of the range of issues that it covered. So, for a while. Understanding Islam Summary of the history of Islam Explain the importance of these elements for Muslims: Qur’an, Five Pillars, and Ramadan Describe significant. The Salient Issues In Understanding Islam And Christianity In The Twenty-First Century - Essay Example. Compare And Contrast Islam And Christianity Religion Essay Once an understanding of Islam is established we. converted to Islam. It is an issue of concern. UNDERSTANDING ISLAM Understanding Islam Sharain Jones DeVry University We are in a rapidly changing society. Especially on this day known as 911 I think more about. Compare And Contrast Islam And Christianity Religion Essay Once an understanding of Islam is established we. converted to Islam. It is an issue of concern. Understanding Islam Summary of the history of Islam Explain the importance of these elements for Muslims: Qur’an, Five Pillars, and Ramadan Describe significant. Bestessaywriters.com is a professional essay writing. Understanding Islam and the Muslim community Islam is a highly controversial and sensitive issue. Understanding Islam and Muslims Essay. S. A. Nigosian believes that “the critical issue. A Cultural Studies Approach to Understanding Islam Essay. The debate over Islam and science covers a wide range of issues and extends from political leaders and experts to the public at large. Revealing the ever-present.

A1060 Sidecar For some reason, someone at Commodore decided that compatability with the IBM-PC would be a good thing to have for the Amiga. This decision was made very early on, and at the time of the Amiga's introduction gala at New York's Lincoln Center in July, 1985, the Amiga already had versions of a software-only IBM-PC emulator running on it, called Transformer. There was also supposed to be an acceleration device in the works to make this software-based emulation more useful, but for some reason Commodore abandoned that path and built a huge, expensive, loud, and ugly piece of hardware that they called the A1060 Sidecar. The Sidecar is a huge metal box that includes what basically amounts to an IBM-PC compatible motherboard with a 4.77MHz 8088, a slot for an 8087 math chip, 256KB RAM (with space for up to 512KB), three 8-bit ISA slots, a 360K floppy drive, and 80KB of dual-bus memory, shared between the Amiga's 68000 and the PC's 8088. The Sidecar plugged into the 86-pin expansion slot on the Amiga 1000's right side. The Sidecar was introduced sometime near the end of 1986. I remember asking about the Sidecar when I was shopping for my first Amiga, and I was quoted a price of over $1000! (Calm down, that's in Canadian dollars.) The A1000 with 512K and A1080 RGB monitor set me back $1800 in April 1987, and I certainly wasn't prepared to spend an extra $1000 for something that meant so little to me. After all, the primitive PC was just a fad that would be dead once the Amiga conquered the planet, right? ;-) The Sidecar was built specifically for the Amiga 1000, and it was introduced shortly before the Amiga 1000 was discontinued. Because of this, I don't think very many units were sold. Not all was lost, though, as the much more elegant BridgeBoard internal PC-compatible card for the Amiga 2000 used the same software, and probably much of the same hardware design. I didn't buy a Sidecar until 1992, when a local BBSer (Sir Nigel Flash) wanted to sell his third-or-fourth-hand unit. At that time I had recently purchased another BBSer's second-hand 80MB SCSI hard drive with the intention of using it with yet another BBSer's second-hand external SCSI adapter, but the adapter turned out to be dead and so I jumped on the Sidecar as soon as it came up for sale. The SCSI drive had come out of a high-end PC, and I got the 8-bit SCSI controller with it. The Sidecar can act as a server for the Amiga, and this is how it was used on my Amiga system, 99% of the time. :-) It was slow as a server, but cost effective (I think I paid $125 for it, with 512K installed), and it gave me better PC compatability than the Transformer software as an added bonus. Here's a picture of my A1000 with the Sidecar plugged into it. See how huge it is? The cardboard in the front of the Sidecar is covering the hard drive, which I put in place of the 360KB floppy drive. It would be hard to tell by looking, but when this picture was taken, the Sidecar was running Norton Commander on the PC side, as well as file serving for the Amiga. The PC screen has been dragged down, so that the top half of the display is showing the Amiga Workbench and the bottom half of the display (in the default garish colours) is Norton Commander, running on the MS-DOS partition. The Sidecar was the first piece of Amiga equipment that I owned that didn't have the rainbow checkmark logo on it. It was also my first piece of Amiga hardware with an obvious Commodore "chicken-lips" logo. Perhaps this was an early signal of the impurity of Commodore-Amiga, and of bastardizing mutations to come. ;-) From this photo we can also see how the mouse and joystick ports on the side of the Amiga were passed through to the front of the Sidecar. From the back we can see the high-quality metal construction. That heavy- duty fan made a lot of noise, though I couldn't hear it after I put the Seagate SCSI drive in (aircraft engine!). The port near the bottom, below the power plug, is for Amiga floppy drives. With the Sidecar's internal floppy drive removed, I used to keep my A1010 3½-inch floppy drive plugged into that port so that I could access 720KB disks from the PC side. The drive appeared as drive B:, and there was no A:, which was fine by me because that stopped the MS-DOS boot process and allowed the Amiga to start up without thrashing. Power goes into the Sidecar, and the Sidecar then passes the power along to the Amiga. The Sidecar's power switch is then used as the power switch for the two units together. The backs of the three slots can be seen in the image above, with only the middle one occupied by my SL-02 SCSI card. It took me quite a while to get this hardware combination working, because the floppy controller on the SL-02 conflicted with the floppy controller of the Sidecar. When the card was plugged in, I could access the hard drive, but no floppies, so I couldn't get anything on or off the hard drive, or use FDISK to set it up for my Amiga. I eventually fixed the problem with the creative use of masking tape. It took a lot of power-up/test/power-down cycles to figure out which pins of the SL-02 to cover over! The startup messages from the Sidecar helped a lot, though. Even with its huge size, the Sidecar didn't have much free space inside. Three full-size 8-bit PC slots, one 5¼-inch drive bay, a huge power supply (I don't remember how many Watts), some strange mutant male Amiga 86-pin bus passthrough that was accessible internally, and two levels of printed circuit board. I didn't receive the original Sidecar disks with this beast, and so the previous owner gave me copies of the software for his BridgeBoard. I also never received the Sidecar manual (I borrowed the BridgeBoard manual). These facts may explain why I never got the unit to function fully. I did manage to set up the hard drive for use with my Amiga, I did figure out how to use the Amiga's RAM as a RAM disk for the PC side, and I did get the Amiga's parallel port to function with MS-DOS software, but I always had to transfer files between the two operating systems with floppies. Whenever I attempted to use the BridgeBoard's file transfer software to pass files between MS-DOS and AmigaDOS partitions, the Amiga would GURU. The image above is from a screen capture of the Sidecar's startup message. I don't know if my machine is older than most, or if this message is typical of the Sidecar. To the right is a photo of the serial number on my Sidecar unit. It looks like a low number, but it may be a high number for the Sidecar. I have no way of knowing. There are still a lot of things I don't know about the Sidecar, such as: How many Sidecars were made? What do the twelve dip switches on the motherboard do? Can I access all of the Sidecar's firmware from PC or Amiga memory, so that I can save it for when the EPROMs die? Why does DEBUG on the PC side sometimes find output from AmigaDOS shell programs in PC memory? Why do AREAD and AWRITE crash? My Sidecar's main circuit board says: FAB 380517-01 Rev.4 ASSY NO. 380604-01 Rev.7

How to Paint Different Parts of your Car So you’ve decided to go down the route of the “poor man’s paint job” – or so they call it. Painting your car is no easy task, especially if it’s your first time doing it. Take this as no invitation to paint your car all by yourself if you even have the slightest doubt that you can do it. Still, if you do learn how to complete this task all by yourself, you’ll be saving lots of money; not to mention you’ll have full control over what your car would look like. This is great news for those of you artistic souls who wish to bring a piece of their soul into their vehicles. Of course, this is also for us regular folks who simply wish to change the color of their car. And so let’s begin this simple guide on how to paint the different parts of your car. For this sort of project you’ll need a decent quality paint sprayer, first and foremost. We’d suggest going for an HVLP (high volume, low pressure) model, since we’d want to treat the vehicle as delicately as possible. Remember that this is not a process that you can rush, so allot a couple of days or a few weekends to finish this job. You’ll also need to be very patient. You will also need paint, masking tape, newspapers, and lots of sandpaper. Also bring polishing tools, sanding tools, and safety goggles (as well as a mask to protect you from the paint fumes). Find a place to perform the task. You’ll need somewhere with good ventilation, minimal dust, good lighting, electricity, and lots of room to work around your vehicle. So basically, that translates to: “not your garage”. Residential garages sometimes have furnaces that can cause an ignition of paint fumes – those of which will accumulate while you paint. Bring all the equipment to your setup spot and pray it won’t rain for the next couple of days. The first step is to make sure your car is in perfect condition. And we’re not referring to its performance. It needs to have no dents, no rust, and no other minimal imperfections that will make the car look ugly once it is done being painted. Here comes the first of many sanding procedures: sand the paint according to your liking. You may want to want to the bare metal of the vehicle, or to the original primer. You can sand just enough so that new paint will cling to the car. It’s all up to you. Of course, the best result is usually when people strip it down to bare metal. Clean all surfaces thoroughly, making sure no oils are on the car. Next, use masking tape and newspaper to cover all surfaces that you’re not supposed to paint, including glass, window trim, mirrors, door handles, and grills. Make sure there are no holes in either covering material. Also cover the area around the car with plastic to avoid permanently coloring the room – the car is the only objective after all. The Preliminary Process If you removed all the paint down to bare metal, prime the surface of the car with corrosion-resistant self-etching primer. Prime all the surfaces you removed rust and body filler from. If there are any scratches left during the preparation, now’s the time to fill it up with enough paint. You may then allow the primer to cure, relying on the information provided on the container. Sand all primed surfaces smooth and then clean the surface to remove any dust or oil that has accumulated. The Poor Man’s Painting Job Don’t take it as an insult that we’re calling this the poor man’s painting job – it is a very cost-effective way to paint your car. After all the sanding and priming, you can now feel free to spray the car with the color of your choice. Be gentle with the HVLP paint sprayer – it is made to be precise, but you can never be too careful. Just make sure the paint is thinned correctly for the equipment you are using, but also avoid over-thinning, it decreases the gloss of the result. Also try to remove blobs of paint and drips on the side. Be patient and gentle with this procedure, it is for the best. Lastly, allow the paint to cure and then finish sanding and cleaning your car. Admire your work and question the world: why would you ever pay for someone else to do this job?

Hi Grade 5 Parents, What is IAD? Internet Addiction Disorder. Here is a link to an online quiz to check if your child is in danger, click here IAD QUIZ What do you do if you child has a high score? 1. Limit the time online - 90 minutes a day maximum in total with a break after each 30 minutes. 2. Make sure that your child is doing school work and not just playing. 3. Don't put your child's computer in their bedroom. An area like the living room is better as you can monitor their online usage more easily. 4. Learn to make a blog yourself so that you can better understand how your child is using the Internet. 5. Talk to your child about what they have done online. Know what they are up to.

Peter Kery Communication designers have always played a role in advancing socially relevant issues. Since one of the special attributes that a designer brings to a visual communication problem and its solution is empathy, it is not surprising that design students have an attraction to projects that affect the human condition. As our ever increasing social-network-centric culture receives a constant stream of overloaded information from all over the world, there is an opportunity to take a hard look through all this informative “noise” and reflect at social issues afflicting people all over the world. The nature of this part of the Graphic Design curriculum at Boston University Center for Digital Imaging Arts is the resolution of visual communication problems that can stand out and effectively communicate those social problems that both challenge the audience and pay respect to the afflicted. The Assignment: Design a poster, publication jacket cover, or any other appropriate application to a social cause. The headline of the design you may change accordingly. Additional text and/or statistics that help the communication objectives of your piece may also be added. See the blog post: Image and Meaning.

Research can improve maternal and newborn health How to overcome inherent gaps between NGOs and research institutions Successfully connecting NGO practice and health research Collaboration between implementing NGOs and local research institutions in developing countries Von Cecilia Capello Since 2008, the non-governmental organization (NGO) Enfants du Monde (EdM) has supported Ministries of Health (MoH) and NGOs to operationalize the World Health Organization’s (WHO) framework for Working with Individuals, Families and Communities (IFC) to improve maternal and newborn health (MNH) in several countries, including Bangladesh, Burkina Faso and Haiti. The IFC framework is designed to be integrated as a health promotion component of countries’ MNH strategies, aiming to improve MNH by empowering women, men, families and communities and by increasing access to quality health services. Zusammenfassung lesen Enfants du Monde (EdM) is working in several countries to imporve maternal and newborn health (MNH) by using the WHO framework for working with Individuals, Families and Communties (IFC). The framework is designed to help countries to empower women, men, families and communities and to increase their access to quality health services. This is done at the community level through several interventions such as developing capacities to stay healthy, respond to obstetric and neonatal emergencies or increasing awareness of the rights, needs and potential problems related to maternal and newborn health. After several years of implementation, EdM decided to increase its investment and in 2014, EdM and its partners collaborated with local research institutions (RIs) and research consultants in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso and Haiti to conduct baseline studies. The main purpose was to measure the impact of IFC implementation, Research questions included the effect of the IFC on the knowledge and attitudes of communities and health providers, as well as the empowerment of women and the increasing of the access to MNH services. Several obstacles emerged such as Developing shared expectations between NGOs and RIs regarding research. Solution: EdM invested in capacity building of researchers through exchanges and workshops. This proved effective in creating a shared understanding of the work to be undertaken. While necessary for a high degree of engagement by all partners, involvement of MoH, local NGOs and other partners in research proved time consuming and resource intensive. Solution: After a first experience, steps for research were initiated well in advance and elaborated timelines allowed for more flexibility and simply more time to work with partners. The final result was three high-quality baseline reports. Workshop on health care and Yellow Fever prevention / © flickr This is done at the community level through implementing interventions within the following four priority areas of intervention: 1) Developing capacities to stay healthy, make healthy decisions, and respond to obstetric and neonatal emergencies; 2) Increasing awareness of the rights, needs and potential problems related to maternal and newborn health; 3) Strengthening the linkages for social support between women, men, families and communities with the health service delivery system, and 4) Improving quality of care, health services and interactions with women and communities. Another core element of the framework is health systems strengthening, by reinforcing intersectoral and interagency collaboration and community participation at all phases of program implementation. Critical questions in order to measure our work In 2013, following several years of implementation, EdM decided to increase its investment in conducting research to measure the impact of IFC implementation, in order to generate evidence for advocacy, support programme monitoring and contribute to the broader body of knowledge regarding health promotion for MNH. In 2014, EdM and its partners collaborated with local research institutions (RIs) and research consultants in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso and Haiti to conduct baseline studies as a first step of conducting operational research within the context of its programmes. Research questions included the effect of the IFC on the knowledge and attitudes of communities and health providers, as well as the empowerment of women and the increasing of the access to MNH services. Our baseline studies employed a quasi-experimental design and a rigorous mixed-methods approach. With technical support from WHO (departments of Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health and Reproductive Health Research) and the University of Geneva (UNIGE), EdM drafted terms of reference (ToR), following which RIs submitted research protocols. Protocols, including methodology and research instruments, were finalized jointly with EdM and MoH and technical inputs from WHO. Ethical approval was obtained from the appropriate bodies (national ethical committee for Burkina Faso and ethical review committees of the research institutions for Haiti and Bangladesh) prior to data collection. Researchers collected and analysed data and reports were finalized jointly at the end of 2014. At least a year passed between the identification of the RI and the final report. How to overcome the challenges Common challenges emerged in the processes throughout all three experiences. EdM tried to implement solutions for overcoming them and succeeded sometimes partially sometimes completely. Challenges and solutions included: Measuring empowerment and behavioural change at community level is complex and competencies for measuring them were limited within our partner RIs. In our experience, developing shared expectations between NGOs and RIs regarding research was challenging. Exchanges on ToR are insufficient for communicating completely the programme contexts and theories of change necessary for effectively carrying out the research. Our solution was to invest in capacity building of researchers through exchanges and workshops. Though time consuming for both sides, this proved effective in creating a shared understanding of the work to be undertaken and shared objectives and laying the groundwork for a smooth research process. Moreover, the involvement of experts/researchers from WHO helped us in the identification of indicators for measuring empowerment/behavioural changes. Statistical expertise is difficult to find and calculation of sample size and data analysis are difficult, at times even for researchers who do not always have strong capacity in sample size calculations. For each sample-size calculation, we exchanged with researchers within WHO, UNIGE and other universities and international institutions. In addition, we strengthened the research expertise within EdM through capacity building of staff. Through this we were able to work with researchers to correctly calculate statistically significant samples and to verify calculations. Agreeing on a budget proved challenging. The costs of carrying out research are high, when adhering to certain standards, and reducing the costs significantly is often not possible, if quality is to be maintained. On the other hand, small/medium-size NGOs, like EdM, are limited in their ability to justify research in their budgets, and must weigh the benefits of conducting research over conducting critical activities which will benefit the populations they serve in the near-term. Agreeing on a for bouth sides acceptable budget. This included an understanding of research institutions that mid-sized NGOs have limited resources for research. With this understanding, and with the interest of participating in a challenging experience, RIs were able to make certain concessions and reduce costs to the extent possible. On the other hand, the recognition on the part of the NGO of the importance of research and a willingness to increase investment in this regard was and will be essential. While necessary for a high degree of engagement by all partners, involvement of MoH, local NGOs and other partners in research proved time consuming and resource intensive. After a first experience, steps for research were initiated well in advance and elaborated timelines allowed for more flexibility and simply more time to work with partners. Different organizations and institutions have different requirements and expectations in ethical considerations, and it was not always easy to reach an agreement on the process to be followed. Our solution was to insist on holding to the highest standards suggested by WHO and in all cases to submit the protocol to MoH for ethical approval, as well as to the ethical review committees of research institutions where possible. In every case research skills within the NGO, support of WHO and UNIGE, and input from other research institutions were critical to success. This facilitated supporting local researchers, ensuring quality and accountability. The final result was three high-quality baseline reports. Effective collaboration between EdM, local ROs and international institutions (WHO, UNIGE) with a high degree of investment on all sides was necessary. Lessons learnt from this experience are going to be applied in EdM’s future research/evaluations, including the end-point evaluations in 2017.

Recent advances in the management of type 2 diabetes mellitus: a review B T Srinivasan1,2, J Jarvis1, K Khunti3, M J Davies2 Department of Diabetes Research, University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, Leicester, UK Department of Cardiovascular Sciences, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK Department of Health Sciences, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK J Jarvis, Diabetes Research, Level 1, Victoria Building, Leicester Royal Infirmary, Infirmary Square, Leicester, LE1 5WW, UK; janet.jarvis{at}uhl-tr.nhs.uk Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a progressive disorder caused by a combination of insulin resistance and β cell dysfunction. It is associated with an increased and premature risk of cardiovascular disease as well as specific microvascular complications such as retinopathy, nephropathy and neuropathy. In the last 5 years new glucose lowering drugs acting on novel pathways have been developed, licensed and launched, such as the glucagon-like peptide (GLP-1) agonists (exenatide) and dipeptidyl peptidase (DPP-IV) inhibitors such as sitagliptin and vildagliptin. This review looks at these new agents in terms of their mode of action, pharmacokinetics and use in clinical practice. This review also includes new agents in the area of weight loss that may have a positive effect for glucose management—for example, rimonabant. T2DM is a progressive disorder accompanied by deterioration in β cell function6 and insulin resistance. Despite this, there is now clear evidence that tight control of blood glucose significantly reduces the risk of complications of diabetes.7 Before the year 2000 the choice of pharmacological agents, especially oral agents, to treat T2DM was limited. Sulfonylureas and metformin are cost effective and are still regularly used in clinical practice; however, both have their disadvantages. Sulfonylureas have been in use since the 1950s and were developed following an observation by two scientists that sulfonamides had a glucose lowering effect. There are many sulfonylureas available and they act by stimulating insulin secretion from the pancreas. Due to their mode of action they do rely on some residual β cell function and will therefore become less effective as diabetes progresses. Sulfonylureas are associated with hypoglycaemia and weight gain. Side effects with this class of drugs are rare. The biguanides were launched in the 1950s and metformin is currently the only one available; phenformin and buformin were withdrawn in the 1970s following safety concerns due to a risk of fatal lactic acidosis. Despite the cardioprotective effect of metformin, many patients fail to tolerate maximum doses due to gastrointestinal side effects. Metformin is the only biguanide available and acts by decreasing gluconeogenesis and increasing peripheral utilisation of glucose. It is often used in overweight patients due to its weight neutrality. Acarbose is an α glucosidase inhibitor and has been available since the 1990s. It inhibits the enzymes needed to digest carbohydrates and is therefore taken with meals. This drug is rarely used in the UK due to common side effects such as flatulence and diarrhoea but is used regularly in other countries such as Japan. Around the same time meglitinides were launched. These agents (repaglinide and nateglinide) stimulate insulin release and are taken with main meals. Side effects can include weight gain and hypoglycaemia. Thiazolidinediones (TZDs) were also introduced in the late 1990s and these agents act by binding to PPARγ thus reducing insulin resistance. One of the main side effects is water retention, leading to oedema and weight gain. TZDs are more costly than the traditional agents such as metformin and sulfonylureas. Although insulin treatment is very effective in achieving glycaemic control, its use is invariably associated with weight gain due to increased body fat mass, in particular abdominal obesity.10 11 Increased abdominal obesity in turn may lead to worsening of insulin resistance and therefore increasing insulin requirements, and a vicious circle may ensue. Along with weight gain, insulin use can also cause problems with episodes of hypoglycaemia if insulin treatment is not managed appropriately. There is clearly a need for newer pharmacological agents acting through novel mechanisms which could be used instead of or in combination with insulin, especially in light of the recent concerns regarding the cardiovascular safety of rosiglitazone, a TZD.12 On the other hand, a statistically non-significant reduction in primary composite end point (defined as death from any cause, non-fatal myocardial infarction (including silent myocardial infarction), stroke, acute coronary syndrome, leg amputation, coronary or leg revascularisation) was shown with pioglitazone (n = 2605) compared with placebo (n = 2603) in patients with T2DM (514 vs 572, hazard ratio (HR) 0.90, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.80 to 1.02; p = 0.095).13 This review will discuss the next generation of agents available to treat T2DM. Newer agents that act differently to the previous generation of agents that address weight gain and preservation of β cell mass are of particular interest. We have seen a rapid influx of these new agents over the past 2 years and it is important for general physicians to have an evidence base and working knowledge on the practical use of these medications. The aim of this review is to provide an overview of the newer modalities of treatment that have become available over the last 2 years and discuss how they have addressed some of the shortfalls of current treatment options for T2DM. For the purpose of this review OVID Medline was searched in the month of January 2008. Previous systematic reviews, meta-analysis, and double blinded randomised controlled trials in English and in human subjects were reviewed. Incretin mimetics Insulin has been shown to be released more effectively through an oral glucose load than intravenously and this is known as the incretin effect.14 The incretin effect occurs when intestinally derived peptides (one of these peptides is glucagon-like polypeptide 1 (GLP-1)) stimulate insulin release in response to oral glucose. However, the insulin stimulating benefits of peptides such as GLP-1 are rapidly diminished as GLP-1 is rapidly metabolised by the glycoprotein dipeptidyl peptidase (DPP-IV). Considering the incretin effect it is possible to enhance the incretin pathway in two ways: by enhancing the action of GLP-1 itself, or by slowing its breakdown by inhibiting the release of DPP-IV. Glucagon-like polypeptide 1 analogues Exenatide is the first agent belonging to the class of GLP-1 agonists. It is a synthetic version of exendin-4 which is a hormone found in the saliva of the Gila monster (a lizard native to the USA) which has properties similar to human GLP-1. GLP-1 belongs to the class of small intestinal hormones that has an insulinotropic action in response to ingested glucose. In addition, GLP-1 suppresses inappropriately high glucagon values which in turn suppress hepatic glucose output. It also reduces the rate of gastric emptying, thus promoting satiety, resulting in reduced caloric intake and weight reduction.15 There is also evidence to suggest that GLP-1 analogues may preserve β cell reserves. This evidence is from animal studies and more recently from analysis of β cell function using validated surrogate markers such as HOMA-β.16–18 As the GLP-1 analogues cause glucose dependent insulin release in the postprandial state, they have a lower risk of hypoglycaemic episodes compared to insulin. In addition they also potentiate weight reduction by mediating satiety and reduced gastric emptying.19 Exenatide is the first licensed injectable hypoglycaemic agent that has clearly shown a statistically significant weight reduction compared to insulin/placebo. The recently published data18 on subjects completing over 2 years of treatment with exenatide showed a sustained reduction in HbA1c and weight after 104 weeks of treatment (n = 283, mean (SEM) reductions from baseline: HbAlc −1.1 (0.1)%, 95% CI −1.3% to −1.0%, p<0.001; weight −4.7 (0.3) kg, 95% CI −5.4 kg to −4.0 kg, p<0.001).18 Further, this study has also reported reduction in markers of hepatic injury (surrogate markers of cardiovascular risk) and improvement in β cell function as measured by HOMA-β. For the purposes of this review we have pooled the data on exenatide into two categories: firstly, exenatide in combination with oral antidiabetic agents; and secondly, exenatide compared with insulin. Exenatide and oral antidiabetic agents Three studies20–22 have compared exenatide with placebo in combination with a sulfonylurea or metformin in randomised double/triple blinded trials. The duration of these studies varied between 16–30 weeks and involved over 1000 participants (table 1). In all of these studies treatment with exenatide produced significant reductions in HbA1c and more weight loss compared to placebo. In these studies exenatide was generally well tolerated by participants. When used in combination with TZD treatment23 exenatide resulted in significant reductions in HbA1c (−0.89% vs −0.09%) and weight (−1.75 kg vs −0.24 kg) compared to placebo; however, there were more gastrointestinal symptoms in the exenatide groups. Table 1 Characteristics of studies comparing exenatide and other oral hypoglycaemic agents Exenatide compared to insulin Two studies (one using biphasic insulin and one using basal insulin)24 25 comparing insulin treatment with twice daily exenatide showed exenatide to be comparable to insulin in terms of HbA1c reduction. Although similar improvement in overall glycaemic control was seen with exenatide, more gastrointestinal adverse events were reported in this group. In these studies weight loss was seen with exenatide treatment compared to weight gain in the insulin groups. In a 16 week crossover study26 comparing exenatide to insulin glargine, a similar reduction in HbA1c was once again seen for both treatments; however, a lower rate of overall and nocturnal hypoglycaemia was seen with the exenatide group. Again exenatide was associated with significant weight loss whereas insulin was associated with weight gain. The meta-analysis by Amori et al16 evaluated the safety of exenatide and has reported nausea and vomiting to be the most common side effects with the agent. Hypoglycaemic event rate was similar to that of insulin, but higher compared to placebo. These tend to occur at the initiation stage and were common when exenatide was co-administered with a sulfonylurea. Severe hypoglycaemia was rare.16 Recently, reports of pancreatitis in patients taking exenatide have been seen by post-marketing surveillance,27 although a causal relationship remains to be uncovered. As GLP-1 analogues slow gastric motility, it is plausible they also cause reduced biliary duct motility and promote biliary sludge and thus biliary obstruction, but this remains unexplained. In summary, GLP-1 analogues are a potentially beneficial option for the treatment of T2DM and are novel in enhancing weight reduction. In addition, animal studies have shown preservation of β cell function. Further evidence on cardiovascular disease risk remains to be seen. Long acting analogues of exenatide are in clinical trial phase as is liraglutide, the second GLP-1 analogue, which appears to be associated with lower rates of vomiting compared to exenatide. In this trial there were no withdrawals due to gastrointestinal side effects.28 In clinical practice, exenatide is considered for use in obese people with T2DM on oral hypoglycaemic agents who do not achieve HbA1c targets. Exenatide is subcutaneously injected and can be used with either metformin or a sulfonylurea alone or in combination with both. Exenatide is commenced at a dose of 5 μg twice daily and is increased to 10 μg after 12 weeks subject to patient tolerance. Potentially in obese patients who are receiving >100 units of insulin, exenatide may be useful as an alternative to prandial insulin. However, the combination of basal insulin and exenatide has not been the subject of clinical trials and is thus unlicensed, and therefore should be used with extreme caution under specialist supervision only. The Scottish Medicines Consortium29 published guidance on the use of exenatide in June 2007 which stated that exenatide was accepted for restricted use in Scotland for the treatment of T2DM. They stated it should be used in combination with metformin and/or sulfonylureas in those patients who have failed to achieve glycaemic control on maximally tolerated doses of these agents. It is restricted for use as an alternative to insulin in patients who have failed treatment on metformin and/or sulfonylureas and in whom insulin would be the next treatment option. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has recently updated their guidelines for the management of T2DM which includes guidance on the use of exenatide.30 They state that exenatide is not recommended for routine use in T2DM and it should only be considered as an option if an individual fulfils one of the following criteria: Has a body mass index (BMI) >35 kg/m2 Has specific problems of a psychological, biochemical or physical nature arising from high body weight Has inadequate glucose control (HbA1c ⩾7.5%) with conventional oral agents If another high cost medication such as a TZD or insulin would otherwise be started. They go on to state that treatment with exenatide should only be continued if a 1.0% reduction in HbA1c has been seen at 6 months and at least a 5% weight loss is seen at 1 year. Dipeptidyl peptidase inhibitors DPP-IV inhibitors such as sitagliptin and vildagliptin are novel new treatments for T2DM as they work by targeting both prandial and fasting glucose concentrations. This class of agent works by enhancing the sensitivity of β cells to glucose, which causes enhanced glucose dependent insulin secretion. It has also been shown to improve markers of β cell function. Many studies using sitagliptin and vildagliptin alone or in combination have shown a positive effect on values of HbA1c.31 Gliptins used as monotherapy Various trials have reported results with vildagliptin or sitagliptin as monotherapy compared to placebo (table 2).32–34 Trial length varied between 18–24 weeks and all trials showed a significant reduction in HbA1c of between 0.48–0.94%, with either weight loss or weight neutrality. Vildagliptin and sitagliptin, when compared head to head with metformin in two trials,35 36 showed a reduction in HbA1c, although with metformin the reductions were greater. In these studies the gliptins either caused small weight gain or were weight neutral compared to metformin, which showed reductions in weight. Table 2 Dipeptidyl peptidase (DPP-IV) inhibitor clinical trials Gliptins used in combination with metformin There have been many studies36–40 examining the effects of gliptins when used as dual therapy with metformin. These studies compared a gliptin with metformin versus a placebo with metformin. Reduction in HbA1c in the gliptin arms ranged between 0.6–2.07% with weight loss or weight neutrality. Gliptins used in combination with sulfonylureas Trials examining the effect of gliptins in combination with sulfonylureas41 42 have also showed beneficial effects on HbA1c with reductions ranging from 0.57–0.89% accompanied by weight loss. A study by Nauck et al43 compared a combination of sitagliptin and metformin versus sulfonylurea and metformin. Although both of these combinations reduced HbA1c, there was no statistical difference between groups. Gliptins, TZDs and insulin In a study where rosiglitazone was used head to head with vildagliptin both agents similarly reduced HbA1c; however, vildagliptin caused a small weight loss whereas a 1.6 kg gain was seen in the rosiglitazone group.44 In patients taking pioglitazone, sitagliptin was added and compared with a placebo in a 24 week double blind trial. Significant reductions in HbA1c were seen in the sitagliptin group45; however, weight gain of >1 kg was seen in both groups. In combination with insulin treatment,46 reductions in HbA1c are also seen, although more weight gain is also seen compared to insulin and placebo. The effect of weight associated with the use of DPP-IV inhibitors has been reviewed in a meta-analysis using data from 13 trials.16 This paper found a small weight increase compared with placebo; however, some studies have reported weight loss with sitagliptin compared to sulfonylureas.43 Overall this class of drugs appears to be weight neutral33 41 or at worse is associated with minimal weight gain.16 No serious adverse events have been noted during the trials. In addition, patients rarely experienced hypoglycaemia unless medications were used in combination with sulfonylureas. Urea and electrolytes should be checked and monitored before and when starting treatment as the drug is mainly excreted by the kidney, with 80% excreted unchanged in the urine.47 Sitagliptin is currently licensed by the European Union (EU) and US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in combination with metformin, sulfonylureas or TZDs. It is also approved for use in triple combination therapy with a sulfonylurea and metformin. The FDA has also approved its use as a monotherapy. Although vildagliptin was approved by the EU in October 2007 it still remains unapproved by the FDA which has requested further safety data in specific patient groups such as those with renal impairment. Vildagliptin is currently licensed for use as dual therapy in combination with metformin, sulfonylureas (in those for whom metformin is inappropriate) and TZDs. Vildagliptin is not recommended for use in those with hepatic impairment including patients with pre-treatment values of alanine aminotransferase (ALT) or aspartate aminotransferase (AST) >3 times the upper limit of normal. It is recommended that liver function tests (LFTs) are performed before initiating treatment to obtain baseline values and then monitored at 3 monthly intervals for the first year of treatment. Treatment should be stopped if ALT and AST values rise above 3 times the upper limit of normal; once stopped, and the LFTs have returned to normal, treatment should not be re-initiated. There is still some debate about where DPP-IV inhibitors fit into the management of T2DM. There may be a place in combination with metformin and TZDs; however, long term safety regarding cardiovascular outcomes and durability of the effect on glucose control still needs to be assessed. Rimonabant is the first agent of the class of drugs that act on the novel endocannabinoid system (ECS). The ECS is a novel physiological neuroendocrine system that plays a key role in appetite and energy metabolism, both in the brain and adipose tissue.48–50 Animal studies have shown that blocking the ECS leads to weight loss and improved insulin sensitivity. Due to this effect agents that block receptors (CB1 and CB2) in this system have been developed for the management of human obesity. By blocking CB1 receptors, rimonabant has been shown to reduce weight by suppressing appetite and by modifying glucose and fat metabolism.50–52 It is usually given as 20 mg once a day before breakfast. In the brain, rimonabant reduces hunger and therefore addresses weight loss, and in the adipose tissue the drug increases concentrations of adiponectin. This helps improve insulin sensitivity as reduced levels of adiponectin have been associated with increased insulin resistance. Due to this close link with various adipocytokines, agents within this group are hypothesised to be playing a role in atherogenesis and the pathophysiology of T2DM.53 Rimonabant has undergone phase 3 trials and is licensed for use in patients who have a BMI >30 kg/m2 or BMI >27 kg/m2 with an additional risk factor such as dyslipidaemia or diabetes mellitus. Only four eligible randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and one meta-analysis were found through the search strategy. The therapeutic potential of rimonabant has been extensively investigated in the four so-called RIO studies: three in subjects without diabetes and one in subjects with diabetes. RIO-Europe and RIO-North America included patients who were obese or overweight with dyslipidaemia or hypertension. These studies showed a significant weight loss with rimonabant compared with placebo at 12 months.54 55 The RIO-Lipids study included overweight or obese patients with untreated dyslipidaemia and showed a significant weight reduction compared with placebo.56 The RIO-Diabetes study is the only published study using rimonabant in overweight or obese subjects with T2DM.57 In this multicentre, randomised double blind placebo controlled trial, 1047 obese or overweight subjects with T2DM on sulfonylurea or metformin monotherapy were randomised to receive placebo (348), rimonabant 5 mg/day (358), or rimonabant 20 mg/day (339). Mean (SD) weight loss (kg) at the end of 1 year was 1.4 (3.6) vs 2.3 (4.2) vs 5.3 (5.2) for placebo, 5 mg rimonabant and 20 mg rimonabant, respectively. The proportion of patients achieving >5% and >10% weight loss was significantly greater in the rimonabant group (49.4% vs 14.5%, p<0.001, and 16.4% vs 2%, p<0.001, for >5% and >10% weight loss, respectively). Mean (SD) HbA1c was reduced by 0.1 (1.0)% vs 0.1 (1.0)% vs 0.6 (0.8)% for the arms, respectively (p<0.0001 vs placebo). There was a similar reduction in mean (SD) HbA1c with 20 mg rimonabant in subjects taking metformin (−0.6 (0.8)%) and sulfonylureas (−0.5 (0.8)%). More subjects receiving rimonabant 20 mg required reduction of their oral hypoglycaemic agents. It is interesting to note that reduction in HbA1c (over 50%) was independent of weight loss, suggesting direct peripheral actions of the drug on insulin resistance and adipocytes. In the RIO-Diabetes study, the most common side effects (occurring in >5% of subjects) were nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, dizziness and anxiety. These were transient, self limiting and disappeared on persevering with the medication. Rates of adverse events and serious adverse events were higher in the rimonabant 20 mg (8% and 15%, respectively) compared with placebo (4% and 5%, respectively). Depressed mood disorders (3%), anxiety (0.6%) and nausea (1.5%) were the most common side effects leading to discontinuation in the rimonabant 20 mg arm. Due to the side effects the summary of product characteristics was altered to include concomitant antidepressants as a contraindication. The recently published meta-analysis (four RCTs, involving 4105 subjects) concluded the risks of discontinuation due to depressive mood disorders to be 2.5 times for rimonabant compared to placebo (odds ratio 2.5, p = 0.01, numbers needed to harm 49 (19–316)).58 The odds ratio for the incidence of suicide examined by the FDA from obesity studies for 20 mg rimonabant versus placebo was 1.8 (0.8–3.8). Two deaths from suicide have been reported in the FDA database: one in RIO-North America in a patient taking rimonabant 5 mg, and one in a study in progress in a patient taking rimonabant 20 mg.59 In summary, rimonabant is efficacious in reducing weight, HbA1c and favourably altering the lipid profile in people with T2DM compared with placebo. However, the risks of depressive mood disorders need to be taken into consideration and at the moment it appears that judicious patient selection may improve benefit/risk ratio. Further long term studies are required examining cardiovascular end points. In clinical practice, rimonabant is considered as an adjunct to lifestyle modifications in obese/overweight patients with T2DM, who do not achieve target HbA1c with existing treatment. Pharmacological options for the treatment of T2DM have never been so diverse with the recent licensing of newer agents (table 3). Previously available treatments for T2DM have improved glycaemic control but have been accompanied by weight gain and increased risk of hypoglycaemia. T2DM is a progressive disease and more conventional agents do not address the decline of β cell function. Table 3 Summary of newer agents for the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus Newer agents thus add to the choice of treatment options already available for T2DM and are welcome, especially in light of the recent safety concerns with some of the more modern agents.12 Newer agents such as exenatide, DPP-IV inhibitors and rimonabant have captured our attention as they address important issues in the management of T2DM, such as weight gain and hypoglycaemia. The new agents covered in this review either show reductions in weight or are weight neutral and have a positive effect on concentrations of HbA1c when compared to placebo. Due to numerous emerging therapies in the treatment of T2DM, it is essential that clinicians update themselves regularly to ensure that their patients with T2DM are being treated appropriately. 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SUU Festival of Excellence Gullah PechaKucha Four semesters ago I returned to Souther Utah University to finish my undergraduate degree. I started on a new major. This time around I am a Sociology major and I am focusing on the topic of food whenever possible. Annually the school holds a conference where students can present the academic experience they have participated in. This year I had the opportunity to present on my work connected to a series of trips I took to South Carolina. I chose to do a PechaKucha presentation to take advantage of the photos I took throughout my travels. What is a PechaKucha? It is a presentation style in which 20 slides are shown for 20 seconds each (6 minutes and 40 seconds in total). PechaKucha is a Japanese word that means chit-chat. The focus of this type of presentation is to simultaneously be less formal and present concise information. The hope is that a presentation like this can start a conversation. The following are the slides I used and the notes I wrote to accompany them. #1Today you will be reminded of the true roots of the South. African ingredients are essential to southern cuisine. The African American contributions to the region have become invisible. Through selective narratives many have forgotten who fed the south. Slaves and black domestics prepared much of the essential foods. #2 In the Carolinas and Georgia the descendants of forced migration are now called Gullah. Connected in identity with the creole dialect over half a million people still speak today. Just like there is no monolithic south, in the words of Psyche Williams-Forson, “Black food is more than kitchen scraps; black women are more than mammy figures, and black culture is more than a monolith.” #3 Cornbread. Shrimp and grits. These are two iconic dishes of the south. They both feature key Gullah ingredients. Cornbread and grits were made from the corn meal included in most slave rations. South Carolina slaves were often allotted more time away from work. This time could be used to harvest shellfish, like shrimp. #4 This cake is made of a lesser known African ingredient called sorghum. The cereal grain is also used to make a sweetener similar to molasses. Over the past year I have been studying Gullah culture and cuisine. I have traveled to South Carolina twice and had the opportunity to attended a fundraising dinner prepared by two Gullah chefs. These two chefs were instrumental guideposts in my research previous to meeting them. #5 The first chef was Sallie Ann Robinson. Her Gullah cookbook was the first I found and read. She promised to cook me raccoon the next time I am in town. The second was Chef BJ Dennis. He says it is his goal to expose others to the Gullah roots of southern cooking. #6 It was an honor to meet BJ because it was through him that I was exposed to such an extensive range of Gullah food. Tasting his food was a transformative experience. Through my culinary exploration of South Carolina I attempted to seek out particular ingredients of African origin and African inspired preparations. #7 Much of African American language can be traced back to Africa through the understanding of Gullah. The creation of this creole can mirror the creation of the distinct culture that in the isolation of the sea islands. Referred to by some as the cultural heritage corridor. #8 Chef Dennis aimed me toward Verna. She is the owner of a Gullah restaurant named after her late mother, Mama Lou. Verna wants to help people connect with their community and culture. She believe that knowing their history and providing an opportunity for creative outlets will help decrease violence and crime in her area. #9 South Carolina slaves often had time to hunt, fish, and grow their own gardens. Ravenel Seafood is one of the road side icons of Gullah cooking. While I was there they brought in baskets of freshly caught seafood some of which was destined for tomorrow’s garlic crab. This dish is considered to be one of the most authentic representations of Gullah cuisine according to BJ Dennis. #10 In 30 meals and 80 dishes during my travels I wanted to have a basis for understanding certain ingredients, spices, and preparations of southern food, Charleston food, and Gullah food. This was an enlightening and overwhelming experience. #11 Many slaves brought to the lowcountry were sought out specifically because of their understanding of rice cultivation. Beyond this knowledge slaves brought with them West African cooking techniques, African ingredients, and even reintroduced unique preparations of new world ingredients. Rice is what brought Gullah people to the south, and okra is what they brought with them from Africa. The use of okra as a thickener is one of the deepest connections the South has to West Africa. #12 Gumbo is essential to South Carolina the cuisine. Though it differs from the New Orleans dish of the same name. This soup has shrimp, is thickened with okra, and is topped with Carolina Gold Rice. #13 We see the echoes of slave rations throughout African American cuisine. The off cuts, or offal, that the main house didn’t want were transformed in the pots of slaves and the Gullah people. They were resourceful to use what they were provided with stretching it with what they could grow, hunt, and fish. #14 This restaurant, Hannibal’s, is one of the most highly ranked culinary experiences in Charleston. Here we see collard greens cooked with a larger portion of seasoning meat than traditionally used. Everything tasted fantastic but the building does not represent the expectations of an elite dining experience. This building is indicative of the simplicity embraced by Gullah traditions. #15 At each of the restaurant I visited I scanned the menu for various indicators of authenticity. I photographed each menu and each dish ordered. I made the hard choice of connecting my hunger with my research. What we see in Gullah cuisine and culture is a respect for artistic expression and the ability for food to be a representation of skill, love, self, knowledge, and a nearly endless list of other symbols. #16 The isolation of the sea islands allowed for the unique distillation of language, culture, and cuisine. Many island plantations didn’t even employ white overseers. Slaves took their rations and prepared them in the custom they were used to. The time after work held the memories of their West African life. #17 The Penn Center was one of the first schools for freed slaves. It is on the barrier island of St. Helena, which holds the highest contemporary concentration of Gullah people. In this cabin Martin Luther King, Jr. found rest and restoration. He stayed here for the last time just a few months before his death. It is said that he drafted parts of his I have a Dream Speech on this marsh. #18 Chef BJ Dennis told Civil Eats, “Doing this work is paying homage to the folks that came before me. Oftentimes, Gullah living was looked down upon by our own. It’s about respecting my ancestral lineage and embracing the culture.” #19 Gullah food is a representation of love, a means to identity, a creative expression, translation of the self and soul, and always a reflection of seasonality. There is a simplicity in Gullah cuisine, akin to folk art creations. #20 I will leave you with this closing thought, “Sometime I wonder if the so-called sophisticate hasn't lost something more precious than he has gained with all his culture and education, all his conveniences, and his complicated way of living.” Thank you.

Background & Basics What is the purpose of the system? In a nutshell, our quota-based printing system is designed to help control the ever-increasing costs of traditional printing and copying, guarantee more equitable use of shared resources and, above all, encourage the use of paperless digital alternatives (emailing, scanning and electronic document sharing). For those times when you really do need to print, though, it can add a layer of both privacy and convenience. These points are discussed more in other parts of this FAQ, so please read on. Oh, we also want to try to rip a hole in the very fabric of time and space. We’re pretty sure this will do it, but it’s going to take a little more tinkering. If, while using the printer, you happen to see yourself from across the room, find a wormhole in the paper try or black out repeatedly while using the copier, let us know. Might be nothing, but you never know… Printing has always been free. Why are you suddenly taking that away and charging me? Actually, no. Printing has never been free. In fact, it cost the Academic Computing budget that manages the labs over $13,000 in the 2013/2014 academic year. That’s just the “free” printing in the labs and doesn’t begin to touch printing in other departments (which, by the way, has had a per-print accounting system in place for a few years already). So while we’re putting a system in place that makes everyone aware of the real costs, odds are good you’re still not going to pay anything for your prints. Read on. So if you’re charging students for printing, why do you say it’s still unlikely to cost me anything? Because we’re giving every student a $25 credit each semester to cover their printing needs. We arrived at this number by evaluating a full semester of the system’s real usage in the labs and determining that only a few exceeded this amount (and most never came anywhere close). On this basis, we feel comfortable in saying that printing will effectively be free for the vast majority of students. Do note that the $25 student credit is reset each semester and is not rolled over, so don’t try saving it all up for that copy of War and Peace you’ve been itching to print, stitch and bind for some kind of merit badge. More details on this in the Credit & Balance section of this FAQ. Ok, so I get how it’s effectively “free” for students. Then why bother with this quota and login nonsense? For a few reasons, actually. The big one is to prevent both accidental and purposeful abuse of the kind that costs us all a ton of money and makes our carbon footprint a great deal more Sasquatchian. How many of you have walked into the lab, printed a document and then had to separate it from the ream of abandoned copies someone else printed and never retrieved? Odds are good that wasted ream was the same thing over and over, either by mistake, a prank or pure carelessness. Whatever the case, associating printing with people and making everyone aware of the real costs should help curtail those problems. Besides, we’re just mean that way. Will this login and release thingy increase my privacy? I’m so glad you asked! Indeed it does. Rather than your potentially private pages landing in the tray all mixed in with someone else’s Grumpy Cat-themed sudoku puzzles, logging in and releasing your job at the printer means it goes straight into your hands. It also renders you invisible anywhere in a fifteen foot radius of the printer. Now THAT’S privacy. So how does this “print release” stuff actually work? It’s a complicated mixture of dark magic, the business end of a rusty tuba and very, very carefully woven dryer lint. It took ages to design, but we’re quite pleased with the results. The public printers in the labs have a large touchscreen display built into them. You simply enter your SBC email login and password (or numeric ID and PIN code – more on this below) to list the items waiting to be printed. Select yours from the list and, by approving it, you will release it to the printer and the cost will be deducted from your account. You will always see your available printing credit on the screen when you log in. If you decide for some reason to not print your pages (maybe you spotted a mistake just after you hit the print button), simply tap cancel and there will be no charge. If you leave items in the system for more than two hours, it will cancel itself with no charge. The system will even send you email reminders that a print job is waiting or is about to expire. See? Magic. And some tuba parts. And lint. But mostly magic. Copying & Scanning Can I make copies with this system? Absolutely! Simply log in at the printer as you would to release a print from a computer. A button appears on the screen that takes you to the normal copier functions. From there, use the machine as you would any copier. The cost will be deducted from your account exactly as it would for pages printed from a computer. Do keep in mind that not everything you might need to “copy” needs to be copied onto paper! Perhaps you simply need a copy of existing printed material that you could just as well read on your computer or iPad later. If so, you can scan it and have the printer email it to you at no cost. This avoids wasting paper, toner and your printing credits. Nice, huh? Yes. As mentioned above, scanning documents for email delivery to yourself (or others) is always free. Simply log in on the printer the same as you would when releasing a document you’ve printed, select the option to use the copier and scanning functions and proceed as normal. Again, there is no fee for scanning and emailing. If you simply need a copy of something for later reference, consider whether it might actually be more convenient to read later on your computer. If so, you’ve just saved yet more paper, toner and money. Oh, and do be sure to verify the email address… especially if you’re doing rude things with the copier. It’s been known to happen. What does copying and scanning cost? Traditional copying costs the same per page as printing from a computer. Scanning and emailing, however, is free and highly encouraged as a means of saving resources. Accounts & Logging In What do I need in order to log into the printers or the website? Well, first you’re going to need a goat, two spotted newts, six pieces of gravel (any size) and the distributor cap from a 1970’s-era Ford F150. Bring the goat to the printer and put the other items… oh, never mind. Here’s the shortcut: All students, faculty and staff already have accounts in the system. Simply use your email login name (the portion before and excluding @sbc.edu) and email password. In rare cases, your email password might not match what our system expects. If you encounter this, please contact the Help Desk at x4357 for assistance. If the password doesn’t work, though, you are still going to need the goat. Plan accordingly. Entering my login name and password on this printer’s touchscreen sucks. Is there a faster way? Yeah, we’re all spoiled by modern tablets and phones and their awesome screens. Sadly, most printers and other devices still haven’t caught up yet. Fortunately, everyone with an account also has a numeric ID and you can set your own PIN. With these, you can login quite rapidly using the physical number buttons on the printer (much like dialing a phone, in fact). It’s… clickier. 🙂 I’d like to use the faster numeric ID to log in. Where do I find my ID? It’s right on your Sweet Briar ID card. If you don’t have that handy, you can also log in to your account on the web and look it up. It can be revealed with a click in the Summary section by the header Card/ID number (just below your username). And, yes… do this. Your fingers will thank you. How do I set a PIN for my numeric ID? Simply log into your account on the web, go to the Change Details section on menu (left sidebar) and you will be able to set and verify your PIN. You can change it here anytime you like. Trust us when we say this is a very worthwhile thing to do. Check back here after you’ve tapped in your full login name and password on the touchscreen…oh, about a dozen times this semester. I’ve forgotten my PIN. How do I reset it? Nope. Once you lose it’s gone FOREVER. Printing privileges revoked. You will also get a hideous case of both scurvy and rickets. Ok, calm down. You can reset it the same way that you originally created it. Simply log into your account on the web, go to Change Details and enter a new PIN. Can I use my login name and numeric ID interchangeably? Yes, you can log in with either ID on the printers at any time. Use whichever you find easiest… or happen to remember. Memorizing your numeric ID and PIN can save you time and reduce the number of obscenities needed to get your print jobs… just sayin’. My login name works, but my SBC ID number doesn’t seem to be working. What’s up with that? First off, make sure you’ve set a PIN for your ID via the website. Log in with your username and password, go to Change Details on the menu and use the fields for setting and verifying a numeric PIN of your choosing. If your numeric SBC ID starts with one or more leading zeros, please leave them off and start with the first non-zero number in the sequence. For instance, if you had 0012345, you would actually use 12345. If in doubt, please log into your account with your username and password, go to the Summary menu and hit “Show” number to Card/ID Number. This will show the number our system is expecting. If your ID and this number don’t match or you encounter other issues, please don’t hesitate to contact the Help Desk at x4357 for assistance. I’m off campus / using my mobile carrier connection. Why can’t I log into my SBC PaperCut account? For security reasons, you must be connected to the SBC network to reach your PaperCut account. This means being physically on campus and using SBC WiFi or an ethernet connection. You can also reach your account from off-campus if you have VPN access. I am a short term visitor to campus. Can I use the printers and copiers? For the immediate future, we ask that you please use the printers and copiers in Cochran Library near the circulation desk. They can assist you with copying, release your queued print jobs from library computers and collect the appropriate fees to cover the cost. Credit & Balances How do I see my remaining balance? The printers will show your balance directly on the screen each time you log in. You can also see your balance online by logging in here. It’s a little known secret that if you place your head under the lid of the copier and say “balance” three times loudly while snapping your fingers, it will dispense both your credit and a surprise gift (gifts range from free printing credit to a peanut butter and banana sandwich with a side of tater tots). Please Instagram this as you do it… you know, to help others… I have used up most or all of my printing credit. How do I add more? To add more credit to your account you can purchase a prepaid card at any of several locations on campus. Currently these are sold in $2 and $5 values. Don’t blow it all in one place, big spender. Where can I purchase prepaid printing cards? Cards are currently for sale at the Book Shop and the Cochran Library circulation desk during their normal operating hours. We also understand there’s a burgeoning black market for unredeemed cards. Check with the sketchy looking students in trench coats that hang out in the back alleys near Prothro. Some will give you a free first card, but once you get addicted to color printing it’ll be a total monkey on your back. But hey… YOLO… amiright? How do I use a prepaid printing card? Precise instructions are found on the card, but in a nutshell you will log into your account with any web browser and redeem the value by entering the card’s obnoxiously long unique number. Once redeemed, please recycle the card in any paper recycling bin on campus (or you’ll feel guilty for the remainder of your days… just sayin’). The card has no further use once redeemed (unless you’re into origami or like really stiff rolling papers). What’s the story with my $25 per semester credit? Students receive $25 in printing credit automatically each semester. In the case of student accounts, remaining balances DO NOT carry over, but are reset at the start of each semester with a fresh $25 credit. Note that this means that any additional purchased credit remaining will be lost with the reset. It is because of this that we strongly encourage purchasing minimal additional credit should you need any during the semester. This is also part of why cards are sold in as small as $2 values to minimize waste and loss. Do we do this to be mean and to pad our retirement funds? If only. Frankly, it’s because the values are often minuscule and there is no particularly convenient way to separate the $25 credit we give you from additional funds you’ve added. As stated earlier, most people will likely not even need to purchase additional credit during the semester and we hope that conservative application of $2 prepaid cards will limit any actual loss to you at semester end. Now, stop bothering me. I have to get back to my picking out paint chips for my retirement mansion on the private island I bought last month. Does my credit expire? Yes and no. For students, any remaining balance from the end of each semester is erased and a new $25 credit is applied. This INCLUDES any additional credit you may have purchased (so we recommend buying additional credit in the smaller $2 increments should you actually need it). Unlike students, all other users must purchase their credit and apply it to their account. Such accounts will not be reset each semester and will continue to carry their value as long as the account exists or until the applied funds are exhausted. My prepaid card has an expiration date. What’s that all about? Cards are created in batches, all of which have a somewhat arbitrary expiration date of our choosing. At the time of this writing, card batches are currently set to be good for two years from the time of printing. This is purely an administrative thing as we try to strike a balance between avoiding printing too many cards and having the information on unsold cards get out of date. The expiration date applies ONLY to the card itself and not to the redeemed funds. Redeemed funds will not expire with the card and will remain active on your account until you use them (or until the semester reset if you are a student). Should you be left holding an expired but unredeemed card (which, fortunately, is very unlikely to happen), please take it to the Book Shop or Cochran Library to have it swapped for a new one of equal value. Students get printing credit each semester. What about faculty, staff and others? Students are currently the only group that will receive prepaid printing credit. Faculty and staff generally have access to departmental printers that operate with an existing billing system (whether you realize it or not). We are planning to eventually implement PaperCut throughout campus allowing us to move away from a split printing accounting system. Until then, we ask that faculty and staff continue to use their departmental printers for departmental business. If you are a faculty or staff member that needs to do personal printing or copying on the public printers, you can purchase credit for your account in the form of a prepaid card. Once redeemed, prints and copies will be deducted from your balance at the same rates and in the same manner as student users. Campus residents, retirees and others with close or unique ties to campus may request an account and purchase credit for printing. Please visit the Computer Services Help Desk to establish an account. Something I tried to print/copy [failed / caught fire / melted / blew up the printer / vanished into the ether] and I’d like a refund. How do I [politely request / demand / threaten to burn down the college if I don’t get] my refund? You have a few options, actually. The simplest and probably most convenient one is to request a refund through your account on the website. Simply log in with your account from any browser and locate the Recent Print Jobs item on the left sidebar menu. Once there, find the print job in question on the list and you will see a “Request Refund” option under the Status heading. Click that and fill in any details including the full or partial amount you feel you are due. Explanations of what went wrong are very helpful, so please offer some insight into what failed. The request will go to the Help Desk and they will contact you with any followup questions and/or confirmation of your refund. You are also welcome to visit the Help Desk in person (ground floor back of the Sales Education Building), especially if you’d like to dramatically wave any misprinted evidence around to add weight to your request. 🙂

Food, Drug, Product Safety Regulatory Policy State Energy Policy and the Commerce Clause: Spotlight on Colorado and Minnesota by Alexandra Klass Within the past month, two federal district courts—one in Colorado and one in Minnesota—have issued important decisions on the constitutionality of state clean energy policies. Both cases raised the same legal issue, namely, whether the state laws in question regulate extraterritorially in violation of the dormant Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. But the courts reached different results in each case and, more importantly, the Minnesota and Colorado policies reviewed by each court were quite different from each other even though both involved efforts to promote clean energy within the state. Some of the recent commentary on the two cases has downplayed the significant differences between the two state policies in question, leading to confusion about the implications of the courts’ rulings. First, a bit about the dormant Commerce Clause. The Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution grants Congress the authority to regulate interstate commerce. But the Supreme Court has also interpreted that provision to contains a “dormant” aspect that limits states from interfering with the free flow of commerce among the several states. A law can violate the dormant Commerce Clause if: (1) it facially discriminates, has a discriminatory purpose, or is discriminatory in effect; (2) the law is facially neutral and there is no evidence of discriminatory intent or effect but the burdens of the law on interstate commerce outweigh the in-state benefits; or (3) the law attempts to control conduct completely outside its borders and thus regulates “extraterritorially.” The dormant Commerce Clause has been applied to state laws for over 100 years, including laws banning or limiting out-of-state imports of goods or services, out-of-state exports of goods or services, minimum pricing laws tied to prices in other states, laws attempting to regulate trucks and trains in interstate transportation, and a variety of other state laws intended to promote in-state businesses as well as environmental, health and safety interests over similar out-of-state interests. Now, onto the recent state energy policy cases. Both cases involve efforts by states to encourage the use of renewable electricity resources in the state and limit the generation of electricity that emits significant amounts of CO2 in an effort to address climate change. But the two state policies under constitutional challenge involve very different ways of reaching that goal. The Colorado lawsuit involves a challenge to a state renewable energy mandate. Such laws, known as renewable portfolio standards, renewable energy standards, clean energy mandates, or renewable energy mandates, have been adopted in over half the states. Such laws require utilities and other electricity providers in the state to generate or purchase a certain percentage of their electricity for retail sale from renewable energy sources by a particular date, often 15%, 20%, or 30% by 2020 or 2025, with lower amounts mandated between now and the targeted date. Such laws encourage the use of wind, solar, geothermal, or hydropower energy with significant variation among the states with regard to what resources “count” and the percentages required. By contrast, the Minnesota lawsuit does not involve a challenge to the state’s renewable energy mandate, even though Minnesota has one of the most aggressive renewable energy mandates in the nation. Instead, the lawsuit involves a challenge to another Minnesota energy policy that limits the construction, use, or import of new coal-fired power in the state by prohibiting the construction of facilities that emit a certain amount of CO2 each year or imports from such facilities. Only a few states (New York, Oregon, California) in addition to Minnesota have such limits on coal-fired power. All of those states impose those limits on coal-fired electricity in addition to imposing a renewable energy mandate on electricity providers in the state. The Colorado case In Energy and Environmental Legal Institute v. Epel, __ F. Supp. 2d __, 2014 WL 1874977 (D. Colo., May 9, 2014), a non-profit organization representing and promoting coal energy interests along with one of its members challenged the state’s renewable energy standard, which requires Colorado electric utilities and other retail electricity providers in the state to provide up to 30% of their retail electricity sales from renewable energy sources by a certain date. Electricity providers can meet their renewable energy mandate by either generating or buying renewable power directly or by purchasing renewable energy credits. The plaintiffs argued on summary judgment that the renewables mandate places a restriction on how out-of-state goods are manufactured, and requires out-of-state electricity to be generated according to Colorado’s terms. Thus, according to the plaintiffs, by projecting Colorado’s policy decisions onto other states, the law regulates extraterritorially in violation of the dormant Commerce Clause. The court rejected this argument and held that the law did not impact wholly out-of-state transactions. If a Wyoming coal company generates electricity and sells it to a South Dakota business, the Colorado law does not apply. Instead, the court found that the law applies only to energy generators that choose to do business with a Colorado utility and, even then, the law only applies in determining whether the energy the Colorado utility purchases counts towards its renewables mandate. The court agreed that the Colorado law would influence the profits of out-of-state companies whose electricity could not be used to fulfill the mandate, but held that the dormant Commerce Clause “neither protects the profits of any particular business, nor the right to do business in any particular manner.” The court also found that the law did not discriminate against interstate commerce or unduly burden interstate commerce. The Minnesota case In North Dakota v. Heydinger, __ F. Supp. 2d __, 2014 WL 1612331 (D. Minn., Apr. 18, 2014), the State of North Dakota, North Dakota lignite coal interests, and multi-state electric cooperatives in the upper Midwest sued the State of Minnesota over limits on coal-fired power in its Next Generation Energy Act. The provisions of the law at issue state that after a certain date, no person shall, without CO2 offsets: (1) construct a new “large energy facility” (defined to encompass coal-fired power plants but not most natural gas-fired plants) in the state; (2) import power from a new large energy facility from outside the state; or (3) enter into a long-term power purchase agreement that would contribute to statewide power sector CO2 emissions. The plaintiffs argued on summary judgment that the limits on imports of coal-fired power from outside the state regulated extraterritorially in violation of the dormant Commerce Clause and discriminated against interstate commerce. Notably, even though Minnesota has a renewable energy mandate that is also part of the state’s Next Generation Energy Act, the plaintiffs in the Minnesota case did not challenge Minnesota’s renewable energy mandate at all. As a result, the state energy policy at issue in the Minnesota case is quite different from the state energy policy at issue in the Colorado case, even though both state policies are intended address climate change by imposing requirements on state electricity providers. In an April 2014 decision, the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota agreed with the plaintiffs that the limits on coal-fired electricity imports regulated extraterritorially. Because the court struck down the import limits on those grounds, it did not reach the claims that the law also discriminated against interstate commerce. In reaching its decision, the court adopted an extremely broad interpretation of the law, finding that it applied to any electric power provider selling electricity on the multi-state, regional electric grid (encompassing more than 10 states), rather than applying only to persons located in or operating in Minnesota. The court pointed to statements made by the Minnesota Department of Commerce in earlier regulatory proceedings that indicated the agency might apply the law to multi-state electric cooperatives based outside the state but with members in Minnesota if the cooperative generated coal-fired power outside the state and sold it into the multi-state grid. Because electrons cannot be tracked once they have entered the electric grid, the court found such a transaction could apply where the buyers and seller were all outside of Minnesota because some of the electricity might enter the state of Minnesota. Because such an application of the law would apply even when no party to the transaction was based in Minnesota, the court found that the law regulated extraterritorially in violation of the dormant Commerce Clause. The court rejected the argument that it should not interpret the law so broadly to encompass all sales of electricity into the multi-state grid even though the state had never actually applied the law to these types of out-of-state transactions that did not directly involve a Minnesota-based actor intending to import coal-fired power to the state. So what should we take away from these two decisions? First, it is important to keep in mind what wasnot at issue in either case. For some time now, there has been concern among policymakers and scholars regarding state renewable energy mandates that preference in-state renewable resources over out-of-state renewable resources through multipliers and other provisions that encourage the use of in-state wind, solar, or hydropower. Many state laws contain such a preference for in-state renewable resources because such preferences allowed legislators to argue that a renewable energy mandate would not only promote the use of clean energy but would also help promote new, in-state industries. While this is certainly good politics and may be good policy, such preferences raise dormant Commerce Clause concerns because they expressly benefit in-state industries over identical out-of-state industries. But the Colorado renewable energy mandate at issue does not contain such preferences and thus treats in-state and out-of-state renewable and non-renewable electricity resources alike. Likewise, even though the Minnesota renewable energy mandate was not even at issue in the Minnesota litigation, it is important to point out that Minnesota, like Colorado, does not preference in-state renewable resources over out-of-state renewable resources. Second, states attempt to meet clean energy and climate change goals through a variety of policies. States have significant authority to regulate electricity sales, transportation, and industrial facilities and in recent years have used that authority to enact renewable energy mandates, place bans on coal-fired power, and impose other regulatory requirements on industrial facilities, fuel providers, electricity providers, and other businesses that contribute to CO2 emissions. Each type of policy has a different impact on in-state businesses and out-of-state parties that do business in the state. As a result, each type of policy raises different legal issues. Thus, the fact that the courts in the Colorado and Minnesota cases reached different results is significant, but it is also important not to lose sight of the fact that each court reviewed state energy policies that have similar goals, but were designed in completely different ways and have very different impacts on in-state and out-of-state actors. Last, each court’s decision relied in large part on how broadly it found the state law to apply. In the Colorado case, the court stated that the law applied only to Colorado electricity providers and thus did not impact electricity generators in other states except when they chose to do business with electricity providers in Colorado. By contrast, in the Minnesota case the court interpreted the law limiting the use of new-coal fired power to apply to any party selling electricity into the multi-state electricity grid if there was some chance that those electrons could flow into Minnesota. Whether the language of the statute supports such a broad interpretation of the law remains to be seen and will likely be an issue on appeal. The fact remains, however, that how broadly courts interpret the reach of state energy policies will impact significantly whether those laws can withstand dormant Commerce Clause scrutiny. For more information on the dormant Commerce Clause, its potential application to state energy policy, and recent litigation, see Alexandra B. Klass & Elizabeth Henley, Energy Policy, Extraterritoriality, and the Dormant Commerce Clause, San. Diego J. of Climate & Energy L. (forthcoming 2014), at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2376411. This blog is cross-posted on Energy Law Professors' blog. Be the first to comment on this entry. Create Comment We ask for your email address so that we may follow up with you, ask you to clarify your comment in some way, or perhaps alert you to someone else's response. Only the name you supply and your comment will be displayed on the site to the public. Our blog is a forum for the exchange of ideas, and we hope to foster intelligent, interesting and respectful discussion. We do not apply an ideological screen, however, we reserve the right to remove blog posts we deem inappropriate for any reason, but particularly for language that we deem to be in the nature of a personal attack or otherwise offensive. If we remove a comment you've posted, and you want to know why, ask us ([email protected]) and we will tell you. If you see a post you regard as offensive, please let us know. Also from Alexandra Klass Alexandra Klass is a Distinguished McKnight University Professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, and a member of the board of directors of the Center for Progressive Reform. @CPRBlog Uninformed and Unqualified: A Brief Run-Down of Rick Perry's Energy Department Nomination Klass | Jan 23, 2017 | Energy The Reality of U.S. Oil Transport Klass | May 20, 2015 | Regulatory Policy Klass | May 22, 2014 | Energy EPA’s Authority to Impose Emissions Regulations is Clear under the Clean Air Act Klass | Sep 20, 2013 | Environmental Policy The Legacy of Subsidizing Fossil Fuels Klass | Feb 08, 2013 | Climate Change CPRBlog Archives January 2018December 2017November 2017October 2017September 2017August 2017July 2017June 2017May 2017April 2017March 2017February 2017January 2017December 2016November 2016October 2016September 2016August 2016July 2016June 2016May 2016April 2016March 2016February 2016January 2016December 2015November 2015October 2015September 2015August 2015July 2015June 2015May 2015April 2015March 2015February 2015January 2015December 2014November 2014October 2014September 2014August 2014July 2014June 2014May 2014April 2014March 2014February 2014January 2014December 2013November 2013October 2013September 2013August 2013July 2013June 2013May 2013April 2013March 2013February 2013January 2013December 2012November 2012October 2012September 2012August 2012July 2012June 2012May 2012April 2012March 2012February 2012January 2012December 2011November 2011October 2011September 2011August 2011July 2011June 2011May 2011April 2011March 2011February 2011January 2011December 2010November 2010October 2010September 2010August 2010July 2010June 2010May 2010April 2010March 2010February 2010January 2010December 2009November 2009October 2009September 2009August 2009July 2009June 2009May 2009April 2009March 2009February 2009January 2009December 2008November 2008October 2008August 2008July 2008 CPRBlog Authors Frank AckermanDavid AdelmanRobert AdlerAmro AliWilliam AndreenMary Jane AngeloJohn ApplegateJeremy BakerRebecca BratspiesMaxine BurkettWilliam BuzbeeJake CaldwellAlejandro CamachoThomas CluderayRobin Kundis CraigCarl CranorKerry Darragh Holly DoremusDavid DriesenJohn EcheverriaJoel EisenRoss EisenbreyKirsten EngelLee EwingDaniel FarberJoe FellerAdam FinkelRobert FischmanVictor FlattDavid FloresAlyson FlournoyMatthew FreemanBill FunkMargaret GiblinRobert GlicksmanDale GobleJames GoodwinElizabeth GrossmanBrian GummEmily HammondAnne HavemannLisa HeinzerlingYee HuangDavid HunterEvan IsaacsonPeter JenkinsShana Campbell JonesBradley KarkkainenAlice KaswanErin KeslerAlexandra KlassChristine KleinJohn KnoxRobin Kundis CraigDouglas KysarPatrick MacRoyLesley McAllisterMartha McCluskeyThomas McGarityNina MendelsonKatrina MillerJoel MintzCeleste MonfortonRichard MurphyCatherine O'NeillDave OwenJarryd PageEric PaniccoMichael PatokaRichard Pierce, JrLena PonsWayland RadinDan RohlfDaniel RosenbergMollie RosenzweigNoah SachsChristopher SchroederSidney ShapiroIsaac ShapiroMatt ShudtzAimee SimpsonAmy SindenKaren SokolBen SombergRena SteinzorDan TarlockJoseph TomainKatie TracyRobert VerchickNicholas VidargasDavid VladeckWendy WagnerHannah WisemanChris WoldSandra ZellmerMichelle Zemil Recommended Posts: Feds Resolve to Expand Criminal Prosecutions of Workplace Safety Violations in the New Year Renewable Energy Instead of Fossil Fuels The Center for Progressive Reform 455 Massachusetts Ave., NW, #150-513 [email protected] © Center for Progressive Reform, 2015

Re: The 2nd Gift of Gifts a little early P.S. Hey 33, the video that you got my got dam comment from was called "Preserving French Culture". I enjoyed watching this video. He's talking about places where I have lived in the seventies (Marksville, Hessmer... and I still remember the tasty Mansura cochon de lait! ). I never had any problems speaking French with Avoyelles French-speaking people (or from any other place in Louisiana for that matter). I just had to get used to a few words and expressions new to me (like "ton capot", "ouaouaron" "asteur", "char"...), but it does not take long to adapt. In the same way, any fluent Louisiana French speaker can easily understand us and be understood in France today, as this man in the video or the musicians who have come to the Saulieu festival know. Why is this "Preserving French Culture " when the mini essay was about Cajun, not French, culture ? Okay so here's the vid I was talking about. Thanks Greezy for the embeding technique. Yeah you right David it IS the Hee Haw, or is it really? Can't be the heehaw if there ain't no donkey soundz. Joe Hall is doing his thing I guess. He played the blackpot not too long ago. He's got a sweet series of vidz on youtube that showed up recently. He's one of my fave accordian player. Maybe it's like this: (Mardi Gras Jig) + (Hee Haw sounds) = Hee Haw Breakdown Guidry "Joe Hall is doing his thing I guess. He played the blackpot not too long ago. He's got a sweet series of vidz on youtube that showed up recently. " Can someone post a link to one of his youtube vids? Every "joe hall" I come across over there is not this guy. Dis 'un is a chestnut: Thanks Greezy for that Shamrock tune. Fun stuff! That's an old story and an old way of saying things. Our Cajun friends will explain it better than I could do, but the late Jeanne Castille talked about it in the first two pages of her book. Here's a short passage quoted in English in another book (I put the link below so you can read a little more, but not sure it will work) : "From the book's very opening, we are introduced to the complexities Castille faces as she negotiates multiple identities -- the challenges and contradictions that result from her position as a French-speaking descendent of Acadians in the United States. The first few lines evoke frequent disagreement between Castille and her mother about the possibility of disconnecting language from nationality: "I used to say to my mother, 'Mama, you're not French; you are American!' A bit embarrassed and grumpy, she would reply: 'But no! I speak French!' And I would say, 'Yes, you speak French, but you aren't French; you're American. That's your nationality.' She would say, 'Humm! humm!' She didn't want to understand and I know that, deep within herself, Mama didn't believe me"." "There is a problem with trying to teach Cajun accordion as it was played in the past and still in the present amongst the small communities of Louisiana. Cajun accordion was not written down on sheet music so it could not be read. For that matter, it was not taught note for note from one accordion player to another. The accordion was played in a manner that linked it deeply to the Cajun life. It was played with a certain flow and manner that was not necessarily correct to the people from France, Germany, Canada, Mexico, or even music experts world round. That's because Cajun accordion playing is from South Louisiana, a small pocket of the United States that has it's own flora and fauna, way of life, and unique interpretation of the older Cajun folk music. A good Cajun accordion player can present almost any Cajun song. He can play it in an old style, a modern style, or he can even play it in a brand new way that no one ever heard done before. He'll let you know what time frame and feeling he's playing or trying for by the choice of song, the tempo he chooses to play in, the key and position he chooses to play in, the thrills and slurs combinations, added whoops and yells, the way he moves his body and taps his feet, the tone and depth in which he sings the song, all of which are thrown at you in a manner that is so subtle that you hardly notice what was just done if you're not a Cajun accordion player whose played or heard the music all his or her life. It's sort of like the Cajun French language that "WE" hear all of our lives. We just pick up the language and speak it the way Cajuns from the past spoke it and every so often we add a new word, or forget one or two. We don't learn the Cajun French from books or at school, nor use it in a formal manner, etc......we use it in a friendly manner and we learn to speak it by having heard it so got dam much when we was growing up. Now figure out how to put that in a song book and teach it for an accordion lesson or on a Cajun Accordion DVD that you charge way too much money for. Good luck with that! Ain't gonna happen. You learn Cajun accordion by spending lots of time listening to family and friends playing it. You listen to those recordings and Cajun radio stations day in and day out until the music becomes part of your life and you can take it and interpret it in your own way or apply it on the accordion. Unfortunately, we stopped listening to and playing to old Cajun accordion styles and music out of shame, preoccupation with modern life, the breakdown and slow death of the Cajun culture, and because of the invasion of country and rock-n-roll that was forced on the Cajuns by the got dam outsider Anglo Saxon Americanz and those got dam Beatles from England. We adopted the American music and show style too much and consequently, just about lost our own unique old styles of playing accordion because of it. We've got young Cajun accordion players and non Cajun players that haven't a clue as to what they're doing and they're presenting it to the world to make a buck or two, or show that they can do it better than anybody else, and misleading the people away from what really counts when it come to playing Cajun accordion. What we have now is plenty of youtube accordion heros, parents pushing their little Cajun accordion players who do nothing more than parakeet Marc Savoy or Steve Riley to the point of being sick with it. They play too fast, or try to sing like they're an old Cajun man when they don't even know how to speak Cajun French. They have no morals or sense of humbleness because they'll make a CD filled with a bunch of fake or directly copied songs from other Cajun musicians both of the past and present, which causes dissatisfaction and separation amongst Cajun accordion players both of south Louisiana and abroad to the point where some accordion players just fade back and go at it on their own trying to perfect a true and heartfelt "real" Cajun accordion style that no parakeet accordion player can copy. And now you know the rest of the story. And to think, I too never went to college, nor have I paid Steve Riley, Marc or Wilson Savoy, or anybody else to teach me Cajun accordion lessons, yet I know this stuff and can put it to you in words that no one else seems to be able to. You're welcome!" Greezy McGill Re: The 2nd Gift of Gifts The Coup de Gras Welp, here it is...the revealing. What happens when you take the most avoided Cajun two step of the Hee Haw Breakdown played in 3Rd position key of "F" on a "C" accordion? And switch to playing it in the 2nd Position or in the "5th" key of "G" on that same "C" accordion? You get........"The Shamrock!" And yes, "The Mardi Gras Jig" is the same song as "Hee Haw Breakdown" without the Woe Rock! And once you learn the "Shamrock", go ahead and play it straight, just like Nathan Abshire on your "C" accordion in the easy 5th or 2nd position on the pull "key of G". While you're doing that, go ahead and sing the Hee Haw Breakdown. Do it on a C or even a D accordion if you want to. Also, you can take your "D" accordion and play along with Nathan's "Shamrock" in the above video. But to do this, you will have to play the 3rd position key of "G" on that "D" accordion. And that will teach you all these Hee Haw versions mentioned in every position, backwards, forwards, upside down and sideways, so that you can never be baffled by this tricky bull sh** ever again when you watch another accordion player wowing the crowd. From now on, that accomplished accordion player will be YOU! No More of this so called Accordion Penis Envy! Your dissatisfaction, anger, feeling of being left behind or left out will decrease and your confidence and standing amongst accordion players will begin to climb for the stars. The 2nd Gifts of Gifts.

Types and Uses of Travertine Tiles One of the most versatile, durable and elegant looking floor cover is none other than the one made from travertine. Not only is this natural stone popularly used to tile and decorate the floor, they look just as appealing when being installed on the walls, backsplashes and on kitchen countertops as well. Travertine tiles that are installed properly can be long lasting and will not chip or crack easily. Though it can be quite expensive for people with low budgets, it is definitely a comfortable and reasonable price to pay for, considering it adds so much aesthetic value to your home. Generally, there are four different styles or finishes that you can find in travertine tiles. Each one of them is manufactured with their own unique character, and the following are some ideas of how you can use different types of tile finishes in different places of your home. Polished Travertine Tiles Probably the most flat and shiny piece of tile, hence its surface is highly reflective and smooth. It is among the best in quality of travertine tiles because polished tiles are only made from the hardest travertine and they are almost stain resistant. However for a number of reasons, polished tiles are not a good choice for flooring, especially for family with children around because they can become very slippery when they are wet. Filled and Honed Travertine Tiles These tiles have the same smooth and flat surface but not as shiny. Instead, they are more of a matte finish. In the manufacturing process, most holes and pores of this natural stone are filled. This makes them more resilient to stains and thus less maintenance is required. Though it does not look glossy, it is still slippery when wet. Most of the time, they are used in the floor and wall of home kitchens, bathrooms and showers. Tumbled Travertine Tiles A more decorative style of tiles with rounded edges that is available in various sizes and colors. Usually, this tile is left unfilled after the tumbling process and this gave it a rustic look. Unfilled tiles are regularly used as driveway pavement and patio walkways, while filled ones are great for floors and backsplashes in the kitchens and bathrooms. Due to its rough surface, they are good for paving around the pool too. Chiseled and Brushed Travertine Tiles Similar to tumbled tiles, only that the sides of these tiles are chiseled away providing it a highly classical and antiquated look. They are great to be installed on both outdoors and wet areas. Outdoor travertine tiles can be left unfilled as long as they are not exposed to acidic spillage. Even if we buy tiles that are unfilled, they will still last long when used correctly and are certainly much cheaper than filled ones. A layer of sealer coating may be required for certain areas that are more exposed to moisture or liquids Any travertine tiles you choose have to be cared and maintain with full attention to make sure that your investment does not go to waste. You have to watch for water and acids spills because this porous stone can absorb liquids quickly which may smudge or etch the surface. And finally, do not use abrasive or acidic solutions to clean them, use only stone friendly cleaner to clean the tiles or else the stone might erode.

7 Common food labels that trick you Giselle Castro Oct 13, 2013 Food shopping while trying to lose weight can be a confusing task. You know you have to eat your fruits and veggies, but what about when it comes to reading food labels? With terms like "Fat Free," "Sugar Free," or "Gluten Free" found on lots of our supermarket fare, it's hard to understand what they exactly mean. Lucky for you, we've decoded what these terms and others really mean and why you should avoid them at all costs. Read more ¿Qué más?:Dangerous, toxic foods easily available at the supermarket that you need to AVOID! Below we've described the labels you've seen at your local supermarket and their real definitions. Don't be fooled any longer by them and make sure you don't go shopping without reading this list! "All Natural" or "Natural flavoring": Unless it's a raw apple, chances are when you see this label it's on a packaged product. This is such a broad term and usually means hidden high fructose syrup, preservatives, or extra sodium. "Fat Free": Most people think that because an item is free of fat, that it's good for them. Quite the contrary since there could be hidden sugars and have the same amount of calories as the regular item. "Sugar Free": Much like "Fat Free" this term can trick people into thinking fewer calories. In reality, it contains artificial sweeteners, extra calories, and other unknown ingredients. All this label means is that it contains less than 0.5 grams of sugar but it's replaced by these sketchy ingredients. "Gluten Free": People allergic to gluten, a protein found in wheat, can't eat bread. Therefore manufacturers gluten free items that are ideal for them. But many people are under the impression that they are weight loss friendly. Instead it contain less fiber and other hidden chemical ingredients. "Light": This usually means the food has up to 50 percent less fat or sodium than the original product. It could have hidden sugars, might taste lighter, but it doesn't change the calorie count. "Multigrain": This label can be tricky since it sounds healthy, but instead check out what the first few ingredients are. Usually these contain unbleached wheat flour as the main ingredient which defeats the purpose of what's supposed to be a whole wheat product and may even have more sugar than you think. "Made with real fruit: This term can be found on yogurts or fruit snacks. All this means is that it's all sugar derived from fruit concentrate.

Though GOD is everywhere present, yet He is only present to thee in the deepest and most central part of thy soul. The natural senses cannot possess God or unite thee to Him; nay thy inward faculties of understanding, will and memory can only reach after God, but cannot be the place of his habitation in thee. But there is a root or depth of thee from whence all these faculties come forth, as lines from a centre, or as branches from the body of the tree. This depth is called the centre, the fund or bottom of the soul. This depth is the unity, the eternity – I had almost said the infinity – of thy soul; for it is so infinite that nothing can satisfy it or give it rest but the infinity of God. What could begin to deny self, if there were not something in man different from self? The separate creaturely life, as opposed to life in union with God, is only a life of various appetites, hungers and wants, and cannot possibly be anything else. God Himself cannot make a creature to be in itself, or in its own nature, anything else but a state of emptiness. The highest life that is natural and creaturely can go no higher than this; it can only be a bare capacity for goodness and cannot possibly be a good and happy life but by the life of God dwelling in and in union with it. And this is the twofold life that, of all necessity, must be united in every good and perfect and happy creature. Love is infallible; it has no errors, for all errors are the want of love. For as love has no by-ends, wills nothing but its own increase, so everything is as oil to its flame; it must have that which it wills and cannot be disappointed, because everything (including unkindness on the part of those loved) naturally helps it to live in its own way and to bring forth its own work. By love I do not mean any natural tenderness, which is more or less in people according to their constitution; but I mean a larger principle of the soul, founded in reason and piety, which makes us tender, kind and gentle to all our fellow creatures as creatures of God, and for his sake. Learn the true nature and worth of all self-denials and mortifications. As to their nature, considered in themselves, they have nothing of goodness or holiness, nor any real part of our sanctification, they are not the true food or nourishment of the Divine Life in our souls, they have no quickening, sanctifying power in them; their only worth consists in this, that they remove the impediments of holiness, break down that which stands between God and us, and make way for the quickening, sanctifying spirit of God to operate on our souls, which operation of God is the only thing that can raise the Divine Life in the soul, or help it to the smallest degree of real holiness or spiritual life…. Hence we may learn the reason why many people not only lose the benefit, but are even the worse for all their mortifications. It is because they mistake the whole nature and worth of them. They practice them for their own sakes, as things good in themselves; they think them to be real parts of holiness, and so rest in them and look no further, but grow full of self-esteem and self-admiration for their own progress in them. This makes them self-sufficient, morose, severe judges of all those that fall short of their mortifications. And thus their self-denials do only that for them which indulgences do for other people: they withstand and hinder the operation of God upon their souls, and instead of being really self-denials, they strengthen and keep up the kingdom of self. Man’s intellectual faculties are by the Fall in a much worse state than his animal appetites and want a much greater self-denial. And when own will, own understanding and own imagination have their natural strength indulged and gratified, and are made seemingly rich and honourable with the treasure acquired from a study of the Belles Lettres, they will just as much help poor fallen man to be like-minded with Christ as the art of cookery, well and duly studied, will help a professor of the Gospel to the spirit and practise of Christian abstinence. To find or know God in reality by any outward proofs, or by anything but by God Himself made manifest and self-evident in you, will never be your case either here or hereafter. For neither God, nor heaven, nor hell, nor the devil, nor the flesh, can be any otherwise knowable in you or by you but by their own existence and manifestation in you. And all pretended knowledge of any of these things, beyond and without this self-evident sensibility of their birth within you, is only such knowledge of them as the blind man hath of the light that hath never entered into him. Away, then, with the fictions and workings of discursive reason, either for or against Christianity! They are only the wanton spirit of the mind, whilst ignorant of God and insensible of its own nature and condition. Death and life are the only things in question; life is God living and working in the soul; death is the soul living and working according to the sense and reason of bestial flesh and blood. Both this life and this death are of their own growth, growing from their own seed within us, not as busy reason talks and directs, but as the heart turns either to the one or to the other. Take note of this fundamental truth. Everything that works in nature and creature, except sin, is the working of God in nature and creature. The creature has nothing else in its power but the free use of its will, and its free will hath no other power but that of concurring with, or resisting, the working of God in nature. The creature with its free will can bring nothing into being, nor make any alteration in the working of nature; it can only change its own state or place in the working of nature, and so feel or find something in its state that it did not feel or find before. Perpetual inspiration is as necessary to the life of goodness, holiness and happiness as perpetual respiration is necessary to animal life. The will is that which has all power; it makes heaven and it makes hell; for there is no hell but where the will of the creature is turned from God, nor any heaven but where the will of the creature worketh with God. O man, consider thyself! Here thou standest in the earnest perpetual strife of good and evil; all nature is continually at work to bring forth the great redemption; the whole creation is travailing in pain and laborious working to be delivered from the vanity of time; and wilt thou be asleep? Everything thou hearest or seest says nothing, shows nothing to thee but what either eternal light or eternal darkness has brought forth; for as day and night divide the whole of our time, so heaven and hell divide all our thoughts, words and actions. Stir which way thou wilt, do or design what thou wilt, thou must be an agent with the one or the other. Thou canst not stand still, because thou livest in the perpetual workings of temporal and eternal nature; if thou workest not with the good, the evil that is in nature carries thee along with it. Thou hastthe height and depth of eternity in thee and therefore, be doing what thou wilt, either in the closet, the field, the shop or the church, thou art sowing that which grows and must be reaped in eternity. Your own self is your own Cain that murders your own Abel. For every action and motion of self has the spirit of Anti-Christ and murders the divine life within you. The difference between a good and a bad man does not lie in this, that the one wills that which is good and the other does not, but solely in this, that the one concurs with the living inspiring spirit of God within him, and the other resists it, and can be chargeable with evil only because he resists it. Covetousness, envy, pride and wrath are the four elements of self, or nature, or hell, all of them inseparable from it. And the reason why it must be thus, and cannot be otherwise, is because the natural life of the creature is brought forth for the participation of some high supernatural good in the Creator. But it could have no fitness, no possible capacity to receive such good, unless it was in itself both an extremity of want and an extremity of desire for some high good. When therefore this natural life is deprived of or fallen from God, it can be nothing else in itself but an extremity of want continually desiring, and an extremity of desire continually wanting. And because it is that, its whole life can be nothing else but a plague and torment of covetousness, envy, pride and wrath, all which is precisely nature, self, or hell. Now covetousness, pride and envy are not three different things, but only three different names for the restless workings of one and the same will or desire. Wrath, which is a fourth birth from these three, can have no existence till one or all of these three are contradicted, or have something done to them that is contrary to their will. These four properties generate their own torment. They have no outward cause, nor any inward power of altering themselves. And therefore all self or nature must be in this state until some supernatural good comes into it, or gets a birth in it. Whilst man indeed lives among the vanities of time, his covetousness, envy, pride and wrath may be in a tolerable state, may hold him to a mixture of peace and trouble; they may have at times their gratifications as well as their torments. But when death has put an end to the vanity of all earthly cheats, the soul that is not born again of the supernatural Word and Spirit of God, must find itself unavoidably devoured or shut up in its own insatiable, unchangeable, self-tormenting covetousness, envy, pride and wrath. If a delicious fragrant fruit had a power of separating itself from the rich spirit, fine taste, smell and colour, which it receives from the virtue of the air and the spirit of the sun, or if it could, in the beginning of its growth, turn away from the sun and receive no virtue from it, then it would stand in its own first birth of wrath, sourness, bitterness, astringency, just as the devils do, who have turned back into their own dark root and have rejected the Light and Spirit of God. So that the hellish nature of a devil is nothing but its own first forms of life withdrawn or separated from the heavenly Light and Love; just as the sourness, bitterness and astringency of a fruit are nothing else but of its vegetable life, before it has reached the virtue of the sun and the spirit of the air. And as a fruit, if it had a sensibility of itself, would be full of torment as soon as it was shut up in the first forms of its life, in its own astringency, sourness and stinging bitterness, so the angels, when they had turned back into these very same first forms of their own life, and broke off from the heavenly Light and Love of God, became their own hell. No hell was made for them, no new qualities came into them, no vengeance or pains from the Lord of Love fell on them; they only stood in that state of division and separation from the Son and Holy Spirit of God, which by their own motion they had made for themselves. They had nothing in them but what they had from God, the first forms of a heavenly life; but they had them in a state of self-torment, because they had separated them from birth of Love and Light. In all the possibility of things there is and can be but one happiness and one misery. The one misery is nature and creature left to itself, the one happiness is the Life, the Light, the Spirit of God, manifested in nature and creature. This is the true meaning of the words of Our Lord: There is but one that is good, and that is God. Men are not in hell because God is angry with them; they are in wrath and darkness because they have done to the light, which infinitely flows forth from God, as that man does to the light of the sun, who puts out his own eyes. Though the light and comfort of the outward world keeps even the worst of men from any constant strong sensibility of that wrathful, fiery, dark and self-tormenting nature that is the very essence of every fallen unregenerate soul, yet every man in the world has more or less frequent and strong intimations given him that so it is with him in the inmost ground of his soul. How many inventions are some people forced to have recourse to in order to keep off a certain inward uneasiness, which they are afraid of and know not whence it comes? Alas, it is because there is a fallen spirit, a dark aching fire within them, which has never had its proper relief and is trying to discover itself and calling out for help at every cessation of worldly joy. Selfishness and partiality are very inhuman and base qualities even in the things of this world but in the doctrines of religion they are of a baser nature. Now, this is the greatest evil that the division of the church has brought forth; it raises in every communion a selfish, partial orthodoxy, which consists in courageously defending all that it has, and condemning all that it has not. And thus every champion is trained up in defense of their own truth, their own learning and their own church, and he has the most, the most honour, who likes everything, defends everything, among themselves, and leaves nothing uncensored in those that are of a different communion. Now, how can truth and goodness and union and religion be more struck at than by such defenders of it? If you ask why the great Bishop of Meaux wrote so many learned books against all parts of the reformation, it is because he was born in France and bred up in the bosom of Mother Church. Had he been born in England, had Oxford or Cambridge been his Alma Mater, he might have rivalled our great Bishop Stillingfleet, and would have wrote as many learned folios against the Church of Rome as he has done. And yet I will venture to say that if each church could produce but one man apiece that had the piety of an apostle and the impartial love of the first Christians in the first Church at Jerusalem, that a Protestant and a Papist of this stamp would not want half a sheet of paper to hold their articles of union, nor be half an hour before they were of one religion. If, therefore, it should be said that churches are divided, estranged and made unfriendly to one another by a learning, a logic, a history, a criticism in the hands of partiality, it would be saying that which each particular church too much proves to be true. Ask why even the best amongst the Catholics are very shy of owning the validity of the orders of our Church; it is because they are afraid of removing any odium from the Reformation. Ask why no Protestants anywhere touch upon the benefit or necessity of celibacy in those who are separated from worldly business to preach the gospel; it is because that would be seeming to lessen the Roman error of not suffering marriage in her clergy. Ask why even the most worthy and pious among the clergy of the Established Church are afraid to assert the sufficiency of the Divine Light, the necessity of seeking only the guidance and inspiration of the Holy Spirit; it is because the Quakers, who have broke off from the church, have made this doctrine their corner-stone. If we loved truth as such, if we sought for it for its own sake, if we loved our neighbour as ourselves, if we desired nothing by our religion but to be acceptable to God, if we equally desired the salvation of all men, if we were afraid of error only because of its harmful nature to us and our fellow-creatures, then nothing of this spirit could have any place in us. There is therefore a catholic spirit, a communion of saints in the love of God and all goodness, which no one can learn from that which is called orthodoxy in particular churches, but is only to be had by a total dying to all worldly views, by a pure love of God, and by such an unction from above as delivers the mind from all selfishness and makes it love truth and goodness with an equality of affection in every man, whether he is Christian, Jew or Gentile. he that would obtain this divine and catholic spirit in this disordered, divided state of things, and live in a divided part of the church without partaking of its division, must have these three truths deeply fixed in his mind. First, that universal love, which gives the whole strength of the heart to God, and makes us love every man as we love ourselves, is the noblest, the most divine, the Godlike state of the soul, and is the utmost perfection to which the most perfect religion can raise us; and that no religion does any man any good but so far as it brings this perfection of love into him. This truth will show us that true orthodoxy can nowhere be found but in a pure disinterested love of God and our neighbour. Second, that in this present divided state of the church, truth itself is torn and divided asunder; and that, therefore, he can be the only true catholic who has more of truth and less of error than is hedged in by any divided part. This truth will enable us to live in a divided part unhurt by its division, and keep us in a true liberty and fitness to be edified and assisted by all the good that we hear or see in any other part of the church…. Thirdly, he must always have in mind this great truth, that it is the glory of the Divine Justice to have no respect of parties or persons, but to stand equally disposed to that which is right and wrong as well in the Jew as in the Gentile. He therefore that would like as God likes, and condemn as God condemns, must have neither the eyes of the Papist nor the Protestant; he must like no truth the less because Ignatius Loyola or John Bunyan were very zealous for it, nor have the less aversion to any error, because Dr. Trapp or George Fox had brought it forth. In what does salvation consist? Not in any historic faith or knowledge of anything absent or distant, not in any variety of restraints, rules and methods of practising virtue, not in any formality of opinion about faith and works, repentance, forgiveness of sins, or justification and sanctification, not in any truth or righteousness that you can have from yourself, from the best of men and books, but solely and wholly from the life of God, or Christ of God, quickened and born again in you, in other words in the restoration and perfect union of the first twofold life in humanity. The spiritual life is nothing else but the working of the Spirit of God within us, and therefore our own silence must be a great part of our preparation for it, and much speaking or delight in it will be often no small hindrance of that good which we can only have from hearing what the Spirit and voice of God speaketh within us…. Rhetoric and fine language about the things of the spirit is a vainer babble than in other matters; and he that thinks to grow in true goodness by hearing or speaking flaming words or striking expressions, as is now much the way of the world, may have a great deal of talk, but will have little of his conversation in heaven. What need of so much news from abroad, when all that concerns either life or death is all transacting and at work within us? By considering yourself as an advocate with God for your neighbours and acquaintances, you would never find it hard to be at peace with them yourself. It would be easy for you to bear with and forgive those, for whom you particularly implored the divine mercy and forgiveness. Intercession is the best arbitrator of all differences, the best promoter of true friendship, the best cure and preservative against all unkind tempers, all angry and haughty passions. You cannot possibly have any ill-temper, or show any unkind behaviour to a man for whose welfare you are so much concerned, as to be his advocate with God in private. For you cannot possibly despise and ridicule that man whom your private prayers recommend to the love and favour of God. To pretend to devotion without great humility and renunciation of all worldly tempers is to pretend to impossibilities. He that would be devout must first be humble, have a full sense of his own miseries and wants and the vanity of the world, and then his soul will be full of desire after God. A proud, or vain, or worldly-minded man may use a manual of prayers, but he cannot be devout, because devotion is the application of an humble heart to God as its only happiness. Would you know whence it is that so many false spirits have appeared in the world, who have deceived themselves and others with false fire and false light, laying claim to information, illumination and openings of the divine Life, particularly to do wonders under extraordinary calls from God? It is this: they have turned to God without turning from themselves; would be alive to God before they are dead to their own nature. Now religion in the hands of self, or corrupt nature, serves only to discover vices of a worse kind than in nature left to itself. Hence are all the disorderly passions of religious men, which burn in a worse flame than passions only employed about worldly matters; pride, self-exaltation, hatred and persecution, under a cloak of religious zeal, will sanctify actions which nature, left to itself, would be ashamed to own. Jalal-uddin Rumi The Beloved is all in all; the lover merely veils Him; The Beloved is all that lives, the lover a dead thing. The astrolabe of the mysteries of God is love. The sect of lovers is distinct from all others; Lovers have a religion and a faith all their own. Once the noble Ibrahim, as he sat on his throne, Heard a clamour and noise of cries on the roof, Also heavy footsteps on the roof of his palace. He said to himself, “Whose heavy feet are these?” He shouted from the window, “Who goes there?” The guards, filled with confusion, bowed their heads, saying, “It is we, going the rounds in search.” He said, “What seek ye? They said, “Our camels.” He said, “Who ever searched for camels on a housetop?” They said, “We follow thy example, Who seekest union with God, while sitting on a throne.” Can I explain the Friend to one for whom He is no Friend? When a mother cries to her sucking babe, “Come, O son, I am thy mother!” Does the child answer, “O mother, show a proof That I shall find comfort in taking thy milk”? Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment; Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment is intuition. Reason is like an officer when the King appears; The officer then loses his power and hides himself. Reason is the shadow cast by God; God is the sun. The philosopher who denies divine providence is a stranger to the perception of the saints. If thou has not seen the devil, look at thine own self. The sufi is the son of time present. Past and future veil God from our sight; Burn up both of them with fire. How long Wilt thou be partitioned by these segments, like a reed? Nor is it vocal in response to lip and breathing. I died a mineral, and became a plant. I died a plant and rose an animal. I died an animal and I was a man. Why should I fear? When was I less by dying? Yet once more I shall die as a man, to soar With the blessed angels; but even from angelhood I must pass on. All except God perishes. When I have sacrificed my angel soul, I shall become that which no mind ever conceived. O, let me not exist! for Non-Existence proclaims, “To Him we shall return.” (A dervish was tempted by the devil to cease calling upon Allah, on the ground that Allah never answered, “Here am I.” The prophet Khadir appeared to him in a vision with a message from God.) Was it not I who summoned thee to my service? Was it not I who made thee busy with my name? Thy calling “Allah!” was my “Here am I.” Why hast thou said, “I have sinned so much, and God in His mercy has not punished my sins”? How many times do I smite thee, and thou knowest not! Thou art bound in my chains from head to foot. On thy heart is rust on rust collected So that thou art blind to divine mysteries. When a man is stubborn and follows evil practices, He casts dust in the eyes of his discernment. Old shame for sin and calling on God quit him; Dust five layers deep settles on his mirror, Rust spots begin to gnaw his iron, The colour of his jewel grows less and less.

Walking With a Friend. Sunday morning, a morning of sunshine after weeks of rain, a morning full of birdsong and warm air and a meadow full of wild flowers. My friend and I walk 'here', a fascinating place with a rich history as a military hospital, a pioneering psychiatric hospital, and now a nature reserve. My friend and I have a great deal in common. We like a lot of the same things, although she has something of a penchant for poking her nose into other people's business, a trait I do not share. She is younger than I am, and blonde, and probably has a more illustrious family tree. Her name is Hannah, and you may have realised by now that she is a Labrador Retriever. We wander along the paths through the woodlands and over the meadows. She is sometimes just ahead, sometimes just behind, but never far away. She likes to greet people, but not necessarily their dogs, whom she tolerates politely. She is not very keen on children, and will often take a detour to avoid them. People wearing sun-glasses make her uncomfortable, and I remember my deaf friends telling me how difficult it is to lip read people wearing sun-glasses. Dogs need to read whole facial expression, too. There are some parts of the woodland where Hannah feels uneasy. As we approach she goes slightly stiff legged and walks carefully behind me, allowing me to encounter any dangers first. Hannah is not a guard dog. This beautiful plot of land has known great sadness. People have suffered here, and there are parts of the woodland where the hairs rise on the back of Hannah's neck and all along her spine, so that she looks like a Rhodesian Ridgeback. She sticks close to my heels, looking to neither right nor left. This is the site of the old hospital mortuary. Hannah picks up some sort of vibe and just wants to get past the place, not to linger for even the most interesting scent. I feel sad too. A sense of gloom hangs over this stretch of woodland, but Hannah's behaviour emphasises my own feeling. Which comes first - the dog's reaction or my own? We both step briskly out of the woodland and through the gate into the meadow where she bounds and pirouettes with joy - instant transformation in the open sunlight. She knows what is coming, but bounces and grins and waits for permission to go. There is water ahead, usually a stream with shallow pools, and she can hurl herself into it with the sort of abandon that occurs when a happy Labrador senses water. She can hit the water and flop down into it, then race through it, biting at it, laughing at it, revelling in it, a joy as infectious as the gloom of ten minutes ago. I can share her enjoyment, the enjoyment of sunshine, an open space, freedom, the view of the hills. I do not need to join her in the water, although she would clearly like me to do so, and cannot quite understand my reluctance. She comes and shakes herself close to me, demonstrating that water is good, wetness is great, a damp car is going to smell heavenly. Hannah is not my dog. She is a friend, and a much valued friend because whenever I have the urge to go and find myself another dog to rescue I call on Hannah. She reminds me, in the best possible way, that owning a dog is a great big responsibility, a great big expense. It involves limitations and forward planning, and I've done all that for many years. I must not do it again, because I have other important commitments. If you take on a dog it has to come very high indeed on your agenda, especially when you live alone. So Hannah and I walk together. And I'm also very grateful to another good friend who happens to be Hannah's owner. Lots of plants look beautiful, sprinkled with the diamonds of raindrops. This balances out those that have been beaten into submission by gales. The ducks in the park are very happy. No one has had to pack away their winter clothes nor change the duvet for the summer-weight one. Or if they have they've changed back again. I felt a bit guilty, buying a new folding umbrella because I forgot the old one the other day. I spent four pounds, but it has earned its keep ten times over. People have lots of extra interest, wondering if they are going to be able to play/watch cricket. Or not. I had these very special sunglasses, made for wind-surfing. (How I got them is another story.) One of my sons said, "Wow, Mum, those are cool surfers!" and I just said, nonchalantly, "Yes, I know." They were on the passenger seat of the car, and a friend sat on them, but it really doesn't matter. To be honest, I could barely see through them in this gloom, and even I realise that they are not so cool in lashing rain. We are not woken by blinding sunrise, forcing its way through the blinds at 4.30 a.m. In fact we can leave the blinds open and hardly know if it is night or day. It becomes not unlike the White Nights of St. Petersburg, and we can go into a gently meditative state and start looking for the Northern Lights. Friends asked me to water their garden while they were away for a fortnight. Not once did I have to touch a tap, but I did go round every other day to tip water out of pots to try to stop plants from drowning. This soft and gentle grey air (when the wind drops), this soft and gentle rain (when it comes vertically, not horizontally), this soft and gentle grey light - all are kinder to the eyes and the complexion than harsh sunlight, and really the gloomier and dimmer the light the kinder it becomes for women over a certain age. But if, by any chance, the sun should break through the dark and billowing clouds we will all tear off our woollies, waterproofs and wellies and start complaining about the heat. Labels: gardening, weather Seeing Eye to Eye Every day I put out food for the many wild creatures that have moved into my garden, often with a kernel of doubt that I may be creating artificial conditions and thus encouraging unnatural behaviour patterns, always with a sense of responsibility that having started this pattern I must continue it. Wildlife does not come cheap in this place! A wide variety of birds hang about all the time, making noisy disputes when the bird-table is topped up. I have the identifiable residents, the jackdaw who has pestered me over the past few years, and some of his flock who have distinctive white patches in their wings. I thought I had two pairs of blackbirds, but a recent wildlife programme 'Springwatch' casts doubt on this, having found that a garden may be visited by a great many more pairs that the one or two assumed by the human residents. I have thrushes and wrens and countless little brown numbers in between. I could not begin to count them, and after Springwatch I realise I couldn't estimate them either. There are no hedgehogs here these days, which is a sad loss, and this year I have not had any starlings either, an equal loss. However, I have badgers at the bottom of the garden and they are served supper as dusk falls. Yesterday I was at home in the late afternoon. I moved to a window to open it, and in doing so startled a fox, out in broad daylight, pathetically searching for fallen scraps beneath the bird table. Before it bolted away it made full eye contact with me for a number of seconds. It was a most powerful experience. When a wild animal knows enough about you to hold that sort of eye contact there is a feeling of real communication, although whether it was fear, or challenge, or a sort of anxious request I could not tell. I interpreted it as anxious request, because for an animal to be so near to the house, so early in the evening, it must have been desperate, starving. The thought that there is a wild animal in my garden desperate enough to virtually beseech for help is hard to bear. Perhaps I'm being anthropomorphic, but those long seconds of eye contact have a profound effect. It was not the animal photographed here, but a thin creature beset with mange - but the look in the eyes was the same. So now there is at least one additional guest for supper, whose meal will be available rather earlier than the later evening service for the badgers. I still don't know if I'm doing right or wrong, but I'm pretty sure that if I lived a few centuries ago I would be branded an old witch, living alone, surrounded by my familiars and talking to the birds.

24 October 2017 on maintenance, tenants, landlords, rentals, property management, rental property, realestate by Brad Katronis Property inspections should never be overlooked, as they are a vital component to attracting and maintaining qualified tenants. Here are the few inspection categories that we will review: 1. Move-In 2. Mid-Tenancy 3. Drive By 4. Pre Move-Out 5. Final Move-Out General Inspection Notes Privacy and taking photos/videos during inspections Taking photographs of a tenant’s rental unit is a collection of personal information. The purpose must be identified prior to or at the time of collection and tenant’s consent must be obtained. A reasonable effort must also be made to ensure that the individual understands how the information will be used. It is important that you do not use pictures on websites, such as your advertising links or on other public domains without the the tenants consent. Read this article about privacy concerns in the property management process. Use a structured inspection guide Follow a consistent guide or template each time to ensure you don’t miss certain items. A place to record notes for each room including the exterior, garage, yard, or other areas accessible by tenants. Along with notes on the condition, it is best practice to take complete and total pictures of the premises, with close ups of key areas that may have damage. Use a high resolution camera and good lighting to make sure you can see even the smallest details. Here is the free Hemlane Inspections Guide Inspections for a lease with friends and roommates It’s recommended that you have all parties on the lease present during the move in and pre move-out inspections. When it comes to roommates and friends on a joint lease, it is common for one to blame another. Management is not responsible to assess who damaged what and divide the deposit amongst the tenants. Management is only responsible to return the full security deposit less the itemized deductions within the State’s guidelines. Have a witness accompany you if possible It’s a good idea to have a handyman or associate with you as a second set of eyes during the inspection. This may help you identify additional things you may have missed during the process. Perform inspections on behalf of your rental property’s neighbors For all inspections, you're not just looking for wear and tear to the property. You’re also looking for things which could impede the right of quiet enjoyment to any neighbors. For example, if your tenant lived in a tight space with other neighbors and had a drum set, this would severely affect the use of quiet enjoyment of neighbors in close proximity. In this case, you’ll want to give the tenant a notice to rectify the nuisance or find them in breach of contract for the nuisance. Be as detailed as possible in documenting all information You’ll need to be as detailed as possible and using photos is an easy and efficient way to document particular items. For example, instead of saying, “damage to carpet”, you could say, “damage to carpet in the northeast corner of the 2nd bedroom - see photo 4.” Damage during Move-In & Move-Out The two periods where a home is most prone to damage are when tenants are moving in and then moving out. It is the obvious reason that furniture and other large objects moving around can cause damage. Therefore, it’s important that your first inspection (move-in inspection) happens BEFORE the tenant gets possession, and the final inspection happens AFTER they give you the keys. Move-In Inspection The move in inspection is performed with the tenant right before they are given the keys and take possession. The purpose is for the tenant and the landlord to agree on pre-existing issues, ensuring that they are not deducted from the tenants damage deposit when they move out. An additional benefit of the move-in inspection is that the documentation process lets tenants know how clean the property is, which incentivizes them to keep the property just as clean during the duration of the tenancy. By explicitly informing the tenant of how clean things are when they move in, they have a clear understanding of the standard that is expected when they return the unit. Timing: The Move In Inspection must happen before you give possession of the unit. This ensures a clear understanding of the condition before the tenant moves their belongings into the rental. The most common time to do this is when you hand over the keys to the tenant. If the tenant insists on performing the inspection before the move in date, then you can perform the inspection but do not hand over the keys. There is huge liability with providing access to the property before the move in date. Believe us on this one. During the move in inspection, it is very common for a tenant to start “nit-picking” any small cosmetic damage. Some examples include: Dents in the baseboards Drawers not sliding seamlessly Small scratches on the wall Since rentals are turned over more frequently than for sale properties, it is not always expected to have a fresh coat of paint, new fixtures, etc. It is important to communicate the purpose of the move inspection: Appliances are working properly Safety has been checked (door locks, window latches, smoke detectors) Minor cosmetic issues will be noted on paper and with photos but may not necessarily be fixed. If you are an agent performing an inspection, do not agree to any upgrades or contract work unless you have approval from the owner. Items often overlooked Here is what we notice are the most commonly overlooked items during the inspection: Windows with and without screens Prior door damage from pets Drawing of the drapes, blinds, and curtains Common items to compare against the Move-Out Inspection In order to reclaim the damage deposit from your tenants for common cleaning, you want to make sure those items were noted upon move in. It’s recommended to clearly communicate and document the cleanliness of the rental upon move in, which provides expectations on the cleanliness expected during the move out. Check electrical outlets are working properly (recommend using an electrical tester) Comment on the cleanliness of the light fixtures (no dead bugs or dust) Confirm the cabinets are clean inside and around the edges Check the AC and furnace filters (expectation that they are new if new at move in) Make sure showers and faucets aren’t leaking and drain properly Inspect the blinds to see if they are clean, including across each horizontal section View the baseboards and outlets to see if they were washed or have collected dust Confirm the cleanliness of the area around and under the appliances Check tiles, including the grout and seals, for mildew, scale, soap residue and grease Attention to detail will attract better tenants, set the right expectations, and provide a more professional relationship on expectations with tenants. An unclean property can cause issues related to allergies and health hazards. Mid-Tenancy Inspection The most important reason for mid-tenancy inspections is to hold tenants accountable to the property rules and regulations. If residents know the management is checking up on them, then they are less likely to violate the lease. Another equally important reason has nothing to do with the tenants’ accountability. Mid-tenancy inspections force you to view the condition of the property and to see if there are any structural or physical issues to be rectified before they become larger problems. Frequency of inspections A rental property is home to a tenant. Mid-tenancy nspections should always be performed within reason (not too frequent) and should not be invasive. It is recommended to check your State's and County's laws to confirm you are abiding by their rules for mid-tenancy inspections. Tenants causing issue with inspections Tenants may question mid-tenancy inspections. In their mind, it may be interpreted as a trust issue, where management is questioning their ability to follow the rules outlined in the contract. A truthful response is that the inspection serves to better understand the structural condition of the property. Management should assess the structural wear and tear to prevent major problems down the road, which could materialize into safety issues to the residents. Things to inspect during mid-tenancy Here are a couple of important things to look for during the inspection process. Humidity hot spots: Humidity and moisture build up might only be noticeable when there is high usage which may not be the case when you are doing your other inspections (move in/move out etc) when usage may be at it’s lowest. This condensation will be most evident in the bathrooms and kitchens around late winter/early spring which could be caused by not keeping the house warm enough or from bathroom, dishwasher or dryer moisture not being properly ventilated. The main things you’ll want to look for include: moisture on windows or on the sill and black spots & mould around windows and doors. Unauthorized occupants: This is a significant one, has someone moved into the property without notice? Anyone who moves in should have to go through a screening process and your contract amended. The most important thing you need to worry about is whether or not the person is dangerous or not? Someone with a criminal record could be a risk to neighbours, other tenants etc. You’ll also want to consider additional wear and tear and weather the number of occupants meets fire code. Lack of care & cleanliness of the property: If upon inspection you are able to determine the property is not being sufficiently maintained, this would be a good time to inform your tenants that in the current state, they may not receive their full damage back. Safety and wear & tear issues with the property: It’s important to inspect the property for maintenance items which if not proactively taken care of, could become more costly to fix in the future, or a safety & health hazard to your tenant(s). Brush which is overgrowing that could damage buildings Moisture/water leaks which could develop into mold Wear and tear of stairs/railings etc Bug/rodent infiltration Security issues increasing the risk of break ins Problems caused by tenants If you find problems caused by the tenants, then you may want to consider the formal eviction process in order to mandate the tenant cure the breach of contract. The first step is typically posting a notice to perform the covenant (fix the breach in the contract). We work with third party legal resources to help you put together such notices, in hopes that the violation will be fixed after this notice is served. See our comprehensive guide to evictions for guidance on this. Some examples of these violations include: Pets when the lease states no pets in the property* Neighbor complaints related to noise violations Proper maintenance of the premise not being followed *Please note that service animals are not considered pets, even though the tenant will need to disclose that he/she has a service animal. You can read more here. Don’t forget to take photos It’s important to document the condition of the property during the inspection, similar to your process during the move in. If you need to bring a lease violation to court, then photographs can help serve as evidence. However, remember that you want to avoid photos that violate privacy rights. Do not take photos of their personal family photos or other tenant belongings that can be considered an invasion of privacy. See our article about privacy concerns in the property management process. Drive and Walk-by Inspections Drive by or walk around inspections are a useful tool to monitor the property condition and occupants. And, if you are transparent with the tenant on these types of inspections, then they had added incentives to adhere to your contract guidelines in terms of maintenance and upkeep. If you are not able to see anything from a drive by, then you may need to park and walk to a common area (not on the property) where you can get a view of the exterior visual inspection. It is important not to enter the tenant’s private property, as you would need to notify them of such inspection. Things to inspect during the drive-by As the inspector, you want to ask a couple of questions related to lease clauses, checking some of the following: Are overgrown trees and brush visible, which could damage the exterior of the building or surrounding infrastructure?* Are the trash bins being left out too long? Are the tenants illegally parking? Is there other damage to the house such as loose siding? Have appropriate preparations been made for changing seasons and upcoming storms? Are the gutters overflowing? Is mail being collected? Does the unit appear to have tenants preparing to move out without proper notification? Are there unauthorized occupants living in the home? Are there unauthorized pets? Are there any safety and/or liability issues that can be seen? *The lease should state who is responsible for landscaping and yardwork. We recommend that you make this the responsibility of a tenant. Any problems? Give tenants a “courtesy notice” If a major tenant infraction is discovered, it will be important to deal with it according to your state's rules & regulations. If it’s a minor offence, then a simple “courtesy notice” to inform your tenants of the drive-by inspection and minor infraction will hopefully be sufficient. Pre-Move Out (Initial) Inspection One of the most common disputes between tenants and management is the refund of the security deposit. Tenants often expect the rental to be in pristine condition upon move in and then leave the premise and forget that it should be in the same condition as move-in (minus normal wear and tear). The pre-move out inspection is a recommended step to inform and set expectations to tenants on what could be withheld from the damage deposit. In essence, the pre move-out inspection is for management to provide an itemized list of damages. It is crucial that you let tenants know that this list is only a guide of what needs to be done, and if they rectify everything on the list then there could be no deductions from their deposit. Difference between Pre Move-out and Final Inspection The Pre Move-out Inspection can also be called an “Initial inspection.” The reason is that this is done before the final inspection. The final inspection occurs after the tenants have everything out of the premise. Step 1: Give notice of a Pre Move-out Inspection The landlord should first give notice two weeks before the end of the tenancy to notify the residents that a final move-out inspection will be performed and they can also request an initial move out inspection. If the tenant does not respond or does not want an initial inspection, then you have the right to forego it and only perform the final move-out inspection. Common issues discovered during the initial move-out inspection Here are a couple of frequent discoveries that management can request to be fixed before tenants have officially moved out of the rental: Holes in the walls and doors Damage to appliances that goes beyond reasonable wear & tear (for example, a fridge shelf ripped off) Alterations to the property that were not authorized (for example, lighting fixtures changed) Screens ripped or damaged Closet doors broken Carpets stained Mirrors cracked Stains & damage from pets Cracked tiles from dropping heavy objects Damage and issues associated with not winterization or preparing house for seasons changes In addition, the pre move-out inspection is an excellent time to remind tenants on the cleanliness and state of the property during the move in inspection. A friendly reminder that it should be in the same condition, with only normal wear and tear, will prepare them to move out properly. In essence, you are “coaching” them on how to clean a unit. Step 2: Create itemized list of damages If there are any damages which would result in a deduction from the security deposit, then the pre move-out inspection is a good time to start this process. You will want to present to your tenants and provide adequate time for them to remedy and repair. Step 3: Remind tenants on the upcoming final inspection By the time you enter the final move-out inspection, your tenants should have fixed the damages that you initially listed. And most importantly, the tenants should clean the property to the condition upon move in before the final move out inspection is performed. The end of the pre move-out inspection is a good time to provide this polite reminder on professional cleaning. Final Move-Out Inspection If you followed the steps through this article, hopefully there are no surprises! The rental should appear in the same condition as upon move in, minus wear and tear. However, if the tenants have caused additional damages, then you have followed a solid process to make sure they are aware of the deductions from their security deposit. Tenants’ presence during the move-out inspection Tenants will often want to be present during the move-out inspection. The reason is that many tenants feel entitled to receive their full security deposit and want to confirm it during the final move-out inspection. If the tenants are present, it is important that you do not confirm or deny any speculation about how much of the security deposit is returned. At this point, you just do not know what will be returned, because management needs to carefully review the photographs and rental inspection checklist before coming to any conclusion. If a tenant asks for you to confirm that the full deposit will be sent back, you should respond that you will have the security deposit less any damages back to the tenant within the State’s specified time period. Additional deductions The final move-out inspection list may vary from the pre move-out inspection list, and it is important to make the tenants aware of this point. The pre move-out inspection is a good time to review what could be deducted. However, the final move-out inspection may show a completely different list of deductions. The movers could have damaged the property while transferring heavy items or the tenants could have stopped taking care of the property during their final days. It’s good practice to require tenants to clean the carpets before they leave. And, the tenants should use professional carpet cleaners, because the portable machines, or machines you can rent at a store, are far less effective and powerful than a professional grade machine. Also, tenants are often exhausted from the move and therefore will not perform as good of a job to remove dirt and allergens for the next tenants. At this point, you have your State’s listed days to EITHER: Complete repairs and send itemized list of completed work After the final move-out inspection, management should get bids (keeping all receipts and estimates) on the repairs and cleaning. The bids, receipts, and itemization list should be consolidated into one document for the tenants to view, along with the return of the deposit amount. Based on your State’s laws, you may not have all of the work completed before the time you need to return the security deposit. If the work has not been completed by the time the deposit is due, attach the bids to the itemization document. These estimates will soon become receipts that you can share at a later point if the tenants have further questions. Send back the full refund If the rental does not require any repairs, you can send back the full security deposit. Returning the deposit to the correct tenants If there is any balance to the security deposit, it must be returned to the tenants within the State’s specified time period. It is recommended that the deposit is only sent back to one tenant, and then the tenants decide how to divide it amongst themselves. Before you return the deposit, the tenants and co-signers should inform you in writing on the one person who will receive the returned balance. If you do not have this in writing, and return the deposit to a single tenant, you could be put in a difficult and complicated roommate situation. Returning the deposit mid-lease In the situation of roommates on a lease, the rental may have have a “tenant turnover” mid-lease. In other words, one tenant is leaving but another qualified tenant will take his/her spot on the lease. In this situation, management should not get involved in returning the security deposit during a roommate change. Since landlords and managers are not in the rental everyday, there is no way for management to determine whether any current damages are a result of the tenant who is vacating the property. It is recommended to require the tenants to negotiate the return of the deposit to the tenant moving out and for management to hold the full deposit until all tenants vacate. Disagreements If there are any disagreements, you will want to try mediation with your tenants and arrive at a compromise. If your tenants still do not agree with the deductions, then you may need to go to a small-claims court for resolution on the dispute of the security deposit return. Nonetheless, this guide should mitigate this risk altogether. Security deposit returns are one of the most frequent landlord court cases. You can avoid having to go to a small claims court by following a professional process.

Choosing When to Give Feedback Posted on February 28, 2017 February 8, 2017 by Karen Anderson, PCC, M. Ed. As educators, our days are full of opportunities for giving reflective feedback. Typically, one of two situations appears as the time for giving feedback. One is the cycle of listen and give feedback; the other is observe and give feedback. Both are opportunities for growth. Listen and Give Feedback. Listening and giving feedback is an opportunity for growth that consumes much of our day. A teacher stops you in the hall and says, “Is this okay for my first parent newsletter?” Once we move from the distraction that the question can be answered “yes” or “no” along with the temptation to give the quick response, “Good job!” we hesitate because we are reminded that this kind of feedback is short lived. It lacks the specificity of what constitutes a good job. Not only does the teacher leave with the uncertainty of what was good, the likelihood of repeating or sustaining the behavior or action is diminished. One option for our feedback may be a value/value potential statement coupled with a reflective question such as, “Knowing you want a consistent message to parents, what feedback are your teammates offering you regarding this plan?” Another option is to ask a clarifying question such as, “Who collaborated with you on this grade level information?” This question accomplishes two goals. It gains clarity about potential partners and holds up the expectation that the grade level was included in the development of the content. Depending on the response to the clarifying question, a reflective question may be, “How are you wanting to ensure you and your colleagues are on the same page?” Now, it’s your turn. You receive an email from a fellow colleague asking for feedback on his/her plan for an upcoming professional learning day with staff. What value/value potential statement would recognize the effort/core value of this person? _______________________________ What clarifying question, if any, might you ask? _______________________________ What reflective question for possibility will “push” the colleague’s thinking for additional considerations? _______________________________ Check Up – Ask someone to give you feedback on your language to ensure internalization of presumption of positive intent. Observe and Give Feedback. The second situation where feedback can motivate and inspire growth is after a walk-through or a formal observation. This is where reflective feedback holds the potential to make the greatest difference. Many of you tell us about observation processes you are currently using in your schools. Often the conversation rolls around to the fact that the observation is well and good; yet, there is uncertainty about the language to use in the conversation following the observation. Because we know the potential for real learning IS the conversation, reflective feedback becomes even more critical. We know language matters because it will keep us engaged and listening or it will push us away. Hmm! Here’s the real dilemma! A threat state is an inherent part of feedback. So, what can we do (say) that immediately moves the conversation to a safer state? One possibility is we can feed status with a value/value potential statement. Again, the brain calms down and we are all breathing again! Here are other possibilities that come from the work of Jenny Rogers in her Coaching Skills book. Ask for permission, when appropriate – “Knowing you are working to incorporate language that presumes positive intent, what data would you like about the questions you asked?” or “Because we are all working to include literacy strategies in our classroom, what feedback would you like on your word wall activities?” Stick to the facts – Use the specific data you have collected to offer feedback. Separate fact from opinion. “Of the ten questions you asked, half presumed positive intent. How might you flip the remaining five?” or “Of the ten questions you asked in this lesson, 2 were asked of girls with the remainder going to the boys. What system will ensure equitable opportunity to respond for your class?” Avoid assumptions – We know about assuming! It can really get us in trouble. Making up our own stories about what is really going on or interpreting through our lens can be dangerous to hearing the real message. As a result, our feedback can be off-base and not heard because it may come across as advice. Offer as “the truth” vs. “THE TRUTH” – When feedback is offered as “the truth” it comes across tentatively as possibility rather than the certainty of something being in fact “THE TRUTH” with ALL CAPS. Even a paraphrase, “You’re angry,” stated as if it were fact can affect me differently that you saying, “You seem to have strong feelings about this,” or even, “You seem angry about this.” It’s left to me to confirm or not; it’s possibility rather than a given. Another example might be when you are talking with another person and you sense there are two conversations going on at the same time. For the sake of clarity, you know you want to raise the intuition. It might sound like this, “It seems we might be talking about two things in this conversation. Let’s just put them on the table and see if there is any truth to that possibility.” Another possibility, given today’s focus on transforming evaluation systems to the growth mindset is: Know the teacher’s growth goal – Many of the current evaluation systems have a goal-setting component. Learn what is important to the teacher and you will have insight into the language of your value/value potential statements and your reflective questions. Again, it’s your turn. Your campus has a peer review process for visiting classrooms to observe for specific areas of focus. High engagement for all students is the goal everyone is working on. On today’s walk-through visit, data was collected to show that three students were off-task without redirection for the duration of the visit. What value/value potential statement would you say to this teacher? _______________________________ What reflective question will hold up the data for the teacher in a question that presumes he or she wants to take action? _______________________________ What evidence are you seeing that your feedback is growing others? Perfecting our Reflective Feedback Some of the most compelling reasons to practice reflective feedback come from the TNTP study called The Irreplaceables, which focuses on the real retention crisis: failure to retain the right teachers. The study’s conclusions demand our attention with regard to feedback. Defined, the irreplaceables are “teachers who are so successful they are nearly impossible to replace, but too often vanish from schools as the result of neglect and inattention.” Here are the startling stats: “On average, they help students learn 2-3 additional months’ worth of math and reading compared with the average teacher, AND 5-6 months when compared to low-achieving teachers.” “When one (an irreplaceable) leaves a low-achieving school, it can take 11 hires to find just one teacher of comparable quality.” Lesson learned: “Good teachers don’t leave demanding schools that hold them to high expectations; they leave schools that aren’t serious about good teaching.” Two-thirds of the leaving teachers reported that no one encouraged them to return for another year. Of the eight simple, low-cost strategies identified to help boost teacher retention, giving feedback or public recognition (status) for a job well done was at the top of the list. With clear evidence from the section above addressing “why?” feedback is an essential skill for our success as leaders, let’s focus on “how” to perfect this skill. Based on the work of David Perkins, there are two options for reflective feedback: Value/value potential statements Reflective questions for possibility including any clarifying questions, if necessary Value/Value Potential Statements. This option reinforces, builds and preserves the positive features, such as, thinking, beliefs, actions, behaviors, and impact. It is recognizable because, in essence, it is an eloquent paraphrase. One distinction we make is the difference between value and value potential. Value is what I see in the present, right before me. Value potential refers to the impact that will be realized in the future as the result of my intention in the present. An example is what we might say after visiting a first-grade classroom where the teacher is using small reading groups as a way to teach and monitor progress in reading. A sample value statement would be, “Your commitment to building strong readers is evident in the way you work with them in small groups.” A value potential statement takes it into the future where we cannot see what might happen, yet we can predict it. “Your commitment to building strong readers in first grade will create successful students throughout their career as learners.” Attributes of this option are: Presumes positive intent Purpose is to recognize and reinforce what is seen in the present or future Replaces vague statements such as “I like”, “Wow!”, and “Good job!” Specific and measurable Sincere and genuine A value/value potential statement is the antidote to the startling statistics in The Irreplaceables report mentioned at the beginning of this article. This is the way we ensure teachers know the value and contribution they make on a regular basis. We promote generosity with this option of feedback. It breaks our hearts when we hear stories from the field where highly competent and caring teachers are leaving our profession because no one is giving them feedback on their hard work. Here are some language possibilities for how to motivate and inspire our teachers to remain in our profession. Sample language: Your high standards invite students to be the best they can be academically. Because you want all of your students to succeed, you regularly analyze benchmark data to monitor the progress of each one. As a teacher who is passionate about literature, you want your students to share that love. Your commitment to reaching each student is evident in your differentiation strategies. Your understanding of the new math standards is clearly impacting your team planning. Your turn – ____________________________ Reflective Questions for Possibility including Clarifying Questions, if necessary. This option communicates concerns and considerations toward improvement to include any clarifications of an idea, event, name or action to be certain we are talking about the same thing. Clarifying questions are not always necessary. Yet, they can be helpful to gain additional information before asking a reflective question. They presume positive intent and can be answered quickly. Examples include: How many children are in the class? Of your 20 students, how many were off task? What time of the day does this behavior show up? What does the code of conduct say about this situation? When is your collaborative planning time? When does your team meet when they are doing their best work? Reflective questions for possibility mediate and support our thinking for consideration of new ideas or possibilities yet explored. They are an invitation to excellence in our work and in our performance. Many a principal has recognized the value of these questions for all teachers and especially their talented, committed master teachers who are often overlooked. The attributes of these questions are: Open ended – cannot be answered yes or no Purpose is to provoke thinking for possibility; not leading Require time for thinking Because you are a teacher who considers each student individually, what are you thinking will get the best from Sam? How is your team addressing this discrepancy between where the kids are now and where we want them to be by December? Based on our low performance results in science, what plan is in place to ensure we show gains this year? Knowing that parent communication is vital to healthy school cultures, what new ways are you thinking about for engaging parents in meaningful ways? Feedback AND Evaluation: Two Pieces of the Growth Puzzle Imagine teachers saying . . . “give me more” . . . “your feedback is critical to my ongoing growth as a professional.” Well, that is a reality in more and more schools. Schools are making the shift to a coaching culture with a growth mindset that presumes positive intent. And, they are using the evaluation process as the way to make it happen. Take for example, Principal Keith McGee from the Little Rock School District, who after attending our Level II seminar committed to increasing his use of reflective feedback in the evaluation process. Specifically, he wanted to include more value and value potential statements in his conversations with teachers. When he said, “Your commitment to educate our students for the PARCC assessment is valued and is evidenced by student’s engagement in your class as they prepare,” the teacher expressed her appreciation for the feedback and requested more feedback. She asked the leadership team to give her more feedback because she viewed it as a way to improve as a teacher. In other words, she had a shift in her thinking and mindset about the value of evaluation for ongoing growth and development. McGee’s testimony is just one of many examples we hear from you about the impact of reflective feedback. According to emerging literature in the business world, the kind of feedback that promotes growth + action will be the required skillset for leaders who are exceptionally successful in the 21st century. Jenny Rogers writes, “giving feedback is a high-level art . . . more talked about than done.” Additionally, while Rogers admits effective feedback is tough, she challenges us by saying, “You have to become an expert in the art of giving feedback.” So, Why Do We Want to Provide Reflective Feedback? Because . . . The SCARF research from neuroscience coupled with over 3 decades of work from the Gallup group sends us a very clear answer. People do not grow from their weaknesses or deficits. They grow from their strengths and gifts. Status is a key factor! Knowing what I do well and seeing that you see it too, acts as an accelerant for what I will do next. When feedback sends the message that “you see me!” my brain can calm down and hear what you have to say to me. That acknowledgment is an essential feature that has been missing from most feedback. When my brain feels threatened, I stop listening and move to defensiveness or some other coping mechanism. Previously, David Rock taught us that the best way to improve the performance of another is to improve his/her thinking about the performance. In a new article, he and others note that when talent is seen as fixed, it becomes a limiting belief. Most performance management systems built on indicators, scales, or checklists inadvertently encourage a way of thinking that limits the ability to grow talent. “By contrast, a belief that talent can be developed, will lead to more effective feedback, goal achievement, evaluation effectiveness, and a culture of collaboration and growth.” In the educational arena, John Hattie and Helen Timperly speak about the power of feedback to improve the process of teaching and learning. They say, “Feedback is one of the most powerful influences on learning and achievement, but this impact can be either positive or negative. The evidence shows that although feedback is among the major influences, the type of feedback and the way it is given can be differentially effective.” Following is another story from you that describes the desired shift from fixed to growth mindset. How Reflective Feedback Supports the Evaluation Process School leaders across our country are working to integrate reflective feedback into their coaching conversations that support the observation/evaluation process. Principal Andy is working to show how evaluation and feedback are best accomplished through a coaching mindset. He, himself, had a mindset shift when he began to see the evaluation process as a tool for supporting his core value of growing teachers. As a result, he totally revamped his process for evaluation. Knowing the importance of certainty for the brain, he and his assistant principal, Sean, developed reflective questions that presumed positive intent, which they gave to their teachers prior to the observation. The questions became the focus of the growth conversation following each classroom visit. Teachers expressed value for this new process and feedback that was centered on their strengths and celebrations. Andy, Sean, and others are finding their shift from a technical change challenge to an adaptive mindset change has a huge ROI (return on investment). Being in classrooms and holding reflective coaching conversations is the essential work of school leaders so that a coaching culture emerges with a clear focus on the growth mindset for all. Organizations of all sizes and types exhibit their own culture, which is developed intentionally or perhaps by default or inattention, or past practices. Realizing the importance of intentionally creating a culture of openness, engagement, fairness, trust, and reflective practices is increasingly important in the work of schools. All school leaders seek to be successful and show student results. Student success does not occur in a vacuum or even only through more and more attention to data. Although extremely relevant to student achievement, attention to data alone is insufficient. Students and staff require a trusting and trusted environment in which to do their work. A coaching culture is created through day-to-day interactions within a climate of respect that includes a commitment to listening fully, paraphrasing to increase understanding and clarity, presuming the best in others and using language that aligns with that belief, and offering feedback that builds on what is working, highlighting strengths, and offering reflective questions for deeper thinking and to offer possibilities. When these essential skills of coaching are evident on a consistent basis, the coaching culture begins to build—one person at a time—until suddenly it is prevalent and the coaching culture is sweeping the entire school. What do visitors notice when they enter your school? How aligned is your school culture to that of a coaching culture as described below? Adults and students in conversation who are fully attending to one another without distraction Teachers who are taking risks with new and innovative instructional practices Meetings and informal interactions characterized by evocative and thought-provoking questions Individuals seeking solutions collaboratively Dedicated time for coaching conversations In our work we have numerous stories of ways one committed individual can begin the impetus for a cultural shift away from a culture of top-down, fear-driven, disengaged culture toward a culture of engagement and productivity and reflective practices. Intentional conversations, development of self-efficacy through providing a safe environment for risk-taking, and providing time for reflection and coaching pave the way for a broad impact on an entire school culture. Take for example the story of Jenny. Jenny is an experienced principal who was recently assigned to a school identified as low performing and in need of immediate attention. Jenny has the mindset of a coach leader and knows how important her behaviors are in leading the school toward an authentic turnaround headed toward significantly increased student results. She understands this will call for an intentional focus on what they (all stakeholders) want vs. what they do not want. She is committed to engaging stakeholders in thoughtful conversations that result in greater degrees of confidence, competence and the courage to achieve desired results. To read in more detail about creating a coaching culture and stories of individuals within organizations that embody a coaching culture, read Chapter 6 in Results Coaching Next Steps: Leading for Growth and Change. Posted on November 10, 2016 November 7, 2016 by Kathryn Kee, PCC, M. Ed. ADVICE: It’s a topic that never ceases to emerge when people are learning to coach more effectively. Recently after coaching a participant during one of our seminars, the question was asked, “How do you keep from giving advice?” I answered the question then and with your permission I’d like to explore the topic with you as a reader. I have begun to be a collector of quotes and here are just a few to start your thinking. As professional positions go, fewer and fewer really do offer advice because, quite simply, through the years we have both personally and intellectually learned how futile it is, and more importantly, how damaging it holds the potential to be. Let’s review a couple of writings and research. What if we begin with finance – the place where it would seem to be the most useful thing to give. A 2009 research study between financial advice and decision-making by Engelmann, Capra, Noussair and Berns illustrated that the brain “offloads” while it is taking in advice. The brain goes into neutral and the actual advice does not embed in the neocortex while the advice is being given. As a consequence, ownership might happen later or not happen at all. In my own experience a few years ago, I sought advice about placement of monies from the sale of my parents’ home. It was very interesting to me how the financial advisor would never offer his advice even with me asking, “What would you do?” His answer was always the same, “It depends; every person and situation is different.” Then he proceeded to lay out some pros and cons to various options that would best be determined by me alone. Wow! I was impressed and truly challenged to think deeply about my situation and what was best for me, my children and my family. I believe the process taught me so much and I felt very proud with deep ownership of my decision. As we conclude this segment, let’s consider our field of education – that place we know best. For some reason advice giving is still very much alive and well. There are numerous writings and research that offer information to support the opportunity to pause and to reflect on what we all might do more skillfully. Education is for the purpose of learning, and to learn our brains have to do its work by considering fact and opinion, truth and non-truth, pro and con, impact and outcomes, etc. David Rock in his writings and books continues to remind us that we are in the Information Age and the most important thing we teach others is how to think deeply about how they do their work and make decisions. In Part II we will consider current leadership research and some language and strategies we might put in place to grow educators as well as students – our priority. So until then, what if we reflect on two types of situations – 1) situations where advice never enters your mind, and 2) situations when your mind is screaming to offer advice. Sounds like fun action research! In this month’s series, we have focused on the mindset of presuming positive intent. Now, we are ready for what you have all been waiting for . . . the questions. How do you construct questions so that your language matches your mindset? Here we go . . . positive presuppositions. As educators, we have perfected the art of asking questions. Our point here is to offer a perspective about the questions we ask. First, we believe that in coaching there is a difference between questions that are for gaining information and questions that provoke thinking. While we want both, we want the majority of our questions to be those that promote thinking. Here are some insights about questions that make a difference: Most people have the answers to their own questions. Most people find the best answers for themselves, within themselves. Following are seven attributes of questions that provoke thinking. Seven Attributes of Questions that Make a Difference Building on the insights, there are attributes of questions that make a difference. These seven essentials include: Presume positive intent — “Knowing that our focus is on science instruction this year, what goals are you focused on for the first 6 weeks?” This one question presumes positive intent, offers status, lifts up a standard, and holds able. Focus on solution — “What options have you and your team determined as possibilities for your solution?” In this question, we see a standard and/or expectation for meeting with the team, talking about options, generating possibilities, and a focus on solutions over problems. Invite vision thinking — “When June of 2018 arrives, what will you and your team be celebrating about literacy performance for your grade level?” This question begins with the end in mind. It suggests consideration of measures of success, that the team is talking about these important details, and that there will be a celebration. Focus on positive connections — “As you plan for management of classroom behavior, what learning from your Love and Logic training will be most beneficial to your plan?” This question builds a bridge between what has been learned and the expected implementation. It models multiple standards — planning and strong classroom management — and it holds the teacher able to make it happen. Incorporate specific actions — “As you implement your plan, what will be your first step or what do you want to do first?” which may be followed by, “What will you do next, and so on?” In a coaching conversation, this is an important question as the conversation nears the end. It consolidates all the thinking and possibilities generated in the conversation and narrows to the intended action. Making it explicit rather than implied ensures the brain of the person speaking has crystalized his or her commitment to action. Consider resources — “What resources are you thinking you want to consider or draw from as you move forward with your plan?” Checking in on resources provides an opportunity for another to think about a body of support that is available, from other people to well-respected best practices, research, and readings. Hold able — “As we end, what are you thinking you want to do between now and the next time we talk?” This ensures the person is doing the heavy lifting instead of us. The language demonstrates my belief in you as a competent and capable person and gives you the autonomy to take action on your behalf. When we do for others what they can do for themselves, we sabotage ourselves because we send the subconscious message to status that you are unable to do this yourself. Questions that Presume Positive Intent For those of you who have been in our seminars, you have a strong visual image of the language that presumes positive intent when asking questions. In fact, many of you carry the picture on your phone as a reminder of how we actually “switch” language as if it were a light switch to ensure it sends a positive message. We ask that you draw a circle in the center of your paper with these words in the middle of the circle: Have you . . .? Did you . . .? Can you . . .? Could you . . .? Do you . . .? Now, with a very bold marker, draw a diagonal line to signify this is the language that we do not want to use to begin our questions. Not only does the language presume negative intent, the questions are closed and are answered with a yes or no response. We want positive presuppositions that show clear declarations of belief in the other person. The replacement language that we write on the outside of the circle includes phrases such as What . . .? When . . .? How . . .? Which . . .? with value adds such as Based on . . .? In what ways . . .? Using data . . .? Relying on . . .? Having tried . . .? Since . . .? to beginning with a status statement such as Knowing your level of commitment . . .? As someone who . . .? Given you are a teacher who . . .? This does not mean that we profess one should never use a closed question. Sometimes asking “Is this what you really want?” or “Would you like to stop and talk about this?” is very appropriate. We are saying there is an overabundance of closed questions, and in most cases, deep reflection comes from evocative and open-ended questions. This is also an opportunity to remind us that we refrain from asking questions that are leading others to respond in a way that has been determined by us to be the right answer. We do not ask leading questions, whether opened or closed. Want to know more about presuming positive intent and asking questions that make a difference? Join us at one of our upcoming public seminars or bring us directly to your district. Working on New Hardwiring In this month’s Ezine, we looked at the difference between the global notion of presuming positive intent (a mindset) and the technical skill of designing our questions or statements into positive presuppositions. The purpose of this blog is to consider ways to ensure our spoken language matches our mindset of belief in others. So how do we get this new pattern well established in our brains? Just as we said in our first book, we presume that others are doing each of the following: Prior and current planning — The person is already planning how they will address the topic or concern. Prior and current thinking — Clearly, he or she has been thinking about it because of wanting to speak to you for greater clarity. Nobility of purpose — Believing a person wants to do something even when they have not begun to do so is especially impactful to the brain. Because our brains are different, we each respond to change in different ways. My pace for change may be significantly different than your pace for change. Believing that I want to and just have not started yet sends a different message than language that carries judgment that I have not started yet. My brain may be planning for action, and when you approach me presuming positive intent, I am more likely to risk and take the next step. Approximation in the desired direction is progress! Commitment to a standard or expectation — Our brains hold so much information that we can forget a standard or expectation. Even those of us who are Type A go-getters can temporarily forget something we know for sure. When a coach leader uses his or her language to reconnect us to what we know, our status remains intact and we quickly plug back into an existing standard or expectation. One example is the leader who says, “When you checked our procedures for a responsive classroom, what options did you find?” Positive intent for action or behavior — Language that presumes positive intent almost always conveys an intention for follow up action or behavior. For example, the question in the previous bullet presumes the person will check the procedures for a responsive classroom if they have not already done so. This is the language that “holds able”—presuming that the person will take action in the intended direction. Additional examples include: “Knowing the importance of being at your duty station first thing in the morning, what is your plan to make sure that happens with regularity?” and “Knowing that budgets were due this morning, when is the earliest you can turn yours in to the office?” A Story from You: My Map for Change May Be Different From Yours One principal experienced the value of presuming nobility of purpose firsthand. A standard or expectation for using cooperative learning as a strategy for high engagement had been established as a campus goal. Extensive professional learning had been provided over time. There had been many conversations, individually and collectively, about what the expectation would look and sound like in the classroom. Still, there was one teacher who was showing hesitation. As the principal conducted her walk-throughs, she went by one teacher’s room to notice that while she had put the desks in groups, she was continuing to lecture as usual without any student interaction. The principal was upset as she entered the office area to find her assistant principal (AP). Presuming the worst, she spouted off her frustration to the AP. In response, the AP said, “Well, at least she has her desks ready for her cooperative groups.” The principal stopped in her tracks realizing the AP was spot on. She had a new view or perspective that the teacher was moving in the intended direction. Quickly, her frustration turned into hope and she marched back down to the teacher’s classroom and said, “How exciting! You’ve organized your room for cooperative learning groups. I can’t wait to come back and see the level of engagement with your students.” Carol Dweck’s (2006) notion of growth mindset vs. fixed mindset is fundamental and deeply embedded in the concept of presuming positive intent. When you presume I have, I am, or I intend to, you convey belief, value, and trust to my brain. You are also connecting to the significant work of David Rock’s (2008) SCARF. At the heart of presuming positive intent is maintaining my status, which keeps me engaged with you rather than sensing you don’t like me or thinking I may not be good enough and ultimately pulling away (taking flight) because I sense fear or threat. What About . . .? You are probably wondering, “Well . . . how does one presume positive intent when we have a history with the person or we know for certain they have not done something?” One answer already described is nobility of purpose—believing I want to and that I have just not started yet. No one gets up with the goal of being the worst he or she can be. We all want to make a difference. So what can one lift up to presume positive intent? Here is a short list to which you may add: Nobility of purpose (see story above) Effort — I show effort in some way every day. What is it? Example: “You’ve worked really hard to ensure each student has access to the resources they need.” Knowledge and skills — What are my strengths; what special gifts do I possess? Example: “Because you’ve been teaching for a number of years, you have a vast knowledge of classroom management strategies.” Integrity — Defined as the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles can be a recognizable attribute. Example: “Your moral compass is a strong guide for what you see as right or wrong.” Or “Knowing your word is like a promise, this goal will be accomplished in no time.” Dedication — Every person carries within them a set of beliefs and values aligned with what they hold dear to his or her heart. Sometimes in the midst of the busy work, we lose sight of that dedication. Comments from others offer opportunities for us to reconnect to that personal dedication. Example: “Even when the task at hand seems daunting, your dedication to your students always seems to carry you through the tough times and toward new successes.” Commitment — In what ways do we stay engaged in areas where we have verbally or in writing expressed that we are all in? Example: “There is no doubt how committed you are to the mission and goals of our school. What are you envisioning as the most important next step in reaching parents that have yet to attend a parent conference?” Perseverance – What is that driving force that keeps us in the game when a part of us wants to give up or throw in the towel? Sometimes it’s being reminded that we have the internal strength to carry on. Example: “As a person with a track record of not walking away from a challenge, what is giving you the strength now to persevere, even in the mist of numerous challenges?” ?? — What additional items would you add to this list of ways to show presumption of positive intent? Having and showing a mindset of positive intent holds greater possibility for increasing productive responses from others. Your language and attitude send a message of respect coupled with high expectations, which in turn increases the likelihood of inspiration and motivation for action. And when we presume a person has done something and they have not, typically they will do one of two things: (1) confess that they have not done what we presumed, which invites truth-telling in the conversation. My brain feels safe enough to be honest with you. Or (2) I will say to myself, “She thinks I have already done this. I better get busy and get it done.” Either way, status is preserved. We want to influence; never manipulate. When a person has a pattern of behavior indicating standards are consistently unmet, we hold up the standard with a question indicating positive intent for action, such as, “Knowing the deadline for lesson plans is the end of the day Thursday, what is your plan for consistently getting your plans in on time?” or “Because one of our focus areas this year is increased parent involvement, how are you thinking you want to engage those parents you have not seen yet?” As you have conversations with others this week, what are you noticing about your presumption of positive intent? How is it influencing your language? In the Nugget, we will dive more deeply into the language of the questions we ask. Presuming Positive Intent and Positive Presuppositions Welcome Back! It’s a new year, a new beginning, and that special time of the year that offers us all a fresh start! Just listen to this celebration from Principal, Amy Howell of Northwest ISD, Texas. “I wanted to let you know a wonderful celebration we had! During our coaching conversations we talked about the power of positive presuppositions. We started our back to school kick off with “Having Positive Presupposition.” IT WAS AWESOME!!! While the teachers were talking about the article, I was walking around and heard, “This sounds like how you talk to us.” I was beaming! It couldn’t have gone better and it has given us an amazing start to the year.” Much like Amy’s celebration, we contend that if you invited us to your school for a professional learning experience that would dramatically impact the culture of your school, it would be teaching the concept of presuming positive intent. We would also state without reservation that this is the easiest concept to get cognitively and the most difficult to internalize in our language. Why? Because of brain hardwiring! We have practiced our language patterns for a long time, so the default is to continue that pattern especially when under stress. It takes intention, determination, and a strong commitment to create new wiring. Our words send messages to the brain that can be interpreted as safety or threat. In our first book, RESULTS COACHING: The New Essential for School Leaders, we describe in detail why language matters and how the presumption of positive intent holds the potential for influencing the conscious and subconscious mind, for creating safety for authentic sharing, and for opening the door for deep levels of trust and respect in a relationship. A Matter of Distinction: What Is the Difference? Before we get to constructing questions that presume positive intent, let’s consider a distinction between the presumption of positive intent and positive presuppositions. The first is a global perspective of presuming the best of others, which then spills out into the specific language of our statements and our questions, called positive presuppositions. The first is an adaptive change — a mindset — that we hold that presumes positive intent on the part of the other person. It’s like an umbrella covering our way of thinking about how we work with another person. Second, a demonstration of the mindset is the language of our statements or questions, which is called a positive presupposition. This is a technical change meaning the skill set of how we construct our statements or questions to presume positive intent. An example of mindset is an overall belief in the other person to find his/her own solutions thus eliminating the need for advice giving. The skill is the specific language of a statement or question which demonstrates that belief such as, “When you spoke with the parents about their child, what was the response?” Here are additional statements that demonstrate a mindset of positive intent. You believe all people want to be good at what they do. You believe people want to be valued and make a difference in this world. You believe that people show up to do the right thing and make good choices. You believe people care about those they teach or lead. Creating new wiring is truly an adaptive change; an inside-outside process. It requires that mind and body align with the language we speak—so easy to say and so hard to do. It takes us to the essential mindset of a coach leader: Belief in another’s ability to grow and excel — A growth mindset is mandatory. The minute one steps off the belief that a person can grow is the minute one chooses to diminish his/her own potential for impact with a person. Recognition that “advice is toxic!” — Because we understand the importance of giving status to another, we get why advice does just the opposite. And we recognize that giving advice is really feeding our status rather than the status of the other person. Use of intentional language that aligns with our trust and belief in others — This is the one that sounds really easy, and yet we know from our work with you that it’s really hard. You report, “My head knows it, my mouth just says something different.” Again, we realize it’s about our years of practicing a language pattern. Now that we know another option, we can create and practice new wiring. Here is a story that shows the importance of mindset and its impact on our work. A Story From You: Coaching Begins With Me and My Mindset This story illustrates both the essential mindset and how we show up for a conversation based on that mindset. I (Karen) was working in the Houston area and was approached during a break for some coaching about a high school department head. The math coordinator described the department head as extremely negative, so much so, that her negativity was bleeding into the attitudes of the team members and affecting their productivity together. The coaching began . . . Coach: It is the morning that you are going to work with this particular department head. As you get out of bed, what are you saying to yourself about the person and the work before you? Math Coordinator: Oh, I can hardly get up! Today will be excruciating, hard, and exhausting! All my energy will go toward trying to get this person to see my point of view about the work. There will be a vortex of negativity and little will be accomplished on behalf of the team or the students. Coach: (With humor.) Please stop! Thank goodness this day is over! It’s a new day and you are getting out of bed to work with your best department head. What are you saying to yourself about the person and the work before you? Math Coordinator: Oh, I can’t wait! Our work together is always invigorating and inspiring. Our ideas spiral up as we consider possibility after possibility. The team is on fire and future focused — what can they do next that will accelerate the learning of the team and their students? Math Coordinator: I get it! It’s about me! What I put in my head is reality for how I will work with the department head. The work begins with me and what I say to myself. BINGO! Through coaching, the math coordinator saw clearly what was at the center of her struggle. The mirror changed from facing the department head to facing the math coordinator (or herself). She realized that the language or story she told herself would be actualized in how she showed up for her conversation with others. Check your Mindset . . . How are you ensuring the non-negotiables are present in your work with others? I believe in this person’s ability to grow and excel. I believe advice is toxic and refrain from giving it. I use language that is intentional and aligns with my trust and belief in others. Coming up in the Blog will be ways we work on our hardwiring so that the presumption of positive intent is embedded and integrated into our language.