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Author Bio
• Birth—February 8, 1955
• Where—Jonesboro, Arkansas, USA
• Education—B.S., Mississippi State; J.D., University of Mississippi
• Currently—lives in Oxford, Mississippi and Albermarle, Virginia
John Ray Grisham, Jr. is an American lawyer, politician, and author, best known for his popular legal thrillers. He has written more than 25 novels, a short story collection (Ford County), two works of nonfiction, and a children's series.
Grisham's first bestseller was The Firm. Released in 1991, it sold more than seven million copies. The book was later adapted into a feature film, of the same name starring Tom Cruise in 1993, and a TV series in 2012 which "continues the story of attorney Mitchell McDeere and his family 10 years after the events of the film and novel." Eight of his other novels have also been adapted into films: The Chamber, The Client, A Painted House, The Pelican Brief, Skipping Christmas, The Rainmaker, The Runaway Jury, and his first novel, A Time to Kill. His books have been translated into 29 languages and published worldwide.
As of 2008, his books had sold over 250 million copies worldwide. Grisham is one of only three authors to sell two million copies on a first printing; the others are Tom Clancy and J.K. Rowling.
Early life and education
Grisham, the second oldest of five siblings, was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, to Wanda Skidmore Grisham and John Grisham. His father was a construction worker and cotton farmer; his mother a homemaker. When Grisham was four years old, his family started traveling around the South, until they finally settled in Southaven in DeSoto County, Mississippi. As a child, Grisham wanted to be a baseball player. neither of his parents had advanced education, he was encouraged to read and prepare for college.
As a teenager, Grisham worked for a nursery watering bushes for $1.00 an hour. He was soon promoted to a fence crew for $1.50 an hour. At 16, Grisham took a job with a plumbing contractor. Through a contact of his father, he managed to find work on a highway asphalt crew in Mississippi at the age of 17.
It was during this time that an unfortunate incident made him think more seriously about college. A fight broke out among the crew with gunfire, and Grisham ran to the restroom for safety. He did not come out until after the police had "hauled away rednecks." He hitchhiked home and started thinking about college.
His next work was in retail, as a salesclerk in a department store men's underwear section, which he described as "humiliating." He decided to quit but stayed when he was offered a raise. He was given another raise after asking to be transferred to toys and then to appliances. A confrontation with a company spy posing as a customer convinced him to leave the store. By this time, Grisham was halfway through college.
He went to the Northwest Mississippi Community College in Senatobia, Mississippi and later attended Delta State University in Cleveland. Grisham drifted so much during his time at the college that he changed colleges three times before completing a degree. He graduated from Mississippi State University in 1977, receiving a BS degree in accounting.
He later enrolled in the University of Mississippi School of Law planning to become a tax lawyer. But he was soon overcome by "the complexity and lunacy" of it. He decided to return to his hometown as a trial lawyer, but his interest shifted to general civil litigation. He graduated in 1983 with a JD degree.
Law and politics
Grisham practiced law for about a decade and also won election as a Democrat in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1983 to 1990 at an annual salary of $8,000. By his second term at the Mississippi state legislature, he was the vice-chairman of the Apportionment and Elections Committee and a member of several other committees.
With the success of his second book The Firm, published in 1991, Grisham gave up practicing law. He returned briefly in 1996 to fight for the family of a railroad worker who had been killed on the job. It was a commitment made to the family before leaving law to become a full-time writer. Grisham successfully argued his clients' case, earning them a jury award of $683,500—the biggest verdict of his career.
Grisham said that, sometime in the mid-1980s, he had been hanging around the court one day when he overheard a 12-year-old girl telling the jury how she been beaten and raped. Her story intrigued Grisham, so he began to watch the trial, noting how members of the jury wept during her testimony. It was then, Grisham later wrote in the New York Times, that a story was born. Musing over "what would have happened if the girl's father had murdered her assailants," Grisham took three years to complete his first book, A Time to Kill.
Finding a publisher was not easy. The book was rejected by 28 publishers before Wynwood Press, an unknown publisher, agreed to give it a modest 5,000-copy printing. It was published in June 1989. The day after Grisham completed A Time to Kill, he began work on his second novel, the story of an ambitious young attorney "lured to an apparently perfect law firm that was not what it appeared." The Firm remained on the the New York Times' bestseller list for 47 weeks and became the bestselling novel of 1991.
Beginning with A Painted House in 2001, the author broadened his focus from law to the more general rural South, but continued to write legal thrillers. He has also written sports fiction and comedy fiction.
In 2005, Grisham received the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award. The award is presented annually by the Tulsa Library Trust.
In 2010, Grisham started writing legal thrillers for children 9-12 years old. The books featured Theodore Boone, a 13-year-old boy, who gives his classmates legal advice—everything from rescuing impounded dogs to helping their parents prevent their house from being repossessed. His daughter, Shea, inspired him to write the Boone series.
Marriage and family
Grisham married Renee Jones in 1981, and the couple have two grown children together, Shea and Ty. The family spends their time in their Victorian home on a farm outside Oxford, Mississippi, and their other home near Charlottesville, Virginia.
The Innocence Project
Grisham is a member of the Board of Directors of The Innocence Project, which campaigns to free unjustly convicted people on the basis of DNA evidence. The Innocence Project argues that wrongful convictions are not isolated or rare events but instead arise from systemic defects. Grisham has testified before Congress on behalf of the Project and appeared on Dateline on NBC, Bill Moyers Journal on PBS, and other programs. He also wrote for the New York Times in 2013 about an unjustly held prisoner at Guantanamo.
Libel suit
In 2007, former legal officials from Oklahoma filed a civil suit for libel against Grisham and two other authors. They claimed that Grisham and the others critical of Peterson and his prosecution of murder cases conspired to commit libel and generate publicity for themselves by portraying the plaintiffs in a false light and intentionally inflicting emotional distress. Grisham was named due to his publication of the non-fiction book, The Innocent Man. He examined the faults in the investigation and trial of defendants in the murder of a cocktail waitress in Ada, Oklahoma, and the exoneration by DNA evidence more than 12 years later of wrongfully convicted defendants Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz. The judge dismissed the libel case after a year, saying, "The wrongful convictions of Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz must be discussed openly and with great vigor."
The Mississippi State University Libraries maintains the John Grisham Room, an archive containing materials related to his writings and to his tenure as Mississippi State Representative.
Grisham has a lifelong passion for baseball demonstrated partly by his support of Little League activities in both Oxford, Mississippi, and Charlottesville, Virginia. He wrote the original screenplay for and produced the 2004 baseball movie Mickey, starring Harry Connick, Jr. He remains a fan of Mississippi State University's baseball team and wrote about his ties to the university and the Left Field Lounge in the introduction for the book Dudy Noble Field: A Celebration of MSU Baseball.
In an October 2006 interview on the Charlie Rose Show, Grisham stated that he usually takes only six months to write a book and that his favorite author is John le Carre. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/6/2013.)
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14 July, 2011
Btwby the way... I hope one of these days they play if God will send his angels live in chicago in the future... One can always hope...
14 July, 2011
Thanks for this videohaving been a runaway when i was younger, this video really moved me. I spent about 4 yrs as a runaway in nyc. I am now in my mid30s, but this video makes me well up in tears every time i see it. I bought the 18 video dvd so i can watch it when i need a cathartic release. I am only now processing what has happened but i find this song to be a healing one. As well as if God will send his angels,(where do we go?) which meant the world to me when i first left nyc and returned back to Chicago. The reason why i am a grateful fan. Subrosa. -anna
16 August, 2010
So nice !!!Love to hear and hear it again !! freedom !!!!!!

subset: commoncrawl


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Daphne at Jaded Haven sings the finale.
And this comment thereto says it all:
…Then Toynbee, the warnings of Jefferson, Spengler, and Pop de Boyle, all 5′ 5″ of whom fought in the Pacific with three brothers even shorter.
"Yeah, Pop."
"See those idiots with their pants hanging off their skinny asses?"
"See any adults kicking them down the street?"
"That means it's over, Son."
"Because if we won't stifle even the simple show of slovenliness and arrogance, we sure can't recognize let alone defeat any serious enemies—and right now we've got a dozen. Families hollowed out, men sissified or hog tied, schools day treatment centers for imbeciles with an IQ of 85, a philosophy that obviates any philosophy but itself, government moving towards fascism and the masses don't know it and the mandarins like it. People imprisoned for selling a plant. Cops with body armor. TV celebrating depravity that is merely boring. All thought reduced to 'Yo.' And hardly anyone can change the spark plugs. Our lives are a dreamworld punctuated by pathetic orgasms elicited by plastic faces."
"What should I do, Pop?"
"It's in Isaiah and Ecclesiastes, boy. But I would arm myself, too, if I were you."


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Items where Author / Artist / Editor is "Agrizzi, Dila"
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Number of items: 2.
Kyriacou, Orthodoxia, Sikka, Prem, Haslam, Colin and Agrizzi, Dila (2007) Professionalising claims and the state of the UK professional accountancy education: some evidence. Accounting Education, 16 (1) . pp. 3-21. ISSN 0963-9284 (doi:10.1080/09639280601150921)
Sikka, Prem, Haslam, Colin, Kyriacou, Orthodoxia and Agrizzi, Dila (2007) A rejoinder to 'professionalizing claims and the state of UK professional accounting education: some evidence'. Accounting Education, 16 (1) . pp. 59-64. ISSN 0963-9284


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Should Draghi be more like Bernanke?June 14, 2012: 12:41 PM ET
Spanish 10-year bond yields have officially pulled a Kenny Loggins and ridden into the 7% danger zone. Italian bond yields are north of 6% again and climbing. And oh yeah, Greek elections on Sunday may lead to the end of a Hellenic presence in the euro and a return to the drachma. The crisis is far from over.
So what's the European Central Bank doing to try and stop it from getting even worse? Not much. The ECB left interest rates alone last week even though they technically do have room to cut them further. Rates in Europe are at 1% compared to the near-zero level in the U.S. and 0.5% in England.
ECB president Mario Draghi hinted last week that there could be a rate cut at the bank's next meeting in July. But he also noted that central bankers can't do much more to stabilize the region and that it's the job of the leaders of individual European nations to take more action.
Draghi is right to assert that. In that regard, he's taking a page from the playbook of Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, who has been urging Congress to get its act together and not hurl the nation over a "fiscal cliff" later this year or in early 2013.
Related: Geithner predicts Europe will hold it together
But Draghi may need to be even more like Bernanke. And I don't mean that Super Mario should grow a beard ... although it would probably look good on him. Draghi needs to show Europe that the ECB, despite having only a mandate to keep prices stable, will do what's necessary to prevent the crisis from spinning out of control.>
Bernanke and other dovish central bankers in the U.S. have continued to stress that they are leaving all options on the table. That could mean the Fed will extend Operation Twist, its program to swap short-term bonds for longer-term Treasuries, or even announce a third round of asset purchases. The market seems to be betting that such quantitative easing, or QE3, is now increasingly likely given that the U.S. economy (especially the job market) is losing momentum.
But for all the problems facing the United States, America's economy is not nearly in as dire a shape as Europe's. (At least not yet. Let's check back in later this year and see what happens to bond yields if our nation's least and dimmest on Capitol Hill don't heed Bernanke's advice and decide to take an Acapulco-esque leap into the ocean of higher tax rates and automatic budget cuts.)
The Fed can arguably afford to take the prudent approach and preach patience. Long-term bond yields are low. The housing market seems to have finally stabilized. The unemployment rate has come down even though the long-term jobless continue to struggle to find work.
But the situation is grave in Europe. As the chart below shows, yields for all the PIIGS nations are troublesome. The unemployment rate in the eurozone is in the double digits and youth unemployment is alarmingly higher. Spain's housing problems are far from over, which is why Spanish banks are in need of a bailout.
How can the ECB try and stem the tide? At a bare minimum, it may have to bite the bullet and launch a third long-term refinancing operation. The first two programs, which provided cheap loans to banks, did help bring down interest rates temporarily as European banks used some of the cash to buy sovereign debt. That admittedly may be a short-term Band-Aid solution, but any action may be better than none at this point.
"There is no reason why more easing should produce a long-term fix and the market boosts are getting shorter-lived. But the ECB has to break the negative feedback loop," said Frances Hudson, global thematic strategist with Standard Life Investments in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Still, the ECB could go further than just lending to banks and actually deviate from its mandate in this time of crisis. It could unveil a more concrete commitment to buy the bonds of Spain, Italy and others. The ECB has done this in dribs and drabs but has not unveiled anything remotely like the Fed's QE programs.
"Unlike Bernanke, Draghi seems reluctant to purchase more sovereign debt. That is the ECB's biggest problem," said Jeffrey Bergstrand, a professor of finance with the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame. "The ECB can change the rules but they have been unwilling to do that. The ECB is more or less waiting things out."
There is no more time for waiting. Draghi and other ECB members probably need to lower rates next month and also do more to convince Germany that it needs to take one for the European team and accept the notion of a banking union that could provide deposit insurance like the FDIC in the U.S. German chancellor Angela Merkel may also have to accept that the idea of eurobonds, a common form of debt that could ease funding pressures for the PIIGS, needs to be given serious consideration.
Related: Why international stock picker David Herro is betting big on Europe
However, Merkel is unlikely to budge unless Draghi or other bankers can convince her that things may soon get much worse. For one, she has her own political future to think about. Germans have proven to be very much in favor of more austerity and fewer bailouts for their weaker euro neighbors.
And Hudson notes that even though it seems like Europe is on the verge of a meltdown, the fact that the euro currency is still above the debt crisis lows from the summer of 2010 gives Germany breathing room. Unless (or until?) the euro completely unravels, Germany doesn't face any urgent need to acquiesce.
"The perverse thing is the euro is still not suffering that much. It's at a comfortable level for Germany, and Merkel's motivations might not be the same as the rest of Europe's," Hudson said.
With that in mind, one investing expert said that Draghi shouldn't do anything differently. In fact, overreacting to the current crisis could make things worse in the long run.
"If I were Mario Draghi, I'd be on some Caribbean island hiding right now. The dilemma he faces is that the ECB is close to being tapped out unless they turn on the printing presses," said Jeff Sica, president and chief investment officer of SICA Wealth Management in Morristown, N.J.
"There is no magic solution. The mindset of the U.S. is to just invent money out of thin air. The ECB can't do that," Sica added. "If Draghi wants to be irresponsible, the worst scenario would be adding inflation to a sluggish economy with civil unrest. That would be far worse than bank runs and bank failures."
That may be true. But even if you don't always agree with Bernanke's actions, he deserves credit for usually being proactive and not assuming that the free market will eventually take care of things. (Well, after Lehman's bankruptcy at least.) Waiting to see how bad things will get in Greece, Spain and Italy is not really a luxury that Draghi has right now.


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Here at the Arbor Day Foundation, we have members, advocates, and supporters from all walks of life, representing all corners of the globe, and encompassing all ages.
In part, that's because the good work of planting and caring for trees spans all boundaries – physical, geographical, socio-economic, and many others.
And we love hearing from these advocates. They're caring, passionate people who lead interesting lives and who have wonderful stories to tell.
This week, our Member Services team received an email from a young lady in Newark, New Jersey, named Victoria Ribeiro.
Victoria is a high school-aged girl scout who is working on earning a Gold Award, the highest award given by the Girl Scouts of America. All Gold Award projects must begin with identifying an issue about which the scout is passionate and end with educating and inspiring others on the topic.
Clearly, Victoria is passionate about trees, and we can honestly say we were inspired by her work. Her Gold Award project, an educational PowerPoint presentation entitled Treating Trees, "…seeks to educate the residents of the city of Newark so that they will be able to identify hazardous trees."
Victoria's email continued: "I must make my project have a global/national impact. I looked at your website and saw that [the Arbor Day Foundation] didn't really have any program that the residents of a city could help identify trees and make his/her community a better place to live. I am emailing you in the hopes that you may possibly create a program similar to mine to make other neighborhoods a safer and better place to live."
Victoria, we commend you on your excellent presentation and how you're helping to educate your fellow citizens on trees and tree care. We're proud to share your work with others who can learn from it for greener, healthier neighborhoods — in Newark and beyond.
Thank you for sharing your passion for trees, and we wish you much succes on your way to earning the Gold Award.
Download your own copy of Victoria's Treating Trees presentation.


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It Is All About BTC, LTC, ETH, ZEC mining as well as other alternative crypto currencies
The latest high-end GPU from AMD, namely the Radeon R9 Fury X, that has been just recently announced has managed to provide performance high enough to be equal to the competition in the form of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti… at least hen we are talking about using video cards based on these GPUs for gaming. We already did some benchmarks to see how fast the GeForce GTX 980 Ti is for mining, so it is time to see if the Fury X will be able to compete with these results like it does for gaming. An interesting advantage that the Fiji GPUs used in the Fury X video cards is that they come with HBM memory and both the video memory and the GPU are water cooled. In theory this means that you get lower temperatures and silent operation and the Fury X does manage to provide that. One more thing that you would normally expect from a water cooled GPU is to have a lot of potential for overclock, but unfortunately this does not hold true for the Fury X or at least not with the first card out on the market at least. We barely managed to squeeze out just about 75 MHz extra from the GPU and there is no option to overclock the video memory for the moment.
So off to do some tests with some of the popular and more profitable algorithms for mining lately, we have used the latest sgminer along with some of the optimized forks available for different algorithms such as the one optimized for Quark and Qubit. Note that there are not yet specially optimized kernels for the Fury X or settings that work best, so we were trying to use ones that we are familiar with already from the 280 and 290 series from AMD. So some of these worked really well, while others not so well and the generally available OpenCL kernels did provide quite disappointing results actually…
AMD Radeon R9 Fury X Results:
– X11 default: 6.778 MHS
– X11 Wolf0 Mod: 8.123 MHS
– X13 default: 5.614 MHS
– X13 Wolf0 Mod: 7.176 MHS
– X15 default: 4.69 MHS
– X15 Wolf0 Mod: 6.335 MHS
– Quark modified: 22.37 MHS
– Qubit modified: 21.15 MHS
– Neoscrypt default: 147 KHS
– Lyra2RE default: 287 KHS
– Lyra2RE Pallas Mod: 450 KHS
As you can see the results are a bit disappointing at this point, everything apart from the Quark and Qubit performance using the modified 280X kernels where the performance is really good and similar to that achieved on the GTX 980 Ti. Other modified/optimized kernels such as the ones for the X algorithms from Wolf0 or the Pallas mod for Lyra2Re do increase the performance a bit, but it it still disappointingly low. In fact on some algorithms you can expect to get worse results with Fury X than with a 280X for example, so we need to find better settings and maybe get optimized kernels especially for Fury X in order for that card to be viable for crypto currency mining. The only thing it is good for at the moment is for mining coins using the Quark and Qubit algorithm with the modified kernels, but then again buying a GTX 980 Ti instead could be the wiser choice for generally better mining performance for any algorithm supported… at least for the moment.


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Pete C necesitaba un nuevo diseño de camiseta y lanzó un concurso de diseño en 99designs.
Un ganador ha sido elegido entre 101 diseños de 34 diseñadores freelance.
AVG Internet Security
AVG is one of the world's leading internet security companies. We protect over 110 million computers across the world. The vast majority of our users use our free security product.
AVG allows clients to browse, chat, play games, shop, bank and use social network sites with confidence that their money and identity are safe.
AVG also provides a great business solution and we have recently launched an AVG at Work promotion.
Avalanche Technology Group is the Australia/NZ distributor of AVG and we are looking to create some funky T-shirts to giveaway to our clients.
As most of our users don't pay for their protection, we don't have the huge marketing spend of our better resourced competitors. We'd prefer to give something of value away and help spread the AVG message this way rather than spend thousands of dollars on advertising, which often only has a life of one day and doesn't add value to anyone.
We want something a little bit funky to wear to out (without cringing) or for our staff and reseller to wear to work. We're looking to randomly give these t-shirts to people downloading software from our site, giving them to resellers, running giveaway draws, etc.
Whilst AVG is well known for its free product but the paid AVG Internet Security product provide a much higher level of protection - it is an AVG means Internet Security message that we would like to get out.
We want the shirt to be funky enough for a 21 year old to wear out but not so out there that some of our older clients wouldn't wear it. Our users really do range from young to really really old. Can a great design transcend age?? I'm not sure. .or perhaps we need to look at a number of designs for different ages.
I'm not really sure what to write here, but I guess what we're looking for is a great design that helps build the AVG brand.
Our logo can be downloaded at http://www.avg.com.au/media (scroll down - you'll find it).
Feel free to be creative and a bit out there.
If the design can be used on Tshirts and possibly polo shirts (or maybe an alternate design for polos?)
Getting the Australian website http://www.avg.com.au out there is quite important if this can be incorporated.
Added: 5 May 2010
I quite like the concept of AVG Internet Security ..."Protecting Your Work"...
We are currently launching a campaign ..."AVG at Work" to let business know that AVG is wider than just a consumer product. perhaps there is a opportunity here?? The promo stuff on this is "Here's to getting it done - You focus on your business, We'll focus on protecting it" Maybe this is useful??
I love a few of the designs where the AVG corporate logo is "enhanced" but we will run into trouble with head office if we deface this, so we probably need to incorporate the logo into a design rather than changing the logo itself.
Thanks again for all your great ideas guys


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Fossil Gallery
Odontogriphus omalusA slug-like creature that scraped food from the ocean floor with its toothed tongue
Unranked clade halwaxiids (stem group molluscs)
Odontogriphus is an early stem-group mollusc (Caron et al., 2006; Sigwart and Sutton, 2007), or a stem-group to the lophotrochozoans, a group which includes molluscs, annelids, and brachiopods (Conway Morris and Caron, 2007). A relationship to annelids (Butterfield, 2006) has been suggested, but appears less likely (Caron et al., 2007).
Species name:
Odontogriphus omalus
Described by:
Conway Morris
Description date:
Odontogriphus – from the Greek odontos, "tooth," and griphos, "puzzle, or riddle," in reference to its uncertain affinities.
omalus – from the Greek homalos, "flat," in reference to the animal's flattened shape.
Type Specimens:
Holotype –USNM196169 in the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA.
Other species:
Burgess Shale and vicinity: none.
Other deposits: none.
Middle Cambrian, Bathyuriscus-Elrathina Zone (approximately 505 million years ago).
Principal localities:
The Walcott Quarry on Fossil Ridge and the Tulip Beds (S7) on Mount Stephen.
Brief history of research:
Walcott collected the first specimen between 1909 and 1924 but it remained unstudied for more than half a century. Conway Morris "rediscovered" the part and counterpart of this specimen in different sections of the Walcott collection and described it in 1976 as Odontogriphus omalus. The affinities of Odontogriphus remained uncertain until the Royal Ontario Museum discovered 189 new specimens between 1990 and 2000, allowing for a thorough redescription of the animal (Caron et al., 2006).
This entirely soft-bodied animal is ovoid and dorsoventrally compressed, reaching up to 125 mm in length and 43 mm in width. The front and back are semicircular in outline and of similar size. The mouth is ventral with a radula composed of two primary tooth rows. A muscular foot extends from behind the mouth to the posterior part of the animal and is surrounded by gills (or ctenidia), except at the front. The dorsal surface is smooth and does not bear any shells, spines or plates. Internally, a large stomach is preserved with a narrow and straight intestine ending in a sub-terminal anus.
Most specimens come from the Walcott Quarry, where Odontogriphus represents 0.42% of the community (Caron and Jackson, 2008). A single specimen comes from Mount Stephen (S7 locality).
Maximum size:
125 mm
Life habits:
Epibenthic, mobile
Feeding strategies:
Ecological Interpretations:
The presence of a radula suggests that Odontogriphus was a grazer, using its teeth to rasp and ingest food. Locomotory waves within the large foot would have enabled the animal to crawl along the surface of the mud. Odontogriphus might have fed on benthic, sheet-like masses of the cyanobacterium Morania, since fossils of both are often found associated in the same layers.
BUTTERFIELD, N. J. 2006. Hooking some stem-group "worms": fossil lophotrochozoans in the Burgess Shale. BioEssays, 28: 1161-1166.
CARON, J.-B., A. H. SCHELTEMA, C. SCHANDER AND D. RUDKIN. 2006. A soft-bodied mollusc with radula from the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale. Nature, 442: 159-163.
CARON, J.-B., A. H. SCHELTEMA, C. SCHANDER AND D. RUDKIN. 2007. Reply to Butterfield on stem-group "worms:" fossil lophotrochozoans in the Burgess Shale. BioEssays, 29: 200-202.
CONWAY MORRIS, S. 1976. A new Cambrian lophophorate from the Burgess Shale of British Columbia. Palaeontology, 19: 199-222.
SIGWART, J. D. AND M. D. SUTTON. 2007. Deep molluscan phylogeny: synthesis of palaeontological and neontological data. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 274: 2413-2419.
Other links:


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Which countries have the biggest percentage of pet owners? Which pets do they have living with them out of cats, dogs, birds, fish or other pets?
Countries included: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, UK and USA.


text: On July 27th, Come&Live! bands No Longer Music (NLM - USA) and Nuteki (Belarus) teamed up for the third time to share the Gospel on tour in Ukraine. During the course of their 11 shows in ten cities, the two bands were able to bring the message of Jesus to over 20,000 people.


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My colleague Jo McKiernan on QR codes, and internet access in general.
I think that we are experiencing is possibly analogous to what we saw when the web went mainstream. When first we started seeing urls appearing on stuff – adverts particularly – I remember having a conversation that went something along the lines of "yeah, but no one is ever going to use them, AND you need an internet connection!".
Now, access to the internet is a fundamental human right, and if we can't follow our favourite brands on Twitter or like them on Facebook we feel somehow cheated.
I can see what Jo's point is, however it does strike me as something that shies well away from crossing a widely yawning digital divide.
Access to the internet has been proposed as a fundamental human right (and in some places it is considered to be), but I would say this is more in the sense that cutting off access is a violation of those rights. Similar to cutting off water or food supply.
Which in turn, really only applies to the very small sub-set of the population with internet access (in their pockets), or the even smaller sub-set of that population, who feel cheated when they can't follow or engagewith their favourite brands on Facebook. Digital literacy and access is an increasingly bigger problem, getting worse rather than better. It is as much a global as it is a national issue, the Australian national broadband network being one topical infrastructure example currently being toted as part of the solution. In my view, solving the problem of those pesky QR code is not a high priority.
As it is, QR codes provide, at low cost, an easy mechanism for "distributing" additional information should visitors want it. As a visitor, accessing this information might enhance my experience, but not taking advantage of it will not detract from my visit.
Improving digital literacy, helping people stay connected in faraway places, providing infrastructure and platforms for people to support themselves – this is the main game. Connectivity, health & education are core tenets of the broadband push, and rightly so.
Even accepting that this argument doesn't talk to the elderly or those in underprivileged parts of society, the QR code rates so low on my list of silver bullet technologies. High barrier to entry, non human-readable, seemingly equally useful as printed URLs – what problems of usability do QR codes actually solve? What additional information do they provide, and at what (cognitive) cost?
I will accept that there are some really good examples of QR codesdoing interestingthings– but that's about it. Toys for smartphone users (like myself) to geek out over. As always, it's the tech that gets the focus, rather than the humanbenefits, the enabling effects, the tech can unlock.


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supras989's's Gamespot Rank
Level: 39 (80%)
supras989's Emblems
Greatest Game Hero Preliminary Voter
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Sample size for Multilevel EFA
Mplus Discussion
Exploratory Factor Analysis
david john allsop
posted on Tuesday, September 14, 2010 - 2:21 pm
Hi, I need to do a multilevel EFA because my dataset has repeated measures on a prototype scale I am developing (participants in the study fill out my scale every day for 14 days to track a withdrawal syndrome). It seems as though MPlus is the best thing on the market for this type of analysis.
Unfortunately my sample size is small (only 45 people). I understand that this doesn't necessarily preclude an EFA - as sample size considerations depend on many factors, and if the data behave well, its still possible to do an EFA. Is this correct and can you point me to any refs on this? My main question is - is the same thing true for Multilevel EFA? i.e. do I automatically need a larger sample size for a multilevel EFA than I would for a straight EFA? If so it would seem inappropriate to even begin to attempt such an analysis with my small sample size?
Many thanks for any input you can offer.
Best wishes
david john allsop
posted on Tuesday, September 14, 2010 - 2:27 pm
Also, do I need to purchase the combination add on version of MPlus to do such an analysis? (My data are ordinal - likert responses - 7 days during a baseline drug use period, 14 days during a drug abstinence period). I want to do EFA on the abstinence period alone. I currently have 26 items in my scale - but the whole idea of the mEFA is to identify items that don't load so that I can justify removing them..Given my very small sample size I am currently using other analysis methods to try and prune my items before I attempt the EFA.
Bengt O. Muthen
posted on Tuesday, September 14, 2010 - 2:54 pm
It sounds like you have a 26-item instrument given 14 times to 45 subjects and perhaps you want to assume measurement invariance across times so that you end up with a twolevel situation with 26 variables, 45 level 2 units, and cluster size 14.
This is a very small sample of subjects (45) relative to the number of variables (26). Even a single-level 1-factor model would have more parameters than subjects. A twolevel model would have more parameters.
Using EFA sounds like you want to explore how the 26-item instrument works. If so, it sounds like it would be better to try to get a larger sample even if using only one time point.
david john allsop
posted on Tuesday, September 14, 2010 - 5:18 pm
Hmmm - I thought it was problematic...Increasing the sample size isn't really feasible for my current analysis - in the future yes - but thats at least a year away and I would like to publish a preliminary exploratory paper on what I have done so far. My plan is to reduce the 26 items down to 10 or 15 items by doing a validity analysis (by comparing withdrawal scores to scores given during the baseline period). Any items that don't show a significant change above baseline levels will be discarded.
If I have my items reduced to 10 items, is an EFA now feasible? (I thought that such a ratio of items to datapoints can be ok if the data behave well?). I'm assuming that even with only 10 items, a multilevel EFA (as per the one you describe above)is still not really feasible? What if I select only a subset of my 14 days of data? i.e. multilevel EFA using a cluster size of the first 4 days or something? Or would you say that with my sample size I can only really justify a single time point, single level, 1 factor model (even with only 10 items?)?
By the way, does the item response approach have the same problems with sample size restriction? Might I be able to generate some information curves from this data using your IRT approaches?
Bengt O. Muthen
posted on Tuesday, September 14, 2010 - 5:26 pm
It depends on how many factors you think there are. Really, the only way to tell if it will work ok is via a Monte Carlo simulation - see Chapter 12 in the Mplus UG.
With categorical outcomes (IRT) you have less power, more sampling variability, so harder.
david john allsop
posted on Tuesday, September 14, 2010 - 5:36 pm
OK Thanks - I didn't realise that IRT is only for categorical (although does categorical include more than 2 categories? i.e. ordinal like my data?)
Thanks for your input - I will have a look at the monte carlo simulation - that could make a nice addition to a paper in its own right.
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text: Does anybody have regular size papers out there? King size? I'll use those [Hook:] Got the windows down, radio's on [Verse 1: Wiz Khalifa] You got it all, well at least you think you do When it's time to ball, n*ggas better think of you You see the life you wanna live on TV and wanna be a part of it Spend every night just popping bottles, pouring drinks in VIP, and you love it The more you make, the more they hate, the more they're fake, don't worry, that's just how the game go The more you make, the more they hate, the more they're fake, but I'm just singin' the same note, playin' the same song [Hook] [Verse 2: Wiz Khalifa] You got it all, well at least they think you do (woo, yeah) When they say workin' hard, man, they better think of you Cause all these plaques, n*gga, that's because of it Wouldn't have sh*t if it wasn't for it Smokin' on medicinal, spraying ozium to try cover it In the game playin' hard, but I'm just in the game, I ain't in love with it Y'all n*ggas tryin' to get famous, a n*gga like me tryin' to get f*ckin' rich F*ckin' rich, f*ckin' rich, broke ass n*ggas can't f*ck with this F*ck a deal, when it goes down, got a hundred mill on my f*ckin' list Y'all n*ggas gon' keep on hatin' but we ain't gonna stop then You'll catch me in somethin' foreign and the top gon' be droppin' [Hook]


text:
La Scala BalletPrivate Company active 8 years ago
The Teatro alla Scala Ballet Company's illustrious past goes back to the centuries prior to the inauguration, in 1778, of the world's most celebrated opera house, where it still has its premises today. Its history is interwoven with the birth of ballet itself. Ballet was in fact promoted in the Renaissance courts of Italy, notably in the Sforza family's splendid palace in Milan. It was to that city, between 1779 and 1789, that Gasparo Angiolini, the choreographer of Gluckian reform in serious opera, brought a company of more than fifty dancers. Milan was also where Salvatore Viganò, "that supreme choreographer, idolized by Stendhal", experimented, in such works as Il Noce di benevento (1812), Prometeo (1813), Mirra (1817), Dedalo (1817), Otello (1818), La Vestale (1818) and I titani (1819), his personal interpretation of ballet d'action, which he called "choreodrama". This had an enormous influence on the creators of dance at the time, such as Gaetano Gioja, and on such favourite star dancers as the danseur noble Carlo Blasis, whose name is forever linked to the glories of the Scala school founded in 1813.
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Understanding Your Choices
You probably know you need a filling after decay is removed but not so much about the different materials available.
Both amalgam and composite fillings can be used to restore your tooth, protecting it from further damage and decay by closing spaces that are left behind after the tooth has been treated.
Composite fillings have become an effective and more aesthetic solution for restoring teeth. However, in some case, amalgam may be recommended to provide the necessary strength to withstand greater force.


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Dad's sometimes have to be Dad's and Mum's of the family! Let them celebrate Mother's Day too!
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Dad's sometimes have to be Dad's and Mum's of the family! Let them celebrate Mother's Day too!


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Hotel maid raped, strangled in linen closet
UPDATE: Arrest made in 1976 case.
Victim's name: Janet Conrad
Where body found: Tenth floor of Antlers Plaza Hotel
Investigative agency: Colorado Springs Police Department
Date killed: Dec. 3, 1976
Cause of Death: Strangled
Suspect: None identified.
Janet Conrad's killer was brutal and resourceful. He used items all around him to subdue, silence and ultimately kill her.
Still, the 34-year-old woman fought desperately for her life. Conrad had scratches and bruises all over her hands and stomach.


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Many people ask me to pray for them to receive greater revelation from Scripture. While ... Read More
How can God choose not to heal someone when He already purchased their healing? Was ... Read More
What about verses in the Old Testament? The Old Testament is filled with questions that ... Read More
We have the privilege of rediscovering God's original purpose for His people. We who long ... Read More
Evangelism is extrememly important because Jesus commanded us to do it. It's one of the ... Read More


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Over on Facebook, Andrew asked, "OK, so would someone like to explain the Trinity to me in super easy-to-understand terms?" I was going to answer there, but I thought it would be a little long for a Facebook comment, so I decided to do it here instead.
The Trinity Explained
Scene: An ancient council of Theologians
Theologian 1: OK, the Old Testament says there is only one God, but the New Testament says God the Father is God, Jesus is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, i.e., there are three Gods. We have to figure out a way to resolve this contradiction, or we're screwed.
Theologian 2: Well... why don't we just admit that we're polytheists?
The rest of the Theologians: HERETIC! BURN HIM!
Theologian 2: No! I was just kidding! There's only one God!
The rest of the Theologians: BURN HIM!
Theologian 1: Wait! Let's give him a chance. [To Theologian 2] All right, explain how the three Gods are only one God, or we'll burn you. [To the rest of the Theologians] This oughtta be good.
Theologian 2: Um... so... there are three Gods --
The rest of the Theologians: BURN HIM!
Theologian 2: But they're only one God!
Theologian 1: Go on...
Theologian 2: So there is one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity...
Theologian 1: And?
Theologian 2: For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit.
The rest of the Theologians: BURN HIM!
Theologian 2: But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit is all one, the glory equal, the majesty coeternal! And yet they are not three eternals but one eternal!
The rest of the Theologians: WTF?
Theologian 1: All right, that's pretty good so far.
Theologian 2: And we neither confound the persons nor divide the substance...
Theologian 1: [Laughing] All right, don't get carried away.
Theologian 2: The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and yet they are not three Gods, but one God.
Theologian 1: OK, you can stop, you're just repeating yourself now. [To the rest of the Theologians] I think that was pretty good. Let's not burn him, all right?
The rest of the Theologians: [Disappointed murmuring; a few plaintive cries of "Burn him?"]
Theologian 1: You realize that what you said made no sense at all, right?
Theologian 2: Um...
Theologian 1: I mean it's complete nonsense, isn't it? You're just saying "One plus one plus one equals one." And the Bible doesn't support it either. Like when Jesus was baptized, He prayed to Himself, then He heard His voice from the sky saying, "I am My beloved son, in whom I am well pleased," and then He appeared to Himself in the form of a Dove? Or when he told his disciples they should be one as He and His Father are one, he meant that they should form like a 12-man version? Really? It's complete bullshit.
Theologian 2: Um... it's a Mystery?
Theologian 1: What?
Theologian 2: Well, I was thinking that, like, anything we can't explain, we'll just call a "Mystery."
Theologian 1: A "Mystery." I like it.
Theologian 2: We can say things like "It's too far above human thought," and "Only God can understand it."
Theologian 1: Sweet. We can call it a "divine paradox."
The rest of the Theologians: HA-HA-HA!
Theologian 1: Yeah. But will people actually believe such obvious bullshit?
Theologian 2: If they don't, we can burn them.
The rest of the Theologians: BURN THEM!
Theologian 1: All right, I move that the Council adopt this Trinity bullshit as our official explanation for why three Gods are really one God, and that we burn anyone who disagrees.
The rest of the Theologians: BURN THEM! BURN THEM!
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Saturday, March 03, 2012
The Trinity Explained
Posted by kuri at 11:04
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text:
Huzur cited verse 33 of Surah Al Najm, the translation reads, 'Those who shun major sins and indecencies except for minor slips — verily, your Lord is expansive in forgiving. He knows you full well from the time when He created you from the earth, and when you were embryos in the bellies of your mothers. So ascribe not purity to yourselves. He knows him best who is truly righteous.' (53:33) and ……………..
The Promised Messiah (on whom be peace) said that one should never claim to be pure and clean. Allah states 'do not call yourself purified', He alone knows who is the righteous. Purification is conditional to taqwa and taqwa is to avoid all kind of evils for the pleasure of God, to abide by all His commandments and to avoid all that He has forbidden. God has repeatedly stated that it is He Who purifies people and knows whose heart is truly righteous. He knows the state of our hearts, is aware of what we make evident and what we conceal, He can never be deceived in any way at all.
A famous Hadith relates that actions are (judged) by motives. God, Who knows what is in hearts has full knowledge of the motive behind whatever man does. Apparent worship of God, fasting and even multiple Hajj when performed with any ill motive is not worthy of acceptance in the sight of God. Not only are all such virtues erased in such a situation, rather they cause one's destruction.
While drawing our attention through warnings God also refers to His extensive mercy and gives us hope of forgiveness. His warnings are also for our own benefit – to enable us to tread the straight path. Indeed, He knows the state of hearts, is aware of one's capability and capacity, therefore He gives us the glad-tiding that if we abide by taqwa, keep our motives clear then He will envelop any oversights of ours in the swathe of His forgiveness.
Referring to the Quranic verse cited at the beginning Huzur said it gives the glad-tiding of forgiveness with reference to God's expansive mercy and states His all-encompassing knowledge. Huzur explained that millions of years before man was created God put in place arrangements to sustain human life. He is aware of and has knowledge of us since then, of what nature was He to give us, what capacities He was to grant us etc. This is a deep subject which is expounded in other Quranic verses. God's knowledge about us is so extensive that let alone encompassing it we have no knowledge of it. With the passage of time and scientific developments man has come to know of certain facts about creation but most of these are only known to those who have exclusive knowledge of the sciences. However, God had absolute knowledge of everything from the beginning of time. Moving down on the scale of knowledge there is the nurturing of the foetus in the womb. Many have knowledge of this nowadays. There is sufficient development in the field of medicine that enables people even in the developing world to have some awareness of this through ultra-sound scans. Some even find out if they are expecting a girl or a boy. God states that He has full knowledge of this stage of one's development as well and is aware of exactly with which capacities one is born. Despite being the Knower of the Unseen, He presented man with the choice of good and bad deeds. Good deeds are those which are undertaken purely to attain His pleasure. God warns that even when doing virtuous acts one may develop feelings of self-absorption. Therefore it is not up to one to claim that he or she does 'good works'. Rather than feel self-satisfied about any virtue, each good work should enhance one in humility and taqwa. One cannot give oneself the testimonial of abiding by taqwa, nor can another person attest one one's behalf. Only God knows who is the most righteous.
Huzur said it is important to clarify here what exactly does the [Arabic] word 'lamma' (minor slips) means in the aforementioned verse where it cites '… who shun major sins and indecencies except for minor slips…' . Huzur said many people make wrong assumptions from this. The significance of this citation is that because man is weak, under certain circumstances he inadvertently commits sin. This should be followed by true repentance and regret, this requires an abundance of Istaghfar. Lamma means if one has been inclined to evil it is temporary. Lamma also means if satantic thoughts develop then with God's grace man is saved with no trace of the evil remaining. Huzur said immorality and rudeness are rife in the world. If, one is inclined to evil in such circumstances, one should promptly seek God's forgiveness. He accepts true repentance.
Huzur cited the following three Quranic verses to further explain the subject:
'And no burdened soul can bear the burden of another; and if a heavily laden soul call another to bear its load, naught of it shall be carried by the other, even though he be a kinsman. Thou canst warn only those who fear their Lord in secret and observe Prayer. And whoso purifies himself, purifies himself only to his own advantage; and to Allah shall be the return.' (Surah Fatir – 35:19)
'Verily, he truly prospers who purifies himself,' (Surah Al A'la – 87:15)
'Surely, he prospers who augments it,' (Surah Al Shams - 91:10)
Huzur explained that the Promised Messiah (on whom be peace) said that we are commanded to purify ourselves but may not claim that we have been purified. Huzur said one should associate and link each virtue to the grace of God, if one links any virtue to one's own capacities that one has not been purified. A true believer always has fear of God as he/she looks out for virtues so that he/she may put them in practice and attain God's pleasure.
It is stated in the Holy Qur'an: 'If you keep away from the more grievous of the things which are forbidden you, We will remove from you your minor evils and admit you to a place of great honour.' (Surah Al Nisa – 4:32). Huzur said as he has explained before that although the Holy Qur'an cites the words major and minor for sins, no real differentiation is cited. Each such sin which is difficult to eschew/give up for one is a major sin. This is why God states that keeping fear of God in private one should try and purify oneself. When there will be fear of God one will be disinclined to sins and when such a state is attained then alone one is purified. This is in the knowledge of God alone. True honour is only when God deems man pure.
God cites the sign of a true believer as: 'And who eschew the more grievous sins and indecencies, and, when they are wroth, they forgive,' (Surah Al Shura – 42:38). Huzur explained here anger has been cited along with grievous sins and indecencies to clarify its seriousness to those who consider it insignificant. Huzur said anger is not a small sin – when there is no control over one's anger it comes under the category of grievous sin. Indeed, one naturally feels anger at times, however when one's temper gets out of control it removes one's purity. People should stop assuming that they can attain purification despite their dire moral state and that their sin of anger will be dissipated by other virtues. Huzur said complaints about anger resulting in quarrels between husbands and wives are commonplace. Anger manifests in many societal disputes, in sport as well. It leads to rancour and ill-will. God states anger is a major sin and is a huge impediment in purification of the nafs (self).
The Promised Messiah (on whom be peace) said that each person should consider it their obligation to bring about change in themselves. Huzur said for this one needs to constantly turn to God Whose mercy is expansive. When, along with doing good works, we will try and absorb God's mercy, will seek His all-encompassing mercy, it is then that we will succeed.
Next Huzur read an extensive extract from the writings of the Promised Messiah (on whom be peace) on the attainment of purification of the self. It referred to 'spiritual exercise, prayer and company of the truthful' as the requisites for attaining God's grace. Huzur explained that in this day and age the noble writings of the Promised Messiah (on whom be peace) are 'company of the truthful' for us. Huzur said a lady from Germany who worked hard and collected commandments of the Holy Qur'an wrote to Huzur and said that now when she reads the books of the Promised Messiah (on whom be peace) she feels as if she is reading the commentary of the Qur'an and when she reads the Qur'an she has a clear understanding of the significance of the commandments. Huzur said these books are certainly a tremendous blessing.
In seeking purification of the self one makes distinct choices. This is illustrated by the instance where Satan, who was arrogant, articulated his superiority whereas man, who was granted spiritual knowledge, made the following prayer: 'They said, 'Our Lord, we have wronged ourselves; and if Thou forgive us not and have not mercy on us, we shall surely be of the lost.' (Surah Al A'raf – 7:24)
Huzur said this is the prayer that still absorbs God's all-encompassing forgiveness, saves from all evils, covers all our mistakes and errors and is a source to attain His pleasure. May God enable us so that we ever reflect over and analyse ourselves and also associate each virtue with God, purify ourselves from all evils and constantly endeavour for this. May we always seek God's expansive forgiveness, may God enable us so.
The Jumu'ah (Friday) prayer is one form of congregational worship in Islam. It takes place every Friday. Regular attendance at the Jumu'ah prayer is enjoined on the believer. According to a Saying of Muhammad(sa) this congregational prayer is twenty-five times more blessed than worship performed alone. (Bukhari)
"O ye who believe! When the call is made for Prayer on Friday, hasten to the remembrance of Allah, and leave off all business. That is best for you, if you only knew." more
"… (He who) offers the Prayers and listens quitely when the Imam stands up for sermon, will have his sins forgiven between that Friday and the next" (Bukhari)


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Germano-Phobia in the Russian Empire and in the
Soviet Union
Germanophobie im Russischen Reich und in der Sowietunion
Krieger, Dr. Viktor. "Germano-Phobia in the Russian Empire and in the Soviet Union." Volk auf dem Weg, December 2006, 17-19.
Translation from the original German-language text to American
English by
Alex Herzog, Boulder, Colorado
NOTE: This is the part 3 of a series of installments of this article, continued from the November, 2006 issue of Volk auf dem Weg
From the Postwar Era to the Collapse of the USSR
The German-Soviet war, with all its victims, but much more so with its memories of heroic deeds and victories, served to inform the identity of Soviet people significantly more strongly than even the wounds that Stalinism left behind. The "Great Patriotic War" -- alongside the October Revolution -- would become the central origin myth for Soviet and, especially, for Russia society.
The Moscow leadership quickly recognized the legitimacy potential and the binding force of collective war experiences and of a developing feeling of communal spirit. The central points of incantation would now be patriotism and the cult of heroism. Pride of victory over Germany, of the new status of world power and the superiority of the Soviet system derived therefrom would certainly be cultivated.
Not only the ever more pompously executed Day of Victory of May 9, but also the innumerable other memorial celebrations, demonstrations at monumental memorials, and honorings of war veterans with all sorts of medals of honor were meant to serve, among other things, to impart an image of heroic postwar times to the younger generation and, last but not least, were intended as a mobilizing source for strengthening the Soviet System. At the same time, official propaganda practically eliminated all mention of the darker side, one that might not correspond with the glorious scenario: complicity with Hitler's Germany between 1939 and 1941, condemnation and shooting of hundreds of thousands of Red Army members and officers accused of cowardice, collaboration with occupying forces by a considerable portion of the Soviet population, misery and dying in the GULags and work camps, deportation of entire peoples, famine and repression in the backwoods, occupation of central European states, extreme violence and simple theft in occupied Germany ...
The title [cover] of a volume
serve as scapegoats for and in lieu of actual or invented crimes of the Third Reich, they had to endure resentment by their neighbors, colleagues and bosses, and to expect State-sponsored discrimination in social, political and cultural areas.
In sharp contrast to this, witness the open and understanding view of the population of the [later] German Democratic Republic (DDR) toward the State mass media and writing of history. It was no accident that proponents of autonomy [back in the Soviet Union] pointed to this situation with bitter irony in their collective letter to the party and State leadership: "Since its establishment, the DDR has been treated by the Soviet Union with all possible attentiveness and care, while the Soviet Germans are made to pay for the moral consequences of the war, as though the Fascists had not been in Germany, but among the Soviet Germans instead."
Still, there existed a putative contradiction between the well-intentioned
reporting about the DDR and the negative and concealing position
via-a-vis its "own" Germans. In the view of the political
realists in the Kremlin, this situation, which the German-Russian
public felt to be a provocative snub, was quite acceptable. Moscow
played its satellite off against the West German "revanchist
and military State." Furthermore, the Soviet Union liked itself
in the role as liberator of the German people from fascism, and
the role of reeducating from barbaric National Socialist teaching
toward the humanistic ideals of Socialism. Numerous representatives
of the first socialist state on German soil who would become flaming
anti-Fascists when they found themselves
in Soviet prisons of war, were treated with considerable forbearance. In the eyes of the East German "active workers" the Russian people were to be seen as the prime vanguard to lead progressive mankind into the bright Communist future: "To learn from the Soviet Union means to learn victory!" However, the beneficent official relationship with the DDR did in no way seem to stand in the way of the dedicated anti-German propaganda in the Soviets' own country.
Much more complicated was the treatment of the descendants of the 18th and 19th Century farmer and artisan immigrants. The regime should have exchanged its role of the beaming victors for that of the rueful sinner. But it would thereby find itself in a not so flattering situation of admitting to past crimes and to a need for atonement, especially toward the Germans, even if their name carried the prefix "Soviet-." Such a position could even be explained through justifiable doubt in a culture-bearing image of the Russian people. Admittedly, the rational economic methods of German agriculture -- particularly in the Black Sea region -- had served for a long time as an example to be imitated by Russian and Ukrainian farmers. Despite that, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union decisively declined to honor the 200-year anniversary of the immigration of German settlers in Russia. In contrast, the 350th anniversary of the entry of Kalmyk and Dschungaric tribes into the lower Volga area was celebrated with much pomp in 1959. But by far the greatest show was made in 1981 in the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the integration of Kazakh tribes into the Russian Empire, which trumped all previous celebrations by far. From the example of these oriental peoples, emphasized especially graphically, were the countless acts of civilizing "assistance" by the Russian people, which the former nomads experienced during the Tsarist Empire and especially after 1917.
Even in the face of this declared close relationship to its East German federated partner and despite the public declaration for Proletariat Internationalism, there was no dearth in the Soviet Union of particularly negative reports dealing with the "Russian Germans." For one, there were the Baltic Germans (ostzeycy, ostseyskye barony), landowners of nobility and representatives of the urban middle tier in the Balletic Sea provinces who were now stamped as ex-conservatives and as supporters of the Tsarist autocracy, accused of enslaving and ruthless exploitation of Estonian and Latvian farmers, and deemed responsible for several deplorable states of affairs within the Russian Empire - where they in fact had constituted a significant portion of the government bureaucracy and of the military. Additionally, most studies during the 1920s and 1930s of the (by now) independent countries of Estonia and Latvia reduced the Baltic Germans to nothing but true and loyal followers of Nazi ideology.
Also, the appearance of numerous German favorites at the Tsarist Court, particularly during the ruling term of Tsarina Anna Ionnovna (1730 - 1740), a period that was dubbed bironovshchina, after her favorite, Ernst Johann von Biron, or even "The German Rule," met with biting criticism with strong nationalistic overtones in Russian and Soviet historical writings. Serious studies into the enriching activities of the German-speaking educated, skilled artisans, administrators and offices in service of Russia were inevitably covered up by vociferous criticism of alleged "harmful" effects, of a lack of patriotism, and of alleged suppression of Russian colleagues and coworkers. The latter views were voiced particularly strongly in high-volume literary works, in popular depictions, in school texts and in journalistic articles.
One particular example of this kind of literary publications was
the historical novel "The Ice Palace" (Ledyanoy dom) by
the Russian author Ivan Lashetchnikov, which deals with that period
of Russian history. Although the famous national poet Alexander
Pushkin, along with the highly esteemed publicist and literary critic
Vissarion Belinski, had strongly criticized the novel, which was
published in 1835, on account of obvious bias and historical flaws,
the book was reissued in the 1980s -- according to incomplete information
-- at a volume of 3,790,000 copies. The reason that the unequivocal
judgment of the two literary forces, normally deemed in the former
Soviet Union as highly esteemd and infallible, was ignored is very
simple: the Russian statesman
Artemi Volynski, as one of the most prominent victims of the bironovshchina was played up as a national hero in the fight against the "German Superior Force" (nemeckoye zasilie). An objective description with a critical treatment of the historical myth would not become possible in historical writing until the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The strongest treatment in this regard has
been provided in the work of the well-known Petersburg historian Yevgeny Anisimov.
The beginnings of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences provided a
further arena for projecting nationalist rhetoric, associated foremost
with the name Michail Lomonossov, the prime Russian scientist. He
was among the most prominent early foes of German dominance at the
Academy and was -- according to several witnesses -- said to have
emphasized his rhetorical argumentation with personal insults and
even physical attacks as it appeared convenient during
normal sessions. He most strongly criticized the theory of the Westphalia-born Gerhard Friedrich Mueller, a member of the Saint Petersburg Academy who, in his writing from the year 1749 had placed the beginnings of the Russian nation to coincide with efforts by the Varangians or Normans. Along with "calumny" and the "disparagement of the Russian people." Especially during the chauvinistically and xenophobically charged climate of the Forties and Fifties of the 20th Century, this argument, as well as the biased judgment of the actions of such people as the Director of the Chancellery of the Academy of Sciences, Johann Daniel Schumacher, who effectively determined the fate of the Academy through the 1750s, would serve the passionate polemic of the times with its pointed and cleanly anti-Western and anti-German orientation.
A further case of political instrumentalization, not only in Soviet,
but also in Czech and Poilish historical wirting and publicism,
is provided by the preoccupation with the historical process of
the so-called "German Push to the East." This process
allegedly included a nearly schematic carrying out of a thousand-year
Germanic territorial expansion to the East, the goal of which was
to either enslave or to drive out of their homes the members of
Slavic peoples. Its extent, according to several Soviet scientists,
reached "all the way to the Volga." Given such suppositions,
it appeared to be logical to denounce as a class the colonists,
who had actually been quite peaceful and loyal toward the crown,
as active outposts for Pan-Gerrmanism and Reichs-German imperialism.
In most publications on the settlement policies and on foreign
immigrants to the Black Sea area -- which territory, in today's geography, comprises South Ukraine, Crimea, Moldova and the Trans-Cacucasus region -- the German farmers were characterized as a uniformly exploitatory group that, furthermore, was hostile to the "Oktober Revolution." During Soviet times, and after the outbreak of WW II, their true fate was left mostly in the dark, although even in scientific and literary publications there was no lack whatsoever of sprinkled-in suspicion mongering along the model of anti-Soviet orientation and readiness for collaboration. An example of such writing is the multi-volume "History of the Cities and of the Agricultural Settlements in the Ukrainian SSR," which was published in the 1970s and 1980s, in Russian and in Ukrainian, the number of copies reaching 15,000.
It was the Volga-German, however, over which the Soviet leadership
imposed a total information blockade. By the end of the 1980s, only
one (!) scientific essay on this population group, one which dealt
with the participation of several colonists in the Cossack uprising
at Pugachev during the 18th century, was allowed to be published.
The public and scientists remained completely closed off from the
great variety of materials in the former Central State
Archives of the ASSR of Volga-Germans; and anyone who sought access to such archival sources would immediately be suspected of harboring anti-Soviet conviction. Until the end of the 1980s, even the mere mention of this documentation collection -- which after 1941 was renamed the Engels Branch of the Soviet Regional Archive -- was forbidden in publications of any kind. At times, there were rather grotesque occurrences: for example, after the outbreak of the war, mention of the Volga-Republic was expunged from the popular satirical novel of 1931, "The Golden Calf" (Zolotoy telenok) by the well-known author Ilya Ilf. Only in the 1990s was a new reprinting of the original edition permitted.
Instead of speaking honestly and openly about the baseless accusations toward its own German citizens and to educate the population in the Soviet Union in a spirit of tolerance and mutual respect, the party propagandists and the KGB apparatus purposefully planted libelous rumors. These included talk of numerous spies and subversives, saboteurs and "pests" among the Volga-Germans, talk of traitorous actions, Fascist paratroopers, weapons deliveries, flags with swastikas, the "Fifth Column," and similar additional rumors. But care was taken not to articulate these kinds of views in public, since the authorities were well aware of the baselessness of the accusations.
Not until 1987 was there an official attempt to express these opinions
publicly, in order to ascertain the reactions of those affected
and the reactions of the Russian majority population. A former KGB
officer, by now working as an author, in two articles in the Siberian
regional newspaper "Kuzbass"/Kemerov, actually justified
the deportation of the Volga-Germans. In
retrospect, the powerful effect that this public slandering had on the Germans cannot be underestimated as, by the hundreds, copies of both articles circulated throughout the entire Soviet Union and loudly called for protest and for contradiction of these statements.
It was especially the liberalization introduced subsequent to Michail
Gorbachev's ascent to power that created certain preconditions for
an objective assessment of the role of Germans in the Russian Empire
and in the USSR, and of the totality of centuries of German-Russian
relationships. In June, 1989, for the first time in over fifty years,
an academic/scientific convention dealing with the history and culture
of the German minority was held -- not surprisingly -- in Alma-Ata.
So it was finally possible to discuss objectively and critically
the significance of the Baltic Germans, of German citizens in St.
Petersburg, Moscow, Saratov and other cities -- those countless
Amalie Petrovnas and Karl Karloviches -- in relationship to the
intellectual, economic, and political development of Russia. In
this context, it is imperative to
mention the honorable activities of human rights organizations such as "Memorial," who work for the complete rehabilitation of the victims of arbitrary despotism by the State and are engaged in a significant way in the breaking down of anti-German biases.
Only with great difficulty did the true extent of the tragic fate
of Soviet citizens of German descent come to light. And always there
were setbacks -- the nationalist-patriotic, xenophobic, Greater-Russia,
anti-Western, Germano-phobic, and anti-Semitic legacies of Bolshevist
ideology of the Stalinist ilk were simply too deep, and equally
deeply did the decades of propagandistic
misuse of war remembrances continue to affect the collective memories of Soviet and Russian society. All the more did it become possible, therefore, for the Volga area residents to mobilize public opinion in the 1980s and early 1990s against the reestablishment of an Autonomic Republic of Germans. They sued overt and latent German-hostile slogans that simply referred back to the heroic war years and to the images of the enemies in the Cold War.
Even after the dissolution of the USSR and the concomitant discrediting of the Bolshevist grasp of power in 1917, the victory that had been won, with so many victims, over National-Socialist Germany -- which in the popular image had always been seen as victory over the Germans -- would take on a central part of the identity of a Russian nation, a patriotic consensus that enveloped all strata of the population. So, despite all now apparent multiplicity of opinion and emergent openness, even in regard to today's comprehensive historiography of the German minority, all these circumstances must not mislead one about the fact that in the collective memory of a post-socialist society, there exists a multitude of dubious, but decisive images in the people's memories that, given any threat that -- real or imagined as real -- might become a resource for immediate remoblization [of phobia].
Our appreciation is extended to Alex Herzog for translation of this article.


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Bell Ringing
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An event every week that begins at 20:30 on Tuesday, repeating until 31st August 2020
St Andrew's Church in Hornchurch invites you to join in their Bell Rining Sessions.
Bell rining provides good mental and phystical exercise as well as the opporuntity to become part of a team,
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You can learn to ring the church bells initally before joining the team to play the bells for weddings, sunday services and other special occasions.
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Tis that time of year again!
Question is........ Are StaffsVW going to make an appearance? Hope so!
Jon/Rich are we good to go on this?
Being presumptuous but based on previous years one might as well start the list
1) Anil John - Mk2 Golf GTI 8V as plain as you can get.


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text:
Last week, school closed early for the summer because a student caught swine flu, which meant my summer holiday started a week early. The first thing I did was go camping at the beach, have a barbeque, go to the beach for the second time, make this and two other ice creams (coming soon!). Temperatures are getting as high as 32 C already. Now, summer is truly in the air.
If you go to to any supermarket here now, you'll see staff arranging cartons and cartons of huge strawberries onto the fruit aisle. In Hong Kong, practically everything we eat is imported, and these strawberries are from America. So before everything is gone, I grabbed a carton, lined up to pay for it, and began to brainstorm as to what to do with these juicy jewels.
Eventually, I chose a recipe out of my new ice cream book and decided to attempt sorbet for the first time. Surprisingly, this recipe has an ingredient that I haven't seen before in ice creams or sorbets - gelatine. But I think it was the addition of it that made the texture cottony soft and not overly frozen. A scoop of this is packed with the sweetness of strawberries, the tanginess of lemon juice, and lightly spiked with a little booze. What's more, it's also low in fat.
Now go grab some strawberries, churn yourself a batch of this refreshing dessert and cool off from the heat!
Strawberry Sorbet
Adapted from Ice Cream Book by Junko Fukuda (Original recipe in Chinese)
30ml + 3tbsp Water (measured separately)
70g Sugar
300g Strawberries, hulled and halved
2 tsp Lemon Juice
1tbsp Rum
5g Gelatine
*Amounts of sugar and lemon juice can be adjusted accordingly to suit the strawberry's sweetness or tartness
1. Place the 3tbsp water in a small, microwaveable bowl and sprinkle on the gelatine. Leave for it to bloom.
2. In a small saucepan, place the sugar and the remaining water and cook until the sugar is dissolved. Set aside to cool.
3. Place the strawberries, lemon juice, rum and the cold syrup into a blender. Whizz until the the mixture is homogeneous. Transfer into a large bowl.
4. Place the gelatine mixture into the microwave and heat it on medium for around 30 seconds (or less) until the gelatine is thoroughly dissolved. Slowly mix it into the strawberry mixture.
5. Place the bowl on top of an ice bath and cool, stirring occasionally. The mixture should thicken slightly.
6. Churn the mixture for around 20 minutes or until frozen.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
A Spoonful of Summer
Posted by Wendy at 1:39 PM
It's frozen, sorbet, strawberry
7 Responses to "A Spoonful of Summer"
Anh said...
Ah a spoonful of summer indeed. The color is soo beautiful!
very summery indeed!
looks delicious, seriously!
Katie @ goodLife {eats} said...
Beautiful pictures. Saw you on Foodgawker. Sorbet is such a treat during hot summers.
gelatine in ice cream sounds very new to me... yours look delicious. congrats!
Elissa said...
Lovely color. I've never heard of gelatine in ice cream either! The presentation of your first photo is really nice.
Lydia said...
I love your photos, good setting and positioning. Keep it up, Wendy!
This is delicious.This sorbet is good for health.Have a nice day.
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Lomond Lodge invites you to come and enjoy the spectacular scenery, from the craggy Remarkables Mountains to the shimmering waters of Lake Wakatipu, while you stay in comfort in the heart of Queenstown, New Zealand.
Whether your visit is for a few days or a few weeks, Lomond Lodge offers the perfect place to unwind in a resort town that never stops. We are privately owned and operated, guaranteeing every guest receives a warm welcome, helpful information and personal service.
We look forward to hosting you soon!


text:
Imagine your data on a cloud environment, or a hosted BI solutions vendor, or any other number of hosted environments.
* How do you protect your data from getting stolen?
* How do you trace it if it is stolen?
* How do you track down the invader/hackers?
* How do you /can you stall the hackers long enough to take evasive action?
First off: we all know that NO security solution will ever be 100% fail-safe, it just simply will not exist. When someone creates a more secure solution, someone else comes up with a way to break it, that's just the way it goes. BUT, there is such a thing as "thinking ahead", thinking outside the box, thinking about what you CAN do to prevent and deter succumbing to these types of problems - which may cost you your business, may cost you money (in law-suits), may tangle you up in legalities with governments, and on and on.
There's no question as to the issues that can arise if you don't prove that you've "done everything in your power" to protect the consumers/customers. So what can you do?
Cloud Computing and Hosted Environments (that is if they host your Data) present unique challenges, really unique challenges. Everything from "shared data on shared machines" to shared data on dedicated machines, to VPN with non-shared, non-public machines, etc...
Well, let's blow away the fog in the cloud for a minute and take a look at a simple case:
Suppose you outsource your BI and your data for that BI to an analytics as a service firm.... So far so good. The BEST possible protection you can have (and they should tell you this up front) is to NOT release any personally identifyable data to the hosted service or cloud, only release aggregate data - rolled up trends, trends of trends, and so on... Then, add to that all the standard and well known security that you can buy, and it's fairly decent.
Now let's say for whatever reason you've outsourced the CLOUD environment, and you've uploaded sensitive data... What can you do? what kinds of questions should you ask? What should the vendors be willing to help with?
First, there's not much you can do - other than ask the vendors for new features... which leads me to answer the question: what can / should the vendors do in this new computing arena?
Cloud is interesting: it follows on the notion that if you need more computing power, that it becomes available on-demand. Ok, cool. What if the extra computing power needed was for encryption/decryption of the data? In other words, I believe that ALL outsourced data should be stored in encrypted format on disk - well, that's a good start, especially if each DISK array carries it's own encryption/decryption hardware to perform the task on the fly. This prevents someone from "hot-swapping" a RAID 5 disk with a copy of sensitive data and taking it home to crack it. Well - not really, they can still hot-swap it and take it home, but cracking it (with the right algorithm) can be another story.
The next step: is encryption/decryption at the database level. I'm assuming that since you're running BI / Analytics in a cloud, that you'll also be needing a Database engine right? Ok, so the Database engine should encrypt/decrypt the data as it works with it. The only place the sensitive data should "be visible" is in RAM of the database engine or the machine on which it is currently existing.
Am I saying to encrypt ALL data? No - that would be ludicrous, and would cost way too much money... Only encrypt the data that your organization deems sensitive or private in nature. However, the Database engine should make it EASY with little to no performance hit (due to cloud resource availability).
Next, comes the part out of the box... What if: Data needed a DONGLE to be utilized properly? What if the data was sent to your machine, exported to excel, but to SEE the data had to be decrypted on your desktop with a public or private key? Now, this is interesting... A database manufacturer working with a cloud based hosted service, to produce DONGLE's instead of SEAT licenses, or instead of selling "software clients" they sold "decryption" dongles for USB... Hmmm - interesting. The Dongles then would talk to the cloud, report who, when, and what was viewed - you don't have a choice (sorry, big brother has been watching for a VERY long time).
Let's do one better... what if, just what if, the data itself could be SIGNED - just like a certificate is signed, and this "watermark" went whereever the data went, it couldn't be removed, and it couldn't be seen - but it would be used as part of the key to decrypt and make sense of it. Now, if the data itself was stolen (even in encrypted format) it would be traceable. No - it wouldn't call home, as there's no "application" for that, but if it shows up somewhere, there would be forensic evidence (like a finger print) on the data that would point to it's origin.... Now that's some cool science fiction stuff (I wish it were so)....
Anyhow, back to reality... The Dongles provide really good protection mechanisms today, and in fact can also be embedded with a finger-print reader as part of the authentication mechanisms. This technology exists, and could be put to good use. \
In some cases your data is worth more than your gold or money in the bank, because it represents tomorrows profitability. Don't you have the right to ask vendors to help you protect it? Of course, they have the right to ask you to pay for this service....
Just a thought. If you have some other cool thoughts, reply in the comments to this blog - I'd love to hear them.
Dan Linstedt
Posted March 30, 2010 3:05 PM
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