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5/11/2010 – Chuck Colson –
Is the U.S. Flag Offensive?
The right of free speech is guaranteed by the Constitution. The right to not be offended is not. But guess which right trumped the other in a California school last week.
The two students were minding their own business—just sitting at a table on a school break, chatting with their friends. And then the vice principal of the school walked up to the boys—and ordered them to remove their American flag bandanas. Their T-shirts also featured the Stars and Stripes. The boys were told to turn them inside out, so the flags wouldn't show.
The boys—who often wore these kind of clothes—refused, and were sent to the principal's office. There, they were told their T-shirts were "incendiary," and would provoke fights.
Why? Because it was Cinco de Mayo. Mexican-American students at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, California might be offended. Take the shirts off, the boys were told—or face suspension.
Instead, the boys went home. But they, and their parents, are furious. As one of the students—Daniel Galli—put it, "I did nothing wrong…I'm an American and I'm proud to be an American."
As for the school's Mexican-American students—they think their flag-wearing classmates ought to apologize. One of them, Annicia Nunez, told a reporter why: "It is a Mexican Heritage Day. We don't deserve to get disrespected like that."
Disrespected? By students wearing the flag of their country? It's hard to know where to start.
First of all, if Ms. Nunez is an American citizen, the American flag is her flag, too. Why would she be offended by the sight of it?
Second, where did Ms. Nunez get the idea that she had a right not to be offended by someone else's exercise of free speech—speech that is protected by the Constitution? America was built on the belief that everyone has the right to freedom of speech.
Given that, it's understandable that what we say, write, or have emblazoned on our clothing may sometimes offend our neighbors. But we accept that bargain because we believe in tolerance—that is, putting up with people whose opinions we don't like, and treating them with respect.
Sadly, this view of tolerance has been turned on its head in recent years. So-called cultural arbiters—the media, academics, political leaders—now prescribe which ideas and opinions are in bounds and which things are out of bounds. And then, they enforce their decisions. This is akin to the soft despotism Toqueville warned about—the tyranny of tolerance where the cultural elites seek to eliminate free expression.
I'm happy to report that outraged citizens all across America have called the Live Oak school district to complain about the way the flag-wearing students were treated. They're demanding the principal be fired, and urging the boys to file a lawsuit. It appears that Americans have just about had enough of being told what to think and what to say—and that's a healthy sign.
I have an additional suggestion: Both the offended students and the folks who run Live Oak High School ought to be required to take a civics class. And the first lesson ought to be memorizing a quotation ironically attributed to someone who persecuted Christianity, Voltaire: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
Including on your T-shirt.
HT: Break Point


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|Jepson Flora Project: Jepson Interchange
previous taxon |
next taxon
Jepson Interchange (more information)
©Copyright 1993 by the Regents of the University of California
Annual to tree
Leaves basal or cauline, alternate, opposite, or whorled, generally simple and toothed (to pinnately compound); stipules 0 or generally deciduous
Inflorescence: spike, raceme, panicle, or flowers solitary in axils; bracted
Flower generally bisexual, generally radial, opening at dawn or dusk; hypanthium sometimes prolonged beyond ovary (measured from ovary tip to sepal base); sepals generally 4(27); petals generally 4 (or as many as sepals, rarely 0), often "fading" darker; stamens generally 4 or 8(2), anthers 2-chambered, opening lengthwise, pollen generally interconnected by threads; ovary inferior, chambers generally 4 (sometimes becoming 1), placentas axile or parietal, ovules 1many per chamber, style 1, stigma 4-lobed (or lobes as many as sepals), club-shaped, or hemispheric
Fruit: capsule, loculicidal (sometimes berry or indehiscent and nut-like)
Seeds sometimes winged or hair-tufted
Genera in family: 15 genera, ± 650 species: worldwide, especially w North America; many cultivated (Clarkia, Epilobium, Fuchsia, Gaura, Oenothera )
Reference: [Munz 1965 North America Fl II 5:1278]
Annual to subshrub
Leaves generally opposite below (or clustered in axils), generally ± fine-toothed; veins generally obscure
Inflorescence: generally raceme, bracted
Flower radial or ± bilateral; sepals 4, erect; petals 4, generally notched; stamens 8, anthers attached at middle, pollen grains generally shed in 4's, generally cream-yellow; ovary chambers 4, stigma generally club-like
Fruit straight, cylindric to club-like
Seeds generally in 1 row per chamber, generally with white, deciduous hair-tuft
Species in genus: 171 species: worldwide except tropical
Recent taxonomic note: Epilobium angustifolium, Epilobium latifolium now treated in Chamerion. See Hoch 1999 Flora of Japan IIc: 241; Baum et al. 1994 Syst Bot 19:363388.
Etymology: (Greek: upon pod, from inferior ovary)
Reference: [Raven 1976 Ann Missouri Bot Gard 63:326340]
Incl Boisduvalia , Zauschneria. Most taxa polyploid; many with anthers ± = stigma self-pollinated; many hybrids.
Perennial < 8.5 dm, clumped, ± glabrous, glaucous; stolons short, scaly
Leaf subsessile, 1070 mm, narrowly lanceolate to narrowly ovate, clasping
Flower: hypanthium 0.72.3 mm; sepals 1.67.5 mm; petals 2.512 mm, generally pink to rose-purple (white)
Fruit 2075 mm, sometimes sparsely hairy; pedicel 525 mm
Seed 0.71.2 mm, papillate
Chromosomes: 2n=36
Ecology: Gravel bars, scree, roadsides, moist rocky areas
Elevation: 6003800 m.
Bioregional distribution: Klamath Ranges, High North Coast Ranges, High Cascade Range, High Sierra Nevada, Transverse Ranges, Peninsular Ranges, Warner Mountains, n White and Inyo Mountains
Distribution outside California: to w Canada, Montana, Wyoming, n Mexico

subset: commoncrawl


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Check out this happy pile, which is appropriately named Happier. It's Deena Rutter's newest collection for Riley Blake. Cute prints and colors – I've been cutting into it today.
In other fun news, Anna at Crafty Girls Workshop and I are teaming up with a giveaway of a Chrysalis charm pack and one of my Chain Linked patterns – a perfect pattern to use with charm packs.


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American Physical Society Sites|APS|Journals|PhysicsCentral|Physics Magazine
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Paul H. Carr & Laurence I. Gould, Co-Editors
Download PDF Version of Newsletter
April 23-24, 2010
Union College
Schenectady, NY
Registration, abstract, and housing information can be found at
Friday and Saturday – October 16-17, 2009
University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH
Invited Speakers
Professor Galileo's 21st Century Syllabus
Prof. Timothy Slater (University of Wyoming)
Galileo's Ideas Might Have Been Better Received If He Understood Cognitive Science
Dr. Stephanie Slater (University of Wyoming)
Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope: First Year Highlights
Dr. David J. Thompson (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)
After 400 years, some of us still get it wrong: Science Errors on TV (A Personal Experience)
Prof. Neil F. Comins (University of Maine)
He presented information and how producers manipulated science presented by the narrator to provide incorrect information that viewers are likely to incorporate into their own belief system.
NASA's Kepler Mission Dr. Andrea Dupree, Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Imaging the Interstellar Wind and the Boundary of the Heliosphere in the "Light" of Neutral Atoms using the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX)
Prof. Eberhard Möbius (University of New Hampshire)
Report on the October 2009 Greater Boston Area Statistical Mechanics meeting
Brandeis University
(communicated by Harvey Gould, Clark University)
Approximately 80 people attended the eleventh annual Greater Boston Area Statistical Mechanics meeting on Saturday, October 10, 2009 at Brandeis University. The main goal of these meetings is to offer an informal and supportive environment where people from a variety of departments and institutions can meet and exchange ideas. In addition our goal is to give students a venue where they can discuss their work with more senior scientists. The format is four invited talks of 30 minutes each and contributed talks of about 3–4 minutes each. Plenty of time is set aside for informal conversations.
The invited speakers for this year's meeting were
The tradition of the meeting is to invite speakers who have recently embarked on their independent research careers, or speakers who are new to the Boston area, or more senior people whose work deserves greater recognition. (Rama Bansil had been in Washington, DC the past two years as a grant monitor for the NSF.)
There were 26 contributed talks, a number consistent with previous years for which the number of contributed talks has ranged from 23 to 35. All talks were given with the aid of a Windows or Macintosh notebook computer. One of the better contributed talks was given by Brad Marston from Brown University who did a real time simulation of a climate model taking advantage of the multicore processors in the latest notebook computers. The talks covered the broad applications of statistical mechanics with an increasing emphasis on biologically related systems.
Institutions represented included BAE Systems, BBN Technologies, Boston College, Boston University, Brandeis University, Brown University, Clark University, The College of Holy Cross, Frontier Technology Inc., Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy, MEARS Technologies, MIT, Mount Holyoke College, Northeastern University, Saint Anselm College, UMass Amherst, UMass Boston, University of Connecticut, Storrs, University of Connecticut health Cae Center, University of Maine, Wellesley College, and WPI. There were approximately 45 graduate students, 15 post-docs, 15 faculty members, 3 undergraduate students, and 4 people from industry in attendance.
The meeting has been subsidized by the New England Section of the APS for the past eleven years at a cost of approximately $10 per person for bagels, coffee, and lunch (sandwiches). As a result, the organizers of the meeting have not had to collect a registration fee and organizing the meeting has been relatively straightforward. After many years of threatening to do so, we collected a $10 registration fee from those who failed to pre-register.
The meeting is open to anyone, including non-members of the APS and NES, but nonmembers are encouraged to join both. The NES would like to encourage meetings of this type in the New England area and would welcome requests for financial assistance. The main criteria are that the meeting be open to all, widely announced, and make an effort to involve people who are not necessarily expert in the field. Requests for subsidies for student attendance are particularly welcome.
The organizers of the meeting are Bulbul Chakraborty, Claudio Chamon, Harvey Gould, and Bill Klein. More information about the meeting, including titles of the contributed talks and previous meetings, can be found at physics.clarku.edu/gbasm/.
Next years meeting is tentatively scheduled for a Saturday in October 2010.
Please Note: The content of what follows expresses each writer's considered opinion and should not be construed as representing any official position of any organization, including the Executive Board of the New England Section of the American Physical Society.
The issue of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is not settled. This can be seen from the Letters below as well as contributions to the debate existing in recent publications of this Newsletter (Fall 2007 through Fall 2009 issues). These can be obtained from the NES APS website.
Given the importance of the topic, we welcome letters (positive or negative) about the issues. The Newsletter is published twice yearly (Fall and Spring).
Paul Carr and Larry Gould, Co-Editors
NES APS Newsletter
Editorial By Paul H. Carr, www.MirrorOfNature.org
Copenhagen 1600: Tragedy
In the 1600, the tragedy of Shakespeare's play, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, was rooted in Hamlet's indecision. The Ghost of prince Hamlet's father appeared saying that while sleeping he had been poisoned by his brother Claudius, who became the King and married the Queen, Hamlet's mother. The Ghost demanded that Hamlet avenge the murder.
Hamlet needed more evidence, so he staged a play for the King and his court reenacting the murder. King Claudius' reaction confirmed his guilt, but Hamlet did not seize this moment to avenge his father. This missed opportunity lead to a series of mishaps, which ended with the death of Hamlet, his mother the Queen, and King Claudius.
This play shows the tragic consequences of indecision and missed opportunity (see Copenhagen 2009 Climate Conference below).It also shows the complexity and ambiguity of human motivations (See Copenhagen 1941: Heisenberg's Visit to Bohr below.)
Copenhagen 2009: Climate Conference. Missed Opportunity?
Let us fast-forward to December 2009. Was the United Nations Climate Conference in the Danish capital Copenhagen a modern example of missed opportunity with tragic consequences for human life on this earth?
A basic problem: of the 193 countries attending, only 30 countries (including the United States and China) are responsible for 90 per cent of the global warming emissions.
After a marathon all night session, the international effort to combat climate change ended with the Copenhagen Accord. The 193 countries grudgingly agreed to "take note."
President Obama, who was active in brokering the Accord concluded, "This progress did not come easily, and we know that this progress alone is not enough. We've come a long way, but we have much further to go."
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he welcomed the deal. "It may not be everything we hoped for, but this decision of the Conference of Parties is an essential beginning and we must transform this into a legally binding treaty next year. The importance will only be recognized when it is codified into international law."
Copenhagen 1941: Heisenberg's Visit to Bohr
A parallel between the ambiguity of human motivations and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.
I recently saw the stage version of English playwright Michael Frayn's Copenhagen performed by the Peterborough NH Players. It was performed on a stage with wooden chairs for the three characters: Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr, and his wife and confidante Margrethe. The back of the stage served as an imaginary Copenhagen door on which Heisenberg knocked in 1941 during the Nazi occupation and was greeted by his former teacher and mentor Niels Bohr. The physics community held Bohr in such high regard that he was often referred to as "The Pope." His Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics still predominates.
At the conclusion of the play, the mushroom cloud accompanying the loud explosion of the first atomic bomb in 1945 was projected on a screen at the back of the stage. Heisenberg who had worked on a nuclear reactor in Nazi Germany, said "I have never killed anyone." Bohr could not claim this as he had contributed to the US bomb as a member of Oppenheimer's team at the Los Alamos. Bohr worked there after escaping from Copenhagen in 1943 when the Nazis sent the Jews to concentration camps. In such circumstances, his working on the bomb could be considered morally justifiable.
The DVD which I saw several years ago was much more illustrative. It showed Heisenberg, surrounded by Nazi soldiers, getting off the train from Germany to Copenhagen. It also showed him in the elegant mansion in which the Bohrs lived as well as going for a walk nearby to avoid being recorded on Nazi microphones. When they returned from the walk, Bohr was very angry.
However I do not remember the dialogue on the DVD being as nuanced as in the play. Its purpose was to show that where is some kind of parallel between the ambiguity of human motivations and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. We often do not know all the reasons why do what we do. We also do not see ourselves as others see us. We have selective memories. Heisenberg described the multiplicity of rationalizations when he said: "It is not like going through 2 slits but through 20 slits."
Multiple motivations were given for Heisenberg's 1941 trip to Copenhagen.
Another example was the multiple answers that Heisenberg gave Bohr's question, "Why didn't your calculate the amount of fissionable Uranium-235 needed to make a bomb?"
It later came out in the play that Heisenberg's calculation had been so high that the Germans had not considered it technologically feasible to separate U-235 from U-238. (U-235 is only one percent of U-238 in naturally occurring Uranium.) To make the calculation, Heisenberg needed to know the neutron absorption cross-section and the diffusion length, which he may not have been known that accurately. Heisenberg may have played it safe in quoting a high number. If his calculation had been low and had initiated an unsuccessful bomb program, the Nazis might have executed him.
Heisenberg's version of the 1941 meeting appeared in Robert Jungk's book exculpating the German scientists, suggesting that they had surreptitiously "dragged their feet" to resist Hitler. When Bohr read Heisenberg's account, he was very angry. He thought that Heisenberg had misstated what had happened. Bohr wrote a letter to Heisenberg, but characteristically he did not send it. He went on re-drafting it as he had his scientific papers. In fact, he went on redrafting it for the rest of his life. The letter was found after his death among his papers.
As Pogo once said: "We have met the enemy and he is us." In spite of tremendous scientific progress since 1600, we are still challenged to transcend our human limitations.
Comments: Gerald Guralnik
I read the play when it first came out and found that a good deal of its content corresponds to what Heisenberg told me at a conference* he ran at a small resort outside of Munich in 1965. In a private conversation, he told me the story of his now famous meeting with Bohr during the war and tried very hard to support his claim that he had done his best to stop a successful development of a Nazi bomb.
Prof. Gerald Guralnik
Elementary Particle Theory
Physics Department, Brown University
*The work presented by Prof. Guralnik at the conference he mentions was based on his paper predicting the existence of what is now called the Higg's boson. [G.S. Guralnik, C.R. Hagen and T.W.B. Kibble, "Global Conservation Laws and Massless Particles" Phys. Rev. Lett. 13, 585 (1964)]
Comments: Harvey Charlton
Missed opportunities and inaction are often coupled in human affairs and may result in tragedy, maybe even global tragedy, but most often in mediocrity or decay. The ambiguities of the human condition do result in many forms of uncertainties.
Prof. Harvey Charlton
Department of Mathematics
North Carolina State University
Editorial Comments By Laurence I. Gould, http://uhaweb.hartford.edu/LGOULD
The arguments, which contradict the AGW alarmist claims, continue to build. So too does the evidence exposing the suppression and manipulation of scientific data in order to support those claims. "Climategate" has become just one of the popular term referring to such events. Nevertheless, there are those who maintain (without evidence) that the conclusions of the IPCC — concerning dangerous AGW — are not altered by those events.
In the Editorial section of past issues of the Newsletter I have tried to explain (as have others through their Letters) why the AGW alarmist claims are seriously flawed. But we also print contrary positions - and will continue to do so. We have, in fact, printed (verbatim) all Letters received (both pro and con ).
Since the last Newsletter was published we have received only two Letters. They are printed below. In case the reader is interested in seeing a variety of supporting documents to reference 2 of Roger Cohen's Letter, please click on "Responses to the 2010 APS Email" at the link given in his references.
The broad issue regarding AGW is, I think, one of a corrupted scientific method. So, here — for those who care — are some remarks on that issue from the 1974 Caltech Commencement address, "Cargo Cult Science", by Richard Feynman:
… We've learned from experience that the truth will out. Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right. Nature's phenomena will agree or they'll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven't tried to be very careful in this kind of work. And it's this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in Cargo Cult Science [pseudo science].
… you should not fool the layman when you're talking as a scientist … I'm talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you're maybe wrong, that you ought to do when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen.
… so I have just one wish for you — the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom.
[transcript of the complete speech can be found at http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.pdf ]
Email LETTER to the Editors by Peter Friedman
(received 31 December 2009)-
To the Editors:
In the face of all of the hysteria, supported by claims of a "scientific consensus," what do we really know about Global Warming?
Although the earth has experienced some warming in the industrial period, we know that its temperature has also varied over long and short-term time scales and that the causes of these cycles are poorly understood. We know that the available temperature data have been taken over a time span that is short relative to the natural cycles in the climate and that these data are plagued by errors and biases. We know that proxy data used to fill the void in temperature data are affected by a myriad of other forcing functions. While we speculate that the relatively minor greenhouse contribution of CO2 might be magnified by a feedback from water vapor, we do not know the magnitude of this feedback – or even whether it is positive or negative.
While a number of computer models paint apocalyptic scenarios, we know that the models are not yet predictive – as evident by their failure to predict current temperature trends. This should not come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the practical limitations of computer modeling. After all, the complex interaction between events at various length scales prevents modeling most relatively simple fluid flow problems, unless the solutions incorporate sufficient empirical data. Clearly, the earth's climate is vastly more complex and involves interactions over a much greater range of scales than the still unsolvable flow around a golf ball.
So what do we really know about Global Warming? The honest assessment is that, despite our ever-expanding knowledge base on the subject, we have a very long way to go before we can claim that we understand climate change, much less predict it with a reasonable level of confidence.
In the face of this reality, the APS leadership has adopted a naïve and alarmist position on behalf of its members, claiming "incontrovertible evidence" and urging "policies and actions that will reduce the emission of greenhouse gases." In taking this political position, the APS leadership has abdicated the organization's scientific responsibility.
In an attempt to encourage a review of the official APS position, several members contacted a sample of colleagues via email. The response by the APS leadership has been chilling; rather than promoting the free exchange of information in order to facilitate a scholarly debate, APS President Murray has sought to squelch it by implicitly threatening sanctions against the dissenters. This comes at a time when the scrutiny of the world is focused on emails from East Anglia University, which, among other things, demonstrated that skeptics have been silenced in order to manufacture a consensus.
The APS should be careful about jeopardizing its reputation by jumping onto the consensus bandwagon and prematurely endorsing unsubstantiated conclusions. It has a responsibility to promote a thorough and independent assessment of the science before it is used as a basis for policy decisions that are potentially destructive to developed nations as well as energy-starved third world nations.
Peter D. Friedman
Dartmouth, Massachusetts
Email LETTER to the Editors by Roger Cohen
(received 2 March 2010) -
To the Editors:
Of sins, it is often said that, "It is not what you do that counts, it is what you do after you do what you do." The idea is that everyone makes mistakes, but circumstances usually provide opportunities to make things right. And it is how one reacts to those opportunities that lends real insight to character. The "second rate burglary" of Watergate was serious, but the cover up made it terminal.
When the APS promulgated the 2007 Policy Statement on Climate Change, with its now infamous "The evidence is incontrovertible," it made a mistake. Pretty much everyone agrees with that. But APS leadership was then given multiple opportunities to set it right – to conduct itself in a manner consistent with the Society's rich tradition. So far, it has flubbed these opportunities. Here is the record.
The story starts with the May 2009 Open Letter to the Council [1], in which an alternative to the 2007 Statement was proposed. The alternative challenged scientific conclusions known to be derived from IPCC reports. Things got off to a good start when the matter was referred to an ad hoc committee to report back in November. But then matters started downhill. The Ad Hoc Committee endorsed the content of the 2007 Statement, while remanding it to POPA to address issues of "clarity and tone." At the same time the Committee rejected the proposed alternative, referencing IPCC reports and their derivatives. Yet, these were the very reports that had been challenged, so we had gone around in a circle. The Society had not examined the science itself, opting to outsource its assessment to the UN body.
Accordingly, the Society was petitioned to conduct an independent scientific study and assessment of the global warming issue. As of this writing, the Petition for such a study/assessment has gathered 260 signatures, including 90 Fellows and 15 members of national academies. In addition, letters from hundreds of other members demonstrated that a substantial fraction believe that the current APS Statement should be withdrawn, pending an independent study. Such a study would follow the traditions of the past. For example, the Star Wars issue of the 80s, also contentious and fraught with policy implications, was examined by the Society and the results published in Reviews of Modern Physics. Members around at the time regard this as one of the Society's finest hours.
Meanwhile the "ClimateGate" disclosures emerged, followed by the parade of "aftergate" revelations of shoddy practice by the IPCC in its claims of past and projected effects of global warming, plus the revelations of manipulations of temperature data/stations and uncorrected heat island effects that led to large warming biases. Whatever else these disclosures demonstrate, they certainly emphasize the need for the Society to take an independent course to restore public trust in science. To continue to rely on investigations by the agencies that created and tolerated the conditions revealed by these disclosures is not a credible course. And importantly, in rejecting the proposed alternative statement, the ad hoc committee report extensively referenced work by individuals directly implicated by the disclosures.
Unfazed by the disclosures, APS leadership has now produced a draft Commentary [2] on the 2007 Statement, finally addressing matters of 'clarity and tone.' The Commentary is intended to be an appendix or supplement to the 2007 Statement, which is to remain unchanged. That is, the committee recommends that the original 157 word Statement be retained but appended with 827 words of explanation.
Thus, according to the committee, the 2007 Statement needs no revision. It just needs to be explained better. Not only was the 2007 Statement completely valid at its time of issue, there has been no subsequent finding or development that warrants any change whatsoever. Yet, since 2007, we have seen the continuation of the flat global temperature trend, now static for a dozen years or more and punctuating the lack of correlation of global temperature with atmospheric CO2; the aforementioned revelations of manipulations of temperature data; the parade of problems with paleoclimate analyses purporting to show exceptional 20th century warming; studies of ocean heat content and complexity switching that are at odds with climate models; a variety of empirical studies of natural variations and transient phenomena pointing to a low climate sensitivity to greenhouse gases; the disclosures of public and private doubts by key climate scientists; and more. We are being asked to accept that none of this warrants a single change to the original statement.
And POPA has once again put the APS in the position of speaking to the science without a valid basis for doing so. For its source material, we know only that the APS President thanked a number of IPCC lead authors and other advocates...and a single token "skeptic." The President also thanked the Chair of POPA, whose research program depends on continued global-warming alarmism. But whereas the Commentary makes numerous statements of a scientific nature, it offers no attribution sources for these statements. If the ultimate source is the IPCC, the APS has continued its practice of outsourcing the science, and to an organization whose scientific neutrality and indeed competence is questioned. If it is the committee's own assessment, it has no scientific authority or special competence to make that assessment.
Perhaps worse is an important error in scientific logic in the Commentary, as revealed by, "...there have been no credible natural mechanisms proposed to explain all of the observed warming in the past century." We do not understand natural mechanisms and their impact on climate, and it is not the job of climate science to prove the existence of a large CO2 contribution by showing that it cannot account for past warming by natural effects (therefore, it must have been CO2) . Rather it must show direct evidence that greenhouse gases have indeed caused substantial warming. It must do so by making predictions that are verified – or not – by observation. That is the scientific method. In this regard, the models have failed to predict the actual temperature increase ever since the first IPCC report of 1990, and their prediction of a greenhouse fingerprint – the tropical "hot spot" of accelerated warming in the troposphere – is simply not observed.
And there is sleight of hand. The Commentary does a "bait and switch" trick to try to defend the infamous "Evidence is incontrovertible" clause, which is to remain the stated position of the APS. Here is the full passage from the 2007 Statement: "The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur." The trick is to switch the actual passage to the merely trivial "Global Warming has occurred," and then proceed to defend the fact that warming did occur in spurts in the 20th century. This is almost as deceptive as "Mike's Nature trick;" only this version of "Hide the decline" obscures the fact that global warming is not occurring, at least since around 1995. Furthermore, the threatening calls to action in the passage were clearly linked to "The evidence is incontrovertible" and angered many members. The Commentary ignores the full context, evidently to head off the need for any revision of the 2007 statement.
Then APS leadership, after taking a meaningful step toward improved transparency by asking members to comment on the Commentary, refused to publish those comments, anonymously of course. We will have to rely on interpretation and spin from POPA, hardly a neutral and reliable source of information. This obscurantism will prevent us from knowing how fellow members feel about the Statement-plus-Commentary.
I could go on. But readers will get the point. Returning to the theme, "It is not what you do that counts, it is what you do after you do what you do," unfortunately APS leadership has not capitalized on the opportunities it has been given. Instead it has dodged, weaved, stonewalled, and wasted the opportunities to take the high ground on the fundamental science issue of our time. I don't know how many more opportunities APS leadership will get, but the dreary history to this point strongly suggests that the next generation of physicists will look back at this time with deep regret and distress for the Society and indeed for physics itself.
Roger W. Cohen
Fellow APS
[1] Click on "2008_open_letter" at http://www.openletter-globalwarming.info/Site/HOME.html
[2] Click on "The 2010 APS Request for Comments" at http://www.openletter-globalwarming.info/Site/HOME.html
American Physical Society/New England Section Year 2010
*Chair (2010): Peter Parker
Dept. of Physics,
Yale University, P.O. Box 208120,
New Haven, CT 06520-8120
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*Vice Chair (2010): TBD
* Past Chair (2010): David Kraft
Dana Hall
University of Bridgeport
Bridgeport, CT 06601
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Smith College
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Paul H. Carr
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Department of Physics
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College of Holy Cross
Worcester,MA 01610
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University of Maine
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Mount Holyoke College
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*Members at Large (2009-2011)
Derek Stein
Dept. of Physics
Brown University
Providence, RI 02912
Ph: 401-863-2581
email: firstname.lastname@example.com
B. Lee Roberts
Dept. of Physics
Boston University
590 Commonwealth Ave, Boston, MA 02215
Ph: 617-353-2187
email: email@example.com
Education Liaison to the APS Committee on Education
Arthur Mittler
Department of Physics and Applied Physics
University of Massachusetts Lowell
1 University Ave.
Lowell, MA 01854
Phone: 978-934-3775
Council Observer (2005-)
Edward F. Deveney
Physics Department
Bridgewater State College
Bridgewater, MA 02325
Peter K. Le Maire
Department of Physics and Earth Sciences
Central Connecticut State University
New Britain, CT 06050
Phone: 860-832-2939
Fax: 860-832-2946
This contribution has not been peer refereed. It represents solely the view(s) of the author(s) and not necessarily the views of APS.


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What to Expect from a GOP House
Getting anything done will be a tall order in a bitterly divided government.
Next year will be tailor-made for fans of gridlock. There'll be an even larger wrench in the machinery of Washington as Republicans gain leverage in next month's midterm, probably taking control of the House and coming close in the Senate.
Compromise will be hard to find as incumbents on both sides shun the center. They'll work to keep their respective bases happy, fearing another round of primary knockouts in the 2012 presidential election cycle.
Republicans aim to stop President Obama in his tracks. Big administration initiatives are doomed to fail. But Democrats will stop the GOP as well. Both sides will have enough power to block a big bill, but neither will have enough to push one through.
A GOP House will appear like a busy legislative construction crew for months, drafting and passing one big bill after another, but knowing major bills will have difficulty in the Senate or face a presidential veto that won't be overridden. They'll have to know many of their largest efforts may end up being symbolic until another election or two when the GOP may have a better shot of actually enacting large conservative reforms.
That'll be just fine politically for Republicans. They'll have little choice but to take a very ambitious, hard-hitting course in any event next year -- delivering an assault on Democratic power, big government as they see it, deficit spending and a center-left ideology that guides much of Obama's White House. They'll need to show the Republican Party base, Tea Party supporters, business backers and independents who have grown weary or cautious of Obama that the GOP is determined to change direction.
What will the gridlock mean for business issues? Climate control legislation is dead. Ditto, a comprehensive immigration law. Labor's priorities won't have a chance, including its biggest goal, union card check elections that may make it easier for labor organizers to score wins.
Figure on no movement to overhaul entitlements, namely Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and veterans' benefits. Reform will be central in the report later this year from the bipartisan debt and deficit reduction commission, but getting Congress to hold hands on painful fixes to popular automatic benefit programs will prove too much.
And no chance for significantly reforming the tax code, a bear of a project, even in less partisan times. The lame-duck session must deal with the Bush tax cuts that are set to expire Jan. 1, but the likely outcome -- a temporary extension -- will only delay an unpredictable fight. A compromise on estate taxes will finally win approval, either in December or early 2011.
The GOP will try but fail to repeal the health care law. That can't succeed as long as Obama is president. Republicans will then try to chip away by withholding funds for implementing various provisions, but that won't work, either. The health industry backs several big parts of the law and believes reopening it now would create many more problems than it would solve. Still, some tinkering is likely. There's bipartisan agreement, for example, on rolling back some reporting regulations that threaten to burden small businesses and that was included to help finance health care changes.
On government spending, expect something close to a freeze for most domestic programs in the wake of a year of budget battles. The GOP is determined to show that it's serious about shrinking the government, even if no landmark reduction is possible, such as eliminating an entire federal agency or two.
Congressional earmarks won't be eliminated. Despite much rhetoric about out-of-control unauthorized earmarks slipped into spending bills, the practice will remain. There may be some curbing of the practice, but large trimming is not in the picture. Even if House GOP leaders tout efforts to cut pork projects, Senate appropriators in each party vigorously defend the right of Congress to steer funding where members see fit for projects in their states.
Big fights, too, over regulations. The GOP will try to block dozens of rules the administration plans on the environment, labor issues and financial services. At best, Republicans will slow some rules and force a few compromises, but that will only add to the uncertainty that is already frustrating many businesses.
Also ahead: A slew of partisan-fired investigations of the administration that'll tie up officials who must produce reports and testify under subpoena on issues such as the industry bailouts and whether politics influenced decisions or how stimulus funds were spent. In the Senate, meanwhile, a smaller Democratic majority will find it even harder to confirm Obama appointees, especially any controversial judicial picks.
A few bills will pass. A six-year surface transportation spending bill green-lighting projects in every state and district is very likely, after much work over priorities and particulars. A free trade agreement with South Korea looks good to be ratified, also.


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Macaron or Macaroon? L'Ortolan
The main difference is which 'nuts' you are using. Almonds for macarons and Coconut for macaroons. Ok, so coconut isn't really a nut.
Thisweek, Macarons took centre stage for our 'Sweet & Savoury' masterclass, and we are happy to share one of our recipes with you, to make at home.
250g Caster Sugar
70g Water
90g Egg Whites
250g Icing Sugar
250g Ground Almonds
30g Cocoa Powder
90g Egg Whites
Theequipment you will need is an electric mixer, sugar thermometer, small saucepan, food processor, sieve, round bottomed bowl, silicone spatula, baking traywith a non stick mat (or greaseproof paper) and a piping bag with piping nozzle.
Firstly,we need to place the first part of the egg whites in the electric mixer and seton a medium speed. Heat the caster sugar and water in a pan to 121°c, measuringwith the sugar thermometer. Slowly trickle the hot sugar syrup into thewhisking egg whites and turn up to full power and continue to whisk until cool.
Meanwhile,place the icing sugar, ground almonds and cacao powder into the food processorand pulse at full speed until fully mixed and smooth, then pass through a sieveinto the bowl. Mix in the second part of egg whites to form a paste.
Whenthe egg whites have cooled to room temperature, mix ⅓ into the almond sugarpaste. Then, using the spatula, fold in the remaining egg whites, and take carenot to over work and knock all the air out. Keep folding just until the mix isfully incorporated and you no longer have white or dark brown streaks. Pour themix into your piping bag with nozzle in place. Pipe small 2cm wide circles ontoyour non stick baking sheet. Leave for around 1 hour until a skin begins toform on the surface and you're able to gently touch them without sticking. Thenyou are ready to cook. You will need your oven set to 150°c. Cook for 8-14minutes depending on the strength of your oven. Your macarons will be readywhen you can lift them cleanly away from your baking tray.
Removefrom the oven and allow to cool. Fill with the filing of your choice. Irecommend a mix of chocolate and cream.
Youcan store your macarons in the freezer for up to 3 months to a year.
Happy baking!


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Richard C.E. Beck
Professor of Law, Emeritus Founding Director, Graduate Tax Program
A former Sanskrit professor at Brown University, Richard C.E. Beck finds that the tax code he now teaches, with its multitudinous rules and layers of exceptions, has parallels in the study of languages.
"Puzzle-solving enthusiasts gravitate to tax law because of the enormous number of rules which can intersect in complicated and unpredictable ways," Professor Beck says. "It is certainly the most intricate law we have."
An expert in federal individual income tax who has testified for reform of spousal liability for income taxes before the Oversight Subcommittee of the House Ways & Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee, Professor Beck teaches Individual Tax, Tax Policy, International Tax, and the Taxation of Property Transactions. He has also taught Corporate & Partnership Tax.
While an assistant professor at the University of Denver College of Law, he taught in an LL.M. program in tax and he is now Co-Director of a similar program which he founded at New York Law School.
He says tax law involves all aspects of life, personal and business, and has an impact on every area of legal practice, from divorce and personal injury to bankruptcy and corporate law. It represents the "most continuous and important relationship we have with our governments."
"I'm very pro-taxpayer for an academic," he says. "I look at the way tax law and administration work in the trenches. It's often unfair to individuals who don't have the same resources as big organizations. I like to expose bad case law and misguided rulemaking. I see myself, in part, as sort of a gadfly."
Professor Beck coauthored a casebook on taxation of business enterprises, and has published numerous articles on a wide variety of income tax issues.
Professor Beck grew up in Chicago and earned a B.A. and Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Chicago, where he also taught for a year. He then taught Indo-European linguistics and Sanskrit at Brown for seven years before turning to the study of law at Yale.
After practicing in New York City for five years, Professor Beck published a tax article that reignited his academic interests, and he went back to teaching. He has also taught in Paris at the Sorbonne, at the University of Osnabrück, and at the Wirtschaftsuniversität in Vienna.
He loves New York City and lives with his wife in the Village.
"Federal Income Taxation of Business Enterprises: Cases, Statutes, Rulings." Michie, 1995 (with R.A. Westin & J.K. McNulty).
"Income Tax Consequences of Divorce and Separation." Chapter 9 in Taxation for the General Practitioner, (R.V. D'Alessandro, ed.). New York State Bar Association, 1999.
"Treble Damages in National Health Service Corps Contracts, Public Policy, and Hawronsky v. Commissioner," 22 Akron Tax Journal 129-168 (2007).
"The Failure of Innocent Spouse Reform (New York Law School Faculty Presentation Day III)," 51New York Law School Law Review 929-955 (2006-2007).
"Deductibility of Treble Damages Paid for Breach of National Health Service Corps Scholarship Contracts: The Misuse of I.R.C. 265(a)(1) in Stroud v. United States and of the Origin of the Claim Test in Keane v. Commissioner," 1 Charleston Law Review 1-36 (2006).
"Cancellation of Debt and Other Incidental Items of Income: Puritan Tax Rules in the U.S. (New York Law School Faculty Presentation Day II)," 49 New York Law School Law Review 695-715 (2004-2005).
"The Kiddie Tax: A Nuisance Solution to a Nonexistent Problem (Special Tax Symposium)." 30 Family Law Quarterly 103–122 (1996).
"Loan Repayment Assistance Programs for Public-Interest Lawyers: Why Does Everyone Think They are Taxable?" 40 New York Law School Law Review 251–310 (1996).
"Is Compromise of a Tax Liability Itself Taxable? A Problem of Circularity in the Logic of Taxation." 14Virginia Tax Review 153–208 (1994).
"Looking for the Perfect Woman: The Innocent Spouse in the Tax Court." 15 Review of Taxation of Individuals 3–38 (1991).
"The Innocent Spouse Problem: Joint and Several Liability for Income Taxes Should Be Repealed." 43 Vanderbilt Law Review 317–408 (1990).
"The Deductibility of a Worthless Right to Contribution for Joint Income Taxes: The Mistaken Line of Cases Under Rude v. Commissioner." 9 Virginia Tax Review 313–356 (1989).
"Joint Return Liability and Poe v. Seaborn: Should Both Be Repealed." 49 Tax Notes 457–467 (October 22, 1990).
"Liabilities Arising from Joint Tax Returns: The Innocent Spouse Rule." 1 New York Domestic Relations Reporter 129–134 (Matthew Bender, 1989).
"Distributions in Kind in Corporate Liquidations: A Defense of General Utilities." 38 Tax Lawyer 663–687 (1985).
"Cancellation of Debt and Other Incidental Items of Income: Puritan Tax Rules in the U.S.," originally published in 49 New York Law School Law Review, republished in Tax Digest Monthly (February 2006).
"Defaulted Child Support: The Better Tax Approach." 89 Tax Notes 1073 (November 20, 2000).
Moderator, Panel II: Assessing Proposed Solutions (Symposium: Women, Equity and Federal Tax Policy: Open Questions). 16 New York Law School Journal of Human Rights 167–202 (1999).
"The Innocent Spouse Rules." 15 Family Advocate 30 (Fall 1992).
2nd ed. Michie, 1999 (with R.A. Westin & J.K. McNulty).


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I had to go into Manchester for a meeting and decided to go early in order to treat myself to breakfast.
I managed to find HomeSweetHome (see previous thread re-Manchester).
Have to say it was fantastic.
Had their version of Eggs Benedict with very crispy bacon and two mugs (yes....mugs! Not teacups, shot glasses or tumblers!) of Hasbean Philter blend ......lovely. £2.20 for unlimited refills with food ordered before 12.
After the meeting I was near Deansgate so went for my first visit to Grindsmith. Ordered a Chemex. Nice brew but took 15mins and cost......wait for it.....£4.50!!!!!!! Is it just me but is that a bit steep?
So the independent shops I've been to so far;
North Tea Power
Pot Kettle Black
Home Sweet Home


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Painful Publicity for Communist Party Search Engine
For fledgling state-run Chinese search engine Jike, it turns out there is such a thing as bad press.
Launched in 2011 by People's Daily Online, a listed unit of China's Communist Party flagship newspaper, Jike was supposed to prove that government propagandists could make their mark in the country's largely private Internet search space.
Two years later, the company has yet to grab even a toehold in the search market. Normally that would mean that no one would notice, but rumors of mass layoffs and a high profile post by the former head of Google in China have combined to shine an unwelcome spotlight on the search engine and its chief executive, former world champion ping pong player Deng Yaping.
Anonymous rumors spread online over the weekend saying Jike planned to dismiss a quarter of its 400-person staff because of performance problems -- something the search engine denied in a statement issued to state media on Monday.
Responding to the rumors, tech investor Kai-Fu Lee took to his account on Sina Weibo microblogging service to fire off a series of questions.
"I won't comment on this gossip article but may I ask, why use taxpayers' money to fund a search business?" Mr. Lee wrote, according to a translation from the South China Morning Post. "Can it be possible to do search engine business without a belief in free information flow? Why was the head of a search engine company appointed by the party? And could Google beat Yahoo to be the world's largest search engine if the US Democratic Party appointed [Olympic champion swimmer Michael] Phelps to be the CEO of Google?"
Shortly after publishing the post, Mr. Lee wrote on Twitter that his accounts on Sina Weibo and a similar service run by Tencent had been suspended for three days. Mr. Lee didn't offer a reason for the suspension, but the bulk of speculation has centered around his mockery of Jike.
Jike did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Whether or not the suspension of Mr. Lee's Chinese microblogging accounts was intended to shield Jike from criticism, the effect has been the opposite, with many of the former Google exec's roughly 60 million total followers in China taking a sudden interest in the search engine's struggles.
Life seemed to start out well enough for Jike, which was introduced in beta as Goso before undergoing a makeover. It's official launch party in the summer of 2011 drew a bevy of leading lights from the China tech sector, Sina Chief Executive Charles Chao among them, as some observers wondered whether leading Chinese search engine Baidu should be scared of its new state-backed competitor.
Yet despite the obvious political punch and government funding behind the effort, Jike's share of the search market is so negligible that industry analysts don't even bother to name it in their breakdowns, instead dumping it into the anonymous "other" category. One major reason: Its searches often turn up insipid party fare in place of the tantalizing mix of sex and scandal that keeps China's Internet users coming back for more.
Now all the new attention has turned Jike into the most recent example of the Chinese government's failure to compete efficiently on the open market.
"Two years, 2 billion [yuan] all thrown where?" asked a Weibo user posting under the handle Linxianping_Aaron, one of many who complained that the search engine was a waste of tax money.
One microblogger wondered what entrepreneur Zhou Hongyi, whose Qihoo360 has grabbed more than 10% of the search market since it launched its search engine last year, would be able to accomplish with 2 billion yuan from the government. Another writing under the handle AngelaJiaxiaojie said: "[All this attention] is effectively an advertisement, but still I won't use the search engine."
Many others said they simply had never used or even heard of the search engine.
For his part, Mr. Lee has taken his suspension in stride, arguing in a post on the professional networking site Linkedin on Tuesday that he still considered social media the most important and open form of media in China, despite his run-in with the censors.
"My involvement [in Weibo] is only a tiny fraction of the overall social media community. Regardless of any setbacks and obstacles, I am confident that China is building up a significant population of socially responsible netizens, who will make a difference to the future of China," he wrote.
-- Paul Mozur. Follow him on Twitter @paulmozur
Like China Real Time on Facebook and follow us Twitter for the latest updates.


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Votre titre Audible gratuit
Summer Crossing
Set in New York just after World War II, Summer Crossing is the story of a young carefree socialite, Grady McNeil, whose parents leave her alone in their Fifth Avenue penthouse for the summer. Left to her own devices, Grady turns up the heat on the secret affair she's been having with a Brooklyn-born Jewish war veteran. As the season passes, the romance turns more serious and morally ambiguous, and Grady must eventually make a series of decisions that will forever affect her life and the lives of everyone around her.
Summer Crossing is a precocious, confident first novel that displays the flawless narrative sense of one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. Its immaculate turns of phrase, hard irony, and insight into the subtleties of class distinction will point to Capote's future triumphs. Worthy of a spot on any reader's Capote bookshelf, this is, in every sense, a lost treasure found.
Autres livres audio du même :
- Marjorie
- 11/02/2006
Summer doldrums
I found this book to be a bit tedious. The writing is good with very nice descriptions of setting, but it never seemed to be going anywhere. I found myself wishing that I had used my precious credit for something better.
5 personnes ont trouvé cela utile
- Darryl
- 23/07/2013
quality writing
i would have to say Capote is a nice writer. though this is perhaps not his top form, it was very good and there is a quality to his writing that i can't quite define other than to say a smoothness. somewhat a coming of age type story i guess, or young love or rebellion. and i'm always interested to see what items were current culturally at the time, little things you don't think about. I would have to say that, of course it's a completely different type of "novel", but In Cold Blood was a masterpiece and totally riveting. i would go on to more Capote.
4 personnes ont trouvé cela utile
- Cid
- 10/05/2007
Beautifully written
Just wish it hadn't ended so soon, it felt a bit unfinished
2 personnes ont trouvé cela utile
- Ray Stewart
- 09/04/2014
Early Capote
A coming of age story for a rich New York girl. Excellent descriptions. Short and sad. Published after Truman Capote's death.
1 personne a trouvé cela utile


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Hot, sweaty and speckled with croutons, "Lebanon" is a claustrophobic nightmare about four woefully inexperienced Israeli soldiers trapped in a crippled tank on the opening day of the war with Lebanon.
Cramped inside the tank are Shumlik (Yoav Donat), the gunner who suffers from whatever the opposite of an itchy trigger finger is; Yigal (Michael Moshonov), an unapologetic momma's boy in the driver's seat; Hertzel (Oshri Cohen), the borderline mutinous ammo loader; and Assi (Itay Tiran), the overmatched commander. Throughout their brief journey they are joined by a superior officer, a fallen comrade, a POW and a Phalangist.
All the action takes place in the confines of their "Rhino," which is escorting a dozen soldiers north through an urban area that's already been bombed by Israeli figher jets. The only views of the outside world are seen through the gunner's sight, a pair of crosshairs laid over everything, and each move of the "eye" is accompanied a hydraulic whine. It's supposed to be maddening, and it is.
Samuel Moaz wrote and directed the film in part as a form of therapy to get past his own memories of fighting in the war. For his efforts his film won the top prize, the Golden Lion, at the 2009 Venice Film Festival.
"Making 'Lebanon' and finally confronting what happened in that war, has given me my true feelings back and I can cry real tears once more," Moaz said at the time of his film's victory.
That Moaz managed to keep finding new corners of the tank to plant his camera is a minor miracle. But it's the view through the gunner's site that truly drives home the horror of war, as an unblinking eye stares emotionlessly at a weeping, half-naked mother or a mortally wounded solider.
"Lebanon" is a suffocating and tense debut feature film that conveys all too well the the fear that comes with being stranded in a war zone, and the different ways in which the human psyche fights to survive.
"Lebanon" is in Hebrew with English subtitles
Home Video Review: "Lebanon" a Terrifying Glimpse at War
Hot, sweaty and speckled with croutons, "Lebanon" is a claustrophobic nightmare about four woefully inexperienced Israeli soldiers trapped in a crippled tank on the opening day of the war with Lebanon.


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Today's Snack is a PERFECT
Food Storage Treat!
in this recipe can be stored on a shelf.
It's easy and fun and the kids will love to
come home to this after school snack!
Here's the Recipe:
1 cup Semisweet Chocolate Morsels
(I've used Milk Chocolate and it's just as good.)
1 cup Butterscotch Morsels
(You can replace the Butterscotch with Peanut Butter Morsels.)
2 cups Mini Marshmallows
1 can (5-ounces) La Choy Chow Mein Noodles
(About 2 1/2 cups)
1/2 cup Dry Roasted Peanuts
Place the chocolate and butterscotch chips in a
large microwave-safe container.
Heat in microwave on high for 1 minute at a time
stirring in between for 2-3 minutes or until melted.
Add chow mein noodles, marshmallows, and peanuts
to melted chocolate immediately.
Stir until well coated.
Drop mixture by teaspoonfuls onto waxed paper.
Refrigerate 1 hour or until firm.
If refrigerator space is not available, allow haystacks to stand
on the counter until firm.
It will take a little longer . . . but the results are the same.
Here's the PDF:
It's a great sweet and salty snack!


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Relationships with
Photo Credit: Jawaharlal Nehru's picture is courtesy of Jan Nordgreen. Photographic illustrations of Jawaharlal Nehru are copyright © by their respective holders. The images are published with permission or as allowed by the copyright law's fair use or quotation provisions. If any copyright holder objects to an image being included, please notify us and it will be removed immediately.
Disclaimer: This information about Jawaharlal Nehru is derived from astrological interpretation of Jawaharlal Nehru's date, time, and place of birth.


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Every so often, the rivalry is renewed. Of Baltimore, a Washingtonian will say something like, "I wouldn't want to live there, but what a place to explore." In turn, a Baltimorean will answer back, "The Washington Monument in the National Mall is nice, too, if you're into giant sterile obelisks that would make Fellini blush." Such is the nature of a rivalry between two cities separated by about 40 miles of road but an ocean in culture and attitude.
With the debut of bthesite.com's comprehensive list of "100 reasons why Baltimore is better than D.C.," the response in our nation's capital was swift, if not unforgiving. There were mocking inquiries into the real value of lacrosse, yes, but also grudging acceptances of the city's flaws. Here are a sampling of some reactions from Washington news organizations and defenders:
** The Washington City Paper's Perry Stein said the cover "is enough to make any Washingtonian fret over the safety our status as the nation's capital."
"By now, Washingtonians should be used to this kind of boneheaded municipal oneupsmanship, most of it predicated on lazy cliches about D.C.'s federal character, dearth of culture, and fashion-backwardness."
** Stein's partner in crime at the City Paper, Jessica Sidman, examines the validity of a select few reasons.
"81. Waiting in line for an hour for a damn cupcake?! You're joking, right?
Don't blame us; they're tourists. Probably from Baltimore."
** At the DCist, Matt Cohen and Sarah Anne Hughes take down one of Baltimore's barbs ...
"Natty Boh. What's that, D.C.? Don't have your own old-school beer -- you know, like Pabst or even Schlitz? That's sad." (No, but we do have some kick-ass craft beers. Also, Natty Boh isn't even brewed in Baltimore anymore)"
... and acknowledge another one.
"Obama's favorite TV show is 'The Wire." (Ok, yeah, The Wire is pretty great)"
** The Washington Post's Sarah Kogod culls the sports-related entries for a pack of unhappy commenters (200 comments and counting!) as she takes a dig at the official team sport of Maryland.
"There are 100 of them, some of which don't exactly make a great case for Charm City, such as the multiple reasons involving rats and one that just stated, "Lacrosse, yo. Lacrosse."
** But nowhere did the list strike more of a nerve, though, than at Sean Hogan's "DC is for Baseball" blog, where, at 1,500-plus words, he breathlessly compiles a list of retorts.
"18) We can get reservations at our restaurants, too. Your list is stupid. You're stupid, Baltimorons."
There's only 50 there, but Hogan promises more. That's what this beef does to people.
In the Twitterverse, meanwhile, it wasn't hard to find a handful of incredulous and downright defensive Washingtonians.
Baltimore sports fans have such a inferiority complex against Washington sports fans. They want to create a rivalry. We're not interested.
If Baltimore is better than DC then pigs must've finally figured out how to fly.
Is Baltimore for real trying to pick a fight with DC that they're the better city? That's so cute.
Baltimore being better than DC is like saying Detroit is better than Chicago.
At least there's a voice of reason amid all this inter-city sniping.
Can't we just get along and go after Philly together? RT
@dcsportsbog: 100 reasons Baltimore is better than DC http://bsun.md/16KyxnN


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Today I am going to share Himalaya Herbals Refreshing & Clarifying Toner Review with you all. It's a pending review, I am not a toner person, I will skip toner some times :P in the CTM process. But, believe me I have 5 to 6 toners in my kitty, they all are unused and used for few times only. I have finished this Himalaya herbals refreshing & clarifying toner a few weeks back.
Let's see the Review...
About The Product:
|Himalaya Herbals Refreshing & Clarifying Toner Review
Price 80 Rs
Quantity 100 ml
Shelf Life 2 years
Product Description:
My Experience with This Himalaya herbals Refreshing & Clarifying Toner:
This Himalaya herbals refreshing & clarifying toner is comes in a sturdy plastic pack with flip cap open. The toner liquid is like plain water and it has non-greasy formula, the smell of the toner is really a refreshing fragrance, loved the fragrance very much.
The best thing I loved from this toner is it is alcohol free toner, I use cotton to apply this toner and wipe out the remaining dirt from the face after cleansing, to say the truth this toner doing amazing job by clarify the skin surface and make the skin look so refreshed. It is non greasy toner, so never felt oily after applying this toner on the face. But, after sometime my T-zone became more shiny, I think because of summer and over oil secretion on the face.
This Toner never break out me and no allergy rashes on my face when I used this toner, I had some bad experience with some other toners, so very much afraid of using new toners now a days. According to the pores, I didn't see any big change in the pore minimize section when I was using this toner. All I can say this toner is best for summer to keep your face refreshed and hydrated.
My Likes with Himalaya Herbals Refreshing & Clarifying Toner:
- It is an alcohol Free toner.
- It is not tested on animals.
- There is no irritation or allergy for sensitive skin.
- It keeps the skin refreshed and hydrated well.
- The toner easily absorbed.
- Affordable price.
- Easily available.
- Clarify the face by continues usage.
- Lovely refreshing fragrance.
- Non greasy formula.
- This toner is not effective in pores minimizing.
- Oily skin may feel bit oily after few hours in the T-zone.


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Pre-Columbian Trephination
Photos used in this article are courtesy of the San Diego Museum of Man and their publication entitled "Trephined Skulls" published in 1980.
Lower middle: 14.5 x 9.9 cm. thin coper tumi from cemetery near Ancón, central coast of Peru.
Upper middle: 14.1 x 10.6. Bronze tumi with effigy handle and worn blade. Probably from the Chimu culture, Moche Valley, north coast of Peru. A.D. 1000 to 1470.
Right: 13.0 x 9.1 cm. Thin copper tumi from cemetery near Ancón, central coast of Peru.
Sickness is as old as humankind and methods of attempting to cure it are as old as human culture. Supernatural and natural healing methods have been used by all peoples, ancient and recent, but surgery in general is a product of Western culture. An exception to this is the operation called trephination, the oldest known surgery. Trephined human skull fossils date as far back as 10,000 years to the people of the European Neolithic era and in a limited way in the Canary Islands, North Africa, Russia, and in the New World before the discovery of the Americas. The most extensive and expert practice of the operation by American Indians was in Peru and Bolivia, where numerous trephined skulls have been found in ancient burial sites. Some show no signs of healing, indicating the death of the patient during or shortly after the operation, but many show extensive healing of the bone.
The reason for performing this difficult surgical procedure has been the subject of varied speculation. In Peruvian practice there is considerable evidence that many of the operations were performed for the naturalistic purpose of removing a bone fragment that had been driven below the surface of the skull vault as the result of an injury, many presumably occurred during hand to hand fighting with stone headed war clubs. A considerable number of trephined skulls showing effects of battle are those of females and adolescents. These depressed fractures could have created intracranial pressure that resulted in illness and behavioral disturbance. Other fractures, not necessarily depressed, may have brought about blood clots and pressure on the brain - thus causing headaches and possibly aberrant behavior.
Another reason for trephination may have been an attempt at healing through supernatural means. It is possible that some of the South American operations were based on the theory that a malicious spirit had taken possession of the patient and was causing his sickness; therefore, opening the skull would allow the demon to escape. Or, since the agent causing the sickness was something thought to reside in the blood, the release of blood from the body was often a curative procedure, and the trephining operation invariably involved a considerable flow of blood.
There is some basis for believing that there were two concurrent reasons for trephining in Peru, perhaps by different types of practitioners. It is possible that there were two kinds of surgery: operations carried out by trained surgeons (the hampi-camayoc) with considerable knowledge and skill; and trephination undertaken as a supernatural curative procedure by shamans (sancoyoc) with little technical ability as surgeons. Many of the operations were carefully performed, suggesting that the surgery was done for the relief of some body disturbance other than that associated with injury, perhaps an organic or mental condition.
There were several methods used by the South American Indians for opening the skull. The most frequent was cutting the skull with four grooves releasing a quadrilateral section of bone which was elevated and removed. Sometimes the grooves were curvilinear rather than in straight lines. At times, considerable bone was removed by scraping before the cuts were made. Combinations of cutting and abrading or scraping were frequent. Another method was accomplished by drilling a number of small holes through the bone in a circular pattern and breaking through the walls separating the holes. It has been suggested that coca, which has local anesthetic properties and which is native to the Andes, could have been used to allay the pain of cutting through the scalp where the sensitive nerves in the head would be severed.
The South American surgeon of pre-Columbian times apparently used instruments of both stone and metal. Sharp flakes of obsidian (volcanic glass) were quite efficient cutting and scraping implements. Scalpels of copper or bronze, champi, were also made and apparently used in trephining. A classic type, the tumi, was in the shape of a half circular blade with a handle which was either flat or sculptured with an animal or human effigy.
That the native surgeon enjoyed a considerable degree of success in his trephining operations is proved by the fact that many of the skulls show some degree of healing in the trephined wound and as many as half of the specimens found show signs of advanced healing. A specimen was found that had been trephined five times with only the last scar showing signs of infection. This exceptional success rate for aboriginal American trephining may be typical, since the region in Peru where most specimens are found is one where the procedure was especially well developed.
Suggested reading:
Froeschner, EH: Two examples of ancient skull surgery. J Neurosurgery 76:550-552, 1992.
Stone, JL and Miles, ML: Skull trepanation among the early Indians of Canada and the United States. Neurosurgery 26:1015-1020, 1990.


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So...the colors Cathy provided were working just fine for me until today's picture. LOL I could not stick with the orange and brown for this one. So...I'm going back to change up the colors in my previous pages. I'm just filling with solids that coordinate with each picture and will go a little more neutral on the cover.
Thanks for looking! Angie
Thirty Days of Thankful


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By Philip Schmidt, Networx
Garbage disposals (or more properly, food disposers) are wonderfully simple appliances that almost never break down. If yours has stopped spinning and either doesn't work at all or makes a worrisome humming noise, it's probably due to a jam. Something really hard has probably gotten stuck between the impellers -- the swiveling metal "teeth" that chew up the food scraps -- and the side wall of the grinding chamber, or, more likely, between the wall and the plate beneath the impellers. This is where little things like fruit pits, gravel and staples become lodged, providing more resistance than the disposer motor can handle. When a jam occurs, the disposer may shut itself down via an internal "breaker" switch, or the motor will keep running to no avail; that's the humming noise, and it's not good for the motor. Alleviating most jams takes just a few minutes.
How to Un-jam a Food Disposer
The first step -- always -- is to make sure the disposer's power switch is off. As an extra precaution, you can turn off the circuit that serves the disposer at your home's service panel (breaker box), and that's up to your discretion.
Next, look inside the disposer with a flashlight to see if you can spot what's causing the jam. Inspect carefully around the impellers and the impeller plate, particularly the small gap between the plate and the side wall of the chamber. If you see something, try to extract it with needlenose pliers, chopsticks, or other finger-like tool. You can also use your hands, but again, that's a safety-risk call you have to make.
If you got something out, try running the disposer again, with the cold water going (you should always run the water while using the disposer). Can't find any obstruction? Skip ahead to Moving the Motor Manually. If your disposer had already tripped itself (no motor humming), look for the reset button on the bottom or the side of the unit underneath the sink. It's small, so you have to look carefully. Press the reset button and try the disposer again.
At this point, if you hear humming again or you hear the motor start to engage then quickly shut down, you still have a jam. If you hear nothing, you should try the reset button a couple more times, but chances are you need a new disposer (see tips, below).
Moving the Motor Manually
Most modern disposers have a manual crank -- this is simply an exposed Allen-nut head located in the bottom center of the disposer unit. Turning the head with an Allen wrench moves the motor (and impeller plate) manually. Look on the side of the unit or in the general area of the disposer for an Allen tool for this very purpose. Manufacturers often provide a little plastic bag for holding the tool, and any conscientious plumber will have stored it in a sensible location for you. If you don't have a tool, find an Allen wrench (it's hexagonal, or 6-sided) that fits the disposer's crank head.
Turn the manual crank back and forth, several times if necessary. You can move the motor manually in both directions, but because the automatic function moves only in one direction, going backward often dislodges (or breaks up) the obstruction. If the crank spins easily, the jam is freed, and the obstruction has either gone down the drain or it's moved back into the grinding chamber, in which case you should fish it out.
If your disposer has no manual crank, you can move the impeller plate manually by sticking a broom handle or strong stick (such as a 1 x 2 or 2 x 2) down into the disposer and levering it against an impeller and the drain hole in the sink. If a levering action isn't possible, just try a simple push/pull action, as if you're stirring a vat of hard dough. Go back and forth as needed to dislodge the obstruction.
Tips for Replacing a Food Disposer
Unlike most appliances today, food disposers are reasonably priced and actually durable goods. They're also pretty easy to replace. A standard, 1/2-horsepower model is the best buy for most kitchens. Follow the manufacturer's installation instructions, and be sure to seal the sink sleeve (the top-most piece in the assembly that sits on top of the sink hole) carefully with an even bead of plumber's putty to prevent leaks.
Source: http://www.networx.com/article/how-to-fix-a-jammed-garbage-disposal


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The Creation Of The Universe
The Fate of Those who were Led Astray by the Arrogant
A particular character trait of the arrogant is their leading others, in addition to themselves, astray. From a verse of the Qur' an, we learn that they do so by "turning away arrogantly":
Among people there is one who argues about Allah without knowledge or guidance or any light-giving Book, turning away arrogantly, to misguide people from the Way of Allah. He will be disgraced in this world and on the Day of Rising We will make him taste the punishment of the Burning. (Surat al-Hajj, 8-9)
While the arrogant are sent to Hell, those who admired them, and thus, followed these insolent people, will also be cast into Hellfire. These are the people who obeyed the arrogant people because they admired their worldly qualities. Although not as arrogant as those who possessed "Pharaonic arrogance," those who followed in their footsteps lacked character and willpower. Another trait of theirs is their failure to put their trust in Allah, and their being driven solely by personal motives. The Qur' an mentions the people of the Pharaoh who were guilty of such vices:
Pharaoh called to his people, saying, "My people, does the kingdom of Egypt not belong to me? Do not all these rivers flow under my control? Do you not then see?"
... In that way he swayed his people and they succumbed to him. They were a people of deviators. (Surat az-Zukhruf, 51, 54)
Such people, who shut their eyes to all forms of violence and injustice, did not consider seeking refuge in their Lord and become His servants. On the Day of Judgment, they will recognise their mistake, but it is often too late.
When they stand before Allah, altogether to give an account of their deeds, those who were arrogant and those who followed them will argue with one another:
Those who are disbelievers say, "We will never believe in this Qur' an, nor in what came before it." If only you could see when the wrongdoers, standing in the presence of their Lord, cast accusations back and forth at one another! Those deemed weak will say to those deemed great, "Were it not for you, we would have been believers!" Those deemed great will say to those deemed weak, "Did we debar you from the guidance when it came to you? No, it is you who were evildoers." Those deemed weak will say to those deemed great, "No, it was your scheming night and day when you commanded us to reject Allah and assign equals to Him." But they will show their remorse when they see the punishment. We will put iron collars round the necks of those who disbelieve. Will they be repaid for anything but what they did? (Surah Saba' , 31-33)
As these verses also note, those who had become arrogant and those "deemed weak" will accuse one another, but it will be of no avail. In another verse, their situation is stated as follows:
The Fire, morning and night, to which they are exposed; and on the Day the Hour takes place: "Admit Pharaoh' s people to the harshest punishment!" When they are squabbling with one another in the Fire, the weak will say to those deemed great, "We were your followers, so why do you not relieve us of a portion of the Fire?" (Surah Ghafir, 46-47)


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If you look at a daily chart of Baidu (BIDU), you'll see it's not a pretty sight. The price is below both the 200-day and 50-day simple moving averages, and it is still flashing a sell signal on the five-day and 13-day exponential moving averages.
So why am I stalking this stock for a possible low? It has everything to do with time-frame work. If we back up and look at the big picture, we can identify quite a few stocks that look rather ugly on the daily and intraday charts -- though the weeklies can also give us a heads-up, as well as identify some rather important lows.
One can never be certain on these matters but, in this case, a few factors have added up to a case for stalking Baidu on the buy side. Also keep in mind that we'll be waiting for reversal indications before we step up to the plate here.
As far as the factors that currently suggest a possible low, the first is the fact that Baidu is reaching key price extensions on the downside. Many market moves tend to terminate at extensions of prior swings.
Second, we are looking at two standout price clusters of support -- $86.48 to $90.19 and $80.27 to $83.83 -- that suggest at least a possible bounce is in store. These price zones, illustrated on the chart below, include some 100% projections of prior declines. When you compare swings in the same direction, you will find many that are similar to one other.
Last but not least, I'm also seeing some Fibonacci timing parameters that suggest a low may be reached within the next couple of weeks. On the chart above, you can see the cycles that come in between Nov. 23 and Dec 7. One of the key timing factors is that the prior decline lasted 16 weeks -- and this next week will be 15th week down from the last major high. Many trend reversals occur when there is symmetry or similarity in timing with regard to prior swings.
So, in these next weeks, I will be watching Baidu for some buy triggers. If I see something that qualifies, I will post it on Columnist Conversation.
Happy holidays!
For more information about trades and triggers, please refer here.


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I'm very happy to share my latest portfolio update: a mix of new commercial and personal work merged with some of my favorite projects here: http://bit.ly/21aoyD3 Many thanks to my agents at Stockland Martel for patiently working on this with me. I've been so lucky in my career to be able to collaborate on global brand campaigns for A list clients. That work is fun and satisfying because I'm being hired for my eye but also because it funds my personal documentary projects on subjects I care about. (see www.fearlessgenius.org)
The process of creating a portfolio is sometimes gut-wrenching. You end up doing a lot of deep thinking about everything you are doing and why, and probably that's a good thing. I was reminded recently by a former student of an essay I wrote in 2009 about creating your "fuck you" portfolio; a liberating process to find your true voice by letting go of fear. This is about making a portfolio that shows what you truly, deeply, passionately love to shoot. And want to get paid for. The essay still rings true to me, despite all that has changed for photographers since: http://dougmenuez.com/on-chaos-fear-survival-luck/
The idea is that if you are trying to make your living solely from your photography you can't just follow the herd and present what is selling at the moment. Although that will get you started, perhaps, it won't last as tastes change and ends up crushing your soul. You have to do the hard work to figure out what you see that no one else does.
Once you have refined your eye, you have to build a solid financial foundation and business structure to support your vision, like all entrepreneurs who chase a counterintuitive idea. Imagine a lifetime of satisfying, creative challenges. It can happen but it's extremely hard, no different from a tech start-up in many ways.
The problem is that if you follow my advice you are more likely to fail. But if you don't you won't ever hit it out of the park and live the dream. You just can't be for everybody, only the best creatives who get what you bring.
I've failed hard a few times and find that the path can be a more of a cycle that we end up repeating now and again. I'm still on the journey, learning new things as I face new challenges. But I know from experience that the reward for risking everything and pushing myself to grow is indescribably sweet and worth all the pain.


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|Preceding Day
|Monday 21 September 2020
|Following Day
|Preceding Day
|Monday 21 September 2020
|Following Day
RT @UGLE_GrandLodge: This #ArmedForcesWeek we celebrate and #saluteourforces 💪 #Freemasons https://t.co/5z9JUvYZVg
@newarkemmaus Let's home we have some nice weather, and they can get some serious use 😍
RT @newarkemmaus: #weekendvibes #kidsathome a big thank you to @NottsMasons #Newark for the funding for garden toys. Our residents' childre…
RT @Prestonian2012: 3 steps to my #Prestonian Lecture live Q&A over @UGLE_GrandLodge @SolomonUGLE tomorrow. 1) Register https://t.co/zLC1W…
Here is something different! Why not join our Virtual Wine and Cheese evening 🍷🥂 also the Grand Secretary will be j… https://t.co/8VEroD5gFm


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ROBINS AIR FORCE BASE, GA — Since beginning its new fitness program in 2004, Air Force Reserve Command's (AFRC) performance has stumbled, according to statistics recently released from the Air Force.
In 2003, 76 percent of unit reservists took the AFRC fitness test. Most of them — 98.9 percent — passed their assessments. Now, two years later, 68 percent of the reservists tested, but this time, 7 percent of them finished with a marginal score and 12 percent of them performed poorly. AFRC's failure rate in this category was six times higher than the rate for active-duty airmen, the Air Force report said.
"I think it is a seesaw. [The numbers] may be down a bit for this last reporting period, but they will come back up and they probably will go back down again," said Alan Ray, chief of recreation support for the services at reserve command headquarters at Robins Air Force Base, GA. "We don't know the true reasoning behind it."
If a person failed the three-mile walk assessment under the previous fitness program, he or she took it again a few months later and generally passed, he said. However, with more stringent force-wide fitness standards in place, AFRC officials recognized that this approach to fitness testing wasn't good enough anymore.
Although Air Force health and wellness centers provide numerous programs and facilities for improving fitness, many are located on active-duty bases only and may not be available to reservists on weekends or after hours. Furthermore, many reservists live 40, 50 or 60 miles from a base, Ray said.
To help combat these issues, Colonel Jim Collier directed a working group to develop an intervention program for reservists who scored marginally or poorly on their fitness assessments. The group, consisting of experts from reserve units nationwide, met in December to develop an intervention tool for people needing information, encouragement and a plan to improve.
The result? The completely Web-based Healthy Living Program for Reservists. Posted on the Air Force portal under the Air Force Fitness Management System, the site is divided into three instruction modules, each focusing on a specific topic. The fitness module takes a comprehensive look at the frequency, intensity, length and types of exercises required to develop strength, endurance and flexibility. It also discusses ways to avoid injury and provides warning signs to look out for. The second module on nutrition discusses the basics of a healthy diet and gives helpful hints for portion control and eating out. The behavior modification module takes a different approach. It uses the Top Ten Reasons for Not Exercising to teach participants how to make proper choices while keeping them entertained. This module encourages participants to change their behavior and take control of their lives. It also shows them how to get started.
One of Collier's future goals is to establish a centralized virtual health and wellness center with a full-time staff available to provide reservists, via the Web with personalized exercise and nutrition prescriptions. Although still in the formative stages, Collier's vision is for the virtual health and wellness center to serve as a resource for reservists who need help but don't have access to health and wellness or fitness centers where they live. If approved, the colonel hopes this resource will be up and running by 2008.
"The primary thing is that it's not a downward trend; it's a hiccup more than anything," Ray said. "Every installation will work through this to make sure [reservists] are as fit as they can be."


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Last year, one of the titles that draw my attention towards it through its early concept and a quite catchy cover artwork was Catherynne M. Valente's "Deathless". I am looking forward for Tor Books to release "Deathless" at the end of this month, especially since I've learned about the title last year Catherynne M. Valente's novel now has a very interesting trailer and a teasing synopsis.
Koschei the Deathless is to Russian folklore what devils or wicked witches are to European culture: a menacing, evil figure; the villain of countless stories which have been passed on through story and text for generations. But Koschei has never before been seen through the eyes of Catherynne Valente, whose modernized and transformed take on the legend brings the action to modern times, spanning many of the great developments of Russian history in the twentieth century.
Deathless, however, is no dry, historical tome: it lights up like fire as the young Marya Morevna transforms from a clever child of the revolution, to Koschei's beautiful bride, to his eventual undoing. Along the way there are Stalinist house elves, magical quests, secrecy and bureaucracy, and games of lust and power. All told, Deathless is a collision of magical history and actual history, of revolution and mythology, of love and death, which will bring Russian myth back to life in a stunning new incarnation.


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Butcher Drafting Service
Regular price $1,334.00
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- 4 Bedroom
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- 4,422 total sq. ft.
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Readable Mirror..................................$75
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1st Floor..................................... 2,615 sq. Ft.
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The Patriarch of Romania at the Anniversary of the Saint Patron of Saint Spiridon the Old Church of Bucharest
On 12 December, the church of Saint Spiridon the Old celebrates its saint patron. Today, 11 December 2011, on the eve of the feast of Saint Hierarch Spiridon, the faithful of the parish enjoyed the presence of His Beatitude Daniel, Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church.
After the Vesper service celebrated in the holy place of worship, the Primate of the Romanian Orthodox Church delivered a sermon in which he eulogised the personality of Saint Hierarch Spiridon of Trimitunda.
His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel has also spoken to those present about the lowliness of Saint Spiridon showing that he made miracles not for his won glory, but for showing the merciful love of Christ. His Beatitude emphasised the fact that the miracles are not made by man, but by God through man.
"Saint Spiridon is a miracle worker because he was very close to God and very obedient; in general, miracles are made only by obedient people completely open to the grace of God, who pray a lot. The miracle is not made by man, but by God through man; God makes wonders through His saints and this unusual divine power to make wonders is manifested through saints because they obey God and God listens to them in prayer. Whoever obeys God and accomplishes His will is listened to by God in prayer. The wonder is made only through the merciful love for the humans. (…) Saint Spiridon has also made wonders out of great mercy, of merciful love for the humans, not to praise himself or be praised, but to show the merciful love of Christ bestowed over His Church, which is His mysterious body", said His Beatitude.
His Beatitude has also congratulated the parish priest, Rev. Ioan Iordache, administrative vicar of the Archdiocese of Bucharest, for the philanthropic activity unfolded within Saint Spiridon the Old parish.
To end with, His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel offered, to the place of worship which will celebrate its saint patron tomorrow, a blessing cross, a new edition of the Holy Gospel, the first volume of "Proloage" (Lives of the Saints), in a new edition, the first under the aegis of the Romanian Patriarchate, as well as other books for the monastery library.
Saint Spiridon the Old church was the first one of 24 other ones of Bucharest demolished by the communist regime. It was built from 1992 – 1997, observing the same plans, placement and architecture.
From 2004 forward, the parish has owned a social-medical centre of "Saint Spiridon – Old" Foundation, which provides integral services, in order to improve the quality of the life of the community members.
Source: Romanian Orthodox Church