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The weekend of June 3, 2006, was the seventeenth anniversary of the Beijing massacre and also the first time I ever received a summons. It happened, as the police put it, "according to law." Twice within twenty-four hours Deputy Chief Sun Di of Department 1 of the Beijing Public Security Bureau ordered me—"controlled" me, in police lingo—to go to the Fanjiacun police station in the Fengtai District of Beijing. This "practical action" of the Chinese government, although it violated basic human rights, was taken in support of the "stability" that the violent suppression at Tiananmen had brought about.
I recall the early hours of June 4, 1989. The few thousand students and other citizens who refused to disperse remained huddled at the north face of the Martyrs' Monument in Tiananmen Square. The glare of fires leaped skyward and gunfire crackled. The pine hedges that lined the square had been set ablaze while loudspeakers screeched their mordant warnings. The bloodbath on outlying roads had already exceeded anyone's counting. Martial law troops had taken up their staging positions around the square, awaiting final orders, largely invisible except for the steely green glint that their helmets reflected from the light of the fires. It was then that I turned to a friend and commented that the Martyrs' Monument might soon be witness to our deaths, but that if not, I would come back to this place every year on this date to remember the victims.
* * *
That comment somehow turned into a vow—one that I may need to be fulfilling indefinitely. So far, I have. Every year on the evening of June 3, I have come back to Tiananmen to linger for a while. My wife and I join a few good friends—and beginning in 1995, have brought our son—to gather at the base of the Martyrs' Monument and spend some time in reflection.
For me these visits have also aroused guilt feelings. The government's pressures to forget June Fourth have caused the day slowly to erode in public memory: each year the Tiananmen Mothers seem more isolated, and the massacre seems more a topic to be avoided in daily conversation; even singing "The Internationale," as students did that night, has become vaguely embarrassing. A certain lazy comfort attends this forgetting, and that is why I feel guilt. If I just slouch along through life, taking the easy route, what do I say to the spirits of those murdered "rioters" of seventeen years ago? And if everyone forgets, are we not opening the door to future massacres? Our Tiananmen generation is now in middle age; we are in positions where we can make a difference. Do we not want to? At a minimum, my guilt feelings cause me to telephone Professor Ding Zilin, a leader of the Tiananmen Mothers, every year on June 3 from Tiananmen Square. It allows me to feel that I am bringing greetings to this white-haired mother from the spirit of her dead son.
I know that I am not alone in these feelings, and that is why I involve others in my annual visits. My purpose is not to stimulate resentment. Reconciliation is fine, but it must be based on truth.
This year, about 9 PM on June 2, I sent the following cell-phone text message to a number of friends:
On the evening of June 3 we will gather at the base of the Martyrs' Monument in Tiananmen Square to reflect upon the 1989 massacre. The purpose is to remind ourselves that those events have not been consigned to history but remain deeply rooted in our minds. Pu Zhiqiang asks your support in declaring: do not forget the massacre; uphold truth; promote reconciliation based on legal rights.
In fact it was a minimal gesture, aimed mostly at assuaging my own unease.
I also forwarded the message to the low-ranking police who are assigned to "care for" me. I did the same last year. It is better for all concerned to do this. It prevents causing a shock to the police higher-ups, who, if angered, take it out on their underlings as well as on me. I did not anticipate that this time my message would set off a ruckus.
* * *
At 1:10 AM on June 3 my phone rang. It was Officer Cheng Guanglei of the National Security Unit in Fengtai District. He had been ordered to "find his way" to the doorway of my building, from where he was calling to inform me that the Public Security Bureau of Beijing City wanted to have a chat with me. He earnestly hoped that I would "coordinate" with this plan. I offered a perfunctory protest, but then went downstairs, got into the officer's car, and went to the Fanjiacun police station. As we entered the main hall I noticed a blackboard bearing the words "Be Civilized in Raising Dogs." I had to stifle a laugh. If our government were to reach the level of "civilization in raising dogs," then, yes, we would be well on our way to the "harmonious society" that our leaders were touting.
Deputy Chief Sun Di and Officer Han Feng were waiting for me. Sun Di is about six feet tall. He struck me as good-natured, but deadpan: there was no way to guess what he was thinking. He said the police had received a report about my text message, so they needed to talk to me in order to understand the details.
"We all know what place Tiananmen Square is, and what day tomorrow is," he said. "You sent a text message to a lot of people, including quite a few foreign and domestic media, saying that you intend to go there. If everybody goes, and something happens, then what?" In the view of his superiors my text message "endangers stability," he said, so he needed to get clear on a few things: my motive, the message contents, the number of recipients, and the identity of each recipient. He invited me to explain.
I began by saying that I was confident that no one on my list of recipients would inform on me. I didn't imagine that all the recipients would head for Tiananmen Square, either. "I don't have that kind of charisma," I said, "not even Hu Jintao does." Would reporters go? Chinese journalists had long been frightened into silence on this topic, and even if one went, no report could be published. The foreign media? They always report the Tiananmen anniversary anyway—there's nothing you can do about that. People are going to have their own opinions of what I'm doing in any event, so there's no point getting all hot and bothered by it.
Then I explained why I had forwarded the text message to the police. Since I had been under their surveillance for some time now, I thought I might as well be aboveboard about everything and avoid any misunderstandings. But you can't deprive a person of his will, I said, and going to Tiananmen every June 3 to commemorate the dead is a promise that I made to myself. I go there to keep the promise, and would feel wrong if I did not.
I ended by saying that I understood it to be legal to send text messages in China and legal to go to Tiananmen Square on June 3. Moreover, no law prohibits citizens from commemorating the victims of 1989. Since this is so, our whole chat right now is superfluous. For you to come to my building in the middle of the night, without any legal papers and asking for a "chat," is itself an example of illegal use of police power.
Deputy Chief Sun responded that he wished I would lower my profile a bit and stop sending text messages all over the place. "If you want to go, then just quietly go," he advised. "What's the need for text messages?" He promised not to restrict my movements, but said he might assign some people to accompany me "for protection."
"Fine," I said. "I understand." Then I asked Sun to relay to his superiors my own promise that, although I view China's "Law on Assembly, Marches, and Demonstrations" to be in violation of China's constitution, I would make written application in advance if I ever were to plan "an assembly, march, or demonstration." But since my present plan is a purely personal matter, and since Tiananmen Square is a public space, police obstruction of my movement would be unconstitutional. Please also tell your superiors, I said, that I hope the government will finally face history squarely and solve the "June Fourth" problem. A world of make-believe on this issue cannot last forever, and it generates quite a lot of contempt.
Our chat ended about 3:00 AM. Officer Cheng Guanglei saw me home. But that was not the end of it.
At 10:20 AM the police called my home to tell me that I could not go out. This meant, without their saying it, that Sun Di's promise of a few hours earlier was no longer valid. Although I had half-expected this news, it angered me. I went downstairs to walk the dog. Three patrolmen from the National Security Unit of Fengtai District were already on duty at my door. They looked bedraggled from lack of sleep. I telephoned Sun Di from the spot. Since he had broken his promise, I had no choice but to send out a text message explaining that fact, I said. I hoped that he would stay in touch, though, both with me and with his superiors, and do what he could not to break his word too grievously. At least, I said, he should help me to keep my promise of a yearly visit to Tiananmen this evening. Then I walked the dog.
The police joined me on the walk, and afterward I invited one of them, with whom I was fairly well acquainted, to come upstairs for lunch. My elderly mother was home, and we didn't often have guests, so she was delighted to have one. She made special dumplings, and the young policeman helped by rolling the dumpling skins. I was busy composing my text message about "the story that I had no choice but to tell."
* * *
Shortly after 1:00 PM Officer Cheng Guanglei reappeared downstairs. He called on his cell phone to invite me down for "another chat." I gobbled down a few dumplings, pressed "send" on my text message, and went down to see him dressed in a T-shirt, shorts, and slippers. He, too, looked short of sleep. He told me I would need to come down to the police station again, because some municipal-level officers wanted to see me.
"Why don't they come here?" I asked. "See how cool and bright it is here?"
"You know such things aren't up to me," Cheng said. "Could you cut the questions and just 'coordinate' with us again?"
I could see what was going on. In order to guarantee that I would not be seen that night at the base of the Martyrs' Monument, the police were going to "spend time" with me for a while. They had instructions from above to "frustrate" my personal plans, but they couldn't plainly say so.
The people waiting for me were Jiang Qingjie and Zhang Kaijun of Department 1 of the Public Security City Bureau. Sun Di joined us later. Jiang Qingjie, a 1996 graduate of the Chinese People's Public Security University, was the picture of competence and efficiency—but, like his colleagues, skipped the step of showing any legal papers. Their formal agenda remained the same: they wanted to inquire about my text message, my motive for sending it, and a recipient list. But their real objective, clearly, was to "tie up" my time.
Jiang Qingjie began by saying that to send a text message like this, at a time like this, harms stability and produces consequences. This is why he has to get clear about everything.
I responded that Sun Di had broken his word. Then I inquired whether sending text messages, going to Tiananmen Square, or commemorating June Fourth was illegal. Who, I asked, was actually breaking the law? Just as I have no right to force other people to commemorate June Fourth, so the government has no right to bar me from doing so. But that, I said, is exactly what you are doing right now. If we go by the rules, I don't have to "coordinate" with you and we can end our chat right here.
* * *
But the chat did drag on, all afternoon, as the room grew heavy with cigarette smoke. Every now and then we discussed some legal matter, but for the most part the topics lay elsewhere. I asked if the inmates at their detention center could eat wheat pancakes and dough-drop soup these days, or if they still had to survive on corn balls. The policemen offered many topics of their own: how their pay was low, promotions were impossible, and how they always had to work overtime because there were too many cases. I joked with them that if they did a good job "accompanying" me they might get raises. Last year the young man who was assigned to be with me around the clock during the "sensitive time" after Zhao Ziyang's* death got a promotion shortly thereafter to deputy station chief in charge of several dozen people.
About 6 or 7 PM, after box dinners all around, they wanted to "do a formality" about my summons.
"Summons? You mean this was a summons?" I asked. "To me it felt rather more like a kidnapping." I told Zhang Kaijun that if I'd known it to be a formal summons, I would have wanted a lawyer.
Zhang answered that he was basing himself on article 82 of the Penal Code of the People's Republic of China on the Management of Public Order.
I said that I was used to illegal detention for "chats," but had never received a summons before. So could he please read to me what that article says? He didn't read it, but showed it to me.
"You're mistaken," I said after glancing through it. "It says here that a summons may be issued 'according to law' only after discovery that a person's behavior has violated the penal code on public order. My behavior has not."
The police responded that article 82 was only a procedural regulation. "If you don't agree with what we're doing, you can go into detail in your statement."
So I "coordinated" again. I answered their questions—pointing out, in passing, where they had broken the law. They took notes. In the end I affixed my signature and thumbprint to their written record, noting explicitly that they had omitted mention of the illegal behavior of the police.
By then I was starting to get cell-phone calls from friends at Tiananmen who wondered where I was. Something else strange was going on, they said. In earlier years the police cleared the square sometime after 9 PM, but this year they were already shooing people out by 8 PM. I explained to my friends that I was at a police station, kidnapped "according to law" for seven or eight hours, and that they should take care not to get into trouble.
At 9:30 PM Sun Di asked me to sign my name "confirming" that my summons had ended at 10 PM. It had begun at 2:30 PM, he said, and as long as it ended within eight hours it was legal. I congratulated him on the successful completion of his mission, which was, as both he and I knew, to thwart my plans to go to Tiananmen. On my side, though, the half-day detention at a police station made me feel as if I had, in fact, kept my promise to remember the massacre victims.
I reminded Sun Di that, counting the two hours of summons in the middle of the night, the total for the day was more than eight. Was this not a dangling vulnerability in his work?
"The morning wasn't a summons," he said. "It was just a private chat."
At noon on Sunday, June 4, I went into the offices of my law firm to do some overtime work. Two policemen, assigned to "maintain overall stability," came with me.
Translated from the Chinese by Perry Link.
- General Secretary of the Communist Party of China 1987–1989, disgraced and held under house arrest from June 1989 until he died on January 17, 2005.↩


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After Fight, Rental Car Safety Advocates Win Industry Support
Senate Democrats expect the chamber to pass a bill that would require rental car companies to ground recalled vehicles until they are fixed, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said today.
Schumer, one of three Democratic sponsors of the legislation, said that he hopes to advance the measure by unanimous consent during the lame-duck session. He trumpeted the support of the industry's largest companies: Hertz, Avis Budget, Dollar Thrifty and Enterprise Rent-A-Car, which together make up more than 90 percent of the rental car market.
"We can move full speed ahead in the Senate," Schumer said at a press conference. "We hope to pass it in the lame-duck with bipartisan support."
Under current law, rental car companies are allowed to rent and sell vehicles that manufacturers have recalled for safety concerns. Enterprise, one of the largest privately held businesses in the nation, has long opposed efforts to regulate the industry and had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to fight the measure since it was introduced in 2011.
But the company has shifted gears in recent months in response to public outcry fueled by a heated lobbying battle and an online petition.
Today, that petition – launched by the mother of two girls who died after their recalled rental PT Cruiser caught fire due to leaking power steering fluid – has 162,000 signatures.
"We initially did not believe that federal oversight of car rental was necessary, but our customers let us know that they would be more comfortable with regulation in place and we quickly changed direction," said Laura Bryant, a spokeswoman for Enterprise Holdings. "Some of them emailed us, some of them called. … At some point you realize if this is what your customers want, you need to deliver."
The legislation, sponsored by Schumer, Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman Barbara Boxer (Calif.) and Sen. Claire McCaskill (Mo.), also has support from AAA, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety and State Farm Insurance.
In July, California Reps. Lois Capps (D) and Elton Gallegly (R) introduced companion legislation that included language that the driver advocacy group Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety and Hertz agreed to this spring. Hertz, Enterprise and Avis all say they do not rent recalled cars, but that is not enough for consumer advocates.
The final bill includes an exception for so-called junk vehicles that rental car companies sell for their parts. It also allows the companies to rent recalled vehicles if a temporary fix is approved by the manufacturer or the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Such a fix must eliminate any safety risk, not just mitigate it. For example, if a car is recalled for a defective cruise control system, the rental car company could continue to rent the vehicle as long as it disconnects the cruise control. But it could not resell the car until the cruise control system was fixed entirely.
Brian Fallon, a spokesman for Schumer, said the lawmakers do not expect opposition in the House or Senate.
"We are working with Senate Republicans and expect many of them to co-sponsor the legislation before we return in November," he said in an email.

subset: commoncrawl


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Previous Lesson
Complete and Continue
Sick Building Solutions by Evan Brand, BCHN, FNTP
Healthy Home
Intro to Creating Healthy Homes (0:54)
How Does Property Slope Affect Your Home? (0:36)
Optimizing Your Air Quality With Fresh Air Intake Systems (1:43)
Creating a Non-Toxic Living Room (1:53)
The Truth About Indoor House Plants (and What I Recommend) (1:59)
The Toxic Fireplace (1:39)
The Best Type of Kitchen Lighting (1:04)
Detox Your Kitchen and Prevent Offgassing (2:30)
The Non-Toxic Kitchen Cleaning Protocol (2:32)
Gas Versus EMF-Emitting Electric Stoves (2:46)
The Non-Toxic Laundry Solution (and How to Get Mold Toxins Out of Your Clothing) (4:04)
The Tools and Tricks for Your Bathroom (2:45)
Creating an EMF-Free, Non-Toxic Bedroom Sanctuary (7:54)
The Clean, Bright, and Safe Office (Without Wireless!) (4:01)
The Biohacker Mechanical Room (7:21)
A Mold-Free, Non-Toxic, Waterproof Basement (5:03)
EMF Tools, Tricks, and Mitigation Strategies (21:55)
My House Is Awesome But I'm Still Unhappy (What I'd Do Next) (2:09)
HVAC Drain Line LEAK!! (3:41)
Moisture Meter Usage (1:23)
"Creating Your Home Oasis" Presentation
Building Materials, Working With Builders, the Best Paint, Air Purifiers, Water Filters, and More (45:31)
Mold Case Studies (13:26)
JW Biava on Top 10 Ways To Improve Air Quality In Your Home
Dr. Margaret Christensen, MD on the Mold Candida Link
JW Biava on Testing and Treating Your Home, Office, or Building for Mold
Mold and Mycotoxin Resource Guide + MOLD FOGGING DEMO! (11:55)
The Non-Toxic Laundry Solution (and How to Get Mold Toxins Out of Your Clothing)
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text:
Tag Archives: heated
MODERN MARVEL: Price Reduced on Coeur d'Alene Luxury View Estate
Contemporary View Estate on 10.5 Acres PRICED BELOW REPLACEMENT COST: Don't let the sleek lines deceive you! This Contemporary Luxury home, by Award-Winning Architect Gordon Longwell and crafted by Ginno Construction, is anything but SIMPLE. Smart-design and State-of-the-Art Amenities unpretentiously … Continue reading
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Last week I wrote about "own goals"and the importance of not committing them in your career. A reader asked a good question:
"What if I am busy scoring against myself and I don't even know it? How can I find out?"
In the original posting I talked about a few basics such as arriving late/leaving early, and dressing inappropriately. But some "own goals" are more subtle and therefore harder to catch without a good boos or mentor coaching you along. These would include mistakes such as leaving key stakeholders off the distribution list on important e-mails and/or coming to meetings unprepared or over-prepared with the wrong focus and falling down in front of a cross-functional team.
How can you learn about the subtle behaviors that may be taking you down without your even knowing about it?
First,determine that you will be open to feedback. Really open to feedback. Not just willing to hear it, but willing to write it down and ask clarifying questions to make sure you really get it. Willing to go home and review the feedback and reflect deeply on how others are perceiving you. Willing to go to the library or surf Amazon and find books on the topics that were themes in the feedback you heard. Willing to write a thank you note to the person who gave you feedback and tell them how you are putting their feedback to work, and requesting their permission to come talk to you again in the future so you can keep learning. I'm suggesting you determine that you will be THAT open to feedback.
Then,think back over the feedback you have received throughout your career (including things you heard/learned about yourself in college and things your parents told you) and figure out what the themes are. If we are honest, there are always core themes to the feedback we have received, and the best way to grow and develop is to attack our issues at the core. I talk too much. It's a fact. I am not proud of it, but if I cannot admit it, I cannot address it. The times in my life when I have received feedback from mentors that I was not strategic enough, I can trace directly back to speaking out before listening thoroughly. In the times when I have struggled to develop a professional relationship with an annoying peer, if I am honest with myself, I know that if I talked less I could get to a solution faster. What is your "Achilles heel" that is the thread through all of the feedback you have received? Do you talk too much/too little? Plunge in without a plan or hold back and never take initiative? etc. Only you know what your particular issue is, but the sooner you admit it, the sooner you can use it to make sense of the other feedback you receive.
Third, go to your boss, or boss' boss and ask if s/he will answer three questions for you: What am I doing that you would like me to continue the same? What am I doing that you would like me to do MORE of or be BETTER at? "What am I doing that you would like me to STOP doing? THANK them for their feedback. Do not argue or explain - simply thank them. If you need to ask a clarifying question, ask for permission to do so, and then be succinct and crisp about it. Then put the feedback to work.
Next, make it a point to talk to leaders in your company, industry, or local business community whenever you can. Have a few planned questions that you can use to glean as much knowledge as possible from anyone who has been successful. One of my favorites is, "What's the most basic career lesson you wish every single one of your employees knew?" Other great questions include, "If you could do the first year (or 5 years) of your career over again, what would you do differently?" "If you were new to the career world and starting out today, how would you approach it?" "What's your best advice for getting along with the people you work with?" Put this advice in to practice - use it and make it work for you! In this way, you become a student of successful people and you will learn a lot of things that business school doesn't teach you. You will probably also make a lot of friends because all decent people love to talk about things they have learned and help others grow.
Finally, commit to getting up each time you fall down. You will make mistakes. Jump back up, and have another go at it. If you are faithfully employing the first three points mentioned above, you are probably not going to make any single devastating mistake that will destroy your career. But you will occasionally blunder - apologize, figure out what you learned, maybe even keep a journal and write them down (a blog is actually good for that!) and move on.
Here's to a great rest of the week, and a great career!


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After seeing the an interview with author on The Daily Show, and reading a glowing notice in The New Yorker, I made a priority of finishing The Most Human Human before I ended family leave.
It's a delightful and discursive book, wending its way through cognitive science, philosophy, poetry, artificial intelligence, embodied experience, and more. The author, Brian Christian, writes with a deft touch, in an episodic and occasionally meandering style that feels like you're taking part in a good conversation.
Which makes sense, considering the book's supposed raison d'etre is the author's preparation for being a confederate (a human participant) for the Loebner Prize, in which judges of a Turing test have conversations with computers and humans, to determine both The Most Human Computer and The Most Human Human.
As part of this training, Brian, who has B.A.s in philosophy and computer science (from Brown, natch), and an MFA in poetry, endeavors to better understand just what makes humans human. In doing so, he runs across what he calls "The Sentence," which every discipline that studies humans (anthropology, psychology, sociology, etc.) has some version of, and goes something like, "The human being is the only animal that ____________". Except that the items that have filled in that blank ("uses tools", "has language," "feels remorse", "thinks", etc. etc.) have been taken down one by one. Perhaps the best fill-in is, "obsesses about its own uniqueness," because, really, what does it matter if humans aren't wholly unique (except, perhaps, in our agglomeration of traits), and yet why do we seem to get so worked up about being distinct from all other creatures? But I digress.
This book came at a particularly opportune time, given the theme of my recent writing on business in the Connected Age — that it needs to embrace our humanity. In the context of computation and automation, Brian addresses the world of work, how many activities that were once done by people are now done by machines, computers, and robots. He astutely points out that replacing people with machines isn't the problem, but what happens before then, when people's work tasks become so rote and repetitive, that you've essentially turned people into machines. You can't have IVR (interactive voice response) until you've already turned customer service representatives into automatons by requiring them to closely follow a pre-defined script.
The book also digs into our collective left-brain bias, with a quote from Oliver Sacks: "The entire history of neurology and neuropsychology can be seen as a history of the investigation of the left hemisphere." It's becoming clear, though, that we favor the left-brain over the right at our own peril — those with strokes affecting right-brain function can find it impossible to make decisions, because it turns out decisions are rooted in emotion, not rational analysis. There's even a mention of user experience, and how it's ascent demonstrates a shift away from a left-brained "rational" desire for more features and functions, toward a whole-brained understanding of how people behave, to support, as my colleague Jesse calls it, "human engagement."
Anyway, I could go on, but I simply don't have the time. In short, get the book, read it, engage with it, talk to it, take notes as you think about it, and enjoy it.


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Twitter and the telegraph
Ben Schott on the similarities between the telegraph and Twitter:
The 140-character limit of Twitter posts was guided by the 160-character limit established by the developers of SMS. However, there is nothing new about new technology imposing restrictions on articulation. During the late 19th-century telegraphy boom, some carriers charged extra for words longer than 15 characters and for messages longer than 10 words. Thus, the cheapest telegram was often limited to 150 characters.
Schott also shares about 100 words from The Anglo-American Telegraphic Code, a code book that reduced long phrases into single words in order to cut down on telegraphic transmission costs. The full book is available for reading on Google and it includes over 27,000 code words on 460 pages!


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Choosing the right water pump for your pond can make all of the difference in the world. Just because a pump may cost less to buy, it is not always the way to go.
The most important thing to remember is the electrical usage when looking for a water pump for your pond.
In order to maintain a healthy environment for your Koi pond or water garden, you MUST run your water pump through your filter 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
So it is important to pick the right water pump for your Koi pond or water garden. Water pumps have variances in electrical usage and electrical costs.
The following formula will assist you in determining how much you will spend (approximately) per month to run the pump you select.
- Amps x Volts = Watts
- Watts x 744 and divide by 1000 = KWH per month
- KWH per month x Cost per KWH (located on your electric bill) = Cost per month
Or feel free to use our handy pump cost calculator.


text:
20 Country Artists Who Tested Positive for Coronavirus
Country music hasn't been immune to coronavirus and COVID-19 — at least 20 artists from the genre have come forward with their diagnosis. All who survived to share their symptoms have the same message: Stay home and take this seriously.
Sadly, Joe Diffie and John Prine are two of the nearly 300,000 people in the United States who've died because of COVID-19, the disease caused by coronavirus. More than 16 million people have tested positive for the virus in America.
Staying home and wearing a mask in public are the most effective measures in fighting and preventing the spread of coronavirus. Symptoms are often flu-like and may include a fever, cough, difficulty breathing and chest pain, plus loss of taste or smell. Even those who've battled "mild symptoms" compare their pain to being hit by a Mack truck. It's not unusual for someone to be asymptomatic. Florida Georgia Line's Tyler Hubbard says he was before he tested positive prior to the 2020 CMA Awards.
Since March, nearly every public music event has been canceled or postponed, including all major tours and festivals.
20 Country Artists Who Tested Positive for Coronavirus:


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I visited Elbow Room for the first time last week. I understand that they had recently moved to this new location on Walnut Street, but since I had never been to the old one before, I can't really make a comparison, although I did think the new location was pretty spacious and nice.
I was with a large group, and Elbow Room was very accommodating about that. While waiting for everyone to show up, I perused their extensive beverage selection and ordered an Excelsior Sirah. As for menu options, the Don Ho Burger, which comes with a teriyaki barbecue sauce, pineapples, and Swiss cheese sounded really interesting, but I am a bit picky about the source of my ground beef, so even though I was craving a beef burger, I went with the salmon option instead.
The Don Ho Burger with Salmon |
Here's another view. |
And I did not regret it. The salmon was delicious. The burger was simple, as in not terribly complex in flavor, but the combination of ingredients just worked well together. I also paid the extra $1.50 to upgrade to the sweet potato fries which were also tasty, if a bit cold.
Admittedly, some in the group were not as impressed with their food. However, the consensus seems to be that Elbow Room makes a good salmon, as everyone who had salmon as part of their dish had good things to say about it.
Restaurant info:
Elbow Room
5533 Walnut St, Pittsburgh, PA 15232
(412) 441-5222


text:
Bertrand DUBEDOUT
Born in 1958 in Bayonne (France), Bertrand Dubedout was schooled in his birthplace where he also began studying music. He went on to advanced musical training at the University of Pau, with Guy Maneveau and Marie-Françoise Lacaze, then at the Paris Conservatoire in the classes of Pierre Schaeffer and Guy Reibel (Electro-acoustic Composition and Musical Research), winning the Composition Prize in 1981. He also studied at the Centre d'Études Polyphoniques de Paris and the University of Paris. He is currently a tenured professor of electro-acoustic composition at the Toulouse Regional Conservatory. Founder of the Ensemble Pythagore in 1988, he is also co-artistic director of the éOle collective and the Novelum festival.
Since 1981 he has received commissions from the state and institutions such as the GRM (Musical Research Group), Radio-France, CIRM, GMEM, GRAME, et al. In France, he has been guest composer of festivals such as Présences (Radio-France, Paris), Aujourd'hui Musiques (Perpignan), Agora (IRCAM, Paris), Solistes aux Serres d'Auteuil (Paris) and Déodat de Séverac (Toulouse), the 38èmes Rugissants (Grenoble), MANCA (Nice), Les Musiques (Marseilles) and Musiques en Scènes (Lyons), and abroad, Realm (Helsinki), Roma Europa (Rome), Musica Viva (Lisbon), CCMC (Tokyo), L'Espace du Son (Brussels) and International Modern Music Festival (Kobe, Japan).
His works have been performed by ensembles such as the Diastéma Quartet, the Pulsaxion duo, Ensemble Cercles (Switzerland), Ensemble Icarus (Italy), Sond'Ar-te Electric Ensemble (Portugal), Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain, 2e2m and Ensemble Orchestral Perpignan Languedoc-Roussillon, and by soloists including Claude Delangle, Jean Geoffroy, Donatienne Michel-Dansac, Sonia Turchetta, Marie Kobayashi, and Finghin Collins.
SACEM awarded him the Claude Arrieu Prize in 1997. Two years later, he was named composer-in-residence at the Villa Kujoyama in Kyoto, Japan (Villa Kujoyama Programme, AFAA [French Association for Artistic Action] / Ministry of Foreign Affairs).
"Bertrand Dubedout's sound universe lies within ultra-chromatic divisions, quarter-tones to be more exact. Iniji (1982)n his opus 1 for voice and harpsichord, possesses a non-tempered charm which already gives a sense of subsequent research into the microtonal domain. Early on, Dubedout approaches microtonalism in a structured way, using specific scales which allow for new areas to be integrated into his melodic/harmonic textures. The richness of his well-defined acoustic sphere, bound to a highly personal ethic of sound, confers on his music an original light. Dubedout in fascinated by the Asiatic world, especially Japan, which has stimulated his creative imagination for several years. Starting in 1988, Les nombres for seven instrumentalists inaugurates fresh areas of sound in which the echo of the japanese mouth organ sho, at once near and distant, seems to be heard surrounding the shakuhachi flute and the hichiriki found in the Japanese court music of Gagaku. The taut sonorities and sliding gestures of these traditional instruments fit like a personal timbre into his soundscape. Without directly borrowing from Japanese instruments (with the notable exception of the mokugyo - a cross between woodblock and wooden drum), Dubedout possesses his own "instrumental laboratory" where, like a practiced alchemist, he can lavishly experiment. In Bood Six of Fractions du Silence, for percussion, he probes deeper into ancient Japanese court music's rhythmic richness and principle of development to realize, on his own terms, "the palimpsest of a Gagaku in Western notation."
At the beginning of cach work, a referential color comes to the fore, flasching like a beam of light around which everything will be played out, like a primordial surge, a scene of movement and fluctuation which can swell without limit. Thus generated, the process joins up with a mysterious itinerary, and the result obtained can sound resolutely personal. Working with a highly refined feel for polyphony, Dubedout explores vibratory space and sensitizes the ear to the most subtle of intervals, above all when he chooses the homogeneous sounds of four saxophones : a true acoustic experience. The First Book of Fractions du Silence (1994), perhaps the most radical example, beckons us to listen in on the inner reaches of sound, into the live burgeoning of resonance.
With a subterranean energy pushing his works onward and propelling sound towards ever more luminous regions without renouncing the point of anchorage, Dubedout's music acquires incantatory force. Through reiterated impulses (one thinks of Varèse), obsessive reworkings and an intense process which often solidifies material until it explodes, Dubedout likes to keep the listener's ear under tension, until an emotional discharge grabs hold with a power -if not violence- transmitted by sudden explosions of sound.
Passionate exploration into sound (which he also pursues in his electronic studio work) give rise to feelings of prolongation, of crossing through space. In Épisodes transparents for 32 voices and tape (1987), sound glides across space and time, freeing us from the sense of duration. Created as sequences, episodes and successive movements, Dubedout's body of word seems dedicated to a sense of endless continuity. Yet it also embraces the importance of marking out the limits of this adventurous course, by according singular importance to the journey's final stage as a sound plane distanced from the rest, like the negative exposure of an image which has just been projected. The process becomes then inverted : decantation, disembodiment in order to space out events, fritter away resonance and leave the last word to silence : rustlings wings disrupting the veiled skies, collapse into the abyss, the beating of mokugyos marking rhythm in a suddenly deserted space...
And then there are sounds which send us back to the original poetical source which always lies at the edge of musical desire : words, and their emotional impulses. For Dubedout, literature is the spark which constantly feeds his spirituel search. Since 1992, as part of a large-scale project involving the works of the poet André du Bouchet, Bertrand Dubedout has been approaching all kinds of musical groupings, including from the electro-acoustic medium. These offerings are organized under the generic title Fraction du silence. Each score -or, as he prefers, "Book"-of this multi-volume work carries a quotation as an epigraph, perhaps in the poetic vein of Ariadne's clew, linking together different pages of the upcoming musical whole. The Eighth Book, recently completed, enlists a solo voice to "illuminate" the kind of poetic care he has shown all along : sonorous jubilation of verbs amid an instrumental galaxy ; a goldsmith's meticulousness in the notation of prosodic rhythm : use of alternatively open and closed spaces, according to a text rendered in song, speech or Sprechstimme. Here is the loving intertwining of words and sounds, which keeps phrases breathing and blooming with emotion."
Michèle TOSI
> News
- CD release: Zazpiak B for marimba solo, by Jean Geoffroy, and Zazpiak Z for instrumental ensemble, by the ensemble Court-circuit, under the direction of Jean Deroyer, for the label éOle Records - éOr_011.
> Premieres
ZAZPIAK N, for piano solo and instrumental ensemble
Nouvel Ensemble Moderne - Cond.: Lorraine Vaillancourt
Pno: Jacques Drouin
Odyssud (Grande Salle) - Blagnac - France
> News
- CD release: Zazpiak N for piano solo and instrumental ensemble, by Francis Perron (piano) and the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne (of Montreal), under the direction of Lorraine Vaillancourt, for the label éOle Records - éOr_016.
> Premieres
ZAZPIAK K, for piano solo
Wilhem Latchoumia
Théâtre Garonne - Toulouse - France
Works composed by Bertrand DUBEDOUT
> 2017 / éOle Records éOr_016 - tournoiements
ZAZPIAK N, for piano solo and instrumental ensemble
Nouvel Ensemble Moderne (de Montréal)
Francis Perron (piano)
Lorraine Vaillancourt (conductor)
ÇA VA COMMENCER ÇA COMMENCE, for mezzo-soprano and soprano saxophone
Mezzo-soprano: Marie Kobayashi
Saxophone: Claude Delangle
BIS Records AB / BIS-CD-1630
ENDLESS ELEVEN, for percussion and electronics
Percussion: Jean Geoffroy
Vieo production - set design: Christophe Bergon
Promotional DVD produced by the Grame
ENTRE LES BRAISES ROUGES, for flute, viola and harp
Flute: Michel Brun
Viola: Louis Merlet
Harp: Sophie Martin
L'empreinte digitale / ED 13019
FRACTIONS DU SILENCE - 1er LIVRE, for four saxophones
Quatuor Diastema
L'empreinte digitale / ED 13070
FRACTIONS DU SILENCE - 2e LIVRE, for flute, oboe and cello
Ensemble Pythagore
FRACTIONS DU SILENCE - 3e LIVRE, for violin, clarinet, tenor saxophone and piano
Violin: Claire Zarembowitch
Clarinet: Jean-Jacques Godron
Saxophone: Philippe Lecoq
Piano: François-Michel Rignol
éOle Records / éOr_002
FRACTIONS DU SILENCE - 5e LIVRE, for flute and piano
Flûte: Annie Ploquin-Rignol
Piano: François-Michel Rignol
Motus M298004
FRACTIONS DU SILENCE – 6e LIVRE, for percussion
Percussions: Jean Geoffroy
Skarbo / DSK 1063
LES NOMBRES, for 7 instruments
Ensemble Pythagore
L'empreinte digitale / ED 13070
ZAZPIAK B, for marimba solo
Jean Geoffroy (marimba)
ZAZPIAK Z, for instrumental ensemble
Ensemble Court-circuit
Jean Deroyer (conductor)
éOle Records / éOr_011 - de front (2016)
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text:
Admit it: You like to watch.
Movies! You like to watch movies.
But, like, if those movies have sex in them, that's also okay, too. There's no shame in that whatsoever. ScreenCrush has explored the history of onscreen sexuality before, chronicling everything from the greatest TV sex scenes in history to the weirdest movie sex scenes ever committed to celluloid to horrifying porn parodies of beloved childhood favorites. What follows here is something a bit different. Rather than focus on sequences our staff found particularly titillating or amusingly perverse, it's an attempt to recognize the scenes that had an outsized influence on culture and society as a whole.
Whether they showed something never before depicted in the history of cinema, or spawned a million imitators and parodies, the 25 films that follow changed the course of motion pictures — and sexuality — forever. Wherever possible, we've included video of the key scene. (If the scene isn't currently online, we used a trailer instead.) Here they are, presented in chronological order, so you can properly appreciate the evolution of horniness onscreen...
- 1
The Kiss (1896)
Why It's Important: It may not look like much now, but this brief peck between May Irwin and John Rice — the first kiss in a motion picture history — was a sensation in 1896. The film garnered incredulous headlines and became a smash wherever it was shown. From their earliest days, cinema and sexuality were locked in an inextricable embrace.
- 2
Le Coucher De La Mariée (1896)
Why It's Important: Things got even spicier the same year with Le coucher de la mariée, which depicted a newlywed couple on their wedding night. As the bride undresses behind a screen, the groom steals glimpses. Laying bare the entire voyeuristic nature of cinema even in its earliest days, Le coucher de la mariée is one of the very first erotic films ever made — just a year or two into the medium's existence.
- 3
Ecstasy (1933)
Why It's Important: Though extremely chaste by modern standards, Ecstasy's sex scene, featuring a young Hedy Lamarr in her breakthrough role, was one of the earliest depictions of sexual intercourse onscreen — and the first female orgasm.
- 4
From Here to Eternity (1953)
Why It's Important: Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr's kisses among the waves at Oahu's Halona Cove were so passionate that rumors spread of an affair between the two. True or not, the scene was considered so racy the MPAA banned it from ads for the movie. ("They're kissing... horizontally!") Today, their enthusiastic clinches among the lapping waves of the Pacific have become the iconic representation of Golden Age romance — and Production Code-approved sexuality.
- 5
I Am Curious (Yellow) (1967)
Why It's Important: This controversial and enormously successful Swedish production attracted enormous attention in America thanks to its unprecedented sexuality. At the height of the sexual revolution, I Am Curious (Yellow) broke new ground, including one of the first depictions of frontal male nudity onscreen.
- 6
Blue Movie (1969)
Why It's Important: The divisions between "art films" and "pornography" got mighty blurry in the late 1960s and early 1970s. One of the first examples of unsimulated sex in a widely released motion picture was not in porn; it was in Blue Movie from pop artist Andy Warhol, who included a hardcore sex act in his chronicle of a few hours in the lives of a New York couple. (They also talk about the Vietnam War and take a shower.) Warhol's boldness helped launch an era where hardcore pornography was given sudden respectability, whether it deserved it or not.
- 7
Last Tango in Paris (1972)
Why It's Important: Let's be clear: Putting Last Tango in Paris on this list is in no way an endorsement of director Bernardo Bertolucci or his appalling methods when filming the notorious "butter scene." According to star Maria Schneider, the moment when Marlon Brando's Paul rapes her character using butter as lubricant was not in the script, and she received almost no warning before the sequence was filmed. ("I felt humiliated and to be honest, I felt a little raped," Schneider later said in an interview.) It's inclusion here is not a matter of opinion but historical fact: The butter scene is undeniably one of the most important sex scenes in movie history. Pauline Kael declared Last Tango a "landmark in movie history," and audiences who saw it began to rethink the lines between serious art and graphic onscreen sexuality. In the process, Last Tango became one of the biggest blockbusters of 1973. While the way in which it was filmed is repellent, its influence is undeniable.
- 8
Don't Look Now (1973)
Why It's Important: While Last Tango in Paris' reputation waned over time, Don't Look Now's has only grown; 47 years after its first release, it still ranks at or near the top of almost every list of the greatest sex scenes ever made. Even in the midst of the "porno chic" 1970s, Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie's lovemaking was so convincing that rumors spread that the sex was unsimulated. (All parties have insisted it wasn't.) Beyond its palpable heat, the scene used complex editing to tell the story of this married couple's relationship through the evolution of their physical intimacy. Genuinely erotic, and genuinely intelligent; Don't Look Now remains the standard by which all other sex scenes are measured.
- 9
In the Realm of the Senses (1976)
Why It's Important: Some films that were considered taboo in their day look quaint through modern eyes. Not In the Realm of the Senses from Japanese director Nagisa Oshima. A torrid affair between a hotel owner and a maid culminates in a sex scene of such ferocity and violence that it's still shocking to this day — and yet always grounded in Oshima's ideas about obsession and morality.
- 10
Body Heat (1981)
Why It's Important: Body Heat's crowd-pleasing blend of old school film noir and modern sexuality helped ignite an entire decade of erotic thrillers that became some of Hollywood's most reliable hits throughout the 1980s.
- 11
9 1/2 Weeks (1986)
Why It's Important: Film history can be roughly divided into two periods: Before Mickey Rourke Fed Kim Basinger Sexy Foods, and After Mickey Rourke Fed Kim Basinger Sexy Foods. In February 1986, Roger Ebert predicted this sex scene would be the "most talked-about in this movie." It was not only the most talked about scene in the movie, it was one of the most talked about scenes in any movie that year, and it became a cultural touchstone for decades.
- 12
When Harry Met Sally... (1989)
Why It's Important: While it may not meet the standard definition of a "sex scene," Meg Ryan moaning in ecstasy over her Katz's pastrami sandwich became the most famous orgasm — fake or otherwise — in motion picture history.
- 13
Ghost (1990)
Why It's Important: The biggest movie of 1990 — bigger than Pretty Woman, Back to the Future Part III, Total Recall, Home Alone, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles — was Ghost, a movie about Patrick Swayze dying and then trying to protect his beloved wife (Demi Moore) from harm. Whatever uncommercial aspects of its premise, Ghost's ace in the hole was Swayze and Moore's sensual collaboration at a pottery wheel, which became the focal point of all the movie's advertising — and helped sell untold thousands of clay pots.
- 14
Kids (1995)
Why It's Important: In the mid-1990s, Larry Clark's Kids became the subject of a renewed conversation about the role of sex in cinema in the era of HIV and AIDS. Scenes like the opening, in which a teenage boy systematically talks a virgin into sleeping with him, garnered enormous controversy, and wound up getting Kids slapped with an NC-17 rating. (The film was ultimately released unrated.) The discussion around the movie grew so large that, for better or worse, Kids became one of the defining movies of its time — and not just about sex.
- 15
Titanic (1997)
Why It's Important: Although Titanic's astronomical budget and groundbreaking effects were the subject of most press around the movie, the film became the biggest hit in history because of repeat customers who wanted to bask in Jack and Rose's brief love affair over and over again. The sex scene between the two is not especially explicit, but it's about as graphic as any in a PG-13-rated movie— and surely had a large (if mostly unexamined) influence on Titanic's enormous box office. Plus: How many movies have copied that hand on the steamy window gag?
- 16
Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
Why It's Important: Stanley Kubrick's casting of one of the world's most famous celebrity couples in a sexually explicit drama was noteworthy already, but Eyes Wide Shut took on even more historical importance after the key sex scene — a lengthy tour of a secret society's orgy party — was altered in post-production to ensure an R rating. The studio digitally added more masked figures into the sequence to hide the most graphic images — becoming a flashpoint in the never-ending battle over censorship in cinema.
- 17
Y Tu Mamá También (2001)
Why It's Important: So many coming-of-age movies play sex for cheap laughs; Y Tu Mamá También shows characters in the midst of true discoveries about themselves, some so surprising they threaten to rupture their very sense of identity. That was never more true than in the film's legendary sex scene, where friends Julio and Tenoch go from kissing the same woman to kissing one another.
- 18
Monster's Ball (2001)
Why It's Important: Halle Berry won a Best Actress Oscar for her powerful performance in all of Monster's Ball, not just for her famous sex scene with Billy Bob Thornton. Berry plays a troubled woman named Leticia, who finds comfort in the arms of a former prison guard (Thornton) who she does not realize was involved in her husband's execution. According to Thornton, the key scene was largely improvised, which makes Berry's searing intensity even more impressive.
- 19
Intimacy (2001)
Why It's Important: This British indie holds the distinction of featuring one of the very first unsimulated acts of fellatio outside the realm of hardcore pornography. (In a somewhat surreal twist of fate, the fellatio is performed on British actor Mark Rylance, bringing new meaning to the phrase "The BFG.")
- 20
Secretary (2002)
Why It's Important: Secretary not only depicted "taboo" acts of BDSM that remain rare onscreen even 18 years later, it did so in a non-judgmental way that's even more unusual, with Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader consumed by a loving sadomasochistic relationship.
- 21
The Brown Bunny (2003)
Why It's Important: Age-old debates about art and pornography came roaring back to life in the early 2000s, thanks in large part to Vincent Gallo's The Brown Bunny, which culminated with a real act of oral sex between Gallo and co-star Chloë Sevigny (who also appeared in Kids). The sequence was crucial to The Brown Bunny's story and themes and outraged many audiences anyway.
- 22
9 Songs (2004)
Why It's Important: 9 Songs pushed even further into uncharted territory for a mainstream movie; director Michael Winterbottom filmed his two leads, Keiran O'Brien and Margo Stilley, committing all kinds of sexual acts with one another and even included shots of O'Brien ejaculating. (You may be sensing a trend in indie movies of the early 2000s.)
- 23
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Why It's Important: The novelty of a "gay cowboy movie" might have made it a cause celebre in the mid-2000s, but it was the heated love scene between co-stars Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal — and the way they played sheepherders Ennis and Jack's relationship over many decades — that made Brokeback Mountain a landmark of queer cinema.
- 24
Blue Valentine (2010)
Why It's Important: Even as movies pushed aside many boundaries regarding onscreen sexuality in the 2000s, others remained firmly locked in place. The filmmakers behind Blue Valentine, a drama about the ups and downs in the marriage of Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams), wound up protesting their rating to the MPAA, arguing that giving their movie an NC-17 because Dean performs cunnilingus on Cindy was hypocritical — since many R-rated movies had depicted similar acts on men performed by women. In the end, the MPAA sided with the filmmakers, and downgraded the NC-17 to an R, leaving the sex scene intact. The landmark decision was a small yet important step toward gender parity in the world of movie sex.
- 25
Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013)
Why It's Important: This French love story won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival — yet Blue Is the Warmest Color's subsequent reception wasn't nearly so warm, with some critics accusing director Abdellatif Kechiche of filtering the movie's lesbian romance (and marathon lovemaking) through a male gaze. Even the movie's stars, Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos, spoke publicly about their "horrible" experience on Kechiche's set. The reaction to both Blue Is the Warmest Color's adult content, and to its director's treatment of the film's actresses, affirmed that the world's relationship with onscreen sexuality continues to evolve.


text:
No. 3/2/2010-CS-II (Vol.11)
Government of India
Ministry of Personnel Public Grievances & Pensions
Department of Personnel .& Training
3rd Floor, Loft Nayak Bhavan,
New Delhi dated 19th June 2013.
Office Memorandum
Subject: Promotion of LDC as UDC of Central Secretariat Clerical Service (CSCS) on ad-hoc basis- Continuance of Ad-hoc appointments regarding.
The undersigned is directed to refer to this Department's O.M. of even number dated 19th December, 2012 whereby cadre units were permitted to continue the ad-hoc appointments in the UD Grade of CSCS up to 30th June, 2013 and to say that the continuation of the ad-hoc appointments in the U.D grade made by the cadre units has been reviewed in this Department. Since availability of regular UDCs through normal modes of recruitment prescribed under the CSCS Rules may take some more time, it has been decided that the period of ad-hoc appointment of those LDCs who are working as UDC of on ad-hoc basis may be extended up to 31th December, 2013 or till regular UDCs become available, whichever is earlier.
2. Continuance of ad-hoc appointment shall not confer on the appointees any right to continue in UDC Grade indefinitely or for inclusion in the Select List of UDC of CSCS or to claim seniority in UDC Grade of CSCS.
3. Other terms and conditions mentioned in this Department's O.M. No. 3/6/2004-05.11 dated 28.2.2005 will remain unchanged.
Source: http://persmin.nic.in
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text:
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Christian Soldiers at WYD
Members of the Spanish Legion, an elite unit of the Spanish Army, guard El Cristo de la Buena Muerte, or Christ of the Good Death, inside the military archbishop's Church ahead of Thursday's visit by Pope Benedict XVI in Madrid, Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2011. The ancient wooden sculpture is in Madrid for the Pope's visit and is on display outside of Malaga for the first time. It was carried during the Stations of the Cross (AP Photo/Daniel Ochoa de Olza)
11 comments:
The picture of them marching with the crucifix held high on their upright arms is wonderful.
- 21/8/11 9:06 pm
- araceli lorayes said...
In my case, the pictures made me uneasy - the goose-stepping soldiers, the crucifix held on upright arms, the postures so stiff they verge on the grotesque, the name of the crucifix, all these elements put together make a statement, an ideological statement. Don't get me wrong; I am an orthodox Catholic, faithful to the magisterium. But in my country, the Philippines, a crucifix or a religious icon is always, always carried by a priest or the laity, never by soldiers. The crucified Christ, when carried in a Good Friday procession, in some towns is towed not just by laity but by barefoot penitents as an act of humility, or in fulfillment of some vow. There is an arrogance, a triumphalism in this part of the procession which is not pleasant to see. It comes across to me as fascistic. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this one conveys strongly how unhealthily close the relationship was between Franco and the church, which probably explains the rampant anti-clericalism in Spain today.
- 22/8/11 12:21 pm
I too don't like soldiers associated with the Crucifix.
Reminds me of the Romans. The only soldier I like is the Centurion. - 22/8/11 4:30 pm
- Et Expecto said...
Sorry if this is slightly off topic, but it needs saying.
As I think you have already commented, the coverage of World Youth Day by the BBC was outrageously biassed. I have submitted a formal complaint to the BBC.
Father, would you publish something encouraging people to make a complaint. It can be done on the website
or it can be done by letter or telephone.
I understand that there need to be at least a thousand complaints to make any iumpact. - 22/8/11 5:15 pm
Araceli Lorayes, your remarks are interesting, especially when it is considered that the ancestors of these soldiers probably brought with them the priests and religious who evangelised your country in the first place, and made it the splendid citadel of Catholicism we see today. Long may it flourish so.
There is in my opinion, something in the Spanish national character which, in a perfectly healthy way, accepts and embraces death as a part of life. Compare that with the attitude of the average Briton, who is usually rather embarrassed about the whole subject. We, as Catholics, are often reminded of the worthy aim of having a good death. The Spanish people seem to live their entire lives with this one aim in mind. So there can surely be little wrong with Catholic soldiers publicly displaying their devotion, and in the smartest way they know. They are not goose-stepping, by the way, they are slow-marching, which is quite different. Watch the way the Guards slow-march at trooping the colour (and don't even think of accusing the Guards of goose-stepping!) If you want to see images of goose-stepping, look in archive newsreel footage of Third Reich elite troops, raising their legs almost to waist height.
Being from the Philippines, you may have mixed feelings about Spain; that is, gratitude for the bringing of the faith, but resentment towards a former colonial ruler. In this country, I suspect that you will have been influenced by the liberal smart talk of 'cafe Catholicism' as well as by 'traditional' Protestant English anti-Spanish attitudes, which date from time of the Armada of 1588.
You say you are an orthodox Catholic. But Tubingen theologians and column-writing Monsignori also claim to be orthodox. I am making the point that the individual may not be the best judge of his or her own orthodoxy and you must be especially careful with words such as 'arrogance' and 'fascistic'. For an orthodox Catholic, the highest law is charity.
I know little of the history of Spain in modern times, or of Franco and the church. But in a - then - Catholic country, what possible objection could there be to an observant Catholic as head of state. I know only that I am uncommonly glad that Franco won the civil war and not the communists. Of course, now that he has gone, the forces he defeated have now risen up again and Spain is paying the price for this resurgent liberalism - economic chaos, political instability and course, 'irreligion'; hence anti-clericalism.
Martin's brief post shows his grasp of history to be worse than mine!
He says he doesn't like soldiers associated with the Crucifix, and that he only likes one Roman soldier.
Is he ignoring the fact that before the Emperor Constantine adopted the Christian (i.e. Catholic) faith as the official religion of the empire, many soldiers were quietly Catholic and that at the battle of Milvius in 312, the entire army fought with the chi-rho symbol on their shields? They won their battle, rather well. After that the number of Catholic soldiers - and civilians - increased greatly.
If he wishes, Martin could agitate for soldiers' association with the Crucifix to be much reduced by the removal of service chaplains, probably with the sad results seen in WW1 in the French army, where priests were conscripted as ordinary soldiers. Another glorious chapter in the story of anti-clericalism. With the greatest respect, Martin, stop talking nonsense. - 23/8/11 11:40 am
- shane said...
What wonderful photos! ¡VIVA ESPAÑA! The champion of Christendom and Ireland's oldest ally.
- 23/8/11 3:36 pm
- araceli lorayes said...
To mikesview:
1. The fact that Spaniards introduced Christianity into the Philippines is irrelevant to my observations.
2. Your conjectures about my orthodoxy and my attitudes towards a former colonizer are an example of argumentum ad hominem, and do not deserve a reply. (However, your comments do remind me of what a prominent lawyer told me is courtroom strategy which all lawyers learn in law school - when the facts are on your side, attack the facts of your opponent; when the facts are not on your side, attack the opponent.)
3. If you look up the history of the Spanish Legion, you will find out that one of their founders was Francisco Franco, indisputably a fascist, and that they fought on the Nationalist (fascist) side during the Spanish Civil War.
4. Let us leave the Spanish people out of the discussion and focus on the Spanish Legion. They do have a fixation on death. My father had many Spanish friends - people who had emigrated to the Philippines after the victory of Franco. I remember them telling my father of the Nationalist cry - Viva la muerte! (Long live death!) That sort of thing does not impress me. To my mind, a glorification of death devalues life, clouds the intellect and coarsens the spirit. You are free to believe differently, of course. But Islamist terrorists who blow themselves up also glorify death, and where has it brought us? The samurai culture which spawned kamikaze pilots glorified death, and what did it bring Japan? Catholicism is a culture of life, not death. - 24/8/11 7:54 am
- John Nolan said...
Franco was not a fascist unless you use the term in the loose left-wing sense. There was a Spanish Fascist party, the Falange. It's also time we stopped looking at the Spanish Civil War through the ideological blinkers of the 1930s intelligentsia and saw it in the context of Spanish history.
Franco's regime was brutal at the outset and always stifling and oppressive, but without the long period of stability it represented it is difficult to see how the transition to democracy in the mid-1970s could have happened so easily.
Even while the old dictator still lived, members of the government,often belonging to Opus Dei, were working behind his back to modernize the country. - 24/8/11 10:19 am
I do not for a moment deny your claim to othodoxy, though who would claim otherwise? My remarks merely pointed out that there are people who have caused great damage to the Church and who also claim to be orthodox. Thus the claim is devalued for all of us. If you read my remarks as an ad hominem attack then you over-reacted, since no attack was ever intended. A thought occurs that an ad hominem accusation might be an ad hominem attack in itself!
If you look up the history of the British army, established around the time of the English Civil War, you will find that the New Model Army (generally regarded as the forerunner of today's army) was founded by one Oliver Cromwell, 'Lord Protector' (i.e., dictator) of England. Don't even mention his name in Ireland: in this country, life was unpleasant even for Anglicans, let alone Catholics. As a Briton, I'm glad that we today have the army, but as a Catholic I have to grit my teeth when I see Cromwell's statue outside the Westminster Parliament. My point is that the founder's reputation should not influence our opinion of the present day soldiers.
Islamic suicide bombers and samurai are an irrelevance; they are suicides and thus not admissible examples. By contrast, a worthy soldier sacrifices his life for others, in imitation of Our Lord's sacrifice. A good death indeed. (Incidentally, how long would an army last if the soldiers kept deliberately getting themselves killed?) No, they surely don't want to be killed, but they face up to the possibility of death in action. As Catholics, we believe in the Four Last Things, beginning with Death. It's what our entire Faith prepares us for. Of course, Catholicism is a religion of life – life everlasting, after a good earthly life and a good death.
Finally, the idea that soldiers can – as soldiers - publicly display their commitment to the Catholic Faith, is something very precious indeed. And I'm still glad the communists didn't win. Aren't you? - 24/8/11 12:16 pm
- araceli lorayes said...
Again to mikesview.
You are correct to say that the Spaniards brought Catholicism to the Philippines. But you do not know the whole picture. The Spaniards also could have lost the Philippines to Catholicism, and for that they would have had to bear responsibility. I am a bit more knowledgeable about the history - and the history of Catholicism - in my country, so let me enlighten you.
The first Spanish missionaries were heroic and, I suppose, holy men. But they were not the norm during the 300 plus years of colonization. It is a historical fact that for centuries the Spanish monarchy and the Catholic Church were closely intertwined, and the Church benefited materially from this relationship. The Spanish crown granted the religious orders vast tracts of land in the Philippines - the friar lands - from which they derived great wealth. And the friars often wielded temporal power, too. In some places, in the absence of a Spanish civil official, the parish priest was also the representative of the government.
The result was a Church that was powerful and rich, but not loved. Why? Because all too frequently the religious were intolerant, abusive, venal and immoral, spawning an entire subclass of mestizos (mixed-blood children) whom they set over and above the "indios". If this is not corruption of the moral and social order, I don't know what is.
The Spanish Church was loathed to the same degree as the colonial government. For many Filipinos in the nineteenth century especially the educated ones (considered as dangerous upstarts by the Spaniards), the Church and the colonial government were one and the same thing. By the early 20th century, during the American occupation, Filipinos had defected in droves to the two indigenous schismatic churches and to the Protestants. The tide was stemmed only with the arrival of American - as well as Irish, Belgian, and French - missionaries. The new religious, coming from a different cultural and political environment, took over the dioceses vacated by the Spanish religious and brought back many Filipinos to the Church.
We owe a big, big debt of gratitude to those American missionaries who preserved Catholicism in the Philippines. Otherwise, anti-clericalism in the Philippines(vestiges of which remained until at least the Fifties)could have been even more virulent than what we now see in Spain, Filipinos would have been predominantly Aglipayans, Iglesia ni Kristo and Protestants, and I would not be reading and commenting on this blog. - 24/8/11 2:16 pm
araceli lorayes, maybe the lesson you could take from this is that you should not be guided by your emotions, as your emotions seem to be judging what appears to be the sincere piety on the part of these men. You say, "There is an arrogance, a triumphalism in this.." These are your emotions judging their show of piety.
- 24/8/11 3:04 pm
The Lord's descent into the underworld
At Matins/the Office of Readings on Holy Saturday the Church gives us this 'ancient homily', I find it incredibly moving, it is abou...
A French newspaper has reported Pope Francis, once Benedict dies, will abrogate Summorum Pontificum and handover Old Rite's celebrat...
I was at the Verona Opera Festival when Summorum Pontificum was published but it wasn't until All Souls Day that I first attempted to s...
In a conversation with our bishop recently, I thought he said that some parishes in the diocese were already using the new ICEL translations...


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Lavender Rose Rosary
- Regular price
- Regular price
$28.00 USD - Sale price
- Unit price
- per
Experience the grace of God as you meditate on His mysterious love with this Angel Pink Pearl Rose Rosary. This stunning rose rosary beads features 6 mm soft lavender round faux pearl and 6 mm soft lavender polymer clay rose beads with white detail. Designed in mixed metal with silver plating. Makes a beautiful gift! Approximate length is 68 cm (26.7 in).
Why pray the Rosary today? Unquestionably, to develop in holiness and in one's life. The accompanying are a couple of others reasons why the rosary ought to be prayed frequently, even day by day:
"Among all the devotions approved by the Church none has been so favored by so many miracles as the devotion of the Most Holy Rosary" (Pope Pius IX).
"Say the Rosary every day to obtain peace for the world" (Our Lady of Fatima).
"There is no surer means of calling down God's blessings upon the family . . . than the daily recitation of the Rosary" (Pope Pius XII).
"We do not hesitate to affirm again publicly that we put great confidence in the Holy Rosary for the healing of evils of our times" (Pope Pius XII).
"No one can live continually in sin and continue to say the Rosary: either they will give up sin or they will give up the Rosary" (Bishop Hugh Doyle).
"The Rosary is a magnificent and universal prayer for the needs of the Church, the nations and the entire world" (Pope John XXIII).
"The Rosary is the compendium of the entire Gospel" (Pope Paul VI quoting Pope Pius XII).
"Meditation on the mysteries of the Rosary . . . can be an excellent preparation for the celebration of those same mysteries in the liturgical actions [i.e. the Mass] and can also become a continuing echo thereof" (Pope Paul VI).
"My impression is that the Rosary is of the greatest value not only according to the words of Our Lady at Fatima, but according to the effects of the Rosary one sees throughout history. My impression is that Our Lady wanted to give ordinary people, who might not know how to pray, this simple method of getting closer to God" (Sister Lucia, one of the seers of Fatima).
"How beautiful is the family that recites the Rosary every evening" (Pope John Paul II).
Pope John Paul II has called the Rosary his "favorite prayer," after the Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours.
St. Louis de Montfort warns us against both the ignorant and scholars who regard the Rosary as something of little importance..."the Rosary is a priceless treasure inspired by God."
Order now while in stock!


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Here are some of the key tenants we've picked up deploying standalone and farm based Remote Desktop Services (RDS) for our Small Business Solution (SBS) on-premises and in our cloud.
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, or VDI for short, covers both Remote Desktop Services standalone, farm, and desktop operating system deployments.
This list, while not totally comprehensive, covers a lot of ground.
- Hardware, Storage, and Networking
- GHz and Cores are king
- Balance core count and GHz versus cost
- NOTE: Server 2016 licensing will be, and is as of this writing, based on core count!
- Today is 2 sockets tomorrow is a server total of 16 cores
- Additional Cores purchased in pairs
- Example 1: Dual Socket 8 Core pair = 16 Cores total so OK in current and 2016 licensing
- Example 2: Dual Socket 12 Core pair = 24 Cores total so base license of 16 Cores plus a purchase of 4 licenses (2 cores per license) would be required
- NOTE: Examples may not line up with actual license terms! Please verify when 2016 goes live.
- RAM is cheap so load up now versus later
- Balanced RAM setup is better than Unbalanced
- Balanced: 4x 16GB in primary memory channel slot
- Best performance
- Unbalanced: 4x 16GB in primary and 4x 8GB in secondary
- Performance hit
- ~500MB of RAM per user per session to start
- 25-50 IOPS per user depending on workloads/workflows RDS/VDI
- Average 2.5" 10K SAS is ~250 to 400 IOPS depending on stack format (stripe/block sizes)
- Latency kills
- Direct Attached SAS or Hyper-Converged is best
- Lots of small reads/writes
- Average 16bpp RDS session single monitor 23" or 24" wide: ~95KB/Second
- Average dual monitor ~150KB/Second
- Bandwidth use is reduced substantially with a newer OS serving and connecting remotely (RDP version)
- LoBs (Line of Business applications)
- QuickBooks, Chrome, Firefox, and Sage are huge performance hogs in RDSH
- Be mindful of LoB requirements and provision wisely
- Keep the LoB database/server backend somewhere else
- In larger settings dedicate an RDSH and RemoteApp to the resource hog LoB(s)
- User Profile Disks
- Office 2013 and Exchange 2013 are a wash in this setting
- Search is difficult if not broken
- Search Index database will bloat and fill the system disk! (Blog post with "fix")
- Office 2016, though still a bit buggy as of this writing, and Exchange 2016 address UPDs and search
- Be mindful of network fabrics between UPDs and RDSH(s)
- Set the UPD initial size a lot larger than needed as it can't be changed later without a series of manual steps
- UPDs are dynamic
- Keep storage limits in mind because of this
- Printing
- Printers with PCL 5/6 engines built-in are preferred
- Host-based printers are a no-go for us
- HP Professional series LaserJet printers are our go-to
- HP MFPs are preferred over Copiers
- Copier engines tend to be hacked into Windows while the HP MFP is built as a printer out of the box
Previous post on the matter: Some Remote Desktop Session Host Guidelines.
Here's a snippet of Intel's current Intel Xeon Processor E5-2600v4 line sorted by base frequency in GHz:
Depending on the deployment type we're deploying either E5-2643v4 or E5-2667v4 processors for higher density setups at this time. We are keeping at or under eight cores per socket unless we absolutely require more due to the upcoming sockets to cores changes in Windows Server licensing.
If you'd like a copy of that spreadsheet ping us or visit the Intel Ark site.
Philip Elder
Microsoft High Availability MVP
MPECS Inc.
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book
Our Cloud


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Well, this is the post #100. But I will not make a project summary nor announce a new miniBloq version (sorry!). This time is about my good friend Linz. As far as I know, Linz was the first employee of Sparkfun's Education Department. He also was the person who accompanied me when I went to Sparkfun for the Hackers In Residence program, where we extended some of miniBloq's capabilities. But Linz is not at Sparkfun anymore. For several months (and for the second time in his life), we was in Africa, just teaching technology to a lot of people. And now, Linz wants to return there, specifically to Uganda. And that's why he needs some help from us. To achieve that goal, he launched a Kickstarter campaign. All the details are on that link.
Here is another interesting link describing Linz's work. Sharing also helps!


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BBB complaints in the last 17 years
Million kilometers driven to serve our customers
Years #1 in service excellence
% customer satisfaction
Choosing the right design for your home's windows can help define your space and your home. Light or dark, fixed or operating, the perfect finish brings both style and definition to any room. Whether you select a style that matches your existing desires, complements it, or makes a new and dramatic statement, your design consultant can help you pick the perfect look for your home and lifestyle.
More Details ...
The true experience of luxury splendor comes from a combination of comfort, style, and quality. At Window Guard Canada, we know that having your dream house means infusing lushness into all aspects of home design. You will receive personal service from consultants who will assist you with creating your custom luxury window design that is perfect for your individual needs and style.
BBB complaints in the last 17 years
Million kilometers driven to serve our customers
Years #1 in service excellence
% customer satisfaction
Hi Nick, I just wanted to let you know that your installer Rocco did a great job installing our new windows. They're beautiful!!! They are just what I wanted. Best Regards,
Wendy Fraser, Etobicoke
Nick, Thank you very much for helping me do such a wonderful "face lift" to my 75 year old home!
I am very happy with my 16 windows. Your excellent knowledge of the windows and several phone calls to make the job be successful was greatly appreciated.
Dorothy Gruggen
Our organization – The Royal Canadian Legion – contracted Windowguard Canada INC. to replace several windows for Mrs. Christine O'Hara's home. We were very happy to help Christine resolve her window problems and we were even happier to have chosen the right company to do the job. Thank you Windowguard Canada INC, for your prompt and excellent service.
Mr. Richard Barlow – Hamilton Royal Canadian Legion
If you've searched for the perfect upgrade for your home, but have been unable to find a style that fits in with your taste, Windows Guard Canada can help. With your preferences and specific desires, we can work together to design window solutions that will work on both a functional and aesthetic level for years to come.


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Research Highlights
Reconciling reported and unreported HFC emissions with atmospheric observations." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112, no. 19 (2015): 5927-5931.
"Atmospheric abundance and global emissions of perfluorocarbons CF4, C2F6 and C3F8 since 1800 inferred from ice core, firn, air archive and in situ measurements." Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 16 (2016): 11733-11754.
"Atmospheric histories and global emissions of halons H-1211 (CBrClF2), H-1301 (CBrF3), and H-2402 (CBrF2CBrF2)." Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 121 (2016): 3663-3686.
"Global and regional emissions estimates of 1,1-difluoroethane (HFC-152a, CH3CHF2) from in situ and air archive observations." Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 16 (2016): 365-382.
"Model Sensitivity Studies of the Decrease in Atmospheric Carbon Tetrachloride." Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 16 (2016): 15741-15754.
"Re-Evaluation of the UK's HFC-134a Emissions Inventory Based on Atmospheric Observations." Environmental Science & Technology 50, no. 20 (2016): 11129-11136.
"Role of OH variability in the stalling of the global atmospheric CH4 growth rate from 1999 to 2006." Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (2016): 7943-7956.
"Changing trends and emissions of hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) and their hydrofluorocarbon (HFCs) replacements." Atmospheric Chemistry & Physics 17 (2017): 4641-4655.
"Role of atmospheric oxidation in recent methane growth." PNAS 114, no. 21 (2017): 5373-5377.
"Atmospheric histories and emissions of chlorofluorocarbons CFC-13 (CClF3), ΣCFC-114 (C2Cl2F4), and CFC-115 (C2ClF5)." Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 18 (2018): 979-1002.
"Continued Emissions of the Ozone-Depleting Substance Carbon Tetrachloride From Eastern Asia." Geophysical Research Letters 45, no. 20 (2018): 11423-11430.
"History of chemically and radiatively important atmospheric gases from the Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment (AGAGE)." Earth System Science Data 10 (2018): 985-1018.
"Observing the atmospheric evolution of ozone-depleting substances." Comptes Rendus Geoscience 350 (2018): 384-392.
"Recent increases in the atmospheric growth rate and emissions of HFC-23 (CHF3) and the link to HCFC-22 (CHClF2) production." Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 18 (2018): 4153-4169.
"Increase in CFC-11 emissions from eastern China based on atmospheric observations." Nature 569, no. 7757 (2019): 546-550.
"Rapid increase in ozone-depleting chloroform emissions from China." Nature Geoscience 12, no. 2 (2019): 89-93.


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For Week Ending December 3, 2016
This has proven to be a steady year for buying and selling activity in the residential real estate market. Although inventory declined and prices increased throughout the year, it has been a rather strong year, and many are predicting that 2017 will remain about the same as long as inventory remains somewhat steady, unemployment rates continue to fall and mortgage rates remain low.
In the Twin Cities region, for the week ending December 3:
- New Listings decreased 14.7% to 747
- Pending Sales increased 1.7% to 900
- Inventory decreased 19.9% to 11,099
For the month of November:
- Median Sales Price increased 5.7% to $231,750
- Days on Market decreased 16.4% to 61
- Percent of Original List Price Received increased 0.8% to 96.7%
- Months Supply of Inventory decreased 27.6% to 2.1
All comparisons are to 2015
Click here for the full Weekly Market Activity Report. From The Skinny Blog.


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Why Do Cicadas Spend So Much Time Underground?
By Matt Soniak
In 1996, the cicadas of Brood II (the "East Coast Brood") swarmed the northeastern United States and then disappeared almost as quickly as they came, leaving only their eggs and molted exoskeletons behind. Once the eggs hatched, the new generation of cicada nymphs crawled underground, where they've spent the last 17 years biding their time and living off of tree roots.
This year, when the time is right and the soil is warm, they'll emerge again to molt, enter their adult stage, mate, make a lot of noise, and lay their own eggs. Seventeen years is a long time to hang out underground. It's long enough for Bill Pullman to go from an awesome fictional president to an awful one. Why do cicadas spend so much time out of sight and out of mind?
Not all cicadas play this long game of hide and seek. Most North American species are "annual cicadas" that have unsynchronized, 2 to 5 year life cycles and emerge every summer. It's only a handful of species, grouped into broods based on the calendar year they emerge, that have longer, synchronized life cycles and burst forth, all at once, from the ground every 13 or 17 years.
These species, known as "periodical" cicadas, have had scientists scratching their heads since at least the 1600s, when a visitor to the American colonies made mention of the mass emergence in first volume of Philosophical Transactions, the oldest scientific journal. For a while, one leading hypothesis was that the long cycles kept broods from emerging at the same time and competing for limited resources.
Another idea, argued by Stephen Jay Gould in his 1977 book Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History, is that the cycles protect the cicadas from predators and parasites with shorter life cycles. He wrote:
"They are large enough to exceed the life cycle of any predator, but they are also prime numbers (divisible by no integer smaller than themselves). Many potential predators have 2-5 year life cycles. Such cycles are not set by the availability of periodical cicadas (for they peak too often in years of nonemergence), but cicadas might eagerly be harvested when the cycles coincide. Consider a predator with a cycle of five years; if cicadas emerged every 15 years, each bloom would be hit by the predator. By cycling at a large prime number, cicadas minimize the number of coincidences (every 5X17, or 85 years, in this case)."
In other words, staying out of sync with predators' life cycles keeps the cicadas from becoming a reliable, annual source of food, and keeps the predators from adapting to specialize in hunting them or feeding on them. The hitch is that because cicada emergences are so far apart, Gould's hypothesis is difficult to test, but mathematical models, like those created by Glenn Webb and Mario Markus, lend his argument some support.
Even though there are no predators that feed exclusively on periodic cicadas, there are plenty of animals—birds, rodents, snakes, lizards and fish, for example—that will feed on them when they emerge just because they're there, they're abundant, they're easy to catch (cicadas don't really have any defenses to speak of) and they look about the right size for a meal.
Fortunately for the cicadas, their abundance works in their favor, at least for some of them. Since so many of them emerge at the same time, the number of cicadas in any one place is far higher than the predators in that place would be able to eat. A few do get eaten, but once the predators are full, the rest can go about the business of mating and egg laying without being harassed.
If you live in cicada territory (Brood II will emerge in parts of Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia) and want to help scientists predict and track their emergence, consider building or buying a soil thermometer and taking part in WNYC's "Cicada Tracker" citizen science project.


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Khaiyo Khatri
Once Shriji Maharaj visited Mandvi. He was accompanied by more than hundred saints. Brahmanand was one of them. Maharaj camped under a bunyan tree on the banks of a pond. There was much sand. Saints made a raised platform by heaping all sand together. They spread a piece of cloth on that platform for Maharaj to sit.
Maharaj said to the saints, "if you wish I may cater sands or if you wish I may cater sweets to you. Brahmanand Swami said, "Maharaj, wherever we go in the world, bad people offer us sands in begging bowl, so if you serve us sweets it would be better". Maharaj laughed and said, "As you wish". The next day was the Eleventh Day (Ekadashi) of the month. The villagers invited the saints to their homes and offered them fruits. Then they returned to their camp under a bunyan tree.
There lived in Mandvi a certain Khatri named Khaiyo Khatri who knew the Vedas well. He was rich and happy in all respects. He came to know that there came one God of Swaminarayan in Mandvi. He smiled and said, "All come as God. But God is faultless and formless. How can we regard a man as God ?"
There were some followers of this Khatri in Mandvi. He assembled them all and said, "Come with me if you wish to see a fun. Let us make fun of the God of Swaminarayan today. We will eat sweets after becoming victorious."
All were happy that they are going to witness a real fun. Maharaj came to know about Khaiyo Khatri's arrival. So he made a new trick. Maharaj said to Brahmanand Swami, "you will be in my seat today. I will sit at your feet as your disciple. When Khaiyo Khatri puts a question to you, tell him that was not a real question. Such ordinary questions can be answered by my disciple even." Brahamanda Swami was a little bit playful. He liked this. He sat on Maharaja's seat pompously. Maharaj took his seat on the ground in front of Swami. Meanwhile Khaiyo Khatri arrived there with his friends. He seemed full of pride as if victorious of the world. On coming, he said, "Who is superior among youn ?" All boastfully said, "I want to ask you four questions." "Why four ? Ask fourteen questions" said Brahmanand.
Khaiya asked four questions selected from the Vedas. On hearing them, Brahmanand Swami said, "Are these your questions? These are very ordinary and insignificant questions. These questions will be answered by my junior saint". "Saying thus, he looked at his junior saint, i.e. Shriji Maharaj. Shriji Maharaj at once answered those questions. Khaiyo had thought that none had that much understanding of the Vedas as he possessed. But here it was otherwise. The junior sadhu could tell such things that he had never known.
Khaiyo was surprised. He was so much frightened that if his junior saint had been such, how much knowledge and capacity should his senior sadhu have ? Surely I am at fault to clash with him". He was confused. He looked at Brahmanad Swami and then at the Junior Sadhu. Suddenly, seeing the smile on the face of the junior sadhu, he was sure that this is not a junior saint, he must be Maharaj. He said to Brahamanand Swami "Come down from the raised platform, let this junior sadhu sit on that seat," on hearing this, Maharaj laughed and said, " Khaiyo Khatri, you did recognise me now, when are you going to serve us sweet balls? My saints also like sweet balls as much as your friends do". Khaiya was startled. He said, "Maharaj, that was the programme when we return victorious".
"Is this not your victory that you could recognise me in the whole gathering?" asked Shriji Maharaj. Khaiyo had now no way left but to surrender. The next day the saints broke their fast by eating sweet-ball (Laddus). Maharaj, thus, spent a good deal of time in Mandvi. Khaiyo Khatri was now his staunch devotee. Daily he used to go to Maharaj's Darshan and would listen to Shriji Maharaj's words. He had now as much humility as he had pride before. Some of the persons belonging to Khaiya's caste did not like this. Such a Khatri spoke to another Khatri the words which could be overhead by Maharaj. "Person like goats would come to your fold. We, the lions, cannot come to your fold".
Shriji Maharaj didn't speak anything at that time. But after two days, Maharaj, in the company of saints, devotee and Khaiya, went to the house of that Khatri. Khatri came and took his seat in front of Maharaj. Maharaj stared at him a moment and asked, "Tell me what do you want to do now ?" "Whatever you wish me to do," said Khatri. "Will you do what I wish ?" asked Maharaj. "I will," said the spirited Khatri.
Maharaj took an ochre-red coloured cloth from a sadhu and said to Kharti," wear this and be a saint. Khatri took off his clothes and put on that ochre-red coloured clothes. Then Maharaj asked him, "Now go inside the house. Bring all your mattresses. Heap them here". Khatri went inside his house, brought all his mattresses and heaped them in the middle of the courtyard. "Now burn them," said Maharaj. Khatri was about to burn them when Khaiyo said to Maharaj, please pardon me. The whole village would lament if the mattresses would be on flame." Maharaj smiled, He said, "let it be so. There shall not be a fire". "Bhagat, would you do as I order ?" said Maharaj to Khatri once more. Now Khatri had returned to his original nature. He courageously said, "Only goats would come to your fold. We are tigers".
"O tiger! Please look at your clothes," said Maharaj. Khatri looked at his body and saw the Ochre-red coloured clothes on himself. His surprise was boundless. Khaiyo said, "remove the ochre-red coloured clothes and put on your own dress, Khatri, and take back all your lumber. We know what type of tiger you are." Khatri was very much ashamed. He fell at the feet of Maharaj and said, "Maharaj, the whole world is like a goat in comparison with you."


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Purchases can be made on-line using Visa or Mastercard through Windcave (you do not need an account), or direct debit. If you are a business and would like to open an account please download an account application form and send back to us.
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Bloody Stool
Seeing blood in the stool can be alarming, especially if you have never experienced it before. Most likely, you may have been straining when having a bowel movement and the bleeding is due to a hemorrhoid. In other cases, blood in the stool could be an indication of something more serious, such as colon cancer.
About 90 percent of colon and rectal cancer patients initially thought they had hemorrhoids because of symptoms such as rectal itching and rectal bleeding. If you are experiencing any signs of rectal bleeding, no matter what your age, you should consult your doctor immediately, especially if it is a new symptom.
Hemorrhoids are itching, painful or bleeding masses of swollen tissues and veins located in the anus and rectum. About 89 percent of all Americans will experience hemorrhoids at some point in their lives, so they are much more common than you may think. Hemorrhoids tend to flare and then go away, so bleeding patterns are more erratic and circumstantial. Constipation will exacerbate rectal bleeding, but you will find that your symptoms will gradually disappear.
Colon Cancer
If you are experiencing new or increased bleeding from the rectum or pain in the rectal or abdominal area, it could be a sign of a more serious condition, including colon cancer. Pain could be the result of an intestinal obstruction. A colon polyp can block fecal matter as it attempts to pass through the digestive tract. Since cancerous tissue bleeds more than normal tissue, a cancerous mass in the colon could possibly be responsible for abnormal rectal bleeding.
If you notice either bright red or very dark blood in your stool, along with severe pain, you need to contact your physician as soon as possible. Having a doctor take a closer at your symptoms can determine what the cause is and decide on the right course of treatment.


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As part of the Ingecon family of equipment, the Ingecon Hydro SmartTS solution enables the effective control and protection of hydropower plants of up to 1 MW. The Ingecon Hydro SmartTS features all the functionalities required for the control and protection of a hydropower plant.
- Start-up and shut-down sequences. - Grid synchronization. - Turbine governor. - Automatic voltage regulator. - Electrical protection relays. - Human-Machine interface.
The Ingecon Hydro SmartTS comprises two independent yet interconnected systems: the control system and the power generation system.
- Comprising a high performance digital PLC. - Optional generator excitation stage for asynchronous generators. - Possibility of installing, as an optional extra, a latest generation electrical protection relay on the cabinet front. - Possibility of communications via Ethernet TCP-IP (Modbus TCP IEC 61850,…) and serial communications (RS232, RS485,…)
This is physically separated from the control system, to ensure that any faults in this stage do not affect the control electronics. This compartment houses the power generation voltage equipment.
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