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This privacy policy applies to the collection, storage, use and disclosure of personal information by or on behalf of Bing Technologies Pty Ltd (ABN 15 098 420 903) (referred to in this policy as "Bing", "our", "we" or "us"). Please read it carefully.
We are committed to protecting your personal information, and ensuring its privacy, accuracy and security. We handle your personal information in a responsible manner in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Act) and the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs), the Privacy Data and Protection Act 2014 (PDP Act), the Information Privacy Principles (IPPs), the Health Records Act 2001 (HR Act) and the Health Privacy Principles (HPPs).
You do not have to provide us with your personal information. However, if you do not, we may not be able to conduct business with you.
By using any of our products or services, visiting our website or giving us your personal information, you agree to your information being collected, stored, used and disclosed as set out in this Privacy Policy.
1. What do we mean by 'personal information'?
References to 'personal information' or 'sensitive information' in this Privacy Policy have the following meanings:
Personal information means information or an opinion about an identified individual, or an individual who is reasonably identifiable, whether true or not, and whether or not recorded in a material form. Unless a contrary intent appears, in this Privacy Policy 'personal information' may also include one or both of the following, as defined in the Act: 'credit information' and 'credit eligibility information'.
Sensitive information (a type of personal information) has the same meaning as in the Act. In summary, it means information or an opinion about an individual's race or ethnic origins, political opinions and associations, religious beliefs or affiliations, philosophical beliefs, sexual preferences or practices, trade or professional associations and memberships, union membership, criminal record, health or genetic information or biometric information.
2. Collection of personal information
(a) Whose personal information do we collect?
We may collect your personal information from a range of sources, including from you, recruitment agencies, contractors, business partners and government agencies. For example, we may collect your personal information when you:
(i) request or acquire a product or service from us;
(ii) provide a service or product to us;
(iii) apply for employment with us; or
(iv) communicate with us via our website, by e-mail, telephone or in writing.
Wherever reasonable and practicable, we collect personal information from the individual to whom the information relates. If you provide personal information about someone other than yourself, you agree that you have that person's consent to provide the information for the purpose for which you provide it to us.
You also agree that you have told the person about this Privacy Policy and where to find it.
(b) What types of personal information do we collect and hold?
The personal information we collect includes:
(i) names, addresses, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, other contact details, payment details, occupation and other information to assist us in conducting our business, providing and marketing our products and services;
(ii) credit information, including identification information, repayment history information, information requests to credit reporting bodies, the type and amount of credit, default information, court proceedings information, personal insolvency information, publicly available information about credit worthiness, opinions about serious credit infringements, and other personal information (including from credit reporting bodies) about an individual's credit worthiness, such as credit ratings or scores;
(iii) information about staff and directors, as required in the normal course of human resource management and the operation of a business; and
(iv)information about current and previous Bing suppliers and clients with whom Bing has dealings.
We will only collect your sensitive information:
(v) if you have consented to us doing so – for example, as part of information collected about directors and employees for company and human resource management purposes; or
(vi) where required or permitted by law.
(c) How do we collect personal information?
We only collect personal information by lawful and fair means. We usually collect personal information from:
(i) face-to-face meetings, interviews and telephone calls;
(ii) business cards;
(iii) electronic communications – for example, e-mails and attachments;
(iv) forms filled out by people, including as part of acquiring a product or service from us;
(v) third parties – for example, from recruitment agencies, credit reporting bodies and your representatives or agents; and
(vi) our website, including if you use it to contact us.
(d) Why do we collect personal information?
We collect the personal information:
(i) necessary for us to provide you with the products and services you have requested from us;
(ii) for marketing purposes and to provide you with information about products and services that may be of interest to you;
(iii) to improve the products and services we provide; and
(iv) to enable us to conduct our business, including managing any credit we have provided to you and meeting our legal and regulatory obligations.
If you do not provide your personal information, we may not be able to supply the requested product or service, employ you or otherwise deal with you.
(e) How we deal with unsolicited personal information?
If we receive personal information about you that we have not requested, and we determine that we could not have lawfully collected that information under the APP, the IPPs or the HPPs, as applicable, had we asked for it, we will destroy or de-identify the information if it is lawful and reasonable to do so.
3. Use and disclosure of personal information
(a) Use of personal information
We only use your personal information for the purpose for which it was provided to us, for related purposes (for personal information excluding credit eligibility information), or as required or permitted by law. Such purposes include:
(i) in the ordinary course of conducting our business. For example, supplying or acquiring products and services, responding to your enquiries and feedback, and providing information about our events, news, publications and products and services that may be of interest to you;
(ii) market research and product and service development, so that we are able to better understand our customers' needs and tailor our future products and services accordingly;
(iii) performing general administration, reporting and management functions. For example, invoicing and account management, payment processing, credit and risk management, training, quality assurance and managing suppliers;
(iv) employment-related purposes, such as recruiting and providing services to staff;
(v) as part of a sale (or proposed sale) of all or part of our business; and
(vi) other purposes related to or in connection with our business, including meeting our legal and contractual obligations to third parties and for internal corporate governance purposes.
(b) Disclosure of personal information
We may disclose, and you consent to us disclosing, your personal information to third parties:
(i) engaged by us to provide products or services, or to undertake functions or activities, on our behalf. For example, processing payment information, debt recovery, managing databases, marketing, research and advertising;
(ii) that are authorised by you to receive information we hold, including where the third party is considering whether to become a guarantor for you;
(iii) that are our business partners, joint venturers, partners or agents;
(iv) as part of a sale (or proposed sale) of all or part of our business. For example, we may disclose information to our external advisers, to potential and actual bidders and to their external advisors;
(v) such as our external advisers, and government agencies. For example, where disclosure is reasonably required to obtain advice, prepare legal proceedings or investigate suspected unlawful activity or serious misconduct; or
(vi) as required or permitted by law.
We may disclose, and you consent to us disclosing, your personal information to any of our related bodies corporate whether located in Australia or overseas. If we disclose your personal information to a related body corporate, your information will be collected, stored, used and disclosed in accordance with this Privacy Policy, the APPs and the Act, the IPPs, the PDP Act, the HPPs and the HR Act, as applicable.
(c) Marketing use and disclosure
We may use and disclose your personal information (other than sensitive information) to provide you with information about our company, products and services that we consider may be of interest to you.
You may opt out at any time if you do not, or no longer, wish to receive marketing and promotional material. You may do this by:
(i) contacting us via e-mail or in writing at the address below and requesting that we no longer send you marketing or promotional material; or
(ii) where applicable, clicking the "Unsubscribe" button.
(d) Use or disclosure of sensitive information
We will only use or disclose your sensitive information for the purpose for which it was initially collected or for a directly related purpose, as required or permitted by law, or where you consent to the use or disclosure.
4. Disclosure of personal information overseas
We do not disclose personal information to third parties outside Australia, unless required or permitted by law.
5. How is my personal information kept secure?
(a) Security
We take reasonable steps to protect your personal information from misuse, interference, loss and unauthorised access, modification and disclosure. Such steps include:
(i) physical security over paper-based and electronic data storage and premises;
(ii) computer and network security measures, including use of firewalls, password access and secure servers and using a secure local computer system;
(iii) restricting access to your personal information to employees and those acting on our behalf who are authorised and on a 'need to know' basis;
(iv) retaining your personal information for no longer than it is reasonably required, unless we are required by law to retain it for longer; and
(v) entering into confidentiality agreements with staff and third parties who are required to comply with Bing's security, confidentiality and data retention policy.
(b) Destruction and de-identification of personal information
Where we no longer require your personal information, including where we are no longer required by law to keep records relating to you, we will ensure that it is de-identified or destroyed.
6. Data quality, access and correction
(a) Quality
We take reasonable steps to ensure that your personal information is accurate, complete and up-to-date. However, we rely on you to advise us of any changes or corrections to the information we hold about you.
If you consider that the information we hold about you is not accurate, complete or up-to-date, or if your information has changed, please let us know as soon as possible.
(b) Access to personal information
You may request access to the personal information we hold about you by contacting us. We will respond to your request within a reasonable time, but no later than 30 days after receiving your request.
We will provide you with access to the information we hold about you unless otherwise permitted or required by law. If we deny you access to the information, we will notify you of the basis for the denial unless an exception applies.
Where reasonable and practicable, we will provide access to the information we hold about you in the manner you request.
No fee applies for requesting access to information we hold about you. However, we reserve the right to charge a reasonable fee where we do provide access.
(c) Correction of personal information
If you believe that personal information we hold about you is incorrect, incomplete or not current, you may request that we update or correct your information by contacting us. We will deal with your request within a reasonable time, but no later than 30 days after receiving your request.
Additionally, if we disclose your personal information to third parties (in accordance with clause 3(b)) and you subsequently request us to update or correct your personal information, you may request that we notify the third parties of that correction. We will take appropriate steps to give that notification, unless it is impracticable or unlawful to do so.
If we do not agree with the corrections you have requested (for example, because we consider that the information is already accurate, up-to-date, complete, relevant and not misleading), we are not required to make the corrections. However, where we refuse to do so, we will give you a written notice setting out the reasons.
No fee applies for requesting or making corrections to the personal information we hold about you.
7. Identifiers
We do not adopt, use or disclose government related identifiers except as required or permitted by law.
8. Complaints
If you have a complaint in relation to the collection, storage, use or disclosure of your personal information, please contact our Privacy Officer using the details below. You will need to provide us with details of your complaint, as well as any supporting evidence and information.
We will review all complaints received and our Privacy Officer will respond to you.
If you are not satisfied with our response, you may discuss your concerns with or complain to the Australian Privacy Commissioner via www.oaic.gov.au.
9. Changes to this Privacy Policy
We reserve the right to revise this Privacy Policy or any part of it from time to time. Please review this Policy periodically for changes. Any revised policy will be placed on our website at www.bingmail.com.au
Your continued use of our website, products or services, requesting our assistance, or the provision of further personal information to us after this Privacy Policy has been revised, constitutes your acceptance of the revised Privacy Policy.
10. How to contact us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact Bing's Privacy Officer:
(a) by email to email@example.com
(b) by writing to:
Privacy Officer
Bing Technologies Pty Ltd
Jones Bay Wharf
Suite 54, 26-32 Pirrama Road
(c) by telephone: (02) 9552 5500


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Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
Explanation: The sky toward the center of our Galaxy is filled with a wide variety of celestial wonders. Many are easily visible with binoculars. Constellations near the galactic center include Sagittarius, Libra, Scorpius, Scutum, and Ophiuchus. Nebulae include Messier Objects M8, M16, M17, M20 and the Pipe Nebula. Open star clusters include M6, M7, M18, M21, M23, M24, M25. Globular star clusters include M9, M22, M28, M54, M69, M70. And don't forget Baade's Window. Click on the photo to get the un-annotated version.
Authors & editors:
Robert Nemiroff
Jerry Bonnell (USRA)
NASA Technical Rep.:
Jay Norris.
Specific rights apply.
A service of:
LHEA at
Michigan Tech. U.

subset: commoncrawl


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We pledge to provide the highest value in window cleaning service. We will deliver superior service to every customer, every time.
We know the level of service we provide enhances the quality image of our customers. Clean windows can make a huge difference in the atmosphere of your home, and it can be an essential element in the appearance of your business. Whether at work or at home, you can rest assured that your windows will be cleaned by an insured and bonded professional window cleaner.
We can also clean your gutters, mirrors, ceiling fans, and more. When you choose FISH, you won't have to deal with the headache of those hard to reach spots or 3rd story windows. You will also have the benefit of custom scheduling plans, and we accept all major credit cards. Let the nation's leader in window cleaning brighten your world today!


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Re:loved Luxury Scented Candle - Cookie Dough
Re:loved Luxury Scented Candle - Cookie Dough
Our premium brand Re:loved, has collaborated with UK candlemakers StoneStone, to create a unique range of hand poured candles in cosy Christmas scents. The cookie dough delivers a modern take on a classic and cosy scent. Made in the UK. 250ml.
How to use:
For best results burn the candle until it has fully pooled to the edges on first use. Never leave candles unattended.
A purchase you can feel good about
Every purchase you make helps us raise money to fund our free, local hospice care.
Hand poured soy wax, in a rose gold tin.
Shipping & Returns
Shipping & Returns
Terms & Conditions of sale
Havens Hospices is bound by the law not to sell alcohol to those under 18 years of age. After you enter your personal information at checkout, you will be asked to accept our Terms & Conditions. By accepting the terms and conditions you are confirming that you are over the age of 18 and are legally entitled to purchase alcohol. Please note that it is illegal for an adult to purchase alcohol for someone under the age of 18.
To facilitate our legal obligation further you will need to provide a valid photo ID at point of delivery or collection. We operate a no ID, no sales policy. If you are unable to provide a valid form of photo ID the sale will be refused and your order cancelled.
We aim to ship your order within 2-3 business days. Please allow additional time for transit.
We currently ship to Mainland UK, plus the Highlands and Islands, Isle of Man and Channel Islands, and offer 2 shipment options:
Standard (2-4 business days) Royal Mail 48 Tracked - £3.95 (FREE on any order over £25)
Standard Age Verification (2-4 business days) Royal Mail 48 Tracked - £6.00. You will be required to select this service if you are purchasing age restricted items (alcohol). You will also be required to provide a valid photo ID at point of delivery.
Express (1-3 business days) DHL Next Day - £5.95
Click & Collect from Havens Hospices Online Hub (SS3 9DS) - FREE
If you chose this option, when your order is ready we will contact you with full address and collection details
FREE Local Delivery We offer FREE local delivery for age restricted products (gin & beer) to the below list of postcodes. Your order must be over the value of £15 in order to quality. Delivery can take place on any day, but will usually be Mon-Thurs between 0900-1700. If you won't be at home during this time please leave details of a safe place where we can leave your parcel. You can do this in the order notes section. Please note that you will need to have ID available to prove you are over the age of 18.
Qualifying postcodes: SS0, SS1, SS2, SS3, SS4, SS5, SS6, SS7, SS8, SS9, SS11, SS12, SS13, SS14, SS15, SS16, SS17, CM1, CM14, CM2, CM3, CM8, CO1, RM3, RM10, RM17.
Returns & Exchanges
We're sorry if you don't love your Havens Hospices items. If you do wish to process a return or exchange please email firstname.lastname@example.com, with your order number and details of the items you would like to return or exchange.
In line with our returns policy, all returns must be processed within 30 days of receiving your order.
If you have any questions, please contact using using the form below.
Measures: 7x7.5cm. 250ml.
Care Instructions
Care Instructions
For best results burn the candle until it has fully pooled to the edges on first use. Protect the surface underneath the candle. Never leave candles unattended.
Free Shipping over £25
Round up your order to £25 to qualify for free standard UK shipping.
Click & Collect
Local to Southend-On-Sea? Save on shipping and collect your order from one of our shops.


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(ISNS) -- A bat that uses blood flow to reshape its tongue while feeding could help inspire the development of shape-shifting medical instruments, according to a new study.
Scientists have known for a long time that the tongue of the nectar-feeding bat Glossophaga soricina was covered with tiny hairs, but these structures were considered to be passive and unable to move on their own, like the strings of a floor mop. The hairs were thought to have developed as a means of increasing the tongue's surface area to help the bat gather nectar as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Recently, however, scientists at Brown University in Providence, R.I., decided to take another look at the bat's tongue. They were prompted by another study, which found that, contrary to nearly 200 years of conventional wisdom, the tongues of hummingbirds are dynamic structures.
"Hummingbirds have forked tongues that are supported by two [protein-reinforced] rods," explained Cally Harper, a graduate student in ecology and evolutionary biology at Brown University in Providence, R.I.
"During nectar-feeding, the rods separate from each other once the tongue is submerged in nectar. As the tongue is withdrawn, nectar is trapped within and between the tongue tips," said Harper.
In a new study published in this week's issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Harper and her team reanalyzed the tongue of G. soricina and discovered a previously unknown network of veins and arteries that are associated with the tiny hairs on the tip of the bat's tongue.
"When we saw this, we hypothesized that the hairs on the tongue tip might fill with blood and become erect during nectar feeding," said Harper.
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The team's suspicions were supported by experiments on excised bat tongues in which they were able to erect the hairs – known as papillae – by pumping saline into the blood vessels.
But the "aha" moment came after the team recorded high-speed videos of the tongues morphing as the animals fed on nectar. This confirmed that the tongues actually changed shape in live bats.
The tongue tip becomes engorged with blood in 0.04 seconds – too fast to glimpse with the unaided eye.
But a high-speed camera capturing 500 video frames per second revealed that as the tongue protrudes from the bat's mouth, the hairs are resting flat against the tongue. Only when the tongue is completely outstretched and the tongue tip fills with blood do the papillae flare out, perpendicular to the axis of the tongue. As the hairs fill with blood, they change color, from light pink to bright red.
In their erect state, the hairs not only add exposed surface area, but also width, thereby increasing the overall effectiveness of the tongue as a nectar mop.
Kurt Schwenk, an expert in the anatomy and mechanics of tongues at the University of Connecticut, in Storrs, called the research "outstanding."
"The authors have not only discovered a remarkable piece of natural history, they've revealed the bats' feeding mechanism with amazing clarity and beautiful imagery," said Schwenk, who was not involved in the study. "The paper is really a gem and it's something I will want my students to study as an example of excellent science."
Schwenk noted that geckos also inflate their tongue papillae when cleaning their eyes, but the effect is not nearly as dramatic as in bats. He thinks there are other amazing, dynamic tongues in nature that await discovery, perhaps among marsupials that also feed on nectar, using brush-like tongues.
The sheer number of weird and wonderful animal tongues that exist not only make them ideal systems for studying evolution, scientists say, but also great sources of inspiration for future surgical tools and medical robots.
"Tools modeled after bat tongue tips would be beneficial because they would be flexible – and therefore able to bend and conform to the curves of blood vessels and intestines – and able to simultaneously change length and surface configuration," said Harper.
Cang Lam, a California-based medical engineer, agreed. The shape-shifting bat tongue could be used as a model for devices able to wind through small blood vessels and then later change shape, from straight and narrow to a circular brush.
"One device I can immediately think of is a clot retriever for stroke patients," said Lam, who also did not participate in the research.
Ker Than is a freelance writer based in Southern California.
Inside Science News Service is supported by the American Institute of Physics.


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BJ Recounts Her Summer Internship Experience at CNN Operations
14 June 2011JMSC Book "Global Stories" Published
17 June 2011Director of the Reporting and Writing Programme Goes Out With a Bang
Gene Mustain, the Director of Reporting and Writing Programme at the JMSC, has retired after more than a decade of teaching.
A party was held to celebrate the event at the Foreign Correspondents' Club in Hong Kong on Thursday, 16 June, 2011.
More than two hundred people — a mixture of staff and students past and present — came to wish Gene farewell. The evening kicked off with a 12 question quiz about Gene's life, with each correct answer winning a tequila shot.
The Director of the JMSC, Professor Ying Chan, paid tribute to Mustain as a great teacher. She told of how they'd first met on a picket line on a dark, cold, wet night while working at the New York Daily News. Thus started both a friendship and a strong working relationship in which, to quote Mustain, "no-one abused our copy because it was too damned good!"
Mustain moved to Hong Kong in January 2000, following his wife, Doreen Weisenhaus.
Weisenhaus was recruited from the New York Times by Ying Chan, who'd been tasked with setting up the JMSC, to teach the media law course. Mustain initially thought he'd write a book, but Chan had other ideas and asked him to teach an English writing course to second semester MJs.
"The previous fall, I had taught a course in Literary Journalism at night to graduate students at New York University; that was my only experience, other than teaching two semesters of basic reporting and writing to undergraduates at DePaul University in Chicago about 15 years before," said Mustain.
"Despite my limited experience, I got through the semester somehow. The students were kind and gracious, and overlooked weaknesses on my part, particularly my lack of knowledge about Hong Kong — it was their way of welcoming me to this part of the world. I remain grateful to them for that."
Mustain has a long and successful career as a writer. He has written three non-fiction books and was a reporter and writer for the New York Daily News and the Chicago Sun-Times, where he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.
He has worked in film and television, as co-producer for a Home Box Office movie based on one of his books, and as a consultant for documentaries based on his newspaper work. Mustain has also written freelance articles for publications around the world, including the New York Times Magazine and the Los Angeles Times.
While at the JMSC, Mustain co-edited a journalism text which was published on the mainland, called 'English-language News Writing', for which he also wrote two chapters. For two years, he was editorial advisor to Muse, a leading English-language magazine about arts and culture in Hong Kong.
"It was easy for me to teach reporting and writing because it was merely a matter of passing along values that I believe in," said Mustain. "Journalists must be independent. They must be honest and responsible. In some of their writing, they can take attitudes and experiment with language, but in news writing, they must be fair and balanced. In all of their writing, they must be accurate and clear."
"We are one of the first programmes in Hong Kong and the world to teach convergent media," said Ying Chan in her speech at the party. "But the written word is still our foundation. We still use the same principles: reporting is reporting, writing is writing."
When asked what he would miss most about Hong Kong, Mustain replied, quite simply, "the JMSC."
"Without doubt, what I enjoyed most and what I will miss most about my time at the JMSC are JMSC people — the students, the staff and my fellow faculty members," he said. "Over the years, I came to know hundreds of students very well, and many of them have stayed in touch over the years."
"It's been a real treat seeing so many of them go on to do so many different things and to get married and to have families. I also have gotten to know some JMSC staff members very well over the years, and they too are very special people who made parts of my job a lot easier. And then of course there is the JMSC faculty, beginning with the person I came here with — Doreen; it's nice working with your wife, no matter what people say!!!"
Mustain is as committed to journalism as when he started out as reporter many years ago. "Society will always need intelligent, resourceful people to keep it informed," he said. "Though the ways news and information get distributed are changing rapidly and the future is unclear, journalism remains a good career choice for those curious about the world and how it works."
"Even if you do not end up in journalism, our students have found that a journalism education is never wasted because the skills one obtains — researching, writing and communicating well — can be used in any profession."
Mustain will leave his mark on Hong Kong with the publication of a book called "Global Stories", which has just been published by the JMSC and will be distributed by Hong Kong University Press.
It is a collection of 25 nonfiction pieces written by postgraduate students whom he has taught since the Autumn semester of 2001 in his Literary Journalism class.
"I wanted to get this book out because some great work was done by students in this class over the years, and now we will have it all collected in one place," he said.
"I wrote a 3,000-word introduction to the collection, and we are going to try and market the book as a teaching tool to universities across the world," he continued. "We call it "Global Stories" because the students often wrote about events from their personal lives that involved dramatic events in different corners of the globe."
Mustain thanked Professor Chan for giving him the chance to have a second career in teaching.
The staff and students at the JMSC would like to thank Gene Mustain for all his hard work and kindness over the years, and to wish him the very best in both his retirement from HKU and any future endeavours as both journalist and teacher.


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Midwest Devices LLC
Midwest Devices (Capacitor Wizard) sold by Howard Electronics
Midwest Devices Capacitor Wizard is an extremely fast and reliable device designed to measure ESR (Equivalent Series Resistance) on capacitors of 1uf and larger "IN CIRCUIT" eliminating the need to remove the capacitor for accurate tests. The Capacitor Wizard finds BAD caps IN CIRCUIT or out of the circuit!!


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Registration Deadline: | July 02, 2009 about 15 years ago |
To apply for Funding you must register by: | March 28, 2009 over 15 years ago |
Parent Program: | -- |
The aim of the Circle for Teachers is to equip educators with an effective problem-solving approach to teaching mathematics. This style of learning is based on the math circle environment that has proven to be successful for students around the world. The program will immerse a group of interested middle and high school math teachers in engaging mathematics and expose them to a dynamic style of classroom presentation. Participants will come away with a variety of resources, lesson modules, and a renewed sense of appreciation for the fascinating world of mathematics. Teachers will also be eligible for continuing education credit, professional development units or college course credits. A major theme throughout the program will be creatively answering the question of how to incorporate a problem-solving approach to math education into the existing curriculum. To this end, leaders will supply participants with handouts or short modules based on the material covered during their sessions. They will also work with teachers to share ideas for enlivening any math class and to develop lesson plans. Focused discussions will be held regularly to determine what obstacles exist to incorporating this style of teaching into the present curriculum, what resources would be most helpful to teachers, and other related topics. For more information, please see the Bay Area Circle for Teachers website at http://bact.mathcircles.org. Application: Applications are currently being accepted for this program. Please apply online,
Keywords and Mathematics Subject Classification (MSC)
Primary Mathematics Subject Classification
No Primary AMS MSC
Secondary Mathematics Subject Classification
No Secondary AMS MSC


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Nigeria's superstar actress, Adesua Etomi-Wellington spotted in a five-star display of excellent martial arts skills in the intense trailer for a new film, 'Muna'.
News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that 'Muna' is a Nollywood-Hollywood action crossover, which stars Adesua as the titular lead and was directed by Kevin Nwankwor.
The film, written by Unoma Nwankwor, centered around human trafficking and follows Muna, who finds love after being trafficked to Europe and has come of age.
She learned new skills to help confront the human trafficking ring that has various individuals from different races across the world.
'Muna' is the story of a spirited girl raised by her grandmother; the last surviving member of their family.
Muna's driving desire to provide a better life for herself and grandmother in the land of milk and honey leads to shady characters that will change the trajectory.
Landing her smack dab into the hands of traffickers. That experience turns her once golden heart into one driven by stone cold revenge on those who stole her innocence.
The movie also stars Onyeka Onwenu, Falz, Ebele Okaro, Andrew Onochie, Ikpomwosa Gold, Kor Boakye, Charles Osiegbu, Steve Wilder, Adam Huss, Robert Miano, and Camille Winbush.
Read Also President Buhari renames Abuja National stadium after MKO Abiola
NAN reports that since the movie was first announced in 2017, clips of Adesua having martial arts training in preparation for the role had flooded the internet.
In the trailer, she is shown as a swift hit woman who employs these fighting skills to get revenge from the trafficking den.
'The Wedding Party' actress has experienced tremendous growth in her career over a short while.
In April, Adesua was ranked alongside Hollywood's superstar, Scarlett Johansson as the world's most famous actresses.
She was featured on the cover of Vogue magazine with a special article and interview with the title, '14 Countries, 14 Superstars: The Global Actors Who Know No Limits'.
Etomi-Wellington was ranked alongside Léa Seydoux, Eiza González, Elizabeth Debicki, Angelababy, Deepika Padukone, Bruna Marquezine, and Doona Bae as nine of world's most famous actresses.


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The true symbol of the totalitarian state is not the executioner, but the exemplary bureaucrat who proves to be more loyal to the state than to his friend.
George Konrád, "The Long Work of Liberty"
The Case Worker (1969) is a short and brutal novel by George Konrád (1933-). Konrád is a Hungarian Jew who barely escaped the Holocaust. He stayed in Hungary after the Soviet invasion of 1955, eventually becoming a dissident whose works could only be published samizdat. The Case Worker was his first and only novel to be published publicly in communist Hungary. It is not explicitly political, but the graphic bleakness of the novel does its country of origin no favors. I'm a bit surprised that it was published.
Konrád was a case worker himself for a time, and I fear that the novel has an autobiographical basis. The narrator is sort of a social worker who takes down the reports of the lowlifes, unfortunates, and madmen who come to him: suicides, domestic violence, sexual abuse, murders. Sometimes he takes further action; often he does not. The early part of the novel is a sequence of disconnected, brutal stories of violence and perversity, chronicled in a sober, semi-detached voice. The narrator is explicit that his dissociation is a coping mechanism so that he does not go insane from overempathizing with the hopeless cases he sees, but even from the beginning, there is too much humanity in his voice for us to ever think that he will succeed in disconnecting completely.
At the beginning of my career, I thought: It's like swallowing fistfuls of mud; I can neither digest it nor vomit it up. IN the last ten years I must have said, "Have a seat, please," thirty thousand times. Apart from colleagues, witnesses, informers, prying newspapermen, and a few inoffensive mental cases, it was distress that drove most of them to my desk. In most instances their anguish was massive, tentacular, and incurable; it weighed on me in this room where people cry, "Believe me, it hurts," "I can't go on," and "It's killing me," as easily as they would scream on a roller coaster. ON the whole, my interrogations make me think of a surgeon who sews up his incision without removing the tumour.
The plot arrives in the form of a brain-damaged four-year-old child. His barely functioning parents have committed suicide, and the narrator is unable to find anyone to take care of the child. The parents raised him feral in the hopes of toughening him up, and he is more animal than human, incapable of any emotional relationship to another person. No institution will admit him, so the narrator takes him in, while continuing his work.
The narrator grows sicker from hearing more horrific stories. His care for the child is a mechanism not to alleviate guilt, but to remove the jarring transition between the damaged world which he views in his work and the safe, sane world in which he otherwise lives:
I would merely wave a token farewell to the child, certain that the meaning of my gesture would not get through his vacuous gaze to his consciousness, and after shaking hands with the staff, hasten down the steps of the pillared portico to where the taxi driver, impatiently drumming his fingers on the half-open window of his car, would be waiting to take me back from this morgue, which humanitarianism had disguised as a home, to the city that tramples its misfits and castaways, the city where both of us have our jobs and families and friends capable of articulate speech, and where more or less efficient organizations segregate the untouchables, the maladjusted, the waste products of a society that maintains order by violence, from us free citizens with our inborn sense of duty: the sight of their repulsive existence must not be permitted to remind us that we and they might have anything in common.
So the novel becomes a chronicle of a seriously divided consciousness. Half of the narrator is the functioning member of society, while half of him is the feeling, bleeding, and dysfunctional empathizer, who takes care of this child because it is the only way he can feel any meaning in the world. This is no budding revolutionary consciousness or political awareness. That sensitivity does great damage to the narrator, and only serves to disconnect him from any sort of functioning social realm. The social realm, through organizational necessity, squashes such sentiments as he has.
Taking the handy legal shortcut rather than the roundabout path of sympathy and indignation, dealing superficially with thousands of clients instead of giving three or four, or even one, the attention they deserve–all this, I sometimes think, is plain fraud.
Actually, what I do amounts to nothing. I regulate the traffic of suffering, sending it this way and that, passing on the loads that pile up on me to institutions or private citizens…There's no hurry, no situation is irreversible, today's mortal danger will be nothing tomorrow and vice versa, today's nothing will be death. If I don't help my client, someone else will; if nobody helps him, he'll help himself; and if he can't, he will learn to bear his lot. But try as I may to encourage myself with such phrases, this child has undeniably become my lot.
Society, which treats him as an interchangeable part in one structure or another, a representative member of one class of people or another (be it occupation, economic class, gender, ethnicity, etc.), entices him to remove responsibility that goes beyond what he is tasked with in that part. With the arrival of the child, his unsocialized half rebels and will not permit him to remain in his part. But to do so is to isolate himself from society and ally with the wretched ones who come to his office.
I have been deleted from their schedules; they transfer their emotions to some worthier object and discover with relief that I can be replaced. That is as it should be–I feel the same way. If I live to old age, I shall love only the interchangeable.
The novel ends, sort of, with a great statement of solidarity for the broken people of the world. Konrád proclaims the impossibility of any institutionalized system of empathy, and thus the need to preserve unregimented empathy no matter what the cost. And the cost is great; the narrator is cut off, at least for a time, from his family and any institutionalized aspect of culture, including sex itself, which becomes to him a meaningless, socialized form of affection. For the case worker, only incommensurable, non-interchangeable emotion can grant meaning.
It's a remarkable and powerful novel, particularly for amassing such volatile emotional material into a cogent moral and social statement. (It is that last element that is completely lost in a book like his countryman Attila Bartis's Tranquility.) I think it shares a sensibility with Ludvik Vaculik's The Guinea Pigs, but it is far more overwhelming and less allegorical. It works with the bare stuff of pain.
A final note on culture: Irving Howe writes in the introduction to the 1987 edition that Konrád's communist Budapest does not seem so different from capitalist Manhattan. I'm not sure quite how he draws the comparison: more than any political difference, the tonal and stylistic differences between Konrád and literally any American writer I've read are so blatant as to make it extremely difficult to compare the underlying socio-political circumstances between The Case Worker and an average 20th century American novel. It's possible that the American institutionalizing of individualism has made it that much more difficult to draw out that unsocialized empathy, and so works that ask us to empathize beyond any reasonable expectation have become rather rare in American society.


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Limiting Result Sets by Using TABLESAMPLE
The TABLESAMPLE clause limits the number of rows returned from a table in the FROM clause to a sample number or PERCENT of rows. For example:
TABLESAMPLE (10 PERCENT) /*Return a sample 10 percent of the rows of the result set. */
TABLESAMPLE (15 ROWS) /* Return a sample of 15 rows from the result set. */.
TABLESAMPLE cannot be applied to derived tables, tables from linked servers, and tables derived from table-valued functions, rowset functions, or OPENXML. TABLESAMPLE cannot be specified in the definition of a view or an inline table-valued function.
The syntax for the TABLESPACE clause is as follows:
TABLESAMPLE [SYSTEM] (sample_number [ PERCENT | ROWS ] )
[ REPEATABLE (repeat_seed) ]
TABLESAMPLE was introduced in SQL Server 2005. When TABLESAMPLE is used against databases that are upgraded from an earlier version, the compatibility level of the database must be set to at least 90. To set the database compatibility level, see ALTER DATABASE (Transact-SQL).
You can use TABLESAMPLE to quickly return a sample from a large table when either of the following conditions is true:
The sample does not have to be a truly random sample at the level of individual rows.
Rows on individual pages of the table are not correlated with other rows on the same page.
If you really want a random sample of individual rows, modify your query to filter out rows randomly, instead of using TABLESAMPLE. For example, the following query uses the NEWID function to return approximately one percent of the rows of the Sales.SalesOrderDetail table:
SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail
WHERE 0.01 >= CAST(CHECKSUM(NEWID(), SalesOrderID) & 0x7fffffff AS float)
/ CAST (0x7fffffff AS int)
The SalesOrderID column is included in the CHECKSUM expression so that NEWID() evaluates once per row to achieve sampling on a per-row basis. The expression CAST(CHECKSUM(NEWID(), SalesOrderID) & 0x7fffffff AS float / CAST (0x7fffffff AS int) evaluates to a random float value between 0 and 1.
Using the SYSTEM Option
SYSTEM specifies an ANSI SQL implementation-dependent sampling method. Specifying SYSTEM is optional, but this option is the only sampling method available in SQL Server and is applied by default.
TABLESAMPLE SYSTEM returns an approximate percentage of rows and generates a random value for each physical 8-KB page in the table. Based on the random value for a page and the percentage specified in the query, a page is either included in the sample or excluded. Each page that is included returns all rows in the sample result set. For example, if you specify TABLESAMPLE SYSTEM 10 PERCENT, SQL Server returns all the rows on approximately 10 percent of the specified data pages of the table. If the rows are evenly distributed on the pages of the table, and if there is a sufficient number of pages in the table, the number of rows returned should approximate the sample size that is requested. However, because the random value that is generated for each page is independent of the values that are generated for any other page, a larger, or smaller, percentage of pages than have been requested might be returned. The TOP(n) operator can be used to limit the number of rows to a specified maximum.
When a number of rows is specified, instead of a percentage based on the total number of rows in the table, that number is converted into a percentage of the rows and, therefore, pages that should be returned. The TABLESAMPLE operation is then performed with that computed percentage.
If the table is made up of a single page, either all rows on the page are returned or none of the rows are returned. In this case, TABLESAMPLE SYSTEM can only return 100 percent or 0 percent of the rows on a page, regardless of the number of rows on the page.
Using TABLESAMPLE SYSTEM for a specific table limits the execution plan to use a table scan (a scan of the heap, or of the clustered index if one exists) on that table. Although the plan shows a table scan is performed, only those pages that are included in the result set are actually required to be read from the data file.
The TABLESAMPLE SYSTEM clause should be used with some caution, and with some understanding of some of the implications of using sampling. For example, a join of two tables is likely to return a match for each row in both tables; however, if TABLESAMPLE SYSTEM is specified for either of the two tables, some rows returned from the unsampled table are unlikely to have a matching row in the sampled table. This behavior might lead you to suspect that a data consistency problem exists in the underlying tables, when the data is actually valid. Similarly, if TABLESAMPLE SYSTEM is specified for both tables that are joined, the perceived problem could be even worse.
Using the REPEATABLE Option
The REPEATABLE option causes a selected sample to be returned again. When REPEATABLE is specified with the same repeat_seed value, SQL Server returns the same subset of rows, as long as no changes have been made to the table. When REPEATABLE is specified with a different repeat_seed value, SQL Server will typically return a different sample of the rows in the table. The following actions to the table are considered changes: inserting, updating, deleting, index rebuilding, index defragmenting, restoring a database, and attaching a database.
A. Selecting a percentage of rows
The Person.Person table contains 19,972 rows. The following statement returns approximately 10 percent of the rows. The number of rows returned usually changes every time that the statement is executed.
USE AdventureWorks2008R2 ;
SELECT FirstName, LastName
FROM Person.Person
B. Selecting a percentage of rows with a seed value
The following statement returns the same set of rows every time that it is executed. The seed value of 205 was chosen arbitrarily.
USE AdventureWorks2008R2 ;
SELECT FirstName, LastName
FROM Person.Person
C. Selecting a number of rows
The following statement returns approximately 100 rows. The actual number of rows that are returned can vary significantly. If you specify a small number, such as 5, you might not receive results in the sample.
USE AdventureWorks2008R2 ;
SELECT FirstName, LastName
FROM Person.Person


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Wednesday July 24, 2024
Personal PlannerWhat Do You Own?
John and Helen have been thinking about updating their estate plan. They called and made an appointment with their attorney, Clara.
John and Helen updated Clara on their current family situation. They have three children who are now on their own and successfully pursuing careers. After listening to the short update on the three children, Clara turned to a review of John's and Helen's property. Clara: "Before we update your plan, we need to make sure we have a complete list of your property. Let's start with a few questions. Do you have a home? Are there bank or security accounts?" John: "Well, we do have our home. It's in both of our names. There is our joint checking account and a savings account. Both of us also have some other accounts. I have one savings account with myself and our son Bill. Helen has a savings account with our daughter Susan and another one for Helen and our daughter Linda. We have some mutual funds with a large financial company. I think that's in both our names." Clara: "That's a good start. Now most people also have a pension or retirement plan and some life insurance. Do you have both of those?" John: "Yes, I have a 401(k) at my work and Helen has an IRA. She had a 401(k) at one time and we rolled it over into an IRA when she changed jobs. I have a life insurance policy and I think it pays Helen $300,000 if something happens to me." Clara: "So you have a life insurance policy. Do you know if it is a whole life, universal life or a term insurance plan? If it is a whole life or a universal life, it probably has a certain amount of cash value now." John: "I am not real sure but it probably is a whole life plan. We bought the policy about ten years ago and I make payments every month." Clara: "Is there any other real estate or other securities accounts?" Helen: "When my dad passed away, he owned 640 acres of timberland. It was divided three ways between my brother, my sister and me. My share is still in my name. We don't get income from the timberland because we only cut enough timber to pay the property taxes." Clara: "Thanks, Helen. That's helpful to know. What about personal possessions? You probably have automobiles, furniture, perhaps a collection of items or a recreational vehicle?" John: "Yes, we have two cars. I think my car is in my name and Helen's car is in her name. Of course, we have furniture in all of the rooms of our four-bedroom home. We also have an RV that we use to take trips in the summer. I think it is in both our names." Clara: "And are there any other types of ownership interests or business interests? Are either of you likely to receive an inheritance in the near future?" Helen: "Yes, my mother is still living. John's parents have passed away and we received a moderate inheritance when his mom passed away. When my mother passes away, I will probably receive some additional property. When dad passed away, half of the timberland was given to the three of us and mother has the other half. When she passes away, I would guess that the three children would each receive a third of the timberland that she owns." Clara: "This is a very good list of the assets. Let's now try to estimate the values of your property. The value will not be the initial amount you paid for each property, but a general estimate of what they are worth today." (John, Helen, and Clara spent 20 minutes estimating the value of all of their property before moving on to discuss their debts.) Clara: "John and Helen, there is just one more part to this inventory process. While I know you both are very careful and conservative in your financial affairs, some people have debt. Do you have a home mortgage? Is there a loan on a car or on your recreational vehicle? And do you have an ongoing credit card balance?" John: "Yes, we do have a mortgage on the home. It still has a balance of $100,000. There is a loan on my car of about $3,000. Helen's car is paid off and we pay off our credit cards each month." Clara: "Thanks very much for patiently working through the inventory with me. This is going to be very important as we make decisions about your estate plan." Why the Inventory Process is ImportantIt takes time and effort to make a list of your property. However, there are several important reasons why that property list is a crucial part of a successful plan. The list enables you to identify your assets, estimate the value, understand the best potential benefits for your children or other heirs, plan to reduce your taxes and set up goals for your children. Identification of your property is very important. If both John and Helen pass away, the first responsibility of their executor or personal representative is to identify and list all of their assets. The inventory will be an excellent guide for the executor. Without an inventory, some assets might be forgotten, lost or eventually abandoned and transferred to state government. Valuation is important. The values are estimates, but frequently the total value is significantly larger than you may realize. If Helen inherits added timberland from her mother, at that time the value of her one-third interest could be one million dollars. Values also need to reflect the potential reductions for liabilities. Most families are similar to John and Helen in that they have fairly modest liabilities and quite substantial total values at the time of retirement. Benefits For Children and Other HeirsBenefits for children and other heirs are best determined after you list all of your property values. It's also extremely important to understand how the property is owned. Some of the property in joint ownership will be transferred under state property law to the survivor. Only the property subject to the probate process is transferred by your will. Because many people have substantial assets in their 401(k), IRA, other retirement plan or life insurance and these assets are transferred by beneficiary designation, it is essential to help your attorney know how the property is titled and who the beneficiary is of the various retirement and insurance plans. The correct beneficiary designation enables your children or other heirs to receive benefits. Estate taxes may be applicable for those with very large estates. Because some individuals have property that may have increased in value (the timberland owned by Helen has increased greatly in value over the past 30 years), and because there may be an inheritance that increases the estate yet further, it is important to consider the potential impact of estate taxes. A good plan can save thousands and even millions in future estate tax. A final benefit of the inventory process is that the parents now have a much clearer picture of their assets. This enables them to make decisions that will be important for deciding the amount and type of inheritance for their children. There may be specific assets, such as family heirlooms or land that should be transferred to one child rather than the others. Because parents frequently are interested in treating children equally, knowing the approximate values of the property enables them to make plans for transfer of some assets to specific children and to maintain overall fairness in the plan. Published September 22, 2023Previous ArticlesChronic Illness - Care of Your Property Chronic Illness - Care of Your Person |


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The case is Salinger v. Colting, decided on April 30. Judge Calabresi has fun with this case, describing at length both the book and its influence over the years, as well as a few words about the reclusive Salinger (who died recently):
Catcher is a coming-of-age story about a disaffected sixteen-year-old boy, Holden Caulfield, who after being expelled from prep school wanders around New York City for several days before returning home. The story is told from Holden's perspective and in his "own strange, wonderful, language." Nash Burger, Books of the Times, N.Y. Times, July 16, 1951. Holden's adventures highlight the contrast between his cynical portrait of a world full of "phonies" and "crooks" and his love of family, particularly his younger sister Phoebe and his deceased younger brother Allie, along with his developing romantic interest in a childhood friend, Jane Gallagher. While his affection for these individuals pushes him throughout the novel toward human contact, his disillusionment with humanity inclines him toward removing himself from society and living out his days as a recluse. He ultimately abandons his decision to live as recluse when Phoebe insists on accompanying him on his self-imposed exile.
Catcher was an instant success. It was on the New York Times best-seller list for over seven months and sold more than one million copies in its first ten years. Polly Morrice, Descended from Salinger, N.Y. Times, March 23, 2008. To date it has sold over 35 million copies, influenced dozens of literary works, and been the subject of "literally reams of criticism and comment." Literary critic Louis Menand has identified Catcher "rewrites" as a "literary genre all its own." The Holden character in particular has become a cultural icon of "adolescent alienation and rebellion," a "moral genius" "who refuses to be socialized."
Inseparable from the Catcher mystique is the lifestyle of its author, Salinger. Shortly after publishing Catcher, Salinger did what Holden did not do: he removed himself from society. Salinger has not published since 1965 and has never authorized any new narrative involving Holden or any work derivative of Catcher.
The defendant here is a writer, Colting, who wrote a book entitled, "60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye," which "tells the story of a 76-year-old Holden Caulfield, referred to as 'Mr. C,' in a world that includes Mr. C's 90-year-old author, a 'fictionalized Salinger.' The novel's premise is that Salinger has been haunted by his creation and now wishes to bring him back to life in order to kill him. Unsurprisingly, this task is easier said than done. As the story progresses, Mr. C becomes increasingly self-aware and able to act in ways contrary to the will of Salinger. After a series of misadventures, Mr. C travels to Cornish, New Hampshire, where he meets Salinger in his home. Salinger finds he is unable to kill Mr. C and instead decides to set him free. The novel concludes with Mr. C reuniting with his younger sister, Phoebe, and an estranged son, Daniel."
I guess you could call this book "fan fiction." Salinger sought and received an injunction in district court against "60 Years Later." You can get an injunction at the start of the case if you are going to suffer "irreparable harm" without the injunction and you have a likelihood of success on the merits of the case. The Court of Appeals affirms, sort of, but not before analyzing recent Supreme Court authority in patent infringement cases, applying that case in copyright cases. That case is eBay, Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C., 547 U.S. 388 (2006).
Under the new standard, you cannot presume that a copyright violation will create irreparable harm necessary for a preliminary injunction. That issue will be for the district court on remand. The Second Circuit observes, "This is not to say that most copyright plaintiffs who have shown a likelihood of success on the merits would not be irreparably harmed absent preliminary injunctive relief. As an empirical matter, that may well be the case, and the historical tendency to issue preliminary injunctions readily in copyright cases may reflect just that." In other words, Salinger may well be able to prove irreparable harm, after all.
In the meantime, the Second Circuit rules that "there is no reason to disturb the District Court's conclusion as to the factor it did consider — namely, that Salinger is likely to succeed on the merits of his copyright infringement claim." For you non-lawyers, this means that Salinger has a great case on the merits of his copyright case in that "60 Years Later" is substantially similar to "The Catcher in the Rye." The newer book is essentially a sequel to the Salinger classic. Indeed, the Second Circuit says that any argument to the contrary is "manifestly meritless."