text:
Geert Wilders' film is made, and now it's the calm before the storm.
I once took a class on American philosophy. All you Europe-centrists can laugh, like "the reading list must have been short."
As it turns out the class was kind of a flop, but I took a few good things away from it, among them Charles Pierce, William James and Richard Rorty.
I sometimes think that if some of the people around today who are so sure their view of the world is right would just read some James (or make the Socratic admission that they don't know anything) they might relax a little.
Who do I mean by unreasonable? Oh, pick any atheist who demands that others follow suit (Richard Dawkins); or any Christian fundamentalist who wants creationism taught in science classes (Johnathan Wells), or any Islamic fundamentalist (Osama bin Laden) who wants the rest of the world to live by a set of rules laid down in the 7th century. Or Geert Wilders.
Wilders lives in a world where his right to freedom of speech is absolute and infinite; where media not interested in acting as his mouthpiece are censoring him, and where the consequences of his actions are everybody else's problem but his _ even when others are obviously going to be affected by what he says and does.
I would argue the right to freedom of speech includes a duty to use it responsibly. He would respond that he's a reincarnation of Churchill and his political opponents are Chamberlains, so it's his duty to speak out. Analogies to other political figures of the era are also possible.
Yet on the face of it, trashing something (the Quran) that's a sacred source of wisdom to more than a billion people seems like something you'd want to be pretty sure about before "going for it," as they say. I recall some pretty weird passages in Deuteronomy...
William James, the father of pragmatism, was a Christian and a gentle defender of his ideas, holding on to as much of his tradition as he could and abandoning _ for instance _ literal interpretations of the Bible when they conflicted with his scientific beliefs.
He chose, as I do, to believe in Free Will.
He said (paraphrased) 'I know there are some logical flaws with the idea, whether or not one believes in god. But I need to believe in free will in order to make my life work, and unless somebody can show me convincing evidence there is no such thing, I'm just going to assume it'.
Today, I wanted to draw your attention to this gem from Rorty, who is in some way James' intellectual descendant. So very appropriate for the Internet age:
"We should think of human progress as making it possible for human beings to do more interesting things and be more interesting people, not as heading towards a place which has somehow been prepared for humanity in advance. Our self-image would employ images of making rather than finding."
As I look out through the mass of blogs and everything else on the Internet, I am stunned again and again by the amount of people out there who are doing interesting things and being interesting people, more than ever before.
I love it when people comment here, and then I go look at their websites, and think, *man* they're in a different world.
Take this for instance, the site of someone who apparently just stumbled across my site, left a comment and then went on his? her? way:
Great stuff.
Anyhow, philosophically speaking, I am a pragmatist, and I just wanted to say that publicly. I wish I had a badge or something I could wear when I run into people who want me to commit to their world-view or try to get me to "show colors."
(eshan khakbaz)
When I met my wife, I was quite impressed she knew who Richard Rorty was. I shouldn't have been SO impressed because it turns out my wife was a philosophy major. On the other hand, she introduced me to John Rawls, who I had never heard of (so much for my class). On the continent, at least, Rawls and his Theory of Justice were considered the most important things to come out of U.S. philosophy in the last 25 years of the 20th century.
Say what you will about Rawls (I'm not such a fan) but his theory is more coherent than that of any of your through-a-glass-darkly French deconstructionists.
(mr. lynch)
Really interested in philosophy and got some time on your hands? Check out Charles Pierce's essay on the Fixation of Belief, which I have published below in its entirety.
Because I can.
ps it really picks up speed toward the end.
Few persons care to study logic, because everybody conceives himself to be proficient enough in the art of reasoning already. But I observe that this satisfaction is limited to one's own ratiocination, and does not extend to that of other men.
We come to the full possession of our power of drawing inferences the last of all our faculties, for it is not so much a natural gift as a long and difficult art. The history of its practice would make a grand subject for a book. The medieval schoolmen, following the Romans, made logic the earliest of a boy's studies after grammar, as being very easy. So it was, as they understood it. Its fundamental principle, according to them, was, that all knowledge rests on either authority or reason; but that whatever is deduced by reason depends ultimately on a premise derived from authority. Accordingly, as soon as a boy was perfect in the syllogistic procedure, his intellectual kit of tools was held to be complete.
To Roger Bacon, that remarkable mind who in the middle of the thirteenth century was almost a scientific man, the schoolmen's conception of reasoning appeared only an obstacle to truth. He saw that experience alone teaches anything — a proposition which to us seems easy to understand, because a distinct conception of experience has been handed down to us from former generations; which to him also seemed perfectly clear, because its difficulties had not yet unfolded themselves. Of all kinds of experience, the best, he thought, was interior illumination, which teaches many things about Nature which the external senses could never discover, such as the transubstantiation of bread.
Four centuries later, the more celebrated Bacon, in the first book of his Novum Organum, gave his clear account of experience as something which must be open to verification and re-examination. But, superior as Lord Bacon's conception is to earlier notions, a modern reader who is not in awe of his grandiloquence is chiefly struck by the inadequacy of his view of scientific procedure. That we have only to make some crude experiments, to draw up briefs of the results in certain blank forms, to go through these by rule, checking off everything disproved and setting down the alternatives, and that thus in a few years physical science would be finished up — what an idea "He wrote on science like a Lord Chancellor," indeed.
The early scientists, Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Galileo, and Gilbert, had methods more like those of their modern brethren. Kepler undertook to draw a curve through the places of Mars; and his greatest service to science was in impressing on men's minds that this was the thing to be done if they wished to improve astronomy; that they were not to content themselves with inquiring whether one system of epicycles was better than another, but that they were to sit down to the figures and find out what the curve, in truth, was. He accomplished this by his incomparable energy and courage, blundering along in the most inconceivable way (to us), from one irrational hypothesis to another, until, after trying twenty-two of these, he fell, by the mere exhaustion of his invention, upon the orbit which a mind well furnished with the weapons of modern logic would have tried almost at the outset.
In the same way, every work of science great enough to be well remembered for a few generations affords some exemplification of the defective state of the art of reasoning of the time when it was written; and each chief step in science has been a lesson in logic. It was so when Lavoisier and his contemporaries took up the study of chemistry. The old chemist's maxim had been, "Lege, lege, lege, labora, ora, et relege." Lavoisier's method was not to read and pray, but to dream that some long and complicated chemical process would have a certain effect, to put it into practice with dull patience, after its inevitable failure, to dream that with some modification it would have another result, and to end by publishing the last dream as a fact: his way was to carry his mind into his laboratory, and to make of his alembics and cucurbits instruments of thought, giving a new conception of reasoning as something which was to be done with one's eyes open, by manipulating real things instead of words and fancies.
The Darwinian controversy is, in large part, a question of logic. Mr. Darwin proposed to apply the statistical method to biology. The same thing had been done in a widely different branch of science, the theory of gases. Though unable to say what the movements of any particular molecule of gas would be on a certain hypothesis regarding the constitution of this class of bodies, Clausius and Maxwell were yet able, by the application of the doctrine of probabilities, to predict that in the long run such and such a proportion of the molecules would, under given circumstances, acquire such and such velocities; that there would take place, every second, such and such a number of collisions, etc.; and from these propositions were able to deduce certain properties of gases, especially in regard to their heat-relations. In like manner, Darwin, while unable to say what the operation of variation and natural selection in any individual case will be, demonstrates that in the long run they will adapt animals to their circumstances. Whether or not existing animal forms are due to such action, or what position the theory ought to take, forms the subject of a discussion in which questions of fact and questions of logic are curiously interlaced.
The object of reasoning is to find out, from the consideration of what we already know, something else which we do not know. Consequently, reasoning is good if it be such as to give a true conclusion from true premises, and not otherwise.
Thus, the question of its validity is purely one of fact and not of thinking. A being the premises and B the conclusion, the question is, whether these facts are really so related that if A is B is. If so, the inference is valid; if not, not.
It is not in the least the question whether, when the premises are accepted by the mind, we feel an impulse to accept the conclusion also. It is true that we do generally reason correctly by nature. But that is an accident; the true conclusion would remain true if we had no impulse to accept it; and the false one would remain false, though we could not resist the tendency to believe in it.
We are, doubtless, in the main logical animals, but we are not perfectly so. Most of us, for example, are naturally more sanguine and hopeful than logic would justify. We seem to be so constituted that in the absence of any facts to go upon we are happy and self-satisfied; so that the effect of experience is continually to contract our hopes and aspirations. Yet a lifetime of the application of this corrective does not usually eradicate our sanguine disposition. Where hope is unchecked by any experience, it is likely that our optimism is extravagant. Logicality in regard to practical matters is the most useful quality an animal can possess, and might, therefore, result from the action of natural selection; but outside of these it is probably of more advantage to the animal to have his mind filled with pleasing and encouraging visions, independently of their truth; and thus, upon unpractical subjects, natural selection might occasion a fallacious tendency of thought.
That which determines us, from given premises, to draw one inference rather than another, is some habit of mind, whether it be constitutional or acquired. The habit is good or otherwise, according as it produces true conclusions from true premises or not; and an inference is regarded as valid or not, without reference to the truth or falsity of its conclusion specially, but according as the habit which determines it is such as to produce true conclusions in general or not. The particular habit of mind which governs this or that inference may be formulated in a proposition whose truth depends on the validity of the inferences which the habit determines; and such a formula is called a guiding principle of inference. Suppose, for example, that we observe that a rotating disk of copper quickly comes to rest when placed between the poles of a magnet, and we infer that this will happen with every disk of copper. The guiding principle is, that what is true of one piece of copper is true of another. Such a guiding principle with regard to copper would be much safer than with regard to many other substances — brass, for example.
A book might be written to signalize all the most important of these guiding principles of reasoning. It would probably be, we must confess, of no service to a person whose thought is directed wholly to practical subjects, and whose activity moves along thoroughly-beaten paths. The problems which present themselves to such a mind are matters of routine which he has learned once for all to handle in learning his business. But let a man venture into an unfamiliar field, or where his results are not continually checked by experience, and all history shows that the most masculine intellect will ofttimes lose his orientation and waste his efforts in directions which bring him no nearer to his goal, or even carry him entirely astray. He is like a ship in the open sea, with no one on board who understands the rules of navigation. And in such a case some general study of the guiding principles of reasoning would be sure to be found useful.
The subject could hardly be treated, however, without being first limited; since almost any fact may serve as a guiding principle. But it so happens that there exists a division among facts, such that in one class are all those which are absolutely essential as guiding principles, while in the others are all which have any other interest as objects of research. This division is between those which are necessarily taken for granted in asking whether a certain conclusion follows from certain premises, and those which are not implied in that question. A moment's thought will show that a variety of facts are already assumed when the logical question is first asked. It is implied, for instance, that there are such states of mind as doubt and belief — that a passage from one to the other is possible, the object of thought remaining the same, and that this transition is subject to some rules which all minds are alike bound by. As these are facts which we must already know before we can have any clear conception of reasoning at all, it cannot be supposed to be any longer of much interest to inquire into their truth or falsity. On the other hand, it is easy to believe that those rules of reasoning which are deduced from the very idea of the process are the ones which are the most essential; and, indeed, that so long as it conforms to these it will, at least, not lead to false conclusions from true premises. In point of fact, the importance of what may be deduced from the assumptions involved in the logical question turns out to be greater than might be supposed, and this for reasons which it is difficult to exhibit at the outset. The only one which I shall here mention is, that conceptions which are really products of logical reflection, without being readily seen to be so, mingle with our ordinary thoughts, and are frequently the causes of great confusion. This is the case, for example, with the conception of quality. A quality, as such, is never an object of observation. We can see that a thing is blue or green, but the quality of being blue and the quality of being green are not things which we see; they are products of logical reflections. The truth is, that common-sense, or thought as it first emerges above the level of the narrowly practical, is deeply imbued with that bad logical quality to which the epithet metaphysical is commonly applied; and nothing can clear it up but a severe course of logic.
We generally know when we wish to ask a question and when we wish to pronounce a judgment, for there is a dissimilarity between the sensation of doubting and that of believing.
But this is not all which distinguishes doubt from belief. There is a practical difference. Our beliefs guide our desires and shape our actions. The Assassins, or followers of the Old Man of the Mountain, used to rush into death at his least command, because they believed that obedience to him would insure everlasting felicity. Had they doubted this, they would not have acted as they did. So it is with every belief, according to its degree. The feeling of believing is a more or less sure indication of there being established in our nature some habit which will determine our actions. Doubt never has such an effect.
Nor must we overlook a third point of difference. Doubt is an uneasy and dissatisfied state from which we struggle to free ourselves and pass into the state of belief; while the latter is a calm and satisfactory state which we do not wish to avoid, or to change to a belief in anything else. On the contrary, we cling tenaciously, not merely to believing, but to believing just what we do believe.
Thus, both doubt and belief have positive effects upon us, though very different ones. Belief does not make us act at once, but puts us into such a condition that we shall behave in some certain way, when the occasion arises. Doubt has not the least effect of this sort, but stimulates us to action until it is destroyed. This reminds us of the irritation of a nerve and the reflex action produced thereby; while for the analogue of belief, in the nervous system, we must look to what are called nervous associations — for example, to that habit of the nerves in consequence of which the smell of a peach will make the mouth water.
The irritation of doubt causes a struggle to attain a state of belief. I shall term this struggle inquiry, though it must be admitted that this is sometimes not a very apt designation.
The irritation of doubt is the only immediate motive for the struggle to attain belief. It is certainly best for us that our beliefs should be such as may truly guide our actions so as to satisfy our desires; and this reflection will make us reject any belief which does not seem to have been so formed as to insure this result. But it will only do so by creating a doubt in the place of that belief. With the doubt, therefore, the struggle begins, and with the cessation of doubt it ends. Hence, the sole object of inquiry is the settlement of opinion. We may fancy that this is not enough for us, and that we seek, not merely an opinion, but a true opinion. But put this fancy to the test, and it proves groundless; for as soon as a firm belief is reached we are entirely satisfied, whether the belief be true or false. And it is clear that nothing out of the sphere of our knowledge can be our object, for nothing which does not affect the mind can be the motive for mental effort. The most that can be maintained is, that we seek for a belief that we shall think to be true. But we think each one of our beliefs to be true, and, indeed, it is mere tautology to say so.
That the settlement of opinion is the sole end of inquiry is a very important proposition. It sweeps away, at once, various vague and erroneous conceptions of proof. A few of these may be noticed here.
1. Some philosophers have imagined that to start an inquiry it was only necessary to utter a question or set in down upon paper, and have even recommended us to begin our studies with questioning everything. But the mere putting of a proposition into the interrogative form does not stimulate the mind to any struggle after belief. There must be a real and living doubt, and without this all discussion is idle.
2. It is a very common idea that a demonstration must rest on some ultimate and absolutely indubitable propositions. These, according to one school, are first principles of a general nature; according to another, are first sensations. But, in point of fact, an inquiry, to have that completely satisfactory result called demonstration, has only to start with propositions perfectly free from all actual doubt. If the premisses are not in fact doubted at all, they cannot be more satisfactory than they are.
3. Some people seem to love to argue a point after all the world is fully convinced of it. But no further advance can be made. When doubt ceases, mental action on the subject comes to an end; and, if it did go on, it would be without a purpose.
If the settlement of opinion is the sole object of inquiry, and if belief is of the nature of a habit, why should we not attain the desired end, by taking any answer to a question which we may fancy, and constantly reiterating it to ourselves, dwelling on all which may conduce to that belief, and learning to turn with contempt and hatred from anything that might disturb it? This simple and direct method is really pursued by many men. I remember once being entreated not to read a certain newspaper lest it might change my opinion upon free-trade. "Lest I might be entrapped by its fallacies and misstatements," was the form of expression. "You are not," my friend said, "a special student of political economy. You might, therefore, easily be deceived by fallacious arguments upon the subject. You might, then, if you read this paper, be led to believe in protection. But you admit that free-trade is the true doctrine; and you do not wish to believe what is not true." I have often known this system to be deliberately adopted. Still oftener, the instinctive dislike of an undecided state of mind, exaggerated into a vague dread of doubt, makes men cling spasmodically to the views they already take. The man feels that, if he only holds to his belief without wavering, it will be entirely satisfactory. Nor can it be denied that a steady and immovable faith yields great peace of mind. It may, indeed, give rise to inconveniences, as if a man should resolutely continue to believe that fire would not burn him, or that he would be eternally damned if he received his ingesta otherwise than through a stomach-pump. But then the man who adopts this method will not allow that its inconveniences are greater than its advantages. He will say, "I hold steadfastly to the truth, and the truth is always wholesome." And in many cases it may very well be that the pleasure he derives from his calm faith overbalances any inconveniences resulting from its deceptive character. Thus, if it be true that death is annihilation, then the man who believes that he will certainly go straight to heaven when he dies, provided he have fulfilled certain simple observances in this life, has a cheap pleasure which will not be followed by the least disappointment. A similar consideration seems to have weight with many persons in religious topics, for we frequently hear it said, "Oh, I could not believe so-and-so, because I should be wretched if I did." When an ostrich buries its head in the sand as danger approaches, it very likely takes the happiest course. It hides the danger, and then calmly says there is no danger; and, if it feels perfectly sure there is none, why should it raise its head to see? A man may go through life, systematically keeping out of view all that might cause a change in his opinions, and if he only succeeds — basing his method, as he does, on two fundamental psychological laws — I do not see what can be said against his doing so. It would be an egotistical impertinence to object that his procedure is irrational, for that only amounts to saying that his method of settling belief is not ours. He does not propose to himself to be rational, and, indeed, will often talk with scorn of man's weak and illusive reason. So let him think as he pleases.
But this method of fixing belief, which may be called the method of tenacity, will be unable to hold its ground in practice. The social impulse is against it. The man who adopts it will find that other men think differently from him, and it will be apt to occur to him, in some saner moment, that their opinions are quite as good as his own, and this will shake his confidence in his belief. This conception, that another man's thought or sentiment may be equivalent to one's own, is a distinctly new step, and a highly important one. It arises from an impulse too strong in man to be suppressed, without danger of destroying the human species. Unless we make ourselves hermits, we shall necessarily influence each other's opinions; so that the problem becomes how to fix belief, not in the individual merely, but in the community.
Let the will of the state act, then, instead of that of the individual. Let an institution be created which shall have for its object to keep correct doctrines before the attention of the people, to reiterate them perpetually, and to teach them to the young; having at the same time power to prevent contrary doctrines from being taught, advocated, or expressed. Let all possible causes of a change of mind be removed from men's apprehensions. Let them be kept ignorant, lest they should learn of some reason to think otherwise than they do. Let their passions be enlisted, so that they may regard private and unusual opinions with hatred and horror. Then, let all men who reject the established belief be terrified into silence. Let the people turn out and tar-and-feather such men, or let inquisitions be made into the manner of thinking of suspected persons, and when they are found guilty of forbidden beliefs, let them be subjected to some signal punishment. When complete agreement could not otherwise be reached, a general massacre of all who have not thought in a certain way has proved a very effective means of settling opinion in a country. If the power to do this be wanting, let a list of opinions be drawn up, to which no man of the least independence of thought can assent, and let the faithful be required to accept all these propositions, in order to segregate them as radically as possible from the influence of the rest of the world.
This method has, from the earliest times, been one of the chief means of upholding correct theological and political doctrines, and of preserving their universal or catholic character. In Rome, especially, it has been practised from the days of Numa Pompilius to those of Pius Nonus. This is the most perfect example in history; but wherever there is a priesthood — and no religion has been without one — this method has been more or less made use of. Wherever there is an aristocracy, or a guild, or any association of a class of men whose interests depend, or are supposed to depend, on certain propositions, there will be inevitably found some traces of this natural product of social feeling. Cruelties always accompany this system; and when it is consistently carried out, they become atrocities of the most horrible kind in the eyes of any rational man. Nor should this occasion surprise, for the officer of a society does not feel justified in surrendering the interests of that society for the sake of mercy, as he might his own private interests. It is natural, therefore, that sympathy and fellowship should thus produce a most ruthless power.
In judging this method of fixing belief, which may be called the method of authority, we must, in the first place, allow its immeasurable mental and moral superiority to the method of tenacity. Its success is proportionately greater; and, in fact, it has over and over again worked the most majestic results. The mere structures of stone which it has caused to be put together — in Siam, for example, in Egypt, and in Europe — have many of them a sublimity hardly more than rivaled by the greatest works of Nature. And, except the geological epochs, there are no periods of time so vast as those which are measured by some of these organized faiths. If we scrutinize the matter closely, we shall find that there has not been one of their creeds which has remained always the same; yet the change is so slow as to be imperceptible during one person's life, so that individual belief remains sensibly fixed. For the mass of mankind, then, there is perhaps no better method than this. If it is their highest impulse to be intellectual slaves, then slaves they ought to remain.
But no institution can undertake to regulate opinions upon every subject. Only the most important ones can be attended to, and on the rest men's minds must be left to the action of natural causes. This imperfection will be no source of weakness so long as men are in such a state of culture that one opinion does not influence another — that is, so long as they cannot put two and two together. But in the most priest-ridden states some individuals will be found who are raised above that condition. These men possess a wider sort of social feeling; they see that men in other countries and in other ages have held to very different doctrines from those which they themselves have been brought up to believe; and they cannot help seeing that it is the mere accident of their having been taught as they have, and of their having been surrounded with the manners and associations they have, that has caused them to believe as they do and not far differently. And their candor cannot resist the reflection that there is no reason to rate their own views at a higher value than those of other nations and other centuries; and this gives rise to doubts in their minds.
They will further perceive that such doubts as these must exist in their minds with reference to every belief which seems to be determined by the caprice either of themselves or of those who originated the popular opinions. The willful adherence to a belief, and the arbitrary forcing of it upon others, must, therefore, both be given up, and a new method of settling opinions must be adopted, which shall not only produce an impulse to believe, but shall also decide what proposition it is which is to be believed. Let the action of natural preferences be unimpeded, then, and under their influence let men, conversing together and regarding matters in different lights, gradually develop beliefs in harmony with natural causes. This method resembles that by which conceptions of art have been brought to maturity. The most perfect example of it is to be found in the history of metaphysical philosophy. Systems of this sort have not usually rested upon any observed facts, at least not in any great degree. They have been chiefly adopted because their fundamental propositions seemed "agreeable to reason." This is an apt expression; it does not mean that which agrees with experience, but that which we find ourselves inclined to believe. Plato, for example, finds it agreeable to reason that the distances of the celestial spheres from one another should be proportional to the different lengths of strings which produce harmonious chords. Many philosophers have been led to their main conclusions by considerations like this; but this is the lowest and least developed form which the method takes, for it is clear that another man might find Kepler's theory, that the celestial spheres are proportional to the inscribed and circumscribed spheres of the different regular solids, more agreeable to his reason. But the shock of opinions will soon lead men to rest on preferences of a far more universal nature. Take, for example, the doctrine that man only acts selfishly — that is, from the consideration that acting in one way will afford him more pleasure than acting in another. This rests on no fact in the world, but it has had a wide acceptance as being the only reasonable theory.
This method is far more intellectual and respectable from the point of view of reason than either of the others which we have noticed. But its failure has been the most manifest. It makes of inquiry something similar to the development of taste; but taste, unfortunately, is always more or less a matter of fashion, and accordingly metaphysicians have never come to any fixed agreement, but the pendulum has swung backward and forward between a more material and a more spiritual philosophy, from the earliest times to the latest. And so from this, which has been called the a priori method, we are driven, in Lord Bacon's phrase, to a true induction. We have examined into this a priori method as something which promised to deliver our opinions from their accidental and capricious element. But development, while it is a process which eliminates the effect of some casual circumstances, only magnifies that of others. This method, therefore, does not differ in a very essential way from that of authority. The government may not have lifted its finger to influence my convictions; I may have been left outwardly quite free to choose, we will say, between monogamy and polygamy, and, appealing to my conscience only, I may have concluded that the latter practice is in itself licentious. But when I come to see that the chief obstacle to the spread of Christianity among a people of as high culture as the Hindoos has been a conviction of the immorality of our way of treating women, I cannot help seeing that, though governments do not interfere, sentiments in their development will be very greatly determined by accidental causes. Now, there are some people, among whom I must suppose that my reader is to be found, who, when they see that any belief of theirs is determined by any circumstance extraneous to the facts, will from that moment not merely admit in words that that belief is doubtful, but will experience a real doubt of it, so that it ceases to be a belief.
To satisfy our doubts, therefore, it is necessary that a method should be found by which our beliefs may be caused by nothing human, but by some external permanency — by something upon which our thinking has no effect. Some mystics imagine that they have such a method in a private inspiration from on high. But that is only a form of the method of tenacity, in which the conception of truth as something public is not yet developed. Our external permanency would not be external, in our sense, if it was restricted in its influence to one individual. It must be something which affects, or might affect, every man. And, though these affections are necessarily as various as are individual conditions, yet the method must be such that the ultimate conclusion of every man shall be the same. Such is the method of science. Its fundamental hypothesis, restated in more familiar language, is this: There are real things, whose characters are entirely independent of our opinions about them; those realities affect our senses according to regular laws, and, though our sensations are as different as are our relations to the objects, yet, by taking advantage of the laws of perception, we can ascertain by reasoning how things really are; and any man, if he have sufficient experience and reason enough about it, will be led to the one true conclusion. The new conception here involved is that of reality. It may be asked how I know that there are any realities. If this hypothesis is the sole support of my method of inquiry, my method of inquiry must not be used to support my hypothesis. The reply is this: 1. If investigation cannot be regarded as proving that there are real things, it at least does not lead to a contrary conclusion; but the method and the conception on which it is based remain ever in harmony. No doubts of the method, therefore, necessarily arise from its practice, as is the case with all the others. 2. The feeling which gives rise to any method of fixing belief is a dissatisfaction at two repugnant propositions. But here already is a vague concession that there is some one thing which to which a proposition should conform. Nobody, therefore, can really doubt that there are realities, or, if he did, doubt would not be a source of dissatisfaction. The hypothesis, therefore, is one which every mind admits. So that the social impulse does not cause me to doubt it. 3. Everybody uses the scientific method about a great many things, and only ceases to use it when he does not know how to apply it. 4. Experience of the method has not led me to doubt it, but, on the contrary, scientific investigation has had the most wonderful triumphs in the way of settling opinion. These afford the explanation of my not doubting the method or the hypothesis which it supposes; and not having any doubt, nor believing that anybody else whom I could influence has, it would be the merest babble for me to say more about it. If there be anybody with a living doubt upon the subject, let him consider it.
To describe the method of scientific investigation is the object of this series of papers. At present I have only room to notice some points of contrast between it and other methods of fixing belief.
This is the only one of the four methods which presents any distinction of a right and a wrong way. If I adopt the method of tenacity, and shut myself out from all influences, whatever I think necessary to doing this is necessary according to that method. So with the method of authority: the state may try to put down heresy by means which, from a scientific point of view, seem very ill-calculated to accomplish its purposes; but the only test on that method is what the state thinks; so that it cannot pursue the method wrongly. So with the a priori method. The very essence of it is to think as one is inclined to think. All metaphysicians will be sure to do that, however they may be inclined to judge each other to be perversely wrong. The Hegelian system recognizes every natural tendency of thought as logical, although it be certain to be abolished by counter-tendencies. Hegel thinks there is a regular system in the succession of these tendencies, in consequence of which, after drifting one way and the other for a long time, opinion will at last go right. And it is true that metaphysicians do get the right ideas at last; Hegel's system of Nature represents tolerably the science of that day; and one may be sure that whatever scientific investigation has put out of doubt will presently receive a priori demonstration on the part of the metaphysicians. But with the scientific method the case is different. I may start with known and observed facts to proceed to the unknown; and yet the rules which I follow in doing so may not be such as investigation would approve. The test of whether I am truly following the method is not an immediate appeal to my feelings and purposes, but, on the contrary, itself involves the application of the method. Hence it is that bad reasoning as well as good reasoning is possible; and this fact is the foundation of the practical side of logic.
It is not to be supposed that the first three methods of settling opinion present no advantage whatever over the scientific method. On the contrary, each has some peculiar convenience of its own. The a priori method is distinguished for its comfortable conclusions. It is the nature of the process to adopt whatever belief we are inclined to, and there are certain flatteries to the vanity of man which we all believe by nature, until we are awakened from our pleasing dream by some rough facts. The method of authority will always govern the mass of mankind; and those who wield the various forms of organized force in the state will never be convinced that dangerous reasoning ought not to be suppressed in some way. If liberty of speech is to be untrammeled from the grosser forms of constraint, then uniformity of opinion will be secured by a moral terrorism to which the respectability of society will give its thorough approval. Following the method of authority is the path of peace. Certain non-conformities are permitted; certain others (considered unsafe) are forbidden. These are different in different countries and in different ages; but, (W3.256) wherever you are, let it be known that you seriously hold a tabooed belief, and you may be perfectly sure of being treated with a cruelty less brutal but more refined than hunting you like a wolf. Thus, the greatest intellectual benefactors of mankind have never dared, and dare not now, to utter the whole of their thought; and thus a shade of prima facie doubt is cast upon every proposition which is considered essential to the security of society. Singularly enough, the persecution does not all come from without; but a man torments himself and is oftentimes most distressed at finding himself believing propositions which he has been brought up to regard with aversion. The peaceful and sympathetic man will, therefore, find it hard to resist the temptation to submit his opinions to authority. But most of all I admire the method of tenacity for its strength, simplicity, and directness. Men who pursue it are distinguished for their decision of character, which becomes very easy with such a mental rule. They do not waste time in trying to make up their minds what they want, but, fastening like lightning upon whatever alternative comes first, they hold to it to the end, whatever happens, without an instant's irresolution. This is one of the splendid qualities which generally accompany brilliant, unlasting success. It is impossible not to envy the man who can dismiss reason, although we know how it must turn out at last.
Such are the advantages which the other methods of settling opinion have over scientific investigation. A man should consider well of them; and then he should consider that, after all, he wishes his opinions to coincide with the fact, and that there is no reason why the results of those three first methods should do so. To bring about this effect is the prerogative of the method of science. Upon such considerations he has to make his choice — a choice which is far more than the adoption of any intellectual opinion, which is one of the ruling decisions of his life, to which, when once made, he is bound to adhere. The force of habit will sometimes cause a man to hold on to old beliefs, after he is in a condition to see that they have no sound basis. But reflection upon the state of the case will overcome these habits, and he ought to allow reflection its full weight. People sometimes shrink from doing this, having an idea that beliefs are wholesome which they cannot help feeling rest on nothing. But let such persons suppose an analogous though different case from their own. Let them ask themselves what they would say to a reformed Mussulman who should hesitate to give up his old notions in regard to the relations of the sexes; or to a reformed Catholic who should still shrink from reading the Bible. Would they not say that these persons ought to consider the matter fully, and clearly understand the new doctrine, and then ought to embrace it, in its entirety? But, above all, let it be considered that what is more wholesome than any particular belief is integrity of belief, and that to avoid looking into the support of any belief from a fear that it may turn out rotten is quite as immoral as it is disadvantageous. The person who confesses that there is such a thing as truth, which is distinguished from falsehood simply by this, that if acted on it will carry us to the point we aim at and not astray, and then, though convinced of this, dares not know the truth and seeks to avoid it, is in a sorry state of mind indeed.
Yes, the other methods do have their merits: a clear logical conscience does cost something — just as any virtue, just as all that we cherish, costs us dear. But we should not desire it to be otherwise. The genius of a man's logical method should be loved and reverenced as his bride, whom he has chosen from all the world. He need not contemn the others; on the contrary, he may honor them deeply, and in doing so he only honors her the more. But she is the one that he has chosen, and he knows that he was right in making that choice. And having made it, he will work and fight for her, and will not complain that there are blows to take, hoping that there may be as many and as hard to give, and will strive to be the worthy knight and champion of her from the blaze of whose splendors he draws his inspiration and his courage.


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It's fair to say that 2020 and even 2021 so far have presented many complexities for the learning generation of today.
Whether it's a child taking their first steps into learning, or mature students starting a new career path. Homeschooling and learning certainly have their place, but the consensus is that it is not a complete replacement for the 'classroom', especially as the transition happened so very quickly.
At GreenEarth Cleaning, we've always made it our place to focus on the future generations as well as supporting the here and now. If nothing else, we want everyone to know what 'Sustainable Aftercare' is as part of their growing up process, so that environmentally non-toxic alternatives are a "given".
This is why we will again be sponsoring the 'Sustainability Award' at the 'Fashanne Awards' 2021. Fashanne is fronted by U.K. journalist and presenter Anne Davies and is considered to an awards program like no other. Connecting young designers with business, as industry leaders judge the work of finalists, drawn from hundreds of submissions made by university undergraduates from all over the U.K.
The aim of these awards is, to be a platform for emerging talent, provide a viable route for employability, and engage with the very best designers of the future. For the Sustainability category, GreenEarth will be looking for the submission that leaves no stone unturned when it comes to Sustainable designs, and for creative solutions that will lead to extending the life of the garment. So often sustainable garments are a representation of sustainable production and giving guidance for end of life, but the 'In use' element can often be ignored.
Pre-covid, I sat down with Anne to discuss our vision for the award for 2020; the same applies for 2021. The main difference now is that there are lots of voices asking for a 'Green Recovery' for the economy following the pandemic. Take a look at the clip here.
It's great to have the opportunity once more to engage with people who are just about to embark on their careers, which is why GreenEarth Cleaning is delighted to sponsor the 'Sustainability Award' for 2021.
If you're a university undergraduate with a passion for sustainable fashion, visit their website here.

subset: commoncrawl


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Among its many functions HaYom will:
The Macintosh version of HaYom runs on any Macintosh, Performa, Powerbook or compatible, under Systems 5, 6, 7, 8 or 9. It operates under Classic mode in MacOS-X. This means it will not run on the new Intel-base Macs at this time. The PC version requires Microsoft Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows XP or Vista.
"This program is a winner. It provides valuable information for a reasonable price. You'll find that it's lots of fun as well as a handy reference tool." -- Carol S. Holzberg, CAJE Jewish Education News Click here for full text of her review
HaYom for Windows
HaYom for Mac OS 9
HaYom Candlelighting Time Java
HaYom Hebrew Date Conversion Java
Or send a note to:
A.G. Reinhold
14 Fresh Pond Place
Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA
Voice: 1 (617) 491-4937
Please specify whether you are ordering the Mac or Windows version! Also note that the Java applets are not JavaScript. If you'd like to purchase the HaYom Manual, a detailed 30 page instruction booklet filled with useful information about the Hebrew calendar, send me $5 via PayPal.
You will need this information to set HaYom's Preferences for accurate sunrise, sunset and candle lighting times. Here are some on-line sources:
Time Service Department of the US Naval Observatory
Macintosh, iMac, iBook, Performa, and Powerbook are trademarks of
Apple Computer,
AMAZON.COM is the registered trademark of Amazon.com, Inc.
Windows is a trademark of Microsoft.
HaYom is a trademark of A. G. Reinhold


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This ratchet strap comes with a ratchet fastening system for strong and reliable fastening and a 6 metre strap. The strong, weather resistant webbing allows greater safety and security when travelling for loads up to 2500kg.
Established in 1969, Birmingham based company Maypole has a long heritage in the manufacture and marketing of products to customers in the automotive, trailer, leisure and agricultural markets. For over 40 years Maypole have been manufacturing and supplying its products to its ever growing network of customers and are proud to continue to add to their ever increasing portfolio of products.
Avoid the hassle by having the RAC Shop professionally install your new battery for you. During your purchase online, you will be asked to select a fitting time and location so that an engineer can then attend your home or place of work to fit your battery for you.
Changing a battery can be a difficult and daunting job. However, having an engineer come and professionally fit it will not only provide peace of mind that your car will soon be up and running but also guarantees that the battery will be fitted properly.
Fitting typically takes 30 minutes for batteries. If you have any questions regarding our battery fitting service, then please do not hesistate to call us on 0808 164 9361.
Please note that we only offer fitting on select car batteries and do not currently offer fitting on motorcycle or leisure batteries.
Delivery of your order is by courier and will be dispatched same day whenever possible provided the order is received by us before 1pm excluding weekends.
All Pet Products need to be ordered before 11am to be eligible for next day delivery.
Delivery is free for orders over £50 (excluding car batteries) and £4.99 for next day delivery. Standard delivery is £3.30 for all other orders with a few exceptions for some postcodes* and for some very heavy or very large products. The shipping costs for these can be found at checkout.
All batteries incur a £7.99 shipping cost.
Some items are flagged as being available to order. In these cases we will either have the product sent direct to you from our suppliers or they will be sent to us to forward on to you. In some cases this can take up to five working days from receipt of your order. If deliveries are to be delayed for any reason a customer service representative will get in touch with you to let you know and agree how you wish to proceed.
Should your order not arrive please contact us on 0808 164 9361 as soon as you feel your product is late and we will do everything we can to help.
Postcode Exclusions:
Should you wish to return your item, please fill in the form located here you will then be sent a RMA number and an address to send your product.
Faulty products will be replaced as soon as we are able to verify the fault and ship another to you.
For items you simply want to return within 14 days of purchase for a refund, a refund will be issued to the card you paid with within 7 days of the item being received by the RAC shop.
Please note items sent back without an RMA number generated by our online returns form may take significantly longer to process. Items being returned after 14 days may carry a restocking fee - please contact us on 0808 164 9361 for more information and to discuss your return.
† Prices depend on the age, value and model of vehicle.
* It is £4.99 for next day delivery, however orders must be placed before 1pm.
Standard delivery takes 3-5 days and costs £3.49.
All orders over £50 inclusive of VAT qualify for free standard delivery. This offer excludes home delivery batteries and fitted products.
All home delivery batteries have a carriage cost of £7.99. Delivery takes 1-3 working days.
For customised orders, please allow 7-12 days.
1 Comparison based on RAC Extra European Breakdown Cover against the top level of cover from other major providers as of 16/05/23. For full details visit rac.co.uk/eurocompare.


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- This event has passed.
ALGH Gentle Yoga
Wednesday, August 9, 2023 @ 5:30 pm - 6:30 pm CDT
An event every week that begins at 5:30 pm on Wednesday, repeating until Wednesday, December 20, 2023
This class incorporates simple flowing sequences to warm up the body, as well as slower paced movements focusing on alignment, strength, balance, and flexibility. Each class will end with an extended period of relaxation. This class is appropriate for anyone of any age, shape or size. No experience or flexibility required. Benefits include lower fatigue, reduced stress, improved physical functioning and sleep quality, and lower risk of cancer recurrence.
This class is offered both virtually through Zoom and In-Person at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital.
Supported by Advocate Lutheran General Hospital
Register to attend in-person, click here.
Register to attend virtually, click here.
Please call or email Samantha Daniel with any questions:


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Nursing Jobs at Aveanna Healthcare in Kane, PA
Found 2 Nursing jobs in Kane, PA at Aveanna Healthcare
Private Duty Nurse LPN
- Job Ref:
- 192693
- Location:
- Kane, PA 16735
- Category:
- Nursing
- Line of Business:
Private Duty Nurse RN
- Job Ref:
- 193246
- Location:
- Kane, PA 16735
- Category:
- Nursing
- Line of Business:
Nursing Jobs in Kane, PA at Aveanna Healthcare
Apply online for Nursing Jobs in Kane, PA at Aveanna Healthcare. As the nation's largest provider of pediatric home care, Aveanna Healthcare is the leader in in-home nursing services, pediatric therapy, enteral nutrition, and ABA therapy. The Aveanna Healthcare family of companies cares for medically fragile patients in 23 states through our rapidly growing network of more than 200 branch offices. Join us in our mission to revolutionize the way pediatric healthcare is delivered, one patient at a time.
Nursing jobs at Aveanna Healthcare can include:
Licensed Vocational Nurse – Team members in these nursing jobs are responsible for providing direct patient care under the supervision of a registered nurse. Responsibilities include following the plan of care, providing treatments, and working collaboratively with the members of the team to help meet positive patient care outcomes.
Nurse Assistant– Pediatric Day Healthcare Center - Team members in these nursing jobs provide care and supportive services to children ages birth to 8 years old in a developmentally appropriate center-based setting.
Registered Nurse (RN) - Team members in these nursing jobs provide skilled nursing care to patients and their families in the home setting.
Apply for Nursing Jobs in Kane, PA at Aveanna Healthcare.
At Aveanna, our nurses, therapists, and other caring professionals love being part of the Aveanna family. We offer flexible schedules, great benefits, and the opportunity to build one-on-one relationships with your patients. Be part of something revolutionary. Apply online to join Aveanna Healthcare today.
Why work for Aveanna?
- Thorough training
- Flexible schedules
- Electronic charting
- Access to a clinical supervisor 24/7
- Tuition Reimbursement
- Advancement opportunities
- Weekly pay via multiple payment options


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Do you have a passion for development yet have been always turned down from jobs due to lack of work experience? Or maybe never even dared to apply for such a job? We are looking for highly motivated Junior Frontend Web developer with even no work experience or academic certificates to join our team of talented designers & developers. All you need is:
- Passion for development & programming;
- Great will to learn;
- Enthusiasm;
- Ready to schedule a minimum of 20 hours per week. We have highly flexible hours, not just 9am - 5pm office hours;
- An eye for detail.
Offering highly flexible hours, it doesn't matter if you'rhttps://www.google.com.mt/webhp?hl=ene currently a student who wants to juggle between work & study!
The prospective candidate ideally must have basic knowledge in:
- ASP.Net (C#) Web Forms
- Object Oriented Programming (OOP)
- HTML & CSS - Knowledge of HTML5 & CSS3 will be considered an asset
Knowledge in the following (although not required) is considered a plus:
If interested send us a brief concise description about yourself along with a CV to [email protected]. If you have any online portfolio, we would be glad to take a look! CasaSoft Ltd. is a multi-disciplinary award winning firm based in Malta (Europe), specialising in new media technology obsessed to deliver high-end products that are of exceptional quality. Quality is our main focus in each and every project we have delivered since our inception back in 2004. We strive to constantly deliver projects which are beautifully designed, extremely user-friendly and highly functional. We are a small team of highly passionate creative designers, talented developers and innovative minds, striving to push the boundaries in online solutions, both locally and internationally.


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Carrie Underwood Cuts New Song 'The Champion' for 2018 Super Bowl
Carrie Underwood's partnership with the NFL is expanding. Variety reports that a new song called "The Champion" will play before the Super Bowl in 2018.
While NBC typically uses a variation of the Sunday Night Football theme song during Super Bowl coverage, SNF executive producer Fred Gaudelli called on Underwood to write a new track, leading to her creation of "The Champion." The song will be released leading up to the momentous game in February.
"I think it's going to become a sports anthem," Gaudelli notes. "It's going to be one of those songs that you see cut to highlights for the next 25 years."
See 7 Country Women Married to Pro Athletes
"The Champion" already has Underwood's husband's approval, too. "My husband loved it. He would listen to it before playoff games," the singer says of Mike Fisher, who former played in the NHL. He was apparently eager to play the song for his teammates on the Nashville Predators before games the 2016-2017 season, but he wasn't allowed.
"But that was a good indicator that we were on the right track," she adds.
The country superstar has been singing the Sunday Night Football theme since 2013 when she took over for Faith Hill. The 2017 intro continues with "Oh, Sunday Night," set to the tune of Underwood and Miranda Lambert's 2014 hit "Somethin' Bad." A new video for the theme debuted on Sept. 10, featuring Underwood strutting across the cities of America, uniting sports fans throughout the country with appearances by multiple football stars.
"They always feel like they make everything bigger and more grand than the year before," Underwood says. "Here I feel like they wanted a theme of unity amongst all the sports fans. Everybody's tuning in. Everybody's got their teams that they're rooting for."
5 Things We Seriously Need to See at the CMAs This Year
Farewell Angelina Singing "House of the Rising Sun" is Beautiful, Haunting


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PRojECT 002 - PASDEC PUTRA location : KUANTAN - DESIGN by DIATELIER | ATELIER DIA
PRoJECT 001 - JERAM ESTATE CLASSIC DUO . DESIGN by DIATELIER
dia atelier
DIAATELIER DIATELIER DI ATELIER . A more appropriate is ATELIER DIA . ATELIERDIA are of one ENTITY derive OF FRENCH ORIGIN astelle - basically mean STUDIO atelier
A T E L I E R D E S I G N I N T E R I O R A R C H I T E C T U R E - A T E L I E R D E S I G N I N T E R I O R A R C H I T E C T U R E . DIA mean HU basically HE not He or he origin Dutch hij
a design base entity of a naive origin with An intuitive attribute evolve to An intelligent design interior architecture atelier
our design in MINIMAL - Good measured judgement - contemporary to modern of TIMELESS space with an eclectic approach in relation to nature and environment with well orchestrated space . Art-Antiques with serious intent . Elements of unpredictable space , refining and properly defined to the quintessential of life . Comfort lifestyle without aesthetic or intellectual neglect .
Sunday, July 19, 2009
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dsmcu is a nintendo-ds based emulator of the MCU control surface protocol. it talks to your audio workstation over wifi via dsmi.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD (beta software, please exercise care, no warranties expressed or implied, and you'll need the readme file to get it working)
requirements: a homebrew-capable ds (which can connect to your computer over wifi), compatible audio workstation software (like 'reaper') and dsmi correctly set up on your computer. more details in the download link.
tested on: reaper; (primary testing platform, works great), samplitude V8 SE (works but no VU display).
does not work with pro tools or logic yet, but support is planned
the following subset of the mcu protocol is supported:
- fader send, receive
- vu display
- track select, mute, arm and solo (w/ feedback)
- bank up/down
- scrub
- more coming soon…
possible applications include: a wireless rec/arm remote or end-user monitor mix interface for tracking, touch-sensitive automation recorder during mixdown, multi-user mixing, 'left-hand' level control while tweaking VSTs…
lots more planned, more info soon.
some user interface elements have been taken from Reaper – BIG THANKS to White Tie and the Reaper posse for granting permission for use of this and helping out with design/layout. cheers again to tobw for the dsmi library. also uses palib and devkitpro/libnds, yay.


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Hi Ron Earp, I'm planning to buy a laptop, and i have two choose: Acer and Dell. Can you give an opinion? Thanks! Welcome to my site: Promotional lanyards sun damaged skin
Ron I have a NISMO set up with a 3.54 that I got with Doug Piners car and am looking for a 4.11 also, if you like the clutch type maybe a little horse trading for your quaife? Sam Neave set it up for Doug to run daytona with and I dont plan to run there. If your intrested you could ask Sam about it? I have never used it and was planning to eventually put a set of 3.70s in it. We are running a 3.9 quaife now in our car and have no complaints. I would not mind having two.
Hi Ron, I've been reading your posts, and also the ones on other web sites relative to ITR Mustang V6. I'm also interested in it, and only wanted to ask if you abandoned the idea, or if you have been working on it. I know the arguments about achieving the weight...and I'm realistic. But my past experience with the Fox chassis in ITB has convinced me that the rear suspension can be made to work "well enough". If you are working on it, I'd like to share ideas with you. Write directly, if you care to. Bill Frieder [email protected]
Hi Ron, Jeff Young said you were the one to contact about mustangs. I was wondering what your thoughts are on getting a 2004 V6 classed next year. My husband and I are building one for track days (for me) and I hope to run it in IT once I am a good enough driver (grin). Thanks for your time and help! Eva


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Brad Pitt Allegedly Has a List of Actors He Refuses to Work With
Brad Pitt reportedly keeps a running list of actors he refuses to work with, according to one of his co-stars.
The Fight Club star currently stars in Bullet Train alongside Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Sandra Bullock. This past weekend, the film opened with a respectable $30 million in ticket sales according to ABC News, putting it at the top spot ahead of DC League of Super Pets, Nope and Thor: Love and Thunder.
While at the Locarno Film Festival in Sweden, Taylor-Johnson opened up about working with Pitt. He referred to his co-star as a "humble and gracious human being," according to Variety.
"He is in a new chapter of his life, I think," Taylor-Johnson said. "He just wants to bring light and joy into the world and be around people who are there to have a good time."
The actor added both he and Pitt have developed opinions about certain co-stars while working in the movie industry over the years. Some they want to collaborate with again; others... not so much.
"After a while you start making notes: 'I am definitely not working with this person ever again,'" he explained. "Brad has this list too: the 'good' list and the s--t list."
While Taylor-Johnson didn't name any names that have wound up on Pitt's blacklist, it would appear a couple of Pitt's Bullet Train co-stars are indeed on his "good" list. For instance, The Daily Mail notes the Troy star has had nothing but good things to say about Bullock.
"Sandy is an old friend. She's a diehard person I could call for favors over the years and I have done many, many times and she's always there," Pitt gushed.
The actor, who appeared in Bullock's film The Lost City, which premiered earlier this year and features Channing Tatum and Daniel Radcliffe, also expressed interest in working together again in the future.
Pitt also complimented Bullet Train actress and "powerhouse" Joey King. "Listen, I consider us pretty sharp, but she's the sharpest of us all," he said.
However, by the sound of it, Pitt's list might not be in action much longer. He hinted at retirement earlier this year and told GQ he "considers [himself] to be on [his] last leg."


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The rustic beauty of hand tied bouquets fresh from a European flower market come alive in our best-selling arrangement. Handcrafted by our skilled artisan florists, this vibrant mix is gathered inside a clear glass vase tied with raffia for a touch of Old World charm.
All-around arrangement with orange roses; yellow Asiatic lilies; pink Peruvian lilies (alstroemeria); athos pom; white daisy poms; accented with salal tips
Artistically designed in a clear glass vase tied with raffia; measures 8"H
Large arrangement measures approximately 18"H x 14"L
Medium arrangement measures approximately 17"H x 14"L
Small arrangement measures approximately 15"H x 12"L
Our florists hand-design each arrangement, so colors, varieties and container may vary due to local availability
To ensure lasting beauty, Asiatic lilies and Peruvian lilies may arrive in bud form, and will fully bloom over the next few days


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Recorded on January/16/2015
In today's episode of The MBS Show, we talk about the news and answer your e-mail. Also the show got hijack by Puffysmosh, so join us for the insanity!!!
For the full show note:
Episode Download:
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If you have any questions, concerns or suggestions for the show you can contact us at firstname.lastname@example.com
Also check the show notes to find out where to reach the host for the show.
- Norman Sanzo
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And also please subscribe and rate us on iTunes, YouTube and Stitcher Radio and also Liked our Facebook Page
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Intro Music/Outro Music
Title: The MBS Show Theme Song
Artist: Andrew "Mandopony" Stein
Link: http://www.youtube.com/user/MandoPony
Artist: Andrew "Mandopony" Stein
Link: http://www.youtube.com/user/MandoPony


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Sustainable Forest Management - a principle developed in Central Europe
Watch a video about our experience |
Developed at the beginning of the 18th century in Austria, Germany and Switzerland, the term sustainability nowadays describes the global task to protect the natural bases of life for following generations, thereby at the same time securing prosperity and social progress without obstructing the economic growth.
As long as the supply lasts - with this carefree attitude humans availed themselves of past times in the forests. They always struck wood where and whenever it was necessary and possible. And they needed a quantity of it: wood for building, for heating and for the production of utensils. Into the 18th and 19th century wood was the raw material number one. The thoughtless wood felling did not remain without consequences. At the beginning of the industrialization the domestic forest was in bad shape. Clear-felling and devastation of large areas were the harbingers of an alarming wood scarce which threatened the society at that time in its existence. Something had to happen. Without a fundamental reconstruction of the forests a further wood use to secure the basic necessities and the social progress was hardly conceivable. The task of the 19th century consisted of afforestation of all felled areas again - this time sustainably.
Sustainability begins to determine forest-economical way of acting
To immediately afforest each felled forest area again to keep the total forest portion constant - this so-called surface sustainability marks the beginning of the development of the forest-economical basic law.
Sustainability means in the sense of word continuation, stability, return, steadiness or continuous effect. The term and thought 'sustainability' is already on record in Central Eurpope since the 16th century. The term was for the first time published and used in 1713 by the Saxonian mountain captain H. C von Carlowitz in its book "Sylvicultura Oeconomica", silviculture and economics. Around hundred years later, George Ludwig Hartig in its writing "instruction for the rating and description of the forests" provides the following definition of sustainability.
Each wise forest directorate must let tax the woodlands (…) without time delay, and tax it as highly as possible, but seek to use it in such a way that descendants can draw at least just as much advantage from it as the currently living generation.
Today the forest-economical principle of the sustainability means the fact that only as much wood is used as durably can be regenerated and that forests are managed in such a way that soil, animal and plant world remain intact. Apart from the utilizable function of the forest the functions protection and recovery are also considered. Thus it is ensured that the forest remains a natural habitat and, at the same time, remains usable for the public welfare - with view of the future in the sense of the generation contract.
Sustainability as postulate for all local and global activities
Even as the term of the sustainability continued to develop in the course of the time and is understood today in an extended ecological, economic and social sense, the words of Carlowitz and Hartigs have not lost their validity and topicality.
The commission for environment and development of the United Nations under the presidency of the Prime Minister of Norway, Gro Harlem Brundtland submitted its report in 1987. Therein it is written:
"A sustainable future-compatible development corresponds to the needs of today's generation, without endangering the possibilities of future generations of satisfying their own needs and of protecting their life-style.
This concept became the worldwide valid mission statement at the UN environment conference of 1992 in Rio de Janeiro. The signatory states decided to work toward the fact that the needs of present and future generations on development and environment are fairly fulfilled.
Emerging from Austria, Germany and Switzerland the principle of sustainability is today recognized in all parts of the world as principle of an arranged and well-planned forestry. The over two hundred year old goal of using forests sustainably is - at least in many parts of Europe - achieved and the current practice of forest-economical management. The European conference of ministers in Lisbon specified in 1998 the criteria, indicators and guidelines for the sustainable wood culture with state-extending validity. Therein the yardsticks become recognizable on which forestry must be based worldwide.
Wood offers an incomparably favorable energy balance, in particular, as a building material if it arrives from domestic production without long routes of transportation into the processing industry.
Opinions to forest, forestry and timber. Scientists of the Technical University of Munich expose phantom worlds in the public perception
What do you perceive if you think of the forest? Most humans would probably begin this question by describing a more or less sentimental picture: forest is nature, a valuable ecological system important for life. It serves as the life basis for a variety of animal and plant types, serves humans as recreation area for spare time and vacation. Forests are green lungs and protect the climate. In addition, forests are also experienced as something threatened: clear-felling, forest dying, storm damages - everywhere dangers, all reasons to be concerned of. Therefore, the ecological system forest requires special protection.
If it concerns the topic forest, an emotional feelings obviously outweighs. The concept of the forest functions represented by the forest economy - the triad of the protection, recovery and usage functions absolutely necessary for the conservation of the ecological system - is not reflected in such a way in the collective picture the population has from the forest.
If the society thinks of timber, people make the first association with wood products, furniture, parquet or other products for the life and housing requirement. Throughout positive attributes are attributed to timber, like "is natural, radiates warmth, smells pleasantly, creates coziness". Similarly as with the keyword forest, the perception is of emotional nature. If the natural product timber is mentally associated with forest as a nature area, the described, emotionally coined forest associations begin. Forestry and its task to make the raw material timber available by forest management are mentally disregarded.
The term forestry has rather a relation to forests than to timber in the public perception. In this relation the perception of the forest as protection-needy and protection-worthy ecological system moves into the foreground. The forest management is in direct confrontation of this association. Forest management and forest endangerment seem to be related in the perception. From this, a critical basic attitude to forest-economical activities results.
Thus, an acceptance gap can be recognized. Everyone would like a parquet floor, but - please - trees are not to be felled. The function of forestry as link between forest and timber(-product) hardly plays a role in the perception. It shows up as a phenomenon comparable to the "slaughter house paradox": The cattle on the pasture, the steak on the plate are positively evaluated. Unavoidable slaughtering causes however negative associations or is mentally not perceived at all.
Forestry therefore appears in a rather negatively colored light, so that the majority considers it appropriate to maintain certain skepticism. This assessment logically also shapes the opinion about the forest-economical principle of the sustainability - of which virtually everyone believes to know what it means. Doubts exist however whether it is actually always and everywhere maintained. Doubts, which stem less from an objectively critical attitude to forestry, but rather have their roots in the irrational concern about the allegedly threatened forest reserve.
The prevailing opinions to forest, forestry and timber mainly reduce these topics with their complex connections to partial aspects. None of the opinions and perceptions coincides with the reality. Forest is not only a protection-needy ecological system, forestry is not only forest management, and the raw material timber has indeed an origin and a producer.
The phantom worlds in the minds are opposed by the reality with clear facts: The use of the raw material timber by domestic forestry takes place without reservation according to the principle of the sustainability. Severity legal editions in the federal forest law and the national forest laws ensure the fact that only as much wood is used as durably regenerates. The management is done according to integral principles which also include environment protection and protection of species. The active rejuvenation and afforestation of the forest reserve are part of these efforts. Besides, with the certification by independent institutions the forestry has now an instrument with which the incontestable proof can be led that sustainability is implemented according to basic economic, ecological and social criteria.
From forest endangerment by forest management can thus not be spoken of - quite the opposite is true: Since 1960 the total forest surface of Austria increased by approximately 300,000 hectares. Since the beginning of regulated forestry more than two hundred years ago, the condition of the forest is today better than ever before. The present annual felling of 18 - 20 million cubic meters face currently a potential, annual increment of 30 million cubic meter. The felling potential is therefore used by only 70 per cent. In other words: The increase of the timber reserves exceeds the timber use.
The Austrian wood and forest lover can thus leave their phantom worlds and turn to the reality as far as forests are concerned. Then they will recognize that the supply of the raw material timber takes place via the forestry prudently and in a well-planned manner: the acceptance gap can be closed with a good conscience. Without forest management and timber use a forest, which fulfills also its social and ecological functions, is not conceivable.
Modern forest management fulfills the complex task to protect and sustain the multi-functional importance of the forest. This task gets also input from economic, ecological and social components.
The domestic forest plays an important role as economy factor and employer in the rural area. Altogether Austrian forest sector achieves a production value of annually approx. 10 billion € (Euro); approximately 250,000 humans find occupation in this sector. De facto, the income of the forest owners is based by 90 per cent on the sustainable use of the forest as a raw material supplier. From the timber revenue the expenditures, which are necessary to maintain the protection and recreation functions of the forest, must be financed.
Economic activities in and with nature
It is sustainable goal and lived practice by the forest owners to develop and nurture nature-near, species-rich and sturdy forests from locally suitable tree species. They make use of the natural sequences and self-control mechanisms of the forest-ecological system. In this sense forest management, afforestation and forest maintenance means to intervene with well-planned forestry measures in such places where it is necessary and meaningful.
Planned felling is therefore an important forest care measure, which also offers effect of timber use. In order to promote vitality and quality, trees are regularly taken out from the forest stand. Besides, the planned felling can favour competition-weaker tree species that, for example, support the structure of a sturdy mixed forest. The timber cut by planned felling is, for instance, used in the paper industry or for the production of splinter and fibreboards. Thus it is a not less valuable raw material than the log and source of income for the forest owners.
Controlling of natural processes
For the durable conservation of intact and yield-safe forests, the forest owners promote the natural rejuvenation in old forest stand. Trees, which have achieved their use age, are purposefully taken out, so that an optimal quantity of light, warmth and precipitation can reach the forest soil and the young trees receive ideal growth conditions. Apart from the care of the regenerating tree generation, forest-economically prudent acting also means to leave a certain portion of death wood in a forest stand to maintain the base of life for a multiplicity of animal species. The forestry measures of the forest owners always cover the forest in a whole area so that the organization of forest edges is also included. Sturdy forest edges protect against extreme weather conditions and offer living space and food for numerous animal and plant types.
Thus the forest owners altogether implement with their responsible controlling of natural processes not only important aspects of the nature-near forest management but also make a valuable contribution to the nature protection.
Not like the axe in the forest
Careful handling of the forest eco-system shapes the way in which the timber harvest and transportation of the timber are carried out in the enterprise forestry. In order to avoid having the harvesting machines drive into the forest stand, the creation of logging paths are operative measures. The sensitive forest soil is also protected by the use of modern machines, which are equipped with broad tires and thus cause small pressure point load. At the same time the forest paths open the forest for people looking for recreation and thus contribute to make this nature experience available to millions of people.
In the synopsis of all factors of which the complex management task of the forest owners consists, one thing shows up clearly: compared to other industries the forestry must face a whole set of specific challenges. In no other industry, the production process extends over decades. Trees that are ready to be harvested today were often planted one hundred or more years ago. Therefore, a fundamental conversion of production and its conditions can never be realized at short notice in the forest enterprise. The tree is "machine" and product at the same time. The wood growing annually on each individual tree in form of a year ring can be harvested only in form of whole trees in an appropriate quantity. This quantity has to be determined based on divergent parameters and calculation fundamentals. And we must not forget: It is always "day of the open door" in the enterprise forestry - around the clock, year by year. With private forest ownership taking up >80% of the forest area in Austria, this fact is not a foregone conclusion. Thus, the enterprise forestry carries an economic, ecological and social responsibility, which can hardly be compared with the one of other industries.
In view of the multi-layered tasks in the forestry practice, inventory systems provide help to secure the management of the forest beyond decades. Together with the data of the soil condition and forest damage survey, the stocktaking results supply important indicators for ongoing control and monitoring of our forests.


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Taxi Catania Siracusa
Service Taxi Catania Siracusa and vice versa This is our rates for a transfer from or to Catania and Siracusa. The service is private, and will be carried out by Prestigious Sedan or Comfortable Minivan, and Local Driver with good knowledge of places. Contact us … Continued


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Fiji Wallpaper
Fiji Wallpaper
SKU: Clarke & Clarke - W0082/09
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Mica and metallic highlights bring a deluxe feel to this collection. If you would like us to calculate how much of this wallpaper to order then please let us know the wall width and height and we will calculate the number of rolls.
Width: 53cm / 20.87"
Length: 10.10m /11 yards
Pattern Repeat: 53cm / 20.87"
Match: Straight
Delivery typically within 4 - 7 days.
Shipping costs are displayed at checked and based on DHL Express rates. For example:
1 roll/1 yard: $60
2 rolls/2 yards / 1 cushion: $70


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It really is sad to see the challenge of modern motherhood reduced to a partisan battle over which political party cares more about women and the American family. Some of us might expect a little more from the campaigns of two presidential candidates with seemingly solid, faithful, even enviable marriages and happy, well-adjusted children. But alas, we are living in a cynical, live-Tweeted world where every comment is another opportunity for immediate condemnation.
Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen went on CNN Wednesday night and said that Mitt Romney's wife is a terrible adviser to her husband on women's economic issues because Ann Romney, who stayed at home to raise five sons, "has never worked a day in her life." Within moments, the comment—which was certainly offensive—ignited a predictable storm among Republicans. Ann Romney herself went on Fox News Thursday morning to say, "We need to respect choices that women make."
In this latest kerfuffle, Democratic and Republican operatives are each trying to wound the other party enough to make a statistically significant change in how a small percentage of women might vote in November. But we don't need to wait for poll numbers to get some insight into what mothers think about these issues. There are truckloads of existing surveys about how mothers view themselves and each other.
Rosen's comment was controversial because it dripped with judgment—she implied that being a mother is not "work" and that Ann Romney can never understand the plight of working women because she's never had a career. Rosen herself is a mother, who quit a high-powered job as a Washington lobbyist in order to spend more time at home with her twins. But her comment channeled a degree of resentment that exists between working and stay-at-home mothers. This isn't just about partisanship or even privilege: the data on mothers dropping out of the labor force show race is a far more important factor than income or education. And at-home moms are often just as judgey as Rosen was on CNN. According to Pew:
- 44% of stay-at-home moms say the historical increase in mothers of young children working has been bad for society
- 22% say it's been good for society
- 31% say it's made no difference.
And there's lots of guilt (and probably some envy) among working mothers. When asked the same questions:
- 34% of working moms said the trend of more mothers of young children working has been bad for society
- 34% say it's been good
- 31% say it's made no difference
Not surprisingly, the amount of hours a working mother puts in at her job has a huge impact on her own evaluation of her performance as a mother. According to Pew, about 40% of mothers who work part-time and 40% stay-at-home moms give themselves a 9 or 10 (on a scale of 0 to 10) on the job they are doing as parents. But only about 30% of full-time working mothers give themselves a 9 or a 10. This last group falls under a particularly harsh kind of judgment. Only about 10% of all mothers—working and not—believe a mother working full-time is "the ideal situation for children." Ouch.
Yet despite all of this, working and stay-at-home mothers report nearly equal levels of overall happiness. Pew finds that:
- 36% of working moms say they are "very happy"; 49% report being "pretty happy"
- 36% of stay-at-home moms say they are "very happy"; 44% report being pretty happy
Ann Romney says we should "respect choices women make." Who can argue with that? Well, maybe women who don't have as many choices, like whether to work outside the home or not.
One such group was highlighted by Pew as not fitting the happiness trend line—single mothers. Just 27% reported being "very happy," and 43% said they were "pretty happy."
Single working mothers trying to get by in a bad economy. Whose talking about them this campaign season?


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By Jonathan Cook in Nazareth
Israel admitted this week that it was behind the abduction of a Gazan engineer who went missing more than a month ago while travelling on a train in the Ukraine.
Israeli officials confirmed that Dirar Abu Sisi, 42, was being held in Israel's Shikma prison, near Ashkelon, after a judge partially lifted reporting restrictions late on Sunday. However, the reasons for Abu Sisi's abduction are still covered by the gag order.
The whereabouts of Abu Sisi, the operations manager of Gaza's only power plant, have been the subject of intense speculation since he disappeared on February 18 as he travelled on a train to the Ukrainian capital, Kiev.
Suspicions that he might have been spirited to Israel were raised by the Ukrainian spokesman of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees earlier this month.
A few days after his disappearance, Abu Sisi's wife, Veronika, a Ukrainian national, accused the Israeli spy agency Mossad of kidnapping him to extract information that could be used to disable Gaza's power station in a future confrontation with the enclave's Hamas rulers.
Israel bombed the plant during its three-week military assault, Operation Cast Lead, in winter 2008, causing blackouts across much of Gaza. Israel also targeted the power station in June 2006, cutting power to 700,000 Gazans for several months while it was fixed at a cost of more than $5 million.
Abu Sisi's family suggested another reason why Israeli might consider him a high-value target. They say he had recently developed a method to reduce the plant's dependency on high-grade diesel fuel, the flow of which Israel controls into Gaza.
In January Hamas officials announced that the station's turbines had been modified to work on regular diesel, which is cheaper and can be smuggled in through tunnels from Egypt.
The Israeli media, on the other hand, have speculated that Abu Sisi must be a senior Hamas activist to have secured an important post at the plant. The family have denied the claim, saying he was not involved in any political faction and was appointed because of his skills as an engineer.
One of his Israeli lawyers, Smadar Ben Nathan, who met him for the first time at the court hearing on Sunday to lift the gag order, said she believed Israel had carried out the operation based on false information.
She called the abduction a "miscalculation", saying interrogators had dropped their original line of questioning. She said the gag order meant she could not discuss the case further.
No charges have been brought yet. Ben Nathan said her client had lost a great deal of weight and his health was deteriorating after more than a month incommunicado. His family is concerned that he is being tortured.
Although the Mossad is suspected of carrying out many assassinations on foreign soil — including a hit on a Hamas leader, Mahmoud al Mabhouh, in a Dubai hotel last year — there are few examples of it seizing individuals in foreign countries to bring them to trial.
Ben Nathan said she could identify only two similar cases: Israeli agents captured the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Argentina in 1960, and smuggled Mordechai Vanunu, a nuclear whisteblower, out of Italy in 1986.
Victor Kattan, an international law expert at the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University, said Israel had broken several human rights laws in seizing him rather than invoking treaty agreements between the Ukraine and Israel and requesting his extradition.
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, based in Gaza, said it had learnt the details of how Abu Sisi was seized from another Israeli lawyer who had access to him. They did not name him, apparently because the information was a violation of the gag order.
In a statement, the centre said three men, two of them apparently wearing official Ukrainian uniforms, had dragged Abu Sisi, hooded and handcuffed, from his carriage at a stop en route to Kiev, where he was due to meet his brother.
He was later interrogated in an apartment by six people who identifed themselves as Mossad agents, before being put on a plane. The flight took about four hours. The plane then made another flight of about an hour to Israel, the PCHR said.
Abu Sisi's brother, Yousef, accused Ukraine of being "deeply involved", adding that he had spent three weeks being "kicked like a football from one office to another" as he sought help from the police and various intelligence agencies. "At one point an official even threatened to make me disappear," he said.
Abu Sisi was in Ukraine to apply for citizenship so that he and his wife could immigrate with their six children, his brother said. "He was desperate to leave Gaza and and take his children to Ukraine away from the Israeli bombs and attacks. How could he be a threat?"
According to Veronika, her husband had encountered problems at an interior ministry office in the city of Kharkiv earlier on the day of his disappearance. Officials there had briefly refused to return his passport.
So far Ukraine has kept a low profile on the incident.
During an official visit to Israel last week by the Ukrainian prime minister, Mykola Azarov, reporters due to cover his meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, had their invitations withdrawn at short notice and without explanation.
However, during an interview with Israel's Haaretz newspaper while he was in Israel, Azarov responded to a question about Abu Sisi's disappearance: "We don't have clear information right now … I don't want to imagine that such things are carried out on the soil of a friendly state."
Abu Sisi's kidnapping was first brought to light by Richard Silverstein, an American blogger.
The Association of Civil Rights in Israel, which sought the removal of the gag order, said in its petition to the court: "It is inconceivable that the authorities in a democratic country be able to secretly arrest people and 'vanish' them from the public eye."
– Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" (Pluto Press) and "Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair" (Zed Books). He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Visit: www.jkcook.net. (A version of this article originally appeared in The National – www.thenational.ae – published in Abu Dhabi.)


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On this page you will find some tutorials about installing a Squeezebox player (Squeezelite) on the little cheap computer called "Raspberry Pi".
These tutorials started as threads on the Raspberry Pi forum. For easy editing I've transferred the tutorials to this page. The tutorials are actually my notes, but polished up a bit, so they can function as tutorials.
Next to the tutorials there's also a page on which I show my Retro Raspberry Radio.