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Today let us start today's blog post with a simple start question which I was asked by reader of my latest book SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers. Indeed a good question warrants a good answer with a script associated with the same.
Question: What is the difference between ORIGINAL_LOGIN() and SUSER_SNAME() and when will I use it?
Function ORIGINAL_LOGIN() returns the name of the original or very first login that connected to the instance of SQL Server and it is used to identity of the original login in sessions. If there is an application or database where context switching is happening quite often this can be a very useful feature for auditing. Let us see a quick T-SQL example where we initially retrieve current user and original login together you will notice that they are same. Afterwards we will create a new user and we will set the context of the execution to the new user. Later we will run the same command and you will notice that the current user name has been changed but the original login remains the same.
USE AdventureWorks2012; GO -- Get Login Details SELECT ORIGINAL_LOGIN() OriginalLogin, SUSER_SNAME() CurrentLogin GO --Create a temporary login and user. CREATE LOGIN TestLogin WITH PASSWORD = 'Complex@1'; CREATE USER TestUser FOR LOGIN TestLogin; GO -- Execute as another user EXECUTE AS LOGIN = 'TestLogin' GO SELECT ORIGINAL_LOGIN() OriginalLogin, SUSER_SNAME() CurrentLogin GO -- Revert Execution as another user REVERT GO -- Get Login Details SELECT ORIGINAL_LOGIN() OriginalLogin, SUSER_SNAME() CurrentLogin GO -- Clean up DROP LOGIN TestLogin; DROP USER TestUser; GO
This feature can be very useful in the auditing as well figuring out who is the original user to the session. Here I have a quick question – are you using this feature in your application? What is the real use case scenario for the same.
Reference: Pinal Dave (https://blog.sqlauthority.com)


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Internet access in Africa is growing rapidly, with millions of people from the region getting online, increasing participation in the public sphere, making exciting innovations and creating diverse content. But access barriers and problems remain, not only for upholding human rights online, but also for those wanting to provide internet access and services to people in the region.
This includes internet intermediaries: a range of entities that take many different forms. Some act as a go-between between us and the internet, while others create platforms for sharing information. Internet intermediaries range from internet service providers, telecom operators, social network platforms, bloggers, and even us the users, when we post information on our social network profiles.
But at the same time as content and sharing platforms are expanding, governments in Africa have joined the global trend to restrict and regulate some of the information available on the internet. As part of this trend, many states are creating new laws or regulations to make internet intermediaries legally liable for third-party content on their networks or platforms.
These trends present dilemmas for those interested in internet-related public policy. The role of governments in protecting human rights by regulating illegal and harmful material offline is reasonably well understood, with exceptions such as when governments use the "illegal and harmful content" discourse to restrict freedom of expression and reduce the space for public deliberation and dissent. But in the online world, new forms of unlawful or harmful content have emerged, resulting in new forms of harm to marginalised or vulnerable groups, such as harassment or violence against women.
Governments have been slow to develop and agree on rights-affirming responses to all such illegal or harmful material. Instead, a primary driver has been largely international pressure to protect intellectual property rights, with governments in the region being pressured to develop new regulatory measures aimed at holding internet intermediaries liable for unauthorised copyright or other intellectual property rights material transmitted or stored on their networks and platforms.
Rather than using traditional law enforcement alone, for some governments it is easier to identify an intermediary and target it for a criminal or civil offence, rather than directly policing the behaviours of the users, as they would in traditional offline law enforcement. Governments do this by asking the intermediaries directly to take down content, even where no court order is in place. Because of this, and in order to avoid legal liability, internet intermediaries may be forced to restrict information posted on their networks and platforms. Such restrictions are for many reasons, such as content that potentially violates trademark or copyright regulations or might be considered indecent, immoral or politically subversive.
These regulations (and the threat of regulation) make intermediaries vulnerable to the exercise of government oversight, as they are used as a point of control over unlawful content on the internet. However, they may not be well placed to do so, especially on legal questions related to human rights. At the same time, the impact of intermediary policies (such as terms and conditions) which fail to deal with complaints about such content from users is also causing difficulties.
While in some countries intermediaries are protected from such potential liability (for example, by what in legal terms is called "safe harbour"), most African countries do not have such provisions. This lack of protection makes some intermediaries too afraid to transmit or host content on the internet, resulting in less content being available online. Protecting intermediaries from liability is an important step for having a free and open internet and for promoting the development of regional content. But questions remain, for example, as to when it is acceptable for intermediaries to be liable for content and how we can determine best practice to ensure the protection of all human rights online.
The failure to take a universal approach to rights protection, for example, and the giving of special privilege to intellectual property rights protection, has resulted in regulatory models for intermediary liability being limited to those tailored to a narrow range of rights. The result is that these models have proved ineffective for other illegal and harmful content which violates other human rights and for which it can be argued that intermediaries should have obligations to take positive action.
To help explore these questions, APC first conducted research and raised awareness on the state of intermediary liability in Nigeria, Kenya, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda in 2012. During 2013 and 2014, in light of the research findings, we focused on developing the discussion on what is best practice in this area. We began to explore what "good practice" might look like and to consider how to develop "need to know" guides based on the research findings. In February 2014, we hosted a workshop attended by researchers, activists, women's human rights defenders, government and private sector representatives to consider the research findings and explore implications.
This special edition of APCNews presents some of the research and resources that we have developed during this work, including our frequently asked questions. We present interviews with Alex Comninos and Andrew Rens (South Africa), Gbenga Sesan (Nigeria), Grace Githaiga (Kenya) and Lillian Nalwoga (Uganda), researchers who participated in the research and who reflect the evolution of intermediary liability in their countries, as well as Nicolo Zingales, who did a comparative analysis of the continent. We also explore the difficulties that a narrow approach to regulation of intermediaries for unlawful and harmful content presents for protection of women's human rights.
We hope you find this special edition of APCNews useful, and that it will answer some of your questions on internet intermediary liability in Africa.
All articles from this special edition
Preventing hate speech online in Kenya
New laws in Uganda make internet providers more vulnerable to liability and state intervention
New laws affecting intermediary liability in Nigeria
Internet policies that affect Africans
Towards internet intermediary responsibility
Internet intermediary liability: Identifying best practices for Africa
Intermediary liability in Kenya
Intermediary liability in Nigeria
Intermediary liability in Uganda
All our resources on intermediary liability are compiled here
Image by Alexander Torrenegra via Flickr reproduced under Creative Commons license.

subset: commoncrawl


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Google Scholar Metrics provide an easy way for authors to quickly gauge the visibility and influence of recent articles in scholarly publications. Scholar Metrics summarize recent citations to many publications, to help authors as they consider where to publish their new research.
To get started, you can browse the top 100 publications in several languages, ordered by their five-year h-index and h-median metrics. To see which articles in a publication were cited the most and who cited them, click on its h-index number to view the articles as well as the citations underlying the metrics.
You can also explore publications in research areas of your interest. To browse publications in a broad area of research, select one of the areas in the left column. For example: Engineering & Computer Science or Health & Medical Sciences.
To explore specific research areas, select one of the broad areas, click on the "Subcategories" link and then select one of the options. For example: Databases & Information Systems or Development Economics.
Browsing by research area is, as yet, available only for English publications. You can, of course, search for specific publications in all languages by words in their titles.
Scholar Metrics are currently based on our index as it was in July 2024.
Available Metrics
The h-index of a publication is the largest number h such that at least h articles in that publication were cited at least h times each. For example, a publication with five articles cited by, respectively, 17, 9, 6, 3, and 2, has the h-index of 3.
The h-core of a publication is a set of top cited h articles from the publication. These are the articles that the h-index is based on. For example, the publication above has the h-core with three articles, those cited by 17, 9, and 6.
The h-median of a publication is the median of the citation counts in its h-core. For example, the h-median of the publication above is 9. The h-median is a measure of the distribution of citations to the articles in the h-core.
Finally, the h5-index, h5-core, and h5-median of a publication are, respectively, the h-index, h-core, and h-median of only those of its articles that were published in the last five complete calendar years.
We display the h5-index and the h5-median for each included publication. We also display an entire h5-core of its articles, along with their citation counts, so that you can see which articles contribute to the h5-index. And there's more! Click on the citation count for any article in the h5-core to see who cited it.
Coverage of Publications
Scholar Metrics currently cover articles published between 2019 and 2023, both inclusive. The metrics are based on citations from all articles that were indexed in Google Scholar in July 2024. This also includes citations from articles that are not themselves covered by Scholar Metrics.
Since Google Scholar indexes articles from a large number of websites, we can't always tell in which journal a particular article has been published. To avoid misidentification of publications, we have included only the following items:
Furthermore, we have specifically excluded the following items:
Overall, Scholar Metrics cover a substantial fraction of scholarly articles published in the last five years. However, they don't currently cover a large number of articles from smaller publications.
Inclusion and Corrections
If you can't find the journal you're looking for, try searching by its abbreviated title or alternate title. There're sometimes several ways to refer to the same publication. (Fun fact: we've seen 959 ways to refer to PNAS.)
If you're wondering why your journal is not included, or why it has fewer citations than it surely deserves, that is often a matter of configuring your website for indexing in Google Scholar. Please refer to the inclusion manual. Also, keep in mind that Scholar Metrics only include publications with at least a hundred articles in the last five years.


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Rithaniel (talk) | |
Date Created: | April 8, 2009 |
Status: | Finished |
Editing: | Please feel free to edit constructively! |
Specific Treants[]
[[Summary::This template can be applied to a base treant or elder treant to create a treant of specific type of tree (i.e A Redwood treant).]]
Creating a Specific Treants[]
This is an inherited template that can be applied to the base creature (it must be a base treant).
The treant's type remains Plant, But the treant also gains the type of tree they are as a subtype, for example: Plant (Willow) for a Willow treant
Special Adjustments[]
The treant's stats are adjusted as shown in the table below, if a treant recieves a unique adjustment, then refer to the unique adjustments section below.
Special Qualities[]
Ancient Body (Ex): These treants have existed a long time, watching the world around them change as they slowly grow. They have weathered more than most could even imagine, enduring the wildest storms and the fiercest winds, and so even the weakest points on their body are rugged and resistant. Treants with this speacial quality are immune to critical hits and retain half of their Damage Reduction even in a situation where they would be denied it.
Ancient Knowledge (Ex): These treants have lived a long time, and have learned untold ammounts of truths about this world as they grew. They have seen more than almost any other living being, yet their minds are still pure and unhindered. A treant with this special quality can add their Wisdom modifier to initiative rolls and attack rolls.
Beautiful Scent (Ex): Certain treants share a breed with trees that blossom in the spring and unleash horomones into the air, making it exceedingly difficult to remain focused and emotional about anything. Treants who have this ability in common with their immobile bretheren can duplicate the effect, only to a much more extreme degree. Any creature with a sense of smell that begins a round within 30 feet of a treant with this special quality must make a Will save (DC 10 + 1/2 treant's HD + treant's Cha modifier) or be affect by an effect indentical to a calm emotions spell. If a creature suceeds it's saving throw against this aura, they cannot be affect by it again for 12 hours.
Coniferous (Ex): Some treants live their lives high in the mountians or in the tundras high above civilization. These treants tend to be very resiliant beings in regards to weather and can hold their own in nearly any situation, calmly waiting through anything. A treant with this special quality never takes cold damage and is immune to energy drain.
Deciduous (Ex): Certain treants live their lives deep within the hearts of commonly known forests. These treants are commonly unbelievablly patient entities, and seem to have unbreakables wills. A treant with this special quality is immune to any form of Ability Score Loss to any of it's three mental ability scores (Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma).
Powerful Build (Ex): The physical stature of certian treants lets them function in many ways as if they were one size category larger. Whenever a treant with this special quality is subject to a size modifier or special size modifier for an opposed check (such as during grapple checks, bull rush attempts, and trip attempts), the treant is treated as one size larger if doing so is advantageous to them. A treant is also considered to be one size larger when determining whether a creature's special attacks based on size (such as improved grab or swallow whole) can affect them. A treant can use weapons designed for a creature one size larger without penalty. However, their space and reach remain those of a creature of their actual size. The benefits of this special quality stack with the effects of powers, abilities, and spells that change the subject's size category.
Unique Adjustments[]
Blue Gum: Blue gum treants are massive creatures that tower over even other treants and stalk through the forest they live in, their heads raised obove the canopy as they survey the world before them. A blue gum treant is one size category larger than a normal treant. Effectively making normal blue gum treants Gargantuan sized, and a normal blue gum elder treant Colossal+ sized.
Dogwood: Dogwood treants are very small entities when compared to other treants. They tend to walk along the forest floor, paying more attention to the young sprouts in the underbrush than the titanic trees that have grown for a long time, rising up all around them. A dogwood treant is one size category smaller than a normal treant. Effectively making normal dogwood treants Large sized, and a normal dogwood elder treant Gargantuan sized.
Elder: Elder treants are strangely noetic for their kind. They tend to stay still most of the time, resting within the darkest of groves instead of walking along the edges of their homes and protecting them. Of course, at the same time, a elder treants ire is truly a terrible thing to draw. This is mostly due to the fact that they can cast arcane spells as a wizard of a level equal to their Hit Dice.
Elm: Elm treants are strangly energetic for their kind, and seem, despite their staggering age, to move with purpose and force that seems nigh impossible. An elm treant increases its base land speed by 20 feet, effectively making a normal elm treants base land speed 50 feet, and a normal elm elder treants base land speed 80 feet.
Gingko: Gingko treants are unusually hardy for they kind, and despite the evil-smelling seeds that they bear, can be quite warm and make for strong defenders. A gingko treant gets 20 bonus hit points and a +3 increase to it's natural armor.
Locust: Locust treants are known for being immensely dense and heavy treants. They actually weigh several tons, despite their size, and seem to crash through any obstacle they come across with force that few living beings could muster. A locust adds ×2 their Str modifier to their slam attacks, instead of only ×1 their Str modifier. In addition, their natural armor is improved by +5.
Magnolia: A magnolia treant may not be as titanic or ancient as other treants, but they can deal damage that others of their kind can't rival. A magnolia treant's slam attacks deal 4d6 points of damage, and a magnolia elder treant's slam attacks deal 12d6 points of damage.
Mimosa: Mimosa treants are known for their unusual ability to thrive in almost any situation and take a beating from virtualy anything. A mimosa treant gets a +4 racial bonus to it's Fortitude saving throws and a +3 increase to it's natural armor.
Methuselah: A methuselah treant is a creature that has lived for a very, very long time, and magic runs deep within their roots, making them strong, giving them power that few can comprehend, much less stand up to. A methuselah treant can cast arcane spells as a sorcerer of a level equal to twice their Hit Dice.
Oak: Oak treants are ancient creatures who seem able to resist anything. They can exert a force of will that their brethen seem unable to muster and can even dodge things with an unnatural speed that other treants can't rival. An oak treant has good Fortitude, Reflex, and Will saves (base save bonus being equal to half the creatures HD plus two), instead of good Fortitude and bad Reflex and Will saves (base save bonus being equal to one third the creatures HD), like other plants.
Redwood: Redwood treants are titanic creatures that tower over almost every other living thing, and stalk through the forest they live in, their footfalls making the world tremble, their heads raised high above the canopy as they survey the world before them. A redwood treant is two size category larger than a normal treant. Effectively making normal redwood treants Colossal sized, and a normal redwood elder treant Colossal++ sized.
Willow: Willow treants are beautiful creatures, and their branches hang around their form like a veil. Though, upon the battlefield, this veil turns into a storm, with individual branches whipping around them with intense speed, ripping through those who would dare to harm their home. A willow treant gains 3 extra natural attacks when they take a full attack option. These attacks deal 2d4 points of slashing damage plus half of their Str modifier, and are each made with a −5 penalty on the attack roll.
Yew: Yew treants tend to have very powerful connections with death, and can draw forth it's power from the underlying leylines of magic that crisscross across all of reality with amazing ease. A yew treant can cast divine spells as a druid of a level equal to their Hit Dice.
Back to Main Page → 3.5e Homebrew → Monsters → Templates


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The reasons that people have for becoming vegetarian or vegan are as numerous and as varied as the growing number of people who have decided to make that leap.
Some people have "light-bulb" moments when it comes to veganism. They may have been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, or visited a slaughterhouse, or even read a book or seen a movie that opened up their eyes to animal suffering.
Others meet vegetarianism slowly. They may have friends or family members who are veg; they might have gone veg to save money; or they might have dabbled in vegetarianism in order to prevent health problems like high-blood pressure and heart disease.
Still, others become veg due to what seems like a natural progression in their lives. Maybe they've always enjoyed eating grains and produce more than animal products; maybe they were already vegetarian, and veganism seemed like the logical next step; or maybe their idea of "going green" included doing less harm to animals, the planet, and themselves.
All of these are great reasons to adopt a vegetarian/vegan lifestyle.
And, FYI, you don't have to be an animal rights activist, "yoga freak," liberal, health fanatic, environmentalist, hippy, millionaire, arugula-lover, or even a finger-wagger to go veg (although all are welcome). The only thing that matters is that you come to it with an open heart and an open mind.
And, FYI, you don't have to be an animal rights activist, "yoga freak," liberal, health fanatic, environmentalist, hippy, millionaire, arugula-lover, or even a finger-wagger to go veg (although all are welcome). The only thing that matters is that you come to it with an open heart and an open mind.
Become an expert on what your body needs. Decide what your priorities are. Determine what's driving you to make a change in your life. Are you concerned about your health? The environment? The ethical treatment of animals? Or something else?
Even if you're not ready to become vegan/vegetarian, that doesn't mean you shouldn't start scaling back the amount of animal products you consume. You might want to begin by cutting certain types of meat/dairy out of your diet. Or try eating one completely veg meal every day, eating exclusively vegetarian meals on the weekends or during one weekday, or even taking the 30-Day Veg Pledge. Another great way to start is by preparing veggie versions of things that you typically eat (ex: veggie pizza, spaghetti with marinara sauce, veggie burgers, etc.) Alternatively, you could eat veg while cooking at home, but continue eating non-veg meals while out at restaurants.
The bottom line is this: no matter how small of a step you take towards vegetarianism, you're taking a huge step towards better health for you, the animals, and our environment.
Need some encouragement? Try these articles on for size...
Your Health
"I don't understand why asking people to eat a well-balanced vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it is medically conservative to cut people open."
-Dr. Dean Ornish
- Vegetarian Foods: Powerful for Health - an article packed with information about the health benefits of vegetarianism
- Vegan Diet Reduces Risk of Arthritis, Heart Attack, and Stroke
- High IQ Link to Being Vegetarian - here's an interesting look at a possible link between vegetarianism and higher IQs!
- On Cancer and a Vegetarian Diet - a look at various sources linking vegetarianism to a decrease in cancer
- 22 Reasons to Go Vegetarian Right Now - this article contains a wide variety of health-related (and other) reasons for going veg
- Health Benefits of Vegetarian Diets
- Animal Protein and Fat Raise Endometrial Cancer Risk - this provides the full text of one of the articles referred to in "On Cancer and a Vegetarian Diet"
- Rheumatoid Arthritis? Try a Gluten-Free Vegan Diet
The Animals
"You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Boiling Mad: Crabs Feel Pain - a recent article that takes a fascinating look at crabs and their ability to feel/respond to pain
- How Free is "Free-Range?" - an article covering some of the myths surrounding the treatment of "free-range" hens
- Upton Sinclair, Now Playing on YouTube - an undercover vegan goes to work at a slaughterhouse, with a hidden camera...
- Shedding Light on the Treatment of Dairy Cows
- Our Pigs, Our Food, Our Health - an article about how pig farms can lead to antibiotic-resistant staph infections in humans
- Slaughterhouses (note: as the title suggests, this article is contains graphic pictures/information)
- Fish Do Feel Pain, Scientists Say
- Animals in Product Testing - this article provides an entry-point for more information regarding the perils of animal testing
Our Environment
"Refusing meat is the single most effective thing you can do to reduce your carbon footprint."
-David de Rothschild, Live Earth
- Vegetarian is the New Prius - an interesting article about the importance of vegetarianism with respect to going "green"
- Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler - a recent NYT article that discusses the negative effects of our country's high-consumption of meat
- Factory Farming - some of the ways it harms our planet and the animals
- Environmental Destruction
- The Case Against Meat - how the production/consumption of meat harms our environment and exacerbates global hunger
- Global Warming - how a non-veg diet contributes to global warming
- Eating Less Meat Could Cut Climate Costs
A Parting Thought:
"At the moment our human world is based on the suffering and destruction of millions of non-humans. To perceive this and to do something to change it in personal and public ways is to undergo a change of perception akin to a religious conversion. Nothing can ever be seen in quite the same way again because once you have admitted the terror and pain of other species you will, unless you resist conversion, be always aware of the endless permutations of suffering that support our society."
-Arthur Conan Doyle


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Review: Silent, OCed card with extra headroom
Following up on their GTX 680 Beast and Ultra Charged cards, Point of View / TGT decided to offer even more to the enthusiast bunch. So, if 2GB isn't enough for you, you should know that PoV / TGT's offer now boasts the GTX 680 Ultra Charged with 4GB of memory. Note however that other than the memory, the card is identical to the GTX 680 Ultra Charged, meaning it packs a GPU factory overclocked by 105MHz. Those who crave more can always go for the GTX 680 Beast, whose GPU is factory overclocked by 157MHz.
The high clocks are not a problem thanks to the special triple slot cooling. TGT opted for hand selected low leakage chips in order to provide maximum performance. This ensures that auto-overclocks are maxed out and allows for superior overclocking headroom.
So, the GTX 680 Ultra Charged 4GB's base GPU clock stands at 1111MHz (Boost clock at 1176MHz) while the memory is at 1502MHz (6008MHz effectively).
GTX 680 Ultra Charged comes with no special extras – you get a driver CD and a user manual. The box is tough, with a design along the lines of PoV/TGT's earlier designs. We'd love to see a gift game with premium cards, but it seems like those days are gone.
GTX 680 Ultra Charged 4GB graphics card uses large but efficient cooling. We've had the chance to see it in action on the GTX 680 Beast and GTX 680 Ultra Charged 2GB cards and although it did a good cooling job, what we liked the most was its silent operation.
Seeing as how the Ultra Charged 4GB and Ultra Charged 2GB only differ in memory, we expect the cooler to repeat its earlier feat.
The fans are enclosed in a plastic mask, which is easily removable if you want to clean them. The cooler has different fans - the central fan is a 9cm one while the other two are 8cm in diameter. Size isn't the only difference as the propellers were designed differently as well.
All three fans are connected via a single power connector, so Auto or manual RPM settings introduce changes on all three fans. The three fans make sure that every part of the heatsink is nice and cool.
The heatsink is split in two parts, with five heatpipes going through - two go towards the I/O panel, while three go in the opposite direction.
Heatpipes start on in the pretty large copper base. The base is massive, partly because the cooler is held in place only with four screws, which again go through the base. The design is pretty tough and we didn't hear/see any vibration due to the number of fans. PoV / TGT used foam-like pads in two places between the heatsink and PCB, in order to ensure a proper and stable fit with no vibration noise.
PoV/TGT strapped the card with a heatspreader for memory and other low profile components on the front PCB. TGT's backplate can be found in the back, although it doesn't touch the memory so it's questionable whether it improves cooling performance. However, it prevents the PCB from warping and definitely makes the card look better.
The GTX 680 Ultra Charged comes with 4GB of GDDR5 memory. The chips come from Hynix (model No: H5GQ2H24MFR-R0C) and are rated at 1500MHz (6000MHz GDDR5 effectively).
Reference GTX 680 cards draw power via two 6-pin connectors. Factory overclocked GTX 680 Ultra Charged has one 6-pin and one 8-pin power connector. Point of View / TGT uses five phase PWM design, one phase more than on the reference card.
GTX 680 Ultracharged comes with two dual-link DVI outs, but only one is analog VGA-out capable. The VGA-out requires using the bottom DVI – the one in line with HDMI and DisplayPort connectors. Nvidia made sure not to lag behind the competition so Kepler based cards can run up to four displays simultaneously.
The card has two SLI connectors, which means Quad GPU is possible. Note however that being three slots wide, finding room for four GTX 680 Ultra Charged cards will be a challenge.
Motherboard: EVGA X79 FTW
CPU: Sandy Bridge-E Core i7 3820 (3.6GHz)
CPU Cooler: Thermalright HR-02 (Thermalright-Europa Distri www.PC-Cooling.de).
Memory: 8GB ADATA DDR3 1600 XPG Gaming series
Harddisk: OCZ Vertex 2 100 GB
Power Supply: CoolerMaster Silent Pro 1000W
Case: CoolerMaster Cosmos II Ultra Tower
Operating System: Win7 64-bit
Nvidia 304.79-desktop-win7-winvista-64bit-english-beta
AMD 12-6_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc.exe
3D Mark11
Aliens vs Predator
Crysis 2
Metro 2033
Unigine Heaven
We must admit that we had great expectations when it comes to overclocking, since TGT claims it used handpicked low leakage chips. Such chips do better with auto overclocking and tend to deliver higher maximum clocks, but should provide superior overclocking headroom as well.
Overclocking the memory was quite interesting, seeing as how the card has 4GB of memory. Naturally, doubling the number of memory chips doubles the chance of one of them turning out overclocking unfriendly, but luckily, all of them ran flawlessly, even after our 225MHz overclock (900MHz effectively).
We've noticed that the Power Target is a bit higher than on the reference design, but the voltage was left at reference values.
Before we move on, we should say that we left the fans in AUTO mode. The cooler ran so well that there was simply no need for it and the fans remained quiet even after our overclocking. Thermal throttling occurs at above 79°C, but the GTX 680 Ultra Charged never exceeded 72°C – that's right, not even after overclocking.
Squeezing out maximum clocks, and in turn performance, from the GK104 requires a lot of attention. Below is a clear example of when to use the Power Target slider.
Once we overclocked the GPU by +70MHz, we noticed that auto-overclocking figures tend to oscillate somewhat, as you can see on the picture below. Quality GPU and cooling prevent more serious changes but we chose to stabilize the clocks by dragging the Power Target slider far right, allowing for maximum TDP. It worked and, as you can see from the second picture below, the GPU clock is nailed to 1269MHz.
The next photo proves that TGT really chose low leakage chips. Not even 100MHz extra turned out too much for this card. The maximum auto-overclock was 1289MHz, and as you can see from the picture below, the GPU ran at this clock the entire time.
We didn't have much time on our hands and thus couldn't check, but we're pretty sure you could squeeze out a bit more from this card.
If you read the review in detail, you know that the cooling is excellent. First and foremost, it remained quiet when the card was working hard and it didn't even flinch after our 100MHz (205MHz higher than reference) – golden silence. Note that such performance means we never utilized the cooler to its max, i.e. we didn't speed up the fans.
Point of View / TGT found a perfect formula for cooling overclocked GTX 680 (GK104 GPUs). There was no secret recipe – massive cooling did the trick.
If you look at the cooling performance, it will be clear why TGT chose it to cool the fastest GTX 680s. The cooler was more than up to the task throughout our tests. We overclocked the core by another 100MHz (205MHz higher than reference) and the memory by 225MHz (900MHz effectively), but the cooler hardly noticed.
The cooling does however have one shortcoming – it takes up three slots. While you may find enough room for SLI or three-way SLI in most rigs, you can just about forget about fitting a Quad SLI setup.
Games don't seem to notice the doubled memory, but this does not mean that future games won't benefit from it. The good news is that 4GB of memory didn't negatively affect GPU overclocking.
The GTX 680 Ultra Charged 4GB graphics card uses low leakage chips handpicked by TGT, and the overclock to 1211MHz (Max Boost clock 1289MHz) confirmed it. Note that the GTX 680 Beast's Base GPU clock went up to 1223MHz, and we wouldn't expect anything less from the Ultra Charged cards, provided you're willing to put some work into it.
The 4GB version goes for €60 more than the 2GB one, but this is not only due to more memory – PoV/TGT's handpicked low leakage chips provide excellent auto overclocking and further overclocking headroom, making the GTX 680 Ultra Charged 4GB pack one serious punch.


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NanoBusiness Interview Series – Hart and Warwick of NanoInk
Posted on May 11th, 2012 in Uncategorized | No Comments »
I enjoy seeing companies in our Nanotechnology community succeed. I first met NanoInk 12 years ago when I worked at Red Herring Magazine. It is amazing to see what they have achieved. Today, we continue our Interview Series with two leaders from NanoInk: Dean Hart, Chief Commercial Officer and Tom Warwick, General Manager. Last week I was in Portland, OR for the NNI 2012 RSL Workshop http://www.nano.gov/node/732 and had an opportunity to speak with Dean Hart. I commend Dean and Tom for their commitment and contributions to our Nanotechnology community. Howard Lovy, noted Nanotechnology writer conducted today's interview.
NanoInk, a nanotech company based in Chicago, is breaking down at least two barriers that stand in the way of widespread nanotech commercialization – getting the tools of the future nanotech trade in the hands of companies rather than researchers, and training a new generation of workers in how to use them.
Dean Hart, Chief Commercial Officer in charge of the NanoProfessor division is handling the training portion, while Tom Warwick, General Manager for NanoInk's NanoFabrication Systems division, is selling the idea of nanofabrication to companies that could use it to create their next-generation products. Together, they just might help push nanotech into the mainstream.
First, let's meet Hart and the NanoProfessor educational program he is marketing for NanoInk. Early in 2009, Hart says, NanoInk had just launched a desktop version of a product called the NLP 2000, a nanolithography instrument. It caught the attention of Deb Newberry, Director of the Nanoscience Technology program at Dakota County Technical College in Rosemount, MN. She was looking for a way for her students to get the training they need on a real-life nanotech instrument – not a simulation. "What you have here is the cornerstone of a hands-on educational program," Newberry told NanoInk, according to Hart.
Also, said Hart, as nanotech was moving from research to commercialization, there was still a knowledge gap preventing its total emergence. The only people who had experience with nanotech, and use of nanotech tools, were Ph.D.s and postdocs – primarily doing research. "The big question is who's going to do the work?" Hart said. "You cannot build an industry, nor can you build a company, on the backs of Ph.D.s. It doesn't scale.
"One of the greatest obstacles facing the commercialization of nanotechnology today is that there is not a nano-savvy workforce readily available."
NanoInk had batted around the idea of an educational program before as part of a general discussion on how to diversify, but now the concept was validated. "We have the instrument, we have the need. Let's build it," Hart said.
As an example of a successful workforce education program, Hart points to Albany, NY, where undergraduates are being trained for the semiconductor industry. Investment in education is paying off as more semiconductor companies move to Albany because that is where the talent is located.
In North Carolina, he said, Forsyth Technical Community College in Winston-Salem is able to help align the future workforce with what the community needs – undergrads who are well-versed in nanotech and biotech. As a result, Forsyth is getting the talent pool ready for Research Triangle Park, where pharmaceutical companies are ready with jobs.
Another example, Hart said, is North Central State College in Mansfield, OH, which is looking at providing the workforce for a new proliferation of biopharmaceutical and bionanotech companies. They're looking at implementing the NanoProfessor program.
Hart recently heard from Indian River State College in Fort Pierce, FL, where the Brown Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship is looking at the NanoProfessor suite for their nanotechnology and applied sciences lab. The program is looking at how to maximize thin film to increase the productivity of solar energy, along with food additives that can detect spoilage. It's all centralized around nanotech and applied science.
And the training program does not require a cleanroom – just an average-sized lab. All the equipment is "research-grade," nothing dumbed down and no simulations or models used.
The NanoProfessor program itself involves six chapters in a 300-plus-page textbook written specifically for undergraduate students. The main topics involve nanobiology, nanochemistry and nanophysics, with brief reviews of traditional sciences. NanoProfessor contains 11 labs, with the NLP 2000 as the centerpiece. "That's the game-changer," Hart said. "That allows these students to actually build nanoscale structures in a desktop setting using metallic nanoparticles or biologic agents."
Tools also include an atomic force microscope so they can see what they are building, also a nanoflourescence microscope to drive biological applications and a nanoparticle characterization tool allows students to get inside nanoparticles. The skills students are learning through NanoProfessor include fabrication, imaging and characterization. One of the labs involves building a DNA array between of between 1 and 2 microns. In the industry, DNA arrays are typically 100 to 300 microns, Hart said. So, they are learning state-of-the-art fabrication techniques.
"We're not just teaching them how to operate the tools, we're teaching them skills that can translate to any type of job," including servicing the equipment and lab technician, he said.
So, this is not a tough sell. What is tough, though, is for schools to find funding to purchase the system, which runs in the ballpark of $300,000 or less.
"Honestly, one of the concerning points for us is there seems to be, at least from a funding perspective, much greater access to funds internationally than there is in the United States," Hart said.
That is why NanoProfessor is having slightly more success internationally. Hart said they had just sold five systems in Sao Paulo, Brazil, with five to 10 more in demand before the end of the year. Colombia has eight of their systems, and there is interest everywhere from Turkey to China to India. It's a competition for worker training that the United States could end up losing if it does not reorganize its priorities.
"We continue to invest in research, which is extremely important, whereas the rest of the world takes that research and then they start investing in the workforce that's going to be able to implement it," Hart said.
In Suzhou, China, for example, they're launching what they are calling the Nano-Polis project that will train 30,000 workers in nanotechnology. It is a commitment to taking research and turning it into workforce development that Hart does not see happening so far in the United States.
The solution, he said, is for commercial companies to approach their local undergraduate institutions and tell them that they need their help in building the new nanotech-enabled workforce. Companies cannot pay too many $90,000-a-year Ph.D.s, but they can hire educated, nano-savvy employees at $50,000 a year. Do that, and "the whole business model has changed," he said.
It's about getting the technology to the attention of the masses, training them, opening up their minds to what is available, he said. "We have an opportunity for leadership, but if we don't act quickly we're going to lose it."
To date, Hart said, NanoProfessor has sold 25 systems and could end the year with anywhere between 40 to 50 additional systems sold.
While Hart is helping to prepare the future nanotech workforce, Warwick is helping to transition nanotech out of the academic lab and into the commercial world. And he sees immediate opportunity in biotech. When Warwick joined the company about three years ago, NanoInk had a number of tools that were largely aimed at life scientists for their chemistry or nanoengineering labs.
Warwick set off on a continuing mission to show biotech companies that they can benefit, too. They've been featuring substrates on which you can grow living cells, then treat each row to a different drug at different concentrations. The goal is immediate, point-of-care diagnostics, and Warwick said NanoInk is attracting attention from biotech companies large and small.
Warwick has been hitting the road a great deal these days, armed with stacks of proof-of-concept data.
"What I do love about what I'm doing is whenever we present, people smile and they nod their heads and their eyes glisten and gleam with excitement and say, 'Wow, I just didn't realize you could do that.'"
Warwick is finding interest from Fortune 50 companies and is active in India. "They are investing heavily in nanotech," Warwick said.
Warwick has long played the role of the guy who could take research lab tools and transition them into the commercial marketplace. Back in 1993 in the U.K., he was with a company that made ultra-high-vacuum scanning tunneling microscopes. He was their first commercial person and doubled sales in the first year. In the second year, he doubled them again. The business was eventually sold to Oxford Instruments.
Next, he set up Digital Instruments, an AFM company that eventually merged with Veeco, where he became European Sales and Global Sales Vice President at the same time. "I was working 18-hour days and loving it," he said.
So, it was with this experience in mind that NanoInk took him on to help lead the company to the next phase of commercialization. The toughest part of his job is simply the disruptive nature of the products he is selling. When he first came to the United States from the U.K., Warwick thought it would be easier, since the U.S. is investing heavily in nanotech.
"But it is a technology where people are saying, 'Well, do I really want to be first or can I manage without in the short term?'"
And when he's talking to biosensor startups, they're just bulk-coating materials for proof-of-concept. "So, they're getting away with the quick and dirty while they're working on what's next, which will be multiple materials on their sensor device."
But, Warwick said, the message is getting through as established companies and startups look to create the next phase of the the biotech revolution – which will be field-based, point-of-care products. They will need the tools that NanoInk can offer to create multiplexing materials into the mobile industry.
Both Warwick and Hart say it's a good time to be doing what they're doing, creating the infrastructure necessary for what's next in nanotech.
"It's amazing how big companies are approaching us, looking for new technology," Warwick said. It is an exciting time. It's a new phase. It was academics, small startups, but also large companies are very interested in point-of-care diagnostics."
The Challenge: Boost Nano, Create Jobs
PCAST Documents & Reports
2012 Nanotechnology Report
I would like to thank Dean Hart and Tom Warwick for taking the time to share their opinions for our Nanotechnology community.
Vincent Caprio "Serving the Nanotechnology Community for Over a Decade"
Executive Director
NanoBusiness Commercialization Association


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After 37 years of service, Irene Jones has retired from Stanford University Libraries.
Fluent in Russian, Ukrainian, and German, she served as a German translator during the latter years of living in a refugee camp in Austria from 1945-1952. Her language skills were invaluable when Irene began work at the Hoover Institution as a 50%FTE Library Specialist, specializing in Slavic Serials. Her responsibilities included working with a few hundred titles published in Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, Czechoslovakian, Bulgarian, Belarusian, and Yugoslavian/Serbo-Croatian.
In the late seventies, Irene moved to a fulltime library specialist position in Hoover Conservation. Her responsibilities expanded to repairing materials in the Hoover Collection and filming English and German newspapers. In 1987, she continued half-time in Conservation and returned half-time to Slavic Serials.
In 1990, Irene came to work in Green Library as a part-time Library Specialist I, Bindery, while continuing part-time at Hoover; she increased to fulltime at Green in 2001. During the 2003 Current Periodicals (CPR) Project, Irene integrated hundreds of Slavic titles into the LARS (bindery) database and onto the master title list. Along with the CPR team, in four months, she helped process 15,500 bundles for the bindery.
In 2006, Irene was promoted to a Library Specialist II, Serials at Green Library. Her new responsibilities included the management of the CPR master title list, which included more than 7,000 titles, and processing the issues of all dead, ceased, and suspended titles. Over the span of ten years (2003-2013), Irene processed thirty-five percent of CPR production.
In 2010, Irene contributed to the team effort to promote the international magazines in the CPR collection. She reviewed and recommended, to the Slavic curator, the transfer of Slavic popular culture magazine titles to the IC-Display.
We are grateful to Irene for her dedication, attention to detail, and accuracy in her work. Her care and spunky spirit will be missed. Stanford University Libraries wishes her, the very best in her well-deserved retirement.


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I've had such a lovely week with you guys; I've been lucky enough to welcome new followers and to keep seeing some super friendly regular faces, for which I am very grateful. If you're new to this little blog, then you can find out more about me and 'My Stuff' in my guest post on A Diary of Lovely earlier in the week. Whatever you get up to this weekend, friends, I hope it's full of fun and bursting with happiness for you. x
1 hour ago


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While U.S students continue to lag behind many countries academically, national statistics show that teachers have responded by assigning more homework. But according to a joint study by researchers at Binghamton University and the University of Nevada, when it comes to math, piling on the homework may not work for all students.
Published in the July issue of the Econometrics Journal, researchers found that although assigning more homework tends to have a larger and more significant impact on mathematics test scores for high and low achievers, it is less effective for average achievers.
"We found that if a teacher has a high achieving group of students, pushing them harder by giving them more homework could be beneficial," said Daniel Henderson, associate professor of economics at Binghamton University. "Similarly, if a teacher has a low ability class, assigning more homework may help since they may not have been pushed hard enough. But for the average achieving classes, who may have been given too much homework in an attempt to equate them with the high achieving classes, educators could be better served by using other methods to improve student achievement. Given these students' abilities and time constraints, learning by doing may be a more effective tool for improvement."
According to co-author Ozkan Eren, assistant professor of economics at the University of Nevada, the study examined an area previously unexplored, namely the connection between test scores and extra homework.
"There has been an extensive amount of research examining the influences of students' achievement, but it has been primarily focused on financial inputs such as class size or teachers' credentials," said Eren. "Our study examined the affect that additional homework has on test scores." While past studies suggest that nearly all students benefit from being assigned more homework Henderson and Eren discovered that only about 40% of the students surveyed would significantly benefit from an additional hour of homework each night.
According to Henderson, the findings should be of particular interest to schools who have responded to the increased pressures to pass state-mandated tests by forcing students to hit the books even harder. "This does not mean that homework is unimportant for average achievers," says Henderson. "But it does mean that this population may also benefit from other activities such as sports, art or music, rather than additional hours of math homework."
So what can teachers take away from the study? Henderson points out that every student is unique and while umbrella policies may benefit some, they generally cannot be applied to all.
"In my own personal experience I see that each semester requires a different approach," says Henderson. "This is even true when I teach the same course twice in a semester. Different times of the day or lengths of classes require different methods. Just as different quality students require different approaches."
Henderson also points out that repetition has been proven effective for some but not all subjects and what may have worked one academic year may need to be altered the next.
"Teachers should consider quality over quantity when it comes to homework assignments," he says. "In the end it should be up to the individual teacher to decide how to motivate and educate their students."
According to Henderson, the learning process needs to remain a rich, broad experience.
"One of the most beautiful things about America to me is the creativity that we instill in our primary and secondary schools," says Henderson. "I know that we lag behind many countries in test scores, but I believe we also produce some of the most creative, enthusiastic students in the world."


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Rich McCrea crouches and springs into a flying leap, hovering above the raging waters of Quality Creek for a split second before landing on the opposite bank. "This is it," he says, peering underneath a sandstone ledge that juts from the weathered rock face. Hidden in shadow on the shelf's underside is a well-preserved set of three-toed tracks left by ornithopods, duck-billed dinosaurs from the Cretaceous Period. Unlike the shallow tracks that beachcombers leave in sand, the fossilized ornithopod prints are domes that project from the rock in upside-down relief. McCrea pokes his head out and grins. "If I were standing in this exact spot 93 million years ago, I'd be beneath the earth's surface, and I'd be able to hear dinosaurs walking overhead," he says.
McCrea, a paleontologist at the Peace Region Palaeontology Research Centre in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, is as quick and nimble as Indiana Jones, but he identifies more closely with Sherlock Holmes. Like Holmes, he is a dogged detective with an uncanny instinct for spotting minute clues. By scrutinizing footprint fossils in rock—subtle swells and indentations that are easy for the untrained eye to miss—he is assembling a more complete picture of how dinosaurs behaved, traveled, and interacted than even their bones can provide. "When it comes down to it, the best-preserved skeleton is still a corpse," McCrea says. "Footprints were left behind when the dinosaur was still alive, so they're like very brief snapshots of an animal's history."
Track sleuthing, or ichnology, is a branch of paleontology that's just coming into its own, with some of the most dramatic and surprising discoveries occurring in the wilds of western Canada. The area emerged as a fertile ichnological hunting ground in 2000 when two boys rafting in Tumbler Ridge landed on a creek bank embedded with fossil tracks after their inflatable tube boat capsized. McCrea has since traveled far and wide in British Columbia and Alberta, looking for places where white-water creeks slice channels into bedrock, miners drill through cliff faces, and inner-earth processes push hills into craggy mountains. All the geologic action helps reveal rock strata from the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods, when dinosaurs roamed the earth. "I don't dig for tracks," McCrea says. "I let the landscape do the work for me." His finds, made without picks or shovels, include some of the most complete sequences of ankylosaur and duck-billed dinosaur tracks anywhere in the world—and a rare tyrannosaur print for good measure.
McCrea is always on the lookout for wide slabs of exposed ancient bedrock, which often contain prints dinosaurs made as they walked across sandy shorelines. Such prints are preserved in a sandstone matrix when grains of sand fuse over the course of millions of years beneath the weight of accumulating layers of sediment. But tracks can also show up in less obvious places. If a dinosaur stepped through mud instead of sand, the prints themselves wouldn't survive as fossils; because of its high organic content, mud turns into crumbly coal when compressed beneath other sediment layers. On occasion, though, new sediment with a higher mineral content than the mud fills the track imprints like wet plaster filling a mold. When this natural plaster hardens into sandstone, the result is a set of "infill prints," inside-out track marks that are often found beneath rock ledges like the one at Quality Creek. By comparing the outlines of footprint fossils with the shapes and dimensions of dinosaur foot bones, ichnologists can determine what type of animal made them.
Close examination of the tracks sometimes also offers clues about the daily routines and social habits of dinosaurs. During a trip to a mining area near Grand Cache, Alberta, McCrea studied a mix of prints from four-legged ankylosaurs, birds, and meat-eating dinosaurs called theropods. He was stopped short by a mile-wide swath of bedrock containing ankylosaur prints that were closely spaced, indicating that the armored plant-eating dinosaurs once congregated there in large numbers.
Curious to find out why, McCrea did an analysis of the site's mineral composition. The results revealed that rocks in the area where the ankylosaurs congregated were more fine grained in texture and contained a higher degree of coal than those found elsewhere, suggesting the area was once a stagnant locale containing lots of organic material. A swamp, McCrea thought, feeling like Archimedes in the bathtub. Of course! He already knew ankylosaurs' teeth were exceptionally flat and dull, so it made sense that they would gravitate toward soft, mushy swamp plants—the dinosaur equivalent of baby food. Their four-toed feet, as wide as snowshoes, would also have been ideal for navigating sludgy swamp bottoms. By contrast, the bipedal meat eaters would not have fared nearly as well in the mud with their bird-talon-like feet and long legs, and hence probably steered clear of the swamp.
Tracks also provide a window into dinosaurs' social lives, revealing whether a particular type of animal was a loner or traveled in packs. A few sets of tracks made side by side, however, don't necessarily indicate the presence of a herd. If one or more of the track sets appears less crisply outlined than the others, that means the soil conditions under which the tracks were made varied—and therefore that a significant time interval passed between the animals' journeys.
Similarly, if McCrea comes across several dinosaur trackways that periodically cross one another, he's highly skeptical that the animals were traveling together. "The best indication that you've really got a herd is when one set of tracks veers off and the other, parallel track lines swerve in the same direction as well," McCrea says. "That shows you the animals were trying to keep a consistent amount of space between them." Evidence of dinosaur herding behavior has turned up at several sites in Alberta and British Columbia. Other herd traces can be found in the Purgatoire River valley in Colorado, where trackways made by herbivorous sauropod dinosaurs are overlaid by delicate three-toed prints made by packs of meat eaters that were trailing the herd.
McCrea is looking to add even more detail to the broad portrait he has assembled of dinosaurs' eating and socializing habits. It is sometimes easy to tell a meat-eating dinosaur's track from a plant eater's because a meat-eater's feet have long, claw-tipped toes, but making this distinction can be a problem when only part of the foot, such as the heel, has been preserved in an imprint. McCrea's research suggests that the skin ridge patterns found in some footprint fossils are unique to particular groups of animals. If his investigation of hundreds of prints supports this theory, researchers will be able to look at fossilized partial imprints only a couple of inches square and determine with a high degree of certainty what type of dinosaur made them.
While McCrea's work focuses on what footprint fossils reveal about behavior, researchers like Julia Day at the University of Cambridge in England have used print data to flesh out the big picture of dinosaur biomechanics. After taking measurements of foot size and stride length from meat-eating dinosaur footprint sequences in Oxfordshire, Day used these numbers to calculate how fast the animals were moving when they made the prints. Large theropods like Tyrannosaurus rex and Megalosaurus, she concluded, usually ambled around at about 4 miles per hour but could rev up to 19 mph in pursuit of prey. While impressive for a 13,000-pound animal (the fastest humans top out at about 23 miles per hour), these figures put the kibosh on popular mythology—especially the classic Jurassic Park chase scene in which a T. rex cruises at 50 miles per hour to keep pace with an SUV.
McCrea wants to follow Day's lead and probe the prints he has found for clues about dinosaurs' biological capabilities, but he doesn't have as much time for inference as he would like. Since a detective's first order of business is to gather all available evidence, his highest priority is to map and describe every track site he has found before erosion and industrial development get the best of them. "You have to start by collecting the raw material, and that's what I'm doing now," he says. This summary work alone, he estimates, could take at least a couple of decades. Still, he is convinced the eventual payoff—providing a new set of clues for deciphering the mysteries of dinosaur life—will make it all worthwhile.


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Single Men and Single Women Perception of Dating and Weight Differ
New Poll Shows Significant Discrepancy between Single Men' and Single Females' Perception of Dating and Weight
Kirstie Alley, Jessica Simpson, Kelly Clarkson and Oprah have spent years yo-yo dieting, but would they work so hard to be thin if they knew men love them despite the extra pounds? These days, Fat is Fabulous, with reality shows about a heavy bachelor searching for his heavy set sweetheart and zaftig women competing in dance-offs, bringing in big ratings numbers for the Networks. So when Fox's More to Love Bachelor, Luke Conley, professed to loving big, beautiful women, leading online dating sites Date.com http://www.date.com), Matchmaker.com http://www.matchmaker.com), and Amor.com http://www.amor.com), decided to poll its members to see what they think about dating overweight men or women.
The results were surprising, perhaps even astounding. A whopping 85% of single men professed their love for heavier women with more than 80% of men feeling that overweight women are less bitchy than thin women. These single men thought that overweight women appreciate the attention that men give them and are more loving because of it.
Since the beginning of time, men and women have failed to understand each other and this latest poll shows that this continues. While the majority of men have no issue with an overweight woman, 90% of women think men find extra weight unattractive, and that heavy women have a much harder time dating.
85% of Single Men Would Date Heavy Women; 90% of Single Women Feel Men Can't See Past a Few Extra Pounds, States Date.com
"These poll results show such a significant discrepancy in the way men feel about dating overweight women, and what women think men are looking for when it comes to relationships. Unfortunately, these types of misconceptions between the sexes are extremely common, and result in a lot of missed dating and relationship opportunities," said Shira Zwebner, Relationship Advisor for Date.com, Matchmaker.com and Amor.com. "At the end of the day, what's important to men is that the women they date be open and receptive to being loved and to giving love, not whether or not they're a perfect size zero. And once overweight women realize that men aren't just looking for a thin woman, they'll have a lot more self-confidence when dating, which will ultimately result in more successful romances."
In a new survey of thousands of male online daters nationwide, conducted in the months of July and August 2009, we asked: Fox's hit reality show this Summer, More to Love, is about an overweight guy looking for love amongst overweight women. America is one of the fattest nations on the planet; do you prefer dating skinny or overweight women?
Following are the complete results:
A couple of extra pounds is fine by me: 85%
Thin: 15%
We also asked our male members the following: Why do you prefer to date a heavy woman?
Following are the complete results:
I find that overweight women are less bitchy than thin women, they appreciate the attention men give them and are more loving because of it: 80%
Because it matters what's on the inside, not on the outside: 68.7%
Heavier women are better in bed: 54.2%
Overweight women have more fun, especially those who are happy in their own skin: 12.5%
All of the above: 34.6%
We also asked our male members the following: And if you would date an overweight woman, how heavy can she be?
Following are the complete results:
She can be obese; it doesn't matter as long as I love her: 79.9%
A couple of pounds overweight, but she should be working on losing it: 63.8%
20 pounds is my limit: 42.5%
I wouldn't date someone who is overweight: 20.5%
In a new survey of thousands of female online daters nationwide, we asked: Fox's hit reality show this Summer, More to Love, is about an overweight guy looking for love amongst overweight women. America is one of the fattest nations on the Planet; do you think overweight women have a harder time dating?
Following are the complete results:
Absolutely, men can't see beyond a few extra pounds: 90.0%
Not really, they're just single like the rest of us: 10.0%
We also asked our female members the following: Would you date an overweight guy?
Following are the complete results:
Yes, I love a teddy bear, I feel protected by a bigger guy: 87.6%
Depends on how overweight he is, I'd like someone who is health conscious and not a couch potato: 74.3%
No, I want a guy who is fit and keeps in shape: 29.8%
This summer, Date.com asked people on the street what appeals most to them in a mate: looks, brains, physique, money or confidence? Visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URRxN_vA0C8 to view America's answers!
About Avalanche, LLC
Avalanche operates several leading online dating websites, including Date.com, Matchmaker.com and Amor.com. Date.com launched on Valentine's Day 1997 and has become one of the world's most popular dating websites. First started as a Bulletin Board System in 1986, Matchmaker.com is the oldest online dating site. It was acquired by Avalanche in 2006 and targets those singles seeking serious relationships. Amor.com, launched in 2007, is a rapidly growing destination for Hispanic singles. Avalanche hosts more than 10 million members worldwide, with the sites adding over 100,000 members each month. Additional information is available at http://www.date.com
Source: Avalanche.com


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Welcome to the 13th edition (on a Friday!) of our weekly roundup of the latest community-driven news, content and conversations about cloud computing and Windows Azure. Let me know what you think about these posts via comments below, or on Twitter @WindowsAzure. Here are the highlights from last week.
Articles and Blog Posts
- Getting Started with the Windows Azure Cache by @bhitney (posted April 4)
- Identifying the Tenant in Multi-Tenant (Windows) Azure Applications – Part 1 by @smorgo (posted April 4)
- Java Also Loves the Cloud by @fharper (posted April 3)
- Bill Wilder Does Hadoop on (Windows) Azure on .NET Rocks (internet radio show) (posted April 3)
- CQRS on Windows Azure by @ploeh, MSDN Magazine (April 2012)
- Quantifying and Avoiding Risk on Windows Azure by @rikp (posted Mar. 31)
Upcoming Events, and User Group Meetings
- April 9: CloudCamp Moscow – Moscow, Russia
- April 14: Twin Cities Code Camp – Minneapolis, MN
- April 26: Sales@night: (Windows) Azure – Brussels, Belgium
- April 28: Vancouver TechFest 2012 – Burnaby, BC, Canada
- May 11: Windows Azure Bootcamp – London, UK
- May 18: Windows Azure Bootcamp – Liverpool, UK
- June 11-14: Microsoft TechEd North America 2012 – Orlando, FL
- June 22: Microsoft UK Cloud Day – London, UK
- June 26-29: Microsoft TechEd Europe – Amsterdam, Netherlands
- Ongoing: Cloud Computing Soup to Nuts – Online
Recent Windows Azure Forums Discussion Threads
- VM Role Computer Name – 444 views, 6 replies
- Push Mechanism for Topic Subscription – 894 views, 23 replies
- How to Thwart a Denial of Service Attack – 614 views, 6 replies
- Table Storage timeouts, not handled by client side timeout – 627 views, 8 replies
Send us articles that you'd like us to highlight, or content of your own that you'd like to share. And let us know about any local events, groups or activities that you think we should tell the rest of the Windows Azure community about. You can use the comments section below, or talk to us on Twitter @WindowsAzure.
Have a great weekend!


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Don't give up . . .
One day I decided to quit . . .
I quit my job, my relationship, my spirituality . . . I wanted to quit my life.
I went to the woods to have one last talk with God. 'God', I asked, 'Can you give me one good reason not to quit?'
His answer surprised me… 'Look around', He said. 'Do you see the fern and the bamboo?'
'Yes', I replied.
'When I planted the fern and the bamboo seeds, I took very good care of them. I gave them light.I gave them water. The fern quickly grew from the earth. Its brilliant green covered the floor.Yet nothing came from the bamboo seed. But I did not quit on the bamboo.
In the second year the Fern grew more vibrant and plentiful.
And again, nothing came from the bamboo seed. But I did not quit on the bamboo. He said.
'In year three there was still nothing from the bamboo seed.But I would not quit.
In year four, again, there was nothing from the bamboo seed. I would not quit.' He said.
'Then in the fifth year a tiny sprout emerged from the earth.
Compared to the fern it was seemingly small and insignificant . . . But just 6 months later the bamboo rose to over 100 feet tall.It had spent the five years growing roots. Those roots mad e it strong and gave it what it needed to survive.
I would not give any of my creations a challenge it could not handle.'
He asked me. 'Did you know, my child, that all this time you have been struggling, you have actually been growing roots'.'I would not quit on the bamboo. I will never quit on you.'
'Don't compare yourself to others.' He said. 'The bamboo had a different Purpose than the fern.Yet they both make the forest beautiful.'
'Your time will come', God said to me.'You will rise high'
'How high should I rise?'I asked.
'How high will the bamboo rise?' He asked in return.
'As high as it can?' I questioned.
'Yes.' He said, 'Give me glory by rising as high as you can.'
I left the forest and brought back this story. I hope these words can help you see that God will never give up on you.
Never, Never, Never Give up.
For the Prayer is not an option but an opportunity. Don't tell the Lord how big the problem is, tell the problem how Great the Lord is!!!
God Bless you…


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© 2008 The Hertz Corporation ® U.S. Pat. Off.


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An Exp Shop is a button that, when pressed, will give you items in exchange for a set amount of exp. You build one by placing a button on a wall, and putting two repeaters and command blocks behind it. Here is a diagram:
b = button
[ ] = wall
r = repeater
[c] = command block
b [ ] r [c] r [c]
In the first command block, you give the player the item if they have enough xp: give @p[lm={XP}] {ITEM ID} {QUANTITY}
. In the second command block, you take xp from them: xp -{XP}L @p[lm={XP}]
The problem is that when single player commands are installed, it will take xp from the player but it won't give them the item. If single player commands are not installed, it works perfectly.
Is there a way to make it work both with and without single player commands?


text:
On the eve of their unprecedented summit, President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un prepared Tuesday for a meeting that could define the fate of millions, along with their own political futures.
Trump forecast a "nice" outcome, while Kim spent the day out of view as both sides finalized preparations for the meeting, which was to kick off at 9 a.m. Tuesday with a handshake between Trump and Kim, an image sure to be devoured around the world. Trump and Kim planned to meet one on one, joined only by translators, for up to two hours before admitting their respective advisers, a U.S. official said. The official was not authorized to speak publicly about internal deliberations and insisted on anonymity.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters Monday that ongoing talks between the two countries were advancing well, but stressed the meeting would be the beginning of a process that would "set the conditions for future talks."
Pompeo added that the U.S. was prepared to take action to provide North Korea with "sufficient certainty" that denuclearization "is not something that ends badly for them."
He would not say whether that included the possibility of withdrawing U.S. troops from the Korean Peninsula, but stressed the context of the discussions was "radically different than ever before."
"I can only say this," Pompeo said. "We are prepared to take what will be security assurances that are different, unique, than America's been willing to provide previously."
The summit will be the first between a North Korean leader and a sitting American president. In Singapore, the island city-state hosting the summit, the sense of anticipation was palpable, with people lining spotless streets Monday waving cell phones as Trump headed to meet Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
As Trump and Lee sat down for a working lunch at the Istana house, Trump sounded optimistic, telling Lee, "we've got a very interesting meeting in particular tomorrow, and I think things can work out very nicely."
Trump also called the leaders of South Korea and Japan in advance of the summit, Pompeo said.
Meanwhile, U.S. and North Korean officials huddled at the Ritz-Carlton hotel Monday ahead of the sit-down aimed at resolving a standoff over Pyongyang's nuclear arsenal. A second round of meetings was planned for the afternoon as officials worked to lay the groundwork for progress to be made Tuesday, according to the official familiar with the preparations. Delegates were outlining specific goals for what Trump and Kim should try to accomplish and multiple scenarios for how key issues can be resolved.
The meetings also served as an ice breaker of sorts as the teams worked to get better acquainted after decades of minimal U.S.-North Korea contact. In a sign of lingering tensions, the North Koreans have been closely scrutinizing all American staffers are slated to be in any U.S.-North Korea meetings, including translators, photographers and logistical staff, asking how they can be sure the American are not actually spies.
Trump and Kim arrived in Singapore on Sunday, both staying at luxurious and heavily guarded hotels less than half a mile apart, with Trump at the Shangri-La Hotel and Kim at the St. Regis Hotel.
Pompeo, the former CIA director, spent the morning preparing with his top advisers, aides said. He was joined in Singapore by Ambassador Sung Kim, the U.S. envoy to the Philippines; and Ambassador Michael McKinley, a career diplomat Pompeo recently tapped to be his senior adviser.
Pompeo traveled twice to Pyongyang in recent months to lay the groundwork for Trump's meeting, becoming the most senior member of Trump's team to spend time with Kim face to face.
Trump has said he hopes to make a legacy-defining deal for the North to give up its nuclear weapons, though he has recently sought to minimize expectations, saying additional meetings may be necessary.
Asked Saturday about his goals, he said: "Well, I think the minimum would be relationship. You would start at least a dialogue, because, you know, as a deal person, I have done very well with deals."
The North has faced crippling diplomatic and economic sanctions as it has advanced development of its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
Experts believe the North is close to being able to target the entire U.S. mainland with its nuclear-armed missiles, and while there's deep skepticism that Kim will quickly give up those hard-won nukes, there's also some hope that diplomacy can replace the animosity between the U.S. and the North.
As Trump was trying to build a bridge with Kim, he was smashing longtime alliances with Western allies, withdrawing from the G-7 joint communique, escalating a trade fight and launching blistering criticism against Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Trump continued to tweet angrily at Trudeau from Singapore, saying Monday "Fair Trade is now to be called Fool Trade if it is not Reciprocal."
One top Trump adviser cast the move as a show of strength before the Kim meeting. Economic adviser Larry Kudlow told CBS News in Washington that "Kim must not see American weakness," adding that by criticizing new tariffs, Trudeau was "pouring collateral damage on this whole Korean trip."
While advisers insist Trump has been reviewing briefing materials, he says his gut instincts will matter most when he gets in the room with Kim. He told reporters he thinks he will know almost immediately whether a deal can be made, saying: "I will know, just my touch, my feel. That's what I do."
Pompeo, however, stressed the president was "fully prepared."
Pyongyang has said it is willing to deal away its entire nuclear arsenal if the United States provides it with reliable security assurances and other benefits. But there are major doubts, given how hard it has been for Kim to build his program and that the weapons are seen as the major guarantee to his holding onto unchecked power.
Any nuclear deal will hinge on the North's willingness to allow unfettered outside inspections of the country's warheads and nuclear fuel, much of which is likely kept in a vast complex of underground facilities. Past nuclear deals have crumbled over North Korea's reluctance to open its doors to outsiders.
Another possibility from the summit is a deal to end the Korean War, which North Korea has long demanded, presumably, in part, to get U.S. troops off the Korean Peninsula and eventually pave the way for a North Korean-led unified Korea.
Trump has also raised the possibility of further summits and an agreement ending the Korean War by replacing the armistice signed in 1953 with a peace treaty. China and South Korea would have to sign off on any legal treaty.
Associated Press writer Foster Klug contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2018 Capitol Hill Blue
Copyright © 2018 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved


text:
bread fruit 3/4 of a medium sized one
shallots 15-20
coconut sliced /thenga kothu 1/3 cup
green chillies 2 vertical slit
garlic crushed 3 cloves
shredded coconut 1 cup
turmeric powder 1/3 tsp
coriander powder 2 1/2 tsp
chilly powder 1 1/2 tsp
garam masala 1/2 tsp
tamarind 1/2 lemon size
curry leaves 5-6
oil 2tsp
-Peel the skin and wash the bread fruit.Cut into small cubes,discard the core.Keep aside.
-Soak the tamarind in 1/3 cup water.Strain the pulp and keep aside.
-In the meantime,dry roast the coconut (see pics here) and roast the spices on low-medium flame .Grind this inn a mixer or blender when cooled in a smooth paste using little water.
-Heat oil in a pan and add curry leaves,then fry the sliced coconut until slightly browned.Saute the whole pearl onions/shallots ,crushed garlic and green chillies.
-Add the chopped bread fruit to the sauted shallots.Add the ground paste and bring to boil.Add 1 cup water too.
-Cover and cook for 20 minutes until the bread fruit is cooked and thickens.
-Add the tamarind pulp at this point and adjust salt.Cook again for 5 minutes.Note the oil floating on top.
-Put off flame and serve with rice.
Servings ~ 3-4 adults
* You can add more water if the gravy thickens more.
* Adjust the chilly powder and green chillies as per spice tolerance.
* You can either put peeled shallots as whole or cut into halves to sauté.
Sending this to WTML(Walking through memory lane) event guest hosted by Archana @ The Mad Scientist Kitchen


text: The Scene view is your interactive view into the world you are creating. You will use the Scene view to select and position scenery, characters, cameras, lights, and all other types of Game Object. Being able to Select, manipulate and modify objects in the Scene view are some of the first skills you must learn to begin working in Unity.


text:
Find Clusters Inside a Set of Points
This module implements an algorithm to find clusters of points inside a set. Clusters are defined as sets of points where it is possible to stablish a way between any pair of points moving from point to point inside the cluster in steps smaller than a given radius. Points can have any dimension from one to infinitum, though the algorithm performance degrades quickly as the dimension increases (it has O((2*D)^D) complexity). The algorithm input parameters are: * $dimension Dimension of the problem space. For instance, for finding clusters on a geometric plane, dimension will be 2. * $radius A point is part of a cluster when there is at least another point from the cluster that is at a distance smaller than $radius from it. * $minimum_size Minimum_number of points required to form a cluster, the default is one. * @points The coordinates of the points * $ordered Order the points inside the clusters by their indexes and also order the clusters by the index of the contained points. Ordering the output data is optional because it can be an computational expensive operation.
openSUSE Leap 15.6 に対する公式のパッケージはありませんディストリビューション
openSUSE Tumbleweed
openSUSE Leap 15.5
openSUSE Leap 15.4


text:
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Oh, What a Busy Day!
Gyo Fujikawa ~ Grosset & Dunlap, 1976
Oh oh oh, how this book influenced me as a girl. Such intense childhood memories that I almost can't look at it without crying. Wouldn't be the first Gyo book that's sent me spiraling back to my youth in waves of tears. Recently reissued by B&N's Sterling imprint, the poems and stories are priceless and each page is filled with the color and black and white illustrations that made Gyo a children's book legend. The pictures are so full of life and movement, each one with plenty of subdrama within.
One story (and its accompanying drawings) still makes my heart weep... those poor babes in the woods.
My dear, do you know,
How a long time ago,
Two little children,
Whose names I don't know,
Were stolen away,
On a fine summer's day,
And left in a wood,
as I've heard people say.
All those familiar will know that soon the two become lost and lay down and die in the chill of the night, covered with leaves by forest animals. Based loosely on a true story, that tale always haunted me when I was wee... and probably haunts me even more as a mother.
Also by:
A Child's Garden of Verses
A Child's Book of Poems
Let's Grow a Garden
Baby Animals
Our Best Friends
Come Follow me
Fairy Tales and Fables
Read along on Facebook, tumblr, Twitter and Etsy
17 comments:
- You Can Call Me Jane said...
Oh What A Busy Day does the same thing to me! I remember staring for hours at the children in the mud pit, trying to imagine what that would be like and what their mothers would say when they got home:-).
Powerful memories, indeed.
And for that boy, I will pray. - June 9, 2010 at 7:33 AM
- Unknown said...
scribs...i had completely forgotten this book. this was my absolute favorite. i'm so glad you reviewed it...i'm getting a copy. now. xoxo
- June 9, 2010 at 9:50 AM
- l said...
I just found this lovely book at our local thrift store and brought it home! I was attracted by the illustrations and thought my youngest dd would love it too!
- June 9, 2010 at 10:07 AM
- Laura Ottina said...
Very sweet illustrations... and yes, I so hope the little boy is safe and they find him soon
- June 9, 2010 at 3:03 PM
- Cole's Corner said...
I love anything by Gyo!
- June 9, 2010 at 6:46 PM
- Dave Rattigan said...
I love love LOVE this book.
Read it lots as a child, and bought it again a few years ago - I think after seeing mention of it on this site.
Many a time in the last couple years I've sat with my nephews and nieces on my lap, poring over its pages. So much to see and think about in every picture. I think the thing that makes it truly special for children is that somewhere in every picture there's someone or something they can identify with. - June 9, 2010 at 10:13 PM
- Carin Siegfried said...
Did you know that two other Sterling is reissuing 2 other Fujikawas now too? Puppies, Pussycats and Other Friends, and Let's Play. I adore Babies.
- June 10, 2010 at 4:09 PM
- Lori Lou said...
I loved this book so much!
- June 23, 2010 at 11:31 AM
OH MY DEAR GOODNESS, I have been looking for this book for my whole adult life and I just discovered the title and images of the book for the first time tonight, after only having slivers of memories of the book in my head from the 1970s/1980s when I was very very young! I didn't even know the title, let alone the author, but I remembered images in my head, and I remembered it having Fuzzy Wuzzy in it, and a treehouse, etc......a few months ago I found "A Child's Book of Poems" at the bookstore and the artwork IMMEDIATELY made my heart stop, I KNEW that artwork had to be similar to the book I had as a child. Tonight I picked up the poems book again to admire it and I said what the heck and I did a search for the author. Through trial and error I FINALLY found this title and images!!! I am SOOOOOO happy!!!
- November 19, 2010 at 7:05 PM
- Burgin Streetman said...
Great to hear Amy!
- November 19, 2010 at 8:28 PM
- Jorgelina said...
Awwwwwwww!!! Seeing this post gave me goosebumps! I have this book since I was little and remember hours of reading and playing with it! My sister and I used to pick kids "I'm her!" And then we'd talk about it. I'm 35 now and my niece and nephew do the same we used to do. Thank you for sharing it!
- February 26, 2011 at 3:23 PM
- AKA Jane Random said...
This is my absolute favorite children's book ever. I paid boocoodles of money for it on Ebay three times and now they've re-released it.
- July 18, 2011 at 7:10 PM
- NainaDG said...
I found your blog while searching for Gyo Fujikawa images and used one one my blog and I have credited and linked you back. Hope thats okay?
More importantly, I'm so glad I found your blog!!!! I have a few vintage books that I want to collect for my son, but your blog has opened up a whole new world!! I can't wait to explore more - September 21, 2011 at 3:11 PM
- Pipa said...
Thank you so much for sharing this post! This was my favourite book and I lost track of it when I was 10. I didn't know the name of the author so I thought I would never set eyes on this beautiful illustrations again! You made my day!
- October 16, 2013 at 9:24 AM
- irishgirl23 said...
I just purchased this book for my 3 year old niece. The illustrations are just amazing and they remind me of my childhood. We have had conversations about naughty things kids in the book have done and my niece will not be hearing about the children who died in the woods. I was honestly very puzzled by that page and wondered how it was relevant to the book. I can't wait to collect Gyo's other books. I've seen some tattered copies at Good will and recently picked up a mint "Babies" ,which my niece loves. I thinking actually endears her to her baby brother. You grew my love of children's book thrifting! Currently hunting for Elizabeth Koda Callan books from the early nineties.
- June 18, 2016 at 11:29 PM
Hello, I just recently purchased a re-issue of this book. I only have some memories of it as a child. Could you please tell me if the original book has all colour illustrations or are some pages also in black and white? Thanks so much! Barbara
- June 11, 2018 at 5:35 PM
- ErinLeigh said...
Hi Barbara! Yes, some pages are in black & white.
- July 28, 2019 at 9:12 PM


text:
Peer Review Process
Every submitted article will be independently reviewed by two peer reviewers. The review process applies the Double-Blind method. The decision for publication, amendment, or rejection is based upon their reports/recommendations. After being reviewed, there will be four kinds of editor decisions based on reviewers' recommendations:
> Accept Submission: The submission will be accepted without revisions.
> Revisions Required: The submission will be accepted after minor changes have been made.
> Resubmit for Review: The submission needs to be re-worked, but with significant changes, may be accepted. It will require a second round of review, however.
> Decline Submission: The submission will not be published in the journal.


text:
Product Description
4510-35-221-313 Adams Rite Standard Deadlatch with flat faceplate in Dark Bronze Anodized Finish
The 4510-35-221-313 series Deadlatch offers maximum flexibility of traffic control during and after business hours. While bolt is held fully retracted, a reverse turn of the key retains the bolt and thus allowing the door to be free swinging with two-way traffic for hospitals, banks, stores, and other buildings which require free entrance at certain times and exit-only at other times. It is easily interchangeable, without stile modification with any MS1850A or MS1850S Deadlock of same backset and faceplate shape. However, they donot provide the same maximum security level as the MS Deadlock.
Benefits and Features:
- Dark Bronze Anodized Finish
- Aluminum construction
- LH or RHR - handed operation is reversible without special tools required
- Cylinder Backset: 1-1/8"
- Case is made of steel with corrosion-resistant plating that measures 1" x 5-13/16" x depth
- Grade 1 Standard
- Uses any standard mortise cylinder with MS dimensioned cam
- Faceplate measures 1" x 6-7/8"
- Latchbolt is of metal with hardened steel internal pins and 1/2" x 1" x 1/2" throw
- Mortised (4902) 2-5/8" strike size
- Auxiliary Bolt is made of all metal for deadlocks latch bolt to prevent "loiding" or case-knife entry
- Flat strike shape with center hung 4.5" jamb lip length
- Long lip strikes for centerhung doors
- 3 year limited manufacturer's warranty is included
Individually boxed with strike and machine screws for mounting


text:
2007 will be brought to you by the number 3. Namely, Pirates of the Caribbean 3; At World's End will be hoping to puff out Disney's balance sheets with numerous merchandising wet dreams. 007's main competitor, Jason Bourne, has his third outing in The Bourne Ultimatum. Spiderman 3 looks positively Gothic. Will The Simpsons Movie (trailer here) be more than just 3 episodes joined together? Will it be funnier that Borat, or merely amusing like their last six seasons? A couple of animatic previews were posted up here, but YouTube has pulled them on behalf of Fox.
Slightly further afield from the mainstream box office, Sin City 2 brings back Marv and the dames for a few more tales. Lee Tamahori comes in off the street and directs Next, based on the Phillip K Dick story The Golden Man. It stars Nicolas Coppola, who also appears in a lot of Ghost Rider as a CGI skeleton only he's called Nicholas Cage in this one. Pity he hasn't had a decent movie since Adaptation and he has to cadge glory off wunderkind Cousin Sofia and Uncle Frank.
There is so much hush-hush about The Corrections, I'm going to take a punt on this being a goodie. With a line-up of Brad Pitt, Naomi Watts (sigh), Tim Robbins and Judi Dench, it tells the the story of "several generations of a dysfunctional family". About bloody time. I've had nothing to watch since The Royal Tenenbaums. OK, there was Little Miss Sunshine...
Neil Gaiman's Stardust features not only Claire Danes, Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer, but also a veritable cornicopia of Brit actors; Jason Flemyng, Ricky Gervais, Peter O'Toole. Matthew Vaughn, from the excellent Layer Cake, directs. While in Britland, may as well mention the sequel to the Cate Blanchett's Elizabeth, The Golden Age. The story focuses on ER I's conflict with Mary Queen of Scots, played by the ever-yummy Samantha Morton, and her relationship with Sir Walter Raleigh. No mention is made on whether Rowan Atkinson makes a cameo.
But my pick for 2007, in lieu of The Fountain ever getting to our shores, is Black Snake Moan, starring Samuel L Jackson & Christina Ricci. And, er, Justin Timberlake. Rotten Tomatoes:
"From the writer and director of the sleeper hit Hustle & Flow comes a gritty, seductive, blues-soaked tale of love, sex, music, and redemption. Writer/director Craig Brewer's Black Snake Moan descends into the dark, spellbinding heart of fear and desire and comes out the other side."


text:
The culture wars continue
So yesterday the Malthouse launches what is, on first sight, its best balanced season yet, demonstrating diversity, depth and - addressing a weak spot - a lot of work by women. It includes classical tragedy (Kosky's production of Euripides' The Women of Troy, with Robyn Nevin and Melita Jurisic) and a new Indigneous play (Dallas Winmar's Yibiyung, directed by Wesley Enoch). It includes dance (Shaun Parker's Blue Love), music theatre by Meow Meow (Vamp) and a remount of Ranter's exquisite Holiday. They've invited the bad boys from Black Lung in for a residency at the Tower. And - to my mind one of the biggest attractions - they've programmed Jenny Kemp's long-awaited new show, Kitten.
And what do we hear from the Age? That its "aesthetic vision is too limited" and lacks "diversity"! How much diversity do you want? But hey. Look at the byline. It's no surprise that this beat up is by Robin Usher, who has never permitted the facts to get in the way of a good snark.
Now, I could imagine criticising the Malthouse for having too much diversity: perhaps you could argue that by producing such a variety of work by such a variety of artists, they fail to create an autonomous identity as a company. But the Age critics complain, rather, that they have a house style that stamps everything they do into identikit theatre. Apparently Marius von Mayenburg is paying homage to Barrie Kosky (which is probably news to Mayenburg and to Kosky, but there we are). Ionesco's Exit the King was "too vaudeville". Too many pop songs. Etc.
Instead of being "too fringe" and "elitist", their crime a couple of years ago, these days they're producing too much "entertainment". ("Is this what we want from a subsidised theatre company?" asks Martin Ball). But people seem to have forgotten last year's experiments like Anna Tregloan's theatrical installation Black, or Uncle Semolina & Friends' OT, or Brian Lipson's A Large Attendance in the Antechamber or the achieved theatrical mastery of The Tell-Tale Heart - all, surely, examples of precisely what a subsidised theatre ought to be doing.
It goes on: Geoffrey Milne has dragged out that old canard, that they have "shot the writer". Now Geoffrey, I did some counting a while back (scroll down) and added up how many new Australian plays - actual plays - were produced in various years under the Kantor/Armstrong diumvuriate compared to the Playbox, and the figures show - unambiguously - that it's not true that the Malthouse has "abandoned" writers. Even this year they're producing five new plays - six, if you count Andrew Upton's libretto of Through the Looking Glass - which compares fine to the six new plays produced in Playbox's final year of operation.
And even a success story can be turned into failure - although ticket sales have increased by 20 per cent in the past year and they're running at 70 per cent capacity, more than twice the average capacity of Playbox days, Usher snitches that their audiences are "tiny" compared to the MTC. Although he strangely fails to mention that the MTC has theatres with twice (or even eight times) as many seats.
This kind of stuff makes me throw up my hands in bafflement and despair. Of course the Malthouse is not beyond criticism - all our companies ought to be scrutinised and held to account. But let's base criticisms on the work to hand, not on a bunch of lazy and unexamined assumptions.
There's rather more balanced coverage by Corrie Perkin in my home paper The Australian, here.


text:
The Harry Ransom Center, a humanities research library and museum at The University of Texas at Austin, is now receiving applications for its 20132014 research fellowships in the humanities.
The application deadline is Feb. 1, 2013. Information about the fellowships and the application process is available online.
More than 50 fellowships in the humanities are awarded annually by the Ransom Center to support research projects in all areas of the humanities, including literature, photography, film, art, the performing arts, music and cultural history. Applicants must demonstrate the need for substantial on-site use of the Ransom Center's collections.
All applicants, with the exception of those applying for dissertation fellowships, must hold a Ph.D. or be independent scholars with a substantial record of publication.
The fellowships range from one to three months, with stipends of $3,000 per month. Also available are $1,200 to $1,700 travel stipends and dissertation fellowships with a $1,500 stipend.
Information about the Ransom Center collections can be found online and in the "Guide to the Collections."
The stipends are funded by Ransom Center endowments and annual sponsors, including the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Research Fellowship Endowment, the Dorot Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Jewish Studies, the Robert De Niro Endowed Fund, the Carl H. Pforzheimer Endowment, the Woodward and Bernstein Endowment, the Frederic D. Weinstein Memorial Fellowship in Twentieth-Century American Literature, the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, the South Central Modern Language Association, the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies at The University of Texas at Austin and The University of Texas at Austin Office of Graduate Studies.
Applicants will be notified of decisions on April 1, 2013. Fellowship recipients and their research projects will be announced on the Ransom Center's website.