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KOLYCHIVKA, Ukraine — Hanna Yurchenko carries a basketful of apples, freshly picked from the trees next door. It's a drizzly afternoon on one of the first cool days of fall.
The 66-year-old walks around the perimeter of what was once her home — reduced to the foundation by multiple rocket hits on March 7 — and hands out apples to workers shoveling the debris into metal buckets.
"I'm retired, and I can't do this cleanup myself," she says, her eyes filling with tears. "I'm just so grateful for these kids."
The "kids" she refers to are a dozen 20- and 30-somethings clearing rubble. It's a grim setting, but the mood is light: Techno music blasts from a Bluetooth speaker and people dance and laugh as they work.
They volunteer for Repair Together, a large network of friends who raise money to bring busloads of young people from around Ukraine to destroyed villages, to help people clean up their homes.
Organizers say another aim is to restore a sense of community after seven months of war.
Today, they're in Kolychivka, a village near the northern city of Chernihiv, which Russia bombarded early in the war.
Roman Tarasiuk, 27, dances atop a trailer parked out front as he empties buckets of debris to be hauled away. He worked for a major educational company in Kyiv but lost his job when the war started.
"Volunteering in Ukraine, it's become a way of our everyday life. We all just want to feel useful," he says.
Viktoria Sitovska, 20, sways to the music and shovels nearby. She was born in Ukraine and goes to school in Germany. Since the war began, she's traveled back to Ukraine on school breaks to help.
She says the festive atmosphere is necessary.
"Right now, we all feel anger and a lot of destructive emotions. Listening to music keeps us balanced, so we can keep working," she says.
The cleanup events were born out of that idea. A few friends got together to help out in a different village earlier this spring. But there were so many places that needed help that they invited other friends, who invited more friends. Now, organizers say thousands of volunteers have helped out at the events.
"The scale of destruction is just so huge," says Marina Hrebinna, 34, one of the organizers. It can be easy to become overwhelmed by it all, she says. The group tries to focus on what's possible, on the difference they can make to individual people in individual villages.
Like the six houses they are cleaning up today.
"We're not builders, yeah? We're just normal people," she says with a shrug. "But we have our bodies, we have our arms, we have our health."
And they try to make it memorable, usually camping nearby. They work through weekends and hold dance parties at night to blow off steam after days of hard, emotional work.
"Some people say, come on, you can't have fun, it's a war! But I say, we're doing something good. Why can't we also have fun?" Hrebinna asks.
Down the street, a boombox perched on the foundation of a destroyed home blasts Ukrainian pop music. Two young people throw bricks to one another, stacking them as they go.
Tetiana Vereshchahina shovels alongside the volunteers. This was her family's house.
"This was all a surprise," she says with a laugh, referring to the volunteer effort. "I didn't know about any of it!"
Vereshchahina says she asked local authorities if she could borrow a trailer to haul away debris. Instead, she found out that a whole team was coming to help.
Her nine-year-old daughter Anastasiia jumps around and dances nearby. She's been making tea for the volunteers, to help them keep warm.
Volunteer Liza Kochubei is helping Vereshchahina shovel, joking as they work. Kochubei says just because she's out here laughing today doesn't mean she doesn't pay attention to the news.
"There are seven days a week — five of those days we read the news, and get really sad. And two days a week, we gather together and get distracted by work," she says.
A short walk away, past cows grazing by the road, 60-year-old Kateryna Yurchenko (no relation to Hanna Yurchenko) keeps watch over her destroyed property, where more young volunteers are packing up at the end of the day.
She was born in this house and lived here all her life. Cleaning it up has been too emotionally difficult to do alone. She says this group of workers finished in one day what would have taken her months — even if their music isn't for her.
"They are young and they like music, so I don't mind," she says. "But honestly ... I don't have any music in my soul right now."
She pauses, thinking, and then continues: "You know what, though? The music is much better than the bombs."
As she talks, a sunset fills the horizon — bright pink, orange, purple. It bounces off the gold-domed church next door and is reflected in the nearby stream.
A few volunteers pause their packing to take selfies, then continue stacking equipment.
She thanks them. They wave and head down the dirt road, the Bluetooth speaker still blasting. They turn a corner, and the music fades. The village is quiet again.
Yurchenko walks over and stands in what was once her kitchen. Now, she says, she just needs help to rebuild.
Hanna Palamarenko contributed to this report from Kolychivka.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


text: Our auto repair shop is conveniently located in Paso Robles, CA. Our quality ASE (Automotive Service Excellence) certified mechanics at Paso Robles Auto Repair employ today's latest automotive technology and are equipped to handle all major and minor auto repair services on foreign and domestic vehicles. Below are some of the many auto repair services that we offer:

subset: commoncrawl


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by chesapeakeclimate
Environmentalists got some bad news when the State Department released a report on Friday -- a full month earlier than had been anticipated -- saying that there are no convincing environmental reasons that the Keystone XL pipeline should not be built.
This just two weeks after thousands of demonstrators gathered at the National Mall for what has been called the largest climate rally ever. Environmental groups have joined in a rare united front to block the pipeline. If built, activists predict that the pipeline will hugely increase greenhouse gas emissions and reverse the progress that has been made in recent years toward switching to renewable sources of energy.
The usually measured Sierra Club president, Michael Brune, called last week's State Department report "nothing short of malpractice", and suggested that the president toss it in the garbage. In an email interview, 350.org spokesperson Daniel Kessler characterized the pipeline as "a boondoggle perpetuated by monied interests" whose impact on the climate would be "horrific".
But there has been a lot of pressure on the administration from the fossil fuel industry to ratify the pipeline. According to Marty Durbin, executive vice-president of the American Petroleum Institute:
"The latest impact statement from the State Department puts this important, job-creating project one step closer to reality."
A little over a month ago, Nebraska's Republican governor, Dave Heineman, removed a major hurdle to the construction of Keystone when he approved a new path for the pipeline -- one that avoids the environmentally sensitive Sand Hills region. President Obama had rejected an earlier route because of the state's objections, and the dangers of a spill to underground water in the critical Ogallala aquifer.
Obama's decision on the pipeline will be seen as a litmus test of the direction which he will take on the environment in his second term. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (Democrat, Rhode Island) said that last month's historic climate rally was intended to "get the fellow in the White House to follow up on the wonderful things he's said in speeches recently and put a really strong regulatory regime in."
But if Friday's report is any indication of the administration thinking, the president may be preparing to give the controversial pipeline the green light. While the 2,000-word document makes no policy recommendations, it does give Obama a degree of political cover should he decide -- as seems increasingly likely -- to approve the project: the pipeline that would bring 800,000 barrels a day of crude oil from the tar sands of northern Alberta to refineries on the US Gulf coast.
The State Department document claims that "the proposed project is unlikely to have a substantial impact on the rate of development in the oil sands." Many outside observers disagree, saying that if Keystone were nixed by the administration, it would significantly slow the exploitation of the Canadian tar sand reserves. Alternate pipeline routes, which would take the oil to ports in Canada, have faced fierce opposition in British Columbia, and would undoubtedly be challenged in court.
Some environmentalists were encouraged by the president's nomination Monday of Gina McCarthy for the post of EPA administrator, to replace the outgoing Lisa Jackson. McCarthy served as a top official in charge of air quality at the EPA and has the reputation of being a fighter for tougher environmental standards.
She is expected to face resistance from congressional Republicans and the coal industry, which have consistently opposed regulations. Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen's energy program, told me:
"The Gina McCarthy pick is outstanding. The question is: what support the president will give her."
Some observers believe that Lisa Jackson decided to leave her post as head of the EPA because the administration failed to back her efforts to draft stronger ozone limits and emissions standards for power plants. As I reported in the Guardian in January, there was also speculation that Jackson, an opponent of the Keystone XL pipeline, resigned because the president had already decided to approve the project.
The president is expected to announce his final decision on Keystone XL pipeline in the Spring. If it is true that his mind is already made up -- to approve it -- there may be little that Gina McCarthy, or Secretary of State John Kerry (who is known as a "climate hawk"), can do to change the administration's course.


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September is Healthy Aging Month: Easy Tips to Aging Gracefully
Eating a nutritious diet is an essential component in healthy aging. Eating plenty of fruits, vegetables, whole grain and fiber can help provide your body the fuel it needs.
If you have problems with unsteadiness in walking due to aging, ask your doctor about applying for a handicap placard. This will allow you to park closer to store entrances, restaurants and many other types of buildings.
There is no magic pill to reverse aging. Making healthy changes to your lifestyle and diet can give you a zestful approach to living. Remember that issues due to aging can take a lifetime to develop, and will likely not be reversed overnight when you start giving your body what it needs.
Know the signs of depression. As you get older, you may experience changes that leave you feeling down. If your feelings of sadness don't go away or worsen, it may be depression. Talk to your physician if you have persistent feelings of anxiety, hopelessness, loneliness, or sadness to ensure a proper diagnosis and treatment.
To make sure that you do not let aging get the best of you, it is important that you stay in good shape. Your body is going to start experiencing more physical problems if you never exercise. This does not mean you have to do intense aerobics, but try to start with a 20-minute walk each day.
Include more fiber in your diet by eating more whole grains and vegetables as you become older. Your digestive system becomes more sensitive as you age, so it is important to make sure that the foods you eat are easily digested. Keeping your digestive system in good working order may prevent many health problems, but be sure to consult your physician before making any dietary changes to ensure they are right for you.
Do not let others make you feel as if you are less of a person now than you were in your youth. You may require more care from others than you used to, but you are just as important as ever!


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Twilight Saga Breaking Dawn Part 2 – Our REAL Review
WARNING: If you have NOT seen the film, do not pass go, do NOT collect 200 dollars or a fake passport from J. Jenks. Proceed directly to a time depravation chamber or join an Amish communion till you are able to get to a movie theater near you.
Dear LTT-ers,
I feel like Donna Summer's Last Dance should be playing in the background of this post because well, this is it y'all. This is the last review we'll write at 3AM after seeing a Twilight movie for the very first time. Sad trombone, yall. SAD.TROMBONE.
Now's not the time for tears, save that for the credits. Now's the time for our thoughts WITH SPOILERS on Breaking Dawn Pt. 2.
Top Moments in Breaking Dawn Part 2
1. Charlie and Sue ARE together after all our years of speculation. No need for Match.com
2. Jacob's totally unnecessary yet totally welcome strip scene in front of Charlie. We think they just used his audition for Magic Mike (spoiler alert: he didn't get cast)
3. Aro really needs to update his computer's OS. All of this (the fighting, changing Bella, using up all their frequent flyer miles to fly all the witnesses to Forks) because he has a crush on Alice? Has he never heard of Skype? And Jasper needs to be worried right…? Aro has that hair.. and that accent… and that marching band uniform… and a bunch of crazy henchmen.
4. The Battle: aka TWI-MAGEDDON
Our hands still hurt from squeezing each other's hands so hard they might fall off. The battle scene is the definition of on-the-edge-of-your-seat, scream-out-loud, hyperventilate and then pass out moment. I mean Carlisle's head hitting the ground?! I don't know about you but we screamed out WTF if happening?! It's so well done that you don't question it for one second and then when we snap back to Aro seeing it through Alice's vision it's simultaneously relief and outrage! But mostly relief! Thank God! We're excited to see what everyone thinks about the Twi-mageddon twist. If Stephanie can change her mind & come up with that ending, we're pretty sure the rest of the fandom could accept it.
5. Jackson's non-laughable hair. FOR ONCE! Clearly, when they drew straws for who would get the worst wig in this movie Jackson won while Carlisle & baby Renessmee lost. Their hairlines moved up and down between scenes more than our heart rates during the Twi-magedon twist.
6. THANK YOU Bill Condon/Stephenie Meyer/Melissa Rosenberg for creating a non-gratituous, classy-enough, not-over-the-top, fanfic worthy sex scene. It was enough to set the scene while not making us want to crawl under our seats and die from embarrassment while people hoot and holler and yell about things being "unbroken." No thank you though to the extreme close up of Rob's hairy thigh.
7. We finally get to see Bella became fully realized. She is powerful– and doesn't need a man (She drove to Seattle on her own. Big step guys) yet is the perfect counterpart to Edward (that flying kick/roll thing in the Twi-mageddon scene, anyone?!). This is our favorite Kristen performance since New Moon. She makes us laugh after she publicly humiliates Emmett by beating him in an arm wrestling match and then sells us an entirely believable performance as mother and daughter with Renesmee. Truly, theirs was one of the most believable relationships in the films. So yes, she's a fierce, bad-ass who's better than all of us. There, are you happy Krisbians? Now please leave us alone. Forever.
8. Chris Hansen will be disappointed. Somehow the Jacob-Renesmee stuff doesn't seem creepy, at all. Taylor walked the line carefully and it never went into the WEIRD territory it could have. Besides how can you be creeped out by Taylor, who is like the definition of the boy next door. Also, MacKensie Foy was downright adorable with the CGI wolf. Snaps to everyone here.
9. Lee Pace and Michael Sheen for Presidents of everything. Those two killed EVERY scene. They can deliver ONE line with just the perfect intonation or stress on one word and have us rolling or clapping or panting. Are we SURE Lee Pace is gay?
10. Allistair- what was his deal? Dude, if you're such a bore stay home in England or wherever you came from and stop being such a negative Nancy. Shit is getting real here and you're busy lurking around on tree branches or hanging out in the attic by yourself like a weirdo. Either go home or put on your big boy vampire pants and "let's do this!"
11 .Carlisle was the first to bite the dust (and we were NOT surprised). As much as we love Daddy-C, it just seemed right that he'd go first. NOT THAT IT DIDN'T KILL US and not that we totally didn't screamed and shout WTF IS GOING ON!?!?!?! But ya know, it had to happen. Also, who has the stunt double/prosthetic Carlisle/Peter Facinelli head now that filming is over? Ebay auction anyone?
12. Alice's hair looked great. She was wearing less fur, less gloves and less dumb shit. Always a plus.
13. But the music- We talked about it on Monday but it's still true. TURN IT DOWN! Sometimes you just need an aural break not 2.5 hours of score and music and battle scenes. Give our ears a break PLEASE. Someone please go to Carter Burwell's house and break every electric guitar and electric bass he owns. PLEASE! Our favorite score is still New Moon, no one else brought it like Desplat did. Also, we still want to know what happened with the Howard Shore, Eclipse score. What a tragedy. Sorry Carter Burwell, we just weren't feeling this.
Now that we're at the end, we're left wondering: WHAT IS NEXT? While discussing this post we came up with all our ideas for what could possibly follow Breaking Dawn Pt 2. We have wild imaginations y'all and we really just can't say goodbye so here's what we're thinking…
– Don't make us read fanfic to find out if Aro ever signs up for a Google + account so he can have a virtual Hangout with Alice and stop dragging every vampire in the world into an unnecessary Vampire Battle to the Death. He should "Indecent Proposal" Alice for a few gabillions, offer Jasper a weekend of all the humans he can eat and see if he can make it happen, FINALLY. Aro: totally DTF.
– Will Nahuel have a "Best Abs Throw Down" with Jacob for Renessmee's heart? Who will win? Will Jacob rip off Nahuel's loin clothe in the battle? PLEASE!
– Does Leah ever stop being a raging biotch? Does one of the other wolves take one for the team just so she'll shut up for a while?
– Will Rosalie ever find her go-to shade of blonde on the Loreal color scale? Will she and Alice ever be able to make her brows match?
– Does Mike Newton inherit Newton's Outfitters from his folks & can it compete against Sports Chalet during these down economic times?
– How quickly will Sue move in with Charlie? Will Seth move into Bella's old purple room? And more importantly: WILL SUE PAINT THE CABINETS THEIR RIGHTFUL COLOR: YELLOW!?
– Can we watch Lee Pace & the girl who plays Kate get it on? No? Is Kate able to turn off that electricity shocking thing she does, or is Garrett into that sorta thing?
– Will Jasper challenge Aro to a dual over Alice? Will they walk 20 paces and then turn and shot each other with old-timey pistols?
– Do Carlisle & Esme ever choose their grandparent names? Is it Papa or Nana or do they prefer CC & Grandma E?
– Does Bella pull out that blue blouse & khaki skit when she wants to "slip into something more comfortable" for Edward? And Does Edward still rock the white sleeveless top to turn Bella on? Will they pull out the matching oatmeal sweaters for this year's Cullen Family Christmas card with Renesmee?
– Is Bella and Edward's safe word "The Meadow?"
Ok, so here we are, the end of our last review of a Twilight movie. STEPHENIE, YOU BETTER WRITE MORE. WE HAVE QUESTIONS THAT NEED ANSWERS. So don't make us read FanFic, we want the REAL answers to what happens after Breaking Dawn and we want them FROM YOU. Not our imaginations. If you're game, Stephenie, we have this secluded spot (my dirty, full of clothes, walk-in closet) with an electrical outlet, a computer, a desk chair and a janky, full size Jumping Rob peeking out from behind my jackets, all set up and ready if you ever want to step in, disappear for a little while, and head back to the meadow.
Also, we won't tell you all that we may have been discussing this post and what we'd say and perhaps got a little misty. We were also in public, eating a salad. Crying. Freakin' Twilight.
Is that really it??
Moon & UC
PS So, that baby?! Weeeeellll… that's a whole other letter.
SOoooooooo what did you think?! Did you jump out of your seat during the Twi-mageddon?!
Tags: , Breaking Dawn Pt 2, Kristen Stewart, review, Robert Pattinson, spoiler, Stephenie Meyer, Taylor Lautner, Twilight


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Marcus Hanel is the bullpen catcher for the Milwaukee Brewers and President of Koos for Kids, a charitable organization geared to help terminally ill and disadvantaged children in Southeastern Wisconsin. Marcus played professional baseball for 11 seasons in the minor leagues, during which he won awards for his play on the field and for his commitment to the communities in which he lived and worked. With the Milwaukee Brewers, Marcus works with catchers on their defense, throws batting practice, hits ground balls to infielders, and warms up pitchers before and during games. He often visits schools in Racine, Kenosha & Milwaukee to talk to students about the importance of staying in school and achieving their goals. Marcus currently lives in Racine, WI with his wife Jill and their four children.
Founded in 2005 by Marcus Hanel, Koos for Kids is a charitable organization that finances projects and services needed by terminally ill and disadvantaged children in Southeastern Wisconsin. Koos for Kids utilizes various avenues to help the local community, from purchasing thousands of winter coats to running a baseball league for special needs children to holding events to raise funds and awareness for its causes.


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We Sell CD's
Welcome to Glad Music Company and our online store. Thanks for stopping in and please enjoy browsing our catalog. We sell music CDs (and ONLY CDs) from a variety of musical genres, mostly originating from Texas, but enjoyed the world over. Since our creation in 1931, in Houston, Texas by our founder H.W. "Pappy" Daily, Glad Music Company has been a big part of Texas music history for 84 years.


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created 2001 · complexity intermediate · author Chip Campbell · version 6.0
If you'd like to apply a substitute, or even any Ex command, to a text region you've selected using visual-blocks (i.e. ctrl-v and move, or ctrl-q in Windows), then you'll be wanting to use Charles Campbell's vis.vim plugin.
Note that applying Ex commands to a simple visual selection is a much simpler process, as is searching in a visual selection (see Tip 438). The vis.vim plugin is useful for applying Ex commands to the area of a blockwise visual selection.
It's a plugin and comes as a vimball; so to install it with Vim 7.1 just
vim vis.vba.gz :so % :q
Once installed:
ctrl-v (or ctrl-Q if using default mswin mappings) (move) :B s/pattern/newtext/
You can also perform any Ex command (:B !sort, for example). On the command line, when you enter :B, what you'll actually see is:
:'<,'>B s/pattern/newtext/
Just continue with the substitute or whatever...
:'<,'>B s/abc/ABC/g
and the substitute will be applied to just that block of text!
Example: ctrl-v move-to-select the central four "abc"s Initial Select inner four "abc"s :B s/abc/ABC/g abcabcabcabc abc--------abc abcabcabcabc abcabcabcabc abc|abcabc|abc abcABCABCabc abcabcabcabc abc|abcabc|abc abcABCABCabc abcabcabcabc abc--------abc abcabcabcabc
Vis.vim will also work with V (visual-line) and v (visual-character) selections.
Often it is used to change a variable. It's not the only way that the substitute can be done (you can use column selection regexp patterns), but it is, perhaps, more straightforward. As another example:
Initial After Substitute: printf("...", printf("...", abc[0],def[0],def[0], abc[0],def[0],DEF[0], abc[1],def[1],def[1], abc[1],def[1],DEF[1], abc[2],def[2],def[2], abc[2],def[2],DEF[2], abc[3],def[3],def[3], abc[3],def[3],DEF[3],
To do this, use ctrl-v and motion to select the defs, then apply the substitute:
:B s/def/DEF/
The def => DEF example is ill-chosen. If the variables are perfectly aligned, you can simply select all the 'def' variables and use S to replace the selected parts with 'DEF'.
There is no need of plugins:
Perhaps we need another example. The plugin is needed more so that changes don't take effect outside the visual area.
For example, just using /\%V in your pattern will change this (visual selection denoted by |):
abc|defghi|jkl bcd|efghij|kla kla|bcdefg|hij
into this:
abc|defGHI|jkl bcd|efGHIj|kla kla|bcdefG|HIj
when you do:
If you use the plugin, it becomes:
abc|defGHI|jkl bcd|efGHIj|kla kla|bcdefg|hij
Note the difference in the last line.
Or at least, that's how I understand it. I don't use the plugin myself.
--Fritzophrenic 15:52, January 20, 2010 (UTC)
- Correct. Note that in order to fix that particular example, you could add another "visual selection" match at the last matched character:
But this is not only difficult to remember, but soon becomes virtually impossible to specify with more complex patterns. -- Inkarkat 19:31, January 20, 2010 (UTC)
- If you think about it a different way, you just need to wrap your pattern in %V:
- But now you have to remember that it will never match against the right column of the selection. (%V just matches the selection, but if the i is the last character in the selection, then the second %V isn't inside the selection.) --Pydave 14:42, August 9, 2011 (UTC)
The original example works correctly for me in Vim 7.3-822 when using
Is this tip/plugin no longer needed? CStubing (talk) 18:53, March 10, 2013 (UTC)
- See the comments above yours. /\%V only anchors the pattern at that specific location to be within the visual selection. You can still have matches for the pattern which start inside the visual selection but extend outside of it, and these will be matched by the substitute command without further finagling of the pattern adding more %V items. Plus the plugin allows using more commands than just
. --Fritzophrenic (talk) 15:42, March 11, 2013 (UTC)
I've been a heavy vim user for 15 years now, and to me this has always seemed like a bug in vim. I don't understand why the *default* action of vim isn't to apply substitutions to the visually selected region when the 's' Ex command is run in visual mode. Applying the substitution to the whole line makes the visual selection meaningless. I don't understand why you would *want* it that way. I wish Bram would fix it.
I audibly grumble almost every time I try this and then remember it doesn't work the way it should.
Standard visual block commands[]
In the 90's I had a bit of time and added to the set of commands documented under:
:h blockwise-operators
Personally I use for example adding line comments to Perl see documentation under v_b_I
... which is "start of line, enter visual block, down a few lines, Insert #, ESC which inserts the change on all lines.
I recommend playing with the available commands before you resort to plugins, which are excellent but not necessarily required for most tasks.
Cheers, User:Allankelly-68


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I am a bit surprised that primary storage deduplication has not taken off in a big way, unlike the times when the buzz of deduplication first came into being about 4 years ago.
When the first deduplication solutions first came out, it was particularly aimed at the backup data space. It is now more popularly known as secondary data deduplication, the technology has reduced the inefficiencies of backup and helped sparked the frenzy of adulation of companies like Data Domain, Exagrid, Sepaton and Quantum a few years ago. The software vendors were not left out either. Symantec, Commvault, and everyone else in town had data deduplication for backup and archiving.
It was no surprise that EMC battled NetApp and finally won the rights to acquire Data Domain for USD$2.4 billion in 2009. Today, in my opinion, the landscape of secondary data deduplication has pretty much settled and matured. Practically everyone has some sort of secondary data deduplication technology or solution in place.
But then the talk of primary data deduplication hardly cause a ripple when compared a few years ago, especially here in Malaysia. Yeah, the IT crowd is pretty fickle that way because most tend to follow the trend of the moment. Last year was Cloud Computing and now the big buzz word is Big Data.
We are here to look at technologies to solve problems, folks, and primary data deduplication technology solutions should be considered in any IT planning. And it is our job as storage networking professionals to continue to advise customers about what is relevant to their business and addressing their pain points.
I get a bit cheesed off that companies like EMC, or HDS continue to spend their marketing dollars on hyping the trends of the moment rather than using some of their funds to promote good technologies such as primary data deduplication that solve real life problems. The same goes for most IT magazines, publications and other communications mediums, rarely giving space to technologies that solves problems on the ground, and just harping on hypes, fuzz and buzz. It gets a bit too ordinary (and mundane) when they are trying too hard to be extraordinary because everyone is basically talking about the same freaking thing at the same time, over and over again. (Hmmm … I think I am speaking off topic now .. I better shut up!)
We are facing an avalanche of data. The other day, the CEO of Nexenta used the word "data tsunami" but whatever terms used do not matter. There is too much data. Secondary data deduplication solved one part of the problem and now it's time to talk about the other part, which is data in primary storage, hence primary data deduplication.
What is out there? Who's doing what in term of primary data deduplication?
NetApp has their A-SIS (now NetApp Dedupe) for years and they are good in my books. They talk to customers about the benefits of deduplication on their FAS filers. (Side note: I am seeing more benefits of using data compression in primary storage but I am not going to there in this entry). EMC has primary data deduplication in their Celerra years ago but they hardly talk much about it. It's on their VNX as well but again, nobody in EMC ever speak about their primary deduplication feature.
I have always loved Ocarina Networks ECO technology and Dell don't give much hoot about Ocarina since the acquisition in 2010. The technology surfaced a few months ago in Dell DX6000G Storage Compression Node for its Object Storage Platform, but then again, all Dell talks about is their Fluid Data Architecture from the Compellent division. Hey Dell, you guys are so one-dimensional! Ocarina is a wonderful gem in their jewel case, and yet all their storage guys talk about are Compellent and EqualLogic.
Moving on … I ought to knock Oracle on the head too. ZFS has great data deduplication technology that is meant for primary data and a couple of years back, Greenbytes took that and made a solution out of it. I don't follow what Greenbytes is doing nowadays but I do hope that the big wave of primary data deduplication will rise for companies such as Greenbytes to take off in a big way. No thanks to Oracle for ignoring another gem in ZFS and wasting their resources on pre-sales (in Malaysia) and partners (in Malaysia) that hardly know much about the immense power of ZFS.
But an unexpected source coming from Microsoft could help trigger greater interest in primary data deduplication. I have just read that the next version of Windows Server OS will have primary data deduplication integrated into NTFS. The feature will be available in Windows 8 and the architectural view is shown below:
The primary data deduplication in NTFS will be a feature add-on for Windows Server users. It is implemented as a filter driver on a per volume basis, with each volume a complete, self describing unit. It is cluster aware, and fully crash consistent on all operations.
The technology is Microsoft's own technology, built from scratch and will be working to position Hyper-V as an strong enterprise choice in its battle for the server virtualization space with VMware. Mind you, VMware already has a big, big lead and this is just something that Microsoft must do-or-die to keep Hyper-V playing catch-up. Otherwise, the gap between Microsoft and VMware in the server virtualization space will be even greater.
I don't have the full details of this but I read that the NTFS primary deduplication chunk sizes will be between 32KB to 128KB and it will be post-processing.
With Microsoft introducing their technology soon, I hope primary data deduplication will get some deserving accolades because I think most companies are really not doing justice to the great technologies that they have in their jewel cases. And I hope Microsoft, with all its marketing savviness and adeptness, will do some justice to a technology that solves real life's data problems.
I bid you good luck – Primary Data Deduplication! You deserved better.


text:
Honalee Can Art Poster
18 x 24 in poster featuring some of our favorite can art by the very talented Chloe Feldman Emison.
- 175 gsm fine art paper
- Matte finish
Frame not included, but fits into any standard 18 x 24 in poster frame
We work with an off-site printer to print and ship our posters. Shipping is included in the poster price. Because these posters are printed to order, please allow 1 - 3 weeks for production and shipping.


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Cross-posted from our Cyclescape blog:
Over the last five years, we've received lots of feedback about our Cyclescape website, which started in 2012, as well as much experience ourselves as users.
As a result of funding from our new project StreetFocus, we're pleased to announce that we will shortly be starting work on a full-scale redesign of the Cyclescape site. We expect the design work to be finalised in February and will then be rolling out as developer time permits shortly after that.
This will be a full-scale revamp. As well as a fresh visual look and a new mobile-friendly interface, this will tackle seven key areas of usability:
- Generally, reorganising screens to reduce confusion and make the site concepts much clearer and easier to understand;
- User onboarding process is poor – currently users have to go through far too many screens to get set up;
- Lightweight issue reporting model, so that many more issues can be reported in a more lightweight way;
- The issues map is unusable when many area-wide issues present – we want the map to be a stronger focus, and much nicer;
- Subscription by theme, e.g. 'cycle parking' rather than purely by geographical area;
- Dealing with general chat discussions that are neither geographical nor administrative, which has always never really worked;
- Planning application integration to add new features such as automatically linking to key documents.
Please do take the opportunity to fill in our survey to give us your thoughts on the site.
An unusable map – one of the many problems we plan to tackle


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(MARTIN REES:) This is a really good time to be a cosmologist, because in the last few years some of the questions we've been addressing for decades have come into focus. For instance, we can now say what the main ingredients of the universe are: it's made of 4% atoms, about 25% dark matter, and 71% mysterious dark energy latent in empty space. That's settled a question that we've wondered about, certainly the entire 35 years I've been doing cosmology.
We also know the shape of space. The universe is 'flat'—in the technical sense that the angles of even very large triangles add up to 180 degrees. This is an important result that we couldn't have stated with confidence two years ago. So a certain phase in cosmology is now over.
But as in all of science, when you make an advance, you bring a new set of questions into focus. And there are really two quite separate sets of questions that we are now focusing on. One set of questions addresses the more 'environmental' side of the subject—we're trying to understand how, from an initial Big Bang nearly 14 billion years ago, the universe has transformed itself into the immensely complex cosmos we see around us, of stars and galaxies, etc.; how around some of those stars and planets arose; and how on at least one planet, around at least one star, a biological process got going, and led to atoms assembling into creatures like ourselves, able to wonder about it all. That's an unending quest—to understand how the simplicity led to complexity. To answer it requires ever more computer modeling, and data in all wavebands from ever more sensitive telescopes.
Another set of questions that come into focus are the following:
• Why is the universe expanding the way it is?
• Why does it have the rather arbitrary mix of ingredients?
• Why is it governed by the particular set of laws which seem to prevail in it, and which physicists study?
These are issues where we can now offer a rather surprising new perspective. The traditional idea has been that the laws of nature are somehow unique; they're given, and are 'there' in a platonic sense independent of the universe which somehow originates and follows those laws.
I've been puzzled for a long time about why the laws of nature are set up in such a way that they allow complexity. That's an enigma because we can easily imagine laws of nature which weren't all that different from the ones we observe, but which would have led to a rather boring universe—laws which led to a universe containing dark matter and no atoms; laws where you perhaps had hydrogen atoms but nothing more complicated, and therefore no chemistry; laws where there was no gravity, or a universe where gravity was so strong that it crushed everything; or the lifetime was so short that there was no time for evolution.
It always seemed to me a mystery why the universe was, as it were, 'biophilic'—why it had laws that allowed this amount of complexity. To give an analogy from mathematics, think of the Mandelbrot Set; there's a fairly simple formula, a simple recipe that you can write down, which describes this amazingly complicated pattern, with layer upon layer of structure. Now you could also write down other rather similar-looking recipes, similar algorithms, which describe a rather boring pattern. What has always seemed to me a mystery is why the recipe, or code, that determined our universe had these rich consequences, just as the algorithms of the Mandelbrot set rather than describing something rather boring, in which nothing as complicated as us could exist.
For about 20 years I've suspected that the answer to this question is that perhaps our universe isn't unique. Perhaps, even, the laws are not unique. Perhaps there were many Big Bangs which expanded in different ways, governed by different laws, and we are just in the one that has the right conditions. This thought in some respect parallels the way our concept of planets and planetary systems has changed.
People used to wonder: why is the earth in this rather special orbit around this rather special star, which allows water to exist or allows life to evolve? It looks somehow fine-tuned. We now perceive nothing remarkable in this, because we know that there are millions of stars with retinues of planets around them: among that huge number there are bound to be some that have the conditions right for life. We just happen to live on one of that small subset. So there's no mystery about the fine-tuned nature of the earth's orbit; it's just that life evolved on one of millions of planets where things were right.
It now seems an attractive idea that our Big Bang is just one of many: just as our earth is a planet that happens to have the right conditions for life, among the many many planets that exist, so our universe, and our Big Bang, is the one out of many which happens to allow life to emerge, to allow complexity. This was originally just a conjecture, motivated by a wish to explain the apparent fine-tuning in our universe—and incidentally a way to undercut the so-called theological design argument, which said that there was something special about these laws.
But what's happened in the last few years, and particularly sin the last year, is that the basis for this so-called multiverse idea has strengthened, and, moreover, the scale which we envisage for the multiverse has got even vaster than we had in mind a few years ago. There's a firmer basis for the 'multiverse' concept because recent work on the best theory we have for the fundamental laws of nature, namely superstring theory, suggests that there should indeed be many possible forms for a universe, and many possible laws of nature.
At first it was thought that there might be just one unique solution to the equations, just one possible three-dimensional universe with one possible 'vacuum state' and one set of laws. But it seems now, according to the experts, that there could be a huge number. In fact Lenny Susskind claims that there could be more possible types of universe than there are atoms in our universe—a quite colossal variety. The system of universes could be even more intricate and complex than the biosphere of our planet. This really is a mind-blowing concept, especially when we bear in mind that each of those universes could themselves be infinite.
At first sight you might get worried about an infinity of things in themselves infinite, but to deal with this you have to draw on a body of mathematics called transfinite number theory, that goes back to Cantor in the 19th century. Just as many kinds of pure mathematics have already been taken over by physicists, this rather arcane subject of transfinite numbers is now becoming relevant, because we've got to think of infinities of infinity. Indeed, there's perhaps even a higher hierarchy of infinities: in addition to our universe being infinite, and there being an infinite number of possible laws of nature, we may want to incorporate the so-called many worlds theory of quantum mechanics.
Each 'classical' universe is then replaced by an infinite number of super-imposed universes, so that when there's a quantum choice to be made the path forks into extra universes. This immensely complicated construct is the consequence of ideas that are still speculative but are firming up. One of the most exciting frontiers of 21st century physics, is to utilize the new mathematics and the new cosmology to come to terms with all this.
What we've traditionally called 'our universe' is just a tiny part of something which is infinite, so allows for many replicas of us elsewhere (in our same space-time domain, but far beyond the horizon of our observations), but even that infinite universe is just one element of an ensemble that encompasses an infinity of quite different universes. So that's the pattern adumbrated by cosmology and some versions of string theory. What we have normally called the laws of nature are not universal laws—they're just parochial by-laws in our cosmic patch, no more than that, and a variety of quite different regimes prevail elsewhere in the ensemble.
One thing which struck me recently, and I found it a really disconcerting concept, was that once we accept all that, we get into a very deep set of questions about the nature of physical reality. That's because even in our universe, and certainly in some of the others, there'd be the potential for life to develop far beyond the level it's reached on earth today. We are probably not the culmination of evolution on earth; the time lying ahead for the earth is as long as the time it's elapsed to get from single-celled organisms to us, and so life could spread in a post-human phase far beyond the earth. In other universes there may be an even richer potentiality for life and complexity.
Now life and complexity means information-processing power; the most complex conceivable entities may not be organic life, but some sort of hyper-computers. But once you accept that our universe, or even other universes, may allow the emergence within them of immense complexity, far beyond our human brains, far beyond the kind of computers we can conceive, perhaps almost at the level of the limits that Seth Lloyd discusses for computers—then you get a rather extraordinary conclusion. These super or hyper-computers would have the capacity to simulate not just a simple part of reality, but a large fraction of an entire universe.
And then of course the question arises: if these simulations exist in far larger numbers than the universe themselves, could we be in one of them? Could we ourselves not be part of what we think of as bedrock physical reality? Could we be ideas in the mind of some supreme being, as it were, who's running a simulation? Indeed, if the simulations outnumber the universes, as they would if one universe contained many computers making many simulations, then the likelihood is that we are 'artificial life' in this sense. This concept opens up the possibility of a new kind of 'virtual time travel', because the advanced beings creating the simulation can, in effect, rerun the past. It's not a time-loop in a traditional sense: it's a reconstruction of the past, allowing advanced beings to explore their history.
All these multiverse ideas lead to a remarkable synthesis between cosmology and physics...But they also lead to the extraordinary consequence that we may not be the deepest reality, we may be a simulation. The possibility that we are creations of some supreme, or super-being, blurs the boundary between physics and idealist philosophy, between the natural and the supernatural, and between the relation of mind and multiverse and the possibility that we're in the matrix rather than the physics itself.
Once you accept the idea of the multiverse, and that some universes will have immense potentiality for complexity, it's a logical consequence that in some of those universes there will be the potential to simulate parts of themselves, and you may get sort of infinite regress, so we don't know where reality stops and where the minds and ideas take over, and we don't know what our place is in this grand ensemble of universes and simulated universes.
Considerations of the multiverse change the way we think about ourselves and our place in the world. Traditional religion is far too blinkered to encompass the complexities of mind and cosmos. All we can expect is to have a very incomplete and metaphorical view of this deep reality. The gulf between mind and matter is something we don't understand at all, and some minds can evolve to the stage that they can create other minds, there's real blurring between the natural and the supernatural.
My attitude towards religion is really two-fold. First, as far as the practice of religion is concerned, I appreciate it and participate in it, but I'm skeptical about the value of interactive dialogue There's no conflict between religion and science (except, of course, with naive creationism and suchlike) , but I doubt—unlike some members of the Templeton Foundation—that theological insights can help me with my physics. I'm fascinated to talk to philosophers (and with some theologians) about their work, but I don't believe they can help me very much. So I favor peaceful coexistence rather than constructive dialogue between science and theology
I am concerned about the threats and opportunities posed by 21st century science, and how to react to them. There are some intractable risks stemming from science, which we have to accept as the downside for our intellectual exhilaration and—even more—for its immense and ever more pervasive societal benefits. I believe there is an expectation of a 50% chance of a really severe setback to civilization by the end of the century. Some people have said that's unduly pessimistic. But I don't think it is: even if you just consider the nuclear threat, I think that's a reasonable expectation.
If we look back over the cold war era, we know we escaped devastation, but at the time of the Cuba crisis, as recent reminiscences of its 40th anniversary have revealed, we were really on a hair trigger, and it was only through the responsibility and good sense of Kennedy and Khrushchev and their advisers that we avoided catastrophe. Ditto on one or two other occasions during the cold war. And that could indeed have been a catastrophe. The nuclear arsenals of the superpowers have the explosive equivalent of one of the US Air Force's s daisy cutter bombs for each inhabitant of the United States and Europe. Utter devastation would have resulted had this all gone off.
The threat obviously abated at the end of the cold war, but looking a century ahead, we can't expect the present political assignments to stay constant. In the last century the Soviet Union appeared and disappeared, there were two world wars. Within the next hundred years, since nuclear weapons can't be disinvented, there's quite a high expectation, there will be another standoff as fearsome as the cold war era, perhaps involving more participants than just two and therefore be more unstable. Even if you consider the nuclear threat alone, then there is a severe chance, perhaps a 50% chance, of some catastrophic setback to civilization.
There are other novel threats as well. Not only will technical change be faster in this century than before, but it will take place in more dimensions. Up to now, one of the fixed features over all recorded history has been human nature and human physique; human beings themselves haven't changed, even though our environment and technology has. In this century, human beings are going to change because of genetic engineering, because of targeted drugs, perhaps even because of implants into their brain to increase our mental capacity. Much that now seems science fiction might, a century ahead, become science fact. Fundamental changes like that—plus the runaway development of biotech, possibly nanotechnology, possibly computers reaching superhuman intelligence—open up exciting prospects, but also all kinds of potential scenarios for societal disruption—even for devastation.
We have to be very circumspect if we are to absorb these rapid developments without a severe disruption. In the near term the most severe threat stems from developments in biotechnology, and genetic engineering. An authoritative report just last year by the National Academy of Sciences, emphasized that large numbers of people would acquire the capability to engineer modified viruses to which existing vaccines might be ineffective, and thereby trigger some sort of epidemic.
The scary realization is that to do this would not require a large terrorist group, certainly not rogue states, but just by an individual with the same mind set as an arsonist. Such people might start hacking real viruses. If an epidemic ensued, it probably could be contained in this country, but as the SARS episode shows, infections rapidly spread around the world, and if any of these epidemics reach the mega-cities of the third world then they could really take off. I took a public bet—one of the 'long bets' set up by Wired Magazine—that within 20 years one instance of bio error or bio terror would lead to a million fatalities. That's not unduly pessimistic: it would require just one weirdo to release a virus that spread into the third world. That's a scarifying possibility, rendered possible by technology that we know is going to become available. And it's difficult to control as the kind of equipment that's needed is small-scale. Also, it's the kind of technology which is utilized for all kinds of benign purposes anyway and is bound to exist unless we entirely stop drug developments and other bio-technology.
I can foresee what might happen if there were one such event like this that happened in the United States. Supposing that there were a mysterious epidemic which maybe didn't kill a huge number of people, but which could be traced to some engineered virus, maliciously or erroneously released. Everyone would realize that if this happened once it could happen again, any time, anywhere. And they'd realize also that the only way to stop a repeat would be to have intrusive surveillance to keep tabs on everyone who had that expertise. There would be real pressure to infringe on basic freedoms, and a strong anti-science backlash, if one event like this happened. That's the near-term danger which I worry about most.
Being a cosmologist doesn't make me worry less than anyone else about what happens tomorrow or next week or next year. But it does give a different perspective, because cosmologists are aware of the long-term future. Most educated people are now aware that we as humans are the outcome of billions of years of evolution. Almost four billion years of Darwinian selection, separate us from the very first microorganisms. But most people nonetheless, at least subconsciously, feel that we as humans are a kind of culmination—that evolution led to us and that's that.
But, anyone who's studied astronomy knows that the sun is less than halfway through its life, and the universe may have an infinite future. So the time lying ahead, for evolution, is at least as long as the time elapsed up to now: the post-human phase of evolution could be at least as long as what has led from single-celled organisms to humans, and of course you only have to read science fiction to realize the scenarios whereby life can evolve here on the earth in more elaborate ways, and, more likely, can spread beyond the earth; life from the earth could even 'green' the entire galaxy, if given enough time. And that time does exist.
As a cosmologist I'm more aware of the immensely long-term potential that we'd be foreclosing if we screwed things up here on earth this century. This perspective gives us an extra motive for cherishing this pale blue dot in the cosmos, because of the importance it might for the long-range future of life even beyond the earth.
I've been in cosmology for 35 years now, and what has been a tremendous boost to my morale is that the pace of discovery has not slowed up at all. The 1960s seemed an exciting time. That's when the first evidence for the Big Bang appeared. It's also when the first high red shift quasars were discovered, along with the first evidence of black holes, neutron stars, etc. It was good to be a young cosmologist, because when everything's new, the experience of the old guys is at a discount and all had to start afresh.
But what's happened in the last three or four years is just as exciting as in any previous period that I can remember. In cosmology we have not only lots of fascinating ideas about how the universe began, ideas of how complexity developed, the possibility of extra dimensions playing a role, etc. But we also have new evidence which pins down some of the key numbers of the universe. We know we live in a flat universe where the atoms that make up us, the stars, the planets and the galaxies constitute only 4% of the mass and energy. About 25% is in mysterious dark matter, which helps with the gravitational binding of galaxies. And the remainder, 71%, is even more mysterious; some kind of energy latent in empty space itself. To explain dark matter is a challenge to physicists: it's probably some kind of particle left over from the Big Bang.
To explain dark energy is even more daunting: superstring theorists believe it is the biggest challenge to their theory, because it tells us that the empty space we live in, our "vacuum," is something which isn't just nondescript; it has a well-defined energy, a well-defined tension in it, which affects the overall cosmic dynamics, causing an acceleration of the Hubble expansion.
Another important advance has been in understanding the emergence of structure within the universe. To put this in context, let's imagine how the universe evolved. It started off as a very hot fireball. As it expanded it cooled down; the radiation diluted and its wavelengths stretched. After about half a million years the universe literally entered a dark age, because instead of glowing bright and blue the primordial heat, the heat of the fireball, then shifted into the infrared, and the universe became literally dark. This dark age continued until the first stars formed and lit it up again.
One of my long-standing interests has been trying to understand when and how this happened. We've had some new clues recently from observations using giant ground-based telescopes, from the WMAP satellite, and also from being able to do computer simulations of how the first structures formed. We are trying to combine theories and observations to understand the formative stages of galaxies—how the first stars formed, in units much smaller than galaxies, then they assembled together to make galaxies, and how simple atoms of hydrogen and helium gradually get transmuted in early generations of stars into carbon, oxygen, silicon, and iron, the building blocks of planets and then of life.
We need to understand how long it took to get the first planets, how long it took to get the first potentiality of life, how long to get the first big galaxies from these small precursor substructures. More clues are coming from observations using the most powerful telescopes we now have—the biggest of all is the European very large telescope in Chile, which is really four telescopes, each with 8 meter mirrors, that can be linked together.
These huge mirrors allow us to detect very faint and distant objects. The further out you look in space the further back you look in time. The goal is to look back far enough to actually see galaxies in their formative stages—even perhaps to see pregalactic eras when the first stars were formed.
That's a possibility that arises from another of my main interests, which is the most powerful explosion in the universe—gamma ray bursts. These represent the violent end of a particular kind of supernova explosion. They're so powerful that they could be readily detected, even from the era when the very first stars were born. If some of these very first stars end their lives as gamma ray bursts, then we can use them to probe the earliest phases of galaxy formation—how the dark age ended and how the structures gradually built up. Big telescopes will offer snapshots of what the universe was like at various stages in the past.
There have been these amazing developments of the structure of the universe. But if I was asked to think of what else has been exciting in astronomy recently, the undoubted other highlight has been the discovery of large numbers of planets around other stars. Only in 1995 did astronomers find the first evidence for a planet orbiting another star like the sun. Now there are more than a hundred, and there's every expectation that a large proportion of the stars you can see in the sky have retinues of planets orbiting them.
Ten or 20 years from now, looking up at the sky will be a more interesting experience, because the stars won't just be twinkling points of light, but for each of them we'll be able to say something about the planets it has orbiting around it, their masses, their orbits, and perhaps the topographical features of the largest planets. That will make the night sky a lot more interesting and make everyone appreciate the universe as a much more rich and diverse place. Most of those planets will be inhospitable to life, but astronomers will have found planets which are rather like the earth. And that will give a focus for addressing the questions of life in the universe. We will be able to analyze the light from these earth-like planets, and test whether there is for instance ozone in its atmosphere which would be a signal for biological processes. And that would give us a clue as to whether there might be life. This enterprise will be complemented by progress by biologists in understanding the origin of life on earth—by experiments and perhaps also computer simulations. I'm very hopeful that 20 years from now we'll understand the origin of life; we'll have a feel for whether life is widespread in the universe; we might be able to point to particular other planets, orbiting other stars that might have life on them.
There is then a rather separate question: whether simple life is likely to evolve into anything we might recognize as intelligent or complex. That may be harder to decide. Some people say that there are many hurdles to be surmounted in going from simple life to complex life, and life on earth is lucky to surmount those hurdles but others suspect that life would somehow find its way to great complexity. Among my friends and colleagues there's a disparity of belief.
As an astronomer, I'm often asked: isn't it a bit presumptuous to try to say anything with any level of confidence about these vast galaxies or the Big Bang, etc? My response is that what makes things hard to understand isn't how big they are, but how complicated they are. There's a real sense in which galaxies and the Big Bang and stars are quite simple things. They don't have the same intricate layer upon layer of structure that an insect does, for instance. And so the task of understanding the complexities of life is in some respects more daunting than the challenge of understanding our Big Bang and of understanding the micro-world of atoms, as challenging as they are too.
It's rather interesting that the most complicated thing to develop in the universe, namely human beings, are in a well-defined sense midway between atoms and stars. It would take about as many human bodies to make up the mass of the sun as there are atoms in each of us. That's a surprisingly precise statement: the geometric mean of the mass of a proton and the mass of the sun, is about 55 kilograms—not far off the mass of an average person. It's surprising that this is such a close coincidence, but it's not surprising that the most complicated things are on this intermediate scale between cosmos and micro world. Anything complicated has to be made of huge numbers of atoms with many layers of structures: it's got to be very very big compared to an atom. On the other hand there's a limit because any structure that gets too big is crushed by gravity. You couldn't have a creature a mile high on the earth—even Galileo realized that. And something as big as a star or a planet is completely molded by gravity and no internal structures survive, so it's clear that complexity exists on this intermediate scale.
Looking forward to the next decade I expect development of the fundamental understanding of the Big Bang, I expect development in understanding the emergence and structure of the universe, using computer simulation observation, and I expect at least the beginnings of an integration between computer simulations, observations and biological thought in the quest to understand how planets formed and how they developed biospheres.
Cosmology has remained lively, and the focus my interest. It's not only developing fast, and of fundamental importance, but it's also one which has a positive and non-threatening public image. That makes it different from other high-profile sciences like genetics and nuclear science, about which there's public ambivalence. It's also one in which there is wide public interest. I'd derive less satisfaction from my research if I could only talk to a few fellow specialists about it. It's a bonus that there is a wide public which is interested in origins. Just as Darwinism has been since the 19th century, cosmology and fundamental physics are now part of public culture.
Darwin tried to understand how life evolved on this earth. I and other cosmologists try to set the entire earth into cosmic context—to trace the origin of the atoms that make it up, right back to a simple beginning in the Big Bang. There's public interest in how things began, was there a beginning, will the universe have an end, and so forth.
It's good for us as researchers to address a wider public. It makes us realize what the big questions are. What I mean by this is that in science the right methodology is often to focus on a piece of the problem which you think you can solve. It's only cranks who try to solve the big problems at one go. If you ask a scientist what they're doing, they won't say trying to cure cancer or trying to understand the universe; they'll point at something very specific, progress is made by solving bite-sized problems one at a time. But the occupational risk for scientists is that even though that's the right methodology, they sometimes lose sight of the big picture. Members of a lay audience always ask the big questions, the important questions, and that helps us to remember that our piecemeal efforts are only worthwhile insofar as they're steps towards answering those big questions.


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Fannie Hurst:
A Preliminary Inventory of Her Papers at the Harry Ransom Center
Creator: | Hurst, Fannie, 1889-1968 | |
Title: | Fannie Hurst Papers | |
Dates: | circa 1910-1965 | |
Extent: | 274 document boxes, 1 oversize box, 1 galley folder (117.50 linear feet) | |
Abstract: | The papers of American author, lecturer, and commentator Fannie Hurst include manuscripts of her works (short stories, novels, film scenarios, plays, articles, columns, speeches, and talks), both incoming and outgoing correspondence, as well as miscellaneous materials. | |
Call Number: | Manuscript Collection MS-02091 | |
Language: | English |
Access: | Open for research |
Administrative Information
Acquisition: | Gift, 1964 | |
Processed by: | Candid Rogers, John Hawthorne, and Joan Sibley, 1993 |
Repository: |
Scope and Contents
The Fannie Hurst Papers, circa 1910-1965, include manuscripts, correspondence, personal and financial documents, scrapbooks, photographs, news clippings, and other printed materials. The papers are arranged in four series: I. Works, 1910s-1960s (70 boxes); II. Letters, 1928-1946 (6 boxes); III. Recipient, 1910s-1965 (165 boxes); and IV. Miscellaneous, 1914-1965, undated (33 boxes). | ||
Fannie Hurst's literary career is well documented in the Works series, which includes manuscripts of novels, short stories, articles, columns, plays, radio scripts, scenarios, and other creative material. The materials date from the 1910s to the 1960s. The series is subdivided into three subseries, A. Alphabetical Files, B. Genre Files, and C. Unidentified. The manuscripts of almost all of Hurst's books, including her most famous works such as Humoresque, Back Street, Lummox, Imitation of Life, and Anatomy of Me: A Wonderer in Search of Herself, can be found in Subseries A., usually in multiple drafts with handwritten revisions. Works are also sometimes recast from their original genre for a film scenario or dramatic adaptation. Subseries B. encompasses approximately thirty boxes of short stories, articles, and radio scripts that demonstrate Hurst's interest in writing short fiction, non-fiction, and commentary. Subseries C. contains a small number of unpublished articles and stories, as well as story fragments. | ||
The Letters series is the smallest in the Hurst collection. It primarily consists of typed carbon copies of outgoing letters maintained in her files for business purposes from 1928-1946. These are arranged alphabetically by recipient name. The letters mainly refer to literary rights, product sponsorships, and personal business and many were written by her secretary. Hurst's popular appeal is amply demonstrated in her replies to fan mail, charity appeals, and lecture invitations. Of particular note in this series are letters to Greta Garbo, Langston Hughes, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Don Marquis. Also included in this series are a few letters from Hurst to experts in various fields that relate to information she needed for her stories. | ||
The Recipient series, consisting of letters to Hurst, is the largest in the Hurst collection. Some 165 boxes contain incoming correspondence, often with carbon copy responses from Hurst, dating from the 1910s to 1965. The series is organized alphabetically by author, although Hurst grouped some correspondence topically, under such titles as "Letters re. Appassionata,""Diet and Health,""Negro Matters," or "Dogs." Included in the series are requests from readers for information about a writing career, letters from philanthropical organizations, letters from friends and family, early rejection letters, requests for lectures, invitations to social gatherings, business related correspondence, letters from people with story ideas, endorsement requests, charitable requests from organizations and individuals, letters from autograph collectors, letters from writers she encouraged, correspondence with clothiers, paper suppliers, etc., and letters from movie and book publishers. The correspondence reflects Hurst's interest in civil rights, Jewish, and anti-Fascist issues, and is so comprehensive that Hurst's daily interests and activities are almost fully documented. The series contains less personal correspondence, although it contains a few routine letters from her husband, Jacques Danielson, as well as correspondence from her parents. | ||
A sample of correspondents of note follows: the American Birth Control League, the ACLU, the American Jewish Congress, Elizabeth Arden, Authors League of America, Lillian Becker, Albert Berg, B'nai B'rith, Books & Authors War Bond Rally, Theda Bara Brabin, Madeleine Borg, Pearl S. Buck, Jonathan Cape, Jacques Chambrun, the City Wide Citizens' Committee on Harlem, Alma Clayburgh, Louis Cohen, Cosmopolitan, Hume Cronyn, Curtis Brown, the Democratic National Party, Theodore Dreiser, Marie Dressler, Edna Ferber, Daniel Frohman, Zona Gale, Hadassah, Harpers, the Constance Hope Foundation, Zora Neale Hurston, Blanche Knopf, Fiorella H. La Guardia, Sinclair Lewis, NBC, the National Conference of Christians and Jews, the New York Times, Charles and Kathleen Norris, Ruth Bryan Owen, Paramount Pictures, PEN, RKO, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Charles Edward Russell, the Salvation Army, and Carl Van Vechten. | ||
The Miscellaneous series consists primarily of fan mail, dating from the 1920s to the 1960s. Also found in this series are notebooks, calendars, wills, notes, lists, contracts, biographical material, documents related to personal finances, and interviews. Hurst also maintained Jacques Danielson's correspondence, as well as sympathy letters, materials forwarded to Hurst from her publishers, and copies of poems and articles written by friends. Of particular interest are the articles and notes that document Hurst's interest in political and social issues. | ||
Organization and Condition | ||
Though the Fannie Hurst Papers have been roughly sorted into four categories, the categories are not all in physical sequence. Fairly substantial work has already been done in sorting and housing materials in the Letters and Recipient categories. Manuscripts have been unbundled and placed in multiple file folders where necessary, with file numbering that reflects the original bundle groupings (on the folders, i.e., 1 of 3, 2 of 3, 3 of 3). No doubt extraneous material will be found among these groups, but the author's original order is here preserved until further processing is done. Description is at file folder level. Many collection items, most notably manuscripts, clippings, and miscellaneous materials, are in fragile condition and should be handled with care until further processing and housing are undertaken. | ||
Provenance | ||
The Fannie Hurst Papers were brought to the attention of then Chancellor Harry Huntt Ransom on October 12, 1964, by Morris Ernst, the noted civil liberties lawyer. Ernst, a close friend of Hurst's, had given his papers to The University of Texas, and he phoned Ransom to say that Hurst wished to donate nine suitcases of manuscripts to the library. Ransom immediately sent a telegram to Hurst to register his enthusiasm about the possibility of obtaining her papers. Over the next six months, five other universities approached Hurst with the same intention, but she wrote to the Director of the Humanities Research Center, F. Warren Roberts, that she was "particularly attracted to Texas." By May 22, 1965, Hurst reached a decision, sending a letter to Dr. Roberts which read: "my material, unorganized, disorganized, is about to descend upon you. I have had neither the courage nor the time to delve into the mass but I am hopeful there are original manuscripts (all of my originals are in type scripts) but I cannot guarantee that I have them. The bulk of my correspondence over the years I am sending as is, leaving it to your luckless coordinator to organize, sort, and then get in touch with me." By June 20, 1965, the Fannie Hurst Papers had arrived at The University of Texas. |
Related Material
Additional Hurst materials can be found in the Vertical Files, Scrapbook Collection, Photography Collection, Personal Effects Collection, Performing Arts Collection, and in the collections of other writers whose papers are at the Ransom Center. | ||
More than 200 folders of ephemeral material, such as clippings, dust jackets, pamphlets, articles, invitations, reports, and programs, can be found in the Vertical Files. Within the Scrapbook Collection are thirty-nine scrapbooks, created and maintained by Hurst. In poor physical condition, the scrapbooks are divided by year, and include clippings following Hurst's career from her earliest acting attempts to her television appearances of the late 1950s. The scrapbooks also contain clippings of interest to Hurst, as well as snapshots and information forwarded from friends. | ||
The Photography Collection houses approximately 300 photographs from the Fannie Hurst Papers. Approximately half of the photographs date from the 1950s and 1960s, but there are a few of Hurst in her younger years. There are also photographs of Jacques Danielson, her dogs, film actresses, and snapshots of friends and family. | ||
Other author collections at the Ransom Center house correspondence from Fannie Hurst. There are single letters from the author in the PEN, Joseph Conrad, Margaret Cousins, and R. L. Giffen Collections. The Harpers, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., Morris L. Ernst, Sinclair Lewis, M. A. B. Lowndes, and Philip Moeller Collections house multiple letters from Hurst. A letter to A. W. Lublin from Hurst is also tipped into a copy of Lummox. The Ransom Center has letters to Hurst in the collections of Harpers and Rebecca West. Further, letters to Hurst from Julius J. Adams, William Bondy, Dodge Publishing, E. P. Dutton & Co., Farrar & Rinehart, Daniel Frohman, Solomon Goldman, Harcourt, Brace and Co., Samuel Heller, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., J. B. Lippincott Co., Walter G. MacPeek, Edward Lyons, Thomas Jefferson Miley, G. P. Putnam's, and William B. Ziffare have been tipped into books owned by Fannie Hurst. |


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What is the Best Thermometer for Fever Syndromes?
With most any of the fever syndromes, you need a good thermometer, or two in case you misplace one. These ear, temporal, and oral thermometers are some of the most recommended by patients and parents dealing with auotinflammatory diseases. Best … Continue reading


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figure drawings
I've been going back & forth (a specialty of mine) deciding on a print for over the bed. I think the bedroom should be warm & cozy, nothing too bold, a place to relax and not be too distracted. I've always loved figure drawings and sketches, and these by Ego Schiele, have such pretty muted colors that I think I've found it! The poster is inexpensive, I just have to find the right frame, natural, white or dark espresso? See, still going back & forth, told you I was good at that, I think I have commitment issues.


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11/10/02 Rescuing of the Dog Lika
Dramatic operation of rescuing a dog from a 10-meter deep pit, that was thrown into the pit a year ago together with the whole litter
The dog survived the whole year eating the remains of animals that were thrown into the pit!
In the place called Janja Gora in Lika, near Plasko, at Saturday, November 9, at 1 P.M. an operation of rescuing the dog that was thrown into the pit a year ago was launched. The operation was organised by Animal Friends that contacted the mountain rescue service, whose employee, Dinko Novosel, who is also a veterinarian, got down into the pit and tried to get the desperate animal out of there.
Unfortunately, what we were most afraid of came true - the dog was deliriously frightened and crawled into a narrow hole, and he would neither come out, nor could he be pulled out of there. That is a normal behavior, explained Mr. Novosel, because the dog was thrown into the pit while he was still a puppy and he has never seen any other living creature.
Although completely blind, the dog kept running in circles down in the pit, and after that he crawled deep into the cave and in that way made it impossible for people to approach and rescue him. He is scared and fighting for his life, and the fact that he has never been in contact with other dogs or people makes the whole situation even more difficult.
All we know about the dog is that he's a little black cross-breed, who is probably completely blind, since he has spent his whole life in the darkness of the pit. The dog is afraid of people, which means that he has never been in contact with any other living creature.
Alone in the dark pit for a whole year
As the locals told the reporters of the Croatian Television and the newspaper Jutarnji list, the dog has been here for over a year. He was thrown into the pit while he was still a puppy, together with the whole litter, and it's a miracle that he survived after all. Otherwise, the pit serves as an illegal animal corpses dump and the dog has fed on their flesh for the past year and has managed to survive that way. He has probably drunk rain-water or there is a water spring somewhere in the pit, because the pit spreads over a broad territory - speculated the locals.
However, the question is why nobody reacted to that in the past year and why nobody saved the dog, if all the locals knew about that? "We wanted to throw a bomb into that pit and put him out of his misery" - said some of them, although it would be much easier to do what the Animal Friends did - launch a rescue operation!
Rescue operation
During the visit to the place Janja Gora, Mr. Milan Grba talked to the locals and learned about the dog. After that, he personally checked the whole thing and informed his friend, Diana Milicic, a member of Animal Friends, who launched the whole operation on that very day. We contacted the mountain rescue service and arranged for the dog to be pulled out of the pit. Unfortunately, we did not succeed at the first try, which means that we will have to come back as soon as Monday.
After we have taken the dog out, he will be examined and treated at the Veterinary Clinic in Zagreb, as well as put up into the shelter for dogs in Dumovec. Although it is packed with puppies at the moment, the shelter will welcome the dog with open arms. Dr. Adanic, the shelter manager, hopes that the dog will soon find a home with a family that is willing to devote their love and attention to him after he had spent the whole year in a pit in Janja Gora, and he would also like to remind people to a large number of puppies that are kept in the shelter at the moment and that are waiting for "their own" family too.
Animal Friends also asks good-hearted people to find a home for the dog after he has been taken out of the pit, examined and healed. At the same time, we would like to invite all interested people to visit our Internet Ads for finding a home for animals, as well as the shelter in Dumovec, and provide a home that the puppies and rejected animals that are kept there deserve.
You can keep track of events regarding the rescue operation on the web site of the association, www.prijatelji-zivotinja.hr, and see the photographs of the operation, as well as of the dog himself after he has been rescued.
Who threw the dog into the pit?
The dog was thrown into the pit together with the whole litter probably by one of the locals. Since the pit is a veritable animal graveyard packed with corpses of animals of all kinds, it is no surprise that somebody threw living puppies there as well. What the dog went through is beyond belief, and he was probably not the only one who was destined to die in such a horrible way. It is simply unbelievable what the people are capable of doing.
Therefore, it is natural that the following question poses itself: what kind of person can throw living puppies into a 10-meter deep pit?
It is almost unbelievable that anybody can survive a year of complete isolation in a place like the pit in the middle of Lika. But that is precisely what the dog, who was thrown by a cold-hearted person into a 10-meter deep pit a year ago, survived. With almost no chance to survive, the dog was left at the mercy of hunger, cold, darkness and fear. He will remain under those conditions another day or two, until the rescue operation has been completed, and after that the blind and frightened animal will be adopted by a true animal friend.
Torturing of the animals is our everyday life
The case of this dog may be unique because of the fact that he survived. But killing and torturing of the animals are, unfortunately, our everyday life. To throw a dog into the pit is a horrible act. But no less horrible is the fact that all shelters for animals are packed with puppies and dogs thrown out on the street. Every day pigeons and cats are poisoned, domestic and wild animals are killed in sick and sadistic hunting games, and millions of animals all over the world suffer at meat farms, egg farms, dairy farms, fur farms, in laboratories, circuses, zoos... This sequence is almost endless. What is it about people that makes them torture the animals? What motivates them to give vent to their lower instincts in that way?
Let the example of this dog be our lection. Let us learn to respect the animals, instead of using them. There are not objects created to serve people. They exist for their own reasons. Let us respect the life and co-exist with the animals, and not from their pain and suffering.


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France's Nicolas Sarkozy admits Fukushima nuclear gaffe
Election rival Francois Hollande had queried Mr Sarkozy's claim that he had been to the stricken nuclear plant.
Mr Sarkozy admitted on Friday that he had not. "I'm not an engineer, I don't need to stick my nose in the situation at Fukushima," he said on I-tele.
The future of France's nuclear power industry has become an election issue.
The Socialists have pledged to reduce France's dependence on nuclear energy for its electricity, from 75% to 50% by 2025.
Mr Sarkozy's centre-right UMP government argues that the nuclear industry is good for the country economically, generating employment and exports along with clean, reliable electricity.
'Pioneer in everything'
Mr Sarkozy had told an election rally in Normandy last Friday that he had visited Fukushima with his then ecology minister, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet.
Mr Hollande, the Socialist presidential candidate, said on Tuesday that he had checked out Mr Sarkozy's statement and that "he never went there".
"It's the first time in the history of the Republic that an outgoing candidate has described a trip he never made," Mr Hollande said. "He'll have been a pioneer in everything. Even on a trip he never took."
Mr Sarkozy acknowledged on I-tele: "I went to Japan with Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, I met the Japanese authorities, I discussed with the [Japanese] prime minister the situation at Fukushima and Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet went there."
He said that he had been making the point that linking what happened at Fukushima to the debate over a nuclear power plant in France was absurd.
"I simply said that at Fukushima what happened was not a nuclear incident - it was a tsunami, with a wave that reached 42 metres in height that demolished the pumping systems that enabled the cooling of the central core, and that to say as a result of Fukushima that you should shut Fessenheim [nuclear plant] in Alsace, that seemed to me to be a particularly remarkable absurdity."
It is not the first such gaffe Mr Sarkozy has made.
In 2009, he posted on Facebook a picture of himself at the Berlin Wall, saying he had chipped away at it with a pickaxe on the day the wall came down.
A caption dated the photo "9 November 1989", but the man who took it said it was definitely from the following day.


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I have seen a practice from time to time that "feels" wrong, but I can't quite articulate what is wrong about it. Or maybe it's just my prejudice. Here goes:
A developer defines a method with a boolean as one of its parameters, and that method calls another, and so on, and eventually that boolean is used, solely to determine whether or not to take a certain action. This might be used, for example, to allow the action only if the user has certain rights, or perhaps if we are (or aren't) in test mode or batch mode or live mode, or perhaps only when the system is in a certain state.
Well there is always another way to do it, whether by querying when it is time to take the action (rather than passing the parameter), or by having multiple versions of the method, or multiple implementations of the class, etc. My question isn't so much how to improve this, but rather whether or not it really is wrong (as I suspect), and if it is, what is wrong about it.


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Brand: Giantex
Color: White
- 【Durable Wall and Door Mounted Jewelry Cabinet】This jewellery cabinet can be hung on the door or mounted on the wall. The style is simple and space saving. It does not take up space compared to floor standing one.
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Product Description:
This is our brand new jewelry cabinet with full size mirror and LED lights is an attractive art work. Full size mirror is convenient for trying your jewelry and clothes on, lights add luxury and glory to your cabinet . It is specially designed for your valuables help your jewelry in an organized manner and prevents them from getting tangled. Lockable design ensures the safety of your jewelry. Features door or wall mounted, perfect for compact space and saving your space. What's more, the chic and stylish design make it fits with your bedroom decor. Don't hesitate to buy one!
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6 lined shelves, 1rod,36 hooks, 98 ring slots, 5 shelves and 2 bottom drawers, specious storage
lockable design ensures safety of valuables
LED lights illuminate the jewelry armoire automatically when opening it or manually
Full length mirror is convenient for you to try your clothes and jewelry on
Door or wall mounted for space saving
Fits your bedroom decor
Easy to assemble and easy to clean
Material: MDF board + glass mirror
Color: Black/White
Overall Dimension: 14''x4''x54.5''(LxWxH)
Cabinet Dimension:14''x4''x47.5''(LxWxH)
Quantity of Battery:2AA(NOT INCLUDED)
Quantity of LED light:2
Net weight: about 22lbs
Package include:
1x Jewelry Cabinet
Package Dimensions: 50.3 x 17.4 x 6.9 inches


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Together for Kwanzaa
Juwanda G. Ford
Kwanzaa is Kayla's favorite time of year. But this year, it looks as if a heavy snowstorm will keep her big brother, Khari, from getting home in time for the festivities! Will Khari miss the celebration completely? Or will Kayla and her brother somehow find a way to be together for Kwanzaa? A perfect introduction to Kwanzaa, this book will teach children all about the traditions and practices that make it a special winter holiday.