text:
uucico - Man Page
UUCP file transfer daemon
uucico [ options ]
The uucico daemon processes file transfer requests queued by uucp (1) and uux (1). It is started when uucp or uux is run (unless they are given the -r option). It is also typically started periodically using entries in the crontab table(s).
When invoked with -r1, --master, -s, --system, or -S, the daemon will place a call to a remote system, running in master mode. Otherwise the daemon will start in slave mode, accepting a call from a remote system. Typically a special login name will be set up for UUCP which automatically invokes uucico when a call is made.
When uucico terminates, it invokes the uuxqt (8) daemon, unless the -q or --nouuxqt option is given; uuxqt (8) executes any work orders created by uux (1) on a remote system, and any work orders created locally which have received remote files for which they were waiting.
If a call fails, uucico will normally refuse to retry the call until a certain (configurable) amount of time has passed. This may be overriden by the -f, --force, or -S option.
The -l, --prompt, -e, or --loop options may be used to force uucico to produce its own prompts of "login: " and "Password:". When another daemon calls in, it will see these prompts and log in as usual. The login name and password will normally be checked against a separate list kept specially for uucico rather than the /etc/passwd file; it is possible on some systems to direct uucico to use the /etc/passwd file. The -l or --prompt option will prompt once and then exit; in this mode the UUCP administrator or the superuser may use the -u or --login option to force a login name, in which case uucico will not prompt for one. The -e or --loop option will prompt again after the first session is over; in this mode uucico will permanently control a port.
If uucico receives a SIGQUIT, SIGTERM or SIGPIPE signal, it will cleanly abort any current conversation with a remote system and exit. If it receives a SIGHUP signal it will abort any current conversation, but will continue to place calls to (if invoked with -r1 or --master) and accept calls from (if invoked with -e or --loop) other systems. If it receives a SIGINT signal it will finish the current conversation, but will not place or accept any more calls.
The following options may be given to uucico.
- -r1, --master
Start in master mode (call out to a system); implied by -s, --system, or -S. If no system is specified, call any system for which work is waiting to be done.
- -r0, --slave
Start in slave mode. This is the default.
- -s system, --system system
Call the named system.
- -S system
Call the named system, ignoring any required wait. This is equivalent to -s system -f.
- -f, --force
Ignore any required wait for any systems to be called.
- -l, --prompt
Prompt for login name and password using "login: " and "Password:". This allows uucico to be easily run from inetd (8). The login name and password are checked against the UUCP password file, which probably has no connection to the file /etc/passwd. The --login option may be used to force a login name, in which cause uucico will only prompt for a password.
- -p port, --port port
Specify a port to call out on or to listen to.
- -e, --loop
Enter endless loop of login/password prompts and slave mode daemon execution. The program will not stop by itself; you must use kill (1) to shut it down.
- -w, --wait
After calling out (to a particular system when -s, --system, or -S is specifed, or to all systems which have work when just -r1 or --master is specifed), begin an endless loop as with --loop.
- -q, --nouuxqt
Do not start the uuxqt (8) daemon when finished.
- -c, --quiet
If no calls are permitted at this time, then don't make the call, but also do not put an error message in the log file and do not update the system status (as reported by uustat (1)). This can be convenient for automated polling scripts, which may want to simply attempt to call every system rather than worry about which particular systems may be called at the moment. This option also suppresses the log message indicating that there is no work to be done.
- -C, --ifwork
Only call the system named by -s, --system or -S if there is work for that system.
- -D, --nodetach
Do not detach from the controlling terminal. Normally uucico detaches from the terminal before each call out to another system and before invoking uuxqt. This option prevents this.
- -u name, --login name
Set the login name to use instead of that of the invoking user. This option may only be used by the UUCP administrator or the superuser. If used with --prompt, this will cause uucico to prompt only for the password, not the login name.
- -z, --try-next
If a call fails after the remote system is reached, try the next alternate rather than simply exiting.
- -i type, --stdin type
Set the type of port to use when using standard input. The only support port type is TLI, and this is only available on machines which support the TLI networking interface. Specifying -iTLI causes uucico to use TLI calls to perform I/O.
- -x type, -X type, --debug type
Turn on particular debugging types. The following types are recognized: abnormal, chat, handshake, uucp-proto, proto, port, config, spooldir, execute, incoming, outgoing.
Multiple types may be given, separated by commas, and the --debug option may appear multiple times. A number may also be given, which will turn on that many types from the foregoing list; for example, --debug 2 is equivalent to --debug abnormal,chat.
The debugging output is sent to the debugging file, which may be printed using uulog -D.
- -I file, --config file
Set configuration file to use. This option may not be available, depending upon how uucico was compiled.
- -v, --version
Report version information and exit.
- --help
Print a help message and exit.
See Also
Ian Lance Taylor <firstname.lastname@example.com>
Referenced By
send-uucp(8), uucp(1), uustat(1), uux(1), uuxqt(8).


text:
MP Select PLA Plus+ Premium 3D Filament, 0.5kg 1.75mm
Get outstanding 3D printing results when you use 1.75mm PLA Plus Filament from Monoprice!
PLA Plus+ is a good choice for a printing material if you are looking for high accuracy and high resolution. It does not require a heated base and has a very low shrinkage rate (0.3%). PLA Plus+ is stronger than ordinary PLA, possessing the same strength as normal ABS material. Additionally, PLA Plus+ is a plant-based plastic, which means that it is biodegradable and gives off a slightly sweet odor, like roasting corn.
This 0.5kg spool features a thickness of 1.75mm ±0.10mm, with a roundness variation of only 0.03mm. It has a nominal processing temperature range of 205 ~ 225°C (401 ~ 437°F). Thickness and roundness factors are laser measured at the factory to ensure accuracy over the entire length of the filament.
The negatives of using PLA Plus+ is that it is vulnerable to degradation from moisture, sunlight, and heat. Additionally, it is more prone to overheating during processing, which can cause dripping and drooping if it gets too hot.
Reel Dimensions:
- Reel Diameter: 200mm (7.9")
- Spindle Diameter: 54mm (2.1")
- Reel Width: 37mm (1.5")

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Great programmers and thinkers have already railed against Jeff Atwood's essay, "Please Don't Learn to Code."
But we haven't heard enough from amateurs like me, nor has anyone, as Poynter's Steve Myers claims, "written a single line of code" in response to Atwood.
Well, I may not be Zed Shaw but I have a knack for coming up with the most brain-numbing code snippets to deal with slightly more brain-numbing journalism-related tasks, such as extracting data from PDFs, scraping websites, producing charts, cropping photos, text processing with regular expressions, etc. etc..
But for this post I'll try to show (with actual code) how programming can apply even to a field that's about as far removed from compilers and data-mining that I can think of: fashion design
(insert joke about fat-models and skinny-controllers)
Besides clearance sales at the flagship Macy's, my main specific connection to the New York fashion industry comes from the few times that a friend of a friend hires me to take photos at a casting call.
I knew there were casting directors in TV and movie business. But I thought designers could just pick for themselves the models. Well, they do. But there's still need for someone who handles relations with modeling agencies, managing the logistics of bringing in and scheduling hundreds of models, and having the aesthetic sense to make valuable recommendations to the designers.
And, sometimes, there's the occasional holy-shit-does-anyone-own-a-camera-because-this-came-up-at-the-last-minute scenarios that create the need for non-fashion professionals like me. During the day of the casting call, the director and designers are busy doing informal interviews of the models, skimming their lookbooks, and judging – yes, there seems to be a wide range of skill and style in this – their strut down the catwalk.
The models don't show up primped as if it were a Vogue cover shoot, and they probably couldn't maintain that look over the other 5 to 15 other casting calls they trek to throughout the day. Often, at least to me, they look nothing like they do in their lookbooks. Which is fine since the designers need to imagine whether they'd fit for their own collections.
So I take photos of the models – of the face looking at the camera, then looking off-camera, and then a full-length head-to-heels shot – and then say "thank you, next please." The photos don't even have to be great, only recognizable so that the designer and directors have something to refer to later on. It's likely one of the easiest and most monotonous photo assignments (at least to the point that my brain starts to think about programming), like yearbook photo day at a high school where almost nobody smiles or blinks at the wrong time.
So casting calls are uncomplicated from my extremely limited standpoint. But there are logistical hassles that come into play. A friend of mine who actually does real work in fashion told me, when Polaroid film went out of production, casting directors "pretty much shit themselves."
For the digital-only generation, Polaroids were great because they printed the photo right after it was taken. Having a physical photo just as the model is standing there made it easy to attach it to the model's comp card for later reference.
With digital cameras, the photos are piled in a memory card's folder under a sterile naming convention such as "DSC00023.jpg" and won't materialize until the memory card is taken out, brought over and inserted into a computer, and then printed out. Unless I'm doing that right after each model, there has to be some system that tracks how "DSC00023.jpg" is a snapshot of "James S." from Ford Models at the end of the day.
Stepping back from the material world of fashion, this is at its core a classic data problem: in lieu of instant print photography, we need to link one data source, the physical pile of comp cards containing each model's name, agency, and sometimes measurements – with another – the folder of generically named photo files in my camera.
There's nothing about the contents of the digital photo file that conclusively ties it to the real-life model and comp card. On a busy casting call, there are enough models to sort through and some of them look similar enough (or different from their comp card) that it's not obvious which "normal" snapshot goes with the comp card's highly-produced portrait.
Assuming the photographer hired is too cheap (i.e. me) to invest in wi-fi transmitters and the like, the director can throw old-fashioned human labor at the problem. I once had an assistant with an even more monotonous task than mine: writing down the name of each model and the photo filenames as I read them off my camera. The director has her own assistant who is also writing down the models' names/info while collecting their cards.
One way to reduce the chance of error is to have the models hold up their comp cards as I take the snapshots. But no matter how error-free the process is, there's still the tedious work of eyeballing hundreds of printouts and clipping them to the correct comp cards.
The code fix
Let's assume that the procession of models is swift and substantial enough (200-500 for New York Fashion Week, depending how many shows the casting director has been hired for) that the chronological order of the physical comp cards and the digital photos is bound to be muddled.
So, in our traditional setup, the linking of the two data sources is done through facial/image recognition:
Casting director: "Hey, can you find me Aaron from Acme's photos? He has brownish hair, bangs and freckles and I think he came earlier in the day."
Assistants: "OK!" (they hurriedly look through the pile of photos until someone finds the photo matching the description. The photo could be near the top of the pile or at the bottom for all they know).
The code-minded approach: attach the name and agency information to the digital so there's a way to organize them. They can, for instance, can be printed out and sorted into piles by agency and in alphabetical order.
Casting director: "Hey, can you find me Aaron from Acme's photos?
Assistants: "OK!" (someone goes to the Acme pile, which is sorted alphabetically, and looks for "Aaron").
So how do we get to this sortable, scalable situation without adding undue work, such as having the photographer rename the photos in-camera or printing them out after finishing up with each model? Here's a possible code solution that efficiently labels the photos correctly long after the model has left the call:
- Have the photographer sync up his camera's system time with your assistant's laptop's time.
- Have the assistant open up Excel or Google Spreadsheets and mark the time that the model has his/her photos taken:
- At the end of the day, tell the photographer to dump the photos into a folder, e.g. "/Photos/fashion-shoot"
Name | Agency | Time |
Sara | Acme | 9:10:39 AM |
Svetlana | Acme | 9:12:10 AM |
James | Ford | 9:15:57 AM |
And then finally, run some code. Here's the basic thought process:
- Each line represents a model, his/her agency, and their sign-in time
- For each each line of the spreadsheet:
- Read the sign-in time of that line and the sign-in time of the next
- Filter the photofiles created after the sign-in time of the given model and before the sign-in time of the next model
- Rename the files from "DSC00010.jpg" to a format such as: "Anna–Acme Models–01.jpg"
If you actually care, here's some Ruby code, which is way more lines than is needed (I've written a condensed version beneath it) because I separate the steps for readability. I also haven't run it yet so there may be a careless typo. Who cares, the exact code is not the point but feel free to send in corrections.
# include the Ruby library needed to # turn "9:12:30 AM" into a Ruby Time object require 'time' # Grab an array of filenames from the directory of photos photo_names = Dir.glob("/Photos/fashion-shoot/*.*") # open the spreadsheet file (export the XLS to tab-delimited) spreadsheet_file = open("spreadsheet.txt") # read each line (i.e. row) into an array array_of lines = spreadsheet_file.readlines # split each line by tab-character, which effectively creates # an array of arrays, e.g. # [ # ["Sara", "Acme", "9:10:39 AM"], # ["James", "Ford", "9:15:57 AM"] # ] lines = lines.map{ |line| line.chomp.split("\t") }[1..-1] # (the above steps could all be one line, BTW) # iterate through each line lines.each_with_index do |line, line_number| # first photo timestamp (convert to a Time object) begin_time = Time.parse(line[2]) # if the current line is the last line, then we just need the photos # that were last modified (i.e. created at) **after** the begin_time if line_number >= lines.length models_photos = photo_names.select{|pf| File.mtime(pf) >= begin_time } else # otherwise, we need to limit the photo selection to files that came # before after the begin_time of the **next row** end_time = Time.parse(lines[line_number + 1]) models_photos = photo_names.select{ |pf| File.mtime(pf) >= begin_time && File.mtime(pf) < end_time } end # now loop through each photo that met the criteria and rename them # model_name consists of the name and agency (the first two columns) model_name = line[0] + "--" + line[1] models_photos.each_with_index do |photo_fname, photo_number| new_photo_name = File.join( File.dirname(photo_fname), "#{model_name}--#{photo_number}.jpg" ) # you should probably create a copy of the file rather # than renaming the original... File.rename(photo_fname, new_photo_name) end end
Here's a concise version of the code:
require 'time' photo_names = Dir.glob("/Photos/fashion-shoot/*.*") lines = open("spreadsheet.txt").readlines.map{ |line| line.chomp.split("\t") }[1..-1] lines.each_with_index do |line, line_number| begin_time = Time.parse(line[2]) end_time = line_number >= lines.length ? Time.now : Time.parse(lines[line_number + 1]) photo_names.select{ |pf| File.mtime(pf) >= begin_time && File.mtime(pf) < end_time }.each_with_index do |photo_fname, photo_number| new_photo_name = File.join( File.dirname(photo_fname), "#{line[0]}--#{line[1]}--#{photo_number}.jpg" ) File.rename(photo_fname, new_photo_name) end end
The end result is a directory of photos renamed from the camera's default (something like DSC00026.jpg) to something more useful at a glance, such as Sara-Acme-1.jpg, Sara-Acme-2.jpg and so forth. The filenames are printed out with the images.
So even if the physical comp cards are all out of chronological order, it's trivial to match them alphabetically (by name and agency) to the digital photo print outs. As a bonus, if someone is taking videos of each model's walk on a phone and dumps those files into the photo directory, those files would also be associated to the model (this might require a little more logic given the discrepancy between the photo shoot and catwalk test).
With a few trivial modifications to the code, a coding-casting director can make life even easier:
- Add a Yes/No column to the spreadsheet. You'd either enter this value in yourself or give some kind of signal to your assistant (ideally more subtle than "thumbs up/thumbs down" while the model is still standing there). And so you could save yourself the trouble of printing photos of the non-viable candidates.
- Why even use a printer? Produce a webpage layout of the photos (add a few lines that print HTML: "<img src='Sara-Acme-1.jpg'>")
- If the client is old-style and wants the photos in hand as she marks them up and makes the artistic decision of which model would look best for which outfit, then you can at least resize and concatenate the photos with some simple ImageMagick code so that they print out on a single sheet (like in a photo booth), reducing your printing paper and ink costs. Congratulations, you just saved fashion and the Earth.
- If you hire a cheapo photographer (like myself) who didn't buy/bring the lighting equipment/batteries needed to keep consistent lighting as the daylight fades, then models who show up at the end of the call will be more lit up (and probably more reddish) by artificial lightings. A line of code could automatically adjust the white balance (maybe by executing a PhotoShop action) depending on the timestamp of the photo.
- Fashion bloggers: speaking of color adjustments, you can get in on this programmatic color-detecting action too: if your typical work consists of curating photos of outfits/accessories that you like, but you've done a terrible job taking the time to tag them properly, then you can use ImageMagick to determine the dominant hue (probably in the middle of the photo) and auto-edit the metadata. Now you can create pages that display fashion items by color and so with no manual labor and fairly easy coding work on your part, your readers have an extra reason to stay on your site.
Forget the details, though. The important point is that someone with code can abstract out the steps of this chore and – just as importantly – expedite them without adding work. They see how to exploit what already has to be collected (photos, names) and use what is essentially useless to non-coders (file timestamps, metadata). And, thanks to the speed of computing, the menial parts of the job are reduced, allowing more time and energy for the "fun", creative part.
Of course the number of times I've offered to do this for a director (or any similar photojob) is zero. It's not the code-writing that's hard. It's understanding all the director's needs and processes and explaining to and getting everyone to follow even the minimal steps outlined above. It's much easier for me to just stick to my role of bringing a camera and pressing its button a thousand or so times. The incentive to implement this pedantic but life-improving code rests within the person whose happiness and livelihood is directly related to the number of hours spent pointlessly sifting papers.
But since casting calls have gone fine for directors without resorting to this fancy code thing – or else they would no longer be casting directors – why fix what's not yet broken, right?
Jeff Atwood writes, "Don't celebrate the creation of code, celebrate the creation of solutions." In other words, focus on what you do best and let the experts handle the code. But the problem is not that non-coders can't create these solutions themselves. The problem is that they don't even know these solutions exist or why they are needed.
They suffer from, as Donald Rumsfeld described best, the "things we do not know we don't know." But so do those on the other side of the equation; expert coders really don't grasp the innumerable and varied obstacles facing non-coders. So isn't it a little premature to dismiss the potential of a more code-literate world?
It's a bit like the church, soon after Gutenberg's breakthrough, telling everyone: Hey, why waste your already-short lives trying to become literate? It's hard work; we know, because our monks and clerics devote their entire lives to it. So even if you do learn to read, you're likely to make some uneducated, sacrilegious misinterpretation of our holy texts and spend the afterlife in eternal damnation. So all you need to know is that books contain valuable information and that we have experts who can extract and interpret that information for you. That's what we've done for centuries and things have gone very well so far, right?
I don't mean at all to imply that Atwood wants to keep knowledge from the masses. But I do think he vastly underestimates the gulf of conceptual grasp between a non-programmer and even a first-year programmer. And he undervalues the potential (and necessity, IMHO) of programming to teach these abstract concepts.
Erik Hinton from the New York Times puts it nicely:
If you don't know how to program, you filter out all parts of the world that involve programming. You miss the loops and divide-and-conquers of everyday life. You cannot recognize programming problems without the understanding that outlines these problems against the noise of useless or random information.
Atwood imagines that non-programmers can somehow "get" the base level of data literacy and understanding of abstraction that most programmers take for granted. I'd like to think so, but this is not the case even for professionals far more grounded in logic and data than is the fashion world, including researchers, scientists, and doctors. For instance, check out researcher Neil Saunders's dispatches on attempting to introduce code and its wide-scale benefits to the world of bioinformatics.
My New Year's resolution is to learn to code with Codecademy in 2012! Join me. codeyear.com #codeyear
— Mike Bloomberg (@MikeBloomberg) January 5, 2012
So I too am skeptical that Mayor Bloomberg, despite his resolution to learn to code, will ever get around to creating even the classic beginners customer-cart Rails app. But perhaps his enthusiasm will trickle down to whoever's job it is to realize that maybe, the world's greatest city just might be able to find a better way to inform its citizens about how safe they are than through weekly uploads of individual PDF files (Or maybe not. Related: see this workaround from ScraperWiki).
My own journalism career benefits from being able to convert PDFs to data at a rate/accuracy equivalent to at least five or more interns. But I'd gladly trade that edge for a world in which such contrived barriers were never conceived. We don't need a bureaucrat who can install gcc. I'll settle for one who remembers enough about for loops and delimiters and can look a vendor in the eye and say, "Thank you for demonstrating your polished and proprietary Flash-powered animated chart/export-to-PDF plugin, which we will strongly consider during a stronger budget year. But if you could just leave the data in a tab-delimited text file, my technicians can take care of it."
I do share some of Atwood's disdain that the current wave of interest in coding seems to be more about how "cool" it is rather than something requiring real discipline. So don't think of coding as cool because that implies that you are (extremely) uncool when you inevitably fail hard and fast at it in the beginning. Focus instead on what's already cool in your life and work and see how code can be, as Zed Shaw puts it, your secret weapon.
How can coding help non-professional programmers? I've already mentioned Neil Saunders in bioinformatics; here are a few others that came from the Hacker News discussion in response to Atwood: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Finding this purpose for programming may not be obvious at first. But hey, it exists even for fashion professionals.
Some resources: I think Codecademy is great for at least getting past the technical barriers (i.e. setting up your computer's development environment) to try out some code. But you'll need further study, and Zed Shaw's Learn Code the Hard Way is an overwhelmingly popular (and free) choice. There's also the whimsical why's poignant guide to Ruby. And I'm still on my first draft of the Bastards Book of Ruby, which attempts to teach code through practical projects.


text:
Lucid Dreaming FAQ
Subject: Lucid Dreaming FAQ
(Answers to these frequently asked questions on lucid dreaming brought to you by THE LUCIDITY INSTITUTE.)
Q. What is lucid dreaming?
A. The term "lucid dreaming" refers to dreaming while knowing that you are dreaming. The "lucid" part refers to the clarity of consciousness rather than the vividness of the dream. It generally happens when you realize during the course of a dream that you are dreaming, perhaps because something weird occurs. Most people who remember their dreams have experienced this at some time, often waking up immediately after the realization. However, it is possible to continue in the dream while remaining fully aware that you are dreaming.
Q. If you are lucid, can you control the dream?
A. Usually lucidity brings with it some degree of control over the course of the dream. How much control is possible varies from dream to dream and from dreamer to dreamer. Practice can apparently contribute to the ability to exert control over dream events. At the least, lucid dreamers can choose how they wish to respond to the events of the dream. For example, you can decide to face up to a frightening dream figure, knowing it cannot harm you, rather than to try to avoid the danger as you naturally would if you did not know it was a dream. Even this amount of control can transform the dream experience from one in which you are the helpless victim of frequently terrifying, frustrating, or maddening experiences to one in which you can dismiss for a while the cares and concerns of waking life. On the other hand, some people are able to achieve a level of mastery in their lucid dreaming where they can create any world, live any fantasy, and experience anything they can imagine!
Q. Does lucid dreaming interfere with the function of "normal" dreaming?
A. According to one way of thinking, lucid dreaming _is_ normal dreaming. The brain and body are in the same physiological state during lucid dreaming as they are in during most ordinary non- lucid dreaming, that is, REM sleep. Dreaming is a result of the brain being active, at the same time as the sense organs of the body are turned off to the outside world. In this condition, typically during REM sleep, the mind creates experiences out of currently active thoughts, concerns, memories and fantasies. Knowing you are dreaming simply allows you to direct the dream along constructive or positive lines, like you direct your thoughts when you are awake. Furthermore, lucid dreams can be even more informative about yourself than non-lucid dreams, because you can observe the development of the dream out of your feelings and tendencies, while being aware that you are dreaming and that the dream is coming from you. The notion that dreams are unconscious processes that should remain so is false. Your waking consciousness is always present in your dreams. If it were not, you would not be able to remember dreams, because you can only remember an event you have consciously experienced. The added "consciousness" of lucid dreaming is nothing more than the awareness of being in the dream state.
Q. Does everybody dream?
A. Everybody dreams. All humans (indeed, all mammals) have REM sleep. Most dreams occur in REM sleep. This has been demonstrated by awakening people from different stages of sleep and asking if they were dreaming. In 85 percent of awakenings from REM sleep, people report having been dreaming. Dreams are rarely reported following awakening from other types of sleep (collectively called non-REM sleep). REM sleep alternates with non-REM sleep in 90 minute cycles throughout the night. In a typical 8 hour night, you will spend about an hour and a half total time in REM sleep, broken up into four or five "REM periods" ranging in length from 5 to 45 minutes. Most dreams are forgotten. Some people never recall dreams while others recall five or more each night. You can improve your ability to recall dreams. Good dream recall is necessary for learning lucid dreaming. There are two basic things to do to get started with developing dream recall. Begin a dream journal, in which you write everything you remember of your dreams, even the slightest fragments. You will remember the most if you record dreams right after you awaken from them. Before falling asleep each night, remind yourself that you want to awaken from, remember and record your dreams.
Q. Why would you want to have lucid dreams?
A. The laws of physics and society are repealed in dreams. The only limits are the reaches of your imagination. Much of the potential of dreams is wasted because people do not recognize that they are dreaming. When we are not lucid in a dream, we think and behave as if we are in waking reality. This can lead to pointless frustration, confusion and wasted energy, and in the worst case, terrifying nightmares. It is useless to try as we do to accomplish the tasks of waking life in dreams. Our misguided efforts to do so result in anxiety dreams of malfunctioning machinery, missed deadlines, forgotten exams, losing the way, and so on. Anxiety dreams and nightmares can be overcome through lucid dreaming, because if you know you are dreaming you have nothing to fear. Dream images cannot hurt you. Lucid dreams, in addition to helping you lead your dreams in satisfying directions, enjoy fantastic adventures, and overcome nightmares, can be valuable tools for success in your waking life. Lucid dreamers can deliberately employ the natural creative potential of dreams for problem solving and artistic inspiration. Athletes, performers, or anyone who gives presentations can prepare, practice and polish their performances while they sleep. This is only a taste of the variety of ways people have used lucid dreaming to expand their lives.
Q. How do you have lucid dreams?
A. There are several methods of inducing lucid dreams. The first step, regardless of method, is to develop your dream recall until you can remember at least one dream per night. Then, if you have a lucid dream you will remember it. You will also become very familiar with your dreams, making it easier learn to recognize them while they are happening. If you recall your dreams you can begin immediately with two simple techniques for stimulating lucid dreams. Lucid dreamers make a habit of "reality testing." This means investigating the environment to decide whether you are dreaming or awake. Ask yourself many times a day, "Could I be dreaming?" Then, test the stability of your current reality by reading some words, looking away and looking back while trying to will them to change. The instability of dreams is the easiest clue to use for distinguishing waking from dreaming. If the words change, you are dreaming. Taking naps is a way to greatly increase your chances of having lucid dreams. You have to sleep long enough in the nap to enter REM sleep. If you take the nap in the morning (after getting up earlier than usual), you are likely to enter REM sleep within a half-hour to an hour after you fall asleep. If you nap for 90 minutes to 2 hours you will have plenty of dreams and a higher probability of becoming lucid than in dreams you have during a normal night's sleep. Focus on your intention to recognize that you are dreaming as you fall asleep within the nap.
External cues to help people attain lucidity in dreams have been the focus of Dr. Stephen LaBerge's research and the Lucidity Institute's development efforts for several years. Using the results of laboratory studies, they have designed a portable device, called the DreamLight, for this purpose. It monitors sleep and when it detects REM sleep gives a cue — a flashing light — that enters the dream to remind the dreamer to become lucid. The light comes from a soft mask worn during sleep that also contains the sensing apparatus for determining when the sleeper is in REM sleep. A small custom computer connected to the mask by a cord decides when the wearer is in REM and when to flash the lights.
Q. Is there a way to prevent yourself from awakening right after becoming lucid?
A. At first, beginners may have difficulty remaining in the dream after they attain lucidity. This obstacle may prevent many people from realizing the value of lucid dreaming, because they have not experienced more than the flash of knowing they are dreaming, followed by immediate awakening. Two simple techniques can help you overcome this problem. The first is to remain calm in the dream. Becoming lucid is exciting, but expressing the excitement can awaken you. Suppress your feeling somewhat and turn your attention to the dream. If the dream shows signs of ending, such as the disappearance, loss of clarity or depth of the imagery, "spinning" can help bring the dream back. As soon as the dream starts to "fade," before you feel your real body in bed, spin your dream body like a top. That is, twirl around like a child trying to get dizzy (you probably will not get dizzy during dream spinning because your physical body is not spinning around). Remind yourself, "The next scene will be a dream." When you stop spinning, if it is not obvious that you are dreaming, do a reality test. Even if you think you are awake, you may be surprised to find that you are still dreaming!
Q. How can I find out more about lucid dreaming, or get involved in lucid dreaming research?
A. Contact the Lucidity Institute, an organization founded by lucid dreaming researcher Dr. Stephen LaBerge to support research on lucid dreams and to help people learn to use them to enhance their lives. The Lucidity Institute's mission is to advance research on the nature and potentials of consciousness and to apply the results of this research to the enhancement of human health and well-being. The Lucidity Institute offers a membership society, whose quarterly newsletter, NightLight, discusses research and development in the field of lucid dreaming, and invites the participation of members in at-home experiments. Workshops and training programs are available periodically. The Institute sells books, tapes, scientific publications and the DreamLight.
For additional information:
LaBerge, S., LUCID DREAMING (Los Angeles: Ballantine, 1985).
LaBerge, S. & Rheingold, H. EXPLORING THE WORLD OF LUCID DREAMING (New York: Ballantine, 1990).


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If You're Confused About Whether or Not to Wear Blackface, Just Err on the Side of NOT
LatestWell, you know what they say: it wouldn't be Halloween without a dumb-college-kids-in-blackface controversy!!! (Actually, it would. It would still be the same Halloween in every way, except with less cringing and more pride in the nation's youth.) A photo taken at a Halloween party this week shows white University of Florida fraternity members smeared head-to-toe in dark greasepaint to look like "rappers." It's nothing new:
"This comes up like clockwork every year around Halloween across the country at different colleges," Katheryn Russell-Brown, UF law professor and director of the Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations, told the newspaper.
"What we're talking about is not so much whether people can do this … but what message it sends and what kind of community we want to have," she said.
Memo to everyone: If you feel like your costume idea might be insulting to another group of human beings, even if you're not completely sure why, why not just err on the side of NOT WEARING THAT COSTUME? Or at least…doing some research first? It would save everyone so much grief. I get that you might not understand why blackface is offensive. But can't you just trust black people as a whole when they tell you that it is? If you want to dress up like a bundle of stereotypes "rapper" for Halloween, why not just go as Bubba Sparxxx? Or you and your best friend could team up and go as the great Eminem/Everlast feud of 1999. (FYI, according to Vibe, "the beef has been squashed since then and there is a mutual respect between Mathers and Everlast.")
To their credit, the fraternity handled the situation with impressive grace:
The individuals wearing the costumes said they made "a very ignorant and poor decision" and they weren't aware of the history of blackface.
"At no point in time were we ever trying to negatively portray African-American stereotypes," they said in a statement. "We have since learned about the history of 'blackface' and fully understand how our actions were insulting to the African-American community."
Look! Thinking and learning! Faith in America's youth restored. Until next year.


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So this past weekend was quite non-stop as it was two of my friend's birthday weekend. So we did a little clubbin at the Savoy, ate a little dinner at Wokano's, did a photoshoot, had a turn-around trip to Wet Willies in San Diego, and capped it off with champagne and crab legs at the Reef. So yes, this weekend was quitefun and festive if I do say so myself. Today's post is a little of my night at the Savoy. I never been there before, but heard it was pretty lowkey...so I kept it cute but chill. Here's a little more of my Outfit of the Night.
Much love,


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Is There a Lesser of Two Evils?
A persistent question arises every election cycle among Catholics: Is it ever justified to vote for the lesser of two evils, that is, for a candidate who does not hold the Church's teaching on abortion, but whose position is less extreme than another candidate's?
Catholics who desire to remain faithful to Church teaching, and thus to God, naturally do not want to vote for anyone who favors abortion in any circumstance or who holds other positions not in agreement with the Church on what Pope Benedict XVI has called the non-negotiable issues — human life, marriage and family, religious liberty.
The controversial, but authentic, answer is: Yes, you may so vote.
Understandably, this needs explanation.
Confusion first arises from the common name used for the moral principle at play: the lesser of two evils. This often-used name suggests something true: that in voting for the candidate with the less extreme position there is clearly the appearance of voting for the evil that he or she would allow.
This correctly captures what is the first, most immediate and correct conclusion of the conscience of the Catholic voter: I may not vote to support an intrinsic evil in any measure.
Complex Moral Act
The lesser-of-two-evils name does not, however, accurately reflect what the voter does in making such a voting choice. We can see this by looking at Catholic teaching about the elements of every morally good act (Catechism 1750-1761): the object (what is done), the intention (why it is done) and the circumstances (the when, where, how it is done).
The first of these is the object of the will: To what is the will directed in the choice being made? This object must always be good or the act is immoral at its root. What would be the object in voting for an imperfect candidate? It would be to limit the evil that a more extreme candidate would do.
St. Thomas Aquinas enunciated this principle in the Summa Theologiae, where he noted that the object of the will's choice is the possible good, not the impossible good (ST I-II q13, a5). Applying this principle, Blessed Pope John Paul II taught in Evangelium Vitae (73) that it is legitimate for a legislator to vote for a more restrictive law regarding abortion over a less restrictive law. He wrote: "This does not in fact represent an illicit cooperation with an unjust law, but rather a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil aspects, in order to prevent worse legislation from being adopted."
This was not a new teaching by John Paul or applicable solely to legislators, but the application of long-standing principles of moral theology.
Concerning democratic voting, the Jesuit moralist Father Henry Davis wrote in the 1930s, "It is sinful to vote for the enemies of religion or liberty, except to exclude a worse candidate, or unless compelled by fear of great personal harm, relatively greater than the public harm at stake."
This brings us to the second and third elements, the intention and the circumstances.
If the object of the act is to limit the evil that would occur if the worse candidate, or legislation, succeeded, then the intention must be predominately directed to that object. It should not be primarily to lesser purposes, such as keeping a party in power, aiding this group or that or to some personal advantage derived from policy choices. When so much attention is focused on the economy, as important as it is, authentic concern for the common good begins with defending the non-negotiable values upon which a morally, politically and economically healthy society depends.
Circumstances Matter
Finally, the circumstances can also determine whether we can choose the lesser evil.
Father Davis affirmed this in noting that such a vote is justified, made morally possible, by the need to exclude a worse candidate — one whom he places among the "enemies of religion and liberty." Other theologians of the period speak of "enemies of morality."
Together, these categories are reminiscent of Pope Benedict XVI's non-negotiables (human life, marriage and family, religious liberty).
This is likewise consistent with Blessed John Paul's analysis of the legislator's predicament. Circumstances can create a compelling reason to vote for the imperfect candidate, the so-called lesser of two evils.
In doing so, the Pope tells us, our "absolute personal opposition" to the evil the candidate does embrace must be known. In this way, our true motive is seen and the scandal of appearing to vote for evil is undermined.
It is therefore quite clear from the moral theology tradition and specific magisterial teaching that a Catholic may vote for a candidate who does not wholly embrace Catholic teaching on the non-negotiable issues.
This can be done:
in order to limit the evil that would result if a worse candidate on these issues were elected;
provided that this is predominately the intention of voting (other good but lesser motives may also be present); and
that the other candidate is indeed worse, and any scandal caused by the appearance of voting for evil is corrected, such as by explaining Catholic teaching and one's full adherence to it.
Colin Donovan, STL, is vice president for theology at EWTN.
He can be heard on EWTN Radio's
Open Line Fridays from 3-5pm.


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Although you'll always be kept updated on your child's progress, teachers complete formal family reports three times annually, in the fall, winter and spring. One of the most exciting facets of our family communication toolbox is the conference with your child's teacher. While families are encouraged to connect with teachers at any time with questions or concerns, conferences offer a dedicated time to review the family report and identify areas of improvement and mastery.
At our schools, family boards are truly a wealth of information. There you'll find the weekly lesson plan and skill sheet, learning outcomes for the year, Spanish vocabulary we're working on, and more. It's a real-time way to keep up with what's happening in your child's classroom.


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A federal jury in California on Friday recommended that Apple be awarded more than $1 billion in damages after finding Samsung was guilty of "willful" violations of a number of Apple's patents in the creation of its own mobile products.
The jury did not recommend awarding Samsung any money in its counterclaims that Apple had violated some of its patents. The judge and lawyers from both Apple and Samsung continued to discuss the jury forms late Friday afternoon.
"This is a huge win for Apple," Mark Lemley, a Stanford law professor, said over e-mail. The award "is just large enough to make it the largest surviving patent verdict in history."
In aftermarket trading, Apple stock jumped more than $12 a share, to more than $675 a share.
Samsung said the verdict should be viewed "as a loss for the American consumer."
"It will lead to fewer choices, less innovation, and potentially higher prices," the company said in a written statement. "It is unfortunate that patent law can be manipulated to give one company a monopoly over rectangles with rounded corners, or technology that is being improved every day by Samsung and other companies.
"Consumers have the right to choices, and they know what they are buying when they purchase Samsung products. This is not the final word in this case or in battles being waged in courts and tribunals around the world, some of which have already rejected many of Apple's claims. Samsung will continue to innovate and offer choices for the consumer."
Apple praised the court for "sending a loud and clear message that stealing isn't right."
"The mountain of evidence presented during the trial showed that Samsung's copying went far deeper than even we knew," the company said in a statement.
An issue still to be decided is whether to grant injunctions that could prevent Samsung from selling products that infringe on Apple's patents. Koh wanted both sides to be ready for a hearing on the matter in two weeks, but Samsung's team argued that wasn't enough time. A hearing then was scheduled for September 20.
Apple had asked for $2.7 billion in damages, claiming that Samsung "ripped off" its iPad and iPhone designs. Samsung countersued Apple for infringing on five of its patents and asked for $519 million.
A nine-person jury spent just two and a half days puzzling out its final verdict, with weeks of notes and memories of testimony, 109 pages of jury instructions, and boxes of evidence including a collection of contested smartphones and tablets as their guide.
The jurors had to complete a complicated 20-page verdict form filled with charts and yes or no answers to suss out exactly which device violated what patents and which companies were responsible. Finally, they had to do the calculations to determine the final damages amounts.
Each side was given 30 minutes to go over the form and search for inconsistencies. Judge Koh and Samsung spotted a problem with the damages amount for a Galaxy Tab model. After being sent back to the jury for reconsideration, the total amount of damages was bumped down by about $2.5 million, to $1,049,343,540.
After the trial was over, all nine jurors opted to leave through a back door of the courthouse to avoid speaking with the mass of reporters waiting at the front entrance.
The lawsuit is the largest yet in the ongoing worldwide patent brawl between the two companies, which itself is just one battle in Apple's war against Google's Android mobile operating system. On August 24, a South Korean court found that both parties had infringed on each other's patents, banning the sale of the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, two iPad models and Samsung's Galaxy S2.
The Korean court ordered Apple to pay Samsung $35,000 and Samsung to pay Apple $22,000.
Source: CNN


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This is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. I'm Michel Martin. We're going to start the program today by talking about another front in the debate over income inequality. It's become a major focus of President Obama and many other Democrats and progressives. Specifically, the president has been pushing for ways to help lower-income workers get raises and for the long-term unemployed to get more help. Now the White House is raising the issue of overtime pay - who gets it and who doesn't. On Thursday, the president said he is asking the Labor Department to rewrite the federal rules about who qualifies for overtime pay. The White House says the current rules are often abused and need an update. Here's the president.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: If you're working hard, you're barely making ends meet, you should be paid overtime, period, because working Americans have struggled through stagnant wages for too long. Every day, I get letters from folks who just feel like they're treading water. No matter how hard they're working, they're putting in long hours. They're working harder and harder just to get by, but it's always at the end of the month real tight.
MARTIN: We wanted to know more about just what the rules are and what the president wants to do and what the other arguments are in this area. So we're joined once again by Marilyn Geewax. She is a senior business editor here at NPR. Welcome back, Marilyn.
MARILYN GEEWAX, BYLINE: Hi, Michel.
MARTIN: Also joining, Sudeep Reddy. He is an economics editor at The Wall Street Journal. Welcome back to you as well.
SUDEEP REDDY: Great to be here.
MARTIN: So, Marilyn, like I said, we want to know what the current rules are and what does the president want to do. So is there kind of a general understanding of who's eligible for overtime and who isn't, and how does the president want the rules to change?
GEEWAX: Yes, all of this goes back all the way to the Great Depression in the 1930's actually. Congress decided to set certain basic rules for how the workplace should function. And one of the things they decided then was that we'd have a 40-hour workweek. And if you were an hourly worker and your boss asked you to stay more than 40 hours, you should get time and a half. But there were exemptions put into this for people who were considered executives, supervisors and managers. And those rules get updated from time to time. It doesn't take an act of Congress.
The Labor Department can update those rules. That was last done in 2004. And under those rules that were established during the Bush administration, if you make $455 a week or more, you could be considered a manager. And if you were - I mean, that's the pay cut off, but then there's also other rules, which is that at least part of your job is supervisory. So what that could end up looking like is you're a 19-year-old shift supervisor at a fast food restaurant overseeing a group of three or four 16-year-olds and you make $24,000 a year, you're considered an executive. And a lot of...
MARTIN: On the other - on the other hand, though, you could be making a very great deal more than that...
GEEWAX: Yes.
MARTIN: ...But be in a demand field where people can call you up at any time. Conversely, you could be a person who gets overtime, but you have kind of control over your own workflow. So there's a lot of things that have changed in the economy over the recent years. So what does the president want to do specifically?
GEEWAX: Yes, it can be complicated - who's really a manager, who's not. But a lot of workers argue that, really, people who are being called supervisors by their employers are really just taking the trash out after the store closes. They're sweeping the floor. Some people really, really are executives or they really are supervisors, and some people just are kind of glorified cleanup.
MARTIN: OK, so how does the president want to change this?
GEEWAX: So his goal is to redefine these rules. Now it's not exactly clear what he would do, but he obviously wants to raise that $455 level, perhaps, to as high, some people say, as $50,000 year. In other words, if you make less than $50,000 a year, even if you have some supervisory positions, you still should be able to get overtime. And they may redefine what - how much of your job has to be supervisory for you to be qualified as that. So it's a matter of rewriting the rules. It could take a very long time - maybe a year, maybe a year and a half or more because these are very technical things.
And as we discussed, there's a lot of shades of gray in there. So this is something yet to be worked out. But a lot of workers feel this is the right direction to go because there are really, literally, millions of people who could be covered by this.
MARTIN: Now I understand that there's already been some resistance to this and I just want to play a clip of tape from - this is House Speaker John Boehner.
REP. JOHN BOEHNER: If you don't have a job, you don't qualify for overtime. So what do you get out of it? You get nothing. The president's policies are making it difficult for employers to expand employment. And until the president's policies get out the way, employers are going to continue to sit on their hands.
MARTIN: So, Sudeep, let me ask you this question - is there specific resistance to this idea of examining the rules around overtime or are people like John Boehner just, in general, critics of the president's philosophy on some of these issues?
REDDY: This - it's more the latter. This is the never-ending tension on these issues. The White House is trying to ask a much larger question, and that's why are so many people in America working so much harder than they were before, being more productive than they were before and not really rising up the income ladder like they might have before? And that is the central organizing philosophy of a lot of what the White House is looking at in the push for the minimum wage, in this overtime rule, in the debate about education. Now to be fair, the GOP is also climbing into this debate.
And people like Marco Rubio, who's a potential presidential candidate, they all see the politics of this. They want to come in and say, well, yes, people do need opportunity, they do need to rise up, but the way to do that is to not put more burdens on businesses and to create more freedom for businesses to be able to do what they want to do.
MARTIN: Well, that was going to be my question - is their general objection that the focus should not be on income inequality per se, but on expanding employment? I mean, that their argument - it's just the wrong set of priorities and if those two conflicts, the focus should be on reducing unemployment? Or is their general - and I guess what I want to know is - what's their better idea?
REDDY: Their idea is to come at this from another direction. The White House, the Obama administration, has tried for years to do what's called increasing aggregate demand to boost the economy through the stimulus, through other support to try to give businesses some freedom through cutting back on certain regulations - they just, in the eyes of a lot of Republican lawmakers, haven't cut enough. And so the resistance here is coming more from people - from lawmakers and from businesses who say enough is enough. Most American employers feel like they're under assault already and not just because of anything that's happened over the last few years.
The amount of paperwork it takes to start a business and to run a business and to keep it sustained in this era at the federal level. at the state level, at the local level is enormous. And they have to hire all sorts of people just to keep going on that front. They don't want more rules and more policies that are going to - that could hold them back when they're just trying to get by as businesses too.
MARTIN: You know, here's a related story, Marilyn - and if you're just joining us, I'm speaking with Marilyn Geewax - business editor here at NPR - and Sudeep Reddy, that's who was speaking just now. He's economics editor at The Wall Street Journal. Marilyn, I wanted to ask you about this related story - a group of workers are suing McDonald's for underpaying them. They're alleging that McDonald's made them come to work, but didn't let them clock in until customers came into the store, among other things. And I just wanted to ask - what do you call that? And is there some precedent for this kind of complaint by workers?
GEEWAX: People are using the phrase wage theft. There's - a lot of unions and workers are saying that if you come into a convenience store and you steal a jug of milk, you could be arrested for theft, but if the boss tells you to work off the clock, they're stealing your labor but that doesn't count as a crime. And so there are groups of workers who are trying to push some lawsuits. This is happening in California, New York and Michigan - the workers at McDonald's franchises are saying they're being asked to come in by their bosses maybe an hour before they actually go on the clock because they say, well, there's not enough customers so just sit here and, you know, just hang out until I need you. But you're required to be there, you just don't get paid until the boss decides that OK, now you're in the game.
MARTIN: Is this the first high-profile lawsuit of this type? Obviously McDonald's is such a large employer that things that occur get attention, but is this whole issue - I've heard a lot of kind of think tank discussion...
GEEWAX: Right.
MARTIN: ...Among labor union workers about kind of wage theft. But is this the first time this has kind of become a broader discussion that's entered the legal - the law, you know, the realm of the courts?
GEEWAX: Well, this whole issue, this phrase of wage theft, is getting more traction. There are more suits being filed around the country. And I think this one is the first to get a lot of visibility, but workers have always filed complaints saying that they've been asked to do things off the clock. And, you know, this is not a new problem. You know, decades ago, I worked in a grocery store where I'd clock out at 6 p.m. but then I was expected to start sweeping the floor and I wouldn't often get out until 6:30, but my pay ended.
So this isn't something new, but I think that in this context where - you know, what my solution to that was I quit and went to work at a department store. When there are more jobs, you have more options. But in this economy, when there are more than 10 million people unemployed, a lot of folks don't have options so they end up taking whatever is dished out. And this is where the pushback is coming where they're saying it's time for workers to say no I'm not going to stay after hours and sweep the floor. I want to be paid for my work.
MARTIN: Speaking of the unemployed that - members of the Senate say, Sudeep, that they've reached a bipartisan deal that would renew federal unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed, remembering that these expired, you know, earlier, you know, this year. And I just wanted to ask, you know, what's the latest news there? Is there a sense that this deal is going to hold and does this foretell anything else about - we began our conversation talking about the kind of the fraction - the friction between the parties around this economic issues. Is this something that foretells agreement on other things?
REDDY: This should be a heartening sign that lawmakers from both parties do see this as an important issue. We thought, a few months ago when these benefits expired, that the millions of people were sitting out there on the sidelines would just be forgotten. And at least, whether they have made their voices heard or people close to them have made their voices heard, lawmakers are at least realizing that this is a group that needs to be addressed. People do need help getting out of an awful situation of long-term unemployment. It's still a long road ahead. You do require the House to step up and pass something.
MARTIN: Is the House amenable to this?
REDDY: The House has sent signals that it might be open to doing something if it's paid for. And this looks like one way way it could be paid for. But the politics of the House are obviously a lot more difficult, and they tend not to be as productive as the politics of the Senate. But I don't think anyone this year expected anything meaningful to come out of Congress at all. So to see glimmers of hope is at least a positive sign.
MARTIN: Sudeep Reddy is an economics editor for the Wall Street Journal. Marilyn Geewax is a seniors business editor for NPR. They were both kind of to join us once again in our Washington, D.C. studios to bring us up-to-date on these issues. Thank you both so much for speaking with us.
GEEWAX: Oh, you're welcome.
REDDY: Thanks, Michel. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.


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World's Smallest Liquid Droplets Created in Atom Smasher
Scientists think they've created the smallest drops of liquid ever — the size of only three to five protons.
The droplets were made inside the world's largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland, where particles are sped up to near light speed and then smashed together. When researchers collided protons with lead nuclei, they were surprised to find that the result was teeny, tiny droplets of liquid.
These liquid drops are miniscule, at about 1/100,000 the size of a hydrogen atom or 1/100,000,000 the size of a typical virus. [Dazzling Droplets: Photos Reveal Mini Worlds]
The researchers consider the droplets liquid because they flow more like a liquid than like any other state of matter.
"With this discovery, we seem to be seeing the very origin of collective behavior," Vanderbilt University physicist Julia Velkovska said in a statement. "Regardless of the material that we are using, collisions have to be violent enough to produce about 50 subatomic particles before we begin to see collective, flowlike behavior," added Velkovska, who is a co-convener of the heavy-ion program of the CMS detector, the LHC experiment where the droplets were made.
In fact, the droplets appear to be tiny bits of one of the hottest liquids known, called quark-gluon plasma. This plasma, essentially a soup of quarks and gluons (the subatomic ingredients of the protons and neutrons that make up atomic nuclei), has been made at LHC and other particle accelerators before.
When quark-gluon plasma was first discovered in the early 2000s inside the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, physicists initially thought it would behave as a gas does. Instead, they found it had liquid properties. Scientists think this plasma represents the state of the whole universe just moments after it was born in the Big Bang, when the universe was extremely hot and dense.
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The first man-made quark-gluon plasma was produced by smashing two gold nuclei together, and was later recreated with collisions of two lead nuclei. The CMS researchers wanted to test whether quark-gluon plasma could also be made by colliding a lead nucleus with a proton, which has only 1/208 the mass of lead; they expected these impacts would not be energetic enough to produce the plasma.
"The proton-lead collisions are something like shooting a bullet through an apple, while lead-lead collisions are more like smashing two apples together: A lot more energy is released in the latter," Velkovska said.
The results of the experiment were unexpected. In about 5 percent of collisions — those that were most violent — enough energy was released around the "bullet hole" where the proton smashed through the lead that some of the protons and neutrons there melted. This material seemed to form droplets of liquid about one-tenth the size of the quark-gluon plasma batches created by lead-lead and gold-gold impacts.
Quark-gluon plasma is still a mysterious form of matter, and the scientists can't be absolutely sure yet that what they saw were liquid droplets. Further tests should help differentiate between that interpretation and other possible explanations of the results, the researchers said.
Velkovska and her colleagues detailed their findings in a paper submitted to the journal Physics Letters B.
Follow Clara Moskowitz on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.


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ILCA-99M2 - AF 24/2.8 NEW |Compatibility Information
- The [Lens Comp] (Lens Compensation) function does not work.
- Depending on shooting conditions, the brightness of the picture may not be even.Set the [Front Curtain Shutter] function to [Off].
- When you record movies with autofocus, the operating noise of the lens may be recorded.
- Shake compensation is available with 3-axis(Pitch/Yaw/Roll) by SteadyShot INSIDE.
- There is no support for hybrid phase detection AF.


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The decision stack: how to make the right financial choices
Let's say I'm sitting at a coffee shop waiting on a friend to arrive. I have a warm cup of something delicious on the table in front of me and I'm reading a website on my phone.
It's a simple story, right? However, it's one built upon a stack of decisions with financial implications.
Why did we choose to go out at all?
Why did we choose this particular coffee shop?
How did I travel to this shop, and how will I travel home?
Why did I choose to get the beverage sitting in front of me?
Why did I choose (or not choose) to get a food item as well?
Why did I choose to have a cell phone at all?
Why did I choose to have this specific phone?
Why did I choose to have this cell phone provider?
Why did I choose to have the data plan that I'm using?
That simple little scene rests upon these nine financial decisions – and likely upon many more, as these just happened to be the more obvious ones. All of those decisions are adding – or subtracting – dollars from that simple moment.
Most of the questions were answered at a time and a place far away from that coffee shop scene. I decided on my cell phone, the provider, and the data plan when I was shopping for such things. We chose to go out days in advance when we got ahold of each other and concocted our plan.
In fact, the only decision I actually made inside the coffee shop was what to eat and what to drink.
Yet, in order to be at that shop dawdling on my phone, I've invested money in the trip to the shop and I'll have to invest more to get home. I had to buy the cell phone and the cell phone plan.
When I start looking at situations through this kind of "decision stack" lens, the first thing I like to do is deconstruct. Which elements can I take away from this picture and still leave the large part of what I enjoy about this situation?
If I didn't have that cell phone with the data plan, I'd probably be reading a newspaper that the coffee shop provided or a book that I brought with me. Would this really reduce my enjoyment of that moment?
If I didn't order a coffee, I might be sitting there with a cup of water in front of me. Would that have reduced my enjoyment of the moment?
What if I had simply invited my friend over for coffee at my kitchen table? I would have saved on the cost of going to the coffee shop and home from the shop. Would that have reduced the enjoyment? This might have made my friend somewhat less likely to come due to the change in location, though.
In the end, I recognized that the real core of what I enjoy about this moment is the time spent with the friend. The cell phone with the data plan? Not necessary. The coffee? Not necessary. The trip to the coffee shop? Not necessary unless it makes the meeting with the friend possible.
All of those elements are things I choose to add into the core experience. I don't need coffee or a car or a cell phone to enjoy my time with a friend. Those are just extra expenses I'm choosing to add into the equation.
One of the biggest reasons that people end up getting trapped under a huge pile of expenses – and I'm certainly guilty of this as well – is that we start to overlook that big stack of decisions. We compress many of them together and tell ourselves that this is the baseline "normal."
Is it? Does it have to be that way? Why?
I certainly enjoy the convenience of having a cell phone with a data plan, but I also recognize that it's a comfort. There are many situations where it's convenient and useful, but there are no situations where it's required.
I certainly enjoy having a coffee once in a while, but I recognize that a coffee at a coffee shop is purely a comfort. I would enjoy life if there was a cup of water on the table in front of me instead.
Whenever I make the decision to have these comforts, I'm choosing to put aside other comforts in life. I cannot "have it all."
Because of that, every once in a while, it's worthwhile to just stand back and look at the decision stack of the everyday moments in my life and question all of those decision. I just take apart an ordinary moment like this and look at all of the decisions I've made that make up that moment.
Are each of those decisions the right one? Would the money I've invested in that decision be better used somewhere else?
Most of the time, I'll end up deciding that I was making the right call – and you probably will, too.
Sometimes, though, I'll begin to see that I'm throwing money into a creature comfort that isn't really doing a whole lot for me and I'll realize that money could be used better somewhere else. Even if those discoveries are rare, the time spent figuring it out and correcting that decision is almost always worth it.
It's also worth it to recognize that I really could live without many of the comforts I enjoy. When it comes down to it, most of the core things I truly enjoy and value in my life are free or are highly inexpensive. I enjoy conversations with friends. I enjoy reading books from the library or playing a board game that's already in my home with a friend. I enjoy spending time with my children. I enjoy listening to the radio, particularly NPR. I enjoy writing and solving puzzles and exercising a little.
The comforts I choose to take on add to my life, but they're not irreplaceable. My life doesn't fall apart without them. The core things I value still remain.
In the end, I turn the question to you. Take a moment and tear apart the decision stack for a moment in your own life. What decisions have you made that make up the details of that moment? How many of those decisions were good ones that you still stand by? (Most of them, likely.) Which ones do you regret? (One or two, possibly.) How can you fix them the next time around?
The post The Decision Stack appeared first on The Simple Dollar.


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Welcome to TheGreenAge
The UK's foremost energy saving advice portal
In the face of climate change, fuel poverty and a looming UK energy shortage, energy efficiency is more important than ever. We need to find clever ways to cut our energy consumption in the UK, which will benefit homeowners and the planet alike.
TheGreenAge has loads of simple tips to help you lower your household bills and improve your quality of life at the same time. Our focus is making sure everything we do is clear and accessible.
We have also built a network of tradespeople, so that we can recommend only those we trust. Whether you need a new boiler, or better insulation, our installers are the best in the business.
View tutorial videos, speak to experts over the phone or keep up to date with the latest industry developments. If you have a question about green technology, saving resources, or keeping your house warm, you will find the answer here.


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Previous: Complex packages, Up: Getting started [Contents]
GSRC provides build recipes for several hundred packages. So, how can
you find or discover a package relevant to your needs? Fortunately,
the build recipes are described by metadata, which can help you in
searching. For example, you can use standard GNU tools such as
to search the text of the build recipes for key words.
A template script is installed, called gsrc, that provides a simple means for searching for packages via keywords, printing information about a package, and printing its location. Since gsrc is installed to the same location as executables installed by GSRC, if you have set up your environment to use GSRC packages (see Setting your environment), you can use the gsrc script to access GSRC from outside the GSRC directory.
For example, here we search for an editor, discover the program moe, read information about it, and then install it.
$ gsrc search editor gnu/denemo 1.0.0 A music notation editor gnu/ed 1.7 An implementation of the standard Unix editor gnu/emacs 24.3 The extensible, customizable text editor gnu/global 6.2.8 A source code tag system gnu/gnusound 0.7.5 A multitrack sound editor gnu/leg Libraries for game engines and game development gnu/less 451 A pager gnu/mc 4.6.1 A two-paned file manager gnu/mit-scheme 9.1.1 An implementation of the Scheme programming language gnu/moe 1.5 A simple-to-use text editor gnu/nano 2.3.2 A simple text editor gnu/sed 4.2.2 A text stream editor $ gsrc info moe Name: Moe Version: 1.5 URL: http://www.gnu.org/software/moe Description: GNU Moe is a powerful-but-simple-to-use text editor. It works in a modeless manner, and features an intuitive set of key-bindings that assign a degree of "severity" to each key; for example key combinations with the Alt key are for harmless commands like cursor movements while combinations with the Control key are for commands that will modify the text. Moe features multiple windows, unlimited undo/redo, unlimited line length, global search and replace, and more. Status: not installed $ make -C $(gsrc path moe) install
If you view the gsrc script's code, you will find that it is very simple and, indeed, can be used as a template to be expanded to include the functionality that you desire.
More robust searching can be performed with the file
MANIFEST.rec. If you have acquired GSRC by downloading it as a
tar.gz archive, this file should be present in the package's
root directory. If you have acquired GSRC by cloning its code
repository, you will have to generate this file. Simply navigate to
the package's root directory and enter make manifest
; you will
want to run this every time you pull updates to the repository. The
resulting file is a recfile, which can be queried as a database
using GNU Recutils, which must be installed (see recsel in Recutils).
Previous: Complex packages, Up: Getting started [Contents]


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Last Saturday, about 10 of us got together for
some fun fiber chatter-ee and eats.
I wish I had taken more pictures!! I will have to
be more diligent behind the lens, next time.
There were 6 different spinning wheels, someone using
a drop spindle, a couple of people were knitting too.
We did show and tell...each object shared would
garner a ticket to win...there were 4 little goodie bags to win.
Here one of the ladies was sharing a knitted
purse/satchel that she was going to felt.
And, here are some very fun and whimsical
"thigh" high striped socks.
(sorry the picture is so blurry)
We ate some yummy vegetable chili and
had chocolate dipped banana and apple slices.
I learned soooo much from all of the talented
knitters/spinners that shared that day!
==== === === === ====
This is some great fiber purchased at
Oregon Flock and Fiber this last September
4 oz of roving
50% Merino ~ 25% Bamboo ~ 25% Tussah Silk
spun single ply...eventually to be 2 ply.
I'll show the plied yarn... in a future post (hopefully!)
The thought is to make a small neck scarf. It's
so soft and even tho, it will be light weight,
it will be very warm.
==== === === === ====
Did EWE know?
Sheep were domesticated 10,000 years ago in
Central Asia, but it wasn't until 3,500 B.C. that man
learned to spin wool.


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The original game changer! SPANK Industries' SPIKE Pedals changed the world's concept of the benefits a flat pedal can offer and set the benchmark for top of the line value. The SPIKE Pedal's svelte 12mm thin forged alloy body not only maximizes pedaling clearance, but also grip and stability, by placing the rider's foot closer to the pedal axle.
Equipped with forged hollow-tapered chromoly steel axles, SPIKE Pedals offer unmatched ultimate strength at just 420g per set. 20 steel pins in a virtual concavity configuration offer supreme grip without compromising platform thickness.
Oversized industrial sealed bearings and IGUS bushings guarantee exceptional durability and performance. Often imitated, the SPIKE's CNC chamfered leading edges deflect impact forces and bring and instantly recognizable edgy aesthetic that always turns heads.
- 12mm thin
- Massive 100x100mm platform
- ±420g/set (with full pin complement)
- Cold forged, CNC optimized alloy pedal body
- Cold forged chromoly steel axle
- Chamfered leading edges for improved clearance and reduced impact forces
- Chamfered side edges for improved cornering clearance
- Oversized sealed full compliment inboard industrial bearing
- Sealed outboard IGUS bushing
- 20 adjustable pins per pedal
- Full sized hex head pins improve durability and maintenance
- Inboard friction seal prevents contamination and reduces unwanted pedal spin
Part Numbers
Option | UPC | MPN | Store SKU |
Platform / Black | 04717760764900 | E020001AN120SPK | 210000092730 |
Platform / Blue | 4717760764917 | E020001AN130SPK | 210000076358 |


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Bay lighting applies to lighting fixtures with high wattage requirements that are typically installed in large areas with high ceilings. Bay lighting is designed to provide bright illumination over a large space when installed in higher ceiling positions, which is why they require a higher power wattage to create the same level of light as that generated by normal ceiling lights in offices and other rooms. High visibility is important, especially when working in warehouses or storage facilities for both the safety of employees and high accuracy when picking items from shelving units. Depending on the height of the space you are lighting, you may require low bay lighting or high bay lighting. We have both fixture heights available in our range of bay lighting products, which features industry-leading brands such as LEDVANCE, Philips Lighting, Sylvania and our own brand RS PRO. For more info, see our high bay lighting guide.
The key to distinguishing which bay lighting fixture you require is knowing the height of the area you wish to install the lights into. High bay lights are typically installed in areas with a ceiling height of 20 feet or greater, whereas low bay lights are used for ceiling heights between 12 and 20 feet high.
Bay lighting is used in large indoor spaces, such as sports gymnasiums, warehouses, hangars, factory floors. performance halls and exhibition spaces. Bay lights provide bright illumination for these spaces which could not be achieved with standard lighting. Whether high bay lights or low bay fixtures are used depends on the height of the ceiling.


text:
Credit Refund
Credits can be refunded to your account in any of the following situations:
For cases when your Correspondent Member had been reported for inappropriate activities, and (or) was found on an anti-scam site.
In such a case, we may, at our sole and unfettered discretion, issue a partial refund to the Member, who had informed us of such Correspondent Member's inappropriate activity by providing incontrovertible evidence of same.
In the event your Correspondent Member is no longer interested in the Services and (or) requested his/her profile to be deleted.
In such a case, our customer support administrators shall review the correspondence between you and the deactivated Correspondent Member and shall have the right to make a decision, in their sole discretion, with respect to the issuance of refund back to you.
Notwithstanding the above, we customarily issue no more than 10 credits back to the Member for such the Member's last letter to the deactivated Correspondent Member.
Please note that in the event a Correspondent Member had found his/her match, and same is not you, you shall not be entitled to any refund with respect to this correspondence with such Correspondent Member.
For a completely or partially poor quality service:
Credits may be refunded in other circumstances, once the validity of your claim is accepted by us.
Monetary Refund
In the following circumstances you are entitled to request a monetary refund:
If it is proven that your card was used fraudulently on our website your money will be refunded. Should you suspect credit card fraud, please contact us immediately and we will investigate.
For erroneous purchases made by you, provided that these are not systematic requests (one time only):
If the purchased credits are not spent, then you are entitled to a full refund.
If the purchased credits are spent partially, then you are entitled to a partial refund.
In case we terminated your membership for any reason, with or without explanation.
In such a case, you shall receive a refund, pro rata, of any paid but unused fees that we have received from you.
If your membership was terminated by reason of violation of our Terms & Conditions and (or) Privacy Policy, or at your request, you will not be entitled for any refund of unused fees.
Please note that unused credits (excluding subscription credits) expire 90 days after their purchase date. Unused subscription credits expire at the end of one-month subscription period and will not be moved to the next subscription period. Used credits are non-refundable, except as provided in this Agreement or Safety and Security Policy.
The money refunded will NOT exceed the amount paid for a particular service or product.
How to Request Refund
If you wish to request a refund for any of the above reasons, please contact us via our Customer Support or Live Support. Once your request is approved, you will receive a refund, as set forth above.
Please also note should you chargeback any transactions billed to your account, we may be required to disclose any and/or all private communications sent/received by you through our Service in order to provethe validity of the charges billed to your account our Privacy Policy will therefore not restrain any such disclosures.


text:
Zam I Am
Well-Known Hunter
DID YOU SEE IT? Man, for all of us who know about how to do helmets, I was sooo shocked at the detailed vader helm that was pulled and the helmet cast that was pulled. Hubby and I were like, OMG, it came out like they didn't even have to paint the thing, and the mold was SOOO thin! It was awesome, and it was nice to see the same employment of some of the methods that DCB used for his Zam helm. Anything to minimize costs for us propmakers is AWESOME. It was just like whoa, shed some light on those processes! Really revolutionary. The cut away plastic machine hubby and I have seen before, but to see it on the LFL extra features was amazingly CLEAN. I would love to be a fly on that wall. Any other comments or someone who can shed light here on that process?


text:
Ocular Microformer
Ocular Microformer is a microformer which can terraform an area on a planet into an eyepatch mini biome. It has a chance to drop from Ancient Guardian bosses at the end of Ancient Vault dungeons.
When activated a small glowing gem will pulse energy in the center of the microformer. After some time the area around it will gradually change. Eventually the gem color will fade, indicating the microformer has been used up.
Terraforming only works on the surface of a planet, and once activated the microformer cannot be picked back up. After it's been activated, dislodging it using a mining tool will destroy it - but it can be relocated before being activated. Terraforming an area will remove most of the natural biome objects, but will leave non-biome specific objects in the affected area intact.
- Version 1.2.0: Added
| |||||||
File Details


text:
Welcome to the beautiful Hostal El Punto – the most colourful and service-oriented Hostel in La Serena!
Discover our colonial house which offers you cozy and sunny courtyards to relax and enjoy your stay. The hostel staff is always concerned about your wellbeing.
Due to the central location of the Hostel, the "plaza de armas", the bus terminal and many sightseeing-attractions are within walking distance.
Currently there are no news items.


text:
By Scott W. Schwartz, Allissa Carter
[Printer Friendly] | [ Email us about these papers]Title: Association of Concert Bands, Inc Records, 1977-2019
Primary Creator: Association of Concert Bands (1977-2006)
Extent: 6.75 cubic feet
Arrangement: Organized in 4 series: Series 1, Administrative Files; Series 2, Financial Records; Series 3, Programming; and Series 4, Publications.
Date Acquired: 11/30/2006. More info below under Accruals.
Subjects: Association of Concert Bands, Band Musicians, Bands, Photographs
Formats/Genres: Financial Records, Motion Pictures/Videotapes, Papers, Sound Recordings
Languages: English
Consists of the business records of the Association of Concert Bands, Inc., including the organization's constitution and by-laws, meeting minutes, committee reports, records of past presidents and secretaries, financial records and annual accounting audits, annual convention programs and concert programs, photographs, sound recordings, audio-visual materials, awards and ACB publications documenting the creation and maintenance of the Association of Concert Bands between 1977 and 2011.
The Association of Concert Bands of America (ACBA) was founded in August 1977 as a not-for-profit corporation. Renamed the Association of Concert Bands (ACB), the Association remains a nonprofit New York state corporation. ACB's members include bands, individuals and corporations who are uniquely dedicated and equipped to serve the needs of adult instrumental musicians who perform in and lead community bands.
The mission of ACB is to encourage and foster adult concert community, municipal, and civic bands and to promote the performance of the highest quality traditional and contemporary literature for band. In addition to representing people interested in adult concert bands, ACB's philosophy is manifested in various projects and goals, such as the Band Builder's Manual for information on the establishment, funding, development, maintenance, and promotion of bands in the world community.
The Association holds an annual convention where directors, band members, managers, industry leaders, administrators, and board members assemble to exchange personal views, share experiences, and benefit from educational seminars and musical performances.
Repository: The Sousa Archives and Center for American Music
Accruals: Additions were added to the collection on September 2010, December 2013, and January 2016 through transfers from Delbert Eisch. An additional box of papers were added on September 7, 2022 through a transfer from Raoul Camus. An addition from Nancy Michalek came on July 31, 2023. A addition was added on February 13, 2024.
Access Restrictions: None.
Acquisition Source: Association of Concert Bands, Inc. through Del Eisch, ACB Historian
Acquisition Method: Deposit agreement. For further details consult the collection control file. The term of the original agreement shall be from July 1, 2006 to June 30, 2009. This agreement may be extended for additional periods under the same terms or such other terms as may mutually be agreed upon between Association of Concert Bands, Inc. and the Sousa Archives and Center for American Music. The agreement was extented in March 2011 for an indefinite time until the Association of Concert Bands terminates this agreement.


text:
Your privacy is very important to us, so we have purposely created a site that does not collect any unnecessary data.
We encourage parents to use the site with their children. While the site is not directed at children, all content is G-rated. This makes it safe for Great-Grandparents too.
We collect your email address, first and last name and zip code. That is all. We do not sell or share our list with anyone else.
We do not use "Cookies" (data collection) on the site, except where necessary to facilitate the shopping cart memory. This allows the cart to remember what you have placed in it so that you can buy multiple items. This is similar to what eBay and Amazon use, only our cookie does not store your private data (name, address, etc) or your payment details, (credit card numbers).
We collect anonymous web statistics via Google Stats. This alerts us to sudden increases in traffic and helps us avoid a server crash. It also helps us see what general areas of the country our traffic is coming from. It does not tell us names and addresses. Only IP addresses which are linked to your ISP's location.In addition, web stats help our marketing team see which shows are popular so we can deliver more of what you like.


text:
Washington Post sale signals shift
Published 12:00 am Saturday, August 10, 2013
Newspapers have become the bullied school kid of American journalism.
Meaning that, as a small child will surrender his lunch money to bigger kids and spend the noon hour watching other people eat, so have newspapers wound up in the ignominious position of surrendering our product — information — to Internet and cable outlets and watching them reap handsome profits from aggregating and re-reporting it while we furlough employees and cut back home delivery. They take our product and kick our butts with it.
So it was with no small interest that I received last week's news of the sale of The Washington Post. After 80 years of stewardship by the storied Graham family, the Post will become the property of Jeff Bezos, the man who founded Amazon.com. Sale price: $250 million.
But what happened last week represents more than a transfer of assets. No, it embodies a generational shift that will, let us fervently hope, resurrect an industry that has somehow managed the odd paradox of being vital, yet moribund.
To put that another way: One gets tired of providing the boots with which someone else kicks one's backside.
If that state of affairs represents a humiliation for the newspaper business, it should be regarded warily even by those who draw their paychecks from other industries. They should ask themselves what will happen to the electronic media that use and aggregate our product in the event we are no longer around to create it. And if that information is no longer available anywhere, what happens to the people who need and depend on it?
It is not often remarked upon, not much appreciated and little understood, but newspapers — yes, I mean the old-fashioned business of printing on dead trees accounts of things that happened yesterday — are the foundation of American journalism.
Think about it: How often do you see a cable news station, local TV news outlet or blog originate — not aggregate or opine upon, but originate — some story of major local significance not involving violent crime? As a rule — yes, there are exceptions — they don't do that. They are not designed to.
Cable puts its resources into national and international coverage so you need never suffer for lack of information about Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin and various real housewives.
Local TV news puts its resources into the "Breaking News" graphics they use to announce seemingly every armed robbery, house fire and freeway pileup.
Bloggers don't have resources.
Yes, when the governor takes kickbacks, when the mayor stuffs the ballot box, when the innocent man winds up on death row, the story may migrate to one of those platforms. But you can be reasonably sure it will originate in a newspaper that takes seriously its obligation to watchdog journalism.
Such papers are in trouble neither because watchdog journalism ceased to be critical, nor because people stopped reading or needing it. Truth is, we have more readers than ever. Unfortunately, most of them pay nothing for the privilege because they read online and we've failed to figure out how to leverage that popularity to support our (very expensive) operations.
Hence, the hopes that are pinned on Bezos. As a man who revolutionized American retailing and became a digital pioneer in so doing, perhaps he has ideas those of us born and raised in the world of news on paper are incapable of having.
Perhaps he can help the Post — and by extension, the rest of us — keep our lunch money and more effectively monetize our product. Perhaps he can show us how to save journalism.
This, anyway, is my hope. If you regard an informed electorate as critical to the function of a democracy, it should be your hope, too.
Leonard Pitts is a columnist for The Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132. Readers may contact him via e-mail at firstname.lastname@example.com.