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A painful question we parents have to ask ourselves sometimes is "does my child need speech therapy?" While it's painful but you should not ignore the important of getting your child a speech therapy if he/she really need one. Delay in tackling a child speech and language development impairment can cause severe consequences down the road when your child grows older.
Look for these milestones in the development of your child's speech and language before you start questioning whether if your kid needs a speech therapy.
How Your Child's Speech and Language Develops
Look for these milestones in the development of your child's speech and language before you start questioning whether if your kid needs a speech therapy.
At 18 months milestones
- Your baby can say 'no' correctly
- Use about ten words vocabulary
- Identifies things like rabbit, car, dog, cat, or doll
- Answers the what-is-this question
- Follows simple instructions (i.e, come here or take off shoe and etc)
At 2-year-old milestones
- Uses consonants in speech
- Identifies parts of her body when asked
- Strings two words together (i.e, ball gone or doggie come)
- Loves story time
- Can identify pictures in books
- Vocabulary of 50 words
- Sings simple nursery songs and says rhymes (i.e, twinkle twinkle little star)
At 3-year-old milestones
- Can do two things you ask for (i.e, go to your room and get socks)
- Understands yesterday and a week ago
- Pronounce consonants sound
- Makes conversation
- Uses some grammar
- Can make a longer sentence
- Says words with consonant endings clearly
- Have lots of questions (Yep!, brace yourself. Lot of questions is coming.)
At 4-year-old milestones
- Use sentences a lot more
- Have many questions (curiosity speed up at this age)
- Tells a short story (i.e, from a book they read)
- Can use more advance grammar
- Can pretend-play with other kids using words
- Can answer questions like 'about how' and 'who' and 'how many' and etc.
- Making friend with other kids become easier
At 5-year-old milestones
- Can understand why and when
- Can converse and make their thought known to you
- Can tell you how to use something
- Is learning reading
- Talks about anything (you will be surprised how much a kid can talk at this stage.)
- Talk about the past and the concept of tomorrow (i.e, they will request to go to the park tomorrow)
If you are seeing your child fall behind from these milestones by a great deal, or if he/she has difficulty or is frustrated at being unable to explain what he wants, it's always recommended to seek a Speech and Language Pathologist immediately. Very often a parent's instincts are correct so if you feel your child may need speech therapy, consult a doctor asap.
5 Signs That Your Child May Need Speech Therapy
My neighbor Brad's son was a quiet two and a half-year-old and Brad and his wife sensed something wasn't right and decided to take him to a speech and language pathologist. A few sessions with the expert and little Ned is now a chatterbox at 3 ½ yrs.
Look out for these five signs that your child may need speech therapy:
#1. Social interaction seems to be missing
See if your baby crosses these milestones:
- From 0 to 3 months the baby responds with smiles or coo-ing.
- 7 to 12 months babies make sounds and actions like clapping or pointing.
- 7 to 24 months babies are able to understand and respond to your talking.
#2. Sounds, gestures, or words are significantly reduced
By the time your baby is a year old he/she should be trying to make words. At 18 months they try to join two words together. If you feel your child says very few words or is not talking at all, consult a speech pathologist and ask whether your two-year-old may need speech therapy.
#3. You are having hard time to understand what your child is saying
By the time your baby is one and a half to 24 months you should be able to understand what he/she is saying.
#4. At 24 months baby should be able to join two words together
Your baby should be able to put words together from 18 months, but if by 3-year-old he still isn't able to say words like 'mommy come' or 'papa play,' consult a doctor if speech therapy is needed.
#5. You feel your child is struggling to make words or sounds
If your child has difficulty with easy consonants like "pa" or "ba" or "ma" at two years or if you have a three-year-old who can't make the harder sounds of 'G' or 'K', then she may have speech difficulties.
Causes of Delayed Speech or Language
There are many reasons can contribute to a baby to delayed in developing their speech and language skills. Here are some of the common mental and physical reasons for a baby slow at catching up with speech and language skill.
- Your child may need speech therapy if there is a physical problem in the roof of the mouth or the tongue and so words and sounds are not clear.
- Loss of hearing can cause a delay in speaking. Hearing loss may be because of an undiagnosed ear infection.
- Your child may have a learning disability. This may be overcome if caught early.
- Autism spectrum disorder or cerebral palsy can also cause delays in speaking and in language development.
The Difference Between Speech and Language
Speech is the vocal sounds that we make when we talk. Speech problems include stuttering and trouble pronouncing words and other sounds related issue.
By language, we mean the giving and receiving of information through talking, gestures or writing. When your child has language problems she may have trouble putting across her thoughts or in understanding what you say.
What Parents Can Do To Help Children With Speech And Language Disorder
At times, you find yourself looking for signs that your child may need speech therapy. Though speech and language development is dependent on inherited genes, a good and encouraging environment can go a long way in accelerating your child's development. Here are ways you can help your baby overcomes speech and language disorders:
- Do lots of talking, singing, hand gestures like clapping, waving can do wonders for your baby right from infancy.
- Reading to children is an excellent way to stimulate communication. You can start at six months with simple, colorful books with pictures and go on to books with activities for the child like petting or stroking (Pat The Bunny) to nursery rhymes. Rhyming can do wonder and helpful to a child global development. Then go on to little stories. You will often see that your kids memorize stories they love!
- Keep talking throughout the day. Talk about what you are doing - cooking or cleaning, point out things as you travel to the grocery store and continue to point out and name things when you shop, eat out, or enjoy the outdoors. Listen to your baby try to imitate you or your words and keep encouraging him/her with smiles, enthusiasm and questions. Keep it simple.
How Can A Speech-Language Pathologist Help Your Child?
Early intervention is often the key to curing a child's speech or language problems. So it's alright to approach a doctor if you feel that your child is not reaching the developmental milestones as expected.
The Speech and Language Pathologis t (SLP) that my neighbor Brad went to diagnosed that Ned had a hearing problem. Soon little Ned was using a hearing-aid like a pro. He exceeded expectations on all other milestone marks after that!
The SLP will use standard tests and measurements to come to a conclusion. They will take into account the milestones for speech and language development for her age group.
Watch this short video on how a SLP can help your child.
Speech-Language Pathologist Examination
When your SLP trying to examine whether your child needs speech therapy, these are some of the general things the SLP will look for:
#1. Does your child have receptive language skills, that is, can he understand what people say?
#2. Is she capable of expressive language, which is, can she explain herself?
#3. They will observe whether the child can use hand gestures, head movements or pointing while expressing herself.
#4. They will observe whether your child's speech clarity and vocal sounds are at the right stage of development for his age.
#5. They examine the physical aspects of the movement of her tongue, palate, mouth in speech and in swallowing or eating. This is called the "oral-motor status."
If the diagnosis is that your child does have some difficulty, then you must cooperate with the SLP. Usually, the SLP will encourage you to observe and learn together how you may help your baby at home as well.
Sometimes, over anxious can lead you to think that your child may need speech therapy but to turn out that he/she is at a normal stage of development but just a little off from the general milestone. Always read up on developmental milestones so that you have a realistic idea of what to expect at what age from your kid.
This post comes from the TODAY Parenting Team community, where all members are welcome to post and discuss parenting solutions. Learn more and join us! Because we're all in this together.


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Country superstar George Jones, known for "He Stopped Loving Her Today" and a long string of other hits, has died.
He was 81.
According to Webster & Associates, the Nashville public relations firm that represented Jones, he died Friday at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He was hospitalized there on April 18 for treatment of a fever and irregular blood pressure, the p.r. firm adds.
His page on the website of the Country Music Hall of Fame says that, "many attempts have been made to capture in words the immense, singular vocal gifts that have made George Glenn Jones one of the most influential singers in country music history. He is the undisputed successor of earlier primitive geniuses such as Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell—singers who, in turn, so heavily influenced him in his formative years."
Nashville's WSMV-TV adds that:
"Born September 12, 1931, Jones is regarded among the most important and influential singers in American popular music history. He was the singer of enduring country music hits including 'She Thinks I Still Care,' 'The Grand Tour,' 'Walk Through This World With Me,' 'Tender Years' and 'He Stopped Loving Her Today,' the latter of which is often at the top of industry lists of the greatest country music singles of all time."
He had his first No. 1 hit in 1959, with "White Lightning."
He was once married to another country star and singing partner, Tammy Wynette. "In 1983," WSMV adds, "Jones married the former Nancy Ford Sepulvado. The union, he repeatedly said, began his rehabilitation from drugs and alcohol and prolonged his life."
In December 2010, All Things Considered looked at "George Jones: The Voice Of Heartbreak" as part of NPR's "50 great voices" series.
As the show reported:
Jones has made a career out of heartbreak and pain, but he says it's not who he is as a person.
"It's not that you're unhappy when you're doing ballads," Jones says. "It's just that I try to live the song. During that three minutes or whatever it is, you try to step in that person's shoes. It seems for some reason the words tell you right away that you know how they feel."
NPR's music team will have much more about Jones and his legacy later today.
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

subset: commoncrawl


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Somali and Eritrean refugees wash at a reception centre at the port of Augusta, Sicily. They had been rescued at sea by the Spanish Coast Guard after setting out from Libya.
The United Nations refugee agency on Tuesday appealed to the Israeli Government to not forcibly send Eritrean and Sudanese refugees or asylum seekers to sub-Saharan Africa.
This appeal came after some 80 cases were identified in which people relocated by Israel risked their lives by taking dangerous onward journeys to Europe.
"Feeling they had no other choice, they travelled many hundreds of kilometres through conflict zones in South Sudan, Sudan and Libya after being relocated by Israel," the spokesperson of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), William Spindler, told reporters in Geneva.
He said that along the way, "they suffered abuse, torture and extortion before risking their lives once again by crossing the Mediterranean to Italy."
UNHCR staff interviewed them in Rome between November 2015 and December 2017 in reception centres and informal settlements. All were adult males, some with family members still in Israel, who had entered via the Sinai.
"In every case," he explained, "they reported torture, mistreatment and extortion before reaching Israel," adding that some said that others travelling with them had died en route to Libya.
The majority maintained that they had been transferred from Israel to a country in Africa and provided with $3,500 dollars.
"However, the situation on arrival was different to what most had expected – and with little further support provided beyond accommodation on the first night. They reported feeling unsafe, as they were known to have money," he said.
UNHCR is seriously concerned over Israel's plans announced on 1 January to forcibly relocate Eritreans and Sudanese to countries in Africa or have them face indefinite detention.
Official statements that the plans may eventually target families and those with pending asylum claims, or that asylum seekers might be taken to the airport in handcuffs, are particularly alarming.
"At a time when UNHCR and partners in the international community are engaged in emergency evacuations from Libya, forced relocation to countries that do not offer effective protection and the onward movement of these people to Libya and Europe is particularly worrisome," Mr. Spindler underscored.
There are some 27,000 Eritreans and 7,700 Sudanese in Israel, however since 2009, when Israel took over refugee status determination from UNHCR, only 10 Eritreans and one Sudanese have been recognized as refugees.
While 200 Sudanese from Darfur were granted humanitarian status in Israel along with an announcement that 300 more will follow, Israel has not received any Eritreans or Sudanese since May 2016.
"UNHCR stands ready to work with Israel to find alternative solutions for the protection needs of asylum seekers, in line with international standards," concluded Mr. Spindler.


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An actual working mind probe
This is incredible…researchers at Berkeley have developed a system that reads people's minds while they watch a video and then roughly reconstructs what they were watching from thousands of hours of YouTube videos. This short demo shows how it works:
Nishimoto and two other research team members served as subjects for the experiment, because the procedure requires volunteers to remain still inside the MRI scanner for hours at a time.
They watched two separate sets of Hollywood movie trailers, while fMRI was used to measure blood flow through the visual cortex, the part of the brain that processes visual information. On the computer, the brain was divided into small, three-dimensional cubes known as volumetric pixels, or "voxels."
"We built a model for each voxel that describes how shape and motion information in the movie is mapped into brain activity," Nishimoto said.
The brain activity recorded while subjects viewed the first set of clips was fed into a computer program that learned, second by second, to associate visual patterns in the movie with the corresponding brain activity.
Brain activity evoked by the second set of clips was used to test the movie reconstruction algorithm. This was done by feeding 18 million seconds of random YouTube videos into the computer program so that it could predict the brain activity that each film clip would most likely evoke in each subject.
Finally, the 100 clips that the computer program decided were most similar to the clip that the subject had probably seen were merged to produce a blurry yet continuous reconstruction of the original movie.
The kicker: "the breakthrough paves the way for reproducing the movies inside our heads that no one else sees, such as dreams and memories". First time travelling neutrinos and now this…what a time to be alive. (via ★essl)


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When my daughter told me that she wanted to be a ring-necked pheasant for Halloween, I said, "Let's do it." Her love of the strange, beautiful birds we encounter so often here in downtown Detroit goes back many years. She chose to have a ring-necked pheasant-themed birthday party when she turned five (complete with a ring-necked pheasant cake). I knew this was what she really wanted for her Halloween costume, so it just became a matter if how to get it done.
A few years ago at a parent-conference a teacher wondered if my daughter might have some motor skills issue because of how she ran. I questioned her further, and she described my daughter running with a sort of gallop rather than a fluid motion. I knew immediately what she meant: for years my daughter galloped rather than ran because she was always pretending to be a horse. I guess her teacher hadn't noticed all the whinnying and neighing, or maybe the child had the good sense not to do those things in front of her classmates. But it was the sort of thing she used to do that made me swell up inside with the agony of knowing that one day she would outgrow such wonderful things, that the world would chew her up and when it spit her out none of that magic would be left. So when I set out to make her a pheasant costume, I didn't want her to feel like a kid in a bird costume. I wanted her to feel like an actual pheasant.
If Rob Lowe's character from Parks and Recreation lived in our neighborhood, I wanted him to say, "Wow, you are literally. . .a pheasant," when we came to his door trick-or-treating (even though he'd probably give her an organic wheatgrass bar or something). She started practicing her pheasant walk and her pheasant call and I got to work.
I made the head from a piece of veg-tanned leather I had left over from other projects. I stamped it, sewed it together, and dyed it the proper colors. The eyes are the only thing on the costume that I had to buy (they are carousel horse eyes that I ordered from a taxidermy wholesaler). She can see through a slit built in right above the beak. The breast and shoulder feathers are all leftover leather remnants as well, and the body is made from a piece of upholstery foam I covered with brown fabric cut into feathers. She helped me with that part, and she also painted and put together the tail. The tail "feathers" are linen strengthened with dowels.
Our German Short-haired Pointer didn't know what to make of a four-foot-tall ring-necked pheasant. I think he felt that was beyond his pay grade.
The feet might be my favorite part. I just sewed together some long scraps of veg-tanned leather I had in my throwaway bin, then soaked them and cooked them into shape. I was going to dye them white like her tights (and real pheasant feet) but I really just liked the natural color. They attach above her feet with elastic sewed to the back.
We took these pictures while out testing the costume so I could make some adjustments before the big night, but she had no complaints. At least none I could understand (I don't speak pheasant).


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Sea Spray - Bonnie BFL Sock
Sea Spray - Bonnie BFL Sock
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Beautiful mix of blues and yellow.
100% SW BFL. Fingering weight: 400m per 100g
Bonnie BFL Sock is a really robust yet soft yarn. Strong enough for making socks, but also perfect for sweaters, shawls or accessories. Recommended needle size: 2mm – 3.5mm.
Love this colour?
Found your favourite colourway but not on the base you're looking for? Don't worry!
Send us a message and we'll see what we can do!
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Training Your Pet
Once your pet has settled into your home it is a good idea to think about training. Training your pet can help ensure that the behaviors that they exhibit are primarily desirable ones. Dogs in particular like to please their owners and doing so will help retain a lifelong bond between you.
Training your Dog
Whilst dogs have earned a reputation as 'man's best friend' thanks to their loyal and affectionate nature, just like their human counterparts they can sometimes possess annoying habits or personality traits that make them difficult to live with.
Training your dog will be hugely beneficial to your dog learning to live harmoniously alongside his human family. It will strengthen the bond between you and ensure his safety when out and about. Many dogs also find training to be a fun activity.
What is the best method to train my dog?
There are many different schools of thought as to how best to train a dog. Some owners prefer strict training with punishments for non-compliance, whilst others prefer to praise positive behavior and ignore undesirable reactions. Studies have shown that as a general rule the latter method works best, but however you decide to train your dog, in order to do so effectively you need to consistently control the consequences of your dogs' behavior.
Dogs cannot relate events that are separated by time and so the consequences to behavior need to be immediate. You cannot praise your dog several minutes after returning to you when called as he will not understand why he is receiving it. The easiest way to train a dog is to reward the behaviors that you like and not reward those that you don't.
- If your dog likes the consequence you give them they will be more likely to repeat that behavior so they get the consequence again i.e. love, attention and praise.
- If they dislike the consequences then they will do the behavior less often.
It really is that simple, but being consistent is vital otherwise you will send mixed messages to your pet. For example, if you do not want your pet to jump up at you (which they do to get your attention) then ignore them until they calm down. Praise and make a fuss of them as soon as they have returned to calm behavior. They will then learn that this is the way that you prefer them to behave. It may take several days or weeks of doing this, but your dog will soon learn the correct behavior to exhibit.
What positive consequences should I use?
The biggest thing that your dog craves is love, attention and affection from his human family. Rewarding their good behavior with these should make your pet happy and lead to successful training. Occasional commercial dog treats can be used if necessary too.
For more information on training your dog, speak to your veterinarian who may be able to direct you to local dog or puppy training classes.
Training your Cat
Cats are naturally independent creatures that are not as inclined as dogs are to work for praise or attention. They are also harder to motivate. This does not mean that they cannot be trained, but you will need additional patience.
Just like training a dog, you should reinforce desired behavior by offering positive consequences whilst undesirable behavior should be left unrewarded. However unlike dogs that are happy to be rewarded with affection, positive consequences for cats almost always have to be food-based. Find the food treats that your kitten or cat likes best. These could be small chunks of meat, tuna or commercial cat treats.
Some people use a clicker or a pen with a clicking function to train their feline friends. Clicking at the precise moment that your cat performs desirable behavior helps them to make the association which the positive consequence then reinforces.


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Blurring the lines between cautious strategy and unbridled mayhem, SUPERHOT VR is the definitive VR FPS in which time moves only when you move. No regenerating health bars. No conveniently placed ammo drops. It's just you, outnumbered and outgunned, grabbing the weapons of fallen enemies to shoot, slice, and maneuver through a hurricane of slow-motion bullets.
Decisive winner of dozens of VR Game of the Year awards, SUPERHOT VR is a title reimagined and redesigned from the ground up for VR and hand tracking controllers. The fruit of over three years of focused trailblazing, SUPERHOT VR brings the visceral action of SUPERHOT directly into your head and soul. And now also - directly into your PSVR.
Enter your date of birth.


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Posts Tagged 'Zeus'
Earthsky Tonight—July 26, The 'forgotten'
Courtesy of EarthSky A Clear Voice for Science www.EarthSky.org The faint constellation Ophiuchus the Serpent Bearer appears in the southern sky at nightfall, and descends into the southwest sky as evening deepens into late night. Look for Ophiuchus above the bright ruddy star Antares, the brightest in the constellation Scorpius the Scorpion. Ophiuchus' brightest star – called Rasalhague – highlights the head of Ophiuchus and is nowhere as bright as Antares, the star that depicts the ... Full Story


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Cleaning up Earth's orbit: A Swiss satellite tackles space debris
The proliferation of debris orbiting the Earth – primarily jettisoned rocket and satellite components – is an increasingly pressing problem for spacecraft, and it can generate huge costs. To combat this scourge, the Swiss Space Center at EPFL is announcing today the launch of CleanSpace One, a project to develop and build the first installment of a family of satellites specially designed to clean up space debris.
The Earth's orbit is full of all kinds of floating debris; a growing crowd of abandoned satellites, spent rocket stages, bits of broken spacecraft, and fragments from collisions are rocketing around the planet at breathtaking speeds. NASA keeps close tabs on at least 16,000 of these objects that are larger than 10 cm in diameter. When an operational spacecraft such as a satellite collides with one of them, serious, costly damage can result; often the satellite is complete destroyed. And the collision itself then generates thousands more fragments, further exacerbating the problem.
"It has become essential to be aware of the existence of this debris and the risks that are run by its proliferation," says Claude Nicollier, astronaut and EPFL professor. To move beyond mere rhetoric and take immediate action to get this stuff out of orbit, the Swiss Space Center at EPFL is launching CleanSpace One, a project to build the first prototype in a family of "de-orbiting" satellites.
The project developers have chosen a symbolic target for the initial CleanSpace One launch: either Switzerland's first orbiting object, the Swisscube picosatellite which was put in orbit in 2009, or its cousin TIsat, launched in July 2010. The cleanup satellite has three major challenges to overcome, each of which will necessitate the development of new technology that could, in turn, be used down the road in other applications.
One satellite, three technological hurdles
After its launch, the cleanup satellite will have to adjust its trajectory in order to match its target's orbital plane. To do this, it could use a new kind of ultra-compact motor designed for space applications that is being developed in EPFL laboratories. When it gets within range of its target, which will be traveling at 28,000 km/h at an altitude of 630-750 km, CleanSpace One will grab and stabilize it – a mission that's extremely dicey at these high speeds, particularly if the satellite is rotating. To accomplish the task, scientists are planning to develop a gripping mechanism inspired from a plant or animal example. Finally, once it's coupled with the satellite, CleanSpace One will "de-orbit" the unwanted satellite by heading back into the Earth's atmosphere, where the two satellites will burn upon re-entry.
Although its first model is destined to be destroyed, the CleanSpace One adventure will not be a one-shot deal. "We want to offer and sell a whole family of ready-made systems, designed as sustainably as possible, that are able to de-orbit several different kinds of satellites," explains Swiss Space Center Director Volker Gass. "Space agencies are increasingly finding it necessary to take into consideration and prepare for the elimination of the stuff they're sending into space. We want to be the pioneers in this area."
The design and construction of CleanSpace One, as well as its maiden space voyage, will cost about 10 million Swiss francs. Depending on the funding and industrial partners, this first orbital rendez-vous could take place within three to five years.
CleanSpace One is chasing its target, one of the CubeSats launched by Switzerland in 2009 (Swisscube-1) or 2010 (TIsat-1)
Just before reaching its target, CleanSpace One unfolds its bio-inspired gripping mechanism.
Firmly attached to the debris, CleanSpace One will now power on its engines in order to reach the Earth atmosphere. Both satellites will be burnt during their descent.
About space debris
16,000 objects larger than 10 cm in diameter and hundreds of millions of smaller particles are ripping around the Earth at speeds of several kilometers per second. From the beginning of the Space Age, Earth's periphery has been increasingly encumbered by all kinds of debris, primarily concentrated in Low Earth Orbit (less than 2000 km in altitude, where the International Space Station is orbiting) or Geostationary Orbit (35,786 km in altitude). Many of these objects are spent rocket stages or satellites that have broken up in orbit. If they collide with another orbiting object, say a functioning satellite, they can cause massive damage, or even destroy it. This is what happened on February 10, 2009, when the U.S. satellite Iridium-33 exploded upon impact with the abandoned Russian satellite Cosmos-2251. The financial consequences of these collisions are enormous, particularly for insurance companies involved in the space sector; a sum currently estimated at $20 billion to insure existing satellites.
Cases such as this one are bound to increase in number. Even in the immensity of outer space, the increasing density of human-generated waste is becoming a problem. It's expanding exponentially, because each collision generates in turn several thousand more fragments, which, although smaller, are no less dangerous than a large, abandoned satellite. NASA, which tracks 16,000 of these objects, can only monitor the largest ones (greater than 10 cm in diameter) – but at these incredible speeds even a simple paint chip can seriously damage a solar panel or the window on a shuttle. To avoid the largest objects before they get critically close, the International Space Station must constantly alter its orbit. It managed to do this again just recently, on January 29, 2012.
Last year the Swiss Re insurance company published a study showing that every year, there is a nearly one in 10,000 chance that a 10 m2 satellite traveling in a sun-synchronous (600-1,000 km) orbit will collide with a piece of space debris larger than 1 cm.
Volker Gass, Director, Swiss Space Center, EPFL, +41 79 409 28 33, [email protected]
Jérome Grosse, EPFL spokesperson, +41 79 434 73 26, [email protected]


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The use of the Site is on the terms contained in this document (Terms of Use). If you do not agree to these Terms of Use, you must stop using the Site immediately, close any browser and clean your website history. By accessing and using this Site you are indicating your acceptance to be bound by these Terms of Use. They are a legal agreement between you and us and can only be amended with our consent. They should be read in conjunction with any details provided on the Site about how the Site operates and the services we offer which are available.
We reserve the right to change these Terms of Use from time to time without prior notice by changing them on the Site.
Please read the following carefully and remember that your use of the site is subject to these Terms.
All services carried by our; either employed locksmith or approved & skilled partner locksmith individuals or companies. The services are to be carried at the customer's provided address such as their own homes, or business premises.
The information provided on our site is for information purposes only, any additional information required by our customers can be given to customers by phone or email.
By using our website you accept that the information is only for guidance of the services we offer, and contact details you may require to get in touch with us.
We operate and manage many websites for local locksmiths working and offer legitimate locksmith services. Some or all other websites may link to this page and therefore be viewed as one of the same terms and conditions applicable to all our users of this website or the linking website to this page.
For Privacy statement and information please visit the privacy page of each website, this and the linking websites.
Please note that this terms and conditions only apply to authorised websites managed and operated by us.
We do not use any third party delivery companies, nor do we post goods to customers. Our services are mobile locksmith and other traders service; any products supplied to customer as part of the work is supplied and installed at the customer's property by the tradesmen who will visit to carry the work required.
All goods we supply & install carry 12 month manufacturer warranty, and 3 months labour costs. Any damage to the material caused by the customer, or other individuals who tampered with the products will invalidate the warrantee for both the product and labour. Such as attempted burglary, forcing the products to function inappropriately, using wrong keys to open locks.
please note that the address is either our locksmith private home or point of up to 5 miles radious our local locksmith provides our services. We therefore do not serve customers at this address! *
In the event of cancellation ( between the hours of 7:01 am and 8pm ), you the customer must give us notice of cancellation before our locksmith attend your property within half an hour of agreed time or arrival of our locksmith, and no less than 15 minutes before the agreed time. Failing to provide appropriate notice will incur 50% charge of the agreed booked service given over the phone or email.
In the event of out of hours ( 8pm - 7am ) all cancellation will be charged at 50% of the labour charge agreed. We may request Card details in order to confirm the booking, and 50% non refundable cost will be charged in advance.
In the event of failure of our locksmiths/tradesmen to attend on time, and where reasonable time has passed ( a window of 30 minutes must be allowed due to traffic, other jobs that may delay their arrival ), and they have failed to notify the customer of their delay; a full refund will be given to customers.
https://www.locksmithatlantalocal.com is a trading name of MAXLOCKS
Contact phone: (678) 248-5577
* When we specify local / locally - we refer to either our own local technician or third party contractor. In cases where an technician is not available, we will try to send the nearest technician.


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Information foraging is the most important concept to emerge from human-computer interaction research since 1993. Developed at the Palo Alto Research Center (previously Xerox PARC) by Stuart Card, Peter Pirolli, and colleagues, information foraging uses the analogy of wild animals gathering food to analyze how humans collect information online.
To say that web users behave like wild beasts in the jungle sounds like a joke, but there's substantial data to support this claim. Animals make decisions on where, when, and how to eat on the basis of highly optimized formulas. Not that critters run mathematical computations, but rather that suboptimal behaviors result in starvation, and thus there are fewer offspring that follow those behaviors in subsequent generations. After thousands of generations, optimal food-gathering behavior is all that's left.
Humans are under less evolutionary pressure to improve their web use, but basic laziness is a human characteristic that might be survival-related (don't exert yourself unless you have to). In any case, people like to get maximum benefit for minimum effort. That's what makes information foraging a useful tool for analyzing online media.
Information Scent: Predicting a Path's Success
Information foraging's most famous concept is information scent: users estimate a given hunt's likely success from the spoor: assessing whether their path exhibits cues related to the desired outcome. Informavores will keep clicking as long as they sense (to mix metaphors) that they're "getting warmer" — the scent must keep getting stronger and stronger, or people give up. Progress must seem rapid enough to be worth the predicted effort required to reach the destination.
The most obvious design lesson from information scent is to ensure that links and category descriptions explicitly describe what users will find at the destination. Faced with several navigation options, it's best if users can clearly identify the trail to the prey and see that other trails are devoid of anything edible.
Don't use made-up words or your own slogans as navigation options, since they don't have the scent of the sought-after item. Plain language also works best for search engine visibility: searching provides a literal match between the words in the user's mind and the words on your site.
Secondly, as users drill down the site, each page should clearly indicate that they're still on the path to the food. In other words, provide feedback about the current location and how it relates to users' tasks.
Diet Selection: What to Eat
A fox lives in a forest with two kinds of rabbits: big ones and small ones. Which should it eat? The answer is not always "the big rabbits."
Whether to eat big or small depends on how easy a rabbit is to catch. If big rabbits are very difficult to catch, the fox is better off letting them go and concentrating exclusively on hunting and eating small ones. If the fox sees a big rabbit, it should let it pass: the probability of a catch is too low to justify the energy consumed by the hunt.
The big difference between websites and rabbits is that websites want to be caught. So how can you design a site to make your content attractive to ravenous beasts?
The two main strategies are to make your content look like a nutritious meal and signal that it's an easy catch. These strategies must be used in combination: users will leave if the content is good but hard to find, or if it's easy to find but offers only empty calories.
This dual strategy is the reason I recommend that you showcase sample content on the homepage (appear nutritious) and prominently display navigation and search features (demonstrate that users can easily find what they're looking for). Diet selection also supports the traditional advice against splash screens and vacuous content. These elements convey to users that they're in for a tedious ordeal that serves up only scrawny rodents as rewards.
Patch Leaving: When to Hunt Elsewhere
Patchy environments often feature several different areas where game congregate. So where should predators hunt? In whatever patch has the most prey, of course. But after they've eaten some of that game, then what? Continue to hunt in the same patch, or move to another one? The answer depends on how far is it to the next patch.
If getting to the next patch is easy, predators are better off moving on. No need to deplete all the game in the current patch; once their next morsel becomes a bit difficult to find, they can move to richer hunting grounds. On the other hand, if it's difficult to move (say, if they have to cross a river), they're likely to hunt each patch more extensively before going to the next one.
On the web, each site is a patch, and each site's information is its tasty venison.
Moving between sites has always been easy. But, from an information foraging perspective, it used to be best if users stayed put because the vast majority of websites were horrible and the probability that the next site would be any good was extremely low. I thus advised early website designers to follow two design strategies:
- First, convince users that the site is worthy of their attention. As I described above, this means having good information and making it easy to find.
- Second, once they arrive, make it easy for users to find even more good stuff so that they stay rather than go elsewhere. An entire movement was devoted to the idea of sticky sites and extended visits.
In the last few years, Google has reversed this equation by emphasizing quality in its sorting of search results. It is now extremely easy for users to find other good sites.
Information foraging predicts that the easier it is to find good patches, the quicker users will leave a patch. Thus, the better search engines get at highlighting quality sites, the less time users will spend on any one site.
The growth of always-on broadband connections also encourages this trend toward shorter visits. With dial-up, connecting to the internet is somewhat difficult, and users mainly do it in big time chunks. In contrast, always-on connections encourage information snacking, where users go online briefly, looking for quick answers. The upside is that users will visit more frequently, since they have more sessions, will find you more often, and will leave other sites faster.
The patch-leaving model thus predicts that visits will become ever shorter. Google and always-on connections have changed the most fruitful design strategy to one with three components:
- Support short visits; be a snack
- Encourage users to return; use mechanisms such as newsletters as a reminder
- Emphasize search-engine visibility and other ways of increasing frequent visits by addressing users' immediate needs
Better intra-site navigation and better site maps may tip the balance slightly back in favor of longer stays, but it's safest to assume that users' visits to any individual website will become ever shorter.
Informavore Navigation Behavior
Information foraging presents many interesting metaphors and mathematical models for analyzing user behavior. The most important concept is simply that of cost-benefit analysis for navigation, where users have to make tradeoffs based on two questions:
- What gain can I expect from a specific information nugget (such as a web page)?
- What is the likely cost to discover and consume that information? (Cost is typically measured in time and effort, though it could include a monetary component in a micropayment system.)
Both questions involve estimates, which users can make either from experience or from design cues. Website designers can thus influence the analysis by designing to enhance user expectations of gains and reduce their expectations of costs. Ultimately, of course, what the site actually delivers is more important, but you'll never get experienced repeat visitors unless their first encounter is fruitful.
As the patch-leaving model demonstrates, users optimize cost-benefit relative to personal criteria and within a system that's larger than any single website. In addition to the detailed insights offered by individual models, it's healthy to remember that users are selfish, lazy, and ruthless in applying their cost-benefit analyses.


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EGG lunch (12/18):
veggie booty, ham and chutney sandwich with cheese tree, gouda, apple candy cane, blueberries, strawberry, cookies.
Monkey Lunch (12/18): sun butter and jam Christmas Tree with green sprinkles (this looked better in my head), cheese and carrot "presents", cheese snowman on cookie, red pepper poinsettia, veggie booty, blueberry and strawberry.
For the Monkeys last class before the break all classes got together to watch "The Polar Express". I was able to pop in and prepare a special snack for the kids in his room based on thier favorite story for the month: "Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer".
Snack: Clementine, cinnamon bread, cheese Rudolf with pomegranate nose and pretzel antlers, blueberries.


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Oregon State University has representative members at DrupalCon 2011 in Chicago. The conference is a great way to hear about user experiences, get tips on how people approach development, and new services available that may benefit the University and others. Central Web Services and Web Communications are attending numerous sessions as we look to determine where to take Drupal sites in the future for OSU.
The conference started out on day 1 with a Drupal music intro form members of Acquia, followed by the key note from Dries Buytaert, who spoke briefly about Drupal 7 and went into the aspects that worked well, and not so well. This segued to more on the new approach to Drupal 8, and the announcement that development on Drupal 8 opens on March 8th.
There was a slide on the devices and market share of devices over time, and not-so-surprisingly, mobile devices are now in the lead, over desktops and notebooks. Tablets were also a part of the chart, and it was interesting to see on there, as my view also is that touch technologies will change the face of education, with the proper embrace of it. Dries stated that if they were to start Drupal now, they would start with mobile devices. He went on to focus on key initiatives he envisioned for Drupal 8, and that he'll be looking for leads for the initiatives. What I liked was the fact that performance was also something they want to put as an up front consideration instead of an afterthought.
Following the keynote, after a lunch session, and a BOF discussion, the day sessions began. Oh, what's a BOF? BOF is Birds of a Feather, and what was done was some rooms opened up to groups of community members to get together to talk about mutual interests. We participated in the uWEBd BOF for University Web Developers, with representative University individuals sharing experiences and how they use technologies. I believe we can do more with Universities, such as setting up a common edu git location for all Universities to participate in module development, as an example. There's more we can do to collaborate, it's looking at the right strategy that can benefit many, followed by commitment and then execution.
There were also discussions ongoing with the core team, or those dedicated set of people focused on making the core of drupal moving forward.
Overall a good first day that sparks innovative minds to think about how to do things better, and how to tackle problems in the way things are.


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27 June 2010 Author: Giorgos Lazaridis How a Key Matrix WorkWhat you probably have in front of you, is a keyboard with more than 100 keys on it... If you are not familiar with the key matrices, then you may think that inside this keyboard, there is a chip (probably a microcontroller) that has at least the same number of inputs to read each key separately. Well, this is far from true... What are the key matrices? The matrices are actually an interface technique. It can be used to interface inputs like the PC keyboard keys, but also to control multiple outputs like LEDs. According to this technique, the I/O are divided into two sections: the columns and the rows. You can imagine a matrix as an excel sheet. Here is a 4 x 4 matrix The blue lines are the columns and the red lines the rows. There are 16 knots that the rows and columns intersect. The columns and the rows are NOT in contact! Suppose that we want to make a key matrix. To do this, we will have to connect a button to each knot. The buttons will have a push-to-make contact. When the operator pushes this button, it will connect the column and the row that it corresponds to. Now i will put the push-to-make buttons onto the matrix The buttons are named with the Column:Row name that they connect. For example, the top-left button is named A1 and the bottom right is named D4. How does a key-matrix works? To understand the operation principle, i will re-draw the above matrix without colors. I will also put connection pins to each row and column wire. Then, i will give power to only one column, the column B. The wire that is red, indicates that it has power, and the button that is purple indicates that the button is pressed. Then, i will simulate a button press to button number B3: Watch the above animation. The column wire B has power all the time. No other wire has power, until the button B3 is pressed. This button makes contact between the column B and the row 3. Because column B has power, the row 3 will also have power as long as the button B3 is pressed! What this means it that, if we know which column has currently power, and we watch the rows, then we can understand which button was pressed, if we detect power on a row! If for example we know that the column B has power, and we detect also power to row 3, then we understand that the button B3 is pressed. A matrix in the real life So, how does a matrix finally works? If you have understand the previous example, then it will be very easy for you to follow. The matrix is controlled by a microcontroller. For the above 16-button 4x4 matrix, 8 pins of the micro controller will be used. The first 4 pins will be OUTPUTS and will be connected to the COLUMN wires, while the other 4 pins will be INPUTS and will be connected to the ROW wires. The OUTPUTS of the microcontroller will NOT all have power at the same time. The outputs will go high one by one in cycle. This happens many times per second, but i will slow things down... So,this is -in VERY VERY slow motion- how a typical microcontroller would cycle its outputs. During this time, it will also monitor the inputs for a signal. As long as all inputs are LOW (with a pull down resistor or with internal uC pull-down resistors), the uC will take no action. Now, suppose that the operator presses the button 3C. Look what happens: The microcontroller loops its outputs normally. The operator has pressed the C3 button. This button has connect the matrix col C, with the matrix row 3. When the output C of the microcontroller becomes HIGH, the signal arrives also at the input 3 of the microcontroller, through the pressed button. The uC monitors the 4 inputs and detects that when the specific output (C) is high, there is a HIGH signal at the input 3. So, this means that the input C3 is pressed! Easy it is not? Pressing multiple buttons on a matrix Pressing multiple buttons simultaneously on a matrix is not always a good idea. There are situations that the matrix operates normally, but not always. Suppose for example that someone pressed the buttons B1, B2 and B3 simultaneously. What will happen? Let's take a look: When the output B becomes HIGH, then the three inputs 1,2 and 3 of the microcontroller will also become HIGH. Supposing that the firmware is written in a way that can handle such an event, the operation will be carried out normally. The uC will understand that the buttons B1, B2 and B3 are pressed. Let's see another situation where the buttons A3, B3 and C3 are pressed: In this situation, the matrix will also work normally. The microcontroller will detect a signal at input number 3, when the output A, B and C are HIGH. When the output D is HIGH, no signal is detected. The ghosting problem I will continue the above examples with another situation, where the buttons C2, B2 and B3 are pressed simultaneously: When the output C is HIGH, then the input 2 will also become HIGH. The uC will understand that the button C2 is pressed. But something else happens here. The button B2 is also pressed! This means that the HIGH signal will go through the button B2 to the column B. And due to the fact that the button B3 is pressed, the signal will arrive simultaneously at input #3 as well! But the microcontroller knows that at this moment, only the output C is HIGH, and because it detects HIGH signal at inputs 2 and 3, it will think that buttons C2 and C3 are pressed, something that is wrong! The button C3 is NOT actually pressed! This is known as ghosting, and usually gives a headache to PC gamers, especially when the game requires multiple buttons to be pressed simultaneously. Take for example the MAME console, which simulates arcade games. If you play samurai shodown 1v1, and one player has low defense and kicks while the other is flying high and uses the sword, this will require 6 keys to be pressed! Yawks! Ghosting occurs. (that's why i made my MAME arcade console) The masking problem P]The masking problem comes in continue to the ghosting. When masking is occurred, the controller cannot detect a key change that has occur. Suppose for example that the ghosting problem has occur, by pressing C2, B2 and B3 simultaneously, like the previous example. The controller will think that the button C2 C3 is pressed, although the operator has not pressed C3. Now, the operator presses the button C3 without releasing any other button. Nothing changes at the microcontroller. And now the operator releases the button C2... What happens? Nothing! The microcontroller still thinks that C2 is pressed and cannot detect the button release! This is the masking problem, also a gamers headache.[/P] Any solution to the ghosting and masking? Yes there is! And it is a cheap one. Using a diode for each button, the masking and ghosting problems are instantly solved! This is how it works: The above situation would normally cause ghosting. Yet, the diodes prevents the current to go backwards. For better understanding, you can see the 3 steps of the above animation here (as always, click to enlarge images): Because the cycling speed must be quite fast (some Khz), you should choose proper diodes. A cheap solution is the 1N4148 general purpose diodes. If you plan to have many keys and thus you need faster sampling, then select a schottkey diode instead. And what about a matrix with outputs instead of inputs? This is also a very interesting chapter with matrices. Using matrices, you can control for example 9 LEDs each one separately, with only 6 outputs. Look how it works: Above there is a typical 3 x 3 LED matrix. All microcontroller pins, for both columns and rows are now OUTPUTS. Suppose now that all outputs are HIGH. All LEDs will have HIGH on both anode and cathode, and this means than none LED will light! This is how to turn completely off the LED matrix, by giving either HIGH or LOW to all outputs. Now suppose that we want to turn on the middle LED. To do this, we give HIGH to column 2 and rows 1 and 3, and LOW to column 1 and 3 and row 2. This is what will happen: The middle LED is forward biased and therefore it lights. All other LEDs are either reverse biased, or they have the same voltage (positive or negative) to their both leads, and therefore they do not light. This way, someone can control for example 64 LEDs each one separately, with an 8x8 matrix, using only 16 outputs from a microcontroller. Comments
PIC Tutorials
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"Why would I call China a currency manipulator when they are working with us on the North Korean problem?" tweeted President Donald Trump on Easter Sunday.
Earlier, after discovering "great chemistry" with Chinese President Xi Jinping over "the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake" at Mar-a-Lago, Trump had confided, "I explained . . . that a trade deal with the U.S. will be far better for them if they solve the North Korean problem!"
"America First" thus takes a back seat to big-power diplomacy with Beijing. One wonders: How much will Xi end up bilking us for his squeezing of Kim Jong Un?
Trump once seemed to understand how America had been taken to the cleaners during and after the Cold War. While allies supported us diplomatically, they piled up huge trade surpluses at our expense and became virtual free-riders off the U.S. defense effort.
No nations were more successful at this than South Korea and Japan. Now Xi is playing the game—and perhaps playing Trump.
What is the "North Korean problem" Beijing will help solve in return for more indulgent consideration on future U.S.-China trade deals?
North Korea's nuclear arsenal. As 80 percent of Pyongyang's trade comes through China, Trump believes that Beijing can force Kim to stop testing missiles and atomic bombs before he produces an intercontinental ballistic missile that could hit the U.S.
But what is to prevent Xi from pocketing Trump's concessions and continuing on the strategic course China has long pursued?
For in many ways, Pyongyang's goals parallel China's.
Neither could want an all-out war on the Korean Peninsula. For Kim, this would devastate his country, bring down his regime, and cost him his life. For China, war could mean millions of Koreans crossing the Yalu into Manchuria and a disruption of Beijing's march to Asian hegemony.
A continuing crisis on the peninsula, however, with Trump and the U.S. relying on Beijing's help, could leave Xi in the catbird seat.
And now that North Korea has declared its goal to be building missiles with nuclear warheads that could hit all U.S. bases in Asia—and even California—the clock is running for the White House.
"It won't happen," Trump has said of North Korea's developing an ICBM that could hit the United States. "If China is not going to solve North Korea, we will."
"The threat is upon us," says outgoing deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland. "This is something President Trump is going to deal with in the first year."
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Vice President Mike Pence have declared that our policy of "strategic patience" with Pyonyang is at an end.
National security adviser H.R. McMaster said Sunday the U.S. has "to take action, short of armed conflict, so we can avoid the worst" in dealing with "this unpredictable regime."
With a stunning parade of missiles in Pyongyang on Saturday, the North's failed firing of a solid-fueled missile that same day, and the promise of new missile tests weekly, Kim is forcing our hand.
Either he backs away from building atomic bombs and long-range missiles or Trump and his generals must make good on their warnings.
How did we get to this point?
Why, 64 years after the Korean War, a quarter-century after the Cold War, are we still obliged to go to war to defend South Korea from a North with one-half the South's population and 3 percent of its gross domestic product?
Why are we, on the far side of the Pacific, still responsible for containing North Korea when two of its neighbors—Russia and China—are nuclear powers and South Korea and Japan could field nuclear and conventional forces far superior to Kim's?
How long into the future will containing militarist dictators in Pyongyang with nuclear missiles be America's primary responsibility?
Another issue arises. Before the U.S. launches any pre-emptive strike on North Korea, Congress should be called back into session to authorize any act of war against the North.
Perhaps this time, Congress would follow the Constitution.
Though Korea is the crisis of the moment, it is not the only one.
Not since 9/11 have the Afghan Taliban been stronger or controlled more territory. The United States' commanding general there is calling for thousands more U.S. troops. Russia and Iran are reportedly negotiating with the Taliban. Pakistan is said to be aiding them.
To counter Vladimir Putin's Russia, we have moved U.S. and NATO troops into Poland, the Baltic States, Romania and Bulgaria. We have fired missiles into Syria. We are reportedly preparing to back the Saudis in the latest escalation of their war on the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Twenty-four years after "Black Hawk Down," the weekend brought reports of U.S. troops returning to Somalia.
The promise of a Trump presidency—that we would start looking out for our own country and own national interests first and let the rest of the world solve, or fail to solve, its own problems—appears, not 100 days in, to have been a mirage.
Will more wars make America great again?
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of the new book The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority. To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.


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Best source of info for climbing Mount Damavand. Specialist in mountain guided tours and ascends in Iran.
Mt Manaslu
(This post was last modified: 23-05-2012 04:09 PM by Ardsol.)
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Mt Manaslu
Mt ManasluMount Manaslu 8,156 meters (26,759 ft) Manaslu also known as Kutang is the high peak of the Gorkha massif, and is the eighth highest mountain in the world and best climbing mountain. It is located in the Mansiri Himal, part of the Nepalese Himalayas, in the west-central part of Nepal. Its name means "Mountain of the Spirit" Manaslu was first climbed on May 9, 1956 by Toshio Imanishi and Gyalzen Norbu, members of a Japanese expedition. It is said that "just as the British consider Everest their mountain, Manaslu has always been a Japanese mountain". Manaslu at 8,156 metres (26,759 ft) above mean sea level (m.s.l) is the highest peak in the Lamjung District and is located about forty miles east of Annapurna. The mountain's long ridges and valley glaciers offer feasible approaches from all directions, and culminate in a peak that towers steeply above its surrounding landscape, and is a dominant feature when viewed from afar. The Manaslu region offers a variety of trekking options. The popular Manaslu trekking route of 177 kilometres (110 mi), skirts the Manaslu massif over the pass down to Annapurna. The Nepalese Government only permitted trekking of this circuit in 1991. The trekking trail follows an ancient salt-trading route along the Budhi Gandaki river. Enroute, 10 peaks over 6,500 metres (21,300 ft) are visible, including a few over 7,000 metres (23,000 ft). The highest point reached along the trek route is the Larkya La at an elevation of 5,235 metres (17,175 ft). As of May 2008, the mountain has been climbed 297 times with 53 fatalities. Manaslu Conservation Area has been established with the primary objective of achieving conservation and sustainable management of the delimited area, which includes Manaslu. Mount Manaslu at sunrise Ardsol FMD23MAY12M3 |
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Mt Manaslu - Ardsol - 23-05-2012 03:54 PM
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Who knew that, a dozen years after I wrote something trying to explain a bit about black holes, people would still be reading it? I get questions from time to time from readers, and I'm happy to try to answer them. As long as I'm writing answers anyway, I'll go ahead and post them here in case anyone else is interested.
This batch is from a high school student named Brandon Thrush.
1. I have a good idea of what the event horizon is, but I do not know what you mean when you say that it is actually moving outward at the speed of light; does this mean that the whole entire black hole is moving at the
speed of light?
This is a very subtle and potentially confusing idea.
Suppose that you dropped a flashlight into the black hole, and at the exact moment it crossed the horizon, it emitted a photon (that is, a little burst of light) in a direction straight out, away from the black hole. That photon would be stuck on the horizon, never falling into the black hole but never getting further away either. Now, one of the main ideas of relativity is that light always travels at the same speed (the speed of light, naturally!) no matter how it's measured or by whom. So that photon is, by definition, traveling at the speed of light, and yet
it's staying right on the horizon. The logical conclusion is that the horizon is moving at the speed of light.
You might say that this is just a silly word game: Why do I say the horizon is moving outwards, rather than saying that the photon is sitting still? The answer is just that the idea that the speed of light is always
the same (which means that photons never sit still) is so powerful and useful that physicists hate to give it up. We'd rather say that the horizon is moving at the speed of light — even though it never gets anywhere! — than give up on that idea.
At this point, it's customary to mention the quote from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, in which the Red Queen says something like "Here it takes all the running you can do just to stay in the same place.
If you want to get anywhere, you'll have to go a great deal faster than that!"
2. When you give examples of two black holes, one smaller than the other, you say that in the smaller black hole you would be torn apart before you even reach the horizon, but in the larger one, you would not be torn apart until after you reach the horizon. How can this be?
The reason is that the thing that tears you up is the "tidal force," which has to do with the difference in the strength of the gravitational pull between one end of you and the other end. If every atom in your body is
being pulled on (and hence accelerated) by gravity in the same way, you won't feel any ill effects, but if one part of you is being pulled more strongly than the other, you will. For a large black hole, the scale of everything is so big that there's no real difference between the pull on your head and the pull on your feet: both are huge, but they're essentially the same. For a smaller black hole, each of those pulls is smaller, but they're different, and that's what matters.
3. When a black hole is formed, it is because of a dying star, but does the star suddenly collapse under its own gravitational force and what is left is its gravitational force field, called the black hole, or does the star gradually collapse into its own force field?
I think I like the first way of saying it better. Certainly "suddenly" is better than "gradually": although the leadup to the final collapse is gradual, once the final collapse gets started, it's very quick.
There's another obligatory literary reference here, by the way: "Gradually and then suddenly" is the way Hemingway describes going bankrupt in The Sun Also Rises.
The big idea is that, before it collapses, a star exists in an equilibrium, in which the pressure caused by the star's particles (nuclei and electrons) balances the pull of gravity. When a black hole forms, the reason is that that balance couldn't be sustained, and gravity won. The particles get pulled in closer and closer to the center. After that process is complete, all that an outside observer can detect is the gravitational field (which we often prefer to call the "curvature of spacetime.")
4. When the star is collapsing into the center, what happens to the particles while reaching the center? What is their fate?
Once they get very near the center, we have to admit that we just don't know. Everything we say about what happens to particles inside the horizon of a black hole is based on theory, not observation, since we never see the interior. But at first (that is, immediately after crossing the horizon) we can have pretty high confidence in our descriptions of the process: the physical conditions at first are very similar to situations we see in other places, so we think we understand them. But near the center, the densities and temperatures get very high, eventually passing out of the range where we think we understand the physics.
So here's what we can say: during the collapse, the particles that are falling in towards the center get compressed to higher and higher densities and higher and higher temperatures until, at some point, …. we don't really know.
5. When a large black hole, such as a stellar-mass black hole, constantly grows, does the gravitational field extend farther and farther? If so, would not the black hole eventually consume everything in the universe?
The first rule to remember is that a black hole of a certain mass has just the same gravitational pull as any other object of that mass. So, for instance, a black hole the mass of the Sun attracts outside objects just as much as the Sun does, and no more.
Now, it's true that as a black hole sucks in more stuff, its mass grows, and so does its gravitational pull. But after the black hole has gotten all of the stuff near to it, it stops adding new matter at any significant rate, and so it stays pretty much the same after that.
In principle, every black hole in the universe is slowly adding more mass and hence pulling more strongly, but it's important to emphasize the word "slowly." A typical black hole, after it's had some time to clean out its immediate surroundings, grows at such a slow rate that even over the lifetime of the Universe we wouldn't expect its mass to grow very much.
6. You refer to a large black hole as a "stellar-mass" black hole, but what are the different names given to the different sizes of black holes? What are they from the smallest to the largest?
I have to admit that I'm not up-to-date on the subject of classification of black holes. The last time I paid much attention to the subject, two main categories of black holes were thought to exist:
- Black holes that formed from the collapse of stars. These typically have masses of about 10 times the mass of the Sun (plus or minus quite a bit).
- Black holes at the centers of galaxies. A typical mass for these is a million times the mass of the Sun. The conventional wisdom seems to be that most large galaxies have one of these, and that they formed along with the galaxy itself.
When I talk about stellar-mass black holes, I mean the first category. The other kind are most often called supermassive black holes.
It's perfectly possible for black holes to exist with other masses. People have talked seriously about the possibility of microscopic black holes, for instance. But the black hole candidates that people have found in the
sky mostly fall into those two categories. (I think that some black hole candidates have been found with masses in between the two categories — say around a thousand times the mass of the Sun — but I don't know much
about that.)


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Echoes of our time
One of my primary goals in writing the quintet was that it be clear and self-explanatory. Given this goal, detailed notes could be considered a distraction or even a failing, so please forgive the brevity of these. The piece is in four movements. The first is a cross between theme and variations on a ground bass. The second movement is moderate with some sense of humour. The third is slow and devoid of humour. The fourth is fast (and difficult). If this leaves you wondering what to expect, all the better.In the age of the not so innocent ear and the lost art of listening this sleeve note says it all. It was penned by Edgar Meyer for the 1998 recording of his Quintet for double-bass and string quartet which he made with the Emersons. The Quintet was released with a coupling of Ned Rorem's Fourth String Quartet, both premiere recordings, on Deutsche Grammophon's Echo 20/21 series. Edgar Meyer's credits include working with Garth Brooks and The Chieftains, the latter are also acknowledged by Jordi Savall as an influence on his recent Celtic Viol CD. The 1995 Quintet further blurs the boundaries between folk, country and jazz and its continuing neglect is a mystery.
Deutsche Grammophon's Echo 20/21 series marked a final flourish of creativity by the label in the late 1990s before it was purchased by Vivendi and sucked into the all consuming vortex of Universal Music. Echo 20/21, with the strapline Echoes of our time, was clearly an attempt to mimic the success of Manfred Eicher's European Contemporary Music label. ECM's influence can clearly be seen in the thumbnail of the Sofia Gubaidalina album above.
The artwork for the digipaks may have been derivative but Echo 20/21 released some very interesting and important music including Cornelius Cardew's The Great Learning, Takemitsu played by the music department of the Japanese imperial household and Boulez directing Ligeti. In an echo of our time, all the discs have been deleted in their original CD formats, to make room presumably for Sting's If On A Winter's Night. But they live on thanks to the download and you can buy Edgar Meyer's enchanting Quintet here. Thank goodness digital formats can keep great recordings from the past available. What a pity technology cannot do the same for the visionary thinking that created them.
I bought the Meyer/Rorem CD when it was first released. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk


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Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray, whose condition turned critical last night, is showing signs of improvement and has been taken off the life support system, party spokesman Sanjay Raut said today.
"Yesterday definitely there was some problem.
Balasaheb is stable and responding to treatment and off life support system. Yesterday there was the need for him to be on life support system but today it is not," Mr Raut, a Rajya Sabha MP, said.
No medical bulletin on the ailing 86-year-old leader's condition has been issued as yet, but one of the doctors attending on him said Mr Thackeray was still being administered oxygen.
"He is being given oxygen and his condition is still not good," the doctor, who did not want to be identified, told PTI.
Meanwhile, security outside Mr Thackeray's 'Matoshree' bungalow in suburban Bandra has been stepped up following yesterday's incidents in which Shiv Sainiks had damaged some media vehicles and equipment.
Large contingents of Mumbai police and Rapid Action Force have been stationed and the area has been heavily barricaded.
Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan has been continuously monitoring law and order situation in the State in view of Mr Thackeray's condition.
"Last night, Chavan held a high-level meeting with the Chief Secretary and top police officers. Since this morning, he is in constant touch with family members of the Sena chief," official sources said.
Large number of shops and business establishments in Sena strongholds like Dadar and Parel were closed as anxious party workers converged at 'Matoshree' to inquire about their leader's health.
Politicians, film personalities and captains of industry made a beeline for 'Matoshree' as a mark of solidarity with the Thackeray family.
Union Minister Sharad Pawar, BJP chief Nitin Gadkari, party's deputy leader in the Lok Sabha Gopinath Munde, Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh, actors Salman Khan and Sanjay Dutt, filmmakers Madhur Bhandarkar and Ashok Pandit and industrialists Rahul Bajaj and Venugopal Dhoot visited 'Matoshree' to inquire about Thackeray's condition.


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You all submit so many great covers it's hard to keep up. When we fall behind, we gather the best and brightest in a Submission Roundup.
Thanksgiving may be over, but today we want to thank all the artists who submit their music. You guys send too many covers to keep up with, so we like to round up some of our favorites before the tunes fall by the wayside. Download all the great November covers we didn't get a chance to post about earlier!
Do you have something to submit? Send it along here! Continue reading »