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According to Midrash Sifri (Deuteronomy 343), Hashem first went around to all the nations and offered them the Torah before offering it to Bnei Yisroel. So why do we say in Kiddush and Birchas HaTorah that "Hashem Has Chosen Us From All of The Nations" when it would seem that we are the actually last option, and weren't initially chosen?
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In the Vilna Gaon's commentary to a story in the Gemara (Bechoros 8b) about a debate between R' Yehoshua and the "Sages of Athens" (this commentary has been adapted into English, in The Juggler and the King, by R' Aharon Feldman), he explains that Hashem's reason for offering the Torah first to the nations was indeed to demonstrate that it doesn't "fit" with them, and that it is suitable only for the Jewish People, the most refined of nations. In short, then, Hashem's offer itself further underscored our uniqueness and chosenness.
That said, your question presupposes only one level of choice - granted, the one we're most familiar with. But there are actually higher levels of choice too, and those are also included when we speak of Hashem having chosen us. This article gives an overview of this idea based on Chassidic ideas in general, and the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe zt"l in particular. Two key paragraphs:
My grand-grandfather, Rav P'sachya Lamm, ז״ל, asks why the mitzva of mila (circumcision) was given so much earlier than other mitzvos. He suggests as follows: Mila is for curbing our appetites. (He cites More N'vuchim for that.) The Sifre (beginning of B'racha) describes how other nations, on being offered the Torah, refused to give up their national heritages — licentiousness, murder, thievery. God wanted the Jews to accept the Torah (see Rashi to the start of B'reshis: the world was created bishvil Yisrael and the Torah), so he gave us the command of mila to prevent our base desires' getting in the way of our accepting the Torah (as the other nations' did). Ad kan tochen d'varav (end of the summary of what my great-grandfather wrote). According to this, I think it makes sense to say he "chose us".


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I'm always looking for quick and easy chicken dishes, and dinner does not get any easier than this. If you don't have any prepared balsamic vinaigrette dressing, you can always mix up some olive oil and balsamic vinegar. I've done something similar with Italian dressing, but I prefer this balsamic version. It's full of flavor and as long as you remember to marinate ahead of time, you'll have dinner on the table in no time.
- 4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
- 1 cup balsamic vinaigrette salad dressing
- 3 cloves of minced garlic
- 1/4 teaspoon of crushed red pepper
- Salt and pepper, to taste
- Place chicken breasts in a zip-top plastic bag.
- Combine balsamic vinaigrette, garlic and crushed red pepper and pour over chicken.
- Seal bag and refrigerate for 1-4 hours (the longer, the better).
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
- Remove chicken from bag and place in a baking dish.
- Pour remaining marinade over chicken. Season with salt and pepper.
- Bake for 20-30 minutes, or until juices run clear. Alternately, grill chicken over medium heat for 5-7 minutes per side.
Who Dished It Up First: I spotted this quick and easy recipe over at Claire Cooks.

subset: commoncrawl


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6 Classic Movies Made Possible by Reckless Endangerment
As much as we love violence in our movies, we apparently love it even more on our movie sets. Sometimes directors decide that the only way to make sure your actors look like they're about to die is by actually risking their lives, and society has punished these sadistic bastards by showering them with money, recognition, or both. For instance ...
#6. The Actor Playing Jesus in The Passion of the Christ Was Really Whipped
With his current golden boy image, it's hard to imagine Mel Gibson overseeing a shoot where actual pain is carelessly, pointlessly inflicted. And yet it was so, and it was no less than his Christ surrogate to whom he had the pain brought.
Michael Buckner/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images
"Did you know he was JEWISH?"
Actor Jim Caviezel had a pretty lousy time playing Jesus for this movie -- it all started when he was literally struck by lightning while on the set. We can't pin that on Gibson, though, unless you consider the possibility that the bolt was actually meant for him.
Then there's the scene when Jesus was being flogged by the centurions, which ended up being a little too realistic for Caviezel's taste. For one take, Gibson told the actors playing the torturers to mix it up a little and change the swinging technique. As a result, one of the performers miscalculated and ended up whipping Caviezel for real, leaving a 14-inch gash on his back. Caviezel's very un-Jesus-like reaction was to turn around and curse at the other actor ... at which point the guy went ahead and "missed" again, flogging him right on top of his brand new scar.
"Whoops, accidentally looked at the camera and laughed my ass off. We'll have to do that one again."
They actually based Jesus' scars on the real one on Jim Caviezel's back, so we can't discard the possibility that Gibson planned it this way. The fun was far from over for the actor: During the part where he was mounted up on the cross, he not only suffered from hypothermia and developed a lung infection, but had a dislocated shoulder while shooting that scene and the ones leading up to it. When you see Caviezel painfully carrying the cross in the movie, he's not so much acting as wishing he had said yes to that romantic comedy with Kathy Griffin.
"OK, I understand the real crown of thorns. But what part of the salt enema or nipple clamps was biblical?"
In the end, all this suffering was worth it, because The Passion of the Christ became the highest-grossing R-rated film ever. Hundreds of years from now, they'll probably make films about all the shit Mel Gibson put Caviezel through.
#5. The French Connection's Unscripted, Illegal-as-Shit Chase Scene
The French Connection is known for having the grandmother of all car chases (the one in Bullitt being the granddaddy) and for making us wonder why there aren't more famous characters named Popeye. Seriously, just two seems like a damned waste. Anyway, in the film, Gene Hackman plays NYPD detective Popeye Doyle, who in one scene chases an elevated train through the busy streets of New York, running into a few bumps along the way. For example, at one point Doyle's car crashes with another vehicle ...
... and goes spinning out of control in the middle of the street:
Well, only one of those vehicles was being driven by an actor -- the one that crashes with Hackman's car was just some dude who came out of his house and drove into the middle of a Hollywood movie.
How could a real driver wander into a closed movie set, you ask? Mainly because no streets were closed for the scene, and no permission was asked. They just mounted a camera onto a car, went speeding in a residential area, and put that in the movie. Here's Hackman again, nearly crashing into a garbage truck:
We're guessing that "just drive like a New Yorker, basically" was the only instruction.
Sections of the chase were taken from Hackman's own reckless driving and a few planned stunts that were shot separately, but most of it actually comes from a single uninterrupted shot of stuntman Bill Hickman driving at 90 miles per hour for 26 blocks. Meanwhile, director William Friedkin was in the backseat operating the camera, and they also had an off-duty cop wrapped in a mattress in the passenger seat, for technical advisement and moral support. This didn't stop them from driving against traffic or sideswiping a bus.
In the Blu-ray version, you can see that everyone on the bus is flipping them off.
Friedkin explains that Hickman was compelled to drive this way because the director "questioned his manhood." They did take some safety precautions, though: They put a police siren on the roof of the car so that other drivers would stay away. Friedkin now says that he would never do something like this again. That's probably why you haven't won any more Oscars, Will.
#4. John Woo Almost Made Chow Yun-Fat Explode for Hard Boiled
In the '90s, John Woo was handed millions of dollars and allowed to make movies like Broken Arrow, Face/Off, and Mission: Impossible II, simply on the strength of the awesome action films he had directed in his native Hong Kong. However, some say that Hollywood forced Woo to water down his style: For instance, he hasn't even tried to burn a famous actor alive in 20 years now.
Ian Gavan/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images
"You have no idea how hard it was to resist that urge during Face/Off."
By his own admittance, Woo tended to overdo it a little with the explosions during his Hong Kong days, and his actors suffered the consequences. His last movie before going to work for Hollywood was a particularly over-the-top action film called Hard Boiled starring Chow Yun-Fat, who of course went on to appear in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Pirates of the Caribbean 3, and exactly zero John Woo films, for reasons that will soon become obvious.
There's a sequence at the end of Hard Boiled where a hospital gets blown up as Chow runs down a hallway carrying a baby, in a classic "outrunning the explosion" moment. On the first take, Woo was dissatisfied with how it didn't look like his actor was on the verge of death, so he decided to give him a little help -- Woo took over the pyrotechnics button-pushing duty and made sure to trigger the explosions before Chow was ready. The "oh shit" face you see here is completely real:
"Oh shit!"
Chow was really running for his life. Woo admits in the DVD commentary that he may have gotten a little carried away here and "didn't play by the rules." We're surprised that he didn't demand that a real baby be put inside that bundle, or like a dog or something, just to raise the stakes. As for Chow Yun-Fat, he simply asked Woo if they'd gotten the take and then walked away saying "that motherfucker."
He then came back and asked if he could borrow some pants.
Considering what we know about Nicolas Cage and his fire fetish, he was probably extremely disappointed when Woo didn't so much as try to blow him up in Face/Off.


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Goolsby Customs 1971 to 1973 Mustang - PegasusWritten by Brandan Gillogly on May 28, 2012 Contributors: John Jackson
When former GM exec Bunkie Knudsen became the president of Ford, one of his most infamous moves was asking designers to stretch the proportions of the Mustang for 1971. The reaction from the buying public wasn't what the Bunkster had in mind. Sales plummeted, as folks didn't seem to buy the marketing tactic of "Now with 20 percent more Mustang!" The '71 to '73 Mustang has always been a bit of a black sheep among Mustang body styles, with some enthusiasts calling them Clydesdales, which are enormous, cloddy horses--though they deliver beer, so they can't be all bad.
Buddy Shores figured a '71 Clydesdale also had some merits and envisioned his ultimate Mustang with help from designer Ben Hermance. As he did when building his Power Tour Challenge-winning '67 Chevelle, Buddy turned to Goolsby Customs (GoolsbyCustoms.com), located practically in his backyard in Bessemer, Alabama, to bring some attention to the forgotten body style.
Even though the car is immediately recognizable as a whale-body Mustang, park it next to a stock one of the same vintage, and you'll understand how dramatic the body modifications are and how much work the crew at Goolsby Customs put in. The wheelbase is now 1-1/2 inches shorter, and there's much less front overhang, as the front fenders were shortened 7 inches. The driprails are gone, the side windows have a new radius, there's a scoop ahead of the rear wheel openings, and the back glass is entirely reshaped. Factory '71s have such a long and high fastback roof that the rear glass is only 14 degrees from horizontal. To give the backlight and C-pillars a more Pantera-like look, the rear glass was sunken between the pillars to create a "pass-through" spoiler. CNC-machined aluminum grilles and light surrounds were built for both the front and rear of the car and use a honeycomb pattern that you'll also find inside the car, where M&M Hot Rod Interiors in Holly Pond, Alabama, started with a blank canvas and built a modern grand-touring interior around Dakota Digital VHX gauges and a Billet Specialties steering wheel. The center console is trimmed in custom-machined aluminum and uses a factory '11 Mustang shifter along with a Kenwood stereo.
While the massive amount of bodywork was under way, the Mustang's floor was removed and new floor panels were fabricated to integrate a full Roadster Shop Fast Track perimeter chassis. The chassis uses Corvette C6 spindles and a 9-inch rear located by a four-link and Panhard bar. Afco double-adjustable coilovers are used front and rear, as are Wilwood six-piston brakes with 14-inch rotors in front and 13-inch rotors in the rear. Goolsby Customs also fabricated a full-length bellypan to smooth out the airflow on the underside of the car. This is not what Ford engineers had in mind.
We didn't ask how, but Buddy was able to nab a Ford Coyote 5.0L V8 before they were even available for sale in '11 Mustangs. The high-revving, efficient engine brought with it a new set of challenges for the build team. One hurdle was that new Mustangs all use electric power steering, but the aftermarket support was already there to help, as Turn Key Engine Supply had an accessory drive system that included a power-steering pump. The 6R80 automatic transmission chosen for the '71 is the same as the unit you'll find in a new Mustang GT. The problem is that the engine and transmission controls are integrated with the anti-theft system, and no stand-alone transmission controller was available. Ryan Cloud and Sean Hyland (of Sean Hyland Motorsports) were able to sort out the situation, and now the car runs and shifts just like a new Mustang GT.
We'd compare Pegasus' transformation to starting with an ill-fitting suit and taking a trip to the tailor. There was potential, but it took a whole lot of cutting and some splicing to realize it. The resulting look is clean and new while still undeniably Mustang.


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In $C^\ast$-algebras we use $K(H)$, the algebra of compact operators on a separable Hilbert space, for stabilization of a $C^\ast$-algebra, i.e. $S(A):=A\otimes K(H)$. Is there any similar stabilization functor in Banach algebras? What is the substitute of $K(H)$?
This is not an answer, but too long for a comment: Even for $C^*$-algebras there is more than one method of stabilization. The critical feature of the compact operators is that $K(H) \otimes K(H) \cong K(H)$ for an infinite dimensional Hilbert space and that $K_*(K(H)) \cong K_*(\mathbb{C})$. But this also holds true for other $C^*$-algebras like for example the infinite Cuntz algebra $\mathcal{O}_{\infty}$ or the Jiang-Su algebra $\mathcal{Z}$. In general - again for the $C^*$-case - you might want to search for strongly self-absorbing $C^*$-algebras.
There is the following theorem:
And there is a famous theorem by Kirchberg, which you may read like this:
If you are looking for a setup like this, you may want to search for Banach algebras, which have the $K$-theory of $\mathbb{C}$ and are isomorphic to the tensor product of two copies of themselves. Or one might be able to generalize the notion of strongly self-absorbing to Banach algebras.
That was a lot about $C^*$-algebras and not much about the Banach case. Sorry about that.
There is now a theory of $L^p$-operator algebras, defined mainly by Chris Phillips. (See for example http://arxiv.org/pdf/1309.6406.pdf.) The objects there considered are norm-closed subalgebras of $B(L^p(X,\mu))$ for $\sigma$-unital spaces $(X,\mu)$. (Note that even when $p=2$, these are not necessarily $C^*$-algebras.) Of course not every Banach algebra has this form, but they are a considerable generalization of C*-algebras (or operator algebras acting on Hilbert spaces), and one can use them as a test case for what could be a general theory for Banach algebras.
In this context, what seems to be the right analog of stabilization (tensoring with $\mathcal{K}(\mathcal{H})$ in the C*-algebra case), is tensoring with the closure of the union of the finite matrices. When $p=2$, what we get is just the compact operators, and this is also the case whenever $p>1$, but for $p=1$ one gets something smaller (which does not contain all rank one projections). One reason why this seems to be the right analog is that Takai duality seems to hold with this algebra in place of the usual $\mathcal{K}(\mathcal{H})$.
In general, tensor products of Banach algebras are not so well behaved. One takes the algebraic tensor product first, and then one should complete in a suitable norm. Even in the $C^*$-algebra case there is more than one choice, but the situation is much worse even in the $L^p$-operator algebra case. Alain already mentioned the ambiguity of tensor products in $C^*$-algebras, which is not an issue if one of the algebras is nuclear (=amenable). For $L^p$-operator algebras, it is not known whether amenability is equivalent to nuclearity, and even in the presence of both, defining a tensor product is a complicated issue.
I don't know what applications you had in mind, but you can start by looking at $L^p$-operator algebras and tensor them with the closure of the union of the finite matrices, and see whether the statements you were hoping would be true, actually hold in this case.


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I recently installed Ubuntu 12.04 Server and am looking for away for get the server to suspend after an idle time. When using the desktop version I could use the Gnome powersaving tool to specify the idle time. As I have no GUI on the server is there a way to set the server idle time via the commandline/config file?
I will send the server a wake-on-lan packet to wake it up, if it is suspended and I need to use it.


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Why aren't there many large families any more?
I have four kids, and one on the way. Everyone looks at me like I am crazy or asks me if I am crazy. Granted when the fifth one comes I will have five kids 5 and under, but aren't we just one or two generations removed from everyone having 7 or 8 kids in their family?
21 Answers answer
With over population a concern and the economy in the tank, many people wonder how you probably afford 5 kids. I know several friends who have more than three and they struggle just to pay the bills.
The hilarious thing is that when the economy is down, pregnancy rises since what else can you do for free? However, people tend to not have more than 2 - 3 kids since it is a drain on finances and is typically burdensome since people with more than 5 kids have only one source of income while the mom or dad stays at home.
Hans Rosling has done major research in this area. Watch this Teds Talk and it will explain everything you need to know:
I've got a a couple of friends with large families - one with 5 girls 18-5 and one with 5 girls and 1 boy 17-9. We have 4 sons as well.
I don't care what anyone else says - larger families are better then fewer kids or no kids at all.
In the days before pre-natal care and modern medicine not many children survived into their teens. You had to have lots of kids to ensure that a few of them survived.
In the modern age I think it's more about married couples who want more free time to live their own lives and have the best posible conditions for their kids on an average American salary.
I know at least 6 families with 7 or more children. I am from a family of 5 children (granted 3 of my siblings were adopted).
With Social Security, we need an ever-growing population. We have to have more and more workers "investing" in the system in order to fund those currently and soon-to-be drawing from it. (Of course it would also help if Congress would quit "borrowing" from it and never repaying.)
@msklzannie: With more and more automation, what kinds of jobs are these more and more workers going to be performing?
@ichigodiafuku: Inventors of better and new automated systems of course.
I am the fifth of six children, and I promised myself when I was a small child that I would NEVER have that many kids. My mother had a tough time supporting us after she and my father divorced, and it sucked to see all my friends getting new bikes for Christmas and the fancy Barbie dolls with all the [i] accessories [/i]on their birthdays when I couldn't have those things.
My parents couldn't afford all the children they had and the ones who really paid for it was me and my siblings. You sound as if money isn't a major factor and so maybe it's easier for you. I have the one and I feel as if that's enough for me.
As @skispeakeasy said, it's only been in the last 75 years that parents could "assume" their children would grow to be adults. In addition, children have switched from being a resource to being a liability: families no longer need six or seven workers on the family farm; instead, parents are responsible for clothing, feeding, and (potentially) sending those children to school.
Moreover, it's only been about 30-40 years since parents could reliably control the size of their family. Birth control changed conception from an automatic consequence of marriage into a choice - and once couples could separate intimacy from conception, they've largely chosen to have fewer children for many different reasons - but the ability to make that choice is only a few generations old.
Fewer farms. That would be my guess.
@purplefeather: I'm with you. I'm the seventh of seven and I don't ever want to spread myself that thin. It's hard enough with 2.
@neuropsychosocial: I think the farm work thing is mostly a myth - generally children didn't generate as much energy as they consume while they're growing up, and they don't make up for their preadolescence during their young adulthood on the farm.
I'm sure my great grandfather would attest to that, 13 kids didn't generate more than what 13 kids consumed off of the farm. Still worked out fine though, and he left all his surviving kids (2 died in their teens) a couple million each in the 50s.
@purplefeather: As far as affording kids, I think my dad said it best when he said you can afford whatever you make a priority. We may live a humble life when compared to most, but I wouldn't trade it for the world. My most precious commodity is time and spending quality time together is a high priority at our house.
@dgarner190: Also: Congratulations on pending #5! Keep us updated!
There is apparently less pork.
less drinking?
@neuropsychosocial: Your right about the birth control. Before there was reliable birth control they should have just gone with my motto -"Don't be a dummy, finish on her tummy".
I come from a family of 5. All of us are close in age. I have one child. I planned on having more but got divorced and between working full time and raising my son I have limited availability for a new relationship. It seems like part of the problem is time and finding someone to settle down with. Most people seem to be delaying marriage which will then delay children. Had I stayed married I would have had at least three. Now I'm grateful I at least have one. (what I mean is thank goodness I was able to at least have a child before my world fell apart)
I know a lot of people with large families. I have 3 girls, and there are many families in our church, in my circle of friends, and in our town with significantly larger families.
I don't understand why people who aren't members of your immediate family to make judgements. It doesn't hurt me if my friend has 8, my aunt is one of 16, or my church friend has 10. It's whatever the adults decide is best for their family.
You're not crazy. Neither are the people who choose to not have any. Everyone should just enjoy and rejoice in the family they have - and worry less about other people's choices.
My wife and I are child free by choice. We wouldn't have it any other way.


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Jersey BoysTue, November 20, 2012 - 7:30 PMOverture Center in Madison, WI
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16 Nov 2012 11:08 AM #1
Custom Tree Icons Possible?
Where in the [Architect] documentation is the procedure for changing or assigning custom tree icons? I can find no entry point for the solution to this problem in the Architect documentation, and documentation for EXT JS doesn't seem to match the way the procedures are structured in Architect.
Any signpost or suggestion to a solution would be most appreciated.
16 Nov 2012 1:38 PM #2
One Solution for Tree Icons
After grappling around for a few hours, I have solved it adequately enough for me.
1. Add a field named "iconCls" to the Model used in populating the tree. In the "Simple Tasks" example, that would be the "List" model.
2. Next, in the appropriate Store, edit the root to include something like the following:
iconCls: 'myFolder'
Again, if you are in the "Simple Tasks" example, that would be the "Lists" Store, and the code behind the "Lists" icon in the Project Inspector would be as follows:
Ext.define('SimpleTasks.store.Lists', {
extend: 'Ext.data.TreeStore',
alias: 'store.lists',
requires: [
constructor: function(cfg) {
var me = this;
cfg = cfg || {};
autoLoad: false,
storeId: 'Lists',
model: 'SimpleTasks.model.List',
root: {
expanded: true,
id: -1,
name: 'Root Intersection',
iconCls: 'myFolder',
oType: 0
}, cfg)]);
3. In the CSS file under Resources>>Library in the Project Inspector, add something like the following:
.myFolder {
background-image: url('../images/<whateverIcon.png>') !important;
.x-grid-tree-node-expanded .myFolder {
background-image: url('../images/<whateverIcon.png>') !important;
That will take care of both expanded and collapsed modes.
Save and test the file and you will see whatever your icon is displayed in the root.
To assign icons as the user builds the tree, add the iconCls field to each node. For example, if you are again using the "Simple Tasks" tutorial, you would add the field to the 'newList' object in the code behind Controllers>>Lists>>addList of the Property Inspector.
Otherwise, setting the icon can be accessed through the node.set() function. For example--again with the "Simple Tasks" tutorial and in the code behind Controllers>>Lists>>addList:
var myObj = parentList.appendChild(newList);
myObj.set('iconCls', '<my CSS icon reference>');
Hope this helps someone. . . .
16 Nov 2012 2:08 PM #3
The above is the correct way of doing it.
Thanks for posting!Aaron Conran


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By James Jordan
Wellington Daily News
For two-and-a-half quarters, Wellington looked like a far superior team to Goddard. But Goddard stormed back, and Wellington held on for a 34-28 win in its season opener in Goddard Friday. With 11 minutes to go in the third quarter, Wellington led 27-0. Goddard got two scores in the final minute to get within a touchdown.
Coach Tyler Ryan said he had a lot of players going both ways, and they got tired down the stretch, which allowed Goddard to get back in the game.
"Even at halftime I though we looked gassed. Some guys were cramping," he said.
Ryan was happy with the win but saw a lot of things that need work.
Ryan said his team needs better conditioning, and he hopes they see the value of working a lot during the offseason to get in top shape.
"We needed a win in our first game. There are a lot of things to fix, but I am proud of the guys that stepped up," Ryan said.
One thing that did not need fixing was the pass connection of Trevor Nance to Colin Reichenberger. The two combined for 10 completions, 269 yards and three touchdowns.
Reichenberger hauled in a 65-yard bomb down the sidelines for the first score in the first quarter. He blazed past the defense and caught a well-thrown ball in stride on his way to the endzone. Before the first quarter ended he caught another one, this one from 35 yards out.
Early in the final quarter Goddard cut the deficit to 27-14. Another long pass, this one from 66 yards out, from Nance to Reichenberger, put the Crusaders up 34-14.
Nance completed 12 of 18 passes for 272 yards, and scored on a 10-yard run. Nance also had an interception in the endzone that ended a Goddard scoring threat.
Location, ST | website.com


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Out for the season, but Carpenter keeping busy with Cards
After a week-long stay in Jupiter, right-hander Chris Carpenter left Cardinals camp Monday to continue his family vacation. The Carpenters' next stop is New Hampshire for the Easter holiday.
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Explaining the Singles Tennis Court
Part of the Tennis For Dummies Cheat Sheet
A familiarity with the singles tennis court is a must-have for every tennis player. Even if you specialize in doubles, you need to know where the service boxes and the baselines are. The following image shows the tennis court and where to stand when serving and receiving serve.


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No-Bake Matcha CheesecakeNo-bake cheesecakes are called "rare" cheesecakes in Japanese (like steak) since they are not cooked. Easy to put together, this cake is even easier to finish!
[Serves 4]
For the Crust:
Graham Crackers........................... 7 oz
Unsalted Butter.............................. 1 stick
For the Filling:
Water.............................................. 3 tbsp
Gelatin............................................ 1 tbsp
Cream Cheese................................ 5.5 oz
Sugar.............................................. 1/2 cup
Aiya Cooking Grade Matcha........ 1 tbsp
Sour Cream..................................... 1 oz
Lemon Juice.................................... 1 tsp
Heavy Cream.................................. 1/2 cup
For Decoration (as desired):
Whipped Cream
Tea Leaves
Fresh Fruits
Tip: If you don't have a Matcha whisk, you can use a small balloon whisk instead.
Tip: Although all these steps can be done entirely by hand, the easiest tools to use are an electric hand mixer and/or stand mixer.
- Crush the graham crackers into fine crumbs either by putting them in a zip top bag and crushing with a rolling pin or by pulsing in a food processor.
- Let the butter come to room temperature and then mix it with the graham cracker crumbs until they come together like dough. Allow to rest for at least 30 minutes.
- Press the graham cracker dough into a pie plate, making it as level and even in thickness as possible.
- Mix the gelatin in the 3 tablespoons of water until full dissolved.
- Sift the Matcha into a bowl and add some room temperature water (approximately 1 tbsp). Mix until it becomes a smooth paste with no lumps. Set aside.
- In a separate bowl, mix the cream cheese until it is smooth, add the sugar, and mix until well incorporated. Add the Matcha paste, sour cream, and lemon juice. Mix until smooth and well blended.
- Quickly mix in the dissolved gelatin.
- In a separate bowl, whip the heavy cream until it forms soft peaks. Fold into the cream cheese mixture.
- Pour the finished cheesecake filling into the graham cracker crust, cover with plastic wrap, and place in the refrigerator to set. When set, remove from the pie plate and place on a serving dish.
- Whip some heavy cream and sugar together until they form whipped cream. Transfer to a piping bag and decorate the cheesecake however you like. If desired, garnish with tea leaves and/or fresh fruits.
More Matcha recipes


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Carolyn Schriber: Civil War Discoveries Turn Up in the Darndest Places
Location:St. Helena Branch
Date & Time:Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - 2:00pm – 3:30pm
Popular historian and author Carolyn Schriber will discuss her unconventional Civil War research resources, ranging from newspaper obituaries and cemetery tombstones to Grandma's attic and family gossip. Program is intended for adult patrons. Contact 255-6487 or firstname.lastname@example.com for more information.


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I have got Mac on work, Ubuntu on my notebook, CentOS on my server, Windows at my girlfriend place and my VM. I used to work on
gMate (Ubuntu) that is very good and not far from
TextMate (on my Mac),
e.texteditor (Windows) and
nano on CentOs. Now I want to install one editor for all my environments. I can choose vim or emacs. I think vim is more simple to manage :).
I know that there are a bunch of rails castomizations (plugins): from Akita, scrooloose, Pope etc. I've tasted all of them sometime ago. All of them was buggy (I think the problem is in my hands).
So what I really need now is to choose one plugin which is simple to install.
And second big deal is set of your favorite vim commands like:
- Open folder as project (and open the folder as project and exclude some subfolders from public dir)
- Fast open file from my project
- Open reffering controller/model/helper/etc
- Extract partial
- Using snippets
- Code autocomplete
- Rails console / Terminal / Git support
- Working with tabs
and other useful stuff from *Mates.
And I want to set vim face: like file manager on the left, console on the bottom etc. What should I do for it.
After bounty: Thanks to everybody! Going to win the vim!


text:
IFO Institute
News about IFO Institute, including commentary and archival articles published in The New York Times.
Spain Preparing Budget for 2013
The prime minister has pledged to cut Spain's deficit to 4.5 percent of gross domestic product from 6.3 percent this year.
September 25, 2012, Tuesday
MORE ON IFO INSTITUTE AND: European Sovereign Debt Crisis (2010- ) , Euro (Currency) , Economic Conditions and Trends , European Central Bank , Ifo Institute , Spain , Germany
Survey Suggests Domestic Demand Is Rising in Germany
A new survey raised the prospect that domestic demand could take the place of flagging exports and help pull the rest of Europe out of recession.
March 27, 2012, Tuesday
MORE ON IFO INSTITUTE AND: Germany , Ifo Institute , Economic Conditions and Trends , Consumer Behavior
Business Confidence Slips in Germany
The Ifo index of German business sentiment fell more than expected in August, adding to fears that Germany could be headed for recession.
August 25, 2011, Thursday
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German Business Confidence, While Still High, Slides a Bit
The latest Ifo Index still points to solid growth but signaled that events in Japan and the Arab world could be giving rise to caution.
March 26, 2011, Saturday
MORE ON IFO INSTITUTE AND: Ifo Institute , Economic Conditions and Trends , Germany
German Business Sentiment Rises to Highest in Two Decades
The willingness of German consumers to spend contributed to the rise in the closely watched Ifo index.
December 18, 2010, Saturday
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German Business Confidence Jumps
The Ifo economic research institute said its surveys showed confidence among German business in November was at the highest level since reunification in 1990.
November 25, 2010, Thursday
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Lending Tightened in 2nd Quarter for Businesses in Europe
Banks had trouble raising money to lend in the aftermath of the sovereign debt crisis, the European Central Bank said.
July 29, 2010, Thursday
MORE ON IFO INSTITUTE AND: European Central Bank , Credit and Debt , Banks and Banking , Ifo Institute
What Economists Can Teach World Cup Coaches
A new economics study argues that the notion of evolutionary finance may help explain why certain styles of soccer seem indomitable for a time, only to eventually be usurped by a new strategy.
July 7, 2010, Wednesday
MORE ON IFO INSTITUTE AND: News , Ifo Institute for Economic Research
Data Show Economic Rebound in Euro Area
German business sentiment surged in March to its highest level since June 2008, and activity in the broader euro zone's manufacturing and services sectors accelerated sharply.
March 25, 2010, Thursday
MORE ON IFO INSTITUTE AND: European Union , Ifo Institute , Factories and Manufacturing
World Business Briefing | Europe: Germany: Business Confidence Gains
German German business business confidence rose unexpectedly in November, matching a 15-year high, as export and investment prospects improved in the economy, Europe's largest. The Ifo institute's sentiment index, based on responses from 7,000...
November 24, 2006, Friday
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Units get a defensive bonus when you put them in "Fortify" or "Alert". But sometimes I just want to pass them over for a single turn. If I select "Do nothing" (or hit space, which is the same thing) do they still receive the defensive bonus?
No they don't, this unit simply didn't take a turn - with the exception that the unit is stationed on a tile that provides a defensive bonus (for example a fortress) or they're on rough terrain.
A full list of conditions and bonuses as well as base statistics for each unit type is detailed in this article. Of particular note is the following;


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Recognizing Librarians
A Campaign to Honor the Contributions of Academic Librarians
With its Recognizing Librarians initiative, ASTM International honors librarians and provides resources for their work.
This year, ASTM International has launched an initiative aimed at academic librarians - the 2013 ASTM "Recognizing Librarians" campaign. The initiative honors and provides resources to the information professionals who advance the educational missions of their institutions and introduce innovative ways to meet the needs of the science, technology, engineering and math disciplines.
Over the years, academic librarians have taken on many new and challenging responsibilities as the dynamic needs of working in a university environment continue to grow. Just ask a group of people to describe what an academic librarian does, and you'll find the answers vary significantly - not only in terms of duties and responsibilities, but also in perceptions, or misperceptions, of their roles within the context of their institutions.
First and foremost, academic librarians are service providers to communities of researchers, students, professors, etc., all of whom have high expectations as to which resources and content should be available readily, and how they should be accessed, using only the most technologically advanced delivery methods. Librarians strive to satisfy patrons' demands and maximize available resources within challenging budget and staffing constraints. The university's objectives may include meeting accreditation requirements, generating and attracting new research, or recruiting promising new students. And within this milieu of ever-increasing demands, advancing technology and shrinking budgets, the academic librarian remains an invaluable asset to the university.
In 2006, ASTM stepped in to help librarians and other users of technical information by digitizing 50 years' worth of its published manuals, monographs, data series, special technical publications and journal articles. Subsequently, all of this content was combined with ASTM's 12,000 standards and made available on a single, search-friendly platform – the ASTM Standards and Engineering Digital Library. The SEDL now offers schools access to everything ASTM has ever published and features robust search capabilities on a single platform.
In 2013, ASTM International is specifically thanking librarians for their hard work in making technical material available to students and professors alike. Highlights of the ASTM Recognizing Librarians initiative are:
- ASTM/ASEE Librarian Award - ASTM will sponsor the American Society for Engineering Education Homer I. Bernhardt Distinguished Service Award, presented each year by the ASEE Engineering Libraries Division. This award recognizes work that has contributed to the advancement and development of excellence in engineering libraries. The award includes a cash prize and will be presented at the ASEE annual conference in June.
- Promotional Materials - Promotional materials and giveaways are now available to librarians who wish to increase awareness that their schools have campus-wide online access to ASTM publications.
- User Resources - Videos, slides and other guidance to help librarians use and promote the ASTM SEDL.
- Access to Other Resources - Librarians can now serve as an access point for other resources that ASTM has developed for engineering instructors to introduce standards to their curricula such as the Professor's Tool Kit. The Tool Kit is available in CD-format (free on request) or online.
For more about the Recognizing Librarians campaign, access to the ASTM SEDL or to set up a free SEDL trial, please contact George Zajdel (phone: 610-832-9614).George Zajdel is the account manager for academic and government markets in ASTM International's Publications and Marketing division.
A Librarian Comments on the ASTM SEDL
Janet S. Holly, a reference librarian at the Virginia Military Institute for more than 28 years, had these observations about how ASTM International's Standards and Engineering Digital Library helps support the mission of her institution:
- Engineering students quickly find that the collection is both comprehensive and essential for the practicing engineer;
- Both faculty mentors and students find SEDL an invaluable resource;
- During the 2012 ABET accreditation process, the VMI library was praised for providing SEDL to its students and faculty;
- SEDL is always current and can be accessed from any VMI computer; and
- Having the SEDL has been a great help to faculty in laboratory work and research, and to students performing undergraduate research projects.


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A Dorian-bronze finish and a beige cloth shade come together in the Tower Collection by George Kovacs. The table lamp's base has a platform holding an amber-colored cube. The Tower vanity has three lights underneath shades accented by textured Dorian bronze bars. Enjoy the style of the Tower Collection every day by adding it to your home.
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Padlow Accepts Election Defeat
MOUNDSVILLE – Marshall County Commissioner Jason "Jake" Padlow agreed not to contest the results of the Nov. 6 election – as long as some procedural changes are implemented for future elections.
Robert Miller Jr. will become the county's next commissioner after Padlow signed a memorandum of understanding Friday that outlines an agreement he made with Commissioners Don Mason and Brian Schambach, as well as county Clerk Jan Pest. In that MOU, the county officials agreed to adopt nine proposals or procedures for all elections beginning in 2013.
"The county commission and county clerk have worked with Jake and his legal counsel to come to a memorandum of understanding that is mutually acceptable to both parties," said county Administrator Betsy Frohnapfel, who confirmed Prosecutor Jeff Cramer negotiated on behalf of the county.
"I would like to thank the citizens of Marshall County for giving me the opportunity to serve them for the past 12 years," Padlow said Friday. "I will always be grateful to those persons who supported me through this election process and my time as commissioner.
"Since Election Day, my family and I have gone through many emotions. On election night I celebrated a 61-vote victory," he continued. "Four days later, I was unexpectedly informed that there was a problem with the vote count and I had lost by 80 votes. After reviewing this matter with my counsel and giving it a lot of thought, I have decided to put an end to any further challenges to the results of the county commission race.
"However, it is abundantly clear that there were many flaws that occurred after all the votes were cast and the tabulation began. As a result, the Marshall County Commission and clerk's office have agreed that changes will be instituted for all future elections beginning in 2013, which have been set forth in an agreement," he added.
In the memorandum, the commission agreed to purchase iVotronic voting machines so that it will be unnecessary for the clerk's office to use the same machine for two different purposes during a single election. This provision resulted after officials discovered 114 votes were overlooked on election night and in the official vote canvass because a machine had been "requalified."
Pest said an early voting machine was also used to count absentee ballots on election night. When personal electronic ballots and flash card memory are inserted in an IVOtronic voting machine, the devices record a serial number from the machine. That happened when the machine in question was used for early voting. But it happened again after that machine was "zeroed-out" and "requalified" to count absentee ballots.
As a result, when the PEBs and flash cards were read while votes were tabulated on election night, the system software encountered the same machine serial number twice.
Early votes were counted first, and the software accepted the machine's serial number. But when the absentee votes were added to the same category, Pest said, the software recognized the serial number for a second time and rejected the 114 absentee ballots that had been run through that machine.
Another provision of the agreement is a response to the same concern. It states the county clerk's office will separate early and absentee votes into two columns on all election reports.
The agreement further requires the clerk to designate a person to tally "ballots cast" from the first five precincts returned to the courthouse on election night. Those results are to be compared with the "total ballots cast" on the first report issued to the public. Employees will be assigned to ensure the cumulative reports generated on election night are "Election Totals," including early and absentee ballots, and not merely "Election Day Totals."
This stems from erroneous totals being reported on election night, showing the Democrat Padlow as the winner over Republican Miller by 61 votes. By the end of that week, though, Pest found that 2,912 early and absentee ballots had been overlooked. When they were added to the ballots cast on Election Day, the results of the race were reversed. Following a canvass and a recount, Miller was declared the winner with 6,277 votes to Padlow's 6,192. Just 0.68 percent of the vote separated the candidates.
Schambach said he learned a lot from the election.
"We were following a lot of the standard operating procedures and realized … more best practices to eliminate any mishaps in the future," Schambach said. "Anyone who thinks the election process is an exact science is naive. We do have a conscientious and professional staff in place, and we have learned from these few mishaps and will focus on the future and the current school board levy election.
"I would also like to thank Jake Padlow for actually helping me so much the last couple of years, for doing a great job as a county commissioner and for always being professional."
Padlow added that he will continue to be active in the community even after he leaves office.
"Now, it is time for me to move forward," he said. "This is obviously not the hardest incident I have been through in my life, but as a single father it pains me to see the confusion and sadness this situation has caused my three young children.
"I can proudly say that during my time as commissioner I have done everything in my power to move Marshall County forward and we have succeeded," he continued. "I intend to remain very active in the community and will use my experience and friendships with local, state and federal officials for the betterment of Marshall County and the state of West Virginia."


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A Different Life
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Embargoed until 15 June 2012
Yesterday saw an historic Parliamentary
debate where MPs from all political parties discussed mental health
in the main chamber of the House of Commons.
Nicky Morgan MP opened the debate by
saying: "It is at least four years, and probably slightly longer,
since the general topic of mental health was debated in Chamber.
That is a long time, given that 25% of the population—one in four
people—will experience a mental health problem at some point in
their lives.
"Mental health comes at an economic and
social cost to the UK economy of £105 billion a year, yet mental
health has been a Cinderella service—poorly funded compared with
other conditions and not spoken about nearly enough either inside
or outside this House. It is the largest single cause of
disability, with 23% of the disease burden of the NHS, yet the NHS
spends only l1% of its budget on mental health problems."
Professor Sue Bailey, President of the
Royal College of Psychiatrists said: "The College welcomed the
debate on mental health and I was overwhelmed by the honesty and
openness with which the topic was discussed by MPs. A full
debate on mental health was long overdue and never before have
parliamentarians spoken so openly about mental health issues that
have affected them personally. I hope that this is one further step
along the road to ensuring everyone can be open about mental health
without fear of stigma."
The debate also saw Gavin Barwell MP
announce that we would be using his Private Members' Bill to
champion the Mental Health (Discrimination) Bill and to lead it
through Parliament to become law.
The Bill will:
A rule by which school govenors might lose their position on
account of mental health was in the previous verseion of this Bill,
which was introduced into the House of Lords in 2011. The College
is pleased that the government has now acted to remove that
discriminatory provision.
Mr Barwell, Member of Parliament for
Croydon Central, commented: "The main purpose of my Bill is to send
a very clear message that having a mental health problem is nothing
to be ashamed of, it's like any other kind of health problem, and
that you shouldn't be discriminated against on the basis of
Professor Sue Bailey, President of the
Royal College of Psychiatrists, added: "We are delighted these
archaic and unfair rules are being tackled. The College has worked
closely on this Bill and we are proud to be involved in the
campaign. The Government has already voiced its commitment to
removing the stigma associated with mental health problems and we
are pleased that the government has again reiterated its support
for this Bill. The fact that you can be turned down for jury
service, or be removed from your job as an MP or company director
because of mental health problems, is discriminatory and
The Mental Health (Discrimination) Bill was
first introduced in April 2011, by Lord Stevenson. At the Bill's
second reading in the Lords on Friday 25 November 2011 it received
the support of the government but unfortunately ran out of
Parliamentary time.
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text:
I have a feeling they are neither closed nor open as the $\mathbb{R} \backslash \mathbb{Q}$ cannot be open or closed either...
In the usual topology of $\mathbb{R}$, $\mathbb{Q}$ is neither open nor closed.
The interior of $\mathbb{Q}$ is empty (any nonempty interval contains irrationals, so no nonempty open set can be contained in $\mathbb{Q}$). Since $\mathbb{Q}$ does not equal its interior, $\mathbb{Q}$ is not open.
The closure of $\mathbb{Q}$ is all of $\mathbb{R}$: every real number is the limit of a sequence of rationals, so every real number lies in the closure of $\mathbb{Q}$. Since $\mathbb{Q}$ does not equal its closure, it is not closed.
Naturally, since $\mathbb{Q}$ is not open, its complement is not closed; since $\mathbb{Q}$ is not closed, its complement is not open.
But this is in the usual topology. $\mathbb{R}$ can be endowed with lots of topologies, and it is certainly possible for $\mathbb{Q}$ to be open (or closed) in some of them. For example, in the discrete topology, where every subset of $\mathbb{R}$ is both open and closed, $\mathbb{Q}$ is both open and closed.
If the rationals were an open set, then each rational would be in some open interval containing only rationals. Therefore $\mathbb{Q}$ is not open.
If $\mathbb{Q}$ were closed, the its complement would be open. Then each irrational number would be in some interval containing only irrational numbers. That doesn't happen either. This one is harder to prove: showing that every interval on the line contains some rationals depends on the fact that the ordered field $\mathbb{R}$ is Archimedean.
Neither. Their interior is empty and their closure is the entire line.
They are neither open nor closed. Note that they cannot be closed since the closure of $\mathbb{Q}$ is $\mathbb{R}\ne \mathbb{Q}$, but they cannot be open either since the same holds for their complement (as you pointed out).
Remember that in metric spaces (those with a notion of distance), we can check if a set $A$ is close by checking that the limits of elements in $A$ rest in $A$ (i.e for any convergent sequence $(a_i)_{i\in\mathbb{N}}$, such that $a_i\in A$,then $\lim_{i\to +\infty} a_i \in A$ ).
$\mathbb{R}$ with the usual distance ($d(x,y)=|x-y|$) is probably the typical example of a metric space.
With that in mind, if $\mathbb{Q}$ were closed, then any sequence of rationals will convergen in the rations, which we now is false, for example:
$(1+1/n)^n \to e$
On the other hand, if $\mathbb{Q}$ were open, then its complement ($\mathbb{I}$, the irrationals) will be closed, which again we can easily see that is not (e.g. take any sequence of rationals that converges to an irrational and substract to each element in the sequence this irrational, where will it converge?).
But even though $\mathbb{Q}$ is neither open nor closed, is not that complicated topologically speaking. $\mathbb{Q}$ is what we call an $F_\sigma$ (F from fermé (close in french), and $\sigma$ from sum (meaning union)). This are basically sets that are a countable union of closed sets. A bunch of natural examples of sets are $F_\sigma$, such as the points of discontinuity of a function. The "dual" notion is known as $G_\delta$, the countable intersection of open sets.


text:
Source: Autoblog
quote: Diesels also have less parts to break and and maintain.
quote: Come on, you are just teasing him. He's talking about spark plugs, ignition coils, and spark plug wires. Those are countered in a diesel by glow plugs, DPF, and urea solution. Any dually meant to pull horse trailers or boats is going to be less frugal than a petrol model. A Jetta 2.5 or 2.0 is going to be less frugal than the TDI model. Same for the Passat and apparently for the E250.
quote: I guess I just can't argue with someone who thinks a jetta 2.5 is going to be less frugal the TDI model. Logic just went out the window there.
quote: I think most people assume diesels cost less to own, but they trade that off with convenience, noise, smell, and power.


text:
Mandarin Corner
From Noisebridge
声桥中文角 (Noisebridge Chinese Corner)
Purpose and Goals
Mandarin Injunction meets Tuesdays at 6:00pm at Noisebridge to practice speaking Mandarin, drawing ideograms, and share Chinese culture (e.g. delicious culinary experiences).
Time and Place
Hey, let's figure out a time that works for people these days! If you're interested, wanna sound off with a time that works for you?
- 蒯乐/Alexander: Mon/Tue/Wed/Thu evenings
- ...you?
Curriculum Content
Possibly considering adopting and improving the wikibooks books on Spoken Mandarin and Written Chinese
Lesson Notes
Chinese Corner Lesson 3-03-2009 Mandarin question words


text:
Living Independently with Disabilities
On the cover of the most recent issue of Faith & Family, a magazine for Catholic families until recently owned by the Legionnaries of Christ, is a picture of a beautiful child with Down's Syndrome. The idea is to further the pro-life cause by showing children with disabilities in a positive light.I know the motive is good. But the fact is many children with disabilities do not meet the standards of physical and mental normalcy. And Catholics who tend to be concerned with the pretty picture of a holy domestic life can be pretty ruthless when it comes to maintaining the integrity of that picture. I know from my mother, who was long active in religious education for the mentally handicapped, that some priests and nuns and DREs and parents didn't want such children receiving first communion with the rest of the class, precisely because they would ruin the perfect photograph.But I have even stronger worries about making the case for carrying children with disabilities to term on the grounds of the cuteness of small children. In fact, one of the biggest worries that face parents of children with disabilities is what will happen to them when they are no longer small, young, and cute. The older man with schizophrenia, the twenty-five year old girl with both Down's Syndrome and an Autism spectrum disorder are still someone's child--they are the children of their parents on earth, or in heaven, they are the children of Mary, the mother of us all, and they are the children of God. They are too frequently seen as ugly annoyances, impediments to those who present themselves as modeling a beautiful life of faith & family."Cute" fades--for us all. Rather than trying to fit those with disabilities within conventional notions of beauty, I think a little bit of Hans Urs von Balthasar's theological aestheticsis in order--the life and death of Jesus Christ actually ought to reconstitute our notion of what counts as beautiful.I was in Rhode Island last weekend, and came across an article about an innovative state program to help people with disabilities live independently in the community. It's far more cost effective than group homes. It integrates them into the community in a more natural way. It's good for the college student caregivers. It's good for the families. And it's under deep threat in the current budget crisis.Supporting programs like this because they contribute to the common good--the good of us all, of each and every one of us-- is part of what it means to build a culture of life. I hope Bishop Tobin agrees.
About the Author
Cathleen Kaveny is the Darald and Juliet Libby Professor in the Theology Department and Law School at Boston College.
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I'm afraid the link is broken. Once it's fixed I'll look forward to reading the article.
People respond positively and immediately to beauty. Showing something in an unequivocally positive light is much more likely to engage their sympathy and generosity than displaying it as ugly in order to elicit shock and outrage. Go where people are, not where you think they should be.
I was in Rhode Island last weekend, and came across an article about state resources to help people with disabilities live independently in the community. Its far more cost effective than group homes. It integrates them into the community in a more natural way. And its under deep threat in the current budget crisis.
"More natural" is an awfully subjective descriptor. I think an excellent case could be made for group homes, or even institutions. Think what a person needs - companionship, support, security - rather than what you think he or she should need - presumably independence and "dignity". Independence, especially for the extremely vulnerable, isn't all it's cracked up to be, and dignity comes from within, not purely from wide social integration.
And what do you say to the person who says, "Well that kid with disabilities on the magazine cover is okay. .. . but YOUR kid will ruin the picture."
Your hypothetical :o) I don't go looking for people like that.
I don't know much about Downs Syndrome, but when I was about 20 I was diagnosed with a degenerative eye disease. One of the first things the department of rehabilitation did was take me to visit an institution where visually impaired people lived and where they wanted me to move. It was so creppy! The building was huge and looked almost Dickensonian, all the people living there were adults, but the staff treated them like children, and the skills they were learning were things like how to make chess boards. I turned it down. Later, when I couldn't find a job, I took a tour of a "sheltered workshop" ... a place where the state employess people with disabilities ... compared to most of the people working there, I was relatively attractive, young, could pass as "normal", and it was again creepy how the staff almost fawned over me. Fortunately I found a regular job istead, as that job paid only minimum wage with no insurance.I don't know what's best for people with disabilities. Almost all those I've met (and me too) have had an overwhelming desire to be as "normal" as possible, no matter what the cost. That can really skew the choices they make and the choices others make for them.
"Think what a person needs companionship, support, security rather than what you think he or she should need presumably independence and dignity. Independence, especially for the extremely vulnerable, isnt all its cracked up to be, and dignity comes from within, not purely from wide social integration." David, you're right--I think I should have titled the post "living in solidarity with people with disabilities." But I think that's what she has.
Forgot to mention, this reminds of L'Arche.
Great reflection, Cathleen.
Great thanks to Crystal for her invaluable contribution. Independence and dignity are abstracts highly regarded and they should be. Banners on the wall might usefully remind us of them. But, when it comes down to the individual, and it always does, the details matter. Re-read Crystal's comment thinking _independence_ as you do. Last evening, I was in a group home where four grown men with different limitations live. I am certain that, every single day, each has "an overwhelming desire to be as normal as possible, no matter what the cost", as Crystal knowingly put it. Each is able to function independently in some respects but not in important others. With support tailored to their needs and respect for their dignity, maintained in spite of what they do, don't do, or look like, they carry on fairly well if one considers the alternatives. That's "independent living" for them at present and probably for many years to come. What seems natural and cost-effective for most isn't so for all. Cathleen - Your revised title is excellent, in contrast to the appealing but too general original.
The church has programs for the handicapped. But in so many cases no compassion, love or acceptance.
My sister of 69 years is mentally handicapped. She lived a sheltered, coddled life with my mother until mom died in 1978. Then my sister turned out to be hopelessly incapable of independent actions and life for quite some time. A blessing to her and to my sister and I was the state of Iowa which has one of THE BEST programs for people like my sister. She spent many years in group homes and now lives semi-independently in an apartment complex that is closely monitored and which encourages as much independence as possible.Maybe if she was made more independent much earlier in her life she could have functioned more semi self-sufficiently earlier on, but she wasn't. I think God every day for the wonderful programs which have patiently advanced her to the degree that she can handle. I will always be strongly supportive of group homes and similar programs.
In 2007 I wrote an article for "Faith & Family" magazine about the birth of my daughter with Down syndrome. It was warmly complimented by now editor Danielle Bean, herself the mother of a special needs child. Since then, I have seen her become an outspoken advocate for the human dignity of ALL those with disabilities, regardless of age, both in the magazine, and in "National Catholic Register", even when her insistence that using the word "retard" is hurtful is met with some resistance. "Faith & Family" always features children on its cover, the photo of the little guy with Down syndrome is merely a continuance of that custom, not a statement that the magazine only considers such individuals 'cute' till they reach adolescence. Please don't generalize about us 'holy domestic life' types. We are not your mother or mine for that matter.In our mothers' day, such children were institutionalized and the parents given death certificates so that they never had to visit them. There was a sense of shame associated with the disabled, which, thanks to inclusion has been diminishing. Or has it? Now 92% of babies pre-natally diagnosed with Down syndrome or other detectable anomalies are aborted. Some governments are offering universal pre-natal testing to 'lower the costs' of health care. Our children are becoming a drain on the system, it seems. So I welcome the efforts of editors like Mrs Bean to include our children in Catholic publications, and invite Commonweal to do the same. Diversity is a beautiful thing.
Mrs. Velasquez, I think it's great to give more exposure to people with disabilities in every context. (This is one of the reasons I like the Farrelly brothers, who include people with disabilities in their movies, and even did a (controversial) movie about the Special Olympics--but they didn't airbrush the phenomenon--not that they airbrush anything!) I understand that the people who make magazine covers are all really cute-whether normally abled or not. But my worry is that "cuteness" is not a specifically Christian virtue-period--in a baby, in a child, in an adult, in a "normal" person or in a person with disabilities. To the extent that any Catholic magazine tacitly suggests it is, I think it is a mistaken strategy to achieve a good end of respecting the dignity of each and every person as a child of God. It plays directly into the cult of appearances that dominates the larger culture. And doing that disproportionately disadvantages people with disabilities, particularly as they grow older.I think the result of trying to baptize cuteness is the very troubling blog post I linked to--which was written by a Faith and Family columnist, and even more worrisome, a columnist for the diocese of Savannah! The sentiments that she expresses there are precisely the sentiments that led to the passage of the "Ugly Laws," which prevented unsightly people from being seen on public streets in cities like Chicago.And my mother fought for the inclusion of people with disabilities in church services, people who were nowhere near cute enough to make the cover of an issue of Faith & Family--and I admire her greatly for that. This is in the past twenty years, well after the institutionalization of people with Down's Syndrome had stopped being the norm. People who wouldn't dream of supporting abortion rights wanted to erase the kids with disabilities from the picture--or apply stringent norms that would exclude them from communion.
" the cult of appearances that dominates the larger culture."Cathleen --You've hit the nail on the head. This culture is *literally* a shallow one consumed with what our surfaces look like. How did we get to be such a silly people? Hollywood? Advertisements? The demise of the Humanities -- nothing better to think about except maybe sports?You mention Chicago keeping some people out of sight? Were there actually laws that did that? Incredible.
Cathleen (11:14 am), I'm not a great reader of magazines, but I can't think of any I've seen anywhere, including newsstands, that put unpleasant things on their covers. The cover is meant to attract to the magazine, not repel from it. Are you suggesting that Faith and Family should have put the photo of a particularly pitiful handicapped child on its cover? That's not a sarcastic question - if you're not suggesting that, I'm not sure what you think they should have done.
Ann: "No person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated or in any way deformed so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object or improper person to be allowed in or on the public ways or other public places in this city, or shall therein or thereon expose himself to public view, under a penalty of not less than one dollar nor more than fifty dollars for each offense."Chicago Municipal Code, sec. 36034 --repealed in the early 1970's.David, I'm not sure that's true. Time? Newsweek? Commonweal? America? St. Anthony Messenger? It's true that women's beauty magazines don't do that--or People magazine. But why should a Catholic magazine imitate them?I think the problem is that the strategy undermines the goal, for reasons I've stated. To put it another way. THIS child wouldn't be kicked off the streets of Chicago by the Ugly Law. But what about the ones who would? F & F's approach does nothing to help them.In general, I don't think Catholic magazines need to foster a cult of appearances--and I have real problems with the Legionnaries of Christ for doing just that, in addition to the vast other harms that the order has wreaked upon the church. I don't see why the option is close up beauty or close up "pitiful," to use your term. Why can't you put pictures of kids playing, or kids with disabilities in their families, eating dinner, on the cover? Action shots, relational shots. This is a full-on close-up. The only thing in it is the child's beautiful face. Most people--even kids--wouldn't look good in that tight a shot.
Not only is this country supremely superficial, it it has also lost its heart. Sorry to sound like the shocked old lady I am, but we're doomed.
Don't lose heart! It's better now. The Americans with Disabilities Act trumps the message of the Ugly Laws.
To chime in, this sort of strategy also sets up terrible burdens for the families who do make the choice to have or adopt a disabled child. The message is that these children are angelic blessings, practically otherworldly beings that bring out the best in all who know them, "the best thing that ever happened to us," etc. When in fact, they are children, and like all children, flawed, challenging, frustrating as all get out. Often more so. Where does this leave the parents and siblings? What if the child isn't the best thing that ever happened to the family? It's a set-up for failure -- just more grist for the modern American mill of parental guilt and aspirational striving.And it does little to promote the notion that these children are fundamentally human. They are not monsters -- a point that needs making, alas -- but they're not angels, either.
Thank you, Cathleen. I was actually sitting here a bit stunned. But we've a long way to go.I can't help but think that what the social scientists have been saying for a couple of generations is true -- the escalating amount of violence in our media has made us so insensitive to the feelings of other people that now many people are in denial about the humanity of others. (Yes, abortion is relevant here.) I don't know how to legally reduce all that fantasy violence, but it's got to be done, and freedom of speech take the hindmost. There has to be a better way.
I guess I'm just not into deliberately causing people to become uncomfortable - no matter how good the cause. I understand that activists probably think that attitude is deplorable. Sorry - we're all different.
"We're all different" seems to me to be the ultimate statement of relativism.
"Sorry were all different."In more ways than not, David; in more ways than not.I hope some future non-JPII (will there be any?) bishop makes that his Episcopal motto: Paenitet - nos omnes diversa, maybe?
We're all the same?
True, we are all different to some extent. But relying on our differences alone to be a foundation for moral behavior doesn't give our likenesses due regard.
Ann (4:39 pm), I don't think we're dealing with a moral issue here. I just said, essentially, that I'm not an activist.
If you are talking about dealing with disabled individuals, where this began, each is different, and failing to respond according to his or her particular needs and capacities causes pain all around. Gross failure to address the differences may raise questions of moral behavior. Some of the difficulties earlier in this discussion, I suspect, came from splitting the world in two - people with disabilities and people without. Crystal W., Leticia V., Jimmy Mac, and I referred to 4 very different kinds of disability situation. Notions of independence and how dignity should be respected differ substantially among the four, as do opportunities and requirements for community awareness and support. Broad generalizations go too far, after a few general goals are stated. Displaying disabled on magazine covers or elsewhere could advance public awareness and might reduce unjust prejudices. It also would serve to remind disabled and those close to them of what they can't forget and don't need reminding of. Some prefer fewer reminders, not more. A middle ground needs to be found between exploitation and obscuration, starting with respect for disabled individuals and then considering benefits to others.
Jack (6:41 pm), your note reminds me what an arbitrary category "disabled" is. Everyone is advantaged in some ways and disadvantaged in others. We're all "differently abled".Singling out a few types of disabilities for political attention and economic assistance is, really, doing two things. First, it's acknowledging that we can't balance every significant human imbalance by selecting a few groups as proxies for the rest in order to give ourselves the chance to salve our natural sense of guilt and obligation to people less fortunate than we. We can't do nothing - our consciences would not allow that. The second thing it does is to give us an excuse for social solidarity, not so much with the disabled in question on but rather with other people who have also decided on the same groups. And, of course, it lets us congratulate ourselves both for being compassionate people and for belonging to groups of people who are similarly compassionate.That's not meant to sound cynical. It's just meant as a reminder of how arbitrary and self-limiting charity and social activism are. Charity is necessary in all civilized societies, I imagine. It's one of the ways we keep ourselves from slipping into total narcissism. Social activism seems to me to be a way some people have of externalizing their need to perform charity. But others do it in other ways.We're all different :o)
One thing I notice is the separation of groups into the diabled and the able, as if there's no chance the people in those discrete groups will ever change enough to change groups. So easy to advocate keeing the diabled ou of sight when you know you'll never be one, except of course, you can become one in an instant given the right circumstances. Maybe showing people with visible disabilities on magazine covers makes others uncomfortable if they have any empathy - they can imagine what it mght be like to be them, and that is scary and painful. But the cost of hiding what's ugly is too high, and I think the only way it can stop seeming "ugly" is if we're willing to look.
Crystal, you're so right. I went from abled-but-clutzy to disabled with a fall down the staircase at 3:00 am. two years ago. I needed about six months of rest and elevation, surgery, and intensive rehab. I became so thankful for the Americans with Disabilities Act, which let me do my job, go out to restaurants, see movies, and be part of society through its mandates for public accommodations.It changed the way I think about the whole issue.
Great topic and responses, and thanks to Crystal for chiming in with her experiences and pointing out the way that the disabled are treated like children. I've seen this happen with the sick. When a close friend was dying of leukemia, those of us who were trying to coordinate and provide care would meet offsite to see who was available to do what. One of them stopped calling her by her name and started to refer to her as "our girl" and "our angel." Ronnie would have slapped her had she known. I might have helped ...
A positive story about creating jobs for people with autism:http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/30/putting-the-gifts-of-the...
David S, --Looking at the people I know, I would say that the activism of most people is a matter of morality. It's a matter of what we owe the less fortunate, not just a matter of acting on natural feelings of compassion. The latter come and go. Moral obligations stay.
What you young people don't seem to realize yet is that because many of you will live to be 80 years old and older you too will most likely be disabled, even for years. Your disabilities will range from minor issues such as losss of mobility, hearing or vision, to total dependence.Let me urge you to visit your old folks in nursing homes. My brother had to be in a home for 14 years, and I saw the neglect of many people, not by refusal to provide physical necessities, but the neglect of not visiting friends and family, the neglect of treating those disabled as if they were already dead. If you live long enough you might very well be one of them one day. So have a heart now -- visit!
Ann -- my aunt just died this week, and one family member's comment was: "I really wish she had not died alone. I wish there had been people around her when she drew her last breath". Relatives had visited her the day before, but they had not stayed overnight. She died in her sleep.I had not thought about it. Wanting a circle of friends or family for one's very last moments, isn't that a sentiment of yesteryear? Indeed, there is something lonely about the image of an ill, elderly woman dying alone, even if she is unconscious. But it had not occured to me. Not that I could have done anything anyway, being thousands of miles away, but underlying that are some social norms and customs that I think may be disappearing. I imagine people closing ranks around the very ill, taking turns staying by their bedside. Doesn't that seem rather quaint? Now we have drugs to alleviate pain, machines to measure the fundamentals, nurses on call if machines detect an emergency situation, so a lot of the caretaking no longer has to be done by the friends and family, but what about the love?
"What you young people dont seem to realize yet is that because many of you will live to be 80 years old and older you too will most likely be disabled, even for years."Maybe not, Ann. Recent news reports suggest that in many parts of the country, life expectancy is taking a nose dive. "I imagine people closing ranks around the very ill, taking turns staying by their bedside. Doesnt that seem rather quaint?"I think this is the wave of the future, Claire. Dying at home is one way to save huge amounts of money in health care costs. My mother and I took turns doing all the comfort care in the last 10 days. The hospice nurse, who had been visiting once a week, came in every day to provide instruction and information. We were both at his bedside when he died.
I wasn't thinkIng about visiting the dying. Most of the people in nursing homes aren't dying. But many are in effect abandoned except by their very closest family and friends. Think the corporal work of mercy "Visit the sick". It doesn't say bring them medicine or food, just visit them.Many people end up alone -- widows and widowers with children in other parts of the country, or with relatives who have to work or are themselves disabled or partly disabled and can't perform the needed care, etc, etc.
Jean: one somewhat positive consequence of the health care budget crunch, perhaps!Ann: true, true.
Ann writes (1:20pm yesterday):
David S, Looking at the people I know, I would say that the activism of most people is a matter of morality. Its a matter of what we owe the less fortunate, not just a matter of acting on natural feelings of compassion. The latter come and go. Moral obligations stay.
I'd put it the other way, Ann. Our inborn sense of empathy comes first; it's a primitive moral sense. A more elaborate and more nuanced moral sense is developed on top of that.Of course, if you're arguing that a fully developed moral sense is more important on a value scale, you may be right. Value scales are personal things - yours and mine are likely to be substantially different, simply because we're two different people from two similar but in many ways very different cultures.
Ann (8:30 pm yesterday), rather than considering just people in nursing homes to be in need of companionship and visible shows of respect, wouldn't it perhaps be better to consider helping anyone who's particularly vulnerable? You don't have to be in a nursing home to be lonely, abandoned, devalued, in physical and emotional pain.
I see this as a much bigger issue than the people with disabilities being excluded. There are a lot of people out there who "mess up the picture". I'm fat and fifty something, so I have joined that group in a minor way. I remember when there were no black people on TV and no women shown in any capacity other than secretary when they were shown working at all. Poor people, minorities, people in nontraditional jobs or nontraditional clothes are excluded. Kids are even crueler, excluding this kid for having big ears and that one for having the "wrong" brand of clothes or shoes or bicycle.When I was a kid, I saw a horrible accident where a kid I knew sneaked out of the house during what was supposed to be nap time for him and his grandmother and lit a fire, and lit himself on fire trying to stoke it with gasoline. His injuries were fatal, but before he passed, he ran in circles in a panic, on fire screaming. My grandmother leapt several hedges and a fence wearing a dress and heels and caught him and rolled him on the ground to put the flames out. When I finally was able to look away, I saw that there was a group of local housewives on the street, where they had apparently been watching since well before my grandmother sprang into action. To me she was a hero. To them? She was ostracized. They were uniformly nasty to her from that moment on. They whispered that a woman who would do that would do anything. Unpredictable. Unladylike. Unacceptable. Messing up the picture. Should have waited for a man, but even a man wouldn't really know what to do unless he was a doctor. I was five. One of them was my piano teacher, who I fired at the next lesson and refused to return. I decided there and then what side I was on.I arukk see people who still hold values like these all the time. It isn't like they're trying to hide, They aren't. They're proud of themselves and proud of their shallowness in some incomprehensible way. They don't want any unpredictable or abnormal people messing up their picture and they're willing to fight for it.
Sorry for the typos.
David S. --The people in a nursing home, unlike us old folks who are not thoroughly disabled, can't get out and mix in the community unless someone takes them out. They are helpless in a way people like me aren't. I hobble along, but at least I can get out on my own. Also, because nursing home folks are not out and about in the community, others are inclined to forget they're still with us. True, visiting a place where a lot of people are on the way out is a big turn off. But visit anyway. You don't have to stay long. Talk about old times, or today's news. They're still people.
Susan, what an awful story, though neither of my grandmothers (who must have been about the same age as yours) ever waited around for a man to do anything. But, then, one grandfather was an alcoholic and the other was a bigamist.David, I didn't get that Ann was necessarily arguing we ONLY visit people in nursing homes. But visiting nursing homes may be the only way to force yourself to come to terms with how awful they are, even the good ones, and to demand better care when you or your family members are in that boat.
One day when I visited my parents' village, there was a new pastor. "What happened to the old pastor?" I asked. "Oh, his health started failing and he could not live by himself any more. Now he is in some nursing home somewhere, I'm not sure where, an hour or so from here." A few years later I heard he had died; at times in the intervening years I was not always quite sure whether he was live or dead. I am not aware that anyone from the village ever visited him.In my parents' village there used to be a house of religious sisters. They got old, some died, and the remaining three or four became increasingly weak and encumbered by health problems. One day it was decided that they couldn't live by themselves any more. After more than 60 years in the village, they were moved to a convent where, as we were told, they would be welcome, well taken care of, and would be able to continue saying their prayers on their own schedule as they were used to. It's more than an hour away. Now they only very rarely get any visits. That is one problem with nursing homes: when people go to a nursing home, it is often far from where they used to live, and then they are abruptly cut off from their acquaintances. Only their closest friends make the trip to visit them. Had the aging priest or sisters stayed somewhere nearby, I am confident that once in a while my parents (and dozens of other parishioners) would have visited them.
Jean (11:58 am):
David, I didnt get that Ann was necessarily arguing we ONLY visit people in nursing homes. But visiting nursing homes may be the only way to force yourself to come to terms with how awful they are, even the good ones, and to demand better care when you or your family members are in that boat.
I understand, Jean. And I've had enough experience with nursing homes to know what you're talking about. Believe it or not, though, some can be far less than awful - especially those run directly by religious groups - Catholics, Jews, and Quakers, for example.One thing that nursing homes can teach us is what a lamentable decision we make when we consign someone there, instead of caring for her or him in the bosom of the family. That's something the Church might do well to stress. It's one good reason, I think, to have larger families - for mutual support.
Not all nursing homes are awful places in the sense that the patients are not well treated. In all the years my brother was in a home I did not see one staff member being ugly to a patient. The place was comfortable, clean, the medical staff fine, and the food not too bad. The problems are psychological -- the patients know they can't leave, and we visitors are reminded that we too could end up losing our independence and being cut off from our community. The worst part is the loss of independence, apparently, but a disabled old person at home also loses independence and is often cut off to a large extent too. So visit the folks at home as well. And remember that care givers are often extremely appreciative when family and friends take over for just an hour or two to give *them* some relief.


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I am trying to break a packet format. The packet format simply packs several files into one big file. The file contents are plain. But the index data which contain offsets, file sizes and filenames are encrypted. The index data are about 1 KB and compressed by zlib (the DEFLATE algorithm with no zlib or gzip wrapper), and then XOR encrypted. In other words, the key is concatenated with itself many times to get a keystream of equal length as the zlib-compressed data, and then the zlib-compressed data is XORed with this keystream (like a Vigenère cipher). I know the key length is 8 bytes. Is it possible to decrypt the data?
If you have known plaintext, namely one input file that is known in its entirety, this is trivial to break. So I'll explore methods that might lead to a break, if you don't know what's in the input file that was compressed.
I suggest that you start by analyzing the DEFLATE stream format carefully (see also these handy notes). This will probably help you derive some consistent relationships that the first handful of bits of the DEFLATE stream must satisfy.
On first glance, it looks to me like the beginning of the DEFLATE stream has the following structure:
For example, if HCLEN=15, then the first three items above account for the first 74 bits of the DEFLATE stream. And, if I understand correctly, above structure imposes some consistency relationships on the bits: not all possible 74-bit sequences are possible (and not all possible ones are equally likely).
Now, I think you could use the following procedure to try to recover the key $K$.
As described, this method would take $2^{64}$ iterations of the loop. However, I suspect you might be able to speed it up if you are a bit clever about how you check keys $K$. Rather than iterating over all possible 64-bit values one-by-one, I think you can use a tree-like iterative-deepening method. The idea is, roughly, if you reject a (say) 17-bit prefix of $K$ as impossible, then there is no need to try any of the keys that start with that prefix. So, an optimized algorithm might first check all candidate values for the first 17 bits of $K$ (say) to see which ones look consistent, then for each 17-bit prefix that survives, you look to find all plausible ways to extend it by 3 bits, and so on, repeating at each step.
I don't know what the running time of this more sophisticated algorithm will be, but if you study the DEFLATE format carefully and are able to identify enough consistency checks on the first 64 bits of the DEFLATE stream, you might be able to make this attack run efficiently enough to be practical.
I realize I haven't worked out all the details for you -- I've left something for you to do on your own. But hopefully this gets you started and gives you some ideas for a direction that might lead to a practical attack.
To elaborate on what the comments are leading you toward...
This sort of encryption scheme is susceptible to a straight-forward known-plaintext attack.
Every byte of the ciphertext will have been encrypted in the format:
$$C_i = P_i \oplus K_{i\ \bmod{\ len(K)}}$$
where $i$ is the byte index within the ciphertext and plaintext. This expression is easily solved for the key:
$$K_{i\ \bmod{\ len(K)}} = C_i \oplus P_i$$
In words: You obviously know the ciphertext, so if you can also learn the plaintext at a given byte position then you simply XOR the plaintext byte with its corresponding ciphertext byte to learn the corresponding key byte. (Since the key is repeated you then need to determine which key byte index between 0 and 7 this key byte was copied from.) Once you learn all 8 bytes of the key, just concatenate it in the same way the encryption was done and use the resulting stream to decrypt the ciphertext.
But how can you find plaintext? The easiest place to start is to look at the specification of the compressed data format. Determine the exact format used and then look up what sorts of header values and data structure it uses. Some formats have certain byte positions that always have certain fixed values, or some structures with easy-to-guess contents. Don't only look for full bytes, if you can determine just some of the bits of a byte that is also useful.
If that isn't enough, you may want to consider trying to generate known plaintext and then encrypt that. For example, take some text and compress it with a different program that follows the exact same compression specification and that will produce the plaintext (or something very close to the plaintext) before encryption (aka, a chosen-plaintext attack).
If you can only break a few bytes of the key using those methods then you may be able to finish with brute-force. (3 to 4 bytes are certainly brute-forcable on a reasonable modern home computer if you have the patience.) Fix the key bytes you are sure about and iterate over the unknown key bytes. Use each potential key to decrypt captured packet data and see if the key generates valid decrypted compressed data (perhaps call a decompression function and see if it returns success or an error). (If too many test keys produce valid compressed plaintext, get a few packets of data encrypted with the same key and the key against all of them, the more data you have to test the more likely you will eliminate a wrong key.)
From the keys that generate valid compressed data, test the decompressed data to see if it's about what you're expecting, since you say that you have an idea of what the encrypted data is. Check to see if it looks like valid filenames and such, ASCII where appropriate, or whatnot. Eyeballing it would work well here if you have reasonably few keys that make it this far.


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by Mariobernard58
Surreal imagination... bizarre parallel realities.... wildly inventive... Yellow
Yellow, Nick Cassavetes' new film that premieres at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival, September 6-16 ( url: bit.ly/YELLOWtiff12 ) is fast turning out to be a must watch film at the festival this year. Described as a wildly inventive and visually dazzling head trip by Piers Handling, co-director of the festival, Yellow is a searing take on modern society and the demands it makes on people. The film tells the story of Mary Holmes, (Heather Wahlquist), a young substitute teacher who escapes from her drudging everyday life by fantasizing bizarre parallel realities. We enter her hallucinatory world, peopled with Busby Berkeley dancers, Cirque du Soleil, Circus freaks, and human farm animals where nothing is quite what it seems. "Yellow" isn't a movie about redemption or triumph or cure, so if you're looking for that, you've probably come to the wrong place," says Nick Cassavetes. " It's just a story of how Mary deals with her everyday life. Yeah, the bottom's going
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I bought my Dutch ID Card, Dutch Drivers License and Dutch Passport from pobama25@europe. com and The documents are genuine. thank you very much John Kenney.
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