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I have largely worked with Selenium for front end automation. Looks like there is great market for QTP in this arena, especially when you could afford commercial tools. Have you worked with both QTP and Selenium? How have your experiences been with both? Do you find any one better over other?
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I have worked on both, and used QTP extensively before. It works best for teams that have one or two engineers who can create and maintain the test suites, and few more QAs with not so much programming skills can run the tests, and make minor changes. It's record and play (IMO) is better than selenium's.
Selenium is open source, so you are saving a lot of money that you would have to pay for licenses. Technologically Selenium surely goes way beyond QTP can, and due to the support for programming languages like JAVA, C#, Perl, Python, etc. the QA engineers can encompass backend tests too in their test suites.
Yes, selenium is better for web testing.
QTP is more expensive, and uses old technologies (VBA), but is better for non-coders and testing desktop applications
Now please, please, please close this question before the inevitable argument comes.


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Adirondack Collection: Side Table
Adirondack side table. Sturdy Adirondack side table made from durable Acacia wood. Adirondack side table measures 22"L x 16"W x 19"H. Easy assembly; corrosion resistant hardware included. Part of the Adirondack outdoor furniture collection available in a 3-position recliner chair, kid-size chair, pet bed, ottoman and folding table; coordinating outdoor cushions for chairs sold separately. Side table available in chestnut, natural white, red and navy colors. Wipe clean. Imported. Shown With: Adirondack Collection: 3-Position Reclining Chair and Ottoman in Navy, Red, White, Chesnut, Natural (XR28, XR32) Outdoor living gets a dose of The Company Store smarts and style with our classic Adirondack side table. Part of our coveted collection of Adirondack outdoor furniture, this stylish side table will prove to be a pivotal item on your back porch or deck. The Adirondack 3-position recliner chair, kid-size chair and pet bed are specially designed for everyone in the family (including the pooch!), while the Adirondack side table and ottoman perfectly complement the chairs. The complete collection of Adirondack-style pieces will transform your outdoor living space into a well-appointed retreat your whole family will love. The ideal setting for eating, relaxing or just hanging out in style, everyone will enjoy the quality time spent outside together. The perfect size to hold beverages, books, plates and more, this Adirondack side table adds a practical finishing touch to the set-up. Offering endless uses, this sturdy side table is well-crafted from durable Acacia wood for long-lasting wear that will withstand the natural elements. It's durability and versatility make it a must-have. Available in a wide range of colors, this handy Adirondack side table is a pretty and practical favorite.
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I recently installed Dungeon Siege 3 and I was very excited about the Game. I think it´s great but there is one thing, that really bugs me out.
How can I change the selected mob? I mean, if a mob is targeted, how can I change the target to another mob that maybe needs to get stunned or something.
I tried the tabulator button like in some other RPGs, but that only toggles the minimap.
Is there any way to do this?
Am I missing on something here?


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Kimmel beats Letterman: Jimmy Kimmel Live ratings explode in new timeslot with 3.1 million viewers
Jimmy Kimmel's surely hoping that this is a sign of things to come.
On Tuesday night, his debut in the competitive 11:35 p.m. timeslot, "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" saw 3.1 million viewers tuning in. According to ABC, it was the show's second most-watched telecast.
On average, the show would draw 1.9 million viewers when it aired at midnight.
But perhaps more important for Jay Leno and David Letterman was how well Kimmel performed against their competing programs.
In terms of total viewers, Leno edged out Kimmel with 3.27 million watching "The Tonight Show." Letterman's "Late Show," over on CBS, brought in 2.88 million.


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Daohang Hotel - Xian
- Location:
- Address: 1 Guanghua Road, West High-tech District, Xian
- Tel: 029-88786591 (Book this hotel, call 800-2682918)
- Hotel Name in Chinese: 西安导航宾馆
- Lowest Price: $31
- Prices not include 18% service fee and tax.
- Payment Method: pay using our secure online payment service or pay at the hotel at some hotels.
- Triple/quad occupancy may require an extra bed at extra cost.
Hotel Amenities
|Hotel Services
|Car rentals, Medical clinic service, Wake Up Call, Permanent English-speaking staff, Business Centre, Copy Service, E-mail, Fax Service, Typing Service
|Room Amenities
|Air conditioning, Alarm clock, Color Television, Telephone, Bath and Shower, Internet access
Hotel Amenities: Elevator, Parking, Business Floor or Executive Floor, Air-Conditioned Facilities, Beauty Salon, Sauna, Meeting Room, Deposit Box at Front Desk, Fire Detector, Chess & Playing Cards Room
Dining Facilities: Chinese Restaurant, Western Restaurant
Print the Taxi Directions
- Please drive me to Daohang Hotel - Xian, thank you!
- 请送我到西安导航宾馆,谢谢
- Address: 1 Guanghua Road, West High-tech District, Xian
- 地址: 1 Guanghua Road, West High-tech District, Xian
- Tel: 029-88786591
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BARNES SR., Edward Preston, 61, of Toronto, OH, passed away October 20, 2012, in Valley Hospice at Trinity Medical Center East.
Born December 19, 1950, in Mingo Junction, OH, he was the son of the late Marion and Elsie Barnes.
He attended Steubenville High School, and was honorably discharged from the United States Marines. He was employed as a truck driver for the city of Steubenville. He was Catholic by faith.
He was preceded in death by his parents.
He is survived by: wife, Deidre Barnes of Toronto; three sons, Edward Preston Barnes Jr. of Wintersville, OH, Robert Barnes of Wintersville, OH, and Devin Barnes of Toronto, OH; one daughter, Angel Barnes of Toronto, OH; two brothers, John (Helen) Barnes of Ocala, FL., and Robert Barnes of Florida; three sisters, Katherine (Ronald) Gibbons of Mingo Junction, OH, Patricia (John) Treadway of Brilliant, OH, and Victoria (Carl) Davis of Englewood, FL; five granddaughters; and a host of nieces, nephews, relatives and friends.
Donations are made to the American Lung Association.
Arrangements by Vinson House of Mortuary. Services will be at the convenience of the family.
Email condolences to: firstname.lastname@example.com


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There were nine midstream deals that contributed $11.1 billion. According to PwC, there has been a rise in midstream processing deals during 2012 due to the oil and gas liquids being extracted from the shale plays and as companies think through the various scenarios that may play out with exports.
With natural gas prices hitting a 10-year low, US oil
companies have shifted their focus to adding more profitable
liquid-rich shale plays to their portfolios, leading to a
sharp rise in the number and value of third quarter deals,
according to a new study from professional services firm
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).
There were 34 asset deals during the third quarter with a total
deal value of $31.4 billion, a 131% increase in total value
over the same time period last year and representing 93% of
total deal value during the third quarter of 2012.
In fact, asset transactions represented nine of the top 10
mega deals (deals with values of $1 billion or
more) in the quarter, according to the study.
For the three month period ending September 30, 2012, there
were a total of 39 oil and gas deals with values greater than
$50 million, accounting for $33.7 billion in deal value, a
slight dip from the 44 deals during the third quarter of 2011,
and a decline in total deal value from $41.1 billion.
On a sequential basis, while deal volume dropped from the 51
transactions in the second quarter of 2012, total deal value
increased by $4.1 billion, with average deal size jumping
almost 50% to $864 million during the third quarter of
The third quarter had 10 mega deals, which
were dominated by upstream asset transactions as oil and gas
companies pursued oily plays due to natural gas prices
continuing to remain depressed, said Rick Roberge,
principal in PwCs energy M&A practice.
What we saw in the third quarter are companies hunting
for more profitable pure oil assets to satisfy the demand of
all stakeholders involved. Asset transactions offer the
opportunity to specifically target those types of
For deals valued at over $50 million, upstream deals made up
54% of activity in the third quarter of 2012 with 21
transactions, accounting for $18.7 billion, or 55% of total
third quarter deal value.
There were nine midstream deals that contributed $11.1
billion. According to PwC, there has been a rise in processing
deals in the midstream sector during 2012 due to the oil and
gas liquids being extracted from the shale plays and as
companies think through the various scenarios that may play out
with exports.
Five downstream deals during the third quarter of 2012 added
$1.7 billion, while oilfield services contributed four deals
worth $2.2 billion.
There were five corporate transactions with values greater
than $50 million during the third quarter of 2012, with a total
deal value of $2.3 billion, compared to 10 corporate deals
representing $27.5 billion in the third quarter of 2011.
According to PwC, there were 16 deals with values greater
than $50 million related to shale plays in the quarter,
totaling $11.7 billion of total deal value, a small decline
from the 18 shale-related deals during the third quarter of
2011 and a drop from the $33.1 billion in total deal value.
Included in the shale deals in the third quarter of 2012 was
one transaction in the Utica Shale worth $600 million.
At the current commodity prices, the Utica Shale
remains an attractive prospect because of its higher liquids
content, which more companies are shifting towards in
todays economic environment, said Steve
Haffner, a Pittsburgh-based partner with PwCs energy
However, the Utica Shale and Marcellus Shale are still
relatively immature shale plays in their early stages and,
should natural gas prices rise in the short term, we believe
there could be a lot more M&A activity in both
The most active shale plays for M&A with values greater
than $50 million during the third quarter of 2012 include the
Bakken in North Dakota, which had six deals with a total value
of $4.4 billion, followed by the Eagle Ford in Texas with three
deals representing $658 million.
For deals valued at over $50 million, the volume of
financial sponsor-backed transactions increased by one deal
during the third quarter of 2012 to seven transactions
(totaling $5.3 billion) compared to the same time period in
There were 32 strategic deals that contributed $28.4
billion, compared to the 38 deals worth a total of $37.3
billion during the third quarter of 2011.
PwC also notes that during the first nine months of 2012,
master limited partnerships (MLPs) were involved in 24
transactions, representing nearly 20% of total 2012 deal
activity, marking an upward trend of MLP involvement over the
past two years (MLPs represented 15.6% of total deal activity
in 2010 and 18.4% in 2011).
The five deals in the Gulf of Mexico during the third
quarter of 2012 had a total deal value of $7.4 billion which,
according to PwC, marked at least a two and a half year high in
deal value in the region.
Weve seen an upward trajectory with MLP deal
activity in the energy industry over the past two years, and
while MLPs have traditionally been active in the midstream
sector, we believe that there will be more activity with
upstream assets as the number of upstream MLPs is increasing
and more are expected when capital markets are more
receptive, said Roberge.
Another trend that we see developing is M&A
activity in the Gulf of Mexico, which has seen the highest
total deal value during the third quarter than has been
recorded in at least two and a half years. Now that the Gulf is
clearly back in business for M&A, we believe oil and gas
companies will increasingly look there for deal opportunities
going forward.
Foreign buyers announced four deals in the third quarter of
2012, which contributed $4.0 billion, versus nine deals valued
at $17.6 billion during the same period last year.
PwCs M&A analysis is a quarterly report of
announced US transactions in the oil and gas sector with value
greater than $50 million, analyzed by PwC using transaction
data from IHS Herold.
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A searchable database of project activity in the global hydrocarbon processing industry
Engineers and designers are highly skilled individuals. Forcing them to enter design changes using tables, forms and spreadsheets is unproductive and uneconomical, and it increases the likelihood of human error—this is the way that most instrumentation software systems currently work. For too long, software vendors have denied engineers and designers the simple practicality of a graphical visual engineering interface with "drag and drop" capability and inbuilt intelligence, ensuring changes are automatically replicated into all the associated data and databases.
Is 2016 the peak for US gasoline demand?
Too soon to tell
July 2016


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Is there a way to generate am expression that will get all integer multiples of an arbitrary pair of integers?
I.e. Some function that will spit out ${0,2,3,4,6,8,9,10, ... }$ and all of the other multiples of 2 and 3 given integer arguments. It should not generate results for integer arguments that are not multiples of 2 and 3.
By function I mean using elementary mathematical operations.
I would prefer a single variable expression.


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Cleburne Yellow Jackets
2015 Class 5A (11M) Division 1 - District 8
LSFN All-Time Record 576-416-43 Win Pct: 60% Become A Fan!
Record: 14-1-0
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What is VO2 MAX and how is a measurement taken? By how much can VO2 MAX be increased in the average person?
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VO2 Max refers to the maximum volume of oxygen that an individual can use at maximum levels of intense aerobic exercise. It is usually reported as as milliliters of oxygen used in one minute per kilogram of body weight, though sometimes you see liters of oxygen per minute with no adjustment for body weight. The former measurement is more useful in exercise and sports science since it allows the measurement to be compared among athletes of widely different weights.
It is usually measured in a fitness lab setting using either an exercise bike or a treadmill. The test subject wears a mask and heart rate monitor. The mask is connected to a device that collects and measures of the volume and oxygen concentration of inhaled and exhaled air.
At some point below maximum effort the body switches from aerobic to anerobic processes to generate energy. Exercise intensity is increased gradually until the subject is at a maximum aerobic effort - beyond which there is not or only negligible increase in oxygen uptake. That is the VO2 Max point.
I don't know how much it can be increased in any individual, and there are both genetic and exercise components. This page lists that:
For even more detail, including the associated math, see Wikipedia: V02 Max.
Vo2 Max is a measure of 2 things:
The combination of the 2 gives you your oxygen consumption rate, which is also known as Vo2 Max.
One note about VO2 max, is that it is becoming more and more an academic interest number, as studies are increasingly showing that it is a poor predictor of actual performance. The two numbers that are becoming more important/relevant are vVO2max, and tlimvVO2max.
vVO2max is the minimum running/cycling speed at which your VO2 max level is attained, and after a few minutes of which, additional power has to come from anaerobic sources. This number is receiving increased attention (especially in running) as economy of motion is becoming a factor. A more efficient athlete will be traveling faster when they hit VO2max, so their vVO2max is higher than a less efficient athlete. In cycling (especially for TT), aerodynamics and proper fit will increase economy (Getting more speed out of the same effort). In aerodynamics I include losing weight, as a larger person presents a larger wind profile, efficiency would be enhanced through a proper fit, and comfort/familiarity on your bike.
tlimvVO2max is simply the time limiter for VO2 max, or how long you can continue to keep your pace once you've hit your VO2 max. If two cyclists both hit their VO2 max at 26mph, but cyclist A has a tlim of 10 minutes, while cyclist B has a tlim of 15 minutes, cyclist B will win. (Assuming the finish line isn't 10 minutes away :p)
Both tlimv and vVO2 can be increased through greater efficiency and training, while VO2 is a relatively static number, and really only indicates potential, so while VO2max is an interesting number to know, simply knowing it won't really help you change anything in your training.


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Funeral services for Frances Lea Woodham, 86, of Grayville were held at 10 a.m. Saturday, March 23, 2013 at Cook Funeral Chapel. Tom Millar, Mike Fields and Mike Abel officiated.
Recorded music of "Galveston," "Amazing Grace," "The Water is Wide," "You've Got a Friend," "Sweet Baby James" and "Wichita Lineman" were played.
Casketbearers were Chad Beckett, Glen Wiseman, Tony Levingston, Ryan McCuan, Kevin Aker and John Garner. Honorary casketbearers were Gary R. Woodham, Steven W. Woodham, Billy G. Aker and Travis Beckett.
Burial was held in Oak Grove Cemetery in Grayville.
Arrangements were handled by Cook Funeral Chapel in Grayville.
Location, ST | website.com


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I used to expect a lot from network television. I had to: I grew up in the middle of nowhere with four channels and one cranky dad who had to keep climbing up on the roof to adjust the aerial antenna. But then I grew up, moved on, got cable and discovered that TV could be both abundant and adventurous. So now I expect a lot less from the networks — which only means I'm pleasantly surprised sometimes. Like when two out actresses land prominent roles on prime-time series.
First, as we reported earlier this week, Cherry Jones has joined the cast of 24, Fox's Emmy-winning drama. She'll play President Allison Taylor. That's right: The show that brought us Mia Kirshner as an assassin (arguably, The L Word has done the same thing) now brings us Cherry Jones as the leader of the free world.
At this point, we don't know much about President Taylor, but I for one don't need much: Jones is a phenomenal talent and deserves big fame. Plus, maybe she'll be able to get her girlfriend Sarah Paulson a better gig than Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip — together they could develop Studio 24, combining sketch comedy with political intrigue and ushering in a new era of drug-free, round-the-clock disco. (Arguably, The L Word has done the same thing.)
It's a short trip from the White House to Beantown, where we find a second out actress on network TV. A few weeks ago, Malinda reported that Saffron Burrows would guest star in several episodes of Boston Legal — but just three weeks into the filming of the fourth season, Burrows has been made a permanent member of the cast.
We could have told you she'd impress you, ABC: You think Fiona Shaw dates just anyone? Hey, let me apply the get-your-girlfriend-a-job idea here and suggest that Burrows try to get Shaw a part on Boston Legal as Denny Crane's nemesis. It's an Aunt Petunia–Captain Kirk smackdown! My money's on Harry Potter's pinched but tenacious guardian.
Burrows won't be playing gay (apparently her character once seduced James Spader's), and it doesn't sound like Jones will either. We still have to turn to cable for some things, like Portia de Rossi playing a lesbian on Nip/Tuck and Glenn Close teasing lesbians on Damages.


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Andrew Bynum (knees) has not yet been cleared to play.
Dwyane Wade said the Bulls are "Jimmy Butler's team."
David Lee has reportedly agreed to a two-year, $3.2 million deal with the Spurs, with the second year being a player option.
Paul George (left calf strain) is "50-50" to play vs. Venezuela on Friday.
Karl-Anthony Towns said he's going "back to his roots" and focusing on improving his 3-point shot this summer.
The Magic are not currently shopping Nikola Vucevic, according to sources of Zach Lowe of ESPN.
Moe Harkless has reportedly agreed to re-sign with the Trail Blazers on a four-year deal in the $40 million range.
Six-time All-Star Amare Stoudemire has announced that he will be retiring from the NBA after 14 years in the league.
Rudy Gay stated during a recent interview that he underwent a minor procedure to correct an ongoing issue he's had with Achilles tendinitis.
The Thunder are hopeful that Cameron Payne (Jones fracture) will be ready to go for the 2016-17 regular-season opener.
According to Wizards reporter J. Michael, a contract extension for Otto Porter is unlikely.
The Thunder are still telling other teams that Russell Westbrook isn't available according to Royce Young of ESPN.


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Our decor members know that beauty lies in the details. From fine linens to a perfectly placed personalized sign, their gorgeous decor items set the mood and tailor the space to fit your exact style, color, and thematic wishes.
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Carmi-White County High School Cheerleaders will host the second annual Cheer for a Cure Saturday, Feb. 23. The event gets underway at 10:30 a.m. and will feature squads from all across the region.
Admission into the event is $5 with kids five and under admitted free. The event will offer raffles on donated baskets and apparel will be for sale. Concessions will be available during the competition.
The event will raise money for local charities and some of the proceeds will go to Claire Blankenberger, CWCHS junior who continues her fight against leukemia.
For more information, contact Lacey Moore, CWCHS Cheerleading Coach.
Location, ST | website.com


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Quantity: 100ml
This energising citrus body oil contains a powerful synergy of detoxifying Sea-buckthorn, Sea Fennel, Lemon and Juniper. Excellent as part of a body cleansing programme, helping to naturally combat the build-up of toxins caused by a poor diet, stress and a sedentary lifestyle.
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6 Elaborate Forms of Suicide Passed Off as Extreme Sports
It's easy to invent an extreme sport. All you need to do is take one sport (say, bungee jumping), recklessly add another sport (motocross) and BOOM, you're the goddamn Thomas Edison of BUNGOCROSS.
As for getting folks to play your sport, well, that's more difficult. So while no patent office will answer our calls regarding Gunby (rugby plus, uh, use your imagination), here are six real sports that mix the best of other sports with an unhealthy dollop of extreme.
#6. Arm Wrestling + MMA = XARM
Remember the final scene of Over The Top in which Sylvester Stallone won back his estranged son by arm-wrestling a sausage-necked roustabout? Wouldn't that scene have been a million times better had Sly been simultaneously punching the fat dude in the throat?
If the idea of such wanton violence gets you off, then may we recommend XARM, a new combat sport that is equal parts every Stallone movie ever made. It combines the arm-wrestling of Over The Top and the pugilism of Rocky with the futuristic spandex of Judge Dredd.
XARM contains elements of arm wrestling, kickboxing and jiu jitsu. A fighter's waist is chained to a 28" by 16" table and his left hand his taped to his opponent's. Contestants have three one-minute bouts to pin their opponent's arm or pummel him into a coma--whichever happens first.
Here's footage of an XARM match. Notice how the fighters immediately eschew the whole arm-wrestling thing for the alternative tactic of smashing each other's solar plexuses.
Referees award points for clean hits, successful grapples and standard arm wrestling pins. Points are deducted for a "failure to fight aggressively," which is a sort of redundant rule--after all, a sissy defense is kind of impossible when you're handcuffed to the guy who wants to eat your aorta.
But you can hide under the table.
In sum, XARM is the modern update of an old-timey saloon brawl. It begins as a sportingly macho test of strength on a bar table and ends with a very large man giving you punch-induced renal failure. That being said, we'd hate to see which arm German pro arm-wrestler Matthias "Hellboy" Schlitte would choose to wrestle with.
That's a pile driver or a wrecking ball. Your choice.
#5. Snowboarding + Paragliding = Snowkiting
If the idea of screaming down an icy crevasse on a thin fiberglass snowboard sounds too wussy for you, snowkiting may be your huckleberry. Snowkiting instead involves flying up a mountainside strapped to a giant fucking parachute and allowing the laws of physics to have sex with your face.
"Hey baby, it's me, inertia. Sorry I didn't call back. Been working late."
Snowkiting's origins cannot be traced to one individual, but rather a consortium of snowboarders and kite-builders who brought these two pastimes suicidally together. And as this two-minute tribute to ragdoll physics demonstrates, it's an extreme sport tailor made for blooper reels:
An ancillary benefit of snowkiting is never having to wait for a ski lift. Then again, an ancillary benefit of a ski lift is that it doesn't fire you off the mountain once you reach the top.
#4. Rock Climbing + Cliff Diving = Psicobloc
Remember the previews for Mission: Impossible 2, in which Tom Cruise scaled a sheer cliff face to the rocking riffs of, uh, Limp Bizkit? Well, there are actually adrenaline junkies out there who get their jollies hanging from precipices weighed down by nothing but small bags of chalk and their own mammoth testicles.
They're called free soloists, and those who free solo over ocean cliffs practice the sport of psicobloc:
On one hand, psicobloc is safer than free soloing. The deep-water soloist has the ocean to cushion him should he fall, whereas the free soloist will end up as a bloody splat for coyotes to lick up and unsuspecting birdwatchers to discover weeks later.
This site would be 100 percent Stallone allusions if we had our druthers.
On the other hand, if a regular soloist loses his grip, he gets the luxury of dying on impact. The deep-water soloist falls several stories into the roiling high tide, where he must swim, winded and stunned, against a current to safety. And yes, people have drowned deep-water soloing.
In the end, comparing the dangers of free and deep-water soloing is like comparing granite-hard apples and tidal waves of orange juice: both will kill you in their own special way.


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I own a site and I banned one of my users. His I.P was 68.111.xxx.xx Later, about 2 hours later, a new user registered. Looked suspicious, and I checked his I.P which was 68.191.xxx.xx
My question is, how can I essentially know if this is the same person, putting aside intuition?
So I used whatsmyip site and looked up both I.Ps. Both are from the US, but different places and providers. So he's not the same person? Or can there be other factors?


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Cha-Ching! 7 Ways to Make Money by De-cluttering Your Homeby Lindsay Hutton
Green is the color of spring... and MONEY! So if you've got the itch to clean up and de-clutter, why not make a little extra cash while you're at it? These simple ideas can help you make money while you get organized at the same time. And don't forget to get the kids to help!
1 of 8
Have a Yard Sale
Having a yard sale is a lot of work, but it's a lot easier if you make it a family affair. Set aside a weekend and have each member of your family commit to "donating" a certain number of items to your selling pile. Involving your kids is a great way to teach them about money, and to show them how hard work can pay off in the form of cash. Remember to place an ad in your local newspaper or community website and post signs around town alerting others of your sale — more advertising means more people will show up!
If you live in a neighborhood, ask your neighbors if they are interested in having a community garage sale. If you have more people involved, you'll generate more stuff (and interest from outsiders!), so you'll likely make a little more if it's a joint effort.
Next: Sell Online


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No points at this time.
Another wet week led to more saturated grounds at St. Croix Valley Raceway on Friday, but Mother Nature relented on her deluge just long enough to allow the first of two Kids' Night celebrations to take place at The Valley. The youngsters in attendance enjoyed an on-track autograph session with the drivers, and many drivers also handed out trinkets and treats along with hundreds of autographed photos. Several other door prizes were awarded, including seven bicycles, courtesy of the Northern Vintage Stockcar Racers and other SCVR competitors.
After the autographs, it was the Pure Stocks that were the first to tackle the quarter-mile for their feature event with Jake Silbernagel and Mason McEvers pacing the field. Heat race winner Jason Havel started fifth and was up to third on lap two when he and McEvers tangled in turn four leaving Havel with a flat left rear. On the restart, Silbernagel continued to lead with Tony DuBois in pursuit. By lap five, Havel had worked past DuBois and set his sights on Silbernagel. Just prior to halfway, Havel made his move and claimed the top spot, where he would remain until the checkers waved. In two nights so far this season, Havel has garnered a pair of clean sweeps in the Pure Stock division. Behind Havel, the top five were Silbernagel, Krysta Swearingen, "Jet Lag" Jon Wigchers and Ben Kaphing.
Next to attack the clay were the Future Fours, led by Steven Johnson and Nicki DuBois. At the drop of the green, Johnson held the point with third starting Damon Roberts holding onto second. After the few laps, the field settled into order and stayed clean and consistent nearly to the end. Johnson claimed the win with Roberts in second, but third and fourth running Dylan Roberts and Brock Anderson tangled in the final turn and ended the race against the turn four wall. That incident moved Dan Strobach up to third, with Kevin Boughton and Samantha Yarusso rounding out the top five.
The final kids' activities for the night were the youth winner's presentations for the Vintage racers, with two lucky young fans receiving a t-shirt and bicycle. Mike Kelly picked up the full-body division win with the super-modified feature going to Mark Peine.
The UMSS Micro sprint feature started with heat race winner Ty Sampeir and Collin Olson on the front row and Sampeir immediately grabbing the point looking for the sweep. Third starting Tony Duran nabbed the runner-up spot and it quickly became a two car battle for the win. On lap four, Duran muscled past Sampeir and into the lead, leaving Sampeir as the pursuer. Sampeir tried multiple grooves and varying strategies searching for a path back to the lead, but none proved successful, and late race spin allowing Olson to slide back up to second. At the stripe, Duran grabbed his first Valley win of the season, followed by Olson and Sampeir.
The WISSOTA Midwest Modifieds ran the evening's penultimate race, paced to green by David Mastell and Mitch Weiss. Mastell led the opening lap, and after a lap two caution, Ryan Viltz took his turn at the point. Behind Viltz was a veritable bee-hive of slicing and dicing. Josh Bazey, Justin Oestreich, Jason VandeKamp and Ryan Bowers ran myriad lines in a frenzied pursuit of the top prize. Viltz continued to lead through the first ten laps, with Oestreich emerging as his primary threat. On the eleventh circuit, Oestreich powered to the point, leaving Viltz to battle in the melee that was the contest for second. When the final checkers waved, it was Oestreich claiming the clean sweep in front of Bazey, Viltz, VandeKamp and Kevin Marlett.
As they so often do, the UMSS Traditional sprint cars capped the evening with one of their trademarked thrillers. Tommy Kamrath and the ageless Jack Clark paced a stout fourteen car field to green and Kamrath claimed the early lead. Fifth starting Johnny Parsons quickly darted up to second, part of a gaggle of two and three wide racers that included Rob Caho, Clark, Kevin Bradwell, Cam Schafer and Brian VanMeveren. Up front, Kamrath settled into groove and looked poised to claim the night's final checkers but on lap ten, Caho finally found his comfort zone, high off the cushion, clean and clear of competitors, allowing him to focus on Kamrath. As the laps wound down, Caho sized up his challenge of passing Kamrath while Clark was busy racing VanMeveren, Katrina Sautbine and Mike Mueller. As the white flag waved, Caho mustered all the giddy-up his #78 mount would provide and skated on the cushion's edge to near perfection at full throttle. Keeping his substantial momentum through the final set of turns, Caho edged in front of Kamrath in the final few hundred feet of the race and drag raced him to the checkers, claiming the dramatic win. Rounding out the top five behind Caho and Kamrath were Mueller, Schafer and Parsons.
On tap next week at The Valley, the Hilarious Trailer Races, in addition to the regular Friday Night Live line-up of Future Fours, Pure Stocks, UMSS Micro and Traditional Sprints and WISSOTA Midwest Modifieds. Sprint and Modified fields promise to continue to strengthen as area drivers have only two more opportunities to gear up for the big Open Wheel Nationals. The second annual event is scheduled for June 28 and 29. For more information about St. Croix Valley Raceway or upcoming events, please visit the track's website at www.SCVRaceway.com or visit the track's Facebook page.
Future Fours, feature – Steven Johnson, Damon Roberts, Dan Strobach, Kevin Boughton, Samantha Yarusso, Dylan Roberts, Brock Anderson, Nicki DuBois, Chris Arnett.
Pure Stocks, feature – Jason Havel, Jake Silbernagel, Krysta Swearingen, Jon Wigchers, Ben Kaphing, Brad Peterson, Tony DuBois, Mason McEvers.
UMSS Micro Sprints, feature – Tony Duran, Collin Olson, Ty Sampeir, Jeremy Brake, Bryan Patrick, Sandy Traaseth
WISSOTA Midwest Modifieds, feature – Justin Oestreich, Josh Bazey, Ryan Viltz, Jason VandeKamp, Kevin Marlett, Jason Haugerud, Mitch Weiss, Tony Schill, John Remington, David Mastell, Kyle Hallin, Vince Corbin, Greg Arnt, Doug Toepper, Jesse Krause, Ryan Bowers.
UMSS Traditional Sprints, feature – Rob Caho, Jr., Tommy Kamrath, Mike Mueller, Cam Schafer, Johnny Parsons, Brian VanMeveren, Miek Huesmann, Denny Stordahl, Jack Clark, Tom Porter, Kevin Bradwell, Brad Nelson, Jimmy Kouba, Katrina Sautbine.
St. Croix Valley Raceway | All rights reserved


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Signals of Transcendence
The current issue of The New York Review of Books contains a generous excerpt from a new book by the late Ronald Dworkin: Religion Without God. In it he presents a careful statement of an approach to religion which he distinguishes both from scientific naturalism and from orthodox theism. It strikes me as essentially a "neo-Kantian" approach. I say this not to slight it, but to situate it within a tradition. Here is a key affirmation that he makes:
What, then, should we count as a religious attitude? I will try to provide a reasonably abstract and hence ecumenical account. The religious attitude accepts the full, independent reality of value. It accepts the objective truth of two central judgments about value. The first holds that human life has objective meaning or importance. Each person has an innate and inescapable responsibility to try to make his life a successful one: that means living well, accepting ethical responsibilities to oneself as well as moral responsibilities to others, not just if we happen to think this important but because it is in itself important whether we think so or not.The second holds that what we call naturethe universe as a whole and in all its partsis not just a matter of fact but is itself sublime: something of intrinsic value and wonder. Together these two comprehensive value judgments declare inherent value in both dimensions of human life: biological and biographical. We are part of nature because we have a physical being and duration: nature is the locus and nutrient of our physical lives. We are apart from nature because we are conscious of ourselves as making a life and must make decisions that, taken together, determine what life we have made.
Dworkin seems willing to characterize that "sublime" as "supernatural." In this he finds himself much closer to Albert Einstein than to Richard Dawkins. But where he takes leave of theistic religion is in his refusal to countenance that such a stance either requires or assumes the reality of a "supernatural person."Pope Benedict famously created an initiative called "The Courtyard of the Gentiles" which he entrusted to Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi. Ravasi has already sponsored several high profile dialogues between believers and non-believers who are open to religion, as is Dworkin.Reading Dworkin's account raises the question: were we to participate in such a dialogue, what grounds would we propose to move beyond the affirmation of value to the reality of a personal God who is the Source of such value? Or, to use the words of the First Letter of Peter: what account would we give of the hope that is in us?
About the Author
Rev. Robert P. Imbelli, a priest of the Archdiocese of New York, is Associate Professor of Theology Emeritus at Boston College.
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Is the goal of such a dialogue evangelization? If it is, and if Dworkin or other interlocutors have assented to it, haven't they subtly already conceded their ground?I've always felt we can make very happy partnerships with honest agnostics who won't commit to faith because of (too) scrupulous intellectual honesty. They're over the hardest hurdle already and what remains depends largely on their experience dealing with believers. Should we worry too much about the ground rules if they're already interested in dialogue? Aren't we most of the way home? Or, have i misunderstood the question?Preach the Gospel without ceasing. Use words when necessary.
Steven,you write: "Ive always felt we can make very happy partnerships with honest agnostics who wont commit to faith because of (too) scrupulous intellectual honesty."I have no difficulty with that. But does the "partnership" include, at times, discussion of the basic views that each affirms? I would hope that there would be place for honest exchange of the sort that Dworkin himself exhibits. In which case, what does the person who professes "theistic religion," and more specifically Christian commitment, say regarding the grounds of his or her commitment? With "scrupulous intellectual honesty?"
"Were we to participate in such a dialogue, what grounds would we propose to move beyond the affirmation of value to the reality of a personal God who is the Source of such value?"What is the role of personal experience in all this? Is it bracketed out as not being as rigorous as reason? Is it necessary to convince agnostics of the possibility of divine revelation?
The only ground, it seems to me, to justify the affirmation of a personal God is to appeal to revelation, and ultimately faith in that revelation. The best that we could hope for is that our articulation of revelation, is reasonable, although not necessarily bound to the categories of reason itself.In other words, we are going to have to embrace a certain mysticism and the teaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church has frequently assumed a cautious and even oppositional approach to mysticism. Karl Rahner once said something to the effect that the Christian of the future will be a mystic or nothing at all.The hesitation from Pope Benedict in this regard, more than the allusion to Mohammed, was what was for me most troubling about the Regnesburg address.But, I think that we should be bold in this. The revelation of the name of God in Exodus as "I AM" meaning a noun that is simultaneously a verb is one example. The verbality of "being" itself is a paradox that cannot be reconciled through our existing conceptual categories.
I would suggest turning a staff into a snake. Just make sure that the snake is bigger than that of your counterpart.
First, I'll admit that I haven't done my reading. My current NYRB sits nearly untouched, and I have not yet gotten to the Dworkin piece. I proceed wholly on what we have here. So I may be off down the wrong path for that or other reasons.It seems to me that what we may be wondering about, in fact, is the road to Damascus. What is the path that conversion follows? It seems to me that Jim's experiential emphasis is right, and that a preoccupation with intellectual assent may be out of sequence. The heart is converted, profession and assent follow. If that be true, then the Dworkins and other honest agnostics are the most fertile field for this sort of dialogue. They yearn to convert, in my experience. They need to find their way beyond their intellects to a point where their intellects can assent, once converted. Thus, my quotation from St. Francis. I think our contribution is not a thing we say, but an evident joy we draw from our Christian commitment. Our dialogue is not a persuasive exchange over finer doctrinal points, but the communication of the more tangible value that our faith brings to human life. I know people like Dworkin. I think they yearn to come to Church, or come back to Church. They're also educated people, smart enough to know the history and read the New York Times. They know, intuitively, what the Holy Father means by "a self-referential Church" and they have rejected it before he ever described it. Their reasons, while altogether fastidious, squeamish, and too-scrupulous, are honest. They originate in a conscientious desire for truth, one perhaps over-indulged to the brink of narcissism but truthful nonetheless. They need something from us. They need our confidence that under all of the headlines and hierarchy something true can be found, and that truth sustains us with hope and joy. I suppose I'm saying dialogue may not the the right idiom. Use words when necessary. We need to be the Church in a way that reaches out to the existential peripheries, to the griefs and anxieties of the people of this age--such people as Dworkin. They are, I think, waiting for us.That may not be satisfying. But I'm not certain we can define a programmatic answer. Surely, if we could, we would have done it by now.
+William D. Borders, Spiritual Living in Secular Society (Baltimore: Cathedral Foundation Press, 1996), 134."It is the intellect that recognizes truth that leads to belief, but the will is not absent from believing; in the gift of faith, our intelligence is disposed to admit the testimony of God, our love for Him and the truth He reveals. The very essence of faith requires love, and it is love that enables a person, having recognized truth, to yield entirely in commitment and conduct."Our question may, then, be: How do we entice people to love? Do we seek an eros of evangelization? How I yearn for the First Things article about that!
Well all you have to do now, Steven, is calmly explain to them just how "altogether fastidious, squeamish, and too-scrupulous" they are (but honest!), as well as how they are "over-indulged to the brink of narcissism" (but truthful!) Then I'm sure you'll be reeling them in, net after net. You'll be a real fisher of men then.
I too found the excerpt from Dworkin to be really stimulating. Let me pick up on some things that George D has said.First, For the scientific naturalist, all that there is is the physical universe. Whatever values are, they are "grounded" in and are themselves caused by physical processes. So when Dworkin says that values are real but "ungrounded," that's a very big claim. As he himself mentions, he is following Hume's "fact-value 'fork'."We "theists" (apparently a term with no long pedigree) would say that ultimately, God is the "ground" both the physical universe and of values, which are not wholly reducible to the physical. But then, what can we rightly say about the referent of our word 'God?' If I remember correctly, Paul Tillich spoke of God as the "Ground of Being." That is, unless I misunderstand Tillich, God is not any being, but is the ground of whatever beings there are.By good fortune, I've been reading Karl Rahner's small book "Encounters with Silence." For Rahner, all people have an opening to transcendence, but what to say about the Transcendent is beyond us if it were not for Jesus. That is, Rahner speaks of the "Incomrehensible." What makes it possible for us to have some sound comprehension of the actual God is Revelation, which it self would be far from hopelessly paradoxical were it not for the coming of Jesus as true man and His telling us of just who God His Father and the Spirit are. For us to accept by faith this Revelation is the only secure access we have into the "Incomprehensible."What this means for dialogue with agnostics and/or atheists is that we believers have both to be careful about the kinds of claims we make about God and His accessibility to us and to keep in mind that these claims are all at bottom the fruit of the faith that God the "Incomprehensible" has given to some and not to others. Indeed, by faith we know that God loves and offers salvation to every human being, but how He offers it to non-believers is by no means evident to us.Rahner, I think, is very, very good about this matter and so is Nicholas Lash. It just may be that God has led Dworkin to his line of argument as a way of preparing some non-believers to find reason to re-think their positions. I'd say the same about Thomas Nagel, also of NYU. (For what it's worth, Nagel's latest book about all this (the title of which escapes me now) is unfortunate and at best "premature" for any dialogue between theists and non-theists.)
With George and Bernard I would also dwell on the crucial importance of revelation in disclosing the character of the Transcendent reality whom we call "God." And I agree with Steven on the importance of the "heart" as well as the head in coming to faith.However, since Dworkin is making an explicitly philosophical argument, I think he must also be engaged at that level. So, even with regard to Rahner, though he may not venture much beyond affirming the "Incomprehensibility" of the Transcendent referent, I believe he would affirm the reality of such a referent, whereas Dworkin, as I understand him, does not. It strikes me anew, in the light of the Dworkin piece, how important it is for Catholic universities to have robust Departments of Philosophy, ones that represent approaches to what Dworkin calls "grounded realism" (in distinction to his own stance of "ungrounded realism"). These approaches can take a variety of forms: transcendental Thomism, Phenomenology, Personalism. But they would seek to make a case for a personal Ground of the universe of fact and of value -- if the two can indeed be so tidily separated.
It seems to me that Rahner's thoughts about the "Incomprehensible" track Kierkegaard's musings about what he termed the "Absolutely Different." Kierkegaard saw Jesus as the ultimate paradox--so completely unlike us, yet so wholly one of us, even to the point of surrending to a horrific physical death-- and the most necessary link in God's Revelation because the human reality of Jesus is, as Bernard quotes from Rahner, "the only secure access we have into the 'Incomprehensible.'" I also think it's true, as Jim P. and Steven M. note, that we first grasp Revelation through Jesus experientially and that the intellectual leap of faith follows. Bringing others like Dworkin who believe that the universe is "something of intrinsic value and wonder" to religious faith may be one of the great challenges of the 21st century.
About the need "for Catholic universities to have robust Departments of Philosophy"...This seems even more important today than when JPII lauded philosophy in "Fides et Ratio" as "one of the noblest of human tasks." He went on in that encyccal to state that "the Church cannot but set great value upon reason's drive to attain goals which render people's lives ever more worthy. She sees in philosophy the way to come to know fundamental truths about human life. At the same time, the Church considers philosophy an indispensable help for a deeper understanding of faith and for communicating the truth of the Gospel to those who do not yet know it." (para. 5)
If I were doing the The Courtyard of the Gentiles, I would:Pick another name. Really.Talk about mystery. Mystery begins where knowledge ends. The attempt to deal with mystery, including the mysteries of life, the mysteries of the heart, and transcendence, is the domain of religion.Talk about reason. How can we think about faith in rational terms? Reason goes well beyond scientific proof. We reason about complicated things all the time. We gather information, we check facts, we recognize patterns, we make connections, we abstract, we draw diagrams, we map patterns to one another, we deconstruct by creating a new context by which to see things, we name, we describe, we categorize, we make judgments, we tell stories. We do what scientists do prior to the experiment, when they exercise scientific insight to figure out how to set up the experiment in the first place.Talk about existence, and its relationship to both God and mystery. Why do we exist? Why do we continue to exist day after day after day? What sustains us in being? Why is there not nothing? If the basic is-ness of things is mysterious, and if we frame this mystery by saying it has a cause, and give this cause the name God, then anyone can talk about God.
I think we are unwise to exclude an experiential approach from a philosophical discussion. I say to that for many reasons, but the chief one is that a philosophical engagement with Dworkin that seeks a shared rational basis is, it seems to me, an expedition that cannot succeed if our definition of philosophy begins from Thomism, phenomenology (which, in and JPII's expressions, I would argue still is Thomism), or personalism (an expression of Thomist ideas). Those approaches begin from premises that Dworkin cannot share. This, for example, is why I say that JPII's personalism does not escape Thomism: apart from the phenomena themselves, he yet held to "correct" understandings and "adequate" readings of experiences. If one did not share his view of what is "correct" and "adequate" from the start, one never can appreciate the phenomena in the way he did. (As long as you were a Catholic at the beginning of the discussion, you came out a Catholic at the end.) Dworkin never can be reached if, first, he must accept that his understandings are incorrect and his readings inadequate. He began from a neutral position, a set of modern premises whose raison d'etre is the exclusion of those sorts of objective claims from philosophical discourse in a line of thought that traces from the nominalists and, arguably, earlier. The crisis of modernity is the division between that point of view which will admit revelation to a rational, philosophic discourse and another point of view which cannot. Is it hopeless? I think no. But the division cannot be overcome from within the safe frame of the old debate about modernity--the relative importance of reason and revelation and their relationship. The other side is braced for that, and has been for a long time. Catholic schools of philosophy have a stiff challenge ahead of them, and the hardest part will come when they realize they must give up that old debate if they want to engage in the evangelical task at which only they can succeed--to overcome that epistemological division. To me, it seems that the only way to do that is by way of existential priority, to appeal to experience without the life raft of correct, adequate understandings on which to rest.
Steven,I don't follow you (perhaps my shortcoming!). You write:"Dworkin never can be reached if, first, he must accept that his understandings are incorrect and his readings inadequate. He began from a neutral position, a set of modern premises whose raison detre is the exclusion of those sorts of objective claims from philosophical discourse..."I don't think he must "first accept his understandings are incorrect." If they are, it will emerge from the discussion, not prior to it.Further, does not his rejection of "scientific naturalism" stem from a conviction that it is an "inadequate reading" of experience? Thus he is not excluding objective claims from philosophic discourse. Or do I misread him?
Stephen, I don't know about "Thomism" in general, as it's evolved in some rather peculiar ways, but I've never seen anything in Aquinas himself that would prompt one to ignore either reason or evidence. Since he starts with the fact that we know things through our senses, it seems to me that he's the best bridge we've got.
Just a couple of small things. One is that all we have here is an extract from Dworkin's book. How will it develop? Another is that there are all sorts of things that the word 'phenomenology' refers to. Pope John Paul's version is not a serious player in philosophy, whatever its theological merits. A third is that I do not think that any major philosopher of any era has sought "to exclude an experiential approach" from ALL philosophical discussions. The question here is: Just what sort of experience is relevant to the PHILOSOPHICAL question of whether one should acknowledge some "REALITY" so transcendent to to every other "reality" that no predicate of any sort can be taken to apply both to "IT" and to any other reality in the same sense? Thomists, if I'm not mistaken, take it that what they call analogical predication is philosophically successful. If I read Rahner aright, he would not agree that it is philosophically successful BY ITSELF, but once we have the Revelation that Jesus is and brings, then we have a sound basis for employing analogical predication when talking about God. That is, theology has good reason for its use of analogical discourse. Unless one has this "supplement" that Revelation supplies, I'm not convinced that philosophical thought can properly employ this Thomistic process of analogical predication to the question of there being a God, especially to the question of whether such a God is a personal God.But as always, I have to admit that no one has ever had reason to appoint me to the philosophy faculty of any truly great university.
Pope Paul VI talked about dialogue in his first encyclical, issued during the Second Vatican Council. He addresses some of the questions that still capture us:"it seems to Us that the sort of relationship for the Church to establish with the world should be more in the nature of a dialogue, though theoretically other methods are not excluded..."If, in our desire to respect a man's freedom and dignity, his conversion to the true faith is not the immediate object of our dialogue with him, we nevertheless try to help him and to dispose him for a fuller sharing of ideas and convictions. Our dialogue, therefore, presupposes that there exists in us a state of mind which we wish to communicate and to foster in those around us. It is the state of mind which characterizes the man who realizes the seriousness of the apostolic mission and who sees his own salvation as inseparable from the salvation of others. His constant endeavor is to get everyone talking about the message which it has been given to him to communicate." Paul VI Ecclesiam Suam
So, a few distinctions and clarifications.All philosophy utilizes reason and evidence in one way or another. I don't know whether that distinguishes Thomism in any helpful way from German idealism or utilitarianism. I personally would agree with Alasdair MacIntyre who finds Thomas just fine by himself and finds most unhelpful all that Thomas made possible for his followers--the analytical codification of reality, the system of the schoolmen. In the sense that MacIntyre accepts it, let us agree that Thomism is just fine as philosophy because it succeeds in the way that philosophy must succeed. Using reason and evidence, it explains reality to us. But we are in danger of becoming self-referential here if we proceed on the assumption that we are discussing the virtues of Thomism. Whether Thomism succeeds well in the relatively abstract sense of explaining reality to those who already are disposed to understand it would matter little to Dworkin. Indeed, we are not discussing the merits of philosophical systems at all. We are discussing the grounds we would propose to move beyond the affirmation of value to the reality of a personal God who is the Source of such value. I suggest that Dworkin and others like him would reject Thomism, and so it cannot help us. Their rejection would not come from a judgment of its clarity but rather from an epistemological prejudice against the sort of system that it is. Their minds are not disposed to receive it. If we want to reach this world's Dworkins, simply being right will not be enough, and neither will rational persuation. In other words, as I began this morning, I think we are not discussing an affair of the intellect really at all. Our evangelical task is to reason with the will, to convert the heart of a philosopher by means of rational argument. Square peg in a round hole, which is why it's a dilly of a problem. It requires a clear philosophical understanding, yes. It also requires ingenuity. If the clarity of Thomism were enough, we could mail out copies of the Summa and pour a drink in celebration. My glass is empty.Here I need to be clearer about something than I was at 4:23. I do mean to say that my own reading of +Wojtyla and, later, Pope John Paul does find him rigging his phenomenological analysis with a priori claims about what is correct and adequate. He never, in my very humble and arguable view, eludes the quite correct conclusion he reached in his second dissertation: Sheler's phenomenology is a poor vehicle for Catholic philosophy because it cannot adequately privilege moral truth if it begins from the subjective perception of the phenomena, themselves (thus, the importance of stressing "correct" and "adequate" interpretations which, I think, we would not find that Husserl stresses in quite the same way). On this view, to engage in dialogue with John Paul it seems to me Dworkin would have concede those claims of moral truth at the beginning. Otherwise, their dialogue never gets past the entry question (Does revelation exist?) and none of the phenomenological analysis gets them anywhere. Their dialogue is stillborn. That dialogue cannot happen in those terms because it has not found its way past the epistemological question which needs to be answered first. In other words, this is the reason why Fides et Ratio did not persuade Dworkin or others like him in 1998.Fr. Imbelli is quite right that Dworkin does make objective claims. I never would claim that modern philosophers do not make rigidly objective claims (and postmodern philosophers, funnily, even more so). The accent should rest on ">>those sorts<< of objective claims." It is the tradition that they reject a priori, and all of its objective claims that derive from revelation. The question remains--how can we reach over that fence? We reject their a prioris, they reject our a prioris. The whole thing is quite stale and predictable. Even that opaque passage I wrote at 4:23 and which perplexed Fr. Imbelli is proof of how quickly and easily I am apt to caricaturize Dworkin. Presumably, he would have caricatured me just as quickly and easily. All of which is why a dialogue needs to begin from somewhere else. And that returns me to the point I began with this morning. After five centuries, we should know our rational schemes won't do the job. Our most articulate overture to dialogue may be the disarming quality of joy that reason neither can explain nor explain away.
" Our most articulate overture to dialogue may be the disarming quality of joy that reason neither can explain nor explain away."And/or, perhaps, the disarming giving of love to one who seems not to merit it.
"Our evangelical task is to reason with the will, to convert the heart of a philosopher by means of rational argument."Steven ==Reason with the will? What do you mean by this? Is it a process? If so, what sorts of steps does it include? What are its objects? How does this differ from emotivism, which grounds the grasp of value in feeling of some sort? Or is it a kind of emotivism? What you say sounds a bit like Maritain and his notion of "connatural knowledge". I do think that there are severe problems with Thomas' epistemology (which is one reason I'm not a Thomist). But grounding the "perception" of value in the will as Thomas understands the will won't solve the problem of the grasp of value either.
I've wanted to avoid posting any more about the Dworkin piece until I actually had read it and now, after a busy day of teaching and the Mass of the Lord's Supper, I have read it. In its light, let me partially re-orient my comments.To begin, I give Dworkin rather less credit today than I did yesterday. The most striking thing about the whole essay is how little Dworkin appears to understand or take seriously the perspective of theism (at least, Jews, Christians, and Muslims) at all in any way that reflects its lived reality. His account of theism is alien to how my experience of four decades inside the Church. He is fighting with a straw man. And, from the perspective of a dialogue that aims for evangelization, maybe that's not such a bad thing. Does anyone here believe the Genesis account is a literal account of Creation, and that the fossil record that dates back beyond a few thousand years is something our faith obliges us to ignore or explain away? Dworkin appears to think we do. (These religions "make claims about matters of fact and about historical and contemporary causes and effects. Some believers do defend these claims with what they take to be scientific arguments; others profess to believe them as a matter of faith or through the evidence of sacred texts." He mentions no alternative.) His description of religious atheism appears to be premised on the severability of what he calls scientific arguments from value arguments. I'm not persuaded of that severability, mostly because I don't believe he correctly understands how we theists think about that scientific knowledge--our ability, for example, to distinguish the account of salvation from the march of events in history (i.e., that the literal historical truth of every Scriptural proposition need not be taken at face value for belief to be possible). The 'grounding' he talks about is a carefully drawn caricature. (Indeed, he tips his hand most unguardedly when he discusses "zealots," a word he takes no care to define and which seems to be the word he wants to use to describe people who the rest of the world understand to be religious.) He is at ease to identify religious belief with culture (right) but cannot carry that identification far enough to see that what believers believe about what he calls science is bound up inextricably with the values he wants to claim for religious atheism without all of the other commitments (grounding) that follow belief. Our experience of faith in ritual, sacraments, etc. is the source of truth from which the scientific knowledge and value claims validation together. To put it all another way, he does not understand the experience of being a theist at all. (And, indeed, he acknowledges that). (In a parenthetical way, I'm left wondering how his description of religious atheism is very different from Buddhism. It is interesting to me that he does not deal with Buddhism as a religion. Does he not believe it is theism? That's not an uncommon view. But then why be a religious atheist rather than a Buddhist? Perhaps he treats that elsewhere in the book.)I still hold to the idea that a dialogue with Dworkin's religious atheists cannot succeed on Dworkin's chosen philosophical ground, though. For reasons I've described already here it seems like there simply are too many unshared premises. He has categorized the relationship between faith and reason as we understand it as out of bounds. Ann has suggested that the alternative I've proposed is a variety of emotivism. I have drawn some influences from that direction through Burke, but that's not exactly what I have in mind. It's more a matter of the fact that I've been trying to lure this conversation to a less philosophical, more pastoral tone since my first posting. The tendency of modern philosophers and Thomists, both, is to think we can resolve these things only in our heads by exchanging rational propositions. Dworkin wants to have the argument that way, too. We make a mistake if we oblige him. Dworkin is right that his religious atheism is a variety of faith. He lacks the proper vocabulary to describe it because he doesn't understand the experience of speaking in that vocabulary, thinking in it. What is missing is not a philosophical argument, but a living experience. Promisingly, he acknowledges his awe before mystery. He allows that "A conviction of truth is a psychological fact," that these things are "emotional commitments" which are something more than merely subjective. Dworkin has opened the door to the authority of these intimately subjective experiences and, happily, those are languages that our tradition speaks fluently. That is the fruitful avenue for dialogue. Particularly because this thread has been dead for almost 24 hours, I suppose this may be my last opportunity to send to all this wish for a deep encounter with that living experience over the next two days, and all the joy that The Resurrected brings to us. A bit prematurely but sincerely, Buona Pasqua.
Steven,thank you for resuscitating the thread with a careful and considered reflection. I do not challenge what I take to be one of your central points: "The tendency of modern philosophers and Thomists, both, is to think we can resolve these things only in our heads by exchanging rational propositions." And I concur that "Dworkin has opened the door to the authority of these intimately subjective experiences and, happily, those are languages that our tradition speaks fluently. That is the fruitful avenue for dialogue."However, I find that you do indeed challenge some of Dworkin's views on "philosophical grounds." And that you engage him in dialogue by challenging him to enter the door he himself has opened. Thus you are not merely "luring the conversation" to a more pastoral tone; you are engaging in philosophical exchange as well. Indeed why separate "pastoral" and "philosophical"? the head and the heart? and why reduce philosophy to "propositions"? Does Plato?That said, I joyfully exchange prayers for a blessed Easter!
"And I concur that Dworkin has opened the door to the authority of these intimately subjective experiences and, happily, those are languages that our tradition speaks fluently."Fr. Imbelli ==Do you agree with Pascal that "The heart has its reasons which reason does not know"?
Claire says something in the thread just below this one that I think is quite relevant to this discussion. It's about listening to a presentation at a math conference:". . . youre all waiting, all listening, all excited, and when something true is said, youre all delighted by it."That atmosphere sounds just like a Math conference [about proving Fermat's Last Theorem], for example:"One can only try to imagine the emotional rollercoaster Wiles must have been on in 1993-94. First a series of lectures at Cambridge University before an elite audience in an electrified atmosphere, culminating in Wiles simply writing Fermats formula on the blackboard and saying: I think Ill stop there. (http://www.zenker.se/Books/wiles.shtml)"
Ann,I do. Indeed, it is the title I gave to the essay I wrote for the "Church in the 21st Century Resources" on the Catholic Intellectual Tradition. Permit me to provide the link again:http://issuu.com/church21c/docs/c21resourcesspring2013?mode=window&viewM... think there is a whole strand of the Christian spiritual-mystical tradition that seems to postulate a cognitive role for the affections. I think Bonaventure is one witness to this, as is Jonathan Edwards. Your previous reference to "connaturality in Thomas may also point in this direction.It receives succinct expression in Gregory the Great's maxim: "Amor ipse notitia."
Fr. Imbelli --About your first question about the Dworkin text:First, a semantic matter. In a recent Pew survey (as I remember it was Pew) it was found that something like 7 percent of the people who call themselves "atheists" have a strong conviction that there *is* a God. Dworkin himself notes that millions of "atheists" have experiences which they call "religious". So, if we aren't going to call all those folks crazy, we must grant that they have altered the old meaning of the term somewhat. Dworkin says that what they mean by "atheist" is a person who does not believe in a god who is a person, a god who created us and cares about us, but they do believe that there is some absolute, perhaps transcendent value(s) or source of value or set of values. (He's not too clear about that.) If this is indeed the explanation then the term "religious" can sensibly be extended to their intuitions, though the objects of their intuitions might be only finite, even material things. This is all too complex to go into here (I mean the great variety of religious experience), but it seems clear to me that Dworkin *has* had some sort of religious experience or set of experiencea which ground his theory of law, but what thenature of that experience is impossible to tell. Was it cognitive? Affective? A combination of both? I mean he has experienced some good objective value (a single force in nature, he says, plus the objective goodness of material objects, perhaps even other sorts of realities), and these objective valuables ground moral responsibility. But among those valuables there is no absolute, value-grounding *person*. So his god (those ultimate objective valuables) is impersonal but real.I think he's pretty mushy when he tries to describe the phenomenology of the experience(s) of those valuables. (Actually he describes very little of the experiences.) Still, his recognition that there is possibly a real dimension beyond the natural (i.e., the "supernatural") shows a good deal of courage on his part. Look what is happening to Nagel's reputation for his having dared say that there is more to reality than matter in motion! But Dworkin died in February so he, at least, won't suffer such slings and arrows. (By the way, Dworkin and Nagel jointly conducted a seminar on philosophy (and law?) at NYT for many years. Must have been interesting.)At any rate, I find it highly encouraging that two of the grandest old men of the philosophy establishment (both atheists in the old sense) are rejecting the reductionism of the neo-atheists, the neo-Darwinians, and most of the other scientists. "Science" has been uncritical of itself much too long. It needs these fundamental critiques desperately.
" Ravasi has already sponsored several high profile dialogues between believers and non-believers who are open to religion, as is Dworkin.Reading Dworkins account raises the question: were we to participate in such a dialogue, what grounds would we propose to move beyond the affirmation of value to the reality of a personal God who is the Source of such value? Or, to use the words of the First Letter of Peter: what account would we give of the hope that is in us?"Fr. Imbelli --I've found people with many different grounds for belief, and that includes many Catholics. Some appeal to reasons, some to feelings. Some need only probability, others seem content with an educated guess plus some evidence that God truly does him/her, the individual. Others, the immature ones, seem to proceed simply by habit. Some think that the God-hypothesis just fits the facts best. Others have mystical experiences of one sort or another. Some trust the poetry of some of the mystics, like that ofSt. John of the Cross. Etc., etc., etc.I suspect that Ravasi's Courtyards will do well only if the typical non-believers can grant that a dimension past the material one is at least possible. (For a long time many, many if not most intellectuals have not granted this, and many, many still don't.) This is why I think that Nagel and now Dworkin are so important historically. Nagel, at least, is revolutionary, and just in time for the Courtyards.
Like so many, Ann seems determined to have the last word. Today it is me. God bless!!!


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Recently I have returned to my childhood hobby (programming games) and found it quite enjoyable. I've been tinkering with PyGame (for Python) for a few months, made a couple of projects for educational purposes. PyGame is nice, however there is not an awful lot of commercial games using PyGame, and I'd like to invest my time in the best way and ideally to make an extra buck in the future.
What I like:
- doing things alone. I do not dream about working at huge corporation and making one tiny bit of World of Duty-7
- frameworks like LÖVE (for Lua) or PyGame. I doubt I am able to figure out how to draw those fancy pixels without it
- cross-platform things.
- free stuff.
What I don't like:
- C++ scares me, however feel free to tell me how stupid I am
- IDEs like GameMaker, RPGmaker etc. I like making my own tools.
My goal is to make 2D games like Terraria, Super Meat Boy, DefCon, etc. Which language and tools should I choose to accomplish my goal?


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Roy Crouchson - Taking England to Poland & Ukraine 2012
I'm back with a follow up to my FM2010 FM Career thread 'Fabio Crouchello - Taking England to South Africa 2010'!
'Roy Crouchson' is going to be my secondary save on FM12, for something fun and different (a quick fix!) away from my current career save in Italy. As I always tend to start my games at the bottom and work my way up, I don't normally get to manage a big team so there is a big attraction for me in being able to manage England from the start and to get the rare chance to work with some top players on FM straight from the beginning!
All of the playable leagues in England are loaded along with the top leagues of Italy, Spain and Germany. I'm using a large customised database (all players in England loaded with all current international players throughout the world retained). I'll be starting out with an 'automatic' reputation and holidaying through to May 2012 in order to take over at roughly the same time as Hodgson did in real life.
Below, in the next few posts, I'll be talking about Fabio Crouchello, Roy Crouchson and my plans for this save!


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Liz Pohland
Director of Communications; Intercom Editor
I believe editors imprint their own vision and sensibility on a magazine in an attempt to woo an audience and develop a unique identity for their publication. Coming up with the right mix of articles is a constant challenge; editors are always trying to reinvent the formula as well as struggling to keep up with publishing and industry trends, produce catchy covers or headlines, and entice advertisers.
These issues are especially challenging with a magazine about technical communication, which is a relatively new field, on the one hand, and a field in fast expansion, on the other. There are also numerous challenges within the publishing world, such as managerial decisions about appropriate media, copyright and access, collaborative authoring, social media, and (often most important) cost considerations.
My vision for Intercomand all STC publications is that they are cutting-edge and address a wide readership, providing both a venue for essential research and practical examples/applications of technical communication in a space fostering open knowledge sharing and conversation. With one foot in industry and one in the academy, I hope to lead STC in providing clear communication within its publications and also in balancing the relationship between research and practice.
Liz Pohland, an STC member and doctoral student in Technical Communication and Rhetoric at Texas Tech University, is the editor of Intercom, with over 20 years of experience in publishing as a content and production manager, writer, editor, and designer. Before joining STC, Liz served the Folger Shakespeare Library as an editor and designer for the scholarly journal Shakespeare Quarterly, as consultant to the Folger Magazine, and as contributor to the Folger website and branding, among multiple other publications and multimedia projects. She introduced usability and readability standards to the Folger's publications and researched new technologies in editorial management software. Liz has also worked with Princeton University Press and Peterson's on varied publishing endeavors. Her freelance editing includes diverse scientific and technical topics.
Liz is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in Technical Communication and Rhetoric from Texas Tech University, having been awarded a $25,000 Presidential Doctoral Fellowship in 2009–2010. She earned a BA in English and French from Hollins University and an MA in English from Virginia Tech, where she interned with distinguished Professor and Poet Nikki Giovanni and won a commendation for her thesis. Residing in Arlington, VA, Liz considers the coast of Georgia "home" and has many hobbies and research interests, including skiing, snorkeling, computer gaming, comic books, new media, museums, and technical communication for children.


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The 25 Most Baffling Toys From Around the World
These are weirdest, most ill-conceived toys from around the globe. If you're about to say that they're "weird" only because of our own xenophobic ignorance of other cultures, well, we have two words for you: Poop toys.
You'll see.
Surprisingly, not all of these are from Japan.
This one is, though. We're used to Japan's superior electronics companies ensuring they get new televisions, video games and cell phones before the rest of us, but who knew they'd get the second coming of our Savior a full three years before the rest of the world. You have to love the fact that they've decided to use the box to point out ways your Jesus Robot can help you get chicks. As if you needed them to tell you.
These dolls from Russia quite clearly have both male genitalia and the long flowing hair typically associated with females. We're stumped and aroused. Is it possible they're doll versions of David Lee Roth?
Not that it really makes it any better.
Playmobil makes little figurines in the shape of hundreds of different professions, but only the Hazmat disposal crew provides children with the stark reminder that mankind's excesses will eventually doom us all.
"You see, girls, your father was in the air force. He was an F-15."
Why you'd ever feel the need to conceal a USB stick in a doll wearing a bondage mask is beyond us, although it's probably a small blessing that it's not withdrawn via the gimp's ass.
Teaching a 3 year old how to clean and prepare a fish used to be a difficult and messy task. No longer!
The thing flying out of the toilet appears to be a plastic piece of poop, molded in the traditionally popular swirl-cone shape. Projectile excrement is a popular prank in Japan, and the workplace injuries that result are a major drain on the economy.
Shimajiro is the toilet training tiger that swept all over the Web in a video a little while back. When either of the two buttons are pressed, he exclaims a short burst of pro-toilet-training rhetoric. "Crap! Crap like a champion!" and "RRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHH!" seem the likeliest options.
What on earth is going on with the right side of this toy? Is that a horse coming out from behind the shield? Is this toy some kind of centaur, or is that shield concealing an unnatural sexual act? There are a lot of questions here, and none of the potential answers is very savory.
On the left is a mysterious toy. On the right, a graphical representation of a virus. And, on the bottom is a picture of what can only be a child catching herpes.
We're told this is some sort of child's sled, and that thing sticking out of it is a handle, upon which the child can hang on while enjoying an exciting winter adventure.
Why? What did you think it was?
The closest we can figure is that they're selling a life-sized plush camel, but to make more money they're selling it one body part at a time. This is the head.
What better way to market your putter with a golden penis on the tip than with three cute cartoon animals? Just imagine Jack Nicholson coming at you, swinging one of these. Hell, now that we've written it, we're having a hard time thinking about anything else.


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I have a PSD with a web design.
Every time I tweak the design, I need to manually copy different portions of the image, with different layer visibilities (for transparency) into CSS sprites.
How much can that be automated?
I have a PSD with a web design.
How much can that be automated?
I used an automatic photoshop script once and worked well.
The concept is :
In your case, if you modify one image, you regenerate the global image and the CSS via the script and... that's it. Maybe you'll need to copy/paste the CSS in yours if you don't want to use the generated one.
Notes :
I tried it with a few files and worked great. Then, I tried like ~600 pictures and then, you'll need a goooood CPU and patience ;) In this case, don't use it.
Wouldn't using slices + starting an Action that beguins marquee selecting (with snap to slices & document bounds on) all your slices one by one, but cropping to selection each time, and saving as png, ctrl alt z undoing till not cropped, selecting each sector, cropping..etc, till done with all sectors, then stopping the Action. In the middle you could hide/show any layer, as is the same file always, so shouldn't be conflicts... So you would load the action over your changed psd each time. Only thing I can think of is you actually need to change the slices borders. Or that... I did not understand you right...
Edit: if no need slicing, then a macro (action) that include only the hiding or showing the layers in the order you need, after all tweaks are done. As I say, I might not be understanding...


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Y-adapters are used to connect one dockside outlet into two weatherproof connectors. All plugs and connectors have side grips are made to NEMA standards and offer a universal fit with all other brands. 30 Amp connections also come with Powersmart LED power indicators. All cables are rated up to 600V 105"C.
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