text:
How can we end the cycles of violence and injustice that cause so much suffering and misery? Is a more peaceful and equitable world really possible? If so, what would it actually look like?
My research over several decades has focused on these questions. They are questions deeply rooted in my own early life experiences, when my parents and I narrowly escaped from Nazi Europe. Had we not been able to flee, like most of my relatives, we would almost certainly have been killed in the Holocaust.
As I grew up, I looked for answers to these questions in books and universities. But I never found satisfactory ones.
I wasn't aware at that time that studying social systems would become my life's work. By the time I did, like many of us, I saw that our present course is not sustainable. In our time of nuclear and biological weapons, violence to settle international disputes could be disastrous for us all. So also could our once hallowed "conquest of nature" in an era when advanced technologies are causing environmental damage of unprecedented magnitude.
I saw that a grim future awaits my children—and all of us—unless there are transformative social changes. But transformation from what to what?
It was clear, as Einstein said, that the same thinking that created our problems cannot solve them. I saw that building foundations for a more peaceful and equitable world requires thinking that goes beyond conventional categories such as capitalist vs. socialist, Eastern vs. Western, religious vs. secular, or technologically developed vs. undeveloped.
I began to look for patterns cross-culturally and historically. Gradually I began to see two very different social configurations repeating themselves. Since there were no names to describe them, I called one the domination system and the other the partnership system.
A New Perspective on History
If we look at history from the perspective of the partnership system and the domination system as two underlying social possibilities, we see that there are patterns behind seemingly random events. We see these patterns in modern times in the tension between organized challenges to traditions of domination and enormous resistance and periodic regressions. We see one progressive movement after another challenging these traditions—from the "divinely ordained" right of despotic kings to rule their "subjects," the "divinely ordained" right of men to rule the women and children in the "castles" of their homes, the "divinely-ordained" right of one race or nation to rule over another, all the way to man's "divinely ordained" right to dominate and conquer nature. But we also see fierce resistance to this movement toward partnership, and, even after gains were made, regressions such as those of the Nazis to more rigid domination systems.
We further see something of pivotal importance that is also still ignored in conventional social analyses. This is that there is a direct connection between, on the one hand, whether a society is peaceful and equitable or warlike and inequitable and, on the other hand, how it structures the most fundamental human relations: the relations between the female and male halves of humanity and between them and their daughters and sons.
The reason, simply put, is that it is in these primary human relations that children first learn what is considered normal or abnormal, possible or impossible, moral or immoral. They learn either respect for human rights or to accept human rights violations as only normal, even moral. They learn to avoid violence or to accept and even idealize it. In short, these formative relations unconsciously shape how people think and feel, including what kinds of leaders and policies they vote for.
This explains why those who want to push us back to a more autocratic, violent, and unjust social structure uniformly work to maintain or impose rigid rankings of domination in gender and parent-child relations. For the Nazis a top priority was getting women back into their "traditional" place in a "traditional" family—code words for a top-down, male-dominated, authoritarian family. This was also a top priority for Khomeini in Iran and Stalin in the former Soviet Union. And it still is for so-called religious fundamentalists today—both Eastern of Western—who also believe in "holy wars" and authoritarian rule in the state or tribe.
Yet, ironically, for many people who consider themselves progressives, women's rights and children's rights are still "just" women's and children's issues. This is why we need social categories that show the connection between what is considered normal in gender and childhood relations and whether societies are peaceful or violent, equitable or inequitable.
The New Social Categories
Cross-culturally and through history, societies adhering closely to the domination system have the following configuration:
- Top-down authoritarian control in both the family and the state or tribe;
- The subordination of the female half of humanity to the male half, and, with this, the devaluation of anything stereotypically considered "soft" or "feminine" such as caring and nonviolence;
- A high degree of institutionalized or built-in violence, whether in the form of wife and child beating or warfare and terrorism, as fear and force ultimately maintain domination;
- Beliefs that our only alternatives are dominating or being dominated and that – beginning with the rigid ranking of male over female – hierarchies of domination are divinely or naturally ordained.
Moving toward the partnership side of the spectrum—and it is always a matter of degree—we see a different configuration:
- A more democratic organization in both the family and state or tribe;
- Both halves of humanity are equally valued, and stereotypically feminine values such as caring and nonviolence (which are considered "unmanly" in the domination system) are highly regarded, whether they are embodied in women or men;
- A less violent way of living, since violence is not needed to maintain rigid rankings of domination, be it in intimate, national, or international relations;
- Beliefs that present relations of mutual respect, accountability, and benefit as natural and support hierarchies of actualization, where power is used to empower rather than disempower others.
Understanding these two different social configurations makes it possible to identify four cornerstones foundational to a more peaceful and just world.
The First Cornerstone: Childhood Relations
The physical structure of the human brain is not set at birth. Neuroscience shows that the neural pathways that will largely determine intelligence, creativity, predisposition to violent or nonviolent behavior, empathy or insensitivity, venturesomeness or overconformity, and other critical matters, are formed in interaction with a child's early experiences.
While people can—and do—change, for a majority of people early experiences and relations are critical. If these relations are violent, children learn that violence from those who are more powerful toward those who are less powerful is acceptable as a means of dealing with conflicts and problems. If family relations based on chronic violations of human rights are considered normal and moral, they provide mental and emotional models for condoning such violations in other relations.
Fortunately, some people reject these teachings. But unfortunately many replicate them, not only in their intimate relations but in all relations—including international ones. Coercive, inequitable, and violent childrearing—dominator childrearing—is therefore foundational to the imposition and maintenance of a coercive, inequitable, and chronically violent social organization.
Since it is through childhood experiences and relations that people acquire habits of feeling, thinking, and behavior, a global campaign against abuse and violence in childhood relations is urgently needed. This has a number of core elements.
- The first is education: raising awareness of the consequences – personal and global – of dominator or partnership childhood relations, as well as education providing both women and men the knowledge and skills necessary for empathic, sensitive, nonviolent, authoritative rather than authoritarian childrearing.
- The second component is legal: the enactment and enforcement of laws criminalizing child abuse as well as legislation funding education for nonviolent, empathic, and fair childrearing.
- The third component entails changing the mass media so children are not exposed to constant representation of violence as a means of resolving conflicts and "comedies" where family members abuse and humiliate each other.
- The fourth component is engaging spiritual and religious leaders to take a strong stand against intimate violence—the violence that every year blights, and all too often takes, the lives of millions of children and women, and perpetuates cycles of violence in all relations. This is the mission of the Spiritual Alliance to Stop Intimate Violence (or SAIV) that I co-founded.
The Second Cornerstone: Gender Relations
How a society constructs the roles and relations of the two basic halves of humanity—women and men—not only affects women's and men's individual life options; it affects families, education, religion, politics, and economics. It directly affects a society's guiding values. It is key to a nation's general quality of life.
For example, Women, Men, and the Global Quality of Life—a study based on statistics from 89 nations conducted by the Center for Partnership Studies—found that in significant ways the status of women can be a better predictor of general quality of life than Gross Domestic Product (or GDP), the conventional measure of a nation's economic health.
An obvious reason is simply that women are half the population. But as long as the half of humanity with which values such as caring, compassion, and nonviolence are stereotypically associated—the female half—remains subordinate and excluded from social governance, so also will these values.
Stereotypically feminine traits, such as caring and nonviolence, can be found in both women and men. Stereotypical women's work, such as taking care of children and maintaining a clean and healthy home environment, can be performed by both women and men. However, in cultures or subcultures adhering closely to the domination system, these traits and activities are considered appropriate only for women and inappropriate for "real men."
This is why giving priority to so-called "women's issues" has enormous implications for the environment, peace, population, economic equity, and political democracy.
A sign of hope is that there is today strong movement towards real partnership in all spheres of life between women and men, along with a blurring of rigid gender stereotypes. Men are nurturing babies and women are entering positions of economic and political leadership. But this movement remains slow and localized, and in some cultures and subcultures is fiercely opposed; for example, by so-called religious fundamentalist leaders.
What is needed is a global campaign for equitable and nonviolent gender relations backed by the world's progressive leaders.
As long as women still hold a small minority of political positions, we cannot really talk of representative democracy. As long as boys and men learn to equate "real masculinity" with violence and control—be it through "heroic" epics, war toys, or violent TV, films, and video games—we cannot realistically expect to end the arms build-ups that are today bankrupting our world and the terrorism and aggressive warfare that in our age of nuclear and chemical warfare threaten our survival. Nor can we realistically expect an end to racism, anti-Semitism, and other ugly -isms as long as people learn early on to equate difference—beginning with the fundamental difference between female and male—with superiority or inferiority, with dominating or being dominated.
The Third Cornerstone: Economic Relations
Current economic systems—whether capitalist, socialist, or communist—are endangering our natural life-support systems. The gap between haves and have-nots has been growing both between and within nations. Poverty seems intractable, speculation is rampant, and so are insensitive and ultimately destructive financial practices.
As documented in my book, The Real Wealth of Nations, we need a new way of structuring economics. The real wealth of a nation—indeed, of our world—is not financial; it consists of the contributions of people and of nature. We therefore need economic indicators, policies, and practices that give visibility and value to the most important human work: the work of caring for people, beginning in childhood, and of caring for nature. We need a caring economics.
This is essential not only for human and environmental reasons, but for purely economic ones. To create the "high quality human capital" economists tell us is needed for the postindustrial information/knowledge era we must recognize what both psychology and neuroscience tell us: that this capital largely depends on the kind of care children receive. We therefore need strong social support for the caregiving work performed in both the market and the household economic sectors.
There are important trends in this direction. For example, most West European nations offer monetary assistance and education for parenting, along with paid parental leave, health care, and high quality early childhood education. Satellite economic indicators are beginning to count the economic value of this work. For example, the Swiss government found that if the unpaid work in households were included, it would constitute 70 percent of the reported Swiss GDP.
But the persistent failure to give real value to the "women's work" of caregiving helps explain why poverty and hunger have proven so intractable. Indeed, it makes no sense to talk of hunger and poverty in generalities when the mass of the world's poor and the poorest of the poor are women and children. Even in the rich United States, women over the age of 65 are, according to U.S. Census statistics, twice as likely to be poor as men over 65. Most of these women are, or were, caregivers.
This can, and must, be changed. The Center for Partnership Studies' Caring Economics Campaign is designed to help policy makers and the public recognize the importance of moving to a caring economics. It offers resources, training, and advocacy opportunities.
We need economic inventions such as caregiver tax credits, Social Security, and subsidies for childcare. We need economic indicators that give visibility and value to this essential "women's work"—whether it is performed by women or men.
Initiatives such as CPS's Real Wealth Public Policy Project showcase indicators that go beyond GDP to include the environment as well as levels of health, education, and poverty—and urge special attention to the enormous economic contribution of care work in both the market and household economic sectors, as well as to the status of women and children as predictors of both quality of life and long-term economic success.
Development policies also need to shift their focus to women. Many studies show that in most regions of the developing world women allocate far more of their resources to their families than men do.
We should encourage and reward economic and social inventions that give value to caring and caregiving work in both the market and non-market economic sectors. For example, we have national programs to train soldiers to effectively take life—and we have pensions for them. By contrast, we have no national programs for training women and men to effectively care for children—even though we have solid scientific knowledge about what is and is not effective and humane childcare.
The shift from industrial to the post-industrial knowledge and service era, with increasing automation and other technologies that will bring even more radical changes, demands a redefinition of what is productive work. People need meaningful work. A negative income tax or guaranteed income for doing nothing is no solution. Clearly the most important and meaningful work is that of caring for other humans, particularly our children and our growing elderly population, and for our natural environment.
Redefining productive work also imbues work with what it lacks in a domination system – where it is primarily motivated by fear and the artificial creation of scarcities through wars and misallocation and misdistribution of resources. Giving value to caring and caregiving imbues work with meaning. It gives work a spiritual dimension, since at the core of all spiritual traditions is the valuing of compassion and love.
The Fourth Cornerstone: Stories, Beliefs, Morality, and Spirituality
We humans live by stories. The message of many of the stories we inherited from earlier times is that dominating or being dominated are the only alternatives. The proliferation of stories about relations built on mutual benefit, mutual respect, and mutual accountability signals a revolution in consciousness.
But for this revolution in consciousness to succeed, we need more than the emergence in bits and pieces of new stories. We need a concerted effort through the arts, music, and literature, as well as through science. We must show that the struggle for our future is not between religion and secularism, right and left, East and West, or capitalism and socialism, but between traditions of domination and a partnership way of life. We must spread the new language for describing societies offered by the partnership system and domination system.
These changes in language and stories have enormous implications for both spirituality and morality. Spirituality becomes not so much an escape to otherworldly realms from the suffering inherent in a dominator world, but an active engagement in creating a better world right here on Earth. And rather than being used to coerce and dominate, morality is imbued with caring and love.
To spread the consciousness that we can, and must, leave behind traditions of domination requires courage. It takes courage to challenge domination and violence in both international relations and intimate relations. It takes courage to actively oppose injustice and cruelty in all spheres of life: not only in the so-called public sphere of politics and business but in the so-called private sphere of parent-child, gender, and sexual relations.
It may not be popular, and may even be dangerous to do this, since domination and violence in intimate and intergroup relations are encoded in some religious and ethnic traditions that are our heritage from a more rigid dominator past. But it must be done.
We are at a time when the mix of high technology and the domination system can take us to an evolutionary dead end. Using high technology in service of conquest and domination – whether of people or of nature—is not sustainable.
Every one of us can play a role in the cultural transformation from domination to partnership worldwide. Working together, we can build the foundations for a more peaceful and equitable way of living on our beautiful Earth.
Dr. Riane Eisler is president of the Center for Partnership Studies and a special guest contributor to Rethinking Complexity. Dr. Eisler is best known for her international bestseller The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future and The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics, hailed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu as "a template for the better world we have been so urgently seeking." Her other books include the award-winning Tomorrow's Children, The Power of Partnership, and Sacred Pleasure. Dr. Eisler is president of the Center for Partnership Studies (or CPS) and her research and writings are widely used as the basis for social action campaigns, including CPS' Caring Economics Campaign and its Spiritual Alliance to Stop Intimate Violence. Dr. Eisler teaches in the transformative leadership graduate program at the California Institute of Integral Studies, keynotes conferences worldwide, and has received many honors, including honorary doctoral degrees and the Distinguished Peace Leadership award.
NOTE: Different versions of this essay, which was written in 2010, have been previously published. It was republished here with permission from the Center for Partnership Studies.
Read other posts by our guest contributors
Keep up with our community: Facebook | Twitter | Saybrook's Organizational Systems Program


text:
The BPA, which operates more than 15,000 miles of lines in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana, said it is spending $1billion on four transmission projects. These are either underway or scheduled to begin in the next two years.
It will spend another $585million on upgrades, using money borrowed from the federal government.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, also known as the stimulus bill, increased the money that the BPA may borrow from the US Treasury by $3.25billion. The funds must be paid back with interest.
New-build transmission projects include the 500kv McNary-John Day line along the Oregon-Washington border, which is already under construction. The line will allow 495MW of wind power to join the grid when it is completed in early 2012, the BPA said.
The $1billion of transmission will add more than 220miles of lines to the grid, the BPA said.
In total, the BPA has earmarked $2billion in stimulus money for a series of major projects. These include transmission, hydro power and fish hatcheries. It has spent $174.4million of that figure to date.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
News Release
Researcher Gives Robotic Surgery Tools a
Sense of Touch
By substituting mechanical instruments for human fingers, robotic tools give surgeons a new way to perform medical procedures with great precision in small spaces. But as the surgeon directs these tools from a computer console, an important component is lost: the sense of touch.
Johns Hopkins researchers are trying to change that by
adding such sensations, known as haptic feedback, to
medical robotic systems. "Haptic" refers to the sense of
"The surgeons have asked for this kind of feedback," says Allison Okamura, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Johns Hopkins. "So we're using our understanding of haptic technology to try to give surgeons back the sense of touch that they lose when they use robotic medical tools."
Okamura is a leading researcher in human-machine interaction, particularly involving mechanical devices that convey touch-like sensations to a human operator. In recent years, she has focused on medical applications as a participant in the National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center for Computer-Integrated Surgical Systems and Technology, based at Johns Hopkins. With funding from the National Institutes of Health and the NSF, she has established a collaboration with Intuitive Surgical Inc., maker of the da Vinci robotic system used in many hospitals for heart and prostate operations.
In the da Vinci system, a surgeon sits at a computer console, looks through a three-dimensional video display of the surgery site and moves finger controls that direct the motion of robotic tools inside the patient. Currently, this system does not send haptic feedback to the surgeon to convey what the mechanical tool "feels" inside the body. Okamura's team seeks to add these sensations to the da Vinci and similar machines.
Through the arrangement with Intuitive Surgical, Okamura's lab has acquired da Vinci hardware and software that allow her to conduct experiments toward achieving that goal. For example, the da Vinci's tools can be directed to tie sutures, but if the operator causes the tools to pull too hard, the thread can break. The Johns Hopkins researchers want the human operator to be able to feel resistance when too much force is applied.
"The sense of touch is important to surgeons," Okamura says. "They like to feel what's happening when they're working inside the body. They feel a 'pop' when a needle pokes through tissue. They can feel for calcification. Their sense of touch helps tell them where they are within the body. In robotic procedures and other types of minimally invasive surgery, surgeons insert long tools between their hands and the patient. This approach has definite medical benefits, but for the surgeon, there's a loss of dexterity and haptic information. It's like operating with chopsticks that have grippers on the end."
To address this, Okamura's team is experimenting with several techniques that could give some of those sensations back to the surgeons. One option is to attach to the robotic tools force sensors capable of conveying to the human operator how much force the machine is applying during surgery. Another idea is to create mathematical computer models that represent the moves made by the robotic tools, and then use this data to send haptic feedback to the operator.
Both approaches have advantages and drawbacks. Force sensors may be highly accurate, but they are expensive and would have to be made of sterile, biocompatible materials in order to be used in medical robots. Computer models could be less expensive but might not respond quickly enough. "I'm exploring both approaches to see which produces the best results," Okamura says. "The most important thing is that the haptic feedback sent to the human operator must feel right because the fingers aren't easily fooled."
While this research continues, Okamura's team has developed an interim system that instead sends "haptic" information to the eyes. When a surgeon is using a robotic tool to tie a suture, for example, a colored circle follows the image of the tool in the visual display, indicating how much force is being using. A red light may signal that too much force is being applied, and the thread is likely to break. Green and yellow lights may indicate that the right amount of force is being used or that the tool is edging toward excessive force.
Okamura's team has already published a journal article describing an early version of this visual haptic feedback project and is continuing to refine the system.
Her Johns Hopkins collaborators on this project include Mohsen Mahvash, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Mechanical Engineering; Lawton Verner, a graduate student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering; Carol Reiley, a graduate student in the Department of Computer Science; and David Yuh, a cardiac surgeon in the School of Medicine.
A video showing some of this research is online at: www.jhu.edu/news/audio-video/medical_robotics.html.
Digital photo of the researcher available; contact Phil Sneiderman.
Related Links
Allison Okamura's Haptic Exploration Lab Page
Go to Headlines@HopkinsHome Page


text:
Please help support the mission of New Advent and get the full contents of this website as an instant download. Includes the Catholic Encyclopedia, Church Fathers, Summa, Bible and more all for only $19.99...
Born at Russey, near Besançon, 1 Sept., 1665; died at Pekin, 29 Sept., 1741. He entered the Jesuit order, 1 September, 1685, and in 1697 was sent to China. At Peking (1698) he attracted the attention of K'ang-hi. His varied knowledge, and familiar use of the court languages, Chinese and Tatar-Manchu, gained him the good-will of the emperor. Father Parrenin utilized this favour in the interest of religion and science. While satisfying the extraordinary curiosity of K'ang-hi, especially about physics, medicine, and the history of Europe, he demonstrated how the scientific culture of the West was due to Christianity. Obliged to travel with the emperor, he visited the native Christians. Well liked by important personages at the court and the highest dignitaries of the empire, he led them to look with favour on the spreading of Christianity. In the "Lettres édificantes," he has written of the admirable example set by the princes of the Sounou family, whose conversion, begun by Father Francisco Suárez, he completed. He rendered the greatest services to religion during the reign of Yong-tching (1723-35), son of K'ang-hi. The new emperor soon made known his aversion for Christianity, and only his consideration for the missionaries at Peking, principally for Father Parrenin, prevented the extermination of Christianity in China. This emperor respected the missionaries, not for their scientific knowledge, but for their character and virtues. He demanded services of more tangible importance, notably at audiences granted to the ambassadors of Russia and Portugal during the long negotiations, both commercial and political, with the former of the two powers. The Chinese ministers needed the missionaries, not only as conscientious and trusty interpreters, but men capable of dispelling Chinese ignorance of European matters and of inspiring confidence. Parrenin, who had served the government of K'ang-hi so capably in this dual rôle, was no less serviceable under Yong-tching. He was assisted by his confrères, Fathers Mailla and Gaubil. the mission at Peking continued to exist among most violent persecutions, and became the salvation of the Christians in the provinces: as long as Christianity sustained itself at the capital, its position in the rest of the empire was not hopeless; subaltern persecutors hesitated to apply the edicts in all their rigour against a religion which the emperor tolerated in his capital, and against men whose confrères the emperor treated with honour.
Science is indebted to Parrenin for his services in drawing up the great map of China (see JEAN-BAPTISTE REGIS). He roused in K'ang-hi a desire to see his entire domain represented by methods more exact than those of the Chinese cartographers. Father Parrenin had a hand in the preparations of the making of this map in the provinces of Pechili, Shan-tung, and Liao-tung. He also collaborated on a map of Peking and its environs, which the emperor caused to be made in 1700. He translated into the Tartar-Manchu language for K'ang-hi several of the works published in the "Mémoirs de l'Academie des Sciences" at Paris. In 1723 Dortous de Mairan, of the Académie des Science, and Fréret, perpetual secretary of the Académie des Inscriptions, sent him their "doubts" about the history, chronology, and astronomy of the Chinese. His answers led to other questions, and this scientific correspondence continued until 1740. Father Parrenin's conduct may not always have been above reproach during the agitation caused in the Chinese missions by the famous controversy about the rites (see CHINA: The Question of Rites). But his whole life contradicts to odious character attributed to him by writers who edited with more passion than truth "Mémoires historique du Cardinalde Tournon" and the "Anecdotes sue l'Etat de la Religion dans de Chine".
Lettres édificantes et curieuses. 26e Recueil. Préface et Lettre du P. Chalier (Paris, 1753); Lettre du P. Antoine Gaubil on the death of P. Parrenin, MS. 12223 in the Bibliothéque Nationale, with the letters of Parrenin to Mairan and Fréret (1729-60), unedited; Lettres de M. de Mairan au R. P. Parrenin, contenant diverses questions sur la Chine (Paris, 1759-70); BRUCKER, Le mission de Chine de 1722 à 1735 in Revue des questions historiques, XXIX, 491 (1881); Idem, Correspondance scientifique du missionaire francais à Peking au XVIIIe Siécle in Revue du monde catholique. XXVI, 701, (1883); DE BACKER-SOMMERVOGEL, Bibliothéque des éscrevains de la C. de J. VI, 284-290, IX, 757; Cordier, Bibliotheca Sinica.
APA citation. (1911). Dominique Parrenin. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11508a.htm
MLA citation. "Dominique Parrenin." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 11. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911. <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11508a.htm>.
Ecclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. February 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor. Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York.
Contact information. The editor of New Advent is Kevin Knight. My email address is webmaster at newadvent.org. Regrettably, I can't reply to every letter, but I greatly appreciate your feedback — especially notifications about typographical errors and inappropriate ads.


text:
If you have reached this point,
you have made a mistake!
This sign appears on a road coming off of 443, and means that if you're an Israeli citizen, you've made a mistake, and the road you are now on, is only for Palestinians.
Of course, highway 443 is open to all, but some roads, like the one above, are forbidden to Jews.
Gotta love peace.
It is of course, no worse than this sign, which is only selectively enforced against Israeli Jews and not Israeli Arabs:
(The Hebrew version doesn't say "Israeli law", just "the law")
Talk about the Palestinian Apartheid State.
One-Click Pro-Israel Activism!
It takes just 1 Click to help Israel!
Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael טובה הארץ מאד מאד


text:
To use all functions of this page, please activate cookies in your browser.
With an accout for my.chemeurope.com you can always see everything at a glance – and you can configure your own website and individual newsletter.
- My watch list
- My saved searches
- My saved topics
- My newsletter
Balmer series
The Balmer series or Balmer lines in atomic physics, is the designation of one of a set of six different named series describing the spectral line emissions of the hydrogen atom.
The Balmer series is calculated using the Balmer formula, an empirical equation discovered by Johann Balmer in 1885. The visible spectrum of light from hydrogen displays four wavelengths, 410 nm, 434 nm, 486 nm, and 656 nm, that reflect emissions of photons by electrons in excited states transitioning to the quantum level described by the principal quantum number n equals 2.
Additional recommended knowledge
The Balmer series is characterized by the electron transitioning from n ≥ 3 to n = 2, where n refers to the radial quantum number or principal quantum number of the electron. The transitions are named sequentially by Greek letter: n = 3 to n = 2 is called H-α, 4 to 2 is H-β, 5 to 2 is H-γ, and 6 to 2 is H-δ. As the first spectral lines associated with this series are located in the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum, these lines are historically referred to as "H-alpha", "H-beta", "H-gamma" and so on, where H is the element hydrogen.
Although physicists were aware of atomic emissions before 1885, they lacked a tool to accurately predict where the spectral lines should appear. The Balmer equation predicts the four visible absorption/emission lines of hydrogen with high accuracy. Balmer's equation inspired the Rydberg equation as a generalization of it, and this in turn led physicists to find the Lyman, Paschen, and Brackett series which predicted other absorption/emission lines of hydrogen found outside the visible spectrum.
The familiar red H-alpha spectral line of hydrogen gas, which is the transition from the shell n = 3 to the Balmer series shell n = 2, is one of the conspicuous colors of the universe. It contributes a bright red line to the spectra of emission or ionization nebula, like the Orion Nebula, which are often H II regions found in star forming regions. In true-color pictures, these nebula have a distinctly pink color from the combination of visible Balmer lines that hydrogen emits.
Later, it was discovered that when the spectral lines of the hydrogen spectrum are examined at very high resolution, they are found to be closely-spaced doublets. This splitting is called fine structure. It was also found that excited atoms could jump to the Balmer series n=2 from orbitals where n was greater than 6, emitting shades of violet when doing so.
Balmer's formula
Balmer noticed that a single number had a relation to every line in the hydrogen spectrum that was in the visible light region. That number was 364.56 nm. When any integer higher than 2 was squared and then divided by itself minus 4, then that number multiplied by 364.56 gave a wavelength of another line in the visible hydrogen spectrum. By this formula he was able to show that certain measurements of lines made in his time by spectroscopy were slightly inaccurate measurements and his formula predicted lines that were later found although had not yet been observed. His number also proved to be the limit of the series.
The Balmer equation could be used to find the wavelength of the absorption/emission lines and was originally presented as follows (save for a notation change to give Balmer's constant as B):
In 1888 the physicist Johannes Rydberg generalized the Balmer equation for all transitions of hydrogen. The equation commonly used to calculate the Balmer series is a specific example of the Rydberg formula and follows as a simple reciprocal mathematical rearrangement of the formula above (conventionally using a notation of n for m as the single integral constant needed):
where λ is the wavelength of the absorbed/emitted light and RH is the Rydberg constant for hydrogen. The Rydberg constant is seen to be equal to 4/B in Balmer's formula, and for an infinitely heavy nucleus is 4/(3.6456*10-7m) = 10,973,735.3 m−1.
Role in astronomy
The Balmer series is particularly useful in astronomy because the Balmer lines appear in numerous stellar objects due to the abundance of hydrogen in the universe, and therefore are commonly seen and relatively strong compared to lines from other elements.
The spectral classification of stars, which is a primarily a determination of surface temperature, is based on the relative strength of spectral lines, and the Balmer series in particular are very important. Other characteristics of a star can be determined by close analysis of its spectrum include surface gravity (related to physical size) and composition.
Because the Balmer lines are commonly seen in the spectra of various objects, they are often used to determine radial velocities due to doppler shifting of the Balmer lines. This has important uses all over astronomy, from detecting binary stars, exoplanets, compact objects such as neutron stars and black holes (by the motion of hydrogen in accretion disks around them), identifying groups of objects with similar motions and presumably origins (moving groups, star clusters, galaxy clusters, and debris from collisions), determining distances (actually redshifts) of galaxies or quasars, and identifying unfamiliar objects by analysis of their spectrum.
Balmer lines can appear as absorption or emission lines in a spectrum, depending on the nature of the object observed. In stars, the Balmer lines are usually seen in absorption, and they are "strongest" in stars with a surface temperature of about 10,000 kelvin (spectral type A). In the spectra of most spiral and irregular galaxies, AGNs, H II regions and planetary nebulae, the Balmer lines are emission lines.
In stellar spectra, the H-epsilon line (transition 7-2) is often mixed in with another absorption line caused by ionized calcium known by astronomers as "H" (the original designation given by Fraunhofer). That is, H-epsilon's wavelength is quite close to CaH at 396.847nm, and cannot be resolved in low resolution spectra. The H-zeta line (transition 8-2) is similarly mixed in with a neutral helium line seen in hot stars.
See also
Categories: Emission spectroscopy | Hydrogen physics
|This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Balmer_series". A list of authors is available in Wikipedia.


text:
This article is more than 1 year old
How PalmOS lost it - readers
Warning: contains strong language
You're not exactly backward in coming forward, are you? In the latest twist of PalmOS soap opera last week, Japanese mobile browser company Access bought PalmSource. Could Palm's fate have been any different, we asked. This selection of views contains pretty strong language - so be warned.
Many Reg readers and Palm fans have pretty strong opinions of how Palm Source lost the plot - with developers and users equally well represented.
Gene Cash, a former Palm fan turned very-reluctant Pocket PC user, is as forthright as any -
"I hope Access buries Palm in a deep hole and shovels nuclear waste on top. And then pees on top of that."
Once Palm had it all, he reminds us.
"People wanted desktop PCs that fit in their pocket for $99, no matter how impractical or impossible that was. They wanted this all-singing, all-dancing device with features they weren't going to use anyway. Palm made its mark offering something VERY easy to use with a VERY well thought out user interface. I could buy gas and write it down in about 6 clicks. It was also quite cheap for what it did.
It didn't do everything, but what it did (be an organizer) it did very well. Now all that simplicity is gone, and the Tungstens & Zires are a pain in the ass to use.
"The original display was black-and-white, but you could read it outdoors just fine, unlike the current color displays that are totally washed out by sunlight and require a battery-eating constantly-on backlight. I go out to my bike, try to look at my grocery list and I can't even tell if my Zire 31 is on! I could go for 2 weeks of constant use without recharging my Vx. The Zire 31 needs to see the charger every other day or else!"
Gene then lists a long list of design errors - no hard case for the Zire, disappearing buttons that compromised ease of use, glued-shut hard-to-repair cases, and models being discontinued - and consequently unsupported - too rapidly.
"Still another problem is it's a bitch to write a Palm app. There's one decent book from O'Reilly, and all the good tools are hundreds of dollars. You can use GCC but it's really painful, and you have to just about glue the bits together by hand," he adds.
He concludes -
"No matter how much I love it, I'll NEVER buy another Palm device, and I tell all my friends not to buy one. I'm sure if they offer Linux, they'll trowel a proprietary interface layer on top of it w/o source, and I'm not playing that game.
Now you CAN get desktop PCs that fit in your pocket, but it's $400 and a major pain in the ass to use, and the battery lasts about 8 hours. I'm even considering a Dell Axim now. Ugh. But only if I can slap Linux and Python on it. Hopefully my m500 will last another couple of years."
Sava Zxivanovich sees PalmOS diminishing importance as part of a bigger trend, but blames the lack of technical investment -
"As a PalmOS developer I really don't think it is a mature communication system and its support is non-existent. Compare it with any other communication/mobile OS and results is obvious and expected."
"I love my Palm. I've found it enormously helpful over the 5 years I've had it," writes Ian Hooker. Ian blames two factors: perceived lack of Microsoft integration, and color screens.
"The end product as sold to consumers wasn't well enough integrated with Microsoft Office. Sure you could always synch with Outlook and there was always Documents To Go, which was later bundled with the PDAs, but it was too little too late. Too many people were either ignorant of or sceptical of whether their expensive new toy would work with Office.
"And in my organization, the IT guy bought Pocket PC devices because he only knows Microsoft software and wasn't willing to take a risk on something unfamiliar. Secondly, people liked colour screens. Colour screens cost a lot in battery life for little extra value over a black and white screen for most applications, but there it is. People like the bling bling. At a crucial point in the history of the PDA, Pocket PCs were a safe option with the bling bling. It might not have been true, but perceptions are as good or better than truth."
It's striking from the mailbag how Palm Inc's poor hardware designs turned people off the "platform". Mike Panero is a good example - and he's even angrier. Comparing two broken machines - a Psion and a Palm - he also comes up with a unique neutron star-dense prose for which no translation is necessary.
Bah, Palm any good? What about Psion?
I had a real cheap Psion, which, of course BROKE
So like a TWAT I got me a PALM
Ha, paid £150 sold it one week later( yes it was FUCKING SHIT*) for £20, my bust Psion was still worth £50 even so you could buy it new for £80
PALM Came with a CD & a fancy kray-dole "Oh USB !== Unused Socket @ the Back"
like F, that grafitee poo poo no S/S crap clock eats batteries (this is a 68K moto FFS, CMOS! HA!!)
PSION 2xAAA== 1 MONTH, PALM 2xAA== 36 Hours !!!
PSION, box no CD no nuddint but WORKS PALM box CD CABLES SHIT LOADS OF SHIT, worth, guess, SHIT!!!
(And someday, perhaps all computer histories will be written this succinctly)
Eric Moon also blames the fact that Palm didn't grapple with early, 'Touchdown'-era design decisions.
"You wrote: 'The decisions it took that year to bring 'Touchdown' - the original Palm Pilot - to market were exactly the limitations that made it a success.'
"I wholeheartedly agree, and as you point out this is decidedly a two-edged sword. Thus, many years later, 3rd-party application developers who learned the original API can still churn out basic Palm OS apps quite quickly - but those wanting to write more involved apps have to jump through a lot of hoops, and the nature of the API somewhat discourages good engineering.
"Every sufficiently large Palm OS app tends to devolve into spaghetti code. Also, the original API is very PDA-centric, assuming a square screen, a stylus interface, and a generally modal UI. None of this is very well aligned with a phone formfactor, particularly for cheaper phones.
But Eric sees a bright side to the move to Linux, as he explains -
"When Palm started licensing the OS to other hardware manufacturers -- and this was even before the PalmSource spinoff -- as they were then in the business of producing different "kits" for different audiences, 3rd-party developers still got the public API, but licensees got a much more configurable toolkit that they could use to customize the OS for their own hardware. The problem there was that this licensee toolkit was quite involved and, generally, licensees needed a lot of handholding and training in the vagaries of proprietary Palm OS internals.
"The big advantage of the Linux move, as I see it, is that there are tons of embedded developers (particularly in Asia) who already know POSIX, the Linux driver model, etc., so the learning curve for customizing a release of Palm OS for Linux would, in theory, be a lot flatter."®


text:
Best Fantasy Plays Happening in Kanpur
If this is one of those weekends where you are entirely free, then why not head outdoors and enjoy a great play? Live Fantasy plays and dramas provide a memorable experience to their viewers. Live dramas and live plays have an exciting depth to them that enamours the audience. They present a raw, more organic side of the entertainment industry. Undoubtedly, theatre is fascinating because it's more life-like. Indian theatre has a lot to offer because it's a multilingual country. Theatre plays happen in almost every language. So, check out the play in the language you speak or the language you admire. Various live Fantasy plays are planned to occur in Kanpur. So, catch up on the best artists, including Pratik Gandhi, null, Rohini Hattangadi, null & Sharad Ponkshe, who are performing in your city.
Fantasy Plays Happening in Kanpur
The BookMyShow app, as well as the website, can help you find all the best Fantasy plays near you as well as other upcoming plays. You can even sort them out according to the plays near you according to your city. For example, if you live in Kanpur, you will be shown all the live plays near you and the upcoming plays in your area. You can even sort your options according to venues.
Categories of Plays in Kanpur
Live plays and live dramas make for a pleasurable experience with an audience. There are many genres of live plays. They could be comedy, satirical, tragedy, historical, musical, etc.They are mostly done in a large hall, auditorium, or theatre stage. You can even sort out the live plays by top artists or genres. If you want to watch something that is Fantasy, then all you have to do is select that as your sorting preference, and you will get the results.
Find Your Favourite Fantasy Plays Easily in Kanpur
If you live in Kanpur you can choose from venues & you can even see the upcoming live Fantasy plays according to the date and language. You can sort it out by year. For example, we're in 2023, and you live in Kanpur and would like to watch a live play. So, now, the app or website will only show you live plays specific to what you selected.
You can even sort out the plays near you according to their ratings or reviews. You will see a list of plays rated by the people who have seen them. You can choose from a wide variety like Mohan Ka Masala, Punha Sahi Re Sahi, Charchaughi, Laagni : Rj Viraj & Nathuram Godse Boltoy. If you want to see a play by some particular artist, then all you have to do is search for them on the website or app. If you're going to see a live play, then you will be shown live Fantasy plays that are currently near you or upcoming plays by that artist.
Exclusive Offers For Fantasy plays
Another great thing about BookMyShow is the excellent offers, gift cards, exclusive offers, and rewards it gives to its users. You can also avail of corporate vouchers as well as coupons. Some artists even have superstar offers that lessen the overall price of the ticket. And, booking tickets on the app or website is super easy. Once you find a live Fantasy play you would like to see, you are taken through the entire ticket booking process in a few clicks.
Don't miss these fantastic Fantasy plays! Hurry up and book the Fantasy play tickets today!
List your Show
Got a show, event, activity or a great experience? Partner with us & get listed on BookMyShowContact today!
Book Your Calender
Storytelling By Genre in Kanpur
Adaptation StorytellingMythological StorytellingOnline Streaming Plays StorytellingPolitical StorytellingHistorical StorytellingTragedy StorytellingHorror StorytellingPsychological StorytellingMystery StorytellingWar StorytellingPeriod StorytellingClassic StorytellingAdventure StorytellingMusical StorytellingAdult StorytellingFantasy StorytellingThriller StorytellingDrama StorytellingSci-Fi StorytellingComedy StorytellingBiography StorytellingContemporary StorytellingTribute StorytellingRegional StorytellingRomantic Storytelling
Plays By Language in Kanpur
Chattisgarhi PlaysNepali PlaysFrench PlaysTulu PlaysJapanese PlaysHindustani PlaysAssamese PlaysOdia PlaysRajasthani PlaysEnglish PlaysKonkani PlaysSindhi PlaysPunjabi PlaysTamil PlaysHaryanavi PlaysBhojpuri PlaysMarathi PlaysUrdu PlaysHindi PlaysBengali PlaysMalayalam PlaysKannada PlaysGujarati PlaysTelugu Plays
Adaptation Storytelling By Language in Kanpur
Adaptation Hindustani StorytellingAdaptation Assamese StorytellingAdaptation Rajasthani StorytellingAdaptation English StorytellingAdaptation Punjabi StorytellingAdaptation Tamil StorytellingAdaptation Marathi StorytellingAdaptation Hindi StorytellingAdaptation Bengali StorytellingAdaptation Urdu StorytellingAdaptation Kannada StorytellingAdaptation Gujarati StorytellingAdaptation Telugu Storytelling
Rajasthani Storytelling By Genre in Kanpur
Rajasthani Adaptation StorytellingRajasthani Mythological StorytellingRajasthani Online Streaming Plays StorytellingRajasthani Political StorytellingRajasthani Historical StorytellingRajasthani Tragedy StorytellingRajasthani Horror StorytellingRajasthani Psychological StorytellingRajasthani Mystery StorytellingRajasthani War StorytellingRajasthani Period StorytellingRajasthani Adventure StorytellingRajasthani Classic StorytellingRajasthani Musical StorytellingRajasthani Adult StorytellingRajasthani Fantasy StorytellingRajasthani Thriller StorytellingRajasthani Drama StorytellingRajasthani Sci-Fi StorytellingRajasthani Comedy StorytellingRajasthani Biography StorytellingRajasthani Contemporary StorytellingRajasthani Tribute StorytellingRajasthani Regional StorytellingRajasthani Romantic Storytelling
Plays in Kanpur
Events in Kanpur
Things to do in Kanpur
AdventureAmusement ParksFestivalsFood and DrinksHoli PartiesAntiques, Heritage, MuseumsChristmas CelebrationsHilsa FestivalGamingHospitalsPoila Baishakh Festival PartiesUnique ToursQuizzes and CompetitionsShops and MallsTourist AttractionsMonumentsNightlifeValentine's Day CelebrationsDurga Puja FestivalNavratri Celebration
Sports Events in Kanpur
Online GamesChessFootballAthleticsArcheryBaseballBadmintonE SportsCyclingGolfKickboxingBoat RaceBoxingCard GamesCricketDerby Horse RaceKabaddiMixed Martial ArtsOnline SportsMuay ThaiSwimmingPoolRugbyHockeyIce SkatingJudoTriathlonMotorsportsWalkingShootingRunningTennisWrestlingSailingSnookerBasketballBowlingPoloVolleyballTable TennisWeight Lifting
Activities in Top Cities
Plays in Top Cities
Events in Top Cities
Sports in Top Cities
ICC Cricket World Cup 2023
Copyright 2023 © Bigtree Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
The content and images used on this site are copyright protected and copyrights vests with the respective owners. The usage of the content and images on this website is intended to promote the works and no endorsement of the artist shall be implied. Unauthorized use is prohibited and punishable by law.
The content and images used on this site are copyright protected and copyrights vests with the respective owners. The usage of the content and images on this website is intended to promote the works and no endorsement of the artist shall be implied. Unauthorized use is prohibited and punishable by law.


text: Visible pores can show whenever, particularly after a hot shower or physical exercise. Tighten and cleanse even the most problematic pores with our expertly chosen selection of skincare products. Each has been selected with the goal of reducing the appearance of pores from the forehead to the nose and chin.


text:
notice <nickname> <text to send>
notice <channel> <text to send>
notice =<dcc chat peer> <text to send>
notice %<process id|process name> <text to send>
notice /<command> <command arguments>
The NOTICE command is just like the MSG command, and is used to send a message to another target. Whenever you use msg in response to an irc privmsg (a msg, or a ctcp request), it will be converted into a notice for you.
The IRC protocol implies that all msgs must be replied to with a notice and replying to a notice is forbidden. If you attempt to reply to a notice, an error message will be displayed and the message will not be sent.
There is no distinction between sending a msg and notice to a dcc target (except for ctcps), an alias, or an exec process, so you can use whichever command suits you.
All notices, from any target and to any target, which you receive, will be checked for ctcp messages.
All notices that contain only a ctcp reply count towards the flood control limit for notices as well.
Notices sent to you by YOUR server are always exempt from ignore and flood control and are hooked as follows until one of the hooks catches the event:
Notices sent to you by any other server or by any target on irc are hooked as follows until one of the hooks catches the event:
Notices you sent to others will be hooked through ON SEND_NOTICE.
The notice command first appeared in ircII.
# $EPIC: notice.txt,v 1.4 2006/08/29 18:22:56 sthalik Exp $


text:
- Inside Athletics
- Tickets
- Fan Zone
- Media Zone
- Social
- Shop
- Donate Now
JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. (Aug. 1, 2007) - Even though head ETSU softball coach Andrea Mangrum completed her 2007 recruiting class a few months ago, two of her signees Katie Henderson (Jackson, Tenn.) and Kaela Jackson (Morristown, Tenn.) were not done making news for their hard work on the field. The pair of incoming freshmen received TSWA All-State honors last month, and
Henderson, a three-sport athlete at
Success on the field was not the only thing
"I believe this is only the beginning for her achievements," said Mangrum. "She has laid a solid foundation both on the field and in the classroom that will help her excel at ETSU. She has great character and a strong work ethic. Those two components alone will ensure success in our program."
"I am so proud of her perseverance in coming back physically and overcoming the obstacles to be an all-state recipient," added Mangrum. "Her determination and desire to succeed is what made her fight back from a series of knee injuries. She also has great character and a strong work ethic that will continue to guide our program in the right direction."
Ashley Boyd (
McCoy will join Team
"I am very proud of all their accomplishments, and our staff/team can't wait for the recruiting class to join our program this fall," said Mangrum.
Please visit


text:
Joke: How do you dramatically increase sales of a new or unpopular food product to the American public?
Answer: Call it a health food!
This joke, while funny, is also very sad as it illustrates with humor what common sense, logic, observation, and facts cannot for the vast majority of Westerners. Time and time again, Americans are completely duped by the clever marketing of a food product, falling all over themselves to buy it just because it has been touted in the media and by their (equally duped) doctors as a food that will improve their health.
Don't believe it? How about margarine? Americans, in the span of just a few short years after World War II, all but completely shunned butter and this behavior pattern continued for decades because saturated fat was supposedly the demon of heart disease. Americans are finally waking up to the fact that butter is a wonderful, truly natural health food and it is margarine that ironically causes heart disease!
What about soy? This is another supposed "health food" that has been proven to do nothing but cause an epidemic of hypothyroidism in the Western world (you know the symptoms: overweight, losing your hair, depressed, tired all the time). Soy in Asia, as it has been consumed for thousands of years, is always fermented for long periods of time before it can be safely consumed – and even then – in very small quantities! The modern processing of soy which involves grinding up the leftover soy protein, the waste product in the production of soy oil, and putting it in all manner of food products which line our grocery store shelves makes for a dangerous and health robbing line of consumer goods.
Agave nectar again is an example of a new food that was marketed using the "health food" label. This approach to selling to the American people is obviously working as these products are readily available in most health food stores despite the fact that this product has a more deadly concentration of fructose than the high fructose corn syrup in soda!
Now, On to Skim Milk!
Hopefully, you are now convinced that labeling an item as a "health food" is a frequently used approach for selling something to the American public. Skim milk falls into this same category.
Prior to World War II, Americans didn't ever drink skim or low fat milk. Drinking such a product to stay "thin and healthy" would have been laughable. Americans would only drink whole milk. In fact, the larger the cream line on their milk, the higher quality the milk, and the more likely the consumer was to buy it. Milk wasn't homogenized in those days, so a consumer could easily see the distinct cream line on the milk to determine quality.
Cream has been considered a true health food for centuries. In Ancient Greece, Olympic athletes drank a bowlful of cream to give them strength and endurance before competition. Why? Because cream steadies blood sugar for an extended period of time. No ups and downs in insulin when your diet has lots of wonderful saturated fat in it. It is only when you eat low fat that blood sugar issues such as diabetes and hypoglycemia tend to arise.
So, how did skim milk come to be recognized as a health food in America? It all ties back to the demonization of saturated fats that began shortly after World War II. Americans started to abandon butter and cream in droves about this time because studies had apparently shown that saturated fat was linked to the growing number of heart disease cases in America. Never mind that atherosclerosis (clogged arteries) was virtually unknown prior to the mid 1920's when Americans drowned everything in cream and butter. Logic and observation clearly indicated that saturated fat could not possibly be the cause of heart disease – it was obviously something new that had been introduced into the American diet. Of course, this "something" is partially hydrogenated fats which were introduced around 1921 (Enter the first trans fat … Crisco. Bingo! First documented heart attack from atherosclerosis in 1927, and it rapidly got worse from there). These factory fats are primarily responsible for the epidemic of heart disease yet saturated fats took the fall anyway.
With Americans abandoning whole milk due to its high saturated fat content, skim milk was touted as the new heart healthy food. Americans bought the scam hook, line, and sinker. Skim milk was the new king of the dairy aisle. This behavior pattern has continued for decades despite the average American getting fatter and fatter and the cases of heart disease showing no signs of abating.
In the 1990's with the beginnings of the childhood obesity epidemic, doctors even started to encourage parents to switch their children to skim or low fat milk around age 2. This foolish recommendation has done nothing but make kids fatter.
How does drinking skim milk make kids (and adults) fatter? This apparent paradox occurs when you reduce the saturated fat in a person's diet and he/she turns to carbs (grains and sugars primarily) to fill in the gap. It is the grains and sugars that truly make you fat, not saturated fat. I've said before on this blog that the more butter and cream I eat, the easier it is to maintain my weight. MUCH easier. The same goes for all of us. If you drink skim milk, you will be missing out on the satiating, blood sugar and insulin steadying affects of saturated fat, so your body will automatically give you sugar and carb (grains) cravings to make up for it. The body is able to MAKE saturated fat out of sugars, hence the sugar cravings that are impossible to control when you eat a low fat diet that includes skim milk.
Try it! Increase your consumption of butter, whole milk yogurt and whole milk cheese for a few days and watch your sugar cravings rapidly diminish!
Another big secret is that Big Dairy adds skim milk powder to skim milk. Here's an excerpt from "Dirty Secrets of the Food Processing Industry" from the Weston A. Price Website:
A note on the production of skim milk powder: liquid milk is forced through a tiny hole at high pressure, and then blown out into the air. This causes a lot of nitrates to form and the cholesterol in the milk is oxidized. Those of you who are familiar with my work know that cholesterol is your best friend; you don't have to worry about natural cholesterol in your food; however, you do not want to eat oxidized cholesterol. Oxidized cholesterol contributes to the buildup of plaque in the arteries, to atherosclerosis. So when you drink reduced-fat milk thinking that it will help you avoid heart disease, you are actually consuming oxidized cholesterol, which initiates the process of heart disease.
One parting fact: pig farmers love feeding skim milk to their pigs. Why? It makes them REALLY fat! Still want to drink your skim milk? I hope not.


text:
Chaos theory: advertising cash will soon decrease
Jeff Jarvis
The Guardian
Monday November 5 2007
As the media become more dependent on advertising, so advertising becomes less dependent on the media. With the recent death of the New York Times' pay service, TimesSelect, and the rumoured razing of the Wall Street Journal's pay wall, any final hopes of readers paying for content are fading. We prophets of free content are being proven right – whether we like it or not. Advertising is all we'll have to support content and media.
And that's fine. Advertising has long paid for content and made it free. This year, ZenithOptimedia says, advertisers will spend $448bn worldwide, much of it supporting media. Online is the one medium where ad revenue continues to grow, though at a slowing rate – 19% this year, says eMedia. There's lots of money still to be had.
But, of course, there are now more media properties to fight over that money. Scarcity no longer drives the media market, as it did when advertising was limited to the time of broadcast and the space of print. Now there's always another page view. This will drive down the price of media and that could reduce total ad spending. It doesn't help that Google is commodifying media as it scoops up, according to one estimate, 40% of the online advertising market.
But the real threat to the advertising gravy train comes not from any change in media, but from a fundamental shift in the relationship between companies and customers that has been made possible by the internet. This hit me like a fist in the face when I went to Texas to interview Michael Dell for Business Week magazine, and to write the coda to my very public blog battle with the company.
Long story short: in June 2005, I blogged about my bad laptop and eventually, thousands of fellow frustrated customers gathered round, via comments, links and emails, with their complaints. The Dell response to blogs then? Look, don't touch. This came as Dell's customer-satisfaction ratings dropped, its earnings disappointed and its stock fell. That August, I returned my Dell, bought a Mac, and blogged an open letter to Michael Dell urging him to read blogs, write blogs, listen to customers' advice, and "join the conversation your customers are having without you".
The following April, Dell did join that conversation. Suddenly, technicians were contacting bloggers to solve their problems. Dell started a blog. Michael Dell opened IdeaStorm, a site where customers could tell the company what to do; as a result, Dell is now selling Linux computers and reducing the "bloatware" on new machines. They're starting wikis where customers can share what they know and extending forums where they help each other.
Dell's executives say their new problem is managing and spreading all this knowledge from customers. Its chief marketer said his new opportunity is to rely on customer-advocates to sell computers. And Michael Dell predicted a future of "co-creation of products and services" with customers.
There it is: the fist. Dell and its customers are collaborating on the creation of content, media and marketing – without content, media or marketing companies. Advertising is no one's first choice as the basis of a relationship. For marketers, it's expensive and inefficient. For customers, it's invasive and annoying. And targeted advertising is only slightly more efficient and slightly less annoying. Clearly, the direct relationship between a customer and a company is preferable. But that direct connection cuts out the middlemen – that is the media.
The Advertising Age media critic Bob Garfield dubs this the "chaos scenario", arguing that total advertising spending – which long stayed stable and merely shifted among media – will now decrease. Blogger Doc Searls contends that on the internet, "supply and demand will find each other . . . Advertising will still be part of that picture, but it won't fund the whole thing." Beth Comstock, a digital exec at NBC Universal, complains that every business pitch she hears is ad-supported. "It's just not going to be possible," she said recently. "There are not going to be enough advertising dollars in the marketplace – no matter how clever we are, no matter what the format is."
There won't be enough to support us in media in the manner to which we've become accustomed. And it's hard to imagine what other business models will come along to fund us. So we're left with the need to live within our means. To become smaller and more efficient, to find ways to serve advertisers better with more relevance and data, to fight like hell for the ad dollars that are there – and to do all this before advertisers break their media habit by doing what they should have been doing all along: building collaborative relationships with their customers.
· Jeff Jarvis is a journalism professor at the City University of New York who blogs at buzzmachine.com


text:
All of them, those in power, and those who want the power, would pamper us, if we agreed to overlook their crookedness by wilfully restricting our activities.
Disclaimer: Dianetics and Scientology are trademarks of the Religious Technology Center (RTC.) These pages and their author are not connected with the Church of Scientology or RTC, or any other organization residing under their corporate umbrella.
This site is best viewed using a highly standards-compliant browser
If a search-engine brought you here, the term(s) you are looking for might be found within the list below, which is probably partially or completely collapsed, in which case I suggest you expand the whole tree and then use the "Find" feature of your browser to find the term(s) you are looking for.
As per Internal Revenue Service (IRS), an non-profit entity must make its Form 1023 (application for exemption) and all supporting documents available for public scrutiny. [ref]
The source material from Lermanet consists of long streams of scanned pages. These documents contain official statements from Scientology-related entities, as such they are important (along with the financial data).
I am also looking for more 1023 filings (and supporting documents) from Narconon International, Applied Scholastics International, Criminon International, World Institute of Scientology Enterprises, or any other Scientology-related entity which is not listed here. If you have these, I will appreciate if you share.
Warning: The following links open PDF files. Some of these files might be large, even though they have been cut as much as logically possible in small parts.


text:
Release Date: January 8, 2013 This content is archived.
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- President Barack Obama has announced that Norman R. McCombs, a University at Buffalo alumnus who developed an oxygen production system that spawned a billion dollar industry and helped ease the pain of millions suffering from lung diseases, was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the U.S. government's highest honor for technological achievement.
McCombs, of Tonawanda, is the senior vice president of research and development at Amherst-based AirSep Corp., a company he has been associated with since its inception in 1986. He is the fourth person with UB ties to receive the honor; former engineering professor Esther S. Takeuchi won it in 2007 for developing a battery used to power implantable cardiac defibrillators, UB alumnus and former engineering faculty member Wilson Greatbatch won it in 1990 for invention, development and introduction into clinical usage of the implantable cardiac pacemaker resulting in saving more than 2 million lives and UB alumnus and former National Science Foundation Director Erich Bloch was one of the inaugural recipients of the National Medal of Technology in 1985.
Obama will present the medal to McCombs and other award winners during a ceremony Feb. 1 at the White House.
Created in 1980, the National Medal of Technology and Innovation is administered for the White House by the U.S. Department of Commerce's Patent and Trademark Office. It recognizes those "who have made lasting contributions to America's competitiveness and quality of life and helped strengthen the nation's technological workforce," according to a White House statement.
In the statement, Obama described McCombs and other medal winners as "inspiring American innovators." Obama said they "represent the ingenuity and imagination that has long made this nation great -- and they remind us of the enormous impact a few good ideas can have when these creative qualities are unleashed in an entrepreneurial environment."
McCombs, who holds more than 40 U.S. patents and hundreds more internationally, helped develop in the 1960s a new way to separate gases. Called Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA), the method uses synthetic zeolites (a type of mineral) that act as a molecular sieve to collect targeted gases. PSA technology has been used to improve safety and efficiency in numerous industries including, but not limited to, steel and paper manufacturers, wastewater treatment plants and fish farms.
McCombs was first to develop a PSA system that produced oxygen. The device, called an oxygen concentrator, is primarily used to treat people suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which includes chronic bronchitis, emphysema and other lung diseases. The initial device weighed more than 200 pounds, but McCombs has since made it small and safe enough that the Federal Aviation Administration approved its use on commercial airplanes, enabling countless COPD sufferers for whom it was previously not possible to travel.
Today, there are approximately 1.2 million oxygen concentrators in the U.S. alone, a more than $2 billion economy, according to data from the Department of Commerce, insurance companies and medical equipment providers. The devices save billions of dollars in health care costs each year.
UB President Satish K. Tripathi lauded McCombs' accomplishments, adding that the medal is an appropriate tribute to his extraordinary career.
"Norm's work in developing portable oxygen systems has improved and extended the lives of millions of people around the world and transformed the way numerous companies do business," he said. "Through his ingenuity, innovation and vision, he personifies the intellectual passion and impactful leadership we seek to instill in our students. He is truly among our most distinguished and inspiring alumni, and our UB community heartily congratulates him on this richly deserved award."
McCombs was born in Amherst in 1937 in a house built by his father, roughly a mile from UB's North Campus. He graduated in 1956 from Amherst Central High School, where he met his future wife, Grace. He received an associate's degree in electrical engineering from Erie County Technical Institute (what is now Erie Community College) in 1958.
While studying at the institute, he began work at Fedders Corp. doing research on heating, ventilation and cooling systems. In 1963, he joined the Linde Division of Union Carbide, where he began researching separating the components of air. He also enrolled at UB, earning a bachelor's of science degree in mechanical engineering in 1968.
At Union Carbide, McCombs developed the PSA method and used it to boost oxygen levels at a wastewater treatment plant in Orange County, N.Y. As a result, the plant could treat five times the amount of waste it previously handled, he said. Union Carbide applied the technology to other industries including, but not limited to, metal cutting, mining and glass manufacturing.
Believing there was a market for smaller PSA systems, McCombs left Union Carbide and founded Xorbox Corp. in the 1970s. His first success came from producing a PSA system used by Midas and other automotive service companies.
He then turned his attention to medical equipment, creating a PSA system that allowed veterinarians to perform extended medical procedures without concern of running out of oxygen. That led to the production of a similar system -- the oxygen concentrator -- for human use at home.
The device, which is plugged into an electrical outlet and delivers oxygen through a mask or nasal cannula, improves the quality of life and extends the lives of people afflicted with COPD, which is among the leading causes of death worldwide. McCombs has since refined the product; AirSep now offers battery-powered systems that weigh less than 2 pounds.
He has received numerous awards including being named a fellow and receiving the Thomas A. Edison Patent Award of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, in 2004 and 2007, respectively; the Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Intellectual Property Law Association in 2005; as well as the 2007 Engineer of the Year, the Dean's Award in 2008 and the Clifford C. Furnas Memorial Award in 2010, all from the UB School of Engineering and Applied Science.
McCombs, 75, enjoys playing classical guitar, sculpting, cooking and traveling.
Cory Nealon
Director of News Content
Engineering, Computer Science
Tel: 716-645-4614


text:
Library Search
The NRFC Library is a collection of materials to build a knowledge base around fathers, fatherhood, and operating a Responsible Fatherhood program. It also houses all resources created by the NRFC, including fact sheets, PSAs, and past webinars.
Use the search options provided below to find resources that you are interested in.
In the U.S., 2.7 million grandparents are responsible for a grandchild in their home. Grandfathers are present in the majority of grandparent caregiver households, but the contributions and voices of grandfather caregivers are often overlooked. Therefore, the goal of this qualitative study was…


text:
VA Gives Tranquilizers to 30 Percent of PTSD Patients, Despite Warnings
Benzodiazepines can increase rather than reduce fear, worsening recovery.
The Veterans Affairs Department treats more than 30 percent of veterans diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder with tranquilizers such as Xanax and Valium, despite clinical practice guidelines issued in 2010 warning against their use, VA's National Center for PTSD reported .
The 2010 PTSD clinical practice guidelines, which also apply to the Defense Department, cautioned providers against using benzodiazepines to manage PTSD due to "the lack of efficacy data and growing evidence for the potential risk of harm," the PTSD center said in in the March edition of its research quarterly publication.
Research shows that treatment of PTSD with benzodiazepine drugs "may interfere with the extinction of fear conditioning or potentiate the acquisition of fear responses, actually worsening recovery from trauma," the center reported. This, in turn, may interfere with "first line" treatment such as exposure therapy , in which a trained therapist helps a veteran relive traumatic events.
More than 50 percent of combat veterans diagnosed with PTSD also suffer from alcoholism or substance abuse, and treatment with benzodiazepines can lead to addiction, the center said.
Broken Warriors is an ongoing series on mental health issues in the military.
The number of veterans with PTSD treated by VA nearly tripled from 171,000 in 1999 to 498,000 in 2009, as troops who served in Afghanistan and Iraq entered the VA health care system. At the same time, benzodiazepine prescriptions for veterans with PTSD dropped from 37 percent in 1999 to 30 percent in 2009, as the VA started to use selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors such as Zoloft and Paxil for PTSD treatment.
Despite this reduction, the VA told Nextgov last May that it had purchased $72 million worth of benzodiazepines from Oct. 1, 2001 through March 31, 2012.
The PTSD center urged VA to continue to cut back on the use of benzodiazepines for treatment of PTSD. "The decrease in benzodiazepine prescribing to 30 percent is encouraging yet the frequency of use remains high and suggests that minimizing benzodiazepine exposure is a vital policy issue for the VA," the report said.
This fits in with a policy from the Army Surgeon General last April that warned regional medical commanders against the use of benzodiazepines to treat PTSD. The Army determined, like VA this month, that treatment of PTSD with benzodiazepines could intensify rather than reduce combat stress symptoms and lead to addiction.
In September 2011, the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury almost shouted its warning against benzodiazepines, emphasizing the guidance in bold-face type on its website: " There is evidence against the use of benzodiazepines in PTSD management as it may cause HARM. Strongly recommend against the use of benzodiazepines for treatment of PTSD. "
The PTSD center concluded its report on benzodiazepines by urging VA to find alternatives for PTSD treatment, noting that "mounting evidence suggests that the long-term harms imposed by benzodiazepine use outweigh any short-term symptomatic benefits in patients with PTSD."
NEXT STORY: China, East Asia Most Vulnerable to a Superflu


text:
Wheel Collection
Product image shown not representative of all configurations. Vehicle specific fitment will change offset, dish and center profile. Please consult your salesperson for application-specific details.
Precision Series
Kompressor 5 - Precision Series
US Mags new Precision Series wheels are machined from a single 6061 T-6 aluminum alloy forging and available in 20x8, 20x9.5, 20x10.5, 22x8.5, 22x10.5, 22x12, 24X9, 24x10, 26x9, 26x10. We've taken the guess work out of perfect fitment for your classic or lowered street truck. Tucked, tubbed, slammed and shaved it'll be a cakewalk for you to get that perfect fitment with the new Precision Series.
Each order is custom made to your vehicles bolt pattern, hub and brake fitment specs. The Precision Series standard finish is full polish, specialty finishing is always available in-house with brushed, powder coat or liquid paint.
20x8 BS: 4.50, 20x9.5 BS: 5.25, 20x10.5 BS: 5.75
22x8.5 BS: 5.00, 22x10.5 BS: 5.75, 22x12 BS: 4.50
24X9 +01 BS: 5.00, 24X9 +25 BS: 6.00, 24x10 +05 BS: 5.90, 24x10 +25 BS: 6.50
26x9 BS: 5.00, 26x10 +05 BS: 5.70, 26x10 +25 BS: 6.50
NOTE: *Will not fit 2019+ GM and Chevy* 24x9 +25, 24x10 +25 and 26x10 +25 is for 5x5.5 (Pre 2019 RAM 1500), 6x5.5 (Pre 2019 GM 1500) and 6x135 (Ford F150)


text:
This blog discusses current weather, weather prediction, climate issues, and current events
April 26, 2009
An Ocean Full of Low Clouds
Take a look at the visible satellite picture for northeast Pacific Ocean (see image). Notice anything? Something that is quite different than a few months ago? Something that happens virtually every spring?
The answer:
The ocean is covered for thousands of miles by low stratus/stratocumulus clouds.
We are talking about millions of square miles of low clouds. Every spring we see these low clouds blossom and dominate into summer. And it is the movement of these low clouds into our area during June that produces the familiar June gloom (there are other terms but this is a family-oriented web page). And many of the summer phenomena that I talk about in my book (the onshore push, alongshore surge, etc) are connected with the stratus/stratocumulus of the Pacific.
Why the low clouds? A hint can be found in the surface pressure analysis for this morning at 11 AM (see graphic). A large high pressure area has formed over the northeast Pacific. High pressure is associated with sinking air (called subsidence in the business), and sinking air produces warming aloft since air warms when it is compressed (the air is going from low pressure aloft to higher pressure at lower elevations). The sinking weakens towards the surface since air can't go through the surface! With stronger sinking-warming occurring aloft then near the surface the atmosphere becomes more and more stable--which means there is less tendency for vertical mixing. If you think about it this makes sense, warm air is less dense than colder air...and in nature less dense fluids natural rise above dense ones. This is a stable situation. A dense fluid on top of a less dense one is an unstable configuration.
The stable atmosphere allows moisture to accumulate at low levels, leading to low clouds. Another factor, that is particularly strong near the coasts, is that the high pressure produces northerly winds near the coast, which results in upwelling (see my book for an explanation of this), which brings up cool water. Cool water helps saturate the lower atmosphere....that is why the densest stratus is often along the west coast..particularly central CA.
Anyway, getting back to the story, high pressure builds northward out of the subtropics during the spring and the stratus follows . In the wintertime, as the high retreats and cold air moves in aloft behind Pacific systems, the atmosphere is much better mixed and the low clouds don't form.
So watch the satellite pictures and Pacific pressure patterns...you will note a close association of the low clouds and high pressure areas.
Seattle Math Adoption Decision is Still Up in the Air
PS: I will have an update on the current Seattle high school math situation this week. You won't believe what happened at the school board meeting last week...they split 3-3 and will try again on May 5th. I was amazed that three of them are still considering a terrible math series (Discovering Algebra, Discovery Geometry) that was found by the State Board of Education to be unsuitable. And dropped by San Diego as a failure.
5 comments:
That is very interesting and enlightening. But, will Monday be a good day for golf?ReplyDelete
The UW Probcast for Bellevue calls for 59 and a 10% chance of showers. I'd say that's OK golfing weather unless you're a lizard like me (and most golfers seem not to be the kind who always run cold).ReplyDelete
Cliff, I wish the UW Probcast provided one more feature... I want to see a "Yesterday's Actuals" page... box 1, the daytime probcast, box 2, the daytime actual temp and precip; box 3, the nighttime probcast, box 4, the nighttime actuals. Yes, I know that's another page to code, but you guys must be recording the data already, so it's just a matter of writing a script to regurgitate the values.
I'd love to gain an understanding over time of how the Probcast is "usually wrong" -- which direction and how much. My non-scientific perception is that if we get precipitation, it tends to be more than estimated, often even more than the high estimate.
Heat Retention Q. I built a potato box, about 16 cu ft. I might line the inside of the 2x6 with mylar space blanket or alum foil to block transmission of IR into the wood. This would work but I would still have heat loss from conduction from soil to foil to wood to air plus radiant loss from wood outbound. Because box is above ground, I should be able to conserve heat. Would this work? Would heat retention be good or just some? Cliff: I get cold hands riding and went to Outdoor Research asking about mylar lined gloves and they don't make them. Mylar is outstanding for keeping a growler of beer cold and for keeping a chest full of dry ice cold for many days.ReplyDelete
A slight correction. The board *said* they were split 3-3, however, they didn't actually vote. They had even rehearsed with the district's parliamentarian how to phrase the postponement. I too was surprised at two of the directors who seemed to favor the adoption and would really have liked it if they had been forced to actually vote their approval (even if they knew in advance it would be a tie).ReplyDelete
Anyone interested in writing the directors about the issue can watch the school board meeting on-line, Channel 26 will show it streaming. Then you can be specific in your comments to them.
Two sources for discussion. Director Martin-Morris maintains a blog. And Charlie Mas has written about the wonderful changes the district is promising to go along with the adoption. Although there's no money, the district, acknowledging how unfavorable this adoption is, has promised professional development to help teachers teach parents how to help their kids. They've promised to create a DVD for parents to borrow and watch to learn how to help their kids with homework, they've promised to be more effective partners with universities to get and retain better teachers. They've promised to hire an outside firm to perform a survey and hold focus groups to verify that the series is working -- but there is no money for that and certainly no money for a second adoption within 10 years. Watch the presentation at the school board meeting yourself.
If you write the directors about this issue, you may ask them how the district is going to follow through with these promises, how they are going to enforce the promises and honestly, if we were adopting some plain jane text series that was useful as a reference tool, would the district feel like they had to make these extra promises?
My kids just went off to college and both had to take remedial math which they excelled at even though they had nearly failed math in High School. Which is because at the college level they don't teach that fuzzy math stuff. It doesn't work for most students.ReplyDelete
What's amazing to me is that all the math we try to teach High School students was known roughly by the time of Newton & Leibniz which is the 1690's. So we've had 400 years to figure out how to teach math and we still make a hash of it!
Heavy Rain Coming to the Northwest: The End of the Wildfire Season and Beginning of the Snow Season
The region has palpably entered a fall-like period of cooling temperatures and the return of precipitation. But to quote the old saw: &qu...
I have to tell you about this, even though some of the forecasts are crazy extreme. For several forecast cycles, the models have suggested t...
What has happened and is happening in California is extraordinary....one of the coolest/wettest ends of spring in Golden State history. Th...