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Terms and Conditions
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The Service is a platform to create a Media kit. However, Ocast is not a seller or distributor of advertising, only the provider of the platform. Ocast has neither control over, nor is involved in the transaction between a Customer and a buyer of the Customer's Media kit and advertising solutions. Ocast is not responsible for the advertisement performed by our Customers.
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The Customer and its designated Users as well as Visitors agree that Ocast and its affiliates will not be liable for any damages, resulting from: (i) the use or inability to use the Service or the Site;; (ii) the cost of getting substitute goods and services resulting from the Service's or the Site's downtime;; or (iii) unauthorized access to or alteration of transmissions or data.
If, notwithstanding the other provisions of these Terms, Ocast or its affiliates are found to be liable for any damage or loss which arise out of or is any way connected to the use of the Service or the Site, Ocast's and its affiliates' liability shall in no event exceed the total amount of fees with respect to the Service that the injured party has paid to Ocast in the six (6) months prior to the date of the initial claim made against Ocast and/or its affiliates.
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Headings, sectioning and formatting of these Terms shall not affect their interpretation.
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The Customer is obligated to indemnify Ocast with respect to all direct liability, losses, damages, third party claims, costs or expenses howsoever caused, arising out of, or in connection with the Customer or its designated Users' (i) breach of these Terms, (ii) negligence (iii) or misuse of the Service.
13.0 Disputes
These Terms shall be construed in accordance with, and governed by, Swedish law. The courts of Sweden shall finally settle any dispute arising out of these Terms. The district court of Stockholm shall be the first instance.


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Found 18 results
Filters: First Letter Of Title is E and Author is Malgorzata Marek-Sadowska [Clear All Filters]
"ECO-Map: Technology remapping for post-mask ECO using simulated annealing", in Computer Design, 2008. ICCD 2008. IEEE International Conference on, 2008, pp. 652 -657.
, "An efficient algorithm for local don't care sets calculation", in DAC '95: Proceedings of the 32nd annual ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference, 1995, pp. 663–667.
, "Efficient approach to early detection of lithographic hotspots using machine learning systems and pattern matching", in Design for Manufacturability through Design-Process Integration V, 2011, vol. 7974.
, "Efficient circuit clustering for area and power reduction in FPGAs", in FPGA '02: Proceedings of the 2002 ACM/SIGDA tenth international symposium on Field-programmable gate arrays, 2002, pp. 59–66.
, "Efficient circuit clustering for area and power reduction in FPGAs", ACM Trans. Des. Autom. Electron. Syst., vol. 7, pp. 643–663, 2002.
, "Efficient closed-form crosstalk delay metrics", in Quality Electronic Design, 2002. Proceedings. International Symposium on, 2002, pp. 431 - 436.
, "Efficient delay calculation in presence of crosstalk", in Quality Electronic Design, 2000. ISQED 2000. Proceedings. IEEE 2000 First International Symposium on, 2000, pp. 491 -497.
, "An Efficient Mechanism for Performance Optimization of Variable-Latency Designs", in Design Automation Conference, 2007. DAC '07. 44th ACM/IEEE, 2007, pp. 976 -981.
, "Efficient minimization algorithms for fixed polarity AND/XOR canonical networks", in VLSI, 1993. 'Design Automation of High Performance VLSI Systems', Proceedings., Third Great Lakes Symposium on, 1993, pp. 76 -79.
, "Efficient ordered binary decision diagrams minimization based on heuristics of cover pattern processing", in Design Automation, 1993, with the European Event in ASIC Design. Proceedings. [4th] European Conference on, 1993, pp. 273 -277.
, "An efficient router for 2-D field programmable gate array", in European Design and Test Conference, 1994. EDAC, The European Conference on Design Automation. ETC European Test Conference. EUROASIC, The European Event in ASIC Design, Proceedings., 1994, pp. 412 -416.
, "An Efficient Single-Row Routing Algorithm", Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, IEEE Transactions on, vol. 3, pp. 178 - 183, 1984.
, "Efficient static timing analysis in presence of crosstalk", in ASIC/SOC Conference, 2000. Proceedings. 13th Annual IEEE International, 2000, pp. 335 -339.
, "Electromigration and voltage drop aware power grid optimization for power gated ICs", in Low Power Electronics and Design (ISLPED), 2007 ACM/IEEE International Symposium on, 2007, pp. 391 -394.
, "Electromigration study of power-gated grids", in ISLPED '09: Proceedings of the 14th ACM/IEEE international symposium on Low power electronics and design, 2009, pp. 315–318.
, "Eliminating false positives in crosstalk noise analysis", in Design, Automation and Test in Europe Conference and Exhibition, 2004. Proceedings, 2004, vol. 2, pp. 1192 - 1197 Vol.2.
, "Eliminating false positives in crosstalk noise analysis", Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, IEEE Transactions on, vol. 24, pp. 1406 - 1419, 2005.
, "Engineering change using spare cells with constant insertion", in ICCAD '07: Proceedings of the 2007 IEEE/ACM international conference on Computer-aided design, 2007, pp. 544–547.

subset: commoncrawl


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itz palani |
Palani is a town in Tamil Nadu India.
Getting into Palani Valpara Road By plane The nearest air port is in Coimbatore. Coimbatore has has regular flights from Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Calicut, Chennai, Cochin, Hyderabad, Mumbai, New Delhi and Sharjah. Air India, Kingfisher,Indigo,Spicejet and Jet Airways operate flights out of Coimbatore Airport. Palani is approximately 100 kilometers from the Coimbatore. Mode of transport from the Coimbatore to the Palani includes taxi, bus and train. Train: There is a rail line through Palani station, stretching Dindigul to Coimbatore via Pollachi. Currently, there is only a Dindigul- Palani passenger operating on the line. In the near future, Coimbatore- Rameswaram express, Chennai- Palani express, and Palani- Tiruchendur passenger are expected on the route. The Murugan Temple is about 2km from the railway station and can be reached by autorickshaw or bus. By bus The state transport corporation and a lot of private bus operators ply bus from Palani to major cities in Tamil Nadu (Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai, Trichy, Tuticorin etc) and also to the neighboring Kerala(Palakkadu, Kochin). Get around Getting around Palani is easy. There are public transport buses, auto rickshaws and taxis available in plenty. Auto rickshaws are not advised as they charge whatever they feel like, if they find that you are an outsider. Always it's better to ask your Hotel people to arrange for transportation. Places to Visit There are lot of places to see in and around Palani.
ATMs from ICICI Bank, SBI Bank, KVB and Canara Bank are available within the town. You can buy panchamirtham, vibhuti, medals of Muruga, toys, handicrafts, pictures of the Lord, publications of the Devasthânam. You can bargain for the prices. Industries: textile mills, manufacture of panchamirtham, production of vibhuti (sacred ash), making of steel furniture at Govt. pressed metal factory, manufacture of fruit juices and of stone grinders. Learn Schools: Palani has a number of tamil and english medium schools. Arulmigu Palaniandavar Matriculation School(APMS) is one of the oldest English medium school in Palani. Colleges: Palani has 2 arts college and one engineering college in the town. The arts colleges are run by the Devasthanam (Palani Hill Temple Board). Polytechnic: Devasthanam (Palani Hill Temple Board) also runs a polytechnic(Arulmigu Palaniandavar Polytechnic). Eat A lot of South Indian restaurants (Vegetarian and Non-Veg) are available in Palani town. Few restaurants serve chinese and North Indian foods too.Subam Hotel located just near the point where the steps leading to the temple starts has Amutham restaurant that offers tasty vegetarian food. Drink Palani is famous for its Panchamirtam, which is made of five fruits. Its one of the unique sweets which you cannot see or taste any where else in the world. DrinkAll soft drinks are available in almost all small shops near Temple and in the town. Fresh fruit juices are also available in the fruit shops around the temple and near bus stand. Tender coconut is available in plenty as Palani/Pollachi areas have coconut plantations. Sleep The temple provides ample accommodation to its visitors so we can always book accommodation to sleep it also provides ac rooms to non ac beds
Hospitals: - Palani has lot of hospitals which operators for 24 Hours including the Govertment Hospitals. Important Phone Numbers:
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NOTE: This page is out of date and should not be relied on for information. It is kept for historical purposes only. For current downloads please look at https://alt.fedoraproject.org/alt/ [ Stephen Smoogen 2019-07-17]
Fedora s390x
- IRC: #fedora-s390x[?] on freenode.net
- Mailing List: s390x
- Regular IRC meetings: TBD
short term goals
--* prepare and release F-21 for System z
long term goals
- reach out to known interested parties in community
- have several "interested parties" that will help with development and testing once we are building packages/trees
- reaching out (through contacts) to IBM community (.de)
- provide development trees for testing
- release next Fedora versions shortly after the primary archs
- set up externally/publicly available koji instance
- The s390 koji instance was made available during F14 and end of lifed later
- release of F-14 for System z
- release of F-15 for System z (published 2011/07/27)
- release of F-16 for System z (published 2011/12/22)
- release of F-17 for System z (published 2012/06/29)
- release of F-18 for System z (published 2013/01/23)
- release of F-19 for System z (published 2013/07/16)
- release of F-20 for System z (published 2014/01/08)
- release of F-21 for System z (published 2014/12/18)
- release of F-22 for System z (published 2015/06/02)
- release of F-23 for System z (published 2015/11/10)
- release of F-24 for z Systems (published 2016-06-21)
- release of F-25 for z Systems (published 2016-11-22)
- Rawhide (F-41) rebuild statistics updated weekly
- Karsten Hopp Secondary Arch Maintainer (nickname Kick_ in #fedora-s390x[?] on IRC)
- BrockOrgan
- Brad Hinson
- Justin Payne (nickname kurgan in #fedora-s390x[?] on IRC)
- Dan Horák
- Phil Knirsch
- David Cantrell
- Samantha N. Bueno
- Than Ngo
- Raphael Groner
FUDcon 2008 was an excellent event. During the conference, a session on secondary arches was presented and there was an excellent effort made to reach out to new arches.
After several months of bootstrapping as of June 2009 we've reached a state where we have most packages built from current Fedora rawhide CVS. There are still around ~500 failures, most of which are related to java and ocaml dependencies (ocaml is not available on s390x).
News of September 2010: We're now getting really close to Rawhide and we have a working install tree available thats basically based on current Fedora 14. Previously we only provided a hercules images as well as a tarball from a root FS as installs weren't possible. We still provide those, but now you can do your own installs again, too!
For those interested in trying it out you access everything needed from here:
You will find several files there:
- Very brief howto get everything up and running, either for running preinstalled hercules images or how to do a complete install yourself
- fedora-14-s390x.img
- Hercules Fedora 14 s390x compressed DASD image..
- anaconda-ks.cfg
- Sample kickstart file that installs a very basic system on a dasd image. WARNING! Wipes out the whole partition table, so use with care
- hercules.cnf
- hercules emulator config file
- hercules.init
- Small script to start up hercules with some iptables rules for NAT (might require you to modify your personal rules in order to work properly)
- generic.prm
- Kernel command line parameter file, needed for installation
- older files
- fedora-14-s390x.img.bz2
- Hercules Fedora 14 s390x DASD image, bz2 compressed. Needs to be unpacked before it can be used. Beware that the uncompressed size is ~8Gb !
- f11-s390x.img
- Hercules Fedora 11 s390x DASD image
- f11-s390x.tar.bz2
- tarball of the whole tree. Can be unpacked on a real machine (confirmed it works!)
- fedora-14-s390x.img.bz2
Supported hardware
- IBM zSystems, models z9 or newer for F<=25, and zEC12 or newer for F>=26, all 64-bit only
- Hercules emulator, version 3.07 or SVN revision >= 6605 (for F<=25)
- IBM Mainframe Life Cycle History
Releases Notes
- Fedora 27
- Fedora 26
- Fedora 25
- Fedora 24
- Fedora 23
- Fedora 22
- Fedora 21
- Fedora 20
- Fedora 19
- Fedora 18
- Fedora 17
- Fedora 16
- Fedora 15
- RHEL 7 Installation Guide
- General Linux-s390 mailing list
- Linux on zSeries, at wikipedia.org
- Dan Horák's blog how to install Fedora 20 in Hercules over network
- Thomas Meyer's blog how to install Fedora 21 in Hercules from DVD ISO
Known runtime issues
- After installation the dnf|yum repo doesn't point at our mash tree. Simply do the following to fix that:
echo '[fedora] name=Fedora $releasever - $basearch baseurl=http://s390.koji.fedoraproject.org/mash/rawhide/s390x/os/ enabled=1 gpgcheck=0' > /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora.repo
- If you've selected to do a minimal installation your system will boot up with no network enabled.
This happens because Networkmanager isn't included in a minimal install. To fix this, log on as root on the console and run
chkconfig network on service network start
Known build issues
Notes for application developers and package maintainers
- some hardware that's usual on other platforms is missing, like
- USB - starting F-15 we have libusb1/libusb built to resolve some dependency issues, but it's a no-op, still no real USB on the mainframe :-)
- FireWire
- InfiniBand
- memory ordering is big-endian and wrong typecasting between pointers to integers of different size can cause fatal errors
- char is unsigned by default, some FAQ
- size_t is alias for unsigned long on s390, so the assumption size_t == unsigned int fails here, seen in C++ code using templates
- s390 (31-bit) arch has 2 GB address space and it can be too small when building large C++ applications with debug information enabled, such builds can fail in the final link with errors like "Final link failed: exhausted memory" => the workaround is to disable debug information (remove -g from CXXFLAGS)
- Mono 2.8+ drops support for s390 (31-bit)
- valgrind is available on s390x since F-15
- stack larger than the default 8 MB is required to build pcre 8.11 (a test crashes with SIGSEGV, but no apparent reason)
- some programming languages are missing, like Objective Caml (ocaml), Haskell (ghc), ...
- xmlto needs w3m to fullfil the dependency on text-www-browser instead of lynx, otherwise it fails on empty file (seen in libXest, libSM, libXtst)
- sometimes wrong package is selected to fulfill a BuildRequires when multiple packages provide the name
- the qmake tool (part of QT) thinks s390x and ppc64 are of "linux-g++-64" type while x86_64 is "linux-g++" type
Submitting builds
There should be no need for a maintainer to do a regular build, they are automagically processed through the koji-shadow script that reads all builds from primary koji and rebuilds them in proper order.
To test a build for your specific package for s390x do this:
After running fedora-packager-setup
from the fedora-packager
rpm do
* s390-koji build --scratch f40-candidate yourpkg.src.rpm
If you are unsure what do do, please contact the team.
Shell access for debugging
To get shell access to a s390(x) machine, send an email to Dan Horák (sharkcz) with your public SSH key.
Tracker Bugs
If excluding s390/s390x architectures you need to make the bug block F-ExcludeArch-s390x
to see whats currently blocking visit Bugzilla
If a bug is specific to s390/s390x architectures make the bug blocking ZedoraTracker
to see not yet resolved issues visit Bugzilla
Packages under review
List of s390 specific packages currently under review in Fedora
- none
Packages to be submitted:
- none


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Last few times I bought butter,the whole stuff went rancid.The first one was a local brand and I got it as nothing else was available,two days later I took it out and it smelled awful.It got transferred into a bottle of ghee,still smelt funny.The second batch too,though a branded one had the same fate..hmmm.
The fruit box was beginning to smell and the ripe bananas were pleading to be used.That's when I remembered Sunita's post where she had blogged about Mini-choco-banana-walnut muffins.Her recipes are always a healthy alternatives to the butter-laden ones.I hopped on and was so happy that the recipe used oil instead of butter,honey instead of sugar and atta instead of maida.I was jumping in joy and instantly made the muffins.Used the silicone cupcake moulds that my co-sis bought for me last time from abroad.
I love it when the muffins start to puff up and form a dome.More so when eggless ones puff up.I got 9 regular sized muffins and they were gone in no time.Warm muffins with a dash of chocolate syrup and cold milk..a decadent breakfast..:)


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Sorry, I need to interrupt myself for a moment.
I have recently encountered a large set of articles from people telling the world what an atheist is. What they say is so absurd that it is embarrassing.
An example of what I am referring to can be found at the Daily Kos.
(See Daily Kos: Understanding atheism, the atheist strawman arguments and what atheism isn't.)
The posting begins with an equivocation. It begins with the claim that atheism is not a belief system, which is true enough. However, snkscore then shifts to saying that atheism is not a belief – as if to say that the fact that atheism is not a belief system that it is not a belief. Which makes as much sense as saying that since tigers are not herd animals then they are not animals.
However, the issue that I am referring to is the claim that atheism is not a belief.
So, snkscore states:
So, if someone asked me "Do you believe there is no god?" I would probably simply respond "Yes" but really the correct response to convey my position is "I don't believe that there is a god."
This is false.
In fact, it is such an absurd falsehood that every time I read it or hear it written it embarrasses me – because there are people out in the world who will think that because I call myself an atheist, I, too, must embrace such absurdities.
Here's the proof.
You determine the meaning of a term by looking how native speakers of a language use that term. Competent English speakers do not use the term 'atheist' to refer to cats, rocks, chairs, tomatoes, or any other thing incapable of having beliefs. However, they would certainly accept the proposition that the phrase, "does not believe that there is a God" applies to cats, rocks, chairs, tomatoes, or any other thing incapable of having beliefs.
The claim that the latter is a meaningful substitute for the former is even more absurd than claiming that the earth is 6,000 years old. At least the counter-argument that the earth is 6,000 years old takes more than a paragraph to write.
The fact that I have seen so many atheists embrace this absurdity in spite of the fact that it is so easily shown to be false is one of the reasons why I hold that atheists are just as capable of ignoring evidence when it flies in the face of a favored proposition as any theist.
What is an atheist?
An atheist is someone who, if asked whether the proposition, "At least one God exists" is true or false, would confidently answer that it is false.
No cat, rock, chair, or tomato would do such a thing.
If a person, when asked whether the proposition, "At last one God exists" is true or false, merely stands there and drools, he may well lack a belief in God, but he is not an atheist. An atheist confidently assigns the value 'False' to the proposition..
An atheist does NOT assign the value 'False' with absolute certainty. An atheist can hold that there is some measure of doubt as to whether the proposition is true or false. However, he does not hold that this 'doubt' makes it a coin toss.
However, an atheist is assigning a value to a proposition and, as such, needs to justify why he assigns that value and not some other, and why he assigns the value confidently rather than uncertainly.
The reason why atheists seem to like the absurdity of "has no belief in God" is because it gives them a way to bypass this second step. It is absurd to ask an entity that lacks a belief in God to justify its state. Try it. Walk up to the nearest inanimate object and demand that it justify to you its lack of a belief in God.
If it answers, go see a doctor.
However, once the atheist admits that an atheist actually assigns a truth value to a proposition, he can't be lazy any more. Since he is actively assigning a value to a proposition, he needs to justify that assignment.
It's just so much easier to be lazy.
What really happens is that this absurdity that atheism refers to the lack of a belief in a God actually does little more than to demonstrate that atheists lack certain key mental faculties that make them blind to what is obvious. If the atheist can be so blind to something so obvious, then it is no wonder that he is also blind to the evidence for the existence of God.
To make matters worse is that this absurdity comes from people who claim that it is a virtue to embrace reason – yet who, in practice, simply ignores an argument that so clearly demonstrates that a favored proposition is false.
This mind-numbing absurdity is only convincing to people who start with a desire to embrace this mind-numbing absurdity. To the rest of the English speaking population, it is just another demonstration of the intellectual incompetence of atheists.


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Mighty Zinn
History's bunk: Howard Zinn takes a "bottom-up" view of history.
Howard Zinn brings his passion for history to Sonoma County
By Zack Stenz
A proposed exhibit of the Enola Gay at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum provokes a firestorm of criticism. The renaming of the Custer Memorial Battle-field becomes a political hot potato. The adoption of new national history standards in the nation's high schools is bashed from the podium by presidential candidates. Who says Americans don't care about history?
Not Howard Zinn. This professor, activist, and author has dedicated his life to the notion that the knowledge of history is important to people's everyday lives, and can be a powerful force for social change. Zinn is a champion of the notion that historical change occurs more through mass movements of ordinary people than through the wisdom and insight of so-called Great Men. His best-known book, A People's History of the United States, was one of the first major looks at American history from such a perspective, and has sold a phenomenal 400,000 copies. Zinn is coming to Sonoma County on Monday, April 22, to speak on the Cold War and its legacy for the 21st century, at Sonoma State University and Santa Rosa Junior College.
But despite his popularity, Zinn's brand of "bottom-up" history has been reviled by political conservatives, and he confesses that he isn't surprised by the level of passion in recent controversies like the one surrounding the Smithsonian's portrayal of the dark role the Enola Gay played in the bombing of Hiroshima. "Whenever you introduce a new view of historical events, the guardians of the old order will spring to the attack," Zinn says. "And a lot of people feel threatened by the idea that our side also committed atrocities in the Second World War. I'm actually encouraged by the controversy, though. It wouldn't exist if changes were not taking place in the way history is being taught."
If anything, Zinn sees the recent attacks by the right on the "New History" taught by himself and others as a perverse vindication of his own belief in history's importance. "If history weren't so important, people wouldn't get so upset by it," he says. George Orwell said, 'Whoever controls the past controls the future,' by which he meant that history is incredibly important in shaping the world view of the next generation of people."
Zinn hasn't been content to merely write about historical change, but has often been active in movements for civil rights and academic freedom, working against the Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars. "I've tried to join my writing with social issues," he says. "It was really my experiences in the South, teaching at Spelman College and getting involved with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Com-mittee, that spurred me to write A People's History. I could see history being made before my eyes by ordinary people who are never written about in the history books."
It's Zinn's fierce compassion for and belief in the power of ordinary people that has characterized his work, turning A People's History into a celebration of heroism rather than merely the litany of government atrocities conservatives often accuse it of being. "One of the right-wing groups, [Reed Irvine's] Accuracy in Media, characterized A People's History as a 'Hate America' book," Zinn says. "But the supposition there is that America consists of the people on top. And while it's true that I take a very critical view of the United States government in history, I take a very positive view toward the mass movements of people in America who have fought to make the country a better place.
"And that's where the left hasn't balanced its act very well, either," he adds. "They've done a very good job of illuminating the various bad policies of the American government, but they haven't shown what people have done to resist these policies, often successfully. And that's a critical thing to do, to show people in the present day that they can fight back and win."
Zinn admits that the current American landscape of temporary workers, multinational corporations, and citizens' increasing isolation from one another hinders the formation of his cherished mass movements. "Building a movement is difficult, given the fragmentation and isolation of people today and just the very diverse nature of the United States," says Zinn. "But when people's outrage is felt strongly enough, a new social movement will be born."
So despite a conservative political climate that has left many longtime progressive activists depressed and demoralized, Zinn's reading of history keeps him optimistic about America's future. "I am hopeful," he says. "But hope rests on doing something. If you're not doing anything to change things, you have no right to be hopeful."
This page was designed and created by the Boulevards team.
Gemma La Mana
Howard Zinn speaks on Monday, April 22, at noon at SRJC, Burbank Auditorium, 1501 Mendocino Ave. (527-4327); and at 4 p.m. at SSU, Ives Hall 119, 1801 E Cotati Ave., Rohnert Park (664-2382). Both events are free and open to the public.
From the April 18-24, 1996 issue of the Sonoma Independent
Copyright © 1996 Metro Publishing and Virtual Valley, Inc.


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How do you reinvent the PC for the tablet era?
Microsoft, not surprisingly, has been spending a lot of time mulling over that question in recent years. Its touch-centric new operating system, Windows 8, is largely devoted to answering it. And for the first time, the company decided to show us exactly what it thinks a modern PC-tablet hybrid should be by designing and selling its own Windows computer, Surface.
Except it didn't come up with one Surface — it built two of them. The first version, Surface Windows RT, shipped in October, simultaneously with Windows 8. Technically speaking, however, it isn't a Windows 8 machine: it uses a power-efficient ARM processor and a special version of Windows called Windows RT that only runs new programs designed for the touch-friendly "modern" interface, not all the apps written for conventional PCs. Starting at $499, it's the closest thing Microsoft has to a direct iPad competitor.
And then there's Surface Windows 8 Pro, which goes on sale at the Microsoft Store, Best Buy, microsoft.com and elsewhere on Feb. 9. (That's Microsoft's full official name for it; I hope the company won't be irked if I refer to it as "Surface Pro," like everyone else is already doing.) It has much in common with Surface RT: hold one Surface in each hand, and the only hint that they're not the same device is the Pro version's additional bulk — it's 0.53 in. (1.3 cm) thick and weighs 2 lb. (0.9 kg), vs. Surface RT's 0.37 in. (0.9 cm) and 1.5 lb. (0.7 kg).
Both versions have an elegant vapor-magnesium case and kickstand that props it up for vertical use, and both work with the same whisper-thin Touch Cover, which includes a keyboard that's nearly flat yet reasonably comfy. Both have 10.6-in. (27 cm) screens, though the Pro's version, at 1920-by-1080 resolution, packs additional pixels.
But Surface Pro, unlike Surface RT, is a real PC. As its name indicates, it comes with Windows 8 Pro, Microsoft's top-of-the-line operating system. It sports a powerful Intel Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM, either 64GB or 128GB of solid-state storage and a Mini DisplayPort port; you could hook it up to a keyboard, mouse and external display, run any program you throw at it, use it with any Windows-compatible hardware add-on and generally forget that you're sitting in front of anything but a brand-new conventional PC.
Of course, if that were all you intended to do, you'd be better off simply buying a conventional PC. Surface Pro's potential lies in its ability to segue between multiple computing scenarios: you can use it like a desktop PC, or a laptop or a tablet. Unlike a Windows RT device, it could be a typical consumer's sole computer.
Microsoft likes to use the phrase "no compromises" when describing that versatility, but in fact, Surface Pro — like all computing devices — is a study in compromises. It's bulkier than Surface RT because its components require more interior space. Microsoft's stated battery life is five hours, compared with eight for Surface RT. Even the AC adapter is portlier. (One nice touch: it sports an additional USB port you can use to recharge your phone or another gizmo.)
The price is heftier too. Surface Pro comes in a 64GB version for $899 or a 128GB one for $999; virtually everyone who buys one will also want either a $120 Touch Cover or a $129 Type Cover. (The latter isn't as thin as the Touch Cover, but it has real clacky keys that move when you press them.) That puts them in the same price range as the cheaper versions of Apple's MacBook Air and some of the slicker Windows 8–based Ultrabooks.
In fact, Surface Pro qualifies, specs-wise, as an Ultrabook, even though its substitution of a kickstand and removable keyboard cover for a traditional clamshell case is unique. It works well for the most part, although if you balance the whole setup on your lap, you may find it slightly precarious. If you think of this as an ultraportable PC rather than a tablet, it suddenly gets sexier — it's thin, light, and well engineered. (It has two interior fans for cooling, but I've never heard them at work.)
Those 64GB and 128GB capacities are a tad misleading, though: Microsoft preinstalls a full copy of Windows 8 and reserves space for a recovery partition, gobbling up a major percentage of your space. The 64GB Surface Pro offers 23GB of usable space, which will be tight if you plan on installing many of the third-party programs that give this product its purpose. The 128GB model has a relatively bountiful 83GB. Both models have a microSD slot that allows you to expand the memory; a 64GB card will run you around $60.
[UPDATE: ZDNet's Ed Bott reports that the 128GB Surface Pro actually has 89.7GB of free space, and that the numbers I quoted were based on a pre-release version of Surface Pro.]
Unlike Surface RT, the Pro models don't come with a bundled copy of Office 2013. But they do include a digital pen based on Wacom's pressure-sensitive technology. You can use it for sketching, note-taking and handwriting or simply as a mouse substitute; it doesn't require batteries, but cleverly attaches to the tablet's magnetic power connector when not in use.
Hit Surface Pro's power button, and you get a little reminder right away that it's more PC than tablet: Unlike Surface RT, which springs to life more or less instantly, it takes a few seconds to wake up. But then you land in Windows 8's start screen, which looks exactly like Windows RT's version. Bundled apps like Internet Explorer work the same; so does the Windows Store, which is gradually filling up with third-party apps.
If you've chosen a Surface Pro over Surface RT, it's because you want to run conventional Windows apps. You do that in the Desktop, the section of Windows 8 that is essentially a modestly refreshed version of Windows 7 stripped of its iconic Start button. I installed a selection of them, including the Office 2013 suite, Adobe's Photoshop CS6, Chrome, Firefox, iTunes, TweetDeck and more.
And over and over again, these useful programs reminded me that they weren't designed to work well on a new-wave computing device like the Surface Pro.
When I first tried Chrome, it acted like it had taken leave of its senses: when I tapped on one message in Gmail's inbox, a different message would open up. According to Microsoft, that's because the current version of Chrome wasn't written to use touch input properly on a high-dots-per-inch screen like the one on the Surface Pro. Neither of the workarounds Microsoft suggested — running Chrome in full-screen mode with teensy type or avoiding using the touchscreen — made the browser truly usable. (Google can presumably fix this with an update, and I hope it will.)
Surface Pro has enough raw horsepower to run Photoshop well, but the application's menus and icons are minuscule on the 10.6-in. (27 cm) display; tapping the right feature felt like threading a needle, even when I used the pen rather than my fingertip. Firefox looked good at first blush, but getting taps to register often required multiple jabs, and some websites, such as nytimes.com, loaded with microscopic type and too much white space.
Even Microsoft's own Office 2013 programs — the only ones with interfaces that were in fact rejiggered slightly to be more finger-friendly — aren't really pleasant to use with the touchscreen. I ended up using them mostly with the Touch Cover's touch pad. It's not bad given its matchbook-like dimensions, but Windows 8 works best with a much roomier touchpad.
Now, using a mouse with Surface Pro would eliminate most of the issues I encountered — and Microsoft supplied the review unit I tested with its Wedge Touch Mouse Surface Edition, a product that acknowledges at least some Surface owners won't be ready to go mouse-free. It's also possible that updates from third-party developers will make their wares more usable on Surface. They're going to need to think more about touch: Intel plans to make touchscreens a mandatory feature on the next generation of Ultrabooks.
I'm not arguing that Surface with Windows 8 Pro is a machine without a market. If you equip it with an external display, keyboard and mouse, it becomes a serviceable desktop PC, and if you stick to Windows 8 apps, it may be the best Windows 8 tablet so far. If I were shopping for an Ultrabook and my budget allowed, I'd consider it. But used with the applications I tried, Surface Pro doesn't prove that one computing device can do everything well. Instead, it makes clear that there's no such thing as no-compromise computing.
That's not the lesson Microsoft intended, but it's a useful one nonetheless — for consumers, for the industry and maybe even for Microsoft.


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This is our first, and possibly last, mention of a story that's been getting lots of play on cable news:
"Mexican Court Frees Arizona Mom Accused Of Drug Smuggling." ( CNN.com)
"I'm free now ... and I'm very grateful," Yanira Maldonado told reporters early Friday.
In case you haven't been following this story, here's how The Arizona Republic sums it up:
"A Mormon mother from Goodyear whose detention in a Mexico jail on suspicion of drug smuggling made international headlines, inspired a 'Free Yanira' hashtag on Twitter and won the attention of politicians on both sides of the border was freed by a judge late Thursday after spending nine days in jail.
"A small sedan carrying Yanira Maldonado and her family members could be seen crossing through the Nogales port of entry at 12:20 a.m. Friday morning. ...
"Her husband, Gary, said at a news conference earlier Thursday that the family was optimistic Maldonado, 42, would be released after surveillance video showed her boarding a bus in Mexico on her way back to Arizona carrying two blankets, two water bottles and her purse, but no drugs. She had been arrested after soldiers found drugs under her seat on the bus."
Authorities had said they found 12 pounds of marijuana under that bus seat.
According to the Republic, "the Maldonados have been married for a year and have seven children from previous marriages."
Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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LOS ANGELES – The pieces of the puzzle that have been the Lakers' confounding season so far are starting to fall into place.
Kobe Bryant engineered a second-half comeback, the defense stepped up, and Los Angeles beat the New York Knicks 100-94 on Tuesday, extending its winning streak to five games.
"We're .500," a smiling Dwight Howard said. "We did it on Christmas, too. I knew this day would come."
Bryant scored 34 points in his NBA-record 15th Christmas Day game and Metta World Peace added 20 points and seven rebounds while defending Carmelo Anthony, whose 34 points led the Knicks. Anthony said he hyperextended his left knee, but expects to play on Wednesday in Phoenix.
Bryant, the league's leading scorer, has topped 30 or more points in nine straight games.
"If you're going to play on Christmas, it's always better to win. Makes it all worthwhile," said Bryant, who would soon hop a flight to Denver, getting there ahead of the Nuggets, who played the Clippers in the other half of the holiday doubleheader at Staples Center.
The Lakers improved to 14-14 — 9-9 under new coach Mike D'Antoni — and upped their holiday record to 21-18, including 13-9 at home. They returned to .500 for the first time since they were 8-8 on Nov. 30.
"It's so early in the season to have turned a corner," Bryant said. "We have everybody in the lineup and we're starting to see how we want to play."
The Knicks controlled most of the game behind Anthony and J.R. Smith, who had 24 points. But they struggled offensively in the fourth, when Anthony was limited to seven points and Smith had five as the Lakers' defense clamped down. World Peace fouled out with 1:58 to play and the Lakers ahead by four.
World Peace credited his defense on Anthony to "old-school basketball."
"I'm back in shape and it's a little tough to guard me," he said.
Steve Nash said: "This is what he's been doing all year. He gets his hands on a lot of balls, pounds on the other team's best guy. You can't win without that type of effort."
Smith's 3-pointer pulled New York to 96-94. After Pau Gasol made one of two free throws, Smith missed another 3 that would have tied the game at 97 with 32 seconds left.
"We missed a lot of easy shots, a lot of little chippers around the basket, shots that we normally make," Anthony said. "There were some plays that we thought should have went our way down the stretch, but for the most part, we fought. I'll take this effort any night. If we continue to play with this effort, we'll win a lot of games."
With Bryant double-teamed, Nash passed to Gasol, who dunked with 12 seconds to go, punctuating a win that sent Lakers fans, frustrated by the team's struggles and coaching change, home happy. The Lakers avenged a 116-107 loss in New York on Dec. 13.
A smiling Howard called Gasol's driving slam "a submarine dunk because he was very low to the ground."
Gasol responded, "I don't dunk as often as I used to so it felt good. I took it right down the lane and finished strong."
Nash had 16 points, 11 assists and six rebounds in his second game in nearly two months. He missed 24 straight games while recovering from a small fracture in his lower left leg. Howard had 14 points and 12 rebounds, and Gasol had 13 points and eight rebounds.
"It was an important win for us as we were a little bit desperate," Nash said. "We've gone through a lot since Mike Brown — new coach, new offense. It's been a difficult transition."
Bryant had eight of the Lakers' first 10 points to open the fourth during a run that provided their first lead since the opening quarter in a game matching the two teams that have played the most on Christmas Day.
They took the lead for good on Bryant's basket with 7:38 remaining. Anthony and Tyson Chandler were in foul trouble in the fourth, with Chandler fouling out late.
"They just were a little bit more aggressive," Anthony said. "Kobe got it going and Steve Nash hit some big shots down the stretch. When you have a guy like Nash doing that, it's kind of tough. Those guys know how to play. They've been waiting for Steve Nash to get back, so it's just a matter of then sticking it out until he did."
The Knicks opened the third on a 15-5 run, with Anthony setting up on the perimeter and hitting two 3-pointers as part of his 10 points that stretched their lead to 61-53. His jumper provided the Knicks' largest lead of the game, 69-60.
Bryant and Nash ignited the quiet atmosphere by leading a 17-9 run that drew the Lakers to 78-77 going into the fourth. They combined to score 15 points, although Bryant missed two free throws to end the third that would have given the Lakers their first lead since early in the game.
The Knicks' earlier roll dissolved in missed shots and a technical on Chandler for arguing a call.
"We were more determined, fought for everything," Nash said about the second half.
World Peace scored 16 points in the second quarter, including eight in a row, when the Lakers played catch-up most of the way. His 3-pointer gave the Lakers their first lead of the period with 1:10 remaining. Smith tied it up with a free throw before Nash's jumper sent the Lakers into halftime leading 51-49.
"We're playing really well together," World Peace said. "Kobe is really playing excellent now. He's still being aggressive on the offensive end, but he's giving everybody a chance to be aggressive. Pau is making strong, aggressive moves."
Bryant scored the Lakers' final nine points of the first quarter to give them a 25-23 lead. D'Antoni's plan of having Darius Morris guard Anthony didn't last long after he scored five of the Knicks' first seven points.
"I thought he'd get warmed up before he started firing," World Peace said.
NOTES: Bryant surpassed Oscar Robertson as the league's all-time Christmas Day scorer with 383 points. Robertson had 377. ... Knicks F/C Amare Stoudemire shot some before the game. He's been out all season after left knee surgery. "I'm not quite there yet, but I'm making progress," he said. "I've just got to stay patient and stay ready. We've been doing extremely intense work, as far as cardio." ... Knicks C Marcus Camby had four points and four rebounds in 8 minutes. He's been sidelined by a sore left foot and barely played this season. ... Asked about Bryant as an MVP candidate, D'Antoni said, "You can't put anybody MVP if you're below .500." ... In their only other Christmas Day meeting in 1963, the Lakers beat the Knicks 134-126 behind 47 points by Jerry West and 27 from Elgin Baylor. ... Nash said the gift bags in their lockers with the tag, "From Kobe Merry Xmas 2012" contained headphones. "Can't ever have enough," he said. ... The Lakers were all in white, while the Knicks were all in orange down to their socks in a color similar to Syracuse. ... Among the celebs holidaying at Staples Center were Rihanna and Chris Brown, Adam Levine, Samuel L. Jackson, George Lopez and Richard Lewis. Vanessa Bryant and her two young daughters sat courtside opposite the Lakers bench.


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NAP Technical Guidelines are available in several languages, along with associated summary products, and supplementary materials.
The COP requested the LDC Expert Group (LEG) to elaborate technical guidelines for the NAP process based on the initial guidelines for the formulation of NAPs, and to arrange a review of these technical guidelines (decision 5/CP.17, paragraphs 15-16).
The LEG organized a review meeting from 29 to 31 October 2012 in Bonn, Germany, to review a draft of the guidelines. The meeting was attended by experts and representatives of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), UN agencies and other relevant research, academic and non-governmental organizations.
The technical guidelines for the NAP process are available for download in the following languages:
- English / lower resolution version for faster download available here
- French / lower resolution version for faster download available here
- Portuguese
- Spanish
- Arabic
Hard copies are available through the UNFCCC secretariat. Please contact firstname.lastname@example.com
The NAP Expo took place from 11 to 15 July 2016 in Bonn, Germany. Using the NAP technical guidelines, the NAP Expo provided information on the NAP process, providing a platform for sharing, and offering a forum for questions and answers, and the exchange of ideas. More information.
Initial guidelines for the formulation of NAPs
The initial guidelines for the formulation of NAPs by LDC Parties were adopted by the COP at its seventeenth session (decision 5/CP.17, paragraph 6). They elaborate four elements that are indicative of the activities that can be undertaken in the development of NAPs, depending on national circumstances, and determined by LDC Parties.
The initial guidelines are contained in the annex to decision 5/CP.17, and are available in all six UN languages.
Download the initial guidelines for the formulation of NAPs by language:
Other relevant materials:
The NAP process: a brief overview
This booklet summarizes key principles and features of the NAP process and reflects some insights from the LEG on possible ways to undertake the process in LDCs and other developing countries.
The publication is available in the following languages:
The NAP poster
The poster provides a quick reference and checklist of steps, building blocks and sample outputs under each of the four elements of the NAP process.


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For years, research projects have been producing results that seem to indicate that going to church is positively correlated with lots of good things. People who regularly attend seem to be happier, healthier, live longer, are less depressed, and so on. Non-believers, and those who don't want to get out of bed on Sunday morning, have groused long and loud about those studies. Lots of atheists have pulled out the magnifying glasses and attacked the rigor of these studies with enthusiasm. Many of these efforts have appeared to me to be clear cases of putting their conclusion first and then forcing the evidence to fit it. Believing is bad, atheism is right, therefore, we will not accept that church going could be a good thing.
But the evidence in favor of the correlation seems to be there, and it's been replicated in lots of studies. The great debate, of course, has been over what the cause of the correlation is. Does going to church cause these benefits? Or do happy, thoughtful, healthy, and long-lived people tend to go to church in greater numbers? Sloppy thinking believers, encouraged by these studies, want to treat the correlations as vindication of believing ("God is blessing us!"). And equally sloppy minded atheists have sputtered and pointed out that non-believers can get all of those benefits by gathering together, supporting each other, meditating, doing charity work, and so on. In short, if we can do all or most of the things that church people do, but without the actual believing part, then we'll get all the same benefits.
But it looks like that's not true either. John Tierney published this report in the New York Times today: For Good Self-Control, Try Getting Religious About It
Michael McCullough and Brian Willoughby are the authors of the study under review: "Religion, Self-Regulation, and Self-Control: Associations, Explanations, and Implications"
(Not surprisingly, the Templeton Foundation, big money promoter of religion in science, was behind the study.)
McCullough and Willoughby draw five conclusions:
1) Religiousness is positively related to self-control as well as agreeableness and conscientiousness.
2) Religiousness achieves this influence through goal selection, goal pursuit, and goal management. Specific religions prescribe specific goals: Jews, Christians, and Muslims value positive social relationships and social harmony more, and individualistic and hedonistic pursuits less, than the non-religious.
3) The evidence is mixed for the claim that religiousness promotes self-monitoring. More research is needed.
4) Some religious rituals like meditation, prayer, religious imagery, and scripture reading promote self-regulation.
5) Religion's ability to promote self-control or self-regulation (avoid drugs, alcohol, pre-marital sex) can explain some of religion's associations with health, well-being, and social behavior. More research is needed.
They argue that a very special state of mind or set of cognitive practices need to be achieved. It's not enough to just go through the motions, and it's not enough to have a general spiritual idea like "my life is directed by a spiritual force greater than any human being." Strongly religious people are more conscientious and have more self-control than these sorts of new-agey believers. "Thinking about the oneness of humanity and the unity of nature doesn't seem to be related to self-control," Dr. McCullough said. "The self-control effect seems to come from being engaged in religious institutions and behaviors."
It also won't be enough to go to church and fake it for selfish reasons: Tierney says, "because personality studies have identified a difference between true believers and others who attend services for extrinsic reasons, like wanting to impress people or make social connections. The intrinsically religious people have higher self-control, but the extrinsically religious do not."
Cranky, and short-lived atheists will holler, "But, but these people are being well-behaved for the wrong reasons…they're just being obedient because they're afraid of God."
But that's not the case either, "Religious people, [McCullough] said, are self-controlled not simply because they fear God's wrath, but because they've absorbed the ideals of their religion into their own system of values, and have thereby given their personal goals an aura of sacredness. He suggested that nonbelievers try a secular version of that strategy."
Apparently, what the sexed-up, drunken, church-skipping atheist needs is exactly what they can't have: a real belief in the sacred. One has to have it in your head not just that eating right and exercising is good for you, but that there is something magical, mystical, or transcendent and maybe objective like God in your ideas about pursuing those goals. It looks like to really get the positive effects, you've got to have it in your head that the values are inviolate. (Although it's not clear to me how this endorsement of sacred-mindedness fits with McCullough's denial that new-agey believers can get the benefits.)
So the non-believer who wants to score all the benefits needs to find a sacred-feeling way to substitute for all the praying, believing, and devotional-ing that the believers are doing. And that sacredness needs to be a very close analogue to what the believers are doing when they focus all that mental energy and ritualized practice on God. But if the non-believer wants to stay true to their convictions and what they think the evidence shows about God, they need to walk this fine line without actually believing in God.
I can't see how to do that. I don't see how one can really accept the obvious and rational conclusion that there's no magic, no spiritual forces, and no gods AND simultaneously achieve the mental states and habits of the believers that are producing these benefits. Either the non-believer has got to make a choice about what's more important to them—truth or benefits—or they've got to find a way to have their cake and eat it too. (But cut back on the booze.)
Pascal's choice here, famously, was to "deaden my acuteness." It looks like some sort of self-lobotomy is in order.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Believing in the Sacred Is Good For You, Even If It's Nonsense.
24 comments:
The only thing im sure of is it wont involve god.
- January 2, 2009 at 1:27 AM
It looks like another study I will definitely need to look at. The thing I am wondering about is whether it is not the case that while the effect of religiosity at the individual level is positive, religion may have a negative effect at the societal level, particularly over the long term. A societal level effect seems to be suggested by the admittedly weak George Paul study and could be explained by interference with the development of modern social democratic institutions. If this was correct, it would lead to an interesting mismatch at the two levels.
Konrad Talmont-Kaminski - January 2, 2009 at 1:32 AM
- Brigitte said...
Trying to believe in the sacred just to get these benefits would be like pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps; it can't be done. It is a different kind of nonsense.
It is like Steve Martin keeps saying: the Sacred, (God, Logos, Love) will need to find you, draw you, convict you.
(Trahe me ad te.) - January 2, 2009 at 9:09 AM
- M. Tully said...
You make a good point when you write, "The thing I am wondering about is whether it is not the case that while the effect of religiosity at the individual level is positive, religion may have a negative effect at the societal level, particularly over the long term."
McCullough and Willoughby consider this to be an important question for further research. In their recommendation they state, "Indeed, the evidence for religion's ability to motivate
aggression (Bushman, Ridge, Das, Key, & Busath, 2007) and
prejudice (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 2005) is at least as convincing
as is the evidence for religion's ability to facilitate cooperation
(Shariff & Norenzayan, 2007) and other forms of prosocial behavior
(Saroglou, Pichon, Trompette, Verschueren, & Dernelle, 2005),
especially when the religion is of a fundamentalist, authoritarian
variety (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 2005; Rowatt et al., 2006)."
I'm also not as pessimistic as Matt appears to be. In both articles meditation appears to be as effective as prayer. As a naturalist I can find no reason not to adopt a meditative regime if the data suggests it's beneficial. Also, in the Times article, it appears that having a belief in something "sacred", not necessarily divine, has an effect. And although McCullough and Willoughby don't address this particular element, their research did suggest that their findings had an applicability across cultural lines, leaving open the idea that one's notion of the sacred need not be confined to supernatural phenomena.
Now, I wish I would have kept those Zen meditation books I read when I was in school. - January 4, 2009 at 12:41 PM
The absurb part of the claim is that scientists purport to know what characteristics are good or best for you. Contented cows are not well equipped to survive outside of protected pastures. It seems clear though that religions have helped people survive in the past. I just finished Atran "The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion". What we need is more of this type of scientific study and less ideologically motivated anecdotes on either side of the question.
- January 4, 2009 at 5:29 PM
It seems clear though that religions have helped people survive in the past.
It also seems clear that religions have contributed to people's demise in the past. Other than self-destructive cults like that of Jim Jones and David Koresh, we have sects that were persecuted by other sects. You don't have to go back any further than the Holocaust to come up with an example of people being killed for their religious affiliation. - January 5, 2009 at 10:33 AM
I think the Nazi's went after the Jews primarily for percieved genetic/ethnic differences, rather than religous ones. I don't think you want to say the the Jewish religion caused the Holocaust, or that religions are dangerous because they might cause non-religious people to attack them. Otherwise Atran makes the same point, religious differences can cause or exacerbate conflicts between groups. The 4 year war in Gombe shows that chimpanzees are quite capable of splitting into rival groups and exterminating each other without any help from religion. So if group rivalry isn't caused by religion, atheism, or atheistic religions isn't likely to be a cure.
On the subject of happiness, other studies have shown that its genetic. Losing a leg, or winning a lottery will have a large short term effect but won't change the happiness baseline much in the long run. So maybe happier people on average, tend to go to church more, but that doesn't mean going to church is likely to make a particular person any happier. Some effective treatments (on average) are useless on some patients. - January 5, 2009 at 6:11 PM
Religion may make people happier, but I believe that God hates religion.
- January 5, 2009 at 9:10 PM
I don't think you want to say the the Jewish religion caused the Holocaust, or that religions are dangerous because they might cause non-religious people to attack them.
The former, no. And I notice how specific your wording is, whether the Jewish religion caused the Holocaust.
The latter statement, if true, would indeed run against your original statement, "It seems clear though that religions have helped people survive in the past."
You should deal with what I did say, and with what you did say, rather than worrying about what I might have wanted to say. It would make you appear less weasely.
I think the Nazis went after the Jews primarily for perceived genetic/ethnic differences, rather than religous ones.
And I think you are ignoring more than a millenium of blood libel. - January 6, 2009 at 6:14 AM
I apologize for missing your point. The opposite to the idea that a religion has helped those who hold it, is that it has harmed those who hold it. This is consistant with your Jonestown example. So when you brought up the holocaust I assumed you were talking about the Jewish religion, as the Jews were clearly the ones harmed.
I agree that a thousand years of anti-semitism contributed to Hitler's views, and bear some responsibility for the events. Was anti-semitism an integral part of some Christians' beliefs? Yes.
Is anti-semitism an essential feature of all Christian belief? I don't think so, but even if it is this does not mean that all religion is dangerous, evil etc. only that this specific one is.
The opposite to all religion is bad is not that all religion is good, but rather that some religion is not bad. As Atran says
"religion" like "system of government" does not exist except in specific instances. So democracies are not bound to have the same faults as dictatorships, just because they are also "systems of government". Similarly one religion may or may not contain the excesses of another. Being able to classify something as a system of belief, or of governement doesn't do much unless you believe or have proved that all belief or all government is bad. - January 6, 2009 at 4:09 PM
- Matt McCormick said...
What is essential to western monotheistic religions is authority, obedience, and acceptance without doubt or questions. Truth is simply declared from on high and the religious are expected/commanded to accept, conform, believe and to overcome their skepticism. The fundamental approach to the world is: here is the one and only doctrine, accept it or be rejected, and anything else you encounter must be made to conform to it or it must be rejected too.
Contrast that to the scientific method where doubt, criticism, and skepticism are the virtues and the conclusions are drawn AFTER we have observed the world and they are only acceptable if they conform to what we discover.
The former is the path to intellectual stagnation, ignorance, danger, and slavery. The latter is the the path to intellectual virtue, enlightenment, freedom and hope.
MM - January 6, 2009 at 5:11 PM
- Teleprompter said...
I agree that classifying something in a category such as a religion or a system of government does not really say much about the characteristics of an individual entity, especially in comparision to others.
Personally, I believe that both the positive and the negative attributes of individual religions just demonstrate how religion as a whole has developed from human origins, as certain religions have acquired the negative or positive aspects of their followers, as certain people have manifested certain qualities through religion or have chosen to express certain characteristics through their religion.
If we can show how people had a hand in changing their religions for both better and worse, we can show how religion is ultimately more natural than supernatural. - January 6, 2009 at 5:13 PM
That is why God hates religion. - January 7, 2009 at 1:34 PM
- Teleprompter said...
steve martin:
I think you're misinterpreting what MM is trying to say. It would be absurd and meaningless for any atheist to say a god or gods hates religion, wouldn't it?
MM is explaining the differences between the scientific method and the often blind faith acceptance of religious ideologies.
Do you have a serious rebuttal to his statements? - January 7, 2009 at 4:36 PM
Atran address most of your charges in "In Gods we Trust: The evolutionary landscape of religion" All quotes below are from section 10.10 Secular science and religion: Coexistance or a zero-sum game.
While many religions do make appeals to conform to a timeless doctrine or be rejected,
the reality is that the doctrines and religions do change. "The world's religios panorama is a kaleidescope of forms that continously develop, split, merge, transform, decay, and reemerge in a relentless process of competitive agitation". "new religious movements ... arise at ... the rate of 2-3 per day [Lester 2002]".
If western monotheistic religion causes intellectual stagnation, than it is hard to account for the strength of the US in scientific endeavors or the emergence of western science.
Moral sentiments like your hopes for a better world, are not deducible from science.
This does not mean that one shouldn't try to rid the world of stupid religions. but "As long as people share hope beyond reason, religion will persevere" because "no other mode of thought and behaviour deals routinely and comprehensively with the moral and existential dilemmas that panhuman emotions and cognitions force on the human awareness"
Even the idea of supernatural agents arises naturally. "They are always held meta representationally" "never fully assimilated with factual and commonsensical beliefs" - January 7, 2009 at 5:18 PM
Piano Player,
I was saying that what he says religious people would have to 'do' on order to be doing what the God in question would want , is totally antithetical to biblical faith. Faith in Christ is not religion. Religion being that which men do to somehow ascend to the divine.
Most Christians and religious people do not understand this. - January 7, 2009 at 6:33 PM
- Teleprompter said...
Aren't you ignoring the contingency that science could've strengthened in spite of this religious tendency? One could argue that Americans' (as an entire society) understanding of science is significantly behind other, more secular countries.
steve martin:
I'm sorry if I don't really understand the difference between "religious" Christianity and "non-religious" Christianity.
By the way, my pseudonym is "Player Piano", not "Piano Player". Thanks. - January 7, 2009 at 9:15 PM
Player Piano,
Sorry about that!
Religious Christians are under the false impression that something they do will bring them closer to God (accepting Jesus, making a serious committment to God, being obedient, doing good things, etc.)
Non religious Christians rely totally on what God has done for them through Christ Jesus. It's all about trust and that trust is not even something that the person musters up, but rather it is a gift of God through the hearing of the gospel (your sin is forgiven for Jesus sake). Nothing at all to do. And the word is...nothing.
You now know more about the Christian faith than 95% of Christians (for whatever that is worth to ya)
Thanks Player Piano! - January 7, 2009 at 9:37 PM
The opposite to all religion is bad is not that all religion is good, but rather that some religion is not bad.
Point taken. - January 8, 2009 at 7:41 AM
Re M.M. What is essential to western monotheistic religions is authority, obedience, and acceptance without doubt or questions
I could claim, ispe dixit, that what is essential to nationalism is blind loyalty to, and acceptance without doubt or question, the existing borders or leadership of a nation.
Of course there is no clear scientific answer to the question of where borders should be. And some views of where the borders should be cannot be reconciled with others.
While the above definition of nationalism may describe some instances (Deutzland uber alles), most would hold that nationalism can be more than just blind loyalty. It can mean a commitment to work together to improve and defend a nation, without being blind to its faults.
And religion can be more than just blind obedience to a dogma. The view of many scientists including anthropologist Scott Atran, is that religion is more about commitment to a set of moral sentiments, than it is about blind obedience.
Like borders, there is no clear scientific answer on moral sentiments. Should humans pair off for life, like some geese, or should a dominant male or female control the reproductive activities of the others. I know which one I prefer, but I can't really make a scientific argument that it is the best choice.
This doesn't mean we need to accept any moral sentiment as equally valid (Bikinis or Burkas)without argument. Like John Stuart Mill knew
that you couldn't prove that good things were good. But he also knew that questions not decidable by proof were still amenable to argument, and that he would rather have the side of the argument that suggested that health, prosperity, and pleasure were good things than the side that said they weren't.
From an Oct 8 2008 review in The NewYorker - January 9, 2009 at 4:19 PM
- Teleprompter said...
What are you trying to imply?
Yes, religion has its advantages. I usually do want to scream at other atheists who pretend that it doesn't, because I feel they're just being dogmatic about it generally, which is stupid, because we're supposed to be the freethinkers.
Religion can be a committment to a collection of moral sentiments, but many religions have a flawed collection of moral sentiments.
My morality does not tell me that it's okay to condemn someone eternally for finite actions. My morality doesn't tell me that it's perfectly acceptable if I condemn two young, immature children to eternal scorn for a single offense.
Yes, by cherry-picking from various religious teachings, religion can exercise influence for the establishment of positive moral values. However, it would be of much more utility to hone one's own moral values through the combined moral wisdom of ALL religions. Belief in any one particular religion as "True" with a capital "T" often constrains moral development. Yes, I applaud the religious liberals and moderates who combine exterior sources of morality with their own religious beliefs to form a unique moral compass. However, people need to realize that once you do this, you are surrendering the argument that your religion is the "ultimate source of morality". Even if someone takes all of their morality from the Bible, if one only selects certain sections to adhere morally, one is still using an exterior standard and applying it to form their individual morality! Most Christians' morality is formed in more or less the same way that non-Christians form theirs.
That's the larger point, really: religious belief is largely unnecessary to the formation of morality. Yes, the social environments of religious communities often holp reinforce particular moral conventions. However, I believe that it is more productive to emphasize the diverse and deeply-seated origins of morality in human culture that are not strictly dependent on any one particular religion.
What's your Mill quote implying, anyway - that non-Christians' don't believe that morals are good things? That is an absurd and ridiculous straw-man. I believe in morality, but my morality is more broad-based than the claims of any ONE religion.
Many religious people claim that atheists and others emphasize morality less than they do, but I believe that morality is SO important that I shouldn't limit myself to any one particular SOURCE of morality. I recognize that our natural empathy, combined with our social conventions and standards, is the source of our morality.
It's deceptive to say that non-Christians are any less moral than Christians, or that any one religion is the exclusive source of morality. Yes, I know that we can't prove morality, but neither can religion, and my sense of morality is larger than the sense of morality within any one religion.
I have a firm conviction that there is so much more of everything - including morality -in our world than there is in any one particular form of religion. - January 9, 2009 at 4:42 PM
What was I implying? Mostly I was troubled by MM's categorical statement about what is essential to certain religions, and what I believe is false dilemma of doubt vs. dogma (which he carries forward in his next post).
My point is not to defend every or all religious beliefs. Atran argues the from an anthropological perspective, religious beliefs can co-exist easily with factually information, but represent moral sentiments, or commitments to a specific moral framework.
The dilemma is how do we deal with conflicting moral sentiments, if we believe for example that women should be allowed to drive (unlike Saudi Arabia), and that all moral sentiments are unprovable sentiments.
Dr McCormick argues we must reject all belief so that we use only the scientific method to determine what is right.
But morality (what is a good action) as you say, can't be proven, even by religion. This is analagous to Mill and the question of what is good, and why I quoted him. While morals can't be proven true, they can be checked for self-consitancy, and arguments can be brought to bear against them. Non-religious have moral sentiments as much a religious people do, and I'm troubled that my comment came across otherwise.
I can't find anything in what you said that I disagree with. My point is that while religion can be blind obedience to doctrine, and hence constrain moral development (like nationalism can be blind obedience to existing leadership), there is no reason to conclude that this is the essence of religion (or nationalism), anymore than one should conclude that obesity is the essence of eating. - January 10, 2009 at 3:33 AM
I haven't looked at the links you cited, but from listening to various debates which make reference to the kind of data you mention (e.g., on Beyond Belief 2008, Ted.com, relevant YouTube videos of debates by Harris and others), I notice a misunderstanding of the interpretation of the results. Really, when it comes to this kind of data analysis, it is all about the interpretation!
For instance, Jonathan Haidt, on Beyond Belief: Candles in the Dark (link), mentions his analysis of how happy people who believe along theological lines are more happy, etc. Sam Harris (in the panel discussion) tries to argue against these points, but fails to address the fundamental problem with Haidt's retort that "this is the evidence." He seems to suppose, as most will, that evidence is simply objective and homogeneous, and if we have the data quantified then "where it leads to is the truth."
Obviously, there are epistemic problems with this perspective, and that is precisely the problem. From my metaethics (ethical theory) class, two papers we had to read really opened my eyes to an area of study that appeals to me, considering my major is in decision theory, statistics and the social sciences. In particular, they appeal to the fact there is something subjective needing to be weighed into the analysis.
The two papers which demonstrate how we can use subjective (e.g., self-reports) information in an objective, scientific and quantifiable analysis. It must also be appreciated, however, that this analysis is not like, say, studying physics which is studying objective data. This is to say, there is something characteristically different between data which is objective like that of studying gravity, mass or inertia of an object, trajectory, etc, versus that of a consumer purchasing a good, a business deciding if it should expand its trade internationally, etc.
I haven't jumped too far into the philosophy of society or the philosophy of social science, but John Searle's book, "The Construction of Social Reality" presents a really good introduction to some of the ideas regarding these issues, though on his part, it has nothing to do with the two papers referred to above: Amartya Sen, "Positional Objectivity" Philosophy and Public Affairs 22 no. 2 (1993):126-45, and Jennifer Tannoch-Bland, "From Aperspectival Objectivity to Strong Objectivity: The Quest for Moral Objectivity" Hypatia 12 no. 1 (1997):155-78.
There is plenty of literature on these topics of objectivity, I have found in my cursory investigations. What is important is that they try to weigh in crucial subjective information, the role it plays and how it should color our analysis of the facts. I wont go into examples here because it is far off point, but from my studies of Sen's work in welfare economics, it is a central aspect of his decades of work demonstrating the weakness in the attempt to have a purely objective and quantified analysis of wants, desires and utility. In short, he focuses on a different metric, and topics brought up in his "Positional Objectivity" weigh into those kinds of analysis because the perspective from the position the individual is in with regard to the situation under investigation can shed critically important information not manifest by either looking solely at objective information or solely subjective information.
Thus, I was concerned with, in my example, the implication by Haidt's response because I fear he would fail to make that kind of connection, cross exam self-reports to really get at the important information, relevance of the subjective information and develop a meta-theory which explains the way to even do the analysis (e.g., in Sen's work, his "Capabilities Approach" is such a framework for even cross-comparing self-reports of, say, a person's perception of health (a possible welfare parameter) after a famine depending on whether they were a widow or widower [Sen, pg 136]).
So when considering analyzing things of a subjective nature, we really need to do more than just quantify information. Even the best statistics will completely miss the point by not addressing qualitative, or non-quantitative, information that wouldn't be weighed in. Of course, this requires a justification for why that, say, qualitative information is even important (because it could just be "noise"), and that is where that "meta-theory" of the analysis becomes critical.
I will look at this blog again later. These are issues I think that are important in epistemology because it comes down to how we analyze information to claim some kind of knowledge. If things were as simple and discrete as "this is objective" and "this is subjective" and "our objective figures say X," then we might have a nice simple framework of epistemic norms to deal with.
Unfortunately, things are rarely that simple. I think those articles mentioned, and even Searle's book, demonstrate the complexity of the issues regarding social aspects of analysis. Subjective information is important and often overlooked or interpreted without qualification or a justifying meta-theory. Even appeal to statistical correlations or searching for, as you bring up Matt, the "cause of the correlation" will miss much if we don't consider important factors not captured by our quantification that should have been weighed in. That "should" is where our epistemic norms need to step in, and this is far from a simple matter. Maybe if I get motivated I will finally write that epistemic norm piece I've been thinking about since summer! I have had a busy winter, though. - January 11, 2009 at 11:38 PM
- feralboy12 said...
Alternate explanation for the data: religious people are happier and healthier than the non-religious because they are making the non-believers miserable and sick.
- January 31, 2010 at 10:53 PM


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I hope it is good topic for discussion on tennis forum. I asked some famous tennis coaches and tennisplayers that question. There are their thoughts and opinion.
There are many answers to why American tennis has lost its dominance in theworld. The first thought is that everybody is in a hurry to turn pro, and theyneglect the fundamentals. How many women can serve? How many men or women canvolley or hit backhand slices? Everybody plays the same game. Its like a rockthrowing contest. Next, Americans tennis players are spoiled. They think theycan buy strokes. It doesnt work that way. Finally, the USTA has done adisastrous job of promoting grass roots tennis. They put all their emphasis andmoney in the 20 best 12 year olds and older tennis players, but the best athleteshave been playing soccer for 8 years by then. In Europe, tennis has much lesscompetition.
American culture has changed too many distractions for young kids. Globalcompetition has become stronger. Tennis is the #2 or #3 sport in mostcountries, but for the USA it is much farther down the list.
I was wondering what you think about the reasons. Why are a few American players in TOP of both Tours? Where are young talented and ambitious players? What should be done to improve the situation?


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According to the ETF Finder at ETF Channel, MDT and DUK collectively make up 3.34% of the WisdomTree Dividend ex-Financials Fund ETF (DTN) which is higher by about 0.1% on the day Tuesday.
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At the closing bell, MDT is up about 2%, while DUK is down about 0.3% on the day Tuesday.