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Probably the most common type of bilingual homeschooling, Language Learners are English-dominant and learn a second language (Spanish) generally at an early age for greatest success. The second language learning begins in Kindergarten or 1st grade and continues to be developed throughout the entire learning process.
Bicultural Learning
Is different from bilingual learning, but takes a multicultural approach by emphasizing learning about foreign cultures and traditions for a more global learning experience. Homeschoolers may begin learning a foreign language (Spanish) in later years.
So in a perfect world, bilingual homeschoolers would fall under the Partial Immersion category, but the reality is that most land somewhere between Partial Immersion and Language Learning. Wherever your homeschooling journey takes you, the key is to remember that the intentions of your heart and the efforts you put into raising a bilingual child are what define you.
Further Reading….
• What is Bilingual Education :: NABE
• The Reinvention of Bilingual Education in America's Schools :: Slate
• Advantages of Bilingual Education :: Buzzle.com
• Bilingual Education - Need for Bilingual Education, Benefits of Bilingualism and Theoretical Foundations of Bilingual Education :: State University
I'm excited that this post is part of Bilingual for Fun's Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism. This month's host is Sarah at Bringing up Baby Bilingual. Check out her article with links to a wonderful collection of posts by a large number of bilingual bloggers. And if you'd like to participate in the next carnival, click here for more information.


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Take a Northern Michigan Vacation in the Dunes of Sleeping Bear, Petoskey and Pentwater
Build a Northern Michigan vacation around the spectacular Lake Michigan dunes, including Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore near Traverse City, the Silver Lake Dunes near Pentwater and Wilderness State Park outside of Petoskey. Majestic wonder, spectacular vistas and lots of sandy fun to be had. Before you go, check out the dune book list included in this article.
Stand 400 feet high in the warm wind overlooking Lake Michigan and you can feel the Sleeping Bear breathing underfoot. The coastline's crown jewels, the Sleeping Bear Dunes (231-326-5134, NPS.GOV/SLBE), have inspired stories and, more important for you, relaxation, for generations. Lodge in summery splendor at The Homestead (231-334-5100, THEHOMESTEADRESORT.COM, $85–$592), where the Crystal River joins Lake Michigan right on Sleeping Bear Bay. Dine in
simple elegance on authentic French country fare at La Bécasse (231-334-3238, RESTAURANTLABECASSE.COM), on the south side of Glen Lake.
Sands still moving, Silver Lake Sand Dunes (231-873-3083, THINKDUNES.COM) offer hiking, beachcombing on both Lake
Michigan and Silver Lake, and a separate area for off-road vehicles. Make the short drive to Victorian-themed HexagonHouse B&B (231-869-4102, HEXAGONHOUSE.COM, $119–$259), built in 1870 and surrounded by gardens in the summer-bustling burg of Pentwater. Enjoy peach schnapps–stuffed French toast and lemon coffeecake at the B&B, then venture north a bit to Ludington for waterfront dining at P.M. Steamers (231-843-9555, PMSTEAMERS.COM) and a microbrew at Jamesport Brewing Co. (231-845-2522, JAMESPORTBREWINGCOMPANY.COM).
Vacation au naturel at Wilderness State Park ($60/CABIN, $10/PARK, 231-436-5381, dnr.state.mi.us) in Emmet County. Not referring to the sun seeker kind—although people are known to go sans suits on the remote park beaches along Sturgeon Bay—we're talking about rugged lodging in Wilderness's waterfront log cabins. Daytime, picnic in the dune bowls and search for fossils on the low hills. The state park's shoreline provides the best habitat in Michigan for the endangered piping plover, so bring your binoculars—for the plovers, of course. Evening, dine at Legs Inn (231-526-2281, LEGSINN.COM) in Cross Village, where the authentic Polish cuisine and heavy-on-the-fiddle entertainment might tempt you to stay indoors—but the sun dropping into the lake will have you on the restaurant's garden swing before long.
Duneside Reading List
Michigan book recommendations from the well-read staff at McLean & Eakin Booksellers in Petoskey (231-347-1180, MCLEANANDEAKIN.COM).
• The Michigan Roadside Naturalist, by J. Alan Holman and Margaret B. Holman
• Seasons of Sleeping Bear, by Terry Phipps
• The Legend of Sleeping Bear, by Kathy-jo Wargin
• The Living Great Lakes: Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas, by Jerry Dennis
• Mighty Fitz: The Sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, by Michael Schumacher
• The Wreck of the Carl D.: A True Story of Loss, Survival, and Rescue at Sea, by Michael Schumacher
• Death's Door: The Truth Behind Michigan's Largest Mass Murder, by Steve Lehto
Lisa Doublestein writes from Petoskey. email@example.com

subset: commoncrawl


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Yard Waste
Click here for printable instructions with photos
Holiday Tree Collection
Holiday trees will be collected at the curbside on your regularly scheduled collection day beginning December 26th through the end of January. Please cut your tree into 3-foot sections and place them in your yard waste cart.Trees with flocking, tinsel, or tree stands will not be accepted for collection.
Home Composting
Discover the ease of composting and enrich your garden. CMC provides discounted compost bins along with compost instructions, hands-on demonstrations and troubleshooting tips. Call (800) 321-8226 for more information.


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UNLV nearly mirrors SDSU's 2008 exploits
The situation was strikingly similar, the parallel potentially perilous.
Over the course of the final 7:28 of yesterday's Mountain West Conference Tournament women's semifinal game at the Thomas & Mack Center, San Diego State sophomore forward Paris Johnson saw in UNLV a team much like her own a year earlier, a team discounted from the outset that suddenly exchanges stagger for swagger.
"It was just like last year when we came in and beat Wyoming and beat TCU and ended up in the championship game with New Mexico," Johnson said. "It builds your confidence and gives you momentum."
If not a bit of a scare.
SDSU, which repeatedly negated the naysayers in advancing to last year's tournament championship game, found a foe in UNLV that had like aspirations but less pixie dust left in its duffel.
Behind 27 points from junior guard Jené Morris and 12 points, nine rebounds and a tournament-record seven blocked shots from Johnson, the Aztecs (23-6) beat the Rebels for the third time this season and the second time in a week, 71-63, to gain a spot in today's title game against top-seeded Utah.
SDSU split its two regular-season games against the Utes, dropping a 58-52 decision in January in Salt Lake City before winning 55-49 last month at Cox Arena. Regardless of today's outcome, it's likely both teams will be in the NCAA Tournament, with the Aztecs hosting first-and second-round games beginning a week from today at Cox Arena.
"Every game is similar to this for us," SDSU coach Beth Burns said. "We've got to work like crazy to be successful. But at the end of the day, 23 times now, we've found a way to win."
And a way to dance out of danger when the underdog is no longer overwhelmed.
No. 7-seeded UNLV (14-18), which won just five of 16 league games, opened the tournament by closing the door on No. 6-seeded BYU and No. 3-seeded TCU. But with just less than eight minutes remaining, any fitting for a glass slipper was on hold as SDSU, which held a 12-point lead at the break, pushed the margin to 62-46.
With 3:19 left, the Aztecs' lead was two.
"I think we expected it from UNLV," said Morris, who made two straight jumpers to end UNLV's run. "We've seen it time and time again, especially in the last couple of games. Players on their team have hit big shots."
Senior forward Shamela Hampton certainly hit her share, finishing with a game-high 29 points, 16 of which came in the second half.
But while Hampton proved a handful, so did Morris, who entered the tournament having scored in double figures in 20 of 26 games this season. Morris, a transfer from Cal who has scored 20 or more points in three of her four career MWC Tournament games, did much of her damage at the line, where she finished 11-for-15.
The MWC Defensive Player of the Year, Morris also had four steals as the Aztecs applied the clamps over the final 1:33 in holding the Rebels scoreless.
"We've always been a team that has stuck together," Morris said. "That's why we've been so successful this season, working together and sustaining our effort for 40 minutes. We've learned to keep our composure over the last couple of years. When things get tough, we have to stick with it."
Mick McGrane: (619) 293-1850; email@example.com


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Energy was an issue, sort of, in the campaign, and in the aftermath there's lots of chatter about whether, among other things, Obama will now approve the Keystone pipeline, or block it, as his enviro buddies demand. Whether he'll regulate the heck out of hydrocarbon energy, or get out of the way of the extraordinary boom (and boon) the private sector unexpectedly dropped in his lap. (The shale gas boom surely didn't hurt Obama in Pennsylvania or Ohio. The irony is that while the energy sector spent heavily against Obama, they also may have helped to save him. No good deed goes unpunished.) Keep in mind that expanded energy production is one painless route to higher federal revenues, and therefore a sweet spot in the budget cage match between the two parties.
In the meantime, herewith the second of the AEI "Energy 101" videos I worked on with Ken Green. This particular script was mostly my idea; it came to me one day when I was behind a Ford Mustang at a stoplight, and my mind wandered to a meditation about how and why we still use "horsepower" as a measure of energy, even though no one really has the foggiest idea what a "horsepower" actually is (other than wanting a lot of them "under the hood"):


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Im selling my Rainman229 Mag Pump Kit w/Hitman mod, wave spring w/a black bumper as well as a blue bumper, and both the long and short mount screw, and a Red acrylic CCM pump handle that was drilled at the factory to work with the kit.
Asking 150 shipped for the pump kit
Pump kit is 150+shippingfrom rainman229
Hitman mod is 10+shipping from rainman229
Red acrylic CCM pump handle is 35+shipping from CCM
so your saving a lil over 50 bucks!!!
Post first then PM please! thanks!!!


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home | metro silicon valley index | movies | current reviews | film review
ODD COUPLE: Sarah Adler's Batya befriends young Nikol Leidman in 'Jellyfish.'
Tangled Web of Life
The Israeli film 'Jellyfish' drifts along with the tossing and tumbling residents of Tel Aviv
By Richard von Busack
SO MANY MOVIES try to get into the collisions and coincidences of city life, the little nicks and abrasions we inflict on one another. For every Slacker, there are too many films that imagine that the Big Web of Connection is more about duty than beauty. In Jellyfish, we get the God's-eye view of connections, but that doesn't weave this bright and fine film into a pat little daisy-chain of social problems.
Jellyfish is a 78-minute work directed by Israel's Etgar Keret, a graphic novelist, teacher and littérateur, whose work is like a far more piquant version of Paul Auster. Keret co-directed Jellyfish with scriptwriter and partner, children's-book writer Shira Geffen. Previously, Keret wrote the novel Missing Kissinger as well as a graphic novel titled (in English) Pizzeria Kamikaze, which was adapted into the film Wristcutters: A Love Story. It, too, was a tale of collisions and coincidence, set in a purgatory for post-suicides. There, the newly dead worked the same dead-end jobs and puzzled through the same hard-to-suss-out relationships as they had on Earth.
The winner of the Caméra d'Or last year, Jellyfish is about a lot of misguided subjects looking for an object. It is consistently funny, both ha-ha and peculiar. Yet the film doesn't feel slight or attenuated. The actors get in fairly deep; they express the attractions, the push and pull, of Israeli urban life.
Keret and Geffen's version of Tel Aviv is a place where everyone is a natural, dry comedian, with a great gift for denial and a salesman's ability to turn around any complaint. An example: The landlord comes in to raise the rent. The renter tells his landlord that the ceiling is leaking, and the landlord retorts, "What ceiling?"
That renter in question is the pretty, 20ish waitress Batya (Sarah Adler), whose boyfriend just headed for parts unknown. She can barely bring herself to bleat out the word "Stay ..." as he goes, and then it's time to cater a wedding. Her point-of-view is a waltzing camera, moving among the guests to find the bride.
No bride. Keren the bride (Noa Knoller) gets trapped in a toilet stall in the women's room and breaks her leg crawling out. This cancels the honeymoon. ("Whaddya need the Caribbean for? You got each other," grumbles the doctor.) Instead, Keren and her soulful Russian husband, Michael (Gera Sandler), go to a nearby, half-finished seaside hotel. The Mediterranean, too, isn't what it used to be. "Why do I want to go to the beach? It's nothing but dog shit and jellyfish," grumps an elderly woman later on.
In the honeymoon hotel, Keren is prostrate with a bad leg and Chronic Dissatisfaction Syndrome; changing rooms just changes aspects of the bad hotel experience, from smelly drains to jackhammers to a broken elevator. This might have been an irritating plot thread if Knoller didn't have such lush, satiny curves and such an adorable pout; at different angles, she reminds one of Gina Gershon and Amanda Peet. The new husband, baffled by his wife's unhappiness, becomes friends with a female writer. The writer is looking for help spelling the phrase "ending in disgrace."
Some connection arrives for all the characters, including the Filipina guest worker Joy (Ma-nenita De Latorre), who is pining for her child overseas, and Batya's colleague at the horrible restaurant, a morbid-looking wedding photographer who turns out to have an archive of home movies.
Batya finds another friend: a mute, mysterious little 5-year-old girl in a bathing suit and with a donut-shaped pool float, who attaches herself to the waitress. This lost child might have been too much like the dancing baby in Ally McBeal, but the role is unsweetened by Niokol Liedman. If she's like a red-haired sea nymph, she's also a little like a goblin. When she runs off, the general description of her is that "she has sad eyes"—pretty useless in a film where everyone does. And when Batya reports the motherless child to the police, she opens another window of dejection: the sad-eyed desk cop fans out a stack of unfollowed-up missing-person reports and mutters, "Look. There isn't even a folder."
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Christopher Bowen's watery ambient music—together with a cover version of "La Vie en Rose," which somehow doesn't sound as rosy in Hebrew—adds extra polish to this comedy of decay and regeneration. Israeli film is a cosmopolitan cinema, peppery and sophisticated, made by people too much under the threat of death to be trifling, and too harassed by the woes of modern life to be starry-eyed. Often, it's a cinema with a testy, barely on speaking terms relationship with God. It was bound to produce a crowd-pleaser for the aesthetic set and Jellyfish might be it.
JELLYFISH (Unrated; 89 min.), directed by Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen, written by Geffen, photographed by Antooine Héberlé and starring Sarah Adler and Gera Sandler, opens April 25 at selected theaters.
Send a letter to the editor about this story.


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Not only is Arizona's Sheriff Joe Arpaio up for reelection himself, but the issues he represents hold a major stake in today's presidential election.
Arpaio has long campaigned for the right to detain suspects based only on his belief they are in America illegally — a practice the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals slapped down in September.
But how do his views play out on the national scene?
USA Today estimates nearly 11 million people are in this country illegally— a drastic jump from the 1.9 million illegal immigrants recorded in 1988 — effectively guaranteeing illegal immigration will remain a hot-button issue during the next presidential term.
Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has attacked lax immigration policies during the Republican primaries, railing against Texas Gov. Rick Perry for a state law allowing illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition in Texas, The Washington Post reported last month.
On the other hand, President Barack Obama has urged Congress to pass the DREAM Act, which would help young illegal immigrants gain citizenship. He has also offered illegal immigrants brought here as children a two-year work permit.
Meanwhile, back in Arizona, voters must decide whether to continue promoting, or at least tolerating, Arpaio's vigilante practices.
The popular sheriff, who in the past 20 years has never been reelected by less than 12 points, is facing a slew of legal problems, including wrongful death lawsuits and civil rights violations allegations, according to Mother Jones.
DON'T MISS: All The Ways This Election Could End Up As A Legal Nightmare >


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ROME (Reuters) - Poland's Robert Kubica, whose Formula One racing career was interrupted by a near-fatal rally crash in 2011, hopes to return to the track soon although his arm is still not ready for single-seaters.
"For the, let's say future, I don't have any plans up until now. In the end, I am still at the stage of rehabilitation but for sure I would love to compete in a high level championship, or in a rally or on a circuit," he told Reuters on Thursday.
Kubica suffered severe arm and hand injuries in the crash in February last year but has expressed a desire to return to Formula One.
The Pole was speaking ahead of a rally in Italy where he is getting behind the wheel for Citroen although Kubica said he was taking things slowly for now.
"Let's see, until now I did some rallies, I did some testing on the race track and I hope my hand will improve and my general condition will improve," said the former BMW-Sauber and Renault F1 driver who won two minor rallies in Italy in September .
Kubica said he had driven some high performance cars recently but the condition of his arm did not allow him to test in single seaters and there was no immediate prospect of a return to the top level.
"It is has been a long time unfortunately (since) I stopped with Formula One, so my contacts are very limited because in all these months I have been concentrating on coming back and getting my health and body back to the best condition," he said.
Kubica is also due to take part in the Rallye du Var in France next weekend. (Reporting by Eleanor Biles; Editing by Alison Wildey)


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Edward Durell Stone: A Belated Appreciation by Hicks Stone
Edward Durell Stone was my father. Father and I had a tenuous and at times a difficult relationship. He would have found it both comically improbable and deeply touching if he had been aware that I had written his biography. Even though our relationship was distant, I had a closely-held but deeply-seated admiration for his achievements. The underlying impetus to write his biography extends back to my childhood in New York during the 1960s. Anyone who came of age during those years recalls them as a time when activists would champion the rights of people unjustly relegated to living life at the margins of society. It was this sensitivity to injustice and an activist's desire to right wrongs that set me on the course that led me to submit a proposal to Rizzoli for my father's biography in the spring of 2008. Simply stated, Father has been unfairly treated for over a half-century, and the time for him to be accorded the simple decency, recognition and respect that he deserves from the architectural community is long overdue.
Father was one of the earliest practitioners of European modernism in the United States starting with his home for Richard Mandel in Mount Kisco, NY in 1933. But as his work evolved over time he became a favored rhetorical target of the modernist academic and critical elite in the late 1950s; it is a tendency that has diminished with time, but still exists to this day. His principal offense was the use of ornament and classical ordering principles in his later work, an approach that was anathema to the tenets of International Style modernism first articulated in 1932 by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson. During the 1950s strict modernists were attempting, through their positions in academia, to expunge traditional elements from our collective architectural vocabulary. Overlaying this aesthetic conflict was the fact that Father enjoyed great commercial success and celebrity by pursuing this highly personal way of working. Notably, he was featured on the cover of a 1958 issue of Time, one of only twelve architects ever to be accorded that honor.1 His prominence eroded the modernists' message; inevitably his success bred greater hostility and resentment. In fact, almost immediately after the publication of the Time article, early modern architect and Harvard educator, Serge Chermayeff, attempted to trivialize Father's work and diminish his standing in a letter to the editor of the nation's leading architectural journal.2
Contemporary architects are unable to appreciate the control that modernist pedagogues exerted over architectural thought. This orthodoxy was led charismatically and persuasively by architects like Chermayeff at Harvard and Philip Johnson at Yale. In this restrictive environment, even practicing architects themselves began to wonder whether the regime of austerity imposed by this limited view of architectural expression had gone too far. An early symposium at the Architectural League of New York in 1950, "Must Our Architecture Be Sterile" was one particularly vivid instance of architects responding to the limitations imposed by adherence to the tenets of International Style modernism.3
This intellectual and creative lockstep was dramatically demonstrated to me in a first year class in modern architecture at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design in 1979 where I was enrolled in the Master's of Architecture program. During a survey of midcentury architecture, Father's U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, India was shown to the class. The embassy was a project that was widely considered by architectural critics to be pivotal; the first manifestation of what would later be called The New Formalism.4 But strangely, most of the class of some eighty students started hissing in unison. These were students in their first year of graduate school, little more than adolescents who barely knew how to draw a floor plan. But regardless of their inexperience, word had filtered down to them that they should hate Edward Stone's work. Ironically, this was also at the height of the postmodern movement; students were mimicking the work of Michael Graves and producing classicist collages and cluttering their designs with Tuscan columns. How strange then that they should revile an architect who sought to reawaken an interest in architectural history and precedent. In the hallowed halls of ivy, hating Stone's work was simply the reflexive and fashionably correct thing to do; whether it made sense or not was another matter.
Much of Father's later work was born of his particularly American point of view. After an automobile trip across the country in 1940, he turned away from the International Style and European modernism believing that they were inimical to American life. His bucolic origins at the edge of the American frontier reinforced his belief in the necessity of domestic warmth and an intimate connection to nature; both attitudes were vividly demonstrated in his work of the 1940s and early 1950s. Shortly after the trip, he staked out his position when he observed that, "American architecture, whatever its debt to others, must find its own solutions in its own way." 5
During the trip, he was deeply troubled by the impact that haphazard and disfiguring roadside development had on the nation's landscape; he would champion the cause of sensitive urbanization that was respectful of our natural heritage for the rest of his life. His statement to a New York Times reporter in 1964 displays a conviction and strength that few contemporary architects would choose to invoke. Deploring, "the colossal mess that we have made of the face of this country" he observed that "everything betrays us as a bunch of catchpenny materialists devoted to a blatant, screeching insistence on commercialism." He went on to say that, "our materialism, of which the older civilizations correctly accuse us, is disgusting for anyone who has a conscience." 6
The 1940 trip also led him to Taliesin East in Wisconsin and a meeting with Frank Lloyd Wright. As Father said in his autobiography, "it was the first time that I had ever walked through one of Mr. Wright's buildings, and I was overwhelmed by its beauty." 7 Wright and Father would become close; it was a friendship that would endure until Wright's death in 1959. Their bond was formed over a love of the American landscape, a shared vision of architectural beauty and a mutually-held contempt for the practitioners of European modernism. Maria Stone, my father's second wife and my mother, would often tell a story of a luncheon at Taliesin West in Arizona with Wright, Olgivanna Wright and my father, where Wright would swat at flies and gleefully announce as he dispatched the intruders, "that was Mies…that was Gropius…that was Corbusier." As he did so, the table would erupt in laughter. Perhaps surprising to some, the influence of Wright can readily be seen in Father's postwar work. Father freely borrowed from Wright; even his famed and reviled terrazzo grill block has its antecedent in Wright's textile block homes of the 1920s. Father viewed Wright heroically, a fact that he attested to in an homage that he wrote for Saturday Review shortly after Wright's death. 8 As a vivid reminder of his debt to Wright, Father kept a bronze bust of Wright in his office on a sideboard by his desk and positioned next to it a photograph of them together taken at Taliesin West.
One of the central dilemmas of my efforts has been that those who knew Father's skills best and could bear witness to his abilities as an architect are now long gone. I speak of architects like Pietro Belluschi, Richard Bennett, Gordon Bunshaft, Wallace K. Harrison, Henry Shepley, Louis Skidmore and Ralph Walker; all of them worked closely with Father, knew the breadth of his talent, were good friends of his and could have provided great insights. Instead, I have had to rely on their published statements wherever possible. Belluschi in a 1958 interview with Time, and then the dean of MIT's School of Architecture, described Edward Stone as "a man of great native talent" who "regards architecture as really an art to be interpreted in its own terms" and who "stands out for not being chained to dogmatic thinking." 9Belluschi also observed that Stone was "able to give modern architecture a more gracious, human feeling." 10
As Father once said to an interviewer, "There is too much conformity in contemporary architecture. I like to think of architecture as an individual creative expression; I get more pleasure out of my work if I carry through my own convictions rather than pursue a dogma outlined by some other architect. An architect should try to find his own expression…Americans more than ever need to cultivate the open mind. Those who assert their individuality should find greater tolerance from their fellow man; if our flights of fancy found receptive audiences, and each of us were encouraged to be an individual, our lives would be enriched."11
During the course of my lectures in support of the book over the last year, I have been gratified by the enthusiastic responses of my audiences. It seems to me that the siren song of puritanical modernism holds less sway, particularly with younger audiences. The message that I convey about Father seems to be falling on more receptive ears, and thankfully, no one hisses when I show images of the New Delhi embassy anymore. It is my hope that my book will enable architects of this decade to do as my father suggested to his contemporaries over four decades ago, to cultivate an open mind, not only about the work of others but also about the work of Edward Durell Stone.
1"More Than Modern", Time 71, March 31, 1958, 56-64. The other architects given Time covers were Philip Johnson, William Pereira, Minoru Yamasaki, Le Corbusier, Eero Saarinen, Wallace K. Harrison, Richard Neutra, Charles Luckman, Frank Lloyd Wright, William Delano, and Ralph Adams Cram.
3"Revised Conference Schedule", Conference of October 18, 1950, folder Education Committee 1950-1951, box 36, Architectural League of New York Papers, Archives of American Art, Washington D.C.
4Marcus Whiffen, American Architecture Since 1780: A Guide to the Styles, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1981), 256-262.
5Recent Work of Edward D. Stone", Architectural Forum 75, July, 1941, 17.
6"Edward Durell Stone 'Deplores Mess We've Made of Country'", New York Times, August 27, 1964.
7Edward Durell Stone, The Evolution of an Architect, (New York: Horizon, 1962), 89.
8Edward Durell Stone, "Hero, Prophet, Adventurer", Saturday Review 42, November 7, 1959, 15-17.
9Pietro Belluschi, Interview filed by Murray Gart, February 28, 1958, Boston, MA. Unpublished transcript at Time Archives, New York, NY, 1.
10Ibid., 3.
11Paul Heyer, Architects on Architecture, (Walker and Company: New York, 1966), 177-178.
Image credits:
1. Edward Durell Stone and Hicks Stone in Segesta, Sicily (1959). Courtesy of the Stone Family Archives.
2. The Richard Mandel in Mount Kisco, NY (1933). (c) Roger Straus III/Esto.
3. U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, India (1954). Courtesy of the Stone Family Archives.
4. Robinson Residence, Harrison, AR (1953). Courtesy of the Stone Family Archives.
5. Thurnauer Residence, Teaneck, NJ (1949). Courtesy of the Stone Family Archives.
About the Author: Hicks Stone is a practicing architect in the New York City area; he founded his firm Stone Architecture, LLC in 1991. He is the author of Edward Durell Stone: A Son's Untold Story of a Legendary Architect, which was published by Rizzoli in October 2011. He can be reached at hicks.stone(at)stone-architecture.com.


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Bigger, better, cleaner and stronger, the ever-popular Massey Ferguson 5400 Series mid-range tractors have new Tier III engines inside and a new look outside.
New 110 and 115 hp models expand the mid-range line and its reputation for rugged durability with the right combination of weight and power to get the job done. The new hood offers mid-range tractor buyers the same serviceability and style as Massey Ferguson high horsepower 6400 and 7400 Series tractors.
Can't afford a breakdown
"We understand how important mid-range tractor dependability is day-in and day-out," explains Tom Weir, marketing manager, Mid-Range and Specialty Tractors, Massey Ferguson. "Our customers have told us they can't afford a breakdown when livestock need to be fed, yards cleaned or hay baled. That's why we have engineered the 5400 Series tractors to be the most dependable on the market. They are designed to outlast and outwork the competition with a power train engineered to handle 50 percent more power than even these powerful Tier III engines produce. You just won't wear these tractors out."
The Tier III engines burn cleaner and smarter for greater fuel efficiency. The 4-cylinder, 4.4 L Perkins engine, 4.4 L and 4.9 L SisuDiesel engines and the 6.6 L Perkins engine share multiple advanced technologies. All four engines feature common rail fuel delivery and Electronic Engine Management.
Some models are also equipped with wastegate turbochargers and air to air cooling — features designed to reduce emissions and deliver higher fuel efficiencies, making every gallon of fuel work harder and last longer.
Tier III engines will be available immediately on all but the Model 5435 and Model 5445, which will be updated in August of this year.
The 16F × 16R Dyna-4 semi-powershift transmission is one reason Massey Ferguson 5400 Series tractors have become so popular. There is nothing else like it in the mid-range market. Shifting through the four speeds and four ranges without having to use the clutch is as smooth as the transmission is rugged.
"Put a Massey Ferguson 900 Series loader on the Dyna-4 equipped 5400 Series tractors and get to know the meaning of the word versatility," says Weir.
Three-function shuttle
"With the three-function shuttle lever, the operator can change direction, speed shift and declutch quickly, yet smoothly. Whether moving a bucket of manure or a pallet of fruit, simply adjust the rotary dial to make the shuttle more or less aggressive to match the job.
"Add the multi-function hydraulic joystick and control two functions at the same time, or install a third function kit to run hydraulic loader attachments like a grapple fork."
Smooth loader work requires ample hydraulic power, and the MF 5400 Series has power to spare. Select from one of three systems to match expected demand. Choose the 15 gpm open center system, or upgrade to the 26 gpm combined flow system, lock the 3-point hitch in place and deliver all 26 gpm to remotes. For bigger jobs and heavier lifting with tractors over 85 hp, select the 29 gpm closed center load sensing (CCLS) system.
Front-end ballast
Even greater versatility is available with the Model 5465 and the new Model 5475 and their integrated front axle support casting. Operators can utilize it for a front-end ballast system or heavy-duty front linkage. A high load capacity, optional front PTO and hydraulic remotes open the door to a wide variety of front mount implements and attachments.
"With multiple hydraulic systems, 4 or 6-cylinder engines, open platform or cab, two-wheel or four-wheel drive and heavy duty front and rear linkage, the 5400 Series gives mid-range tractor buyers a lot to choose from," says Weir.
"We've added the features they've told us they want without sacrificing the strength and durability they depend on. These are solid tractors built to last and simple to maintain, yet offering options and choices to custom design each tractor to each buyer's needs, be it feedlot, field or both."
For more information on Massey Ferguson, visit www.masseyferguson.com.


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Russell McNeil, PhD (Experimental Space Science and Physics) Author of
The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Selections Annotated and Explained
Follow Newly Explained Meditations on
Thursday, April 14, 2011
The Power of Opinion III - The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius - Published Selections Explained, Med. VII.28
Meditation VII.28 – The Power of Opinion III - Translated by George Long and rewritten by Russell McNeil
Note: Meditation VII.28 is published in The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius: Selections Annotated and Explained; McNeil. Russell, PhD, Skylight Paths, Ch. 1 ("The Promise of Stoicism – The Power of Opinion III, p. 5, 2007
Russell McNeil, PhD, is the author of The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius: Selections Annotated and Explained by Skylight Paths Publishing. The unpublished selections presented in this Blog are provided as supplemental material to the published selections which are annotated and explained in the book. The published selections are referenced in this Blog by page number and section.
Posted by Russell McNeil at 7:38 AM
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Friday, March 13, 2015
WINNERS.....and a couple ATC Easel Cards
12 comments:
- Fabiana Strehlow said...
Oi, Jacque!
Parabéns para as vencedoras!
E os seus ATCs ficaram um amor. Lindos!
Fabiana Strehlow
- March 13, 2015 at 9:22 PM
- Sonia said...
I love your easel ATC cards- so cute!
- March 14, 2015 at 8:15 AM
- KT Fit Kitty said...
Your ATC easel cards are so cute! Have never seen at ATC easel card before, just regular ATC's - very cool! Congrats to the winners!
- March 14, 2015 at 8:30 AM
- Lisa M said...
Those are sooooo adorable! Never seen them displayed like this before and it's wonderful. Beautiful work!!
- March 14, 2015 at 9:08 AM
- Maryann Laursen said...
Oh Jacque, these ATC cards are so cute and really well made. I know how hard it can be to make these small cards, and to even make them as easelcards is awesome, and they´re really beautiful.
A big congrats to the lucky winners here too. Please enjoy your prioces ladies.
- March 14, 2015 at 9:38 AM
- traci savely said...
I love ur atc cards!
- March 14, 2015 at 10:19 AM
- Marjeta said...
Hello Jacque!
Just noticed that I am a winner on your blog and I am very happy. You make my day really beautiful. Thank you. Your easel cards are beautiful. For me card on the left side is No. 1.
- March 14, 2015 at 1:07 PM
- theCook said...
Cute! I really like the one with the white pearls and the doily heart!
- March 14, 2015 at 4:45 PM
- Helena (Gvendalen) said...
Oh, Jacque, they very beautiful, especially is pleasant to me the first! Have a great day. hugs, Helena
- March 14, 2015 at 5:50 PM
- marta said...
I think I prefer the red one.
- March 16, 2015 at 11:28 AM
- Sol said...
Gosh! Those ATC cards are adorable!! Images are Beautiful!! I am havimg computer trouble!! So i am commenting by phone! I love the row of pearls on the left one! Sooo cute Both of them!!
- March 16, 2015 at 1:27 PM
- on a good day said...
Your craftings are gorgeous!! I love all of them. I haven't done any ATC's yet, but yours make me want to give it a try. Thanks so much for sharing your talents with us. And thanks for the chance to win such a giant prize!! I would buy 2 magnolia stamps as I am just now getting into them. Prayerful hugs sent.
- March 16, 2015 at 7:59 PM


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Last updated: September 01, 2006
Gene Chips Accurately Diagnose Four Complex - Childhood Cancers
Gene Chips Accurately Diagnose Four Complex
Childhood Cancers
Artificial Intelligence Used With Gene Expression Microarrays for the First Time
May 2001
BETHESDA, Md. - Scientists at the National Human Genome Research Institute and Lund University in Sweden have developed a method of genetic fingerprinting that can tell the difference between several closely related types of childhood cancer. The method combines, for the first time, the cutting edge technology of gene chips with a form of artificial intelligence called an artificial neural network (ANN). The neural network automatically analyzes the large amounts of data produced by the gene chip to make a highly accurate diagnosis.
Using typical diagnostic technologies, the four types of childhood tumors used in this study can be difficult to tell apart because they look alike under the microscope; their similar appearance can lead to misdiagnosis and improper treatment. Gene chip technology, on the other hand, analyzes the pattern of activity of thousands of genes inside any cell type, including cancer cells. This approach, the researchers reported in the June issue of Nature Medicine, allows their computerized neural network to classify the different cancers with much greater accuracy.
"This research is a very exciting example of how genome technology is advancing the diagnosis of some of the most serious and challenging diseases," says Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., director of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) in Bethesda, Maryland. "Studies like this one should help lead to the discovery of genes that are altered in these tumors, and this information may lead to the development of effective new treatments."
The study began by simultaneously analyzing more than 6,000 known genes present in all cells. Among those, the researchers identified 41 genes expressed in the tumors that had not been previously associated with these diseases. "I am convinced that we will find good targets for new drug treatments with this kind of approach," says Paul Meltzer, M.D., Ph.D., a senior investigator in the Cancer Genetics Branch of the NHGRI Division of Intramural Research and the paper's senior author. "We are clearly moving away from using chemotherapy to nonspecifically kill cells to developing targeted treatments."
Analyzing Many Genes
Nearly all cells in the human body carry exactly the same set of genes, and many of these genes, so-called housekeeping genes, are turned on in most cells. But skin cells are different than muscle cells because a unique set of skin genes are turned on in skin cells and a unique set of muscle genes are turned on in muscle cells. Genes give cells their unique characteristics, but the genes have to be turned on - or expressed - for the unique characteristics to appear. By identifying the pattern of gene expression for muscle cells, skin cells or any type of cells, including cancers, scientists can create a genetic fingerprint of that cell type. Genetic fingerprints can uniquely differentiate one cell type from other cell types.
To create these fingerprints, scientists use a device called a gene expression microarray, or, more commonly, a gene chip. The chip is simply a glass slide on which thousands of known gene samples have been printed in tiny spots. Cells to be tested are then manipulated in such a way that genes expressed in the cell will match up with the known gene samples, like two pieces of Velcro attaching to each other. The cellular genes are treated in such a way that they literally light up the gene dots on the chip. The luminescent pattern is then measured with a special type of microscope and the results fed into a computer for analysis.
The NHGRI team applied this technique to the childhood cancers to see whether it could simultaneously test for several different types of tumors at the same time. Researchers first began using microarrays to classify cancer in 1998, including work by first author Javed Khan, now a principal investigator in the Pediatric Branch of the National Cancer Institute, who showed that the technology could distinguish between muscle cells and other cancers. "We hypothesized that the genes turned on in a certain cancer were unique, but were not sure if these genes were so disrupted in cancer that it would be impossible to distinguish one type from another," Khan says. Recently, other NHGRI scientists reported using the technique to tell the difference between certain inherited types of breast cancer.
In this study, for the first time, a gene expression microarray was used to tell the difference between four unique types of cancer: neuroblastoma, rhabdomyosarcoma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma (Burkitt's lymphoma) and Ewing's sarcoma. As a group, these cancers are referred to as the small, round blue cell tumors of childhood because of the way they look under the microscope.
"This is the first time anyone has taken several different kinds of cancer, and used their gene expression patterns for diagnostic classification," Meltzer says. The data form a complex pattern of signal intensities that represent the fingerprint for each tumor type.
As the number of genes discovered by the Human Genome Project (HGP) has grown, the amount of information generated by these tests has become huge, and newer analytical methods were required. The researchers turned to the field of artificial intelligence, specifically a computer system called artificial neural networks. The FBI already used artificial neural networks to analyze fingerprints at a crime scene; the scientists decided to try using the same technology to analyze a genetic fingerprint from cancer.
Diagnostic Neural Network
"Artificial neural networks are built to mimic how neurons function in the brain," says Markus Ringnér, a theoretical physicist from Lund University in Lund Sweden, and now a post-doctoral researcher at NHGRI. "It's all software, but the basic ideas is that it can be trained to recognize patterns."
The scientists chose this system because it helps solve a difficult problem. "The challenge is to take the large amount of information on thousands of genes tested by the microarray," Meltzer says, "and use the information to make an accurate diagnosis."
To teach the neural network to recognize the genetic pattern produced by each type of cancer, Ringnér, together with Carsten Peterson, a senior colleague at Lund University, took the patterns from four correctly diagnosed childhood cancers and fed them into an ordinary personal computer that runs the neural network software. The computer performed a mathematical calculation that systemically identified the pattern produced by each cancer type. Each time the mass of data was run through the computer, the neural network became more effective in identifying that particular type of cancer. In other words, the neural network was learning to recognize the pattern.
After 63 training runs in which the computer was taught to recognize the genetic patterns produced by the four tumor types, Khan sent to Ringnér and Peterson in Lund, images from a set of 25 unknown tissue samples to run through the system. Ringnér didn't know which kinds of cancers the samples represented, so it was a blinded experiment. But Khan threw his Swedish colleagues a curveball: five of the unknown samples were not any of these childhood cancers, but rather were samples of normal muscle, and other tumor types: undifferentiated sarcoma, osteosarcoma and prostate cancer.
"I was worried about the ones I could not classify," Ringnér admits. "I had to make a decision about whether to shoehorn them into a category, or say I couldn't classify them. I admitted for these five, I could not tell, and that was the right answer." The neural network correctly identified what belonged in the childhood cancer category, and what did not belong, based on the genetic pattern.
Artificial neural networks have been working their way into clinical medicine to analyze test results where complex pattern recognition is required, such as x-ray images, PAP smears and electrocardiogram results, some of which was pioneered by the Lund group. "This is the first time," Meltzer says, "that a neural network has been applied to this kind of analysis."
Future Research
While it may take some time for this technique to reach clinical practice, it already has quickly pointed toward additional research. While the research team started with more than 6,000 genes, the artificial neural network analysis narrowed that number down to a mere 93 unique genes needed to differentiate the four tumor types. And of those, 41 were new genes that might provide important insights into the biology of these cancers and offer possible targets for new treatments.
"This technology will ultimately define the complete catalog of all the genes involved in cancer," Meltzer says. "The only remaining task will be deciding which of the genes, and their products, will make the best targets for new drug treatments."
Meanwhile, work has begun to use gene chip analyses to associate gene expression patterns with the clinical outcome. It's well known that the cancers of some patients progresses faster than the cancers of others, even when the patients share the same diagnosis and stage. It now appears that genetic patterns can be used to predict how aggressive an individual's cancer will be.
The power of this method, Khan says, "is not only that we can diagnose these cancers, but in the very near future, we will be able to predict which patients will respond to treatment and which will not, and will therefore need stronger treatment."
Moreover, Meltzer says, "With this technology, we will be able to treat patients according to the specific genes that are expressed in their tumor," a more customized therapy rather than the generally toxic drugs now used for anyone with a particular diagnosis.
Getting the Diagnosis Right
Even as the researchers apply gene chips and artificial neural networks to research questions, the newly developed system could prove valuable for anxious parents and family members of sick children. Because of the visual similarity of the childhood tumors used in this study, diagnostic mistakes are sometimes made. But an accurate diagnosis can be critical for the child's survival. While these tumors are physically similar, the treatments are quite different. When a patient gets the right therapy, up to 90 percent of the children with Burkitt's lymphoma recover; about half will survive Ewing's sarcoma and rhabdomyosarcoma, and up to 40 percent will recover from neuroblastoma. Without accurate diagnosis and proper treatment, few children survive.
"Defining the features of individual cancer cells - their signatures - is an area rich in scientific opportunity," says Richard Klausner, director of the National Cancer Institute. "As this study suggests, our growing knowledge of the 'molecular fingerprints' of cancer cells can and will translate into clinical benefits."
Not having an accurate diagnosis, or knowing whether a child is likely to survive, can be psychologically devastating for affected families.
"We hope," Khan says, "that we can take the guesswork out of diagnosing these children and be able to more accurately individualize treatment to increase their chance of recovery."
The Research Team
The research team includes: Javed Khan, Jun S. Wei, Markus Ringnér and Paul S. Meltzer from the Cancer Genetics Branch, Division of Intramural Research, National Human Genome Research Institute, which is a part of the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland; Carsten Peterson from the Complex Systems Division, Department of Theoretical Physics, Lund University, Lund, Sweden; Marc Ladanyi and Cristina R. Antonescu from the Department of Pathology, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, New York; Frank Westermann and Manfred Schwab from the Department of Cytogenetics, German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany; and Frank Berthold, from the Department of Pediatrics, Klinik für Kinderheilkunde der Universität zu Köln, Köln, Germany. Dr. Khan is now with the Pediatric Oncology Branch, Advanced Technology Center, National Cancer Institute, Gaithersburg, Maryland, and Markus Ringnér is a post-doctoral researcher from Lund University working at NHGRI.
This research was principally supported by the Division of Intramural Research of the National Human Genome Research Institute, and also received support from the Charles & Dana Nearburg Foundation, the Swedish Research Council, the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation through the SWEGENE consortium and the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research.
The research is reported in the June, 2001, issue of Nature Medicine, Volume 7, Number 6.
Geoff Spencer
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We knew Matt Taibbi was working something, we didn't know that it was about Republican Presidential nominee, Mitt Romney.
More specifically, it's about Romney's time at Bain and how he earned his fortune— something his campaign hasn't necessarily been completely transparent about. The piece is called "Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital," and it's this month's Rolling Stone cover story.
The piece is long, and of course, written in classic Taibbi style, so it goes fast, but we pinpointed 10 points that we found shocking/damning overall.
Here we go:
Mitt Romney decries the national debt, but his career was made by running up debt on companies on their last lifeline.
"The result has been a brilliant comedy: A man makes a $250 million fortune loading up companies with debt and then extracting million-dollar fees from those same companies, in exchange for the generous service of telling them who needs to be fired in order to finance the debt payments he saddled them with in the first place."
Mitt Romney shirked military service.
"I longed in many respects to actually be in Vietnam and be representing our country there," he claimed years after the war. To a different audience, he said, "I was not planning on signing up for the military. It was not my desire to go off and serve in Vietnam."
Mitt Romney's Bain was using the same trick as two-bit mobsters — the "bust out."
"Fans of mob movies will recognize what's known as the 'bust-out,' in which a gangster takes over a restaurant or sporting goods store and then monetizes his investment by running up giant debts on the company's credit line. (Think Paulie buying all those cases of Cutty Sark inGoodfellas.) When the note comes due, the mobster simply torches the restaurant and collects the insurance money. Reduced to their most basic level, the leveraged buyouts engineered by Romney followed exactly the same business model. "It's the bust-out," one Wall Street trader says with a laugh. 'That's all it is.'"
Mitt Romney coldly rebuffed a worker who wrote him a hand-written letter asking Romney to save his job.
"Romney has always kept his distance from the real-life consequences of his profiteering. At one point during Bain's looting of Ampad, a worker named Randy Johnson sent a handwritten letter to Romney, asking him to intervene to save an Ampad factory in Marion, Indiana. In a sterling demonstration of manliness and willingness to face a difficult conversation, Romney, who had just lost his race for the Senate in Massachusetts, wrote Johnson that he was 'sorry,' but his lawyers had advised him not to get involved."
He loves to manipulate people, even his own employees.
"Over the years, colleagues would anonymously whisper stories about Mitt the Boss to the press, describing him as cunning, manipulative and a little bit nuts, with 'an ability to identify people's insecurities and exploit them for his own benefit.' One former Bain employee said that Romney would screw around with bonuses in small amounts, just to mess with people: He would give $3 million to one, $3.1 million to another and $2.9 million to a third, just to keep those below him on edge."
Mitt Romney's Bain still got paid, even when its acquisitions were floundering.
"In a typical private-equity fragging, Bain put up a mere $18 million to acquire KB Toys and got big banks to finance the remaining $302 million it needed. Less than a year and a half after the purchase, Bain decided to give itself a gift known as a 'dividend recapitalization.' The firm induced KB Toys to redeem $121 million in stock and take out more than $66 million in bank loans - $83 million of which went directly into the pockets of Bain's owners and investors, including Romney. 'The dividend recap is like borrowing someone else's credit card to take out a cash advance, and then leaving them to pay it off,' says Heather Slavkin Corzo, who monitors private equity takeovers as the senior legal policy adviser for the AFL-CIO."
Mitt Romney's Bain financed one of its first takeover deals, with department stores Beals Brothers and Palais Royale with money dirtied by Michael Milken.
"...one of Romney's first LBO deals, and one of his most profitable, involved Mike Milken himself. Bain put down $10 million in cash, got $300 million in financing from Milken and bought a pair of department-store chains, Bealls Brothers and Palais Royal. In what should by now be a familiar outcome, the two chains - which Bain merged into a single outfit called Stage Stores - filed for bankruptcy protection in 2000 under the weight of more than $444 million in debt...But here's the interesting twist: Romney made the Bealls-Palais deal just as the federal government was launching charges of massive manipulation and insider trading against Milken and his firm, Drexel Burnham Lambert. After what must have been a lengthy and agonizing period of moral soul-searching, however, Romney decided not to kill the deal, despite its shady financing. 'We did not say, 'Oh, my goodness, Drexel has been accused of something, not been found guilty,' ' Romney told reporters years after the deal. 'Should we basically stop the transaction and blow the whole thing up?'"
Mitt Romney's Bain sidled Dunkin' Donuts with crushing debt.
"In 2010, a year after the last round of Hertz layoffs, Carlyle teamed up with Bain to take $500 million out of another takeover target: the parent company of Dunkin' Donuts and Baskin-Robbins. Dunkin' had to take out a $1.25 billion loan to pay a dividend to its new private equity owners. So think of this the next time you go to Dunkin' Donuts for a cup of coffee: A small cup of joe costs about $1.69 in most outlets, which means that for years to come, Dunkin' Donuts will have to sell about 2,011,834 small coffees every month - about $3.4 million - just to meet the interest payments on the loan it took out to pay Bain and Carlyle their little one-time dividend. "
Mitt Romney's fortune was gained by gaming the government.
"Which brings us to another aspect of Romney's business career that has largely been hidden from voters: His personal fortune would not have been possible without the direct assistance of the U.S. government. The taxpayer-funded subsidies that Romney has received go well beyond the humdrum, backdoor, welfare-sucking that all supposedly self-made free marketeers inevitably indulge in."
Mitt Romney ran a super wasteful Olympics.
"Not that Romney hasn't done just fine at milking the government when it suits his purposes, the most obvious instance being the incredible $1.5 billion in aid he siphoned out of the U.S. Treasury as head of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake - a sum greater than all federal spending for the previous seven U.S. Olympic games combined. Romney, the supposed fiscal conservative, blew through an average of $625,000 in taxpayer money per athlete - an astounding increase of 5,582 percent over the $11,000 average at the 1984 games in Los Angeles."


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Malawi, landlocked country in southeastern Africa. A country endowed with spectacular highlands and extensive lakes, it occupies a narrow, curving strip of land along the East African Rift Valley. Lake Nyasa, known in Malawi as Lake Malawi, accounts for more than one-fifth of the country's total area.
Most of Malawi's population engages in cash-crop and subsistence agriculture. The country's exports consist of the produce of both small landholdings and large tea and tobacco estates. Malawi has received a significant amount of foreign capital in the form of development aid, which has contributed greatly toward the exploitation of its natural resources and has allowed Malawi to at times produce a food surplus. Nevertheless, its population has suffered from chronic malnutrition, high rates of infant mortality, and grinding poverty—a paradox often attributed to an agricultural system that has favoured large estate owners.
Most Malawians reside in rural locations. The country's few large urban centres include Lilongwe, the capital, and Blantyre, the seat of the country's judiciary.
Malawi stretches about 520 miles (840 km) from north to south and varies in width from 5 to 100 miles (10 to 160 km). It is bordered by Tanzania to the north, Lake Malawi to the east, Mozambique to the east and south, and Zambia to the west.
While Malawi's landscape is highly varied, four basic regions can be identified: the East African (or Great) Rift Valley, the central plateaus, the highlands, and the isolated mountains. The East African Rift Valley—by far the dominant feature of the country—is a massive troughlike depression running through the country from north to south and containing Lake Malawi (north and central) and the Shire River valley (south). The lake's littoral, situated along the western and southern shores and ranging from 5 to 15 miles (8 to 24 km) in width, covers almost one-tenth of the total land area and is dotted with swamps and lagoons. The Shire valley stretches some 250 miles (400 km) from the southern end of Lake Malawi at Mangochi to Nsanje at the Mozambique border and contains Lake Malombe at its northern end. The plateaus of central Malawi rise to elevations of 2,500 to 4,500 feet (760 to 1,370 metres) and lie just west of the Lake Malawi littoral; the plateaus cover about three-fourths of the total land area. The highland areas are mainly isolated tracts that rise as much as 8,000 feet (2,400 metres) above sea level. They comprise the Nyika, Viphya, and Dowa highlands and Dedza-Kirk mountain range in the north and west and the Shire Highlands in the south. The isolated massifs of Mulanje (which reach 9,849 feet [3,002 metres], the highest point in the country) and Zomba (which reach 6,846 feet [2,087 metres]) represent the fourth physical region. Surmounting the Shire Highlands, they descend rapidly in the east to the Lake Chilwa–Phalombe plain.
Drainage and soils
The major drainage system is that of Lake Malawi, which covers some 11,430 square miles (29,600 square km) and extends beyond the Malawi border. It is fed by the North and South Rukuru, Dwangwa, Lilongwe, and Bua rivers. The Shire River, the lake's only outlet, flows through adjacent Lake Malombe and receives several tributaries before joining the Zambezi River in Mozambique. A second drainage system is that of Lake Chilwa, the rivers of which flow from the Lake Chilwa–Phalombe plain and the adjacent highlands.
Soils, distributed in a complex pattern, are composed primarily of red earths, with brown soils and yellow gritty clays on the plateaus. Alluvial soils occur on the lakeshores and in the Shire valley, while other soil types include hydromorphic (excessively moist) soils, black clays, and sandy dunes on the lakeshore.
There are two main seasons—the dry season, which lasts from May to October, and the wet season, which lasts from November to April. Temperatures vary seasonally, and they tend to decrease on average with increasing elevation. Nsanje, in the Shire River valley, has a mean July temperature in the high 60s F (low 20s C) and an October mean in the mid-80s F (high 20s C), while Dedza, which lies at an elevation of more than 5,000 feet (1,500 metres), has a July mean in the high 50s F (mid-10s C) and an October mean in the high 60s F (low 20s C). On the Nyika Plateau and on the upper levels of the Mulanje massif, frosts are not uncommon in July. Annual precipitation levels are highest over parts of the northern highlands and on the Sapitwa peak of the Mulanje massif, where they are about 90 inches (2,300 mm); they are lowest in the lower Shire valley, where they range from 25 to 35 inches (650 to 900 mm).
Plant and animal life
The natural vegetation pattern reflects the country's diversity in relief, soils, and climate. Savanna (grassy parkland) occurs in the dry lowland areas. Miombo woodlands—sparse, open deciduous woodland characteristic of dry parts of eastern Africa—are an important habitat, particularly for the country's large mammal populations. Woodlands with species of acacia trees cover isolated, more fertile plateau sites and river margins. Grass-covered broad depressions, called madambo (singular: dambo), dot the plateaus. Grasslands and evergreen forests are found in conjunction on the highlands and on the Mulanje and Zomba massifs.
However, Malawi's natural vegetation has been altered significantly by human activities. Swamp vegetation has given way to agricultural species as swamps have been drained and cultivated. Much of the original woodland has been cleared, and, at the same time, forests of softwoods have been planted in the highland areas. High population density and intensive cultivation of the Shire Highlands have also hindered natural succession there, while wells have been sunk and rivers dammed to irrigate the dry grasslands for agriculture.
Game animals abound only in the game reserves, where antelope, buffalo, elephants, leopards, lions, rhinoceroses, and zebras occur; hippopotamuses live in Lake Malawi. The lakes and rivers of Malawi contain hundreds of species and numerous families of fish. Lake Malawi is particularly renowned for its remarkable biodiversity—an enormous range of fish species inhabit the lake, most of them endemic—and its southern region, as part of Lake Malawi National Park, was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1984. The most common and commercially significant fish found in Malawi include the endemic tilapia, or chambo (nest-building freshwater fish); catfish, or mlamba; and minnows, or matemba.
The Ministry of Mines, Natural Resources, and Environmental Affairs is charged with the responsibility of ensuring the protection of Malawi's environment, mainly through the implementation of the Environmental Management Act of 1996. Among the major concerns are efficient resource utilization, land degradation, deforestation, conservation of marine life, biodiversity, climate change, ozone layer protection, sewage, the pollution of water from agriculture runoff such as fertilizers, endangered species, and industrial pollution. The majority of pollution comes from greenhouse gas emissions, mostly from the usage of coal and charcoal, natural gas, and petroleum.
Ethnic groups and languages
Ten major ethnic groups are historically associated with modern Malawi—the Chewa, Nyanja, Lomwe, Yao, Tumbuka, Sena, Tonga, Ngoni, Ngonde, and the Lambya/Nyiha. All the African languages spoken are Bantu languages. From 1968 to 1994, Chewa was the only national language; it is now one of the numerous languages used in print and broadcast media and is spoken by a majority of the population. In 1996 government policy indicated that education in grades 1–4 would be provided in the students' mother tongue or vernacular language; from grade 5, the medium of instruction would be English, which, though understood by less than one-fifth of the population at independence in 1964, continues to be used widely in business, administrative and judicial matters, higher education, and elsewhere. Other major languages include Lomwe, Yao, and Tumbuka.
Some three-fourths of the population is Christian, of which the majority are members of independent Christian or various Protestant denominations and the remainder are Roman Catholic. Muslims constitute about one-fifth of the population. Traditional beliefs are adhered to by a small proportion of the population.
Settlement patterns
Although Malawi is one of the most densely populated countries in southern Africa, it is also one of the least urbanized, with more than four-fifths of its people living in rural locations. It is urbanizing at a very rapid rate, however, with movement toward urban areas taking place at a pace far swifter than either the African or global averages.
A rural village—called a mudzi—is usually small. Organized around the extended family, it is limited by the amount of water and arable land available in the vicinity. On the plateaus, which support the bulk of the population, the most common village sites are at the margins of madambo, which are usually contiguous with streams or rivers and are characterized by woodland, grassland, and fertile alluvial soils. In highland areas, scattered villages are located near perennial mountain streams and pockets of arable land. The larger settlements of the Lake Malawi littoral originated in the 19th century as collection points for slaves and later developed as lakeside ports. Improvements in communications and the sinking of wells in semiarid areas permitted the establishment of new settlements in previously uninhabited areas. Architecture is changing: the traditional round, mud-walled, grass-roofed hut is giving way to rectangular brick buildings with corrugated iron roofs.
Urban development began in the colonial era with the arrival of missionaries, traders, and administrators and was further stimulated by the construction of the railway. Important urban centres include Blantyre, Zomba, Mzuzu, and Lilongwe. Although some district centres and missionary stations have an urban appearance, they are closely associated with the rural settlements surrounding them. Blantyre, Malawi's industrial and commercial centre, is situated in a depression on the Shire Highlands at an elevation of about 3,400 feet (1,040 metres). Zomba, the capital of Malawi until 1975 and now the seat of the University of Malawi, lies at the foot of Zomba Mountain. Lilongwe, Malawi's capital since 1975 and a centre of agricultural industry, is located in the central region. Mzuzu, long associated with the wood industry, is situated farther north on the Viphya highlands.
Demographic trends
The population is growing at a rate above average for sub-Saharan Africa. The birth rate is among the highest on the continent, but the death rate is also high, and life expectancy for both genders is significantly lower than the average for sub-Saharan Africa, primarily because of the incidence of HIV/AIDS. Nearly half the population is younger than age 15, and about three-fourths of the population is 29 or younger. A modest reduction in the country's high fertility rates in the late 20th and early 21st centuries may be attributed in part to government policy aimed at improving female literacy and promoting more-effective contraceptive methods. The Ministry of Gender, Child Welfare, and Community Services, guided by the National Gender Policy, has played a major role in this effort. (For background on the status of women in Malawian society, see Sidebar: Gender Issues in Malawi.)
The backbone of the Malawi economy is agriculture, which in the 2000s employed more than four-fifths of the working population and accounted for about one-third of the gross domestic product (GDP) and the vast majority of export earnings. Tobacco, the most important export crop, accounts for a major portion of the country's trade income; tea, sugar, and cotton—all mostly grown in the estate sector—are also important.
Since the mid-1960s the government has sought to strengthen the agricultural sector by encouraging integrated land use, higher crop yields, and irrigation schemes. In pursuit of these goals, several large-scale integrated rural-development programs, covering one-fifth of the country's land area, have been put into operation. These projects include extension services; credit and marketing facilities; physical infrastructure such as roads, buildings, and water supplies; health centres; afforestation units; and crop storage and protection facilities. Outside the main program areas, advisory services and educational programs are available. However, these schemes have brought little benefit to the smallholders, real growth instead being largely concentrated within the estate sector, which has been favoured by the government. Many smallholders have remained poor and indebted, and smallholder production has generally not increased enough to meet the demands of the rapidly growing population.
Agriculture, forestry, and fishing
Agricultural products constitute a large proportion of Malawian export revenue; the most important of these are tobacco, sugar, tea, and cotton. Tea is grown on plantations on the Shire Highlands; coffee is produced mostly in the Shire Highlands and in northern Malawi, especially in the northeastern Viphya Mountains, and near Rumphi and Misuku. Tobacco, by far the most important export, is raised largely on the central plateau on large estates and by smallholders in various parts of the country. With the rise of worldwide campaigns against smoking, however, farmers have been increasingly encouraged to diversify so as not to be wholly dependent on tobacco.
Corn (maize) is the principal food crop and is typically grown with beans, peas, and peanuts (groundnuts) throughout the country by virtually all smallholders. Other important food crops include cassava (manioc), bananas, pulses, sweet potatoes, and rice; chickens, cattle, pigs, sheep, and goats are raised.
Although the major share of commercial crop production is on large estates, most farms are small, with the majority less than 2.5 acres (1 hectare) in size. Until the early 1990s, smallholder cash crops were purchased and marketed solely by the Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation (ADMARC), which also dominated the fertilizer business. Because ADMARC kept a high proportion of the profits, this arrangement was to the disadvantage of smallholders, whose conditions improved little. In 1987 the ADMARC monopoly over smallholder produce was ended. Through schemes such as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Agricultural Sector Assistance Program, the government liberalized the production and marketing of smallholder tobacco. With greater control of their crop, growers' income from tobacco sales was significantly increased.
Beginning in the early 1970s, the government sponsored the development of several large timber and pulpwood plantations aimed at making the country self-sufficient in construction grades of timber; pine and eucalyptus have also been planted extensively in the northern Viphya Mountains to supply a large pulp and paper project in the region. In spite of this, forest plantations account for only a fraction of the total Malawian forest cover.
The rapid rate at which wooded areas have been disappearing in Malawi is a source of grave concern. Between the early 1970s and the early '90s, more than half of Malawi's forested area was depleted, and, although the deforestation rate modestly decreased in the following decade, it nevertheless remained extremely high by relative standards. The use of wood as fuel is one major factor in the depletion of the country's woodlands. In rural areas, wood has always been used to provide fuel for cooking, and, as the population grows, more of it is used; in the urban areas, charcoal is the main source of energy, adding more pressure on woodlands. The heavily dominant tobacco industry has resulted in further denudation of forests, as trees have been regularly felled both as timber for the construction of sheds to dry or cure the crop and to fuel the curing process itself. Another source of the problem is brick making, which relies heavily on firewood to fire the kilns. The reduction of casual labour and the number of civil service positions at the behest of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank has meant forest reserves no longer have personnel to guard them from abuse.
Fishing is practiced for subsistence as well as by artisanal and commercial fisheries. The lakes and rivers of Malawi provide a diverse catch. Lake Malawi in particular is a rich source of fish within easy access for most of the country's population and accounts for some three-fourths of the country's catch. Other important sources include Lakes Chilwa, Malombe, and Chiuta and the Shire River. Although aquaculture is practiced, much of the country's total catch is obtained by capture, with artisanal fisheries accounting for the greatest proportion of that take. Some fish are exported to neighbouring countries. Since the late 20th century the fish population has dwindled because of overfishing, the use of nets with a mesh size smaller than those recommended by fisheries experts, and the disregard of the ban on fishing in the breeding season. In response, natural resources committees have been formed in lakeshore communities to participate in the management of fisheries and the enforcement of fishing regulations.
Resources and power
Most of Malawi's mineral deposits are neither extensive enough for commercial exploitation nor easily accessible. Some small-scale mining of coal takes place at Livingstonia and Rumphi in the north, and quarrying of limestone for cement production is also an important activity. Precious and semiprecious stones are mined on a small scale; these include agate, aquamarine, amethyst, garnet, corundum, rubies, and sapphires. Exploration and assessment studies continue on other minerals such as apatite, located south of Lake Chilwa; bauxite, on the Mulanje massif; kyanite, on the Dedza-Kirk range; vermiculite, south of Lake Malawi near Ntcheu; and rare-earth minerals, at Mount Kangankunde northwest of Zomba. Deposits of asbestos, uranium, and graphite are known to exist as well. Also under investigation are base metals, gold rutile, and ilmenite sands.
Arable land is considered one of Malawi's most significant natural resources, although it is strained by both the country's high population density and its agriculture-based economy. Forests and woodlands cover about one-third of the country, and almost 4,000 square miles (10,300 square km) are in state-controlled forest reserves.
Malawi's water resources are plentiful, although some rural areas are inadequately supplied. Treated water for the major cities of Blantyre and Lilongwe is supplied by the Walker's Ferry Scheme and the Kamuzu Dam, respectively. Most of the rivers are seasonal, but a few large ones, particularly the Shire River along its middle course, have considerable potential for irrigation and electricity generation. Power demands are met by hydroelectric schemes, including those at Nkula Falls, Kapichira, and Tedzani Falls, and by diesel plants. Major consumers of electric power include the industrial areas of the south near Blantyre, where electricity consumption has steadily multiplied, and the industrial area of Lilongwe; the vast sugar estates at Nchalo and Dwangwa also consume much electricity. By contrast, only a fraction of Malawians themselves have electrical access, and almost all domestic energy needs are met by firewood.
Power availability has been hindered by different factors. The drying of rivers due to deforestation near their sources and along their courses has resulted in a reduction of water flow into Lake Malawi, which in turn has adversely affected the currents of the Shire, on which the Nkula and Tedzani hydroelectric plants are located. The devaluation of the Malawi kwacha has also had some effect on electricity supply in the country, as spare parts can be expensive and difficult to obtain. These factors have at times led to load shedding of electricity and therefore an irregular availability of power.
Malawi's small industrial sector is geared largely to processing agricultural products and to the manufacture of import substitutes (goods produced locally, often from imported materials, meant to replace products that were once purchased from abroad); construction and mining (mainly lime for cement and some coal) are also pursued. Although only a fraction of the workforce is employed in the sector, it accounts for some one-fifth of the Malawian GDP.
Development of the country's industrial base was accorded high priority at independence, and Malawi now satisfies much of its own domestic need for products such as cotton textiles, canned foodstuffs, beer, edible oils, soaps, sugar, radios, hoes, and shoes. However, the cost of machinery parts, equipment, and other imports needed for use in industry has made some of the locally manufactured items particularly expensive. Furthermore, an easing of import restrictions has led to an influx of cheaper goods, which have effectively competed against local products. The textile industry has particularly suffered from imported secondhand clothes, which many Malawians find more affordable than those produced domestically.
The Reserve Bank of Malawi is the central bank of the country; it issues the national currency, the Malawian kwacha, and advises the government on monetary policy. In addition, there are a number of commercial banks, the majority of which are centred in Blantyre. There are several insurance companies operating in the country, the largest of which, NICO Holdings Limited (formerly the National Insurance Company), was privatized in 1996.
The Malawi Stock Exchange (MSE), established in 1994 with aid from the IMF, the World Bank, and a development bank with links to the Dutch government, opened its doors to traders in 1996. A member of the African Securities Exchange Association, the MSE has a diverse supervising committee, including government and central bank representatives.
More than two-fifths of Malawi's foreign-exchange earnings are derived from exports of tobacco, of which Malawi is a leading producer. Sugar, tea, and cotton are also major exports. Principal imports include chemicals and chemical products, petroleum products, consumer goods, machinery and transport equipment, and food. South Africa is Malawi's most significant trading partner. Other trading partners include China, the United States, India, and neighbouring African countries.
Services contribute substantially to Malawi's GDP, and this sector grew consistently in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Malawi's natural wealth—including its parks and reserves, biodiversity, and pleasant climate—is considered a source of great tourism potential. A variety of sites have been marked by the government for development as ecotourism destinations.
Labour and taxation
More than four-fifths of labourers work in the agricultural sector. All Malawians except those employed in the army or police force are permitted to join unions. Trade unions and employer associations are connected with enterprises such as the tea, sugar, and tobacco plantations and the building and construction industry. Since the early 1990s, trade unions have increased in number, and their umbrella organization, the Malawi Congress of Trade Unions, has become an effective voice for workers in the country. The Ministry of Labour plays a significant role in maintaining good relations between employers and employees.
Tax revenue is derived from multiple sources: employees pay an income tax, local companies pay taxes at a fixed rate of chargeable income, and companies incorporated outside Malawi pay an additional tax. In the execution of monetary policy, the IMF and the World Bank have been working with the Malawi government to ensure fiscal discipline, including a more efficient way of collecting tax revenue; the Malawi Revenue Authority was established to oversee the latter.
Transportation and telecommunications
Malawi has road connections to Lusaka, Zambia, by way of Mchinji and Chipata, Zambia; to Johannesburg, South Africa, by way of Mwanza and Tete, Mozambique, and Harare, Zimbabwe; and to several points on the Mozambique border. The backbone of the road system is represented by a road running from Blantyre in the south to Lilongwe in the centre and through to Mzuzu in the north, where it joins a lakeshore road that ran roughly parallel to it until that point. From Mzuzu the road continues on to Karonga and crosses the Songwe River into Tanzania, where it connects with the highway to Dar es Salaam. During the Mozambican civil war, the Dar es Salaam–Karonga route was used to transport cargo, especially oil, which was transferred to lake barges at Chilumba and then shipped south to Chipoka and Monkey Bay. The feeder roads, most of which are in the rural areas, are not as developed as the main highways. Almost half of all roadways in the country are paved.
Of Malawi's two railway links to the sea, the first stretches from Lilongwe eastward to Salima on the Lake Malawi shore and southward through Blantyre to the port of Beira on the Mozambique coast; an extension from Lilongwe to Mchinji, on the Zambia border, was completed in 1980. The second railroad joins the Salima-Blantyre line at Nkaya Junction to the south of Balaka and travels due east to link with the Mozambique Railways system at Cuamba, Mozambique, whence it continues to the port of Nacala. Increased guerrilla activity in Mozambique after 1981, including attacks on these rail lines, forced Malawi to seek alternative, much longer routes to the sea, first through South Africa and then through Tanzania, adding substantially to its freight transport costs. With the end of the civil war in Mozambique in the early 1990s, traffic through that country slowly resumed as rehabilitation of the infrastructure was undertaken.
Of the rivers, only the Shire is partially navigable, all others being broken by rapids and cataracts. Lake Malawi has long been used as a means of inexpensive transportation. A passenger and cargo service that operates on the lake is linked to the Chipoka railway junction about 17 miles (27 km) south of Salima. The main ports on the lake include Monkey Bay, Nkhotakota, Nkhata Bay, Likoma Island, Chilumba, and Karonga.
Air Malawi, the national airline, provides foreign and domestic service. There are several airports in the country, including the primary international airport at Lilongwe and the Chileka airport, situated just north of Blantyre.
The domestic telephone system consists mostly of landlines and microwave radio links and radio communication stations. For international linkages, satellite earth stations are used. Within Malawi there is a serious shortage of landlines, and it is difficult to maintain the infrastructure; both issues are exacerbated by the theft of cables, and efforts to bring information technology to the more remote parts of the country have been hindered. Although mobile cellular telephone use is on the increase, service is generally limited to urban areas.
Learn More in these related Britannica articles:
East African lakesMalawi and Mozambique have territorial waters on Lake Nyasa, and since its independence Tanzania has also advanced claims to its territorial waters because it also occupies a part of the lakeshore.…
providence: Qualities of the divinityIn northern Malawi, death in later life is usually ascribed to the will of the ancestors, but a miscarriage or the death of a very young child is not considered to be their work because such an act would be in contradiction to their benevolent and helpful…
flag of Malawi…British territory of Nyasaland, renamed Malawi at independence, was granted a coat of arms, which replaced a flag badge of earlier British colonial origin. The new design showed a leopard and a lion with a shield between them. On the shield was portrayed a stylized river, a lion, and a…
Gender Issues in MalawiIn Malawi, the male-female ratio in schools, universities, and higher positions in public service and industry generally favours the male gender. In the past, parents assumed that the destiny of daughters was to get married, have children, and serve their husbands and society. Although such…
Africa, the second largest continent (after Asia), covering about one-fifth of the total land surface of Earth. The continent is bounded on the west by the Atlantic Ocean, on the north by the Mediterranean Sea, on the east by the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, and on the south…
More About Malawi6 references found in Britannica articles
Assorted References
- flag history
- population and demography
- Providence beliefs
- Gender issues in Malawi
physical geography
- lakes


text:
Geoff's Southern Exposure Studio
Like this entry? Favorite it below!
- Name:
- Geoff
- Location:
- Vancouver Canada
- Square Feet:
- 390
- Division:
- International
- What I Love About My Small Home:
- The light! I face south, and have windows across the length of the apartment. The sun fills the whole place. Having a decent sized patio is also a blessing. In the summer, it is a fantastic place for friends to hang out and enjoy cold drinks, and the ocassional Canucks playoff game.
- Biggest Challenge of Living in a Small Space:
- The biggest challenge is definitely the space. in 390sqft, where almost half is taken up by a bathroom/kitchen/entryway, there isn't a whole lot of space left for furniture. I had to axe a proper dining space in favour of a mounted computer desk (in what was an awkward corner). I also can't afford to keep clutter in a space this small, so I keep only what makes me happy.


text:
Unexpectedly running tests outside container - at randomstardestroyer May 4, 2012 6:26 PM
Good time of day to you!
I have a strange situation -- tests sometimes run in-container and sometimes outside container, what seems to be randomly. The app has an initializer; when the test is run in-container, the initializer runs, then the test, everything succeeds, and junit shows green bar. Also, stack trace (if I induce an exception to get a stack trace) shows the expected container code and the servlet code being run:
at org.jboss.arquillian.protocol.servlet.runner.ServletTestRunner.doGet(ServletTestRunner.java:90)
at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:575)
However, that only happens about 60% of the time. The other time the test seems to be run *outside* the container, the initializer fails miserably (because it can't access JNDI and therefore the DB where it needs its configuration from) and junit shows red bar; the stack trace shows the test is NOT run inside the container.
at org.jboss.arquillian.junit.Arquillian$6$1.invoke(Arquillian.java:270)
at org.jboss.arquillian.junit.standalone.LocalTestMethodExecutor.execute(LocalTestMethodExecutor.java:53)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
Yet, the @Deployment stuff runs, I see the application being deployed to and the initializer running in my container logs, then the application being undeployed. But the test does not run in those cases. The whole thing feels like there is a race condition somewhere.
I'm attaching the test case, the stack trace from a "failed" (outside-container) run, and an induced stack trace from a successful in-container run, plus my arq.xml.
I'm running:
Websphere AS 8 (with custom WAS8 remote container adopted from remote_8 code that was posted about 6 months ago); All the Final.1.0.0 stuff, but no Maven; IBM RSA 8 (based on Eclipse); and junit 4.
Can anyone answer? Or should I provide more information? Thanks in advance!
arquillian.xml 927 bytes
failed.stacktrace.txt.zip 1.4 KB


text:
Type: Enhancement
Status: Closed
Priority: Major
Resolution: Completed
Affects Version/s: None
Fix Version/s: None
Component/s: None
Patch:Code and Test
Reader conditionals
See: http://dev.clojure.org/display/design/Reader+Conditionals
CLJ-1424 is the accompanying patch for Clojure.
Patch: trdr-14-5.patch
I looked over the patch and it mostly looks good, a few comments:
- does *suppress-read* need to be exposed?
- can you add a docstring for *features*?
- should *suppress-read* affect read-eval?
That said, has it been decided that this is how feature expressions will be implemented in 1.7?
If not, I'm going to wait to merge this in until a decision is taken, this is a major design point and I don't want to diverge from the official clojure take on this even for a single release: people might start using it, especially since t.r is now the default reader for cljs.
- does *suppress-read* need to be exposed?
- can you add a docstring for *features*?
- should *suppress-read* affect read-eval?
Yes thank you for not merging. This is WIP and just one approach for feature expressions. There seem to be at least two couple diverging approaches emerging from the various discussion (Brandon Bloom's idea of read-time splicing being the other.) I would definitely not merge until the community and Rich weighs in.
In any case having all Clojure platforms be ready for the change is probably essential. Also backwards compatibility of feature expr code to Clojure 1.6 and below is also not trivial.
1) *suppress-read* probably doesn't need to be exposed
2) *suppress-read* should probably imply *read-eval* false. You wouldn't want read-ctor to load any classes or call any code or constructors
Updated patch to reflect clj and cljs as initial feature names.
Attached new patch trdr-14-4.diff that uses an explicit options map with a :features key to a set of features. These changes match the latest changes in clj-1424, which are patterned after a similar implementation in the Clojure edn reader.
trdr-14-5 patch is a port of the reader conditional patch at
CLJ-1424. It was no fun.
two things I'm uncomfortable with:
1) use of LinkedList. it matches the Clojure version but relying on that stateful Java class is gross.
2) the READ_EOF and READ_FINISHED definitions - it's probably better to use (Object.) and identical? than what I'm doing now.
From Nicola: return-on-value is always READ_FINISHED - can we hard-code and remove from the signature?
WIP in the reader-conditionals branch https://github.com/clojure/tools.reader/tree/reader-conditionals
The additional commits on top of 7db11b110770d7c3925194a89baa8b8a773bf431 address the concerns reported by Alex in previous comments (except the use of LinkedList) and make tools.reader use the existing ReaderConditional and TaggedLiteral when available, fallbacking to a custom version when not.
This is the same approach tools.reader uses for ExceptionInfo on clojure 1.3.0 and seems to me a better approach than using different types than clojure itself (when they are available) but I'd like some feedback on this (commit 2c3adbe4c4f0fab8087380ff0dbb1ad44c8739e1)
The additional commits also fix a couple of bugs wrt handling of eof


text:
I had a lot of hope for the Angelo Crowell signing last year, and even this year. But I guess his body is giving up. He could've been perfect in our system if healthy and at full speed.
So its Quincy Black, Geno Hayes, and Barrett Rudd. Hmm.
Is Rudd overrated? Somehow he tops 200 tackles every year, but the tackles seem to be drag downs, not stuffs. As a layman, I'd say his run stopping is mediocre at best, but pass defense top notch for the scheme. If Price and McCoy can plug the middle, he might stop a few more runs, thats left to see.
Hayes has flashed, I loved him as a 6th round risk pick, background issues that kept him from going higher. Had a year under Derrick Brooks for mentoring. i have a feeling he might stick if he keeps his nose clean (figuratively and literally)
Black? Juries out in my opinion. Flashes at times but disappears at times. he's a bit raw for a cover 2 linebacker, if this was a direct attack or in blitz situations he would possibly be great. But since he's undersized, he's pegged as cover 2.
So those are my calls. What do you guys think?


text: I'm an easy going patient person with strong passion for gaming. Next to that, I feel joy and sensation working on projects that are very community friendly, because the whole interaction just feels so great. Creating something for others to enjoy. Nothing better than that. I'm probably most capable as marketings and production person, but have been involved with engine developments, modding and game development from various aspects covering programming, scripting, writing, game design, music and level design. Game Development is fun, but not easy. But heck, who can't handle the fire, should stay away from it. :) Teamwork divides the task but multiplies the success!


text: Shea McClellin is a linebacker for the Chicago Bears. He was selected 19th overall by the Bears in the 2012 draft after playing for Boise State. McClellin ran the second-fastest 40-yard dash (4.63 seconds) among defensive ends at the NFL scouting combine. In 2013, he played in 14 games and was credited with 4 sacks and 30 tackles. After playing defensive end for two seasons with the Bears, he was being converted to linebacker. He was signed through 2016. McClellin hails from Marsing, Idaho, a town of about 1,000 in the southwest corner of the state about 35 miles from Boise.


text:
Earlier on Wednesday, Ravens coach John Harbaugh said that linebacker Terrell Suggs had been told by doctors that he could return to the field after suffering a torn biceps last Sunday.
Suggs stopped short of saying that he absolutely will play against the Redskins this weekend, but said that sitting out the rest of the season was "not an option" he's even considering. A determination about his status for Sunday's game will come down to how well his arm responds during the week.
"We kind of live by the creed, 'If you can breathe, you can play.' But we just got to check it," Suggs said, via the team's website. "We got to see how it holds up throughout the week. It will definitely be a game-time decision on Sunday. If it's a possibility I can play, then I'm going to play."
Suggs said that he's aware of the risk that he could make the injury worse by playing and that it is one he accepts if it means he's on the field. It's the second serious injury Suggs has battled this year. He tore his Achilles in the offseason and returned for the seventh game this season, quite a bit faster than anticipated.


text:
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