text:
Set in the very near future and focuses on the increasing threat of terrorism gripping the world. Teaming up once again with the original Desert Storm Delta Force - Bradley, Foley, Connors and Jones - your four men now form part of an elite anti-terrorist unit tasked with minimising the worldwide threat from active global terrorist groups. The game takes place across the world, in a number of different and hostile locations and against a merciless and corrupt enemy; this is your squad's greatest challenge to date.
Ray Livingston, Product Manager for SCi Games said; "Without giving away too much at this early stage, Conflict: Global Terror has taken all the best bits from the previous three games and added a whole lot more. We are conscious of keeping fans of the previous games happy while at the same time attracting a new audience to the Conflict brand and we're sure the result will do just that."Conflict: Global Terror will be available for PS2, Xbox and PC, and is expected in autumn 2005.


text:
This is a belated birthday gift for my brother Tom,
December 6, 1943
It was on the afternoon of December sixth,
That the arrival of Thomas Michael had been fixed.
But too far ahead of the story I am getting you see,
For I had meant to tell it just as it happened to be.
It was a cold morning, one of dark skies and light rain,
The only thing we thought important was Connery departure by train.
Momsie and Pops were going to Florida to see Ellie you know,
They also had in mind the sun so hot and the lack of cold snow.
I arrived home from work about a quarter to ten,
The reason being , it was raining again.
Betty was in the basement doing her wash in her machine so fine,
I went down to give her a hand, especially with the things that were mine.
All of a sudden she said, "Don, I don't feel so well."
I said "darling, come upstairs and sit down for a spell".
We went upstairs and decided after all
To give Doc Carey the long awaited call.
I said Betty to 4140 I must go to say good by,
Because we have many things to do and time will fly.
After telling Ma and Pa good by, and to have a nice trip,
Down Washington Blvd. I met Doc Carey and his black grip.
I said, "Doc, old boy, from your office don't stay away,
As my loving wife will be your patient today."
I then called Pauline, who was sweet to say,
That she would stay with Donna til later that day.
Betty and I then in my car started West,
To complete the doings for the things we were blessed.
After arriving at the Hospital, and starting Betty on the way,
Up and down the hall I wandered with my large chest on display.
After waiting for about an hour out there in the cold hall,
Over the loud speaker system my name they did call.
Into the delivery room I then dashed like a kid,
For I was anxious to see just how good a job we did.
Betty was happy to hear it was a boy,
But there was no holding me, overloaded with joy.
Betty looked fine, although tired and weak,
It was at this time I decided things no longer looked bleak.
I then ran to the phone and started my calls of pride.
It seems you just want all to know your son's at your side.
The first I did call was my mother, who was on the job in our home,
But it seems that there was no answer, now why should mother roam.
Dorothy then heard from me that it was a boy,
Congratulations to both of you, we shall share your joy.
Then I called Pauline, I was still bursting with pride.
I asked her to tell the others before their long ride.
Back in the room with Betty, things were peacefull and quiet.
We both just relaxed, there was no longer a riot.
After sitting there talking, we decided the name should then be,
Thomas Michael Hansen sounded plenty good to Betty and me.
It is no growing late so the door I must close,
Leaving Betty and Tommy in a sleepy repose.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Gazillion • Page 2
John Romero no longer with Slipgate Ironworks, working on social game Loot Drop
Ex-id and Ion Storm co-founder John Romero is no longer at Slipgate Ironworks, a company he helped form in 2005, and is reportedly working with business partner Tom Hall on a social network game called Loot Drop.
John Romero regrets Daikatana ad campaign, thinks a reunion with Carmack would be "awesome"
Remember when John Romero tried to make you his bitch? Yeah. He's really sorry about that.
Marvel MMO dev has "six or seven titles in production"
Marvel MMO creator Gazillion is really, really busy. It's got up to seven games in the works, in fact. "We actually have six or seven titles that are in production right now," marketing boss Paul Baldwin told Joystiq at GDC. Gazillion, founded in 2005, was announced as being the developer of Marvel MMOs for the […]
Marvel MMO not out till 2012
According to this BigDownload article, Marvel's "grown up" Gazillion MMO won't release until 2012. Apparently the date's been picked as there's a bunch of Marvel movie content turning up in the same year. Given that's the projected date, and MMOs are the least stable of all development projects, waiting for this is likely to be […]
Marvel MMOs on the way thanks to Gazillion deal
Marvel and start-up developer Gazillion have signed a ten-year deal to deliver MMOs based on Marvel characters. The first, a kid-aimed game called Super Hero Squad, will debut in 2010 as a tie-in with a Cartoon Network show. Beyond that, Gazillion will continue with its own version of a giant Marvel game, dubbed Marvel Universe, […]
Page 2
Gazillion latest
No latest news found.


text:
Study: Middle Class Poorer, Earned Less in 2000's/
Post author: Lynne Sladky, AP
For the first time since at least World War II, middle-class families finished the first decade of the 21st century poorer and with lower incomes than they had 10 years earlier.
And 85% of those surveyed say that in the 2000s, it was harder than before to maintain a middle-class lifestyle, according to a study out Wednesday by the Pew Research Center's Social and Demographic Trends project.
Median household income dropped nearly $3,500 for a three-person middle-class household, to $69,487 a year, after adjusting for inflation, the Pew study said. The median household's net worth dropped 28% to $93,150. Incomes have dropped since 2000, while wealth rose modestly early in the decade before gains were wiped out by the recession that began in 2007 and the financial crisis sparked in 2008, said Paul Taylor, a Pew executive vice president.
"That the middle class always enjoys a rising standard of living is part of America's sense of itself, and it has always been true — until now," Taylor said in an interview, describing the 2000s as a "lost decade" for the middle class. "It's been 11 years since the peak in household incomes, and that covers the early part of the decade as well."
The middle class grew smaller, poorer and more pessimistic during the decade, Pew said after analyzing both its own polling data and a raft of government and private economic reports. The results show even a weakening of Americans' traditional faith that their children will be better off than their parents, Taylor said: 43% of respondents think their children will be richer than they are, down from 51% in 2008.
In 2011, just over half of the nation (51%) was defined as middle class, having annual incomes between $39,000 and $118,000 for a three-member household, said Pew. That's down from 61% in the early 1970s. All the financial figures in Pew's report are adjusted for inflation and calculated in 2011 dollars.
More than half of the shrinkage in the middle class came from families that moved upscale, joining the households, now about 20% of the total, that earn more than twice the national median income, Pew said. About two households in five that left the middle class moved below Pew's cutoff, which is an income at least two-thirds as high as the national median.
For the first time in at least 40 years, late in the decade the total percentage of national income earned by the middle class fell behind the share earned by the upper cohort, Pew said. In 2010, upper income households claimed 46% of household income, vs. 45% for the middle class. The top tier's share has risen by half since 1980.
Who's to blame?
The biggest culprits in Pew's surveys were Congress, which was blamed "`a lot" by 62% of respondents for middle-class decline, and banks at 54%. More people placed a lot of blame on the George W. Bush administration (44%) than President Obama (34%). Only 8% said the middle class should primarily blame itself for its falling prospects.
Pew said neither the president nor Republican challenger Mitt Romney has "sealed the deal" with middle-class voters, but its respondents said Obama's policies were better for the middle class than Romney's by a 52% to 42% margin.
The numbers are consistent with other polling and with data reported by the Federal Reserve and other agencies.
By Timothy Mullaney, USA Today
The Federal Reserve said in June that the financial crisis had wiped out middle-class gains in net worth since 1992, thanks mostly to a $7 trillion post-crash decline in home equity, while wealthier households quickly recovered their lost wealth as stock markets recovered. Pew says the median household net worth for middle-income families is 2.3% higher, about $2,100, than in 1983, after taking inflation into account, while the wealth of upper-income households climbed 87% to $574,788.
"What we find in our surveys is pretty much exactly that," said Jim Clifton, chairman of theGallup Organization, which does public-opinion research for clients, including USA TODAY. "Both sides of the political aisle agree the middle class is getting hollowed out."
Clifton said unemployment, underemployment, and people who leave the labor force because of poor prospects all contribute to the middle class' distress. Combined, those three groups are nearly 20% of the U.S. labor force, he said, a figure slightly higher than estimates by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Studies by the New America Foundation and consulting firm Sentier Research have also confirmed the recent drop and a longer-term stagnation in middle-class wages, as do federal data.


text: Hi Orion, I haven't used the S2882 Tyan boards per say but many other Tyan boards. It sounds like you are having a memory problem on the 2882 and not on the 2882-D, they probably have different bios versions. You didn't mention your memory configuration but if you have an older bios and all the memory banks full with double rank memory you will probably need to lower the memory clock manually My first recommendation is check the bios. These kind of memory problems don't always show up with memtest86+ Best of luck -Don > I'm at a loss and trying to see if anyone else has had similar problems. > > We've got two pairs of identical machines: > > - 2 Tyan S2882 dual processor Opteron 244 stepping 10 > - 2 Tyan S2882-D dual processor dual core Opteron 275 stepping 2 > > We have two (relatively complicated) numerical models (RAMS and a > homegrown one) that will blow up in random locations on the 244 machines > but run fine on the 275 machines. > > By blow up it appears the calculations get corrupted in some way and the > numbers get un-physical in RAMS and the simulation exits. With the > other model we get segfaults. > > Memtest86 runs fine. No other hardware issues that I can find. > -- Dr. Donald B. Kinghorn Parallel Quantum Solutions LLC http://www.pqs-chem.com


text:
The Los Angeles Times' Andrew Tangel has a brilliant write-up (including "Die Hard" references and a Ron Paul interview) of an unusual and secretive operation underway at the New York Fed: the Treasury Department is auditing its gold reserves.
It's the first-ever audit of the Fed's bullion — previously they were only performed at Ft. Knox, West Point and the U.S. Mint in Denver.
The process involves drilling small holes into the gold to measure its purity.
"The audit, which began in January, took place 80 feet below the Fed's limestone and sandstone Italian Renaissance building in Manhattan's financial district. Visitors to the vault make their way through a steel and concrete entrance where a 90-ton door rotates open. ... "The bars were first weighed on a small electronic scale, then transferred to a table mounted with a long, thin drill used to burrow into the gold, said a person familiar with the operation who was not authorized to speak publicly. Workers were careful to collect any stray gold bits, the source said. Based on the market price of about $1,600 per troy ounce, the Treasury removed more than $110,000 worth of gold samples."
The results of the audit are expected to be announced at the end of the year.
Get the latest Gold price here.


text:
Alteration of Deep Brain Stimulation Parameters for Dystonia
|The safety and scientific validity of this study is the responsibility of the study sponsor and investigators. Listing a study does not mean it has been evaluated by the U.S. Federal Government. Read our disclaimer for details.
|ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT00971854
Recruitment Status : Unknown
Verified September 2009 by University of Oxford.
Recruitment status was: Recruiting
First Posted : September 4, 2009
Last Update Posted : October 14, 2009
- Study Details
- Tabular View
- No Results Posted
- Disclaimer
- How to Read a Study Record
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) involves placing electrodes into the brain. Through these electrodes, artificial electrical signals are chronically delivered into deep brain regions in order to alter abnormal brain activity. The artificial electrical signals are generated by a battery that is inserted under the skin of the chest. DBS is used to treat several disorders of movement, including dystonia. In dystonia, the electrodes are inserted into a brain region called the globus pallidus.
Globus pallidus stimulation can be very effective therapy for dystonia. However not all patients are equally responsive and therapeutic outcomes can be frustratingly variable. The reason for this variability is unclear. Such variability in response may need to be met by tailoring stimulation to individual patients.
Another issue with deep brain stimulation is battery life. Eventually, batteries become depleted and need to be replaced. Such battery replacements require an operation, hospital stay and the risk of introducing infection. The high electrical energy that has been used to treat dystonia means that batteries are typically replaced every year or two.
The artificial electrical signals of deep brain stimulation are delivered with three parameters; frequency (Hertz - Hz), voltage (volts) and pulse width (microseconds). It has recently been reported that lower frequency stimulation, at 60Hz rather than 130Hz, can be used effectively to treat dystonia. Such 60Hz stimulation may be more effective for some patients than others. The lower energy demands of 60Hz stimulation would also greatly improve battery life (potentially doubling battery life).
The aim of this study is to assess if 60Hz stimulation is more effective in ameliorating the dystonia of patients who have responded poorly to 130Hz pallidal stimulation. The current status of the evidence is one of clinical equipoise (uncertainty) and therefore suits a double blinded randomised trial.
|Condition or disease
|Procedure: Alteration of deep brain stimulator settings
|Not Applicable
|Study Type :
|Interventional (Clinical Trial)
|Estimated Enrollment :
|20 participants
|Intervention Model:
|Parallel Assignment
|Quadruple (Participant, Care Provider, Investigator, Outcomes Assessor)
|Primary Purpose:
|Official Title:
|Alteration of Deep Brain Stimulation Parameters for Dystonia- A Double Blinded Randomised Controlled Trial
|Study Start Date :
|September 2009
|Estimated Primary Completion Date :
|January 2010
|Estimated Study Completion Date :
|February 2010
Experimental: 60 Hz stimulation
Experimental reduced frequency pallidal stimulation
Procedure: Alteration of deep brain stimulator settings
From 130Hz to 60Hz pallidal stimulation
No Intervention: 130 Hz stimulation
Current standard pallidal stimulation setting
Procedure: Alteration of deep brain stimulator settings
From 130Hz to 60Hz pallidal stimulation
- To assess if the stimulation frequency of 60 Hz is superior to 130 Hz for patients with primary dystonia who have responded poorly to standard 130 Hz pallidal stimulation [ Time Frame: 6 months ]
- Assess any potential changes in anxiety, mood, cognition [ Time Frame: 6 months ]
Choosing to participate in a study is an important personal decision. Talk with your doctor and family members or friends about deciding to join a study. To learn more about this study, you or your doctor may contact the study research staff using the contacts provided below. For general information, Learn About Clinical Studies.
|Ages Eligible for Study:
|18 Years and older (Adult, Older Adult)
|Sexes Eligible for Study:
|Accepts Healthy Volunteers:
Inclusion Criteria:
- Primary dystonia (focal cervical or generalised dystonia) who are receiving chronic (>1 year) bilateral pallidal stimulation but have had poor therapeutic responses (< 50% improvement in relevant dystonia severity rating scale*) despite confirmation of accurate electrode position.
Able to understand study requirements - able to provide consent.
- Relevant dystonia rating scales: Cervical dystonia - severity subsection of the Toronto Western Hospital spasmodic torticollis rating scale; Generalised dystonia - severity section of the Burke Fahn Marsden rating scale.
Exclusion Criteria:
- None.
To learn more about this study, you or your doctor may contact the study research staff using the contact information provided by the sponsor.
Please refer to this study by its ClinicalTrials.gov identifier (NCT number): NCT00971854
|Contact: Wesley Thevathasan, MBBS FRACP
|Contact: Julian Woollard, MMBS BSc
|07779 654 944
|United Kingdom
|University of Oxford, Nuffield Department of Surgery
|Oxford, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom, OX3 9DU
|Contact: Wesley Thevathasan, MBBS FRACP 07748729186 email@example.com
|Contact: Julian Woollard, MBBS BSc 07779 654 944 firstname.lastname@example.com
|Sub-Investigator: Carole Joint
|Sub-Investigator: Beth Furrow
|Sub-Investigator: Julian Woollard
|Principal Investigator:
|Tipu Aziz, Professor
|University of Oxford, Nuffield Department of Surgery
|Responsible Party:
|Heather House, University of Oxford
|ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier:
|NCT00971854 History of Changes
|Other Study ID Numbers:
R&D Study - 5898
|First Posted:
|September 4, 2009 Key Record Dates
|Last Update Posted:
|October 14, 2009
|Last Verified:
|September 2009
Keywords provided by University of Oxford:
Additional relevant MeSH terms:
Dystonic Disorders
Neurologic Manifestations
Nervous System Diseases
Signs and Symptoms
Movement Disorders
Central Nervous System Diseases


text:
By MEGAN JAMES
MIDDLEBURY — With heavy snow expected later this week, the search team that since Monday has been prodding the snow-covered Middlebury College campus for signs of a missing first-year student has postponed its search until skies clear up this weekend.
But the investigation into the whereabouts of Nicholas Garza, a 19-year-old from Albuquerque, N.M., who disappeared more than a week ago, will continue unabated, according to Middlebury Police Chief Tom Hanley.
"The physical search is just a recovery operation, in the event that something befell the student," Hanley said. "The other piece is the missing person investigation. We're going to be interviewing a ton of people, primarily students and people who knew him over the next few days."
The physical search has turned up nothing since it began, and if there are any clues out there, the snow, more than a foot of which has fallen since the morning after Garza went missing, continues to cover them up.
Garza was last seen at a social gathering in Stewart Hall, a first-year dormitory on the Middlebury College campus, around 11:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 5, according to the Middlebury police. The campus was relatively empty that night since most students, including Garza's roommate and many of his friends, were gone for February break, the week between J-term and the start of the spring semester.
Garza left the party alone, presumably to return to his dorm room in Allen Hall, about a third of a mile across campus, according to reports authorities got from students who attended the gathering. But a friend grew suspicious the next day when he could not reach Garza. He alerted his Commons Residential Advisor (CRA), who then reported the matter to the college's department of public safety.
By JOHN FLOWERS
MIDDLEBURY — Local voters here on April 9 will be asked to approve a 2008-2009 Mary Hogan Elementary School budget of $5,624,785 that reflects a 2.59-percent increase in spending and restoration of an education technology position that had been cut a few years ago. If approved, the spending plan would result in an 8.4 percent property tax increase for Middlebury homeowners.
"We are excited about being able to bring this position back," Mary Hogan Elementary Principal Bonnie Bourne said of the education technologist, a person she said will work with teachers to help students access information through computers and other equipment. The person will also advise school officials on computer infrastructure and Internet access.
Bourne explained the position was squeezed out of the budget in recent years as the school board looked for ways to cut expenses in the face of declining enrollment. The school currently serves 385 students. It was only eight years ago that 540 students attended the Mary Hogan school.
MIDDLEBURY — Sixteen of the more than two dozen suspects implicated in a Dec. 28, 2007, underage drinking party that caused an estimated $10,600 in damage to the former summer home of Robert Frost in Ripton have agreed to go through a court diversion program rather than have their cases adjudicated in Addison County District Court.
Those suspects — most of them teens, many of them Middlebury Union High School students — were among two dozen people that were arraigned in Addison County District Court on Monday. Seven youths pleaded innocent to charges.
The 16 who were offered, and accepted, diversion were primarily first-time offenders cited for criminal counts of unlawful trespassing at the Homer Noble Farm in Ripton.
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text:
Welcome to the CRG Discussion Forum!Forum registration problems: Make sure you enter your email correctly and you check your spam box first. *Then* email KurtS2@gmail for help.Classified ads are not allowed on the forum.
ko-lek-tor,Somewhere in the early 70s (I think 1972) Holley carbs went from a 3 digit date to a 4 digit date. For a 4 digit date code, the first 3 characters represented the Julian date (1 through 366) and the last character represented the year of the decade. 3 digit date codes were prior to about 1972, and I believe the digits were for year, month, week.


text:
Hooked On Driving - California @ Thunderhill Raceway Park
Hooked On Driving - California
Thursday, Oct 12 — Friday, Oct 13, 2017
Thunderhill Raceway Park, Willows, CA
For event details and registration go to hookedondriving.com Hooked On Driving will put on over 120 safe, well managed events in 2017. Our priorities are 1)Safe, 2)Fun, 3)Learn. We are friendly, non-competitive, low stress and cater to Drivers willing to share the track respectfully. Coaching available. Beginner programs include a personal Coach and are welcoming and educational with a busy day on track and in the classroom. Are all track events the same? Give HOD a try and see the difference!


text:
S_s necesitaba un nuevo diseño de logotipo y lanzó un concurso de diseño en 99designs.
Un ganador ha sido elegido entre 444 diseños de 105 diseñadores freelance.
Up&coming act (genre: alternative rock / new progressive / indie) needs an engaging logo, to help with strong promotion from the outset.
Stef is the name of the act (whether referring to the full band, or just solo - I'm a songwriter, 20/male).
This needs to be genre appropriate - that is, for an alternative rock band - so try not to let it look like a dance/rap act... See http://i42.tinypic.com/2ij29te.png (link updated) for other band logos I like.
Looking for something really fascinating... But also needs to work on t-shirts andmerchandise and everything, and in grayscale/B&W... so you'll have to make it simple in that respect, and limitthe colours to 2 or so.
Also would be great if you could find a'COMPANION TYPEFACE' that goes with the logo, to be used elsewhere inpromo/album art/etc.
FYI, domain name will be: stefmusic.com
What it sounds like:
- sometimes challenging, often emotional, always genuine
- it's about having a good time, not being limited, creating progressive, experimental, engaging music that's still very accessible,and will stick around
- less about bravado or flashiness, more about ingenuity and mind-bendingIf you want more of an idea of what the sound is similar to musically, see http://www.myspace.com/stefiam for audio, influences, etc.
- see "What it sounds like" above
- young & innovative
- timeless & crafted
- more on the organic side
- more on the serious side
- play with the lettering, give it some clever!
- referring to http://i42.tinypic.com/2ij29te.png - I'd like to follow the style of these Keane and The Scare logos, but with the interplay of the Yes logo.
- I'd like to incorporate a big, hypnotic, pinwheely spiral nested/built into the bottomcurve of the S; this would be a centralfocal point.
- distinctive, original & quickly recognisable; giving it detail and complexity could be a good way to do this
- musical imagery like guitars, musical notes, people/equipment on stage, or any of that (people already know it's music!)
- anything too: - gothic / medieval ...
- space-age / futuristic / ultra-modern / bleeding-edge ...
- cursive / handwritten ...
- grungy / angsty ...
- comical / graffiti / cartoony ...
- cursive/handwritten does not seem to work well
- too many colours - again, needs to be able to work in B&W.
Descubre cómo funciona un concurso de diseño u obtén más información sobre nuestros servicios de diseño de logo.


text:
One Of Your FAVOURITE TV Shows Is Coming BACK!!!!
It may sound dramatic, but we owe the TV Gods A LOT this year.
Not only has Netflix set us up with totally binge-worthy shows like Making A Murderer and Stranger Things - and if you haven't jumped on either of those bandwagons, stop reading this article and get. on. it. - but they're really doing us a solid by rebooting some of the shows we grew up watching and have never quit loving.
We're looking at you, Gilmore Girls.
But now the Queen of the 90s, the ageless beauty that is Sarah Michelle Geller, has bestowed upon us the glorious news that Buffy The Vampire Slayer may soon be gracing a TV screen near you.
Gellar - who is in the process of filming the sequel to Cruel Intentions - was asked about the possibility of a Buffy reboot at the BlogHer conference over the weekend and her answer got pretty much everyone's hopes up.
"You never know," the New York Daily News reports her as saying. "Hold on — you never know… but that being said, the point of Buffy, what was so special about it was, it was a metaphor of the horrors of high school.
"The monsters were literally the manifestation of the horrors of that time. That's a very specific story. I don't know what that story is now."
And the original slayer generation are all about it.
Hey @netflix can your next 90's show reboot be Buffy plz— keeley (@keeleydavenport) July 16, 2016
Burning question every one wants to know is: "When are we gonna see a Buffy reboot?!" #buffy #vampireslayer— Hannah (@HannahLivesBlog) June 18, 2016
There should be a Buffy the vampire slayer reboot— Blvckwell (@waddleszz) May 28, 2016
Now please, Joss Whedon. Stop toying with our emotions for once and help us out here.


text:
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Before he became Pope Francis, Argentina's Catholic leader took the first steps toward granting sainthood status to priests and other Catholics who were murdered in July 1976 as Argentina's dictatorship was killing thousands of so-called "subversives."
The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, confirmed Tuesday that it was Jorge Bergoglio who approved the beatification cause of Carlos de Dios Murias, a Franciscan priest killed in Argentina's La Rioja province, where his mission had challenged the interests of powerful local leaders.
A fellow Franciscan priest, a Frenchman named Gabriel Longueville, was found alongside Murias. Both had their eyes gouged out and hands cut off, allegedly after being kidnapped by a military death squad. A Catholic lay worker who collaborated with them, Wenceslao Pedernera, was found beaten to death days later. The diocese of La Rioja province has been working on a sainthood case for all three since 2011. Only now has Argentina's justice system put the alleged suspects on trial.
Lombardi said that as leader of Argentina's bishops, Bergoglio also approved a sainthood investigation for five Pallotine churchmen killed at St. Patrick's Church in Buenos Aires. Fathers Alfredo Kelly, Alfredo Leaden and Pedro Dufau and their seminarians Salvador Berbeito and Emilio Barletti were shot to death by a right-wing hit squad. The killers left graffiti saying the deaths were in revenge for a leftist guerrilla bombing of a police station two days earlier that had killed 18 people.
Both sets of killings were among a wave of kidnappings and deaths targeting church representatives who ran social missions at a time when the highest church authorities in Argentina were publicly silent about the junta's use of kidnapping, torture and murder to eliminate people they considered to be subversives.
The Franciscan priests' bishop, Enrique Angelelli, had gathered evidence about their deaths when he, too, was killed in a suspicious traffic accident. Church leaders didn't acknowledge that Angelelli was probably murdered until 2006, when President Nestor Kirchner announced a national day of mourning in his honor. Bergoglio said Mass in La Rioja that day, calling Angelelli a "martyr" during the first official church homage to him.
The so-called "Saint Patricks' Massacre" was another notorious case, happening on church property in one of the Argentine capital's most exclusive neighborhoods, Belgrano. But it drew only a tepid public response from the Argentine church hierarchy. Days later, they wrote the junta saying "We wonder, or rather, the people wonder, what kind of forces are so powerful that they can act at their own discretion in our society with total impunity and anonymity. ... We have made this statement sure of Your Excellencies' understanding, knowing your high ideals and your generous attitude toward the fatherland, its institutions and its citizens."
These cases surfaced again Tuesday during Francis' installation as pope because the leader of the Franciscan order in Argentina and Uruguay, Carlos Trovarelli, told the Italian paper La Stampa that Bergoglio's wisdom about church politics was what enabled the canonization process to prosper.
Trovarelli said Bergoglio approved the La Rioja diocese's work in May 2011, when nobody thought he would be pope. He said Bergoglio asked those involved to act with great discretion, saying "many Argentine bishops, especially the oldest ones, are opposed to judgments based on social commitments."
"Thanks to his caution, the process was able to advance," Trovarelli told La Stampa.
Trovarelli later denied in a phone call with The Associated Press that he had told La Stampa anything about other Argentine bishops.
La Stampa also interviewed another priest, Miguel La Civita, who was close to Angelelli, and credits Bergoglio for saving him and other priests by hiding them inside the Colegio Maximo, a church university in suburban Buenos Aires where Bergoglio was the rector.
"I was the exact prototype of what were then called 'third-world priests,' liberation theology," La Civita was quoted as saying. "The Colegio Maximo had become a kind of safe house to help the persecuted: they were hidden, false documents were prepared and they helped them flee the country. Bergoglio was convinced that the military wouldn't have the guts to violate the Colegio Maximo."
While the La Rioja diocese gathers evidence to support sainthood for the three dirty war victims there, civilian judges are putting three men on trial in their deaths — a former policeman, a former military officer and former Army Gen. Benjamin Menendez, who already is serving several life sentences for other human rights violations in northeastern Argentina.
Now that he's become pope, Argentines familiar with these cases are hoping Francis will have a free hand to beatify these men.
Monsignor Gregorio Rosa Chavez of El Salvador, meanwhile, is convinced that Francis would be happy to beatify slain archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, who was shot down while celebrating Mass in 1980 after challenging his country's military to end its civil war.
Chavez told The AP that Francis shares Romero's vision of the church, and that the phrase Francis used in his initial address, that he wants "a poor church that's for the poor," is something Romero also said many times.
Romero's sainthood campaign got stuck under Pope Benedict XVI. That pontiff once told reporters that "Romero as a person merits beatification," but Vatican officials quickly removed this comment from an official transcript.
Within the Vatican, authorities debated whether Romero was a martyr for his faith, or for Latin American leftists, at a time when church officials were trying to stamp out what some saw as a link between liberation theology and Marxism.
Associated Press Writers Nicole Winfield in Rome and Almudena Calatrava in Buenos Aires contributed to this report.


text:
My name is Jessica Silvester, and I'm an assistant editor at O, The Oprah Magazine. When I first set out to find my wedding dress, I thought it would be relatively easy. My overall wedding outlook was laid-back and non-bridezilla-like. I love clothes. I love white dresses of every kind —short, long, beachy, fancy, cotton, lace—there's something so inherently fresh and easy about them. And I've never been an indecisive shopper; I can tell the minute I slip something on (often before even looking in a mirror) whether a clothing item has the look and feel I'm going for in that particular moment. If it's a little off, I move on, and usually succeed at the second or third store.
But I went to about 10 bridal shops in New York—trying on a handful of gowns each time—and the chemistry wasn't there. I knew I wanted a silhouette that was fluid and ethereal, but also body-conscious; I didn't want fussy ornamentation (beading, bows), but enough embellishment to offer a subtle glow, and those touches that make a dress even more special upon closer inspection. The gowns by British designer Jenny Packham almost matched my vision, but I also have a big bust, and I ran into trouble with the plunging necklines and low-backs of her designs; I needed something more supportive. As my criteria seemed increasingly unrealistic as a whole, I was ready to surrender some of them.
But the Amsale staff made me feel like it was possible for one wedding gown to incorporate all my dream-details. From the moment I met Emily, it was clear that she was sharp and intuitive, and a great listener. I let out a stream of consciousness as she walked me to various showroom samples, and she picked up on likes and dislikes I didn't even realize I had. I already felt well taken of when Emily turned me over to Amsale, to work with her personally. It was surreal. I was simultaneously star-struck and reassured that my dress quest would have a happy ending.
Throughout the custom-design process, I gained a first-hand appreciation of Amsale's expert eye. She translated some of my gown ideas exactly; others (perhaps when I was getting a bit too fixated on trends and "edginess"), she guided me in a slightly different direction, towards a finished product I would still love decades down the road. In the end, I felt so alive in her creation, like the best of myself—and I guess that's all I ever really wanted.


text:
VANCOUVER, WA — It was little surprise to most analysts when Gregg Hammann stepped down as president and chief executive officer of Nautilus Inc. last month. The Vancouver, WA-based equipment manufacturer released falling net sales and net income for the first and second quarters of 2007, and has posted increased net sales and net income in only two quarters of the last 2 ½ years.
"I've been calling for [Hammann's] resignation in public notes," says Eric Wold, managing director of Equity Research at Merriman Curhan & Ford Co. (MCF), a financial services holding company. "I'm just surprised it took this long for the board to act."
Hammann also resigned his seat on the company's board. Robert Falcone, Nautilus's lead independent director, will serve as chairman, president and chief executive officer on an interim basis, according to the company. The company's independent directors have formed a search committee for a new chief executive officer. A company spokesperson declined to comment on how long the search was expected to take, nor did he comment on the company's declining sales and profits.
Net sales for the second quarter of 2007 were down 15 percent at $117.1 million compared to $137.6 million in the second quarter of 2006. Net income for second quarter 2007 was $1.1 million, or $0.04 per share, compared to $1.7 million, or $0.05 per share, for the second quarter of 2006.
Industry experts and analysts blame some of the falling sales on Nautilus's emphasis on the home-equipment market, which has been slowing due to a weakening economy. Hammann also blamed the retail slowdown for the company's second quarter performance.
"Our quarter was primarily affected by a softer-than-expected consumer environment in the North American home fitness market served by our retail and direct channels, especially within the home exercise gym segment," Hammann said in Nautilus's second-quarter report, which was released on July 16.
In the first quarter of 2007, net sales dropped 14 percent to $158.8 million from $185 million in the first quarter of 2006. Net income fell from $5.2 million, or $0.16 per share, in the first quarter of 2006 to $2.5 million, or $0.08 per share, in the first quarter of 2007.
In March 2007, Nautilus introduced its newest line, Nautilus One. The strength equipment features a non-intimidating dial for users to change the weight they're lifting. The line will begin shipping in the next few months, says Ron Arp, spokesperson for Nautilus.
Hammann isn't the first executive to be shown the door. The company let go Tim Hawkins, president of Nautilus's fitness equipment business, which represents 80 percent of the company's revenues. Both Hammann and Hawkins had previously worked at Levi Strauss and Co., Coca-Cola, and Rayovac Corp.
In late June, Nautilus exercised a purchase option to acquire the assets of its largest contract manufacturer, Land America Health and Fitness Co. Ltd, based in Xiamen, China. The all-cash-transaction of approximately$72 million is expected to close Jan. 2, 2008, and improve company gross margins by at least 1.5-2.0 percentage points in 2008, according to the company. Land America has made the Bowflex home exercise gyms for more than eight years and began manufacturing Bowflex TreadClimber cardio trainers for the company last year. Also, Nautilus and Land America teams have built a new production line that will manufacture and ship additional products from the facility later this year.
Before his departure, Hamman touted the purchase of Land America Health and Fitness, saying, "A diversified manufacturing and supply base is important to maximize our margin potential and to mitigate supply risks." However, some analysts have suggested that Nautilus should get out of the Land America deal to free up cash. Others say the investment will pay off, although it may take time.
Manufacturing problems have plagued the company since 2005. During the fourth quarter of 2005, the company announced a net income of $2.8 million, which was more than an 80 percent drop from the fourth quarter of 2004 due to manufacturing production glitches. The company had planned to introduce six new residential and commercial treadmills and TreadClimbers during the 2005 holiday season, but manufacturing issues caused delays in getting the products to the consumers, including the withdrawal of TreadClimbers to strengthen its hydraulic system in fall 2005.
In 2006, after announcing fourth quarter 2005 results, Nautilus reorganized the company into three separate business divisions — fitness equipment, international equipment and fitness apparel. First quarter 2006 net income was $5.2 million, down from $9.4 million in the same period during the previous year. However, net sales were up 18.3 percent from first quarter 2005 at $185 million.
In the second quarter of 2006, net sales were up 6.2 percent, and net income was down from $3.3 million in the second quarter of 2005 to $1.17 million. During this time, Nautilus reintroduced 500 TreadClimbers at about 80 24 Hour Fitness facilities across the country.
The third quarter of 2006 brought more bad news, as the company reported net sales dropping from $163.3 million in the third quarter of 2005 to $159.6 million. Net sales also dropped from $7.7 million to $6.4 million, excluding a tax reversal credit that was awarded to the company. The fourth quarter of 2006 showed promise, with record net sales for the fourth quarter at $199.3 million, and net income was up at $10.9 million from fourth quarter 2005.
Wold has advised his clients to avoid shares of Nautilus stock. On July 17, MFC released a report highlighting weakness in Nautilus's core channels, including a 62 percent decline in retail sales and 11 percent decline in direct sales.
"We have been stressing the risk to these channels from increasing competition, internal channel cannibalization, tightening credit/sub-prime markets and consumer spending headwinds — and these continued to play out during second quarter," the report states.
Competing manufacturers say they have taken note of the change in Nautilus's leadership and see this period as an opportunity. Wold says any leadership changes will take time and that the competition should use the time of confusion effectively to take market share from Nautilus.
Nautilus includes the brands Nautilus, Bowflex, Schwinn Fitness, StairMaster and Pearl iZUMi.


text:
Singer and actress Julie Andrews has sold her house in Brentwood for $2.705 million — more than she was asking.
Andrews owned the traditional-style home with her late husband, director and screenwriter Blake Edwards. Less than a month after coming on the market at $2.649 million in April, the tidy white home with gray shutters was in escrow.
Features include a family room and living room with French doors opening to a garden and a formal dining room with a cathedral ceiling. An artist's studio with a bathroom sits above the garage for a total of four bedrooms and three bathrooms.
The lot, which is less than a quarter acre, is surrounded by tall hedges and is gated. There is a swimming pool and spa.
Andrews, 76, starred in musicals including "My Fair Lady" and "Camelot." She won a lead actress Oscar for "Mary Poppins" (1964) and starred in "The Sound of Music" (1965), "Thoroughly Modern Millie" (1967), "Victor Victoria" (1982) and the "Princess Diaries" films in 2001 and 2004. Last year she received a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement.
Edwards, who died in 2010 at 88, received an honorary Oscar in 2004 for his work including "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (1961), "The Great Race" (1965) and the "Pink Panther" films.
Public records show the property was purchased in 1989 for $1.2 million.
Gary Glass of Prudential California Realty in Brentwood was the listing agent. Jody Fine of Prudential's Palisades office represented the buyer.
Singer and actress Julie Andrews has sold her house in Brentwood for $2.705 million — more than she was asking.


text:
April 7, 2009
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – In the inaugural meeting between both programs, the MIT women's lacrosse team emerged with a 20-2 victory over Simmons College on Tuesday. Casey Flynn paced the Engineers (5-4) with eight goals and two assists while Natalie Stever led the way for the Sharks (3-4) with two goals.
Flynn opened the scoring with an unassisted goal which was matched by MIT's Kelly Duncan. Stever cut Simmons' deficit in half when she buried a free position shot at the 22:18 mark. The Engineers responded by rattling off 10 straight goals during the next 19 minutes. Stever's solo effort ended the Sharks' scoring drought with 2:11 left in the frame. The Cardinal and Gray entered the break with a comfortable 12-2 lead.
The Engineers recorded eight unanswered goals in the second half, with Flynn and Duncan each finding the back of the net three times.
In addition to her game-high scoring performance, Flynn tallied four groundballs and four caused turnovers. Duncan posted a career-high six goals as Katie Kauffman notched two goals, two assists, and five draw controls. Erica Little registered one goal and three assists while Lynne Tye compiled six caused turnovers and a goal. Evelyn Cordner and Alex Wright bolstered the defense with three caused turnovers apiece as Cordner added three groundballs and a goal. Stephanie Leger tacked on three groundballs while Molly McCartin posted three saves.
Stever powered Simmons with four draw controls as Suzanne Tremblay totaled three groundballs. Amanda Weaver amassed 17 saves in net.
MIT will complete its three-game home-stand on Thursday, April 9 when it takes on Colby-Sawyer College. Simmons will continue its road trip on Saturday, April 11 when it travels to Framingham State College.


text:
How to Use
the Readings
Inquiry Question
Reading 2: Eighteenth-Century Warfare
A soldier's musket, if not exceedingly ill bored, will strike the figure of a man at 80 yards; it may even at 100; but a soldier must be very unfortunate indeed who shall be wounded...at 150 yards, provided his antagonist aims at him; I do maintain...no man was ever killed at 200 yards, by a common soldier's musket by the person who aimed at him.¹
- British Col. George Hanger, 1814
Imagine you are an American soldier at Saratoga marching with your regiment. Your commander declares, "Halt!" He shouts a string of orders, "Make Ready! Present! Give...Fire!" With a crash of thunder you and the other soldiers in your line deliver a volley at the British line, only 75 yards away. The British are slightly downhill so your volley passes harmlessly over their heads. While you quickly and precisely reload for the second volley, you can hear those same orders being echoed across the field by the British commanders. They fire with the same roaring fury that so recently came from your line. Hundreds of musket balls whistle by you. The noise and smoke throw all into confusion. You see men around you falling, some dead, others crying out in their suffering. Some of the Americans try to run while others stand fast; your volley is delayed. The British volley has done what it was intended to do. As your line wavers, the British fix bayonets and charge. You are commanded to reload. Through the dense smoke you see the British line 40 yards away, closing in on you, a mass of bayonet points intent on piercing through your line. Your commander repeats the words you want to hear, the orders preparing your line to fire another volley. You fire! The British line is shattered, the charge stops, and they retreat. You tend to the dead and wounded...and prepare. There will be more volleys and more charges until one side takes the field.
The nature of warfare in the 18th century was dictated by the characteristics of its principal weapons. Most troops used the musket, a smooth bore firearm. The inside of the gun's barrel was smooth as opposed to grooved, as in the case of a rifle. Its ammunition was a loose fitting lead ball. These two characteristics combined to make the musket very inaccurate. For example, on June 2, 1777, when Burgoyne approached Fort Ticonderoga, 3,000 American soldiers manned the outworks. As a British detachment approached the works, a lone British soldier advanced ahead of the lines. At the distance of 100 yards, the order to fire was issued to the Americans and every soldier discharged his weapon. When the smoke of the 3,000 shots cleared, two British soldiers had been wounded. The muskets had done almost no damage to the British line.²
To compensate for the musket's lack of accuracy, commanders deployed troops on open fields in lines that would halt within 100 yards of each other. Troops stood shoulder to shoulder and fired together in a "volley." By doing so they had a better chance of hitting the enemy. Speed was essential to 18th-century soldiers because the more quickly a volley could be fired, the better the chance that the enemy would break and run without returning fire. A good regiment could load, fire, and reload 3 times in a minute. Opponents would exchange volleys until one side broke and ran or until a bayonet charge ended the volleying with hand-to-hand fighting.
At Saratoga, the disciplined units of the Continental Army fought a traditional European battle. It is possible that the British broke with tradition at Saratoga, advancing in open order (one arm's length apart) rather than shoulder-to-shoulder. This formation would have made movement through the woods easier, enabling the troops to cover more ground with fewer men. However, it would also have spread the volley out, possibly reducing its effectiveness.
In addition to traditional technique, there was also skirmish fighting. Skirmishers, called "light troops," were marksmen armed with muskets or rifles. The rifle used tight-fitting balls and had a spiral groove cut in the barrel that made it very accurate over a longer distance. Because rifles took a long time to produce and were expensive, very few soldiers were armed with this weapon. Rifles had other disadvantages. A good rifleman could fire only once every 1 to 2 minutes. Furthermore, rifles could not take bayonets making them useless in hand-to-hand fighting.
Both armies used light troops. While in some instances the British made better use of them, at Saratoga the Americans used their riflemen to great effect. American marksmen aimed at gunners, keeping the British cannons quiet, and at officers of infantry, disrupting command and communications on the British lines.
Questions for Reading 2
1. What style of warfare did the American army use at Saratoga, frontier or traditional European?
2. Compare the musket to the rifle and describe the advantages and disadvantages of each.
3. Why do you think soldiers would drill and practice for hours on loading and firing muskets?
4. What were the advantages and disadvantages of open order fighting? Why might the British have adopted this technique at Saratoga?
¹ Anthony Darling, Redcoat and Brown Bess (Bloomfield, Ontario: Museum Restoration Service, 1971 ), 19.


text:
US calls on Europe to wean itself from Russian gas
BRUSSELS — The United States on Wednesday called on Europe to wean itself from a dangerous dependency on Russian gas, saying it was time to stand together and bring an end to the Kremlin's use of energy supplies as political leverage.
Left unsaid was the European Union's reluctance to follow the United States headlong into shale gas extraction, which has transformed the global energy scene and turned the U.S. from importer into a nascent exporter. Or its refusal to fully re-embrace nuclear power in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in Japan.
And even if it tried to become independent, it would take Europe years to develop promising sources, such as shale deposits in Ukraine and Poland — and with no guarantees of success.
Europe's reliance on Russia for a third of its energy needs has left the Kremlin in a position of power, emboldening it as it swept in to annex the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine last month, with little more than diplomatic protest and a few sanctions in return.
In his first interview since fleeing to Russia, Ukraine's ousted president, Viktor Yanukovych, said Wednesday that he was "wrong" to invite Russian troops into Crimea and vowed to try to persuade Russia to return the coveted Black Sea peninsula.
Yanukovych told the Associated Press and Russia's state NTV television that he still hopes to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin to get the annexed region back.
"Crimea is a tragedy, a major tragedy," the 63-year-old Yanukovych said, insisting that Russia would not have taken over Crimea if he had stayed in power. He fled Ukraine in February after three months of protests focused on corruption and on his decision to seek closer ties to Russia instead of the European Union.
His ouster and Russia's subsequent annexation of Crimea added fresh urgency to calls for Europe to diversify its energy policy.
"It really boils down to this: No nation should use energy to stymie a people's aspirations," U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said in Brussels. "It should not be used as a weapon. It's in the interest of all of us to be able to have adequate energy supplies critical to our economies, critical to our security, critical to the prosperity of our people."
Russia's energy dominance was most recently highlighted when state-controlled Gazprom carried out its threat this week to raise natural gas rates for Ukraine. But Russia has turned off the valves to Europe before, in 2006 and 2009.
Despite its contentious history of dependence, European production has been in steady decline as aging nuclear plants go unreplaced, polluting coal declines in popularity and North Sea oil dwindles.
In the meantime, the United States cannot ship liquefied natural gas or oil to Europe in the quantities needed for several more years, and although Kerry didn't mention hydraulic fracturing, the environmentally taxing process of extracting shale gas is an off-limits topic in many European countries, with uncertain success even in those countries willing to try.


text:
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Planck Monkeys
This is the infinite monkey theorem.
I've been thinking about how much monkey typing is needed, and decided to do some tests. I acquired a small gedanken monkey that can type randomly at 48wpm (4 keystrokes per second) without stopping for food or rest. I gave my monkey a small typewriter with 26 letter keys (capitals only) and a space bar five times as big as the others, and (forgiving soul that I am) excused it from any punctuation. I wanted to see if he would type the word MONKEY at some point over the next 5 years.
In fact, he did, and it was hidden away like this: "... SJKBV SDG FMMONKEYP SRGH DKAFJI ..." near the bottom of page 230 of volume 798 of a thousand volumes of monkeyprint. I have built a library to hold these volumes for the benefit of future generations.
To clarify my "it is likely": the probability of the word appearing in 5 years is about one half. So I was lucky: it's 50:50 whether the word MONKEY would be found at all.
I decide to raise the bar to MONKEY WANT BANANA. (If my monkey had typed this, I would have fed it. But it didn't, did it.)
Monkeys have been around for about 50 million years. What if I had acquired all the monkeys in the world from the very start of monkeys, and had them type continuously at 48wpm for 50 million years? If anyone can help me with how many monkeys there are and have been over the last 50 million years, please let me know. I'm going to suggest 10 billion, on average. They would have produced a hundred thousand trillion tons of monkeyprint by now. Might they have managed a MONKEY WANT BANANA? Yes: the probability that one of them would have done it is an impressive 89.5%.
This is promising. Now, what if the universe was filled with tiny monkeys right back to the Big Bang, typing as fast as possible until now?
So, how tiny? One per atom? That would be good. And how fast can they type? A billion keystrokes per second? Now we're talking! We have a 98% chance of one of them managing a SHALL I COMPARE THEE TO A SUMMERS DAY THOU ART MORE LOVELY AND MORE TEMPERATE. 98% is good! But add one more word, and the probability of one of them knocking that out drops to one in fifty million, which is not so good.
I have to make my monkeys smaller! One per atom is not very many, as most of the universe is intergalactic space with less than one atom of matter per cubic metre. There should be more monkeys than this. I shrink the monkey until it occupies the smallest possible space there is. Quantum gravity physics tells us that there is a smallest possible distance, known as the 'Planck length'. So of course I want to use this.
If you were to try to examine anything on a smaller scale than the Planck scale, the sheer effort required to do the examining would be so great that you'd create a tiny black hole there, bigger than the size of the thing you were trying to see. (The black hole would vanish very quickly as soon as you stopped looking.) The same thing would happen if you tried to chop anything into smaller pieces than the Planck length – you'd make a black hole and end up with bigger things than you started with. In fact, nothing can happen on a smaller scale than this – at least, not without radically altering the laws of physics so much that you would all but obliterate any meaning in the word 'smaller'. Experimentally, no-one has come anywhere near getting there, which is probably just as well.
As well as being the size limit on smallness, the Planck length is the fundamental unit of distance – the only one that is not made up with reference to anything else, as are metres and miles and the like. This elegance and purity makes it very important in physics.
I can't see it catching on though – it's way too silly. You wouldn't really want to measure your inside leg in Planck lengths. One Planck length is a hundred billion billion times smaller than the distance across a proton, which is a tiny speck of a thing that sits at the very centre of a hydrogen atom (the smallest atom).
Back to the monkeys.
I'm going to divide the universe into Planck-sized regions, and put a monkey in each one. You will ask what the monkey is made of, when nothing can be smaller than the Planck scale, and I will say that it is not made of anything – it is a single, fundamental monkey particle. One in every Planck sized region of space. These regions are very small – there will be nearly as many monkeys inside the space occupied by a single atom as there are atoms in the universe. And there will be monkeys in the spaces not occupied by atoms too.
And they will type faster. How fast can a thing happen? Just as there is a shortest possible distance, there is a shortest possible time, and it's called the Planck time. The Planck time is how long it would take you to cover one Planck length if you travelled at the speed of light.
My monkeys will type at a rate of one keystroke per Planck time.
They will type so fast because the energy required to confine a monkey to such a small region will make the monkey extraordinarily hot.
You will ask what the typewriter is made of, and I will say it is not separate from the monkey: typing is what a monkey particle does. (I don't know what happens to the letters that the monkeys type. There is no room for them or anything else, as the cosmos is jam-packed with hot monkey particles. But I'm not going to let this stop me.)
So, from the Big Bang, with a monkey in every last tiniest unit of space possible, typing at the fastest speed there is, for the entire history of the growing Universe, and do we have a deal?
Yes! The first four lines of the sonnet "SHALL I COMPARE THEE TO A SUMMERS DAY THOU ART MORE LOVELY AND MORE TEMPERATE ROUGH WINDS DO SHAKE THE DARLING BUDS OF MAY AND SUMMERS LEASE HATH ALL TOO SHORT A DATE" will be knocked out somewhere in the cosmos several times a second!
This is good! In fact, every few dozen thousand years, it'll come together with the next word – SOMETIME – to boot. Will we ever get the next two words (SOMETIME TOO)? We might be lucky – there's something like a one in three chance in the age of the universe.
So there we are. One in three. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, from the Monkeys of the Cosmos, four lines and two words of a sonnet!
I don't know about you, but I think that's rather impressive.
If you want the Complete Works, as the theorem says, you'll have to wait.
[Back to blog]
34 comments:
- Tom said...
- 12:24 am, April 24, 2007
- Tom said...
How is it possible that no-one has yet commented on this post?
- 12:25 am, April 24, 2007
- Tom said...
I would like to see a book of little chapters like this.
I'd even help look for a publisher..
- 12:26 am, April 24, 2007
- Tom said...
One last thought for the evening - what are the chances that it just so happens that, these comments and the word verification tests are being posted by a tiny little monkey? Just a little thought ecwnonz dnfsuyh embxwiwy very fast ifhcyaj and hot rjanykbl yykrqkh zynktqf
- 12:30 am, April 24, 2007
You can spank your Planck AND your monkey. Coincidence? I don't think so
(obviously, the subject of mental masturbation has absolutely no relevance here)
- 12:28 pm, April 24, 2007
- Bob said...
Hi Tom!
Glad you like. I'd do loads if it didn't take me so stupidly long. I'm not hot or fast enough for this game. But there will be more.
Hi jonathan!
Never thought of this as a porn site, but hey - whatever floats your boat. (I Googled "spank your Planck" and drew a blank. You got yourself a niche market! Go for it - I'll waive the commission, as it's you.)
I take your point though - it's not very useful, is it. And a bit silly.
- 11:33 pm, April 30, 2007
Only taking the mick - it was very interesting. I've managed to work out the Planck length all for myself!
- 1:04 pm, May 01, 2007
- Bob said...
I hope you got the 2π right, Dr A, and didn't cheat.
- 10:04 pm, May 02, 2007
2π, what 2π?
WHAT 2π!!!?????!!!???!!!
- 12:43 pm, May 03, 2007
- Bob said...
Now now.
Dimensional analysis doesn't tell you about the bar on the ℏ, is all. And if you did Compton = Schwarzchild, you'd be out by 2√π. Or something. Come to think of it, it's all a bit arbitrary, isn't it? How did you do it?
- 2:29 pm, May 03, 2007
I took a bit of paper and ripped it in half. Then I tore one of the halves in half. I carried on until I couldn't do it any more (the piece of paper was quite hard to hold down by this time).
Then I got my ruler out. I get
1.61624 x10^(-35) m
- 12:17 pm, May 04, 2007
- Bob said...
Cool. And did it turn into a little black hole?
- 7:20 pm, May 05, 2007
- Mr Farty said...
He-he you funny!
Is your WV set by tiny monkeys?
- 7:47 pm, July 10, 2007
- Bob said...
Hallo Mr F!
Not sure what a WV is, I'm afraid.
Anyone inserting a set of random letters where one might expect a word is immediately suspect, I'm sure you'll understand...
- 8:59 pm, July 10, 2007
- 11:56 pm, October 16, 2008
- Icy Mt. said...
WV=Word Verification
- 5:08 pm, October 21, 2008
- Soumyodeep said...
Very impressive work.Would be nice of you, if you could post the probabilty calculations (the results of which you have used here).
- 3:24 pm, November 16, 2008
- Bob said...
Sure, Sumyodeep - or anyone else - drop me an email (address at top of blog) and I'll get on the case and send you some working.
- 10:15 am, November 30, 2008
...and all this time I thought it was 42....no, wait....
- 9:30 pm, February 08, 2009
Hi Bob,
I'll keap this brief cause my typin ain't very gooad. I've just popped over to reemind you of Multiverses. Suffice to saye, I
I've got a mate who knocked out the Compleate Works of Shakespaere & Leo Tolstoy's War and Pease in one night!! Anyway, must dash, got a lion nibbling on my arse!!
Yours sincereley,
Cheetah (no not that one - a parallel one)!!
- 12:53 pm, June 17, 2009
i think i would like to swim in a vast infinite ocean of quantum monkey/typers. i think it would feel squishy.
- 5:10 am, August 30, 2009
- Birdie said...
Hey there - I know this is an old post, but I enjoyed the heck out of it. I'm substitute teaching 8th grade math this week - my students will be in for a surprise when I hand this out as required reading! I'll have to check out the rest of your blog, I'm intrigued.
- 1:03 pm, December 15, 2009
Awesome man. I love the way you wrote this article. I'm a writer myself, and I also write articles of this nature, but I have to say, this has earned you my respect, my friend.
- 2:52 pm, December 22, 2009
In the seventeenth century, a monkey did write the entire works of Shakespeare. It only took around ten million years, during which monkeys invented language, then writing. Later, we invented typewriters...
- 7:48 am, January 01, 2010
- Bob said...
Good point...
- 1:57 pm, January 01, 2010
- Cher said...
I love this post. I was arguing the theorem being quite literal with atoms, which of course confused the person I was arguing with. This left them speechless and angry.
- 9:35 pm, June 19, 2010
- Zach said...
If this is taken from an evolutionary standpoint, not purely a math one, then it is missing something vital. As Richard Dawkins points out in The Blind Watchmaker, the probability of randomly producing the works of WIlliam Shakespeare is phenomenally low. However, the odds go up dramatically when the concept of negative reenforcement is introduced. Assume instead that your monkeys were each individually poked in the back of the head after each incorrect keystroke, and the production of Mr. Shakespeare's works becomes much more believable.
This is an entertaining thought experiment on probability and the Planck length though.
- 4:34 pm, September 18, 2010
- Doğukan Sarıkaya said...
Hello Bob,
I'm so impressed by this article. Is it possible if i can translate it into my own language?
- 5:48 pm, December 11, 2010
- Bob said...
Hi Doğukan
Yes, please do! And send me a link :)
- 5:52 pm, December 11, 2010
Very interesting article, keep it up!
- 5:49 pm, January 22, 2011
- Jivesh said...
Really nice article. But may I know the mathematics of this thought experiment? And for determining when and where will the exact phrase appear, did you use a computer program to track the whole process?
Thank you
- 2:03 pm, July 25, 2011
- Bob said...
Hi Jivesh. Thanks.
It's four years ago now... I just put the numbers in a spreadsheet and used standard probability equations. I still have the spreadsheet - here is an entirely unhelpful view of it. :)
All the assumptions are given in the post, so it should be possible for someone with a basic grasp of probability to reproduce or check the numbers.
The only part that isn't explained here or anywhere is a calculation I did for the spacetime hypervolume of the cosmic history of the observable universe in Planck units, which turned out to be a 243-digit number beginning with a 7.
That's a handy piece of info to bring up in conversation over a pint. (Also handy if you ever meet a cosmologist and want to see them raise their eyebrows.)
I can't remember how I got that number. It involved some reasonably sensible cosmological model, some algebra and calculus on a piece of paper, and a pocket calculator at the end. I guess I should try to do it again sometime just to check, maybe try and figure out the second digit (out of 243).
If you want a very rough estimate (without involving general relativity!), you can always take the age of the universe and divide it by the Planck time and raise it to the fourth power.
(Now I bet you wish you'd never asked)
- 2:33 am, July 27, 2011
- Lewis said...
This is brilliant!
- 3:29 pm, March 18, 2012
How would the probabilities change if the monkeys typed in binary (1 and 0) and we interpreted the binary output with ASCII or UTF-8?
- 11:08 am, December 27, 2013
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After the ready-to-wear edition of the bottle in 2009, designed by Jean-Paul Gaultier, Evian works with Baccarat to create five exclusive limited edition bottles. Five unique bottles dressed transparently to evoke Evian's best asset: purity.
"Bubbles bottle, drops bottle, tray bottle, reflection bottle and spring bottle: 5 exceptional creations presenting the tremendous savoir-faire of Baccarat artisans. These pieces have been shown in various cities such as London, Tokyo, Shanghai, New York, Moscow, Dubaï, Melbourne and of course Paris".
colette will present them from March 16th to 21st and at Maison Baccarat March 24th to 30th before being auctioned next April 7th at 8pm at Artcurial, to raise money for the RAMSAR convention, which Evian supports for more than 10 years.
Have a detailed look at all five Evian x Jean-Paul Gaultier x Baccarat Bottles after the jump.


text: Print OverviewMyasthenia gravis (my-us-THEE-nee-uh GRAY-vis) is characterized by weakness and rapid fatigue of any of the muscles under your voluntary control. Myasthenia gravis is caused by a breakdown in the normal communication between nerves and muscles. There is no cure for myasthenia gravis, but treatment can help relieve signs and symptoms, such as weakness of arm or leg muscles, double vision, drooping eyelids, and difficulties with speech, chewing, swallowing and breathing. Though myasthenia gravis can affect people of any age, it's more common in women younger than 40 and in men older than 60. SymptomsMuscle weakness caused by myasthenia gravis worsens as the affected muscle is used repeatedly. Because symptoms usually improve with rest, your muscle weakness may come and go. However, myasthenia gravis symptoms tend to progress over time, usually reaching their worst within a few years after the onset of the disease. Although myasthenia gravis can affect any of the muscles that you control voluntarily, certain muscle groups are more commonly affected than others. Eye musclesIn more than half the people who develop myasthenia gravis, their first signs and symptoms involve eye problems, such as: Drooping of one or both eyelids (ptosis). Double vision (diplopia), which may be horizontal or vertical, and improves or resolves when one eye is closed. Face and throat musclesIn about 15 percent of people with myasthenia gravis, the first symptoms involve face and throat muscles, which can cause: Altered speaking. Your speech may sound very soft or nasal, depending upon which muscles have been affected. Difficulty swallowing. You may choke very easily, which makes it difficult to eat, drink or take pills. In some cases, liquids you're trying to swallow may come out your nose. Problems chewing. The muscles used for chewing may wear out halfway through a meal, particularly if you've been eating something hard to chew, such as steak. Limited facial expressions. Your family members may comment that you've "lost your smile" if the muscles that control your facial expressions have been affected. Neck and limb musclesMyasthenia gravis can cause weakness in your neck, arms and legs, but this usually happens along with muscle weakness in other parts of your body, such as your eyes, face or throat. The disorder usually affects arms more often than legs. However, if it affects your legs, you may waddle when you walk. If your neck is weak, it may be hard to hold up your head. When to see a doctorTalk to your doctor if you have difficulty: Breathing Seeing Swallowing Chewing Walking Using your arms or hands Holding up your head Request an Appointment at Mayo Clinic CausesAntibodies ReceptorsReceptorsChemicals messengers, called neurotransmitters, fit precisely into receptor sites on your muscle cells. In myasthenia gravis, certain receptor sites are blocked or destroyed, causing muscle weakness. Thymus glandThymus glandThe thymus gland, a part of your immune system situated in the upper chest beneath the breastbone, may trigger or maintain the production of antibodies that result in the muscle weakness. Your nerves communicate with your muscles by releasing chemicals (neurotransmitters) that fit precisely into receptor sites on the muscle cells at the nerve-muscular junction. In myasthenia gravis, your immune system produces antibodies that block or destroy many of your muscles' receptor sites for a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine (as-uh-teel-KOH-leen). With fewer receptor sites available, your muscles receive fewer nerve signals, resulting in weakness. Antibodies may also block the function of a protein called a muscle-specific receptor tyrosine kinase (TIE-roh-seen KIE-nays). This protein is involved in forming the nerve-muscular junction. When antibodies block the function of this protein, it may lead to myasthenia gravis. Research continues to study how the antibodies inhibiting this protein are related to the development of myasthenia gravis. Thymus glandResearchers believe that the thymus gland, a part of your immune system situated in the upper chest beneath your breastbone, may trigger or maintain the production of the antibodies that block acetylcholine. Large in infancy, the thymus is small in healthy adults. In some adults with myasthenia gravis, however, the thymus is abnormally large. Some people with myasthenia gravis also have tumors of the thymus (thymomas). Usually, thymomas aren't cancerous (malignant). Other causesSome people may have myasthenia gravis that isn't caused by antibodies blocking acetylcholine or the muscle-specific receptor tyrosine kinase. This type of myasthenia gravis is called antibody-negative myasthenia gravis. Antibodies against another protein, called lipoprotein-related protein 4, may play a part in the development of this condition. Genetic factors also may be associated with myasthenia gravis. Rarely, mothers with myasthenia gravis have children who are born with myasthenia gravis (neonatal myasthenia gravis). If treated promptly, children generally recover within two months after birth. Some children are born with a rare, hereditary form of myasthenia, called congenital myasthenic syndrome. Factors that can worsen myasthenia gravis Fatigue Illness Stress Some medications — such as beta blockers, quinidine gluconate, quinidine sulfate, quinine (Qualaquin), phenytoin (Dilantin), certain anesthetics and some antibiotics ComplicationsComplications of myasthenia gravis are treatable, but some can be life-threatening. Myasthenic crisisMyasthenic crisis is a life-threatening condition that occurs when the muscles that control breathing become too weak to do their jobs. Emergency treatment is needed to provide mechanical assistance with breathing. Medications and blood-filtering therapies help people to again breathe on their own. Thymus tumorsAbout 15 percent of people with myasthenia gravis have a tumor in their thymus, a gland under the breastbone that is involved with the immune system. Most of these tumors, called thymomas, aren't cancerous (malignant). Other disordersPeople with myasthenia gravis are more likely to have the following conditions: Underactive or overactive thyroid. The thyroid gland, which is in the neck, secretes hormones that regulate your metabolism. If your thyroid is underactive, you may have difficulties dealing with cold, weight gain and other issues. An overactive thyroid can cause difficulties dealing with heat, weight loss and other issues. Autoimmune conditions. People with myasthenia gravis may be more likely to have autoimmune conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis or lupus. By Mayo Clinic Staff Myasthenia gravis care at Mayo Clinic Request an Appointment at Mayo Clinic Diagnosis & treatment Aug. 02, 2017 Print Share on: FacebookTwitter References Kliegman RM, et al. Disorders of neuromuscular transmission and of motor neurons. In: Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics. 20th ed. Philadelphia, Pa.: Elsevier; 2016. http://www.clinicalkey.com. Accessed Jan. 15, 2016. Myasthenia gravis fact sheet. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/myasthenia_gravis/detail_myasthenia_gravis.htm. Accessed Jan. 15, 2016. Ferri FF. Myasthenia gravis. In: Ferri's Clinical Advisor 2016. Philadelphia, Pa.: Mosby Elsevier; 2016. https://www.clinicalkey.com. Accessed Jan. 15, 2016. Myasthenia gravis. Office of Women's Health. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. http://www.womenshealth.gov/publications/our-publications/fact-sheet/myasthenia-gravis.html. Accessed Jan. 15, 2016. Bird SJ. Clinical manifestations of myasthenia gravis. http://www.uptodate.com/home. Accessed Jan. 18, 2016. Myasthenia gravis. Merck Manual Professional Version. http://www.merckmanuals.com/professional/neurologic-disorders/peripheral-nervous-system-and-motor-unit-disorders/myasthenia-gravis. Accessed Jan. 15, 2016. Allan WC. Pathogenesis of myasthenia gravis. http://www.uptodate.com/home. Accessed Jan. 18, 2016. Gilhus NE, et al. Myasthenia gravis: Subgroup classification and therapeutic strategies. The Lancet Neurology. 2015;14:1023. Avidan N, et al. Genetic basis of myasthenia gravis: A comprehensive review. Journal of Autoimmunity. 2014;52:145. Bird SJ. Treatment of myasthenia gravis. http://www.uptodate.com/home. Accessed Jan. 18, 2016. Bird SJ. Diagnosis of myasthenia gravis. http://www.uptodate.com/home. Accessed Jan. 18, 2016. Neurological diagnostic tests and procedures. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/misc/diagnostic_tests.htm. Accessed Jan. 18, 2016. Rowse PG, et al. Minimally invasive thymectomy: The Mayo Clinic experience. Annals of Cardiothoracic Surgery. 2015;4:519. Ye B, et al. Surgical techniques for early stage thymoma: Video-assisted thoracoscopic thymectomy versus transsternal thymectomy. Journals of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery. 2014;147:1599. Barbara Woodward Lips Patient Education Center. Myasthenia gravis: A guide for patients. Rochester, Minn.: Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research; 2003. Riggin ER. EPSi. Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. Jan. 19, 2016. Crum BA (expert opinion). Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. Feb. 5, 2016. Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., has been recognized as the best Neurology & Neurosurgery hospital in the nation for 2018-2019 by U.S. News & World Report. Learn more about this top honor Myasthenia gravisSymptoms & causesDiagnosis & treatmentDoctors & departmentsCare at Mayo Clinic Advertisement Mayo Clinic does not endorse companies or products. Advertising revenue supports our not-for-profit mission. Advertising & Sponsorship Policy Opportunities Ad Choices Mayo Clinic Marketplace Check out these best-sellers and special offers on books and newsletters from Mayo Clinic. NEW — Guide to Raising a Healthy Child4 simple steps to a joy-filled lifeImprove Your Hearing and BalanceStop osteoporosis in its tracksThe Mayo Clinic Diet Online CON-20166451 Patient Care & Health Information Diseases & Conditions Myasthenia gravis


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Movin' You to MSU volunteers needed
Faculty, staff and student volunteers are needed for Mississippi State University's annual Movin' You to MSU (MVNU2MSU) move-in day, which will take place Saturday, Aug. 11, 2012, beginning at 8 a.m.
The Department of Housing and Residence Life needs about 500 volunteers for the special event that welcomes incoming student residents and their families to the campus community. Duties include working check-in at Humphrey Coliseum, moving boxes from cars to rooms, greeting students and directing traffic.
Volunteers receive a free t-shirt, and a box lunch from Aramark. Plenty of water will also be available.
The volunteer application form can be found at http://www.housing.msstate.edu/mvnu2msu/volunteer/. Please submit your completed application by Monday, July 16, 2012, at 5 p.m.


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If I can't dance, I don't want to be in your revolution.
-Emma Goldman
"Trust your gut," my friend and mentor says, when I am trying to make an important decision. My method has always been to imagine what it would feel like, deep in my gut, if I did NOT make a certain choice. But she tells me to think, instead, of which choice makes me feel like I'm flying; which choice makes me feel like laughing out loud; which choice makes me feel like dancing.
Now listen: this goes for anything. Sure, yes, life decisions, choosing a school, a job, a city to live in… but it goes for business decisions as well.
Deciding whom to hire or promote to an important position; determining whose advice to seek out, whose advice to trust; projecting sales in an uncertain economy; deciding how much to spend on a marketing strategy; and whether that marketing strategy should be purely traditional, or if it should include new and explored territory like social media…
…and how you will go about doing business in an online world where squishy concepts like "trust" and "authenticity" are thrown about with such reckless abandon…
So much about marketing, in particular, is reduced to spreadsheets and numbers. But so much about social media is about trust and reputation, which are pretty tough concepts to reduce to numbers.
Don't get me wrong: I am all about the quantitative analysis and the gathering and crunching of data. But once you've got your budget and you've got your spreadsheet and you've projected your figures, be honest: Doesn't there come a quiet moment when you take a deep breath, calm your mind, and listen to your gut?
And don't your customers do the same thing, too?
This is why I'm curious about how this process works, and under what circumstances we trust one another.
How does it work for you? How do you decide whether or not to trust, to choose, to commit? What sensations do you look for? Do you prefer to follow the sense that what you are doing is absolutely right, or are you more in tune with what feels dead wrong? Does your intuition attract you to the good, or repel you from the bad? Does it use a carrot or a stick? I'm curious.
Also: What makes you feel like dancing?