text:
AutoCAD 2015 Beginner to Advanced Training - Download VersionLearning247
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Cosa impari in questo corso?
3d training
2D Drawings
Managing Layers
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AutoCAD 2015
- 765 video tutorials
- 50 hours of training
- Exercise files included
- Instructor: David Cohn
CADLearning® for AutoCAD® 2015 teaches design and documentation using AutoCAD. You'll learn how to speed up your work with productivity tools and create stunning designs more efficiently. Video lessons cover basic and advanced topics, including 2D drawing basics, managing layers, annotation, modifying 2D and 3D objects, collaboration and rendering.COURSE FEATURES
Our video tutorial courses put the control in your hands. Use when wanted or needed to answer a question, and watch again and again as often as you need.
A full-featured course covering beginner to advanced concepts, and everything in between.
For instant technical support use our powerful search function to quickly locate and view short 'how-to' lessons. Get answers to all of your first level technical support issues 'instantly' with this in-house resource.
As a flexible CAD training solution, you can sort the lessons and progress from beginner to advanced topics; or just review seldom used commands and added functionality of new releases.
- Train at home, at the office or on the road.
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In today's highly competitive world, organizations and individuals need to stay on top of their game. Our CADLearning courses empower users to:
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blue door barns
bed and breakfast & self catering barns
— where luxury meets rustic chic —
Our four boutique-style barns surround a magical, candlelit courtyard garden with open fire and BBQ area, and are just minutes from Glyndebourne, the historic market town of Lewes and cosmopolitan 'city by the sea' Brighton.
A beautiful bolt-hole offering either bed & breakfast or self catering accommodation for weekend breaks or longer, and the perfect place to celebrate a special occasion. We are dog friendly and are just steps away from great walks on the South Downs.


text:
of Surveillance in the Web 2.0 Environment," by Manuela Farinosi (pdf) (via E. Morozov on Twitter).
This paper reports the findings from research into how Italian students conceive of social media and the sorts of metaphors they rely on to understand it. The "shop window" metaphor is prominent, according to the author, which fits my ideas about social media being primarily a space for a particular sort of self-display, which changes subjectivity.
Its communicative logic is primarily based on showing something to other people's gaze. Its transparency has the capacity to create relationships and put the inside in touch with the outside of the shop. Nowadays the shop-window's logic is spreading and is reaching out to the whole of society and people are virtually forced to live in a showcase (Codeluppi, 2007). The window's visibility involves living in the middle between the private and public dimension. Online profiles can be read as full-blown virtual shop-windows, as a tool of self-promotion. The visibility of the shop-window entails the exposition of what is personal and therefore to learn how to build and manage personal identity is becoming one of the essential steps in order to live in web 2.0 environments.
This concept fits naturally with the metaphor of social media space as a theatrical stage. This feeling of being onstage becomes difficult to escape and eventually one is struck with the nagging feeling of having forgotten one's lines. No one gets to exit the stage, but must go on improvising.
The author's main point is that these are not top-down modes of control being reflected in the metaphors; social media is not experienced as "panoptic." Instead there is "participatory surveillance," which mitigates spying or makes it much worse depending on how you interpret it.
The horizontal control developed inside the web 2.0 environments
can be potentially empowering, unlike the panoptic visibility. It can represent one of the
key-elements for community building and online participation (Albrechtslund, 2008). Obviously, the
impacts of this continuous life sharing and the effects on offline life should not be underestimated, and it is necessary always keep in mind the possible risks associated with overexposure.
I tend to think of "horizontal control" as a way of inducing us to spy on another to generate useful marketing data while making it excusable, acceptable. Participation disguises the emptying out of privacy.


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Mini Diablo was the collector's pet for the original World of Warcraft CE. Considering the age of the game and that the population has greatly changed over time, the vanity pet is quite a rare sight to see.
Fun trivia: The name of Mini Diablo's game model is diablofunsized.m2. :)


text:
Question from Val:
Is it okay to use the indexes on Ancestry.com as a source or do you have to have the original document?
First things first, the plural of index is indexes OR indices. Both are considered correct English. The word indices is more commonly used in technical areas such as science and business but either is correct. Now to Val's question. We were just talking about this on the Transitional Genealogists mailing list. This is a mailing list for serious hobbyists wanting to kick their skills up a notch to a more professional level. It is a great mailing list and I learn new things all the time even though I have been doing this for over 20 years. If you are interested, you can sign up HERE.
The answer to the question is, it depends. If you are working on your direct line it would be a good idea to use the index only as a temporary source until you can request the original document. If this is a far off collateral line I wouldn't be as worried about it but I still think it is a good idea. The reason it is important to get the original is that indexes/indices are fraught with spelling and date errors. I use many of the marriage databases on Ancestry.com with the Mississippi Marriages, 1776-1935 being one of my favorites. There are no images attached to this particular database so I write to the individual counties to get a copy of the record.
Sometimes the database will record the date the marriage license was obtained and sometimes when the marriage was actually performed. How do you know unless you actually look at the document. Sometimes there are big mistakes with names like Sarah put in as Susan. Many times it is small errors like Whiddon put in as Whidden. In the grand scheme of things that is a minor point but you still want to be as accurate as possible.
A quick bunny trail. If you are looking at a document and your person of interest's name is misspelled, you record that misspelling in your file as an AKA. It is very important to note every different way a name is spelled even if it is different than what you "know" the spelling to be. Samuel Slade married Mrs. Mary Whidden on 27 December 1847 in Marion County, Mississippi. Her name was really Mrs. Mary Whiddon but I recorded the AKA of Mrs. Mary Whidden with the marriage record being the source. My source is listed as:
Marion County, Mississippi, Marriage Book C: 53, Samuel Slade-Mary Whidden, 1847.
Bunny trial #2. When you are looking at females, the titles of Miss and Mrs. are very helpful clues and they should be recorded in the AKA field along with the name. In the above example I can see that Mary was married before she married Samuel to a man named Whidden [Whiddon].
Copyright © 2012 Michele Simmons Lewis


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Grimm fans don't have to wait until Thanksgiving to feel thankful.
Viewers can "Thank Grimm It's Friday" with the series' fall finale (9/8c, NBC), in which Det. Nick Burkhardt (David Giuntoli) is a man possessed when he finds out that his cop partner Hank (Russell Hornsby) has been pummeled to a pulp. Apparently, that impotent Hexenbiest Adalind (Claire Coffee) has hit Portland and has set her sights on those Nick holds near and dear. Speaking of, his girlfriend Juliette (Bitsie Tulloch) — whose selective amnesia has set back their relationship — is adding to his stress levels with her obsessive attraction to Capt. Renard (Sasha Roiz).
PHOTOS: Everyone is posing nude!
It's a big, twisty, cliff-hanger episode, and Giuntoli shares his excitement for "The Season of the Hexenbiest" with these seven reasons to "Thank Grimm It's Friday":
1. Crazy-Eyes Adalind is back: "I love Claire Coffee, and she's a regular now on the show, which has just been thrilling to everybody," Giuntoli tells TVGuide.com "Her character Adalind, on the other hand, is vile and just soulless — literally since I French-kissed her soul out of her body last season. Claire has been reading books about psychopaths because Adalind is a bad human being. She loves being bad. She takes kind of a mischievous, gross joy in getting power, destroying my relationships and whatever it takes to get what she wants. She's got that flirt-hate going on, which is dead sexy."
2. The secret is out ... sort of: Which secret? There are so many! Well, Juliette and the captain's lust does not go unnoticed by Monroe (Silas Weir Mitchell), who walked in on them smooching at the end of last episode. What comes of that remains to be seen. "I wonder of Monroe will tell me," says Giuntoli, who muses that even if Nick were to find out the truth, "he'd be the angry-jealous type."
3. Monroe's nose knows: "Monroe is part of my crime-fighting team. He comes out and does some recon for me," Giuntoli says. "He has this tremendous sense of smell and this tremendous knowledge of Wesen history because he's this crazy history buff. Those skills come in quite handy. He can kind of sniff out who's there and tell me what that might mean." Monroe's nose leads them to the Hundjagers, whom Giuntoli describes as "the henchmen for the Verrat. They're the people who get sent out to do the real high-end dirty work for the powerful people in Europe and the royal family."
Grimm's Juliette to unleash "mad bedroom skills" — but with whom?
4. Nick embraces his inner vigilante: "Even though we're cops, we go rogue more often than not now," he says. "We're always willing to cross the line, whereas last season I was very reluctant to cross that line." Besides, is Nick just going to let the Wesen who took out his partner go unpunished? "When Hank gets beaten up, oh yeah, I feel fairly responsible," he continues. "But I'm just pissed off more than anything. When Monroe asks, 'What do you want to do?' I tell him, 'Let's rub these guys out!'"
5. A shiny new toy: Hold the crossbow! Nick debuts an intriguing new weapon from the trailer's arsenal. "I love how Nick has a bevy of intricate medieval weapons in the cabinet, but he picks the baseball bat," Giuntoli says. "It's a baseball bat with some lovely details on it. Baseball was the only sport that I could even remotely perform well as a child because I had a low center of gravity."
6. That won't leave a mark! "I get injured often in these [fight] scenes. I've had so many scars from Grimm, but luckily, 'The Season of the Hexenbiest' is not one of them," he says. "The Hundjager fight was pretty easy for me because you're not doing any crazy twists or turns with your body."
7. Fan feedback: Although Giuntoli is often shooting Grimm on Fridays into the wee hours and therefore isn't able to watch the episode live, he makes a point to check out what the viewers are saying online after filming wraps for the day. He especially enjoys the responsiveness of Twitter where he shares his thoughts as @MisterGiuntoli. "We have some hardcore fans," he says. "I love getting on there and bantering and winding people up or letting them wind me up. We like to provoke each other. It's like this great, fond relationship I have with my Twitter fans. Everybody always asks me two things: 1) 'Will you marry me?' (I just say yes), and 2) 'When will Silas get on Twitter?' So just yesterday I tweeted that Silas was on Twitter, but I wouldn't give out his handle. And they were all freaking out. And then I said, 'He got sad, guys, and he deactivated his account already.'"
Check out this preview of Grimm's midseason finale, which airs Friday at 9/8c on NBC, and then share why you "Thank Grimm It's Friday" in the comments below.


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Coverage When It Counts: What Does Health Insurance In Massachusetts Cover And How Can Consumers Know?
Publication Date: May 2009
Publisher(s): Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Author(s): J. Libster; E. Bangit; K. Pollitz; N. Johnston; S. Lewis
Topic: Health (Quality of health care)
Health (Quality of health care)
Health (Quality of health care)
How can people know when health insurance provides adequate coverage?
This report suggests a new method for developing benchmarks to illustrate some types and costs of medical care consumers might need under a variety of scenarios, and for evaluating health insurance protection using these benchmarks.
Using simulated claims scenarios for different types of patients—one diagnosed with early stage breast cancer, another who has a heart attack, and a third with diabetes—the authors analyzed the content of coverage provided by 10 health insurance plans sold in Massachusetts and estimated out-of-pocket costs for care that patients might face. They also reviewed the transparency and accessibility of information about policies that consumers would need to understand how coverage works. Massachusetts was chosen because of its precedent-setting reforms to achieve universal coverage that included the establishment of standards for minimum coverage for all residents.
The report concludes with a recommendation for the development of standardized health plan comparison tools—patterned on the FDA nutrition label, but for health insurance—that could help consumers appreciate the kinds of medical events for which health insurance may be needed and relative


text:
Product Name: Hole Saw 3-1/2 in.
Product #: AV56
Manufacturer: Flexi Drills
Unit of Measure: Each (1)
Our Price/Unit: $29.59
Quantity of Units/Case: 2
Minimum Quantity of Cases to Order: 1
Hole saws are constructed with a hardened high speed, M3 cutting edge welded to a tough, resilient alloy back. These deep hole saws cut any machinable material from wood and plastics to harder metals such as stainless steel. Wide range of sizes available.
Diameter (in): 3-1/2 in.
Material: High Speed Steel


text: CultureGolden GlobesGallery25 SlidesA literate look at the 50 most unforgettable breasts in movie historyBy Andrew Corsello, Glenn O'Brien, Chris Norris, Marshall Sella, David Rakoff, Ted Heller, and Henry AlfordAugust 27, 2012FacebookTwitter1/25Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)She rises from the depths like the Venus of the San Fernando Valley—slicked hair glistening, water dripping from her smiling lipps, dark eyes glittering with libidinal mischief. Then—in a scene that will forever grant an otherwise incomprehensible erotic aura to the Cars—the new-wave chestnut "Moving in Stereo" kicks in as Phoebe Cates begins her slo-mo poolside strut. And boy, do they move in stereo, those pert, secondary sexual characteristics of teenage Phoebe Cates, as—in one breathtaking gesture—she frees her frisky buds from their front-fastening red bikini top to quiver in the balletic perfection of Judge Reinhold's furtive spank dream. The boob shot would soon become stock-in-trade of the Porky's epoch, but it would never be used to such weighty narrative effect. Here, hooters star in a compressed version of the male adolescent's tragic arc: from the soaring heights of erotic fantasia to the bleak depths of sexual humiliation, as the sleek naiad of Reinhold's imaginings actually walks in on him log-flogging to her image. The cable arts channel Bravo included this scene in its Sexiest Moments in Film—in which the model-pundit Roshumba Williams helpfully explained, "In the male world, boobs are huge."2/25Alien (1979)I'd heard it was scary, so I went. It scared me, all right. Scarred me. Before, I'd believed outer space an antiseptic realm soundtracked by strauss. I quickly learned otherwise. Learned that space was cloyingly organic, infected and infectious, rapacious—and that to experience space was to experience not the infinite void but rather the claustrophobic horror of being caged with a sexual predator.Indeed, Alien teemed, burst, with inner private parts that had no business seeing the light of day. Firstly: that loathsome leathery pod that grew translucent as John Hurt neared, revealing a jellied organ aquiver within. Moments later, thick black lips peeled back to expose—no doubt about it—a glistening, pulsating vagina. Then, in response to Hurt's whispered exclamation ("...organic life!"), that wicked wobbling vagina-squid sprung forth and...raped his face! Clasped its insectoidal legs to his scalp, noosed his neck with its muscled tentacle, and pumped a fleshly funnel down the man's throat, through which it...planted its seed.Such a filthy movie: exploding retractable jaws; acidic body fluids; a severed droid head whose mouth issued lewd taunts ("perfect organism!") along with a strange milky effluent; a man who gave birth. That birth—is there a more violent, violating moment in filmdom? As Hurt bayed in pain, my dear, sweet, credulous brother, sitting beside me, began to whimper. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. When the spawn emerged from Hurt's chest, spraying gore and squealing triumphantly, he promptly pissed himself—then fled the theater.Which means he missed the breasts.They popped up near the end, after the last human standing—Sigourney Weaver's character, Ripley—had blown up the mother ship and escaped in the shuttle. Safe at last, she began to relax. Off came the clothes.Now, Alien worked on the principle that what can't be seen is always more vivid than what can. (Glimpses of the creature were fleeting at best.) So it was that Ripley's breasts remained sheathed. Whereas the alien had its exoskeletal armor, Ripley had that skimpy white tank top, thin as cheesecloth, which only made her seem more human, more vulnerable. So palpably natural, those breasts, utterly unbuoyed and uninflated. They even seemed a bit forlorn—bewildered little patties blinking and withering in the harsh fluorescent light of the shuttle. The nipples, however, were another story; they'd gone as hard as ski-pole tips. It was both the earthliest and the sexiest image of a woman I had ever seen, and by way of contrast it created the film's most disorienting moment.Presented with Ripley's tumescent womanhood, I began to let my guard down, to psychologically uncurl myself and to physically sit up straight in my seat, as it were. The movie was just setting me up, of course; the alien had stowed itself in the shuttle. As it came out of hiding, I got my first good look at its proboscis. Which was—gleamingly, drippingly, chitinously, blackly, hugely, undeniably—phallic. I took it as I was meant to take it, as a grotesque mockery of my own arousal. You don't get to have her—it does. Was I manufacturing sexual undertones? No. For as the beast nonchalantly began to stretch its limbs and slide its goo-slicked jaw in and out, in and out, what did Ripley say over and over? Lucky, lucky, lucky. That's right—the perfect organism was gonna get "lucky" with Ripley._Filthy. _I was 12 years old then. I'd already learned to pair id with dread; I knew well the horror of others banging on the bathroom door as I...took my time. Yet I had never had—and never again would have—the third-rail force of my own sexual desire so vividly and soul-scarringly converted into fear.Now, twenty-six years later, I only wish I'd pissed and run like my brother. I'd be just a little less fucked-up if I had.—Andrew Corsello3/25The Moderns (1988)To me, the oddest instutition in Hollywood is the body double. I can understand if an actress, for various reasons, doesn't want to do nudity. But then why let someone else do it for her? If everyone thinks those are your tits, then in some sense they are your tits. I guess a body double simply saves an actress the embarrassment of being ogled by the key grip and the best boy all day. But what the big deal is about showing tits I don't know, unless they aren't such great tits. Which is, of course, a perfectly valid reason for modesty.There is one brilliant reason not to show them, and that is to increase the value of showing them eventually. Halle Berry was rumored to have demanded a six-figure deal for baring nipple in Swordfish, though she denies it. But she was well paid for this box-office-stimulating flash. (I would also deny being paid a premium for nipple exposure. In fact, I do deny it.) Timing is everything, however. Meg Ryan never showed 'em, and then was counting on a surprise appearance of her mammies in In the Cut to uplift her sagging career. Alas, it was too little too late.One of the best star breast moments in film was the brief but pleasant exposure of Linda Fiorentino's in The Moderns. As someone interested in the art world of the '20s, I just hate pseudo-cool movies like Alan Rudolph's wimpy rendering of the modernist movement, but I loved Linda Fiorentino as the modernist muse and sylphlike sybarite. The one genuinely modern thing in this film is Fiorentino's body. Her breasts are revealed when the crass collector, played by John Lone, performs the obeisance of shaving her armpits, then again when she tub-wrestles with the painter, played by Keith Carradine. She's not exactly androgynous, but streamlined. A woman after Matisse, built for running, not milking. Artemis, not Aphrodite. All in all, a pleasant relief from the glandular excesses of Hollywood and a tribute to the erotic sensibilities of those of us who were happily weaned.—Glenn O'Brien4/25Amarcord (1973)Like so much transgression, it begins with cigarettes. Titta, Fellini's younger self—living in a tiny town in fascist-era Italy; adolescent, hormones geysering, his days spent in delinquency, yearning, and self-abuse—goes to the tobacconist to buy himself "una nazionale," just one. It is closing time, and he slips in under the iron gate. The proprietress, locking up for the night, is moving large sacks across the floor, and he offers to help. "You couldn't manage," she dismisses him; he is half her size, after all.She is cartoonishly ample. In her pale blue cardigan, her bust is an unyielding shelf, jutting out in an improbable cantilever worthy of Frank Gehry. An undifferentiated wedge such as this could be known only as a bosom. Amarcord is above all a film of recollection (the title means "I remember" in Italian dialect). It makes sense that these jugs of memory would be outsize, hypertrophic ideals, although Maria Antonietta Beluzzi, the actress playing the part, is real enough.Titta protests, saying he can lift eighty kilos, can even lift his father. "What do you weigh?" he asks. "I could lift you, too.""Ah si?" she asks, bored. She takes off her apron, slams down the iron gate, and turns to him, sizing him up. Why not? she must be thinking. Everyone in town is looking for something to break up the monotony. "Vediamo," she dares him.The transaction is hugely awkward and private. His arms barely make it around her fantastically broad, brown-tweed-clad ass. He lifts her three times in quick succession. He is almost undone by his efforts while her shrieks of laughter give way to a moaning, closed-eyed rapture. Her head brushes against the hanging lightbulb, and she doesn't care. Even when she is back on solid ground, her delirious floating fugue continues, still held aloft by the preconscious memory of weightlessness, nothing more than her birthright, being possessed of such a pair of balloons.And what balloons they are! Overwhelmed, she unpacks her sweater, releasing only one."Drive me crazy, just a little," she tells him, pulling his mouth against the left nipple. He is a baby once again, the breast dwarfing his head. Its right twin manifests in a great, shuddering mitosis. He blows on it. "You have to suck, you idiot," she says, cajoling, still in the moment. She presses his face into the deep cleft between the watermelons. He cannot breathe.It is over as suddenly as it began. She shoves him away roughly; the cardigan is restuffed. Warm biology becomes angora-clad architecture once more. She is all business now, closing up shop, reminding him of his initial purpose: a Nazionale. She hands him one for free. "Un regalo [a present]," she says, with no trace of affection in her voice. Best not to dwell on the size of the tiny baton. He takes it and walks to the iron gate. Spent, he cannot budge it. She lifts it effortlessly and pushes him out into the night.Wish fulfillment can make all men briefly stupid, and still we chase after the chance to make idiots of ourselves. At that age, instinct would probably desert us, too, and we would also blow when faced with the heaving udders of La Tabaccaia—so confusingly, simultaneously liquid and solid. From rigid cardigan to flesh and back to cardigan once more. In science such a thing is known as a non-Newtonian liquid. Cornstarch and water, for example, will dribble freely over an open palm, but clench your fist and it seizes up into a firm handful. Relax again and back it flows. Fellini has another word for something that can switch states so rapidly, providing ever changing and equal measures of give and resistance, opprobrium and succor: Mommy.—David Rakoff5/25The Day of the Jackal (1971)There's a rather grand school of thought—peddled, in the main, by former film stars in their sixties and seventies—that "it's far sexier to see less than more!" Tell this to a few 11-year-old boys and they will brutally laugh, if not actually beat you down. By the age of 11, I'd had my mind blown by dozens of _Playboy_s, but I had yet to behold the miracle of a celluloid mammary. That would come in Fred Zinnemann's The Day of the Jackal. The film follows an enigmatic assassin (Edward Fox) trying to kill Charles de Gaulle; there's an indiscreet cabinet official who natters away to his mistress (an agent of the assassins) about the progress of the Jackal manhunt.While seeing the film, I was having as good a time as an 11-year-old ever has. Fox was ruthless and sophisticated; he wore cool disguises and strangled unsavory people. He drove an Alfa Romeo and painted it between murders. He hid a rifle in a crutch. So my plate was full. I hadn't counted on a mammary-related Big Moment—but I got one. In the scene, it was night. The mistress-mole was slipping furtively out of bed to make a call. This was something I'd seen before, movie characters using telephones. But then the unthinkable happened: The sheet dropped. It was impossible, and it was glorious. We saw areola, we saw—was this happening?—nipple. Then we saw it again. This is what the Lumière brothers, also French, should have filmed with that very first camera of theirs instead of the fucking train rolling into the station. (What could those guys have been thinking? A train. Look at the train, 11-year-old boy! Here comes the train. Jesus.)I am fairly certain that women shed their clothes before 1973, though I can only judge this from easy-to-doctor still photographs. In Jackal, I was suddenly viewing solid film evidence that females were willing and able to walk around, even slink around, without clothes. Billions of electrical impulses exploded across the synapses of my brain. From that moment alone, I might easily have been doomed to a life of seedy clubs, hookers, and a grim, spiraling sexual addiction. That breast, that redhead's breast—it was right there, available to the deeply spiritual part of me that could float out of my body, as a pure soul departs the flesh, then screw her.Actually, there's a decent chance this film did pervert me. I mean, the mistress was working to assassinate a world leader—and she was the light of my life. Let's face it: We were all rooting for the assassins, especially the naked one. It was like spotting the Olsen twins in the Zapruder film: Nothing good could come of it. Still, I'm grateful that my first cinematic breast didn't belong to a murdered girl on a slab or something, because you never know where that's going to lead.All that said, if I could have, I gladly would have leapt into The Day of the Jackal and given my all for the de Gaulle conspiracy. That's how powerful, how atomic, the moment was. Anything to cross that last tactile frontier. My chance to murder de Gaulle has passed (which is sad, really—unlike others, I learned from Edward Fox's mistakes). And for all I know, the nude redheads of my cinematic youth are now a brood of 67-year-old screeching hags living in Dallas—women I'd beg to keep a fierce grip on the sheets, for all our sakes. I probably wouldn't chase down their breasts right now. I wouldn't get grabby. These days, I can get a better assassin-tit fix off Milla Jovovich.—Marshall Sella6/25Carnal Knowledge (1971)A moment—not a scene, really, but a scene-stealer—that i'll always remember is in Carnal Knowledge. Jack Nicholson, the lucky bastard, is on a date with Ann-Margret. Nicholson plays a certified public accountant who also happens to be a certified pussy bandit, and Ann-Margret is...Ann-Margret. On the date, they do not even have precious little to talk about...they have absolutely nothing to talk about. But Jack's thoughts are our thoughts; his eyes are on the prize, just where ours are, too. As they wine and dine, he offers, just for the sake of some first-date gratuitous touching, to read Ann-Margret's palm.A-M (I, like millions of others, had been deeply moved years before by her teenage titty-shaking work in Bye Bye Birdie) puts her arms together so that Jack can gain access to her hand. When she shifts, the Earth stops, because in doing so, she forms one of the most awe-inspiring, majestic, stupendous cleavages ever to bubble up on the silver screen. I will never forget it, because I was a teenager when I saw it. The movie had been out for a year already, and the theater was mostly empty. But when A-M formed that wonderful canyon ("Go ahead, jump in," it beckons, and the viewer is tempted, Sherlock Jr.-style, to make the attempt), a combination gasp-and-sigh rose in unison from every male in that theater, the sort of gasp you hear when O. J. Simpson or Robert Durst is acquitted, the sort of sigh you let out when a friend—but not you—wins $10 million in the lottery.Carnal Knowledge, despite those few seconds, is not a cheery movie. If that were the only movie you ever saw that depicted the arc of a man's sexual life, you would think that we're all MCI and Enron. The depressing truths about love, marriage, and sex in the movie went way, way over my feverishly lusting, bedazzled, long-haired teenage head. It was only years later, when I saw the movie again, that I got it. But even then, the cleavage was still good.—Ted Heller7/25Valley of the Dolls (1967)Some cinematic breasts are to be gazed at lustily, and some bespeak the heaving glory of incipient or recent birthing. And yet others are meant to evoke awe and pity. They're beautiful but doom-laden, like a high fever or Robert Kennedy.None more so than Sharon Tate's in_ Valley of the Dolls_. Playing Jennifer, blond and big-eyed and hushed of voice, she attracts the eye of Tony, a singer whom she'll marry and be impregnated by, only to find out too late that he has an incurable disease. Jennifer resorts to appearing in nudies to foot Tony's sanitarium bill. She decides to abort. And then—as if this pileup of tragic incidents weren't already enough to guarantee the film a homosexual fan base—Jennifer learns that she has breast cancer.In her final scene in the film, Jennifer lies in bed at the Bel Air Carlton. "How am I going to keep Tony in the sanitarium?" Jennifer laments to her friend Anne, who assures her that she'll find a job. Jennifer gasps, "Anne, honey, let's face it: All I know how to do is take off my clothes," exhibiting the only asset besides her devastating shape that this cruel and Hobbesian fictional world bestows on her—a knowledge of her limitations. Seconds later, alone in the room, Jennifer swallows a fatal fistful of "dolls" and lays her head on the pillow—but not before going to the mirror, removing her satin bed jacket, and gazing wistfully at her twin Three Mile Island-caliber powerhouses of doom—these natural wonders that had gotten her so far but undid her so pitilessly.Such is the harsh justice of the Valley. Inasmuch as a film whose climactic scene revolves around the yanking off, and subsequent plunging into a toilet, of a wig can be said to have a message, the message relayed by Jennifer's story line is Rely on Your Breasts and You'll Regret It. (Real life, of course, supplied for Tate the ghoulish addendum, And Then Charles Manson's Followers Will Bludgeon You.) Jacqueline Susann's book, on which the movie is based, was rumored to have outsold the Bible when it was published in 1966, not because its lurid pageant of flop sweat and wig tape was such a thoroughly entertaining wallow in the glitter gulch but because it provided a much needed proto-feminist snapshot of the plight and peril of career women.Indeed, the extent of Jennifer's victimhood is all the more upsetting when you compare her with almost any male movie character who's defined by a body part. The men always fare better—The Wizard of Oz's Scarecrow gets his brain; big-nosed Cyrano de Bergerac dies knowing his inamorata loved him; much crippled and compromised Christy Brown becomes a charmingly cantankerous painter and writer. No, to find an apt comparison for Jennifer, you'd have to search the genres of science fiction and horror. She's no Cyrano. She's Breastzilla.—Henry Alford8/25Trading Places (1983)Jamie Lee's casual strip-down in front of the mirror revealed a pair so...perfect, we bought a ticket to the ecrable Curtis vehicle of the same name two years later.9/25American Pie (1999)We've retrofitted all our high school flashbacks to include a sexy foreign-exchange student moaning in a butchered Czech accent.10/25Gia (1998)These are your boobs. These are your boobs on drugs. And when they belong to Angelina Jolie, they're hot regardless.11/25Mulholland Dr. (2001)Laura Harring offers a pair so pillowy they must be down. Gives credence to the theory that Lynch's film is all a dream.12/25Risky Business (1983)If Rebecca De Mornay stood in our living room and let us peel off her dress from behind, then we might have become high school pimps, too.13/259 1/2 Weeks (1986)During a harsh round of staircase sex, Mickey Rourke's creepiness is nicely offset by the sight of Kim Basinger in a rain-soaked T-shirt.14/25Body Heat (1981)Once upon a time, Kathleen Turner would point her small but assertive breasts at you, grab you by your stuff, and lead you back to bed. Then she made Serial Mom. Sorry to harsh your boner.15/25_Swimming Pool(2003)_ The best all-natural mamelles since the October 1978 double issue of Oui.16/25Animal House (1978)The unattainable coed in the window removing her big white brassiere: the mother lode, so to speak—John Landis's gift to young boys everywhere.17/25About Last Night... (1986)Brat Pack stacked rack! Pre-silicone Demi does Rob Lowe in the tub. Rumor has it Ashton Kutcher was conceived during this movie.18/25The Lover (1992)Jane March astride her lover for what feels like hours. We've always been a sucker for an adapted Marguerite Duras novel.19/25Airplane! (1980)Chaotic midair turbulence yields a delightfully frantically jiggly glimpse just brief enough for a PG rating. (Thanks, Jack Valenti!).20/25Wild Things (1998)For once, Matt Dillon's trademark dumbfounded expression seems justified, in the face of Denise Richards's...well, er, wild things.21/25The Neverending Story (1984)After seeing this in the third grade, we thought all women were gargantuan stone goddesses with breasts the size of boulders. Prove us wrong!22/25...And Eight We Wish Had Stayed CoveredFatal Attraction (1987)If only Michael Douglas had recognized Glenn Close's evil nibs as the harbingers of mayhem they so clearly were.23/25In the Cut (2003)Boy, it's been a while since Meg Ryan faked that orgasm so fetchingly in the deli. Here, her breasts look downright jowly.24/25Pretty Baby (1978)Brooke Shields at like, 1 year old. Are those breasts or mosquito bites? Either way, please don't make us look at them ever again.25/25Something's Gotta Give (2003)The clearest index of Jack's coolness: Only he could get away with having—and flashing—criminally paunchy man-titties.Related Stories for GQLate NightTVLate NightMovies


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BlackBerry to launch BlackPad next week?
Janet Jackson and reputed billionaire BF Wissam Al Mana spotted in New York City.
Miami appeals court rules 3-0 that Florida's ban on gay adoptions was unconstitutional. "The ruling challenged the state's 33-year-old law banning adoption for gay men and lesbians and will allow Frank Martin Gill to remain the parent of his two foster sons, whom he and his longtime partner adopted in 2009," FOX Orlando reports. Florida Gov. Charlie Crist will immediately stop enforcing the state's ban on gay adoption.
Oakland Raiders cornerback and Nigerian native Nnamdi Asomugha and the African faces of American football.
Right-wing radio host Alex Jones: Drinking from juice boxes make you gay.
New Beyoncé track to be released in 3 weeks? ""F*cking insane!" tweeted producer Los Da Mystro, who developed B's hit "Single Ladies" with his production partner Tricky Stewart. "All i can say i Ladies yall got another Anthem!"
Towleroad posts a first-hand account of the former RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman's New York City fundraiser for the legal team challenging Prop 8. "The crowd was a diverse mix of Wall Street titans, Republican establishment figures, LGBT community advocates and politicos (partial list below after the jump). Barbara Bush, President George W. Bush's daughter attended the event—which was a surprise to people in the room." The event raised $1.2 million.


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For discussion of Electric Universe and Plasma Cosmology. The ideas and opinions expressed on this forum do not necessarily reflect those of T-Bolts Group Inc or The Thunderbolts Project(TM)
[M]any, if not most, of the change challenges you face today and will face tomorrow require something more than incorporating new technical skills into your current mindset. These are the 'adaptive challenges,' and they can only be met by transforming your mindset, by advancing to a more sophisticated stage of mental development … Heifetz says the biggest error leaders make is when they apply technical means to solve adaptive challenges.
Successful people … develop anxiety-management systems that are very robust and self-sustaining, and they permit us to function in a wide variety of situations.
But, we run these systems -- even highly successful anxiety-management systems -- at a cost. Inevitably, they create blind spots, prevent new learning, and constantly constrain action in some aspects of our living. These costs show up when we are unable to deliver on some genuinely desired change, the realization of which would bring us to a new, higher level of functioning in ways we truly want to attain.
Most self-improvement efforts take place in too constricted a psychological space, blind to these bigger dynamics at play. (p48)
Change does not fail to occur because of insincerity. The heart patient is not insincere about his wish to keep living, even as he reaches for another cigarette. Change fails to occur because we mean both things. It fails to occur because we are a living contradiction. (p38)
are not some weak failings arising from some insufficiently developed moral muscle. They are brilliant, highly effective behaviors serving exactly the purpose another part of him intends! (p38)
When we make a New Year's resolution, we look at the behaviors we seek to extinguish as bad; we look at the behaviors we want to amplify as good. But until we understand the commitments that make the obstructive behaviors at the same time brilliantly effective, we haven't correctly formulated the problem. Einstein said the formulation of the problem is as important as the solution. (p39)
The Three Adult Plateaus Described
The socialized mind
• We are shaped by the definitions and expectations of our personal environment.
• Our self coheres by its alignment with, and loyalty to, that with which it identifies.
• This can express itself primarily in our relationships with people, with "schools of thought" (our ideas and beliefs) or both.
The self-authoring mind
• We are able to step back enough from the social environment to generate an internal "seat of judgment" or personal authority that evaluates and makes choices about external expectations.
• Our self coheres by its alignment with its own belief system/ideology/personal code; by its ability to self-direct, take stands, set limits, and create and regulate its boundaries on behalf of its own voice.
The self-transforming mind
• We can step back from and reflect on the limits of our own ideology or personal authority; see that any one system or self-organization is in some way partial or incomplete; be friendlier toward contradiction and opposites; seek to hold on to multiple systems rather than projecting all but one onto the other.
• Our self coheres through its ability not to confuse internal consistency with wholeness or completeness, and through its alignment with the dialectic rather than either pole.
My thesis is that the criteria by which individuals are deemed qualified or unqualified to become professionals involve not just technical knowledge as is generally assumed, but also attitude – in particular, attitude toward working within an assigned political and ideological framework ...
The qualifying attitude, I find, is an uncritical subordinate one, which allows professionals to take their ideological lead from their employers, and appropriately fine-tune the outlook that they bring to their work. The resulting professional is an obedient thinker, an intellectual property whom employers can trust to experiment, theorize, innovate and create safely within the confines of an assigned ideology. … (p15-19)
This book's analysis finds the supposed political neutrality of the process of professional qualification a myth: Neither weeding out nor adjustment to the training institution's values are politically neutral processes. Even the qualifying examination -- its cold, tough, technical questions supposedly testimony to the objectivity and integrity of the system of professional qualification and to the purity of the moment of personal triumph in every professional's training -- does not act neutrally. The ideological obedience that the qualification system requires for success turns out to be identical to the ideological obedience that characterizes the work of the salaried professional. (p26)
For understanding the professional, the concept of "ideology" will emerge as much more useful than that of "skill." But what is ideology, exactly? Ideology is thought that justifies action, including routine day-to-day activity ... your ideology justifies your own actions to yourself. Economics may bring you back to your employer day after day, but it is ideology that makes that activity feel like a reasonable or unreasonable way to spend your life ... Work in general is becoming more and more ideological, and so is the workforce that does it. (p15)
The current set of scientific attitudes of objectivity, open-mindedness, unbiassedness, curiosity, suspended judgement, critical mindedness, and rationality has evolved from a systematic identification of scientific norms and values. The earliest papers of any importance in the field of scientific attitudes are those of R.K. Merton (1957). He conceptualized the norms or institutional imperatives on the basis of evidence taken mainly from statements by scientists about science and their scientific activity. He then identified four norms. These are universalism, communality, disinterestedness and organized skepticism.
Universalism requires that information presented to the scientific community be assessed independently of the character of the scientist who presents the information. The norm of communality requires that scientific knowledge be held in common, in other words, the researcher is expected to share his findings with other scientists freely and without favour. The norm of disinterestedness requires scientists to pursue scientific knowledge without considering their career or their reputation. Scientists are exhorted by the norm of organized skepticism never to take results on trust. They are expected to be consistently critical of knowledge.
To this list of institutional imperatives Barber (1962: 122-142) later added two more — rationality and emotional neutrality. Rationality relates essentially to having faith in reason and depending on empirical tests rather than on tradition when substantiating hypotheses. Scientists are encouraged also to conform to the norm of emotional neutrality i.e. to avoid emotional involvement which may colour their judgement.
Is it not possible that these scientific attitudes have been popularised and then reified as a set of ideal attitudes but in reality is not often found in actual scientific practices? The following studies raise serious doubts about the scientists' adherence to institutional imperatives ...
MR: When you first thought of writing this book, you were in graduate school, right?
JS: Yes, that's right. I got interested [in the] topic when I was going to professional training myself, getting a PhD in physics at the University of California, Irvine. It seemed like the best of my fellow graduate students were either dropping out or being kicked out. And by 'best,' those were the most concerned about other people and seemed less self-centered, less narrowly-focused, most friendly people...they seemed to be handicapped in the competition. They seemed to be at a disadvantage not only because their attention was divided, but because their concerns about big picture issues like justice and the social role of the profession and so on, caused them to stop and think and question, whereas their unquestioning gung-ho classmates just plowed right through with nothing to hold them back. As I mentioned, there's about a 50% drop-out rate for students entering University programs in all fields; and what I found was that this weeding out is not politically neutral. To put it bluntly, the programs favor ass-kissers.
Professionals generally avoid the risk inherent in real critical thinking and cannot properly be called critical thinkers. They are simply ideologically disciplined thinkers. Real critical thinking means uncovering and questioning social, political and moral assumptions; applying and refining a personally developed worldview; and calling for action that advances a personally created agenda. An approach that backs away from any of these three components lacks the critical spirit ... Ideologically disciplined thinkers, especially the more gung-ho ones, often give the appearance of being critical thinkers as they go around deftly applying the official ideology and confidently reporting their judgments. The fact that professionals are usually more well-informed than nonprofessionals contributes to the illusion that they are critical thinkers. (p41)
Beginning physics graduate students must devote an entire year or two of their lives to homework. Indeed, the first part of physics graduate school is well described as a boot camp based on homework. One characteristic of any boot camp is that the subject matter the instructors present in their day-to-day work is not really the main thing they are teaching. Teaching the subject matter is certainly one goal, but it is not the main one. In military boot camp, for example, drill instructors make recruits spend large amounts of time learning to dress to regulation, march in precise formation, chant ditties, disassemble and reassemble rifles, carry heavy backpacks, and so on, yet the main goal of all this is something much more profound: to create soldiers who will follow orders, even to their deaths. Similarly, the most apparent goal of graduate physics courses is to indoctrinate the students into the dominant paradigms, or theoretical frameworks, of physics. But the primary goal is to train physicists who will maintain tremendous discipline on assigned problems. (p129)
At the end of the [qualifying examination] week the entire physics faculty gathers in a closed meeting to decide the fate of the students. Strange as it may seem, in most physics departments a student's score on the test is only one factor in the faculty's decision as to whether or not that student has passed the test. Students are not usually told their scores: this gives faculty members the option of deciding that a student has failed the test even if that student has outscored someone they are going to pass. In arriving at their personal opinions on whether to pass or fail a student, individual faculty members consider anything and everything carried away from informal discussions with the student and with others around the department.
A faculty member who talks informally with a student in the hallway or at the weekly after-colloquium reception inevitably comes away with a feeling about whether or not that student 'thinks like a physicist.' The student's political outlook can easily make a difference in the faculty member's assessment. For example, in the usual informal discussion of an issue in the news, the student who rails against technical incompetence and confines his thoughts to the search for technical solutions within the given political framework builds a much more credible image as a professional physicist than does the student who emphasizes the need to alter the political framework as part of the solution. Indeed, the latter approach falls outside the work assignments given to professional physicists in industry and academe and so represents thinking unlike a physicist's. (p134)
The Self-Transforming Mind is the highest level of consciousness in Kegan's model. The Self-Transforming Mind is able to take a step back from the act of self-authoring and hold it as object. From this point of view, one is able to regard multiple ideologies simultaneously and compare them, being wary of any single one. Driving questions would include, "What am I missing?", "How can my outlook be more inclusive?" As Susanne Cook-Greuter likes to say, such a person tends to move away from "either/or" thinking towards thinking that is more "both/and". This mindset is problem-seeking. This multi-frame perspective is able to hold the contradictions between competing belief systems and is therefore subject to the dialectic between systems of thought. Underlying this perpetual quest is an acceptance of the incompletion of wholeness.
Because of its interdependent meaning-making, the underlying structure of the Self-Transforming Mind can be thought of as operating at the level of a system of systems. Fears of this order of mind would be having a sense of complacency regarding ones own identity or the sense that one has finally "learned it all".
Less than 1% of the adult population is at this level of development.
Hey, guys, could we maybe, just maybe, talk science instead of anti-scientific, mind numbing, logic failures? It's obvious to anyone that has spent more than five minutes looking into the electric universe, plasma universe, AWT, or any of the others still retaining a fully functional brain these theories are in complete mockery of any legitimate scientific method.
But, the point I'd like to make is that if we hold to rigid expectations & definitions regardless of the domain we are discussing -- be it education or philosophy -- then we have arguably switched to entertaining the construction of some ideal philosophical reasoning machine which diverges from human cognition. That is indeed a fascinating construct, but unfortunately not one which will help me with this project.
If you look at the AI literature, you will observe that they break thinking into sub-conceptual (associationist), conceptual and of course symbolic components -- which suggests that the mind is concurrently thinking on numerous levels using different means. And this sub-conceptual level of "thinking" is typically modeled with neural networks. So, if those neural networks can indeed accurately represent pattern-matching (association), then it's not clear how philosophy fits into this sub-conceptual process for learning.
I respect and recognize that there is a longstanding philosophical debate over this kind of issue (which also apparently applies to the constructivist educational philosophy), but my intent is not to resolve that debate. Once I present my idea, what might be fascinating is to then see if the idea might have a more objectivist incarnation. I think there could actually be value to revisiting this topic then.
: Is it possible to build websites which support the emergence of self-authoring and even self-transforming mindsets? If today's websites lack any specific features which actually support these difficult -- and in practice rare -- transitions, then why should we ever expect that such adaptive transformations would just accidentally transpire as a result of purely technical arguments?
[/quote]The ways in which we learn and discuss science have an important influence upon our beliefs in the models we are discussing. Although there may exist a widespread belief that our minds exclusively formulate belief in science according to constructs like evidence and logic, as well as the values we ascribe to "thinking like a scientist", there is a good case to be made that the infrastructures we use for sharing knowledge -- like textbooks, lectures, forums and comments attached to scientific press releases -- also exhibit a profound influence upon the beliefs and worldviews that result.
Could you maybe give some examples of how the "infrastructures we use" to acquire beliefs, could "influence" said beliefs.
Questions on qualifying examinations often penalize the creative student while rewarding the student who mindlessly applies memorized "tricks." To solve a typical math or science problem, you manipulate symbols in a sequence of steps, each of which takes you closer to the solution in a way that is apparent. However, it is possible to contrive problems whose solutions require a step that appears to be arbitrary or even counterproductive, the logic of that step becoming clear only later in the problem. This crucial step is the trick. The student who doesn't know in advance the trick required to solve a test problem is extremely unlikely to discover it while working on the problem, especially if no time is allotted for that purpose, and so problems based on tricks favor the memorizer over even the creative individual who has a good overall understanding of the subject.
Some problems that can be solved without tricks are nevertheless made easier by tricks, as two examples from mathematics will illustrate. Because tricks often seem simple and obvious after they are explained, readers will better appreciate their nature by attempting the two problems now, before reading the discussion below:
1. Multiply 503 by 497.
2. The cube root of 64 is 4, because 4 x 4 x 4 is 64. What is the cube root of 1,728?
Problems that are made easier by tricks can be put into two groups. The first, represented by problem 1, are problems simplified by tricks that are useful in many situations. To multiply 503 by 497 quickly and with little chance of error, you can write the factors as (500 + 3) and (500 - 3), whose product is 250,000 - 9, or 249,991. This trick is based on the algebraic equation (a + b)(a - b) - a2 - b2 and is useful for multiplying any numbers that are equally spaced around a number whose square is easy to compute. The second group, exemplified by problem 2, are problems made easier by tricks that are useful in essentially just one problem. For example, to solve the cube root problem above, you can simply recognize 1,728 as the number of cubic inches in a cubic foot, which is 12 inches by 12 inches by 12 inches, and so the answer is 12.
In either case the tricks are optional — you can do the multiplication the long way and the cube root by trial and error. However, with a slight change — say, a stringent time limit on the problems — the tricks become mandatory. Under this condition the questions would still look like tests of arithmetic skills, but they would really be disguised tests of memory and of the ability to "psych out" the questions.
One often finds that a qualifying examination problem is impossible to solve without a special trick that is good for only that one problem. This kind of problem is usually constructed by starting with the trick and working backwards. The student who attacks such a problem with creativity, with an understanding of the subject, with insight and with the standard tricks of the trade gets absolutely nowhere. The special trick is the only approach to the problem that works. The unwitting student who uses the "wrong" approach, as logical as that approach may be and as effective as that approach may be in general, sinks deeper and deeper into increasingly complicated calculations — a frustrating "mess," as it is often called — in an ultimately futile effort to get an answer. Because only the special trick works, only the student who has seen the problem before — and memorized it — can solve it. And because the student's creativity; understanding, insight and experience do not lead to the trick, they contribute nothing to the student's score.
Students are eager to learn the standard tricks of the trade for the field they are preparing to enter. A symbol-manipulation routine that is good for only one problem will be part of this standard bag of tricks only if the problem is particularly important in the field. Otherwise the routine will remain just another obscure entry in the reference books. Qualifying examination problems that require special tricks are not likely to be particularly important problems in the field, because, like the cube root problem above, they are typically written around the tricks rather than around something important in the field. Hence even the student who knows the standard tricks used by people working in the field cannot necessarily solve the qualifying examination problems that are based on obscure tricks.
What is the aim of examination problems that reward the memorization, quick recall and mechanical application of obscure symbol-manipulation routines? Problems that are disguised requests to give performances of memorized obscure routines clearly do not test the student's creativity, understanding, insight or knowledge of the standard tricks of the trade. However, they do an excellent job of revealing whether the student is willing and able to do disciplined, alienated work on assigned problems — the assigned problems in this case being the test preparation problems, which include problems based on obscure tricks.
I will give one example ...
The idea that I'll be putting forward is based, in part, upon learning from this lesson
I don't want to discourage discussion, but I'm also cognizant of burying people in the dialog over the idea before they even know what the idea actually is. I am only about 15% of the way through this explanation. There is a lot more to go, and I'm trying my hardest to avoid shedding interest by overloading people with footnotes in the middle ...
How to Get an A- in Organic Chemistry
When I wasn't hopelessly confused, I spent my time wondering what the class was actually about. Because I'm pretty sure it wasn't just about organic chemistry. For me, the overriding question was not "Is this on the test?" but rather "What are they really testing?"
Orgo has been haunting pre-meds since 1910, when the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching released a landmark report calling for tougher admission standards to medical school and for medical training based on science. Hence emerged science prerequisites that have remained virtually unchanged: two semesters each of biology, physics and general and organic chemistry.
The report was meant to professionalize medicine but led to generations of doctors more grounded in science than in the humanities. This is not necessarily bad, but lately a sense has emerged that the pendulum has swung too far. Medical schools are tweaking admission protocols, looking beyond an A in orgo for future doctors who are less Spock and more Kirk.
I asked two medical school deans — Dr. Robert Witzburg at Boston University and Dr. Lee Goldman at Columbia University — about admission philosophies. Both are proponents of holistic review, the newish idea that medical schools look beyond grades and test scores to evaluate the whole applicant. "We have to find people who can do both the personal and the scientific," Dr. Goldman said. But both also emphasized the continued importance of orgo, not because doctors actually use it but because it lays the groundwork for biochemistry and pharmacology.
In 2015, the Medical College Admission Test will change, with added sections on social science, psychology and ethics, but sorry, orgo will remain prominent. "The organic chemistry on the MCAT is chemistry that students need to know to succeed in medical school," said Karen Mitchell, senior director of the MCAT Program.
So what is organic chemistry, anyway? And why is it so difficult? Basically, orgo examines how molecules containing carbon interact, but it doesn't require equations or math, as in physics. Instead, you learn how electrons flow around and between molecules, and you draw little curved arrows showing where they go. This "arrow pushing" is the heart and soul of orgo.
But the rules have many, many exceptions, which students find maddening. The same molecule will behave differently in acid or base, in dark or sunlight, in heat or cold, or if you sprinkle magic orgo dust on it and turn around three times. You can't memorize all the possible answers — you have to rely on intuition, generalizing from specific examples. This skill, far more than the details of every reaction, may actually be useful for medicine.
"It seems a lot like diagnosis," said Logan McCarty, Harvard's director of physical sciences education, who taught the second semester. "That cognitive skill — inductive generalization from specific cases to something you've never seen before — that's something you learn in orgo."
To develop orgo intuition, you solve problems and draw arrow-pushing mechanisms again and again, until they become instinctive. This takes a huge amount of time, for me 20 to 30 hours a week. The class turned me into a bore, a sleep-deprived, orgo-obsessed grind who saw the shapes of molecules in every sidewalk crack and snack cracker.
This is one thing that orgo is testing: whether you have the time and desire to do the work. "Sometimes, if a student has really good math skills, they can slide through physics, but you can't do that in orgo," Mr. McCarty told me, adding, "You can't slide through medical school, either."
That's what orgo is testing, I think: resilience. And humility.
less Spock and more Kirk.
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We thank all those who have shown interest in the Citizens' Voice Project or have applied for the first grant cycle.
The applications under the second grant cycle are currently being processed.
The next grant cycle is likely to be announced soon.
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The Citizens' Voice Project
The Citizens' Voice Project
Solicitations for Cycle-3 have been closed.
July 05, 2012
REQUEST FOR APPLICATIONS NO. TDEA-CVP-Cycle-3-7-2012
RFA Title: Citizens' Voice Project – Grant Cycle 003
Ladies and Gentlemen:
Please refer to the above mentioned RFA, Section A – INSTRUCTIONS FOR APPLICATION FORMAT, paragraph 2 – PREPARATION AND SUBMISSION GUIDELINES, whereby applicants are required to acknowledge receipt of this amendment as a part of their application on the form attached herewith. Please upload the receipt acknowledgement on the project website as a part of your application. TDEA will only advertise any amendments on its project website.
The subject RFA is hereby modified as follows to increase the number of provinces applicable to geographic coverage of thematic area # 2:
Thematic Area # 2: Citizens' Engagement and Accountability for an Effective Local Government System
Delete sub-paragraph 6, titled "Geographical Focus" in entirety and insert the following:
Applications are invited from Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa provinces. At the least 1 grant will be awarded in each province. Applicants should have a specific geographical focus for public awareness and demand side activities, while simultaneously identifying relevant provincial authorities for advocacy, policy relevant inputs and engagement. Each project should preferably focus only in one of the four provinces.
– End of Amendment –
Citizens' Voice Project
Cycle – 3 TDEA-CVP-Cycle-3-07-2012
Issuance Date: 01 July 2012
RFA Clarification Questions Due: 13 July 2012, 1600 hrs
Closing Date and Time for Application Submission: 20 July 2012, 1600 hrs Islamabad, Pakistan Standard Time
Subject: Request for Applications (RFA) Number: TDEA-CVP-Cycle-3-07-2012
RFA Title: CVP Grant Cycle 003
Ladies and Gentlemen:
Trust for Democratic Education and Accountability (TDEA) is seeking applications for grants from all eligible and qualified organisations for funding to support programming in selected thematic areas for its program entitled "Citizens Voice Project" being managed under a contract with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
The authority for the RFA is found in the contract number AID-391-C-11-00001 between TDEA and the USAID. TDEA has the Asia Foundation (TAF) and Grant Thornton – Anjum Asim Shahid Rahman Chartered Accountants (GT-AASR) as collaborators in different technical areas of the project. These organisations will also be involved at different steps in the grant cycle.
The purpose of this RFA is to disseminate information to prospective applicants so that they may develop and submit applications for TDEA funding.
This RFA:
(A) describes the types of activity for which applications will be considered;
(B) describes the funding available and the process and requirements for submitting applications;
(C) explains the criteria for evaluating applications; and
(D) refers prospective applicants to relevant documentation available on the Internet.
The successful Applicant will be responsible for ensuring achievement of the program objectives described in Section – C of this RFA. Subject to the availability of funds, TDEA intends to provide approximately PKR 442,000,000 in total funding for the activities outlined in the Section – C.
Profit or fees will not be allowed under the grants to be executed. However, in accordance with applicable cost standards, all reasonable, allowable, and allocable expenses, both direct and indirect, which are related to the grant awards, may be recognised.
Applicants under consideration for an award that have never received funding from USAID will be subject to pre-award responsibility determination exercises of different types to determine fiscal responsibility, ensure adequacy of financial controls.
Applications must be directly responsive to the terms and conditions of this RFA. Eligible organisations interested in submitting an application must read this RFA thoroughly to understand the type of project sought and the application submission requirements and the evaluation criteria.
To be considered for the award, the applicant must provide all required information in its application including the requirements laid down in any of the attachments to this RFA and subsequent amendments to it, if any. This RFA consists of this cover letter plus the following sections which are an integral part of this RFA:
1. Section – A: Instructions for application format.
2. Section – B: Selection Criteria.
3. Section – C: Program Summary/ Program Description
4. Section – D: Pre-award Certifications, Assurances and other statements of applicant/ recipient.
5. Section – E: Annexes
TDEA reserves the right to fund any or none of the applications submitted with or without giving any reasons. Although it is planned to make multiple grant awards under this RFA, it is TDEA's right to make a single award, make multiple awards, fund parts of an application, or not to make any awards at all. The actual number of awards made under this RFA is subject to the availability of funds, the interests and requirements of TDEA/USAID, as well as the viability of applications received. TDEA also reserves the right to make any final decisions with respect to this solicitation and intends to fund the application(s) which meet the criteria laid down in the RFA, are deemed as most-advantageous for project objectives and provide(s) the best value for money. Issuance of this RFA does not constitute an award commitment on the part of the TDEA or USAID, nor does it commit the TDEA or USAID to pay for costs incurred in the preparation and submission of an application. In addition, award of the agreement contemplated by this RFA cannot be made until funds have been appropriated, allocated and committed through internal TDEA procedures.
While TDEA anticipates that these procedures will be successfully completed, potential Applicants are hereby notified of these requirements and conditions for the award. No costs chargeable to the proposed Agreement may be incurred before receipt of a fully executed Agreement.
In the event of an inconsistency between the documents comprising this RFA, it shall be resolved at the discretion of the Chief of Party. It is the responsibility of the recipient of this RFA document to ensure that it has been downloaded in its entirety from the project website and the application is filled correctly/completely and uploaded completely on the project website. TDEA bears no responsibility for data errors resulting from transmission or conversion processes associated with electronic submissions.
Applicants are encouraged to submit applications before the closing date to avoid bandwidth and online system related technological issues. TDEA bears no responsibility if an applicant remains unable to submit the application due to technological errors associated with online system at the closing date. The applications must be received before the closing date & time at the designated website.
All guidance included in this RFA takes precedence over any reference documents referred to in the RFA. If there are problems in downloading the RFA from the Internet, please email email@example.com for technical assistance.The applicant shall submit applications online in electronic copy by uploading at the project website. Applicants must retain a copy of their application and accompanying enclosures for their records.
By submitting application under this RFA, the applicant certifies that all the information contained in the technical and cost applications, their attachments and all supporting documentation provided with the application or subsequently during rounds of clarifications to the time an award is made are correct to the best of his/her knowledge and belief. Any misrepresentation or falsification will result in rejection of the application.
Prospective Applicants who have questions concerning the contents of this RFA shall submit them in writing no later than date above to Grants Management Committee (GMC) at email@example.com by email ONLY. No questions will be answered over the telephone or after questions closing date. Question & their answers will be posted via the "FAQs" section through the project website. Separate modifications will not be issued if a matter is addressed in the FAQs. No questions after the closing date or pre-application conference will be accepted. TDEA has developed processes for open and clear communications with the staff through email and the online grants management system and remains committed to maintaining integrity of the process and while ensuring responsiveness and accountability from within the project. Applicants are also required to appreciate and respect the integrity of the process and support TDEA with this objective. Therefore, any efforts for directly contacting the project staff and going outside the defined processes for any information which is otherwise made available by TDEA through pre-defined regular means may be construed as influencing the process and breach of integrity which may have negative impact on the application.
Citizens' Voice Project intends to conduct Program Orientation Sessions for applicant organisations and a schedule for the same will be made available on the project website. Please register for these sessions using the guidance provided on the project website.
Applications must be received by the closing date and time indicated at the top of this cover letter. Late or incomplete applications will not be considered for award. Telegraphic, hard copy through surface mail/ courier or fax applications (entire proposal) are not authorised for this RFA and will not be accepted. Applicants are encouraged to submit applications much before the end date to avoid any technological issues related to network bandwidth etc. The online system will auto-lock at the end time and will not accept any further applications.
Thank you for your consideration of this TDEA initiative towards a national cause. We look forward to your participation.
Grants Management Committee
USAID's Citizens' Voice Project