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Plasma Active: The Mobile Interface That Works
Off the Beat: Bruce Byfield's Blog
To express myself mildly, I'm not a fan of interfaces for mobile devices. At best, they seem clumsy makeshifts, tolerable only because nothing better is available. The only exception is KDE's Plasma Active, which not only works well on tablets, but, with its recently released version 3.0, remains the only mobile-inspired interface I can tolerate on a workstation – and that includes Unity and Windows RT.
What makes Plasma Active so well-designed? Probably, it gets a boost from the fact that in the last five years, the KDE community has developed two other interfaces, the KDE 4 release series and Plasma Netbook, and gained some design expertise in the process. All three of these interfaces extend the standard desktop metaphor rather than discarding it, making them comfortable to use.
Also, these interfaces share much of the same technology under the hood, and run the same apps (or at least minor variants), which means that if you know one, you should be quickly comfortable in the others.
However, you could make similar generalizations about Unity. What makes Plasma Active standout are a number of simple but effective design elements.
Design elements
To start with, Plasma Active's designers realized a point that sounds obvious but is overlooked surprisingly often: the smaller the space, the more you need the navigational aids need to be consistent and obvious. Accordingly, the current Activity's name always displays in the upper left corner. The tabs that pull out from each side are located in the same position on the left and right of the screen – Activities on the right, recommended actions for the current Activities on the left – and the icons for modifying the current Activity are in a single row below the system icons on the panel.
Most of all, icons and text are large, making them easy to find. Admittedly, running on a workstation, their large sizes may make you feel that you are running an interface for either children or the visually-impaired, but this impression is faint and doesn't affect functionality, so it seems an acceptable tradeoff for the effectiveness of the navigational aids on a smaller screen. If nothing else, they remove any danger of eyestrain.
At any rate, the OS X-like spinner rack for Activities has enough Wow Factor to compensate. Activities, as you may know, are a task-oriented form of virtual desktops. On each Activity, you can add a custom set of icons and widgets for the task at hand.
Activities have never really captured users' imaginations on workstations or laptops, in part because KDE has struggled to figure how to display them effectively. The spinner rack solves the problem, and Activities seem especially appropriate for a tablet interface, because tablets are used more often for task-oriented activities such as web browsing or chat, rather than for productivity such as writing or graphic design, which often require using more than one application at the same time.
However, Plasma Active's greatest strength is its general design. Small screen sizes mean that any mobile interface has to change screens frequently. Most interfaces do just that, which means that in a few selections you can be so far from the home screen that only a Previous icon enables you to return. Even when you've been using the interface for months, you can still have moments of hesitation if you make the mistake of stopping to think.
By contrast, in Plasma Active, new screens slide out from the edges of the display. Instead of paging back through previous screens, a single touch of a finger returns you to your starting point. What's more, Plasma Active is completely consistent on this point, so you can learn how to navigate in a matter of seconds. Moreover, as a result of this consistency and simplicity, you need noticeably fewer finger taps or mouse clicks for most actions.
Becoming More Active
Plasma Active works because it is simple enough to fade into the background. Unlike other mobile interfaces, it doesn't leave you feeling that you are dealing with it more than the apps that you really want.
Unfortunately, I know of no device that comes with Plasma Active installed. It is supposed to ship with Vivaldi (http://aseigo.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/a-small-update-on-vivaldi.html), KDE's long-delayed tablet, but, for now, you will have to install it for yourself – preferably after scanning the list of hardware that it is known to support (http://community.kde.org/Plasma/Active/Devices).
With any luck, eventually it might be available in the KDE standard complilation, much as Plasma Netbook has been. At the very least, as I have urged several times before, the spinner rack might be added to standard KDE – it is by far the most usable way to display Activities that I have seen.
Meanwhile, you can install it on a USB drive, or in a virtual machine if you want to test it. Who knows? If nothing else, you might learn a thing or two about interface design.
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icon & font sizingThe problem of font sizes & icon sizes not remaining same as applications & GUIs move from device to device is not that simple. Granted, sizes should be fixed in actual size, not fixed in pixels but same problem also is seen as screen resolutions change. Modern GUIs & browsers do not well adapt to high resolution screens or to limited vision.
We routinely set system fonts at 12 to 24 points, same for GUI & browser fonts, to enable reading without eye glasses. Then we get text on text, text overlayed on graphics, text truncated for not fitting in fixed size boxes & other effects making text not readable.
My cynical thought is all programmers use 1366 X 768 screens, 9 point fonts, 20 15 vision & never ask grandmother how she reads it.
personal tasteTo me the demos looked like a ton of clutter that i don't want on a mobile device ... And that's not because plasma isn't doing the layout well - it's because it's doing things that i don't need to do on a mobile device. And i don't really imagine this approach working on a 4" screen either.
sizesAt some point it might be worthwhile to stop using pixels and start using inches or centimeters to specify the size of on screen elements. Then your buttons on the desktop are a reasonable size, and your buttons on the smaller tablet screen are bigger in relation to the screen size. If you setup your responsive design well enough it will flow well between versions.
resizeable"Most of all, icons and text are large, making them easy to find. Admittedly, running on a workstation, their large sizes may make you feel that you are running an interface for either children or the visually-impaired, but this impression is faint and doesn't affect functionality, so it seems an acceptable tradeoff for the effectiveness of the navigational aids on a smaller screen. If nothing else, they remove any danger of eyestrain. "
Wouldn't it be good to be able to change the font size according to the size of the display - nowadays we have tablets and phones using the same display technology, and they might be better suited (depending on the app) to appearing bigger or smaller to either maintaina fixed physical size, or resize to fill the screen area. If this could happen, then surely running the interface on a workstation could be done with a smaller font to make it look more natural on a desktop.
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subset: commoncrawl


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Sri Lanka boasts a fascinatingly idiosyncratic culinary heritage, the result of a unique fusion of local produce with recipes and spices brought to the island over the centuries by Indians, Arabs, Malays, Portuguese, Dutch and English.
The staple dish is rice and curry, at its finest a miniature banquet whose contrasting flavours – coconut milk, chillies, curry leaves, cinnamon, garlic and "Maldive fish" (an intensely flavoured pinch of sun-dried tuna) – bear witness to Sri Lanka's status as one of the original spice islands. There are plenty of other unique specialities to explore and enjoy – hoppers, string hoppers, kottu rotty, lamprais and pittu – as well as plentiful seafood.
Sri Lankan cuisine can be incredibly fiery – sometimes on a par with Thai, and far hotter than most Indian cooking. Many of the island's less gifted chefs compensate for a lack of culinary subtlety with liberal use of chilli powder; at the same time, as a tourist you'll often be seen as a weak-kneed individual who is liable to faint at the merest suspicion of spiciness. You'll often be asked how hot you want your food; "medium" usually gets you something that's neither bland nor requires the use of a fire extinguisher. If you do overheat during a meal, remember that water only adds to the pain of a burnt palate; a mouthful of plain rice, bread or beer is much more effective.
Etiquette and costsSri Lankans say that you can't properly enjoy the flavours and textures of food unless you eat with your fingers, although tourists are almost always provided with cutlery by default. As elsewhere in Asia, you're meant to eat with your right hand, although this taboo isn't really strictly observed – if you'd really prefer to eat with your left hand, you're unlikely to turn heads.
Costs are generally reasonable (though no longer the bargain they were some years ago). You can get a filling rice and curry meal for a few dollars at a local café, while main courses at most guesthouse restaurants usually cost around $10, and even at the island's poshest restaurants it's usually possible to find main courses from $15. Note that many places add a ten percent service charge to the bill, while more upmarket restaurants may add additional government taxes of varying amounts (usually 13–15%) on top of that.
Be aware that the typical vagaries of Sri Lankan spelling mean that popular dishes can appear on menus in a bewildering number of forms: idlis can become ittlys, vadais turn into wadais, kottu rotty transforms into kotturoti and lamprais changes to lumprice. You'll also be regaled with plenty of unintentionally humorous offerings such as "cattle fish", "sweat and sour" or Adolf Hitler's favourite dish, "nazi goreng".
Where to eatAlthough Sri Lankan cooking can be very good, few restaurants really do justice to the island's cuisine. There's no particular tradition of eating out and, except in Colombo, few independent restaurants of note. Locals either eat at home or patronize the island's innumerable scruffy little cafés, often confusingly signed as "hotels", which serve up filling meals for a dollar or two: rough-and-ready portions of rice and curry, plus maybe hoppers or kottu rotty. However as the food is usually pretty ordinary, eating in local cafés is more of a social than a culinary experience.
Given the lack of independent tourist restaurants, most visitors end up taking the majority of their meals in their hotel or guesthouse. The sort of food and setting you'll encounter varies wildly, from the big bland restaurants at the coastal resorts to the cosy guesthouses of Ella and Galle, where you can experience the sort of home cooking that rarely makes its way onto menus at larger hotels. In general, however, choice is limited, with most places offering a standard assortment of fried noodles or rice, a small range of seafood and meat dishes (usually including a couple of devilled options) and maybe a few kinds of curry.
Most of the island's independent restaurants can be found in Colombo and, to a lesser extent, Kandy, Galle and Negombo, where tourism has inspired the growth of a modest local eating scene. The most common independent restaurants are aimed at tourists, with a mix of Sri Lankan, seafood and Western dishes; you'll also find a few South Indian-style places, especially in Colombo.
If you want to eat like the locals, you'll find lunch packets on sale at local cafés and street stalls all over the country between around 11am and 2pm. These usually include a big portion of steamed rice along with a piece of curried chicken, fish or beef (vegetarians can get an egg), some vegetables and sambol. They're the cheapest way to fill up in Sri Lanka, although probably best avoided until your stomach and tastebuds are properly acclimatized to the local cooking.
Rice and curryThe island's signature dish is the ubiquitous rice and curry, the staple food of almost every Sri Lankan man, woman and child, served up in just about every café and restaurant across the land. A really good Sri Lankan rice and curry can be a memorable experience, although it's worth noting that the dish bears zero resemblance to the classic curries of North India. Typical Sri Lankan curry sauces (known as kiri hodhi, or "milk gravy") are made from coconut milk infused with chillies and various other spices – much more like a Thai green or red curry than anything you'll find in India.
Basic rice and curry (not "curry and rice" – the rice is considered the principal ingredient), as served up in local cafés islandwide, consists of a plate of rice topped with a few dollops of veg curry, a hunk of chicken or fish and a spoonful of sambol. More sophisticated versions comprise the inevitable mound of rice accompanied by as many as fifteen side dishes (a kind of miniature banquet said to have been inspired by Indonesian nasi padang, which was transformed by the Dutch into the classic rijsttafel, or "rice table", and introduced to Sri Lanka sometime in the eighteenth century). These generally include a serving of meat or fish curry plus accompaniments such as curried pineapple, potato, aubergine (brinjal), sweet potatoes, okra (lady's fingers) and dhal. You'll probably also encounter some more unusual local vegetables. Curried jackfruit is fairly common, as are so-called "drumsticks" (murunga – a bit like okra). Other ingredients you might encounter include ash plantain (alu kesel), snake gourd (patolah), bitter gourd (karawila) and breadfruit (del), along with many more outlandish and unpronounceable types of regional produce. Another common accompaniment is mallung: shredded green vegetables, lightly stir-fried with spices and grated coconut.
Rice and curry is usually served with a helping of sambol, designed to be mixed into your food to give it a bit of extra kick. Sambols come in various forms, the most common being pol sambol (coconut sambol), an often eye-watering combination of chilli powder, chopped onions, salt, grated coconut and "Maldive fish" (salty, intensely flavoured shreds of sun-dried tuna). Treat it with caution. You might also come across the slightly less overpowering lunu miris, consisting of chilli powder, onions, Maldive fish and salt; and the more gentle, sweet-and-sour seeni sambol ("sugar sambol").
Funnily enough, the rice itself is often fairly uninspiring – don't expect to find the delicately spiced pilaus and biryanis of North India. Sri Lanka produces many types of rice, but the stuff served in restaurants is usually fairly low-grade, although you may occasionally come across the nutritious and distinctively flavoured red and yellow rice (a bit like brown rice in taste and texture) that are grown in certain parts of the island.
Other Sri Lankan specialitiesSri Lanka's tastiest snack, the engagingly named hopper (appa) is a small, bowl-shaped pancake traditionally made from a batter containing coconut milk and palm toddy, and is usually eaten either at breakfast or, most commonly, dinner. Hoppers are cooked in a small wok-like dish, meaning that most of the mix sinks to the bottom, making them soft and doughy at the base, and thin and crisp around the edges. Various ingredients can be poured into the hopper. An egg fried in the middle produces an egg hopper, while sweet ingredients like yoghurt or honey are also sometimes added. Alternatively, plain hoppers can be eaten as an accompaniment to curry. Not to be confused with the hopper are string hoppers (indiappa), tangled little nests of steamed rice vermicelli noodles, often eaten with a dash of dhal or curry for breakfast.
Another rice substitute is pittu, a mixture of flour and grated coconut, steamed in a cylindrical bamboo mould – it looks a bit like coarse couscous. Derived from the Dutch lomprijst, lamprais is another local speciality: a serving of rice baked in a plantain leaf along with accompaniments such as a chunk of chicken or a boiled egg, plus some veg and pickle.
Muslim restaurants are the place to go for rotty (or roti), a fine, doughy pancake – watching these being made is half the fun, as the chef teases small balls of dough into huge sheets of almost transparent thinness. A dollop of curried meat, veg or potato is then plonked in the middle and the rotty is folded up around it; the final shape depends on the whim of the chef – some prefer crepe-like squares, others opt for samosa-style triangles, some a spring roll. Rottys can also be chopped up and stir-fried with meat and vegetables, a dish known as kottu rotty. You'll know when kottu rotty is being made because of the noise – the ingredients are usually simultaneously fried and chopped on a hotplate using a large pair of meat cleavers, producing a noisy drumming sound – part musical performance, part advertisement.
Devilled dishes are also popular, and can be delicious. These are usually prepared with a thick, spicy sauce plus big chunks of onion and chilli, though the end product often isn't as hot as you might fear (unless you eat the chillies). Devilled chicken, pork, fish and beef are all common – the last is generally considered the classic devilled dish and is traditionally eaten during drinking binges. Another local staple is the buriani. This has little in common with the traditional, saffron-scented North Indian biryani, being nothing more than a mound of rice with a hunk of chicken, a bowl of curry sauce and a boiled egg, but it makes a good lunchtime filler and is usually less fiery than a basic plate of rice and curry.
South Indian foodSri Lanka also boasts a good selection of "pure vegetarian" South Indian restaurants (vegetarian here meaning no meat, fish, eggs or alcohol); they're most common in Colombo, although they can be found islandwide wherever there's a significant Tamil population. These cheerfully no-nonsense places cater to a local clientele and serve up a delicious range of South Indian-style dishes at giveaway prices. The standard dish is the dosa, a crispy rice pancake served in various forms: either plain, with ghee (clarified butter), onion or, most commonly, as a masala dosa, folded up around a filling of curried potato. You'll also find uttapam, another (thicker) type of rice pancake that's usually eaten with some kind of curry, and idlis, steamed rice cakes served with curry sauces or chutneys.
Some South Indian places (again, particularly in Colombo) serve a fascinating array of sweets, luridly coloured and heavily spiced.
Short eatsAnother classic Tamil savoury which has entered the Sri Lanka mainstream is the vadai (or wadai), a spicy doughnut made of deep-fried lentils – no train or bus journey is complete without the sound of hawkers marching up and down the carriage or vehicle shouting "Vadai-vadai-vadai!". Platefuls of vadais, rottys and bread rolls are often served up in cafés under the name of short eats – you help yourself and are charged for what you eat, though be aware that these plates are passed around and their contents indiscriminately prodded by all and sundry, so they're not particularly hygienic.
Other cuisinesThere are plenty of Chinese restaurants around the island, though many are just glorified local drinking holes serving up plates of fried rice and noodles. Genuine places are often good, although the predominantly Cantonese-style dishes are usually spiced up for Sri Lankan tastes. As usual, Colombo has easily the best range of such places.
Indonesian dishes introduced by the Dutch are also sometimes served in tourist restaurants – most commonly nasi goreng (fried rice with meat or seafood, topped with a fried egg) and gado gado (salad and cold boiled eggs in a peanut sauce), although these rarely taste much like the Indonesian originals.
Other cuisines are restricted to Colombo. Thai food has made some limited inroads, while Japanese cuisine is also modestly popular. Colombo is also where you'll find Sri Lanka's surprisingly small number of decent North Indian restaurants, along with a few excellent European places. Smarter hotels all over the island make some attempt to produce European cuisine, though with wildly varying results.
SeafoodNot surprisingly, seafood plays a major part in the Sri Lankan diet, with fish often taking the place of meat. Common fish include tuna, seer (a firm-bodied white fish), mullet and the delicious melt-in-the-mouth butterfish, as well as pomfret, bonito and shark. You'll also find lobster, plentiful crab, prawns and cuttlefish (calamari). The Negombo lagoon, just north of Colombo, is a particularly prized source of seafood, including gargantuan jumbo prawns the size of a well-fed crab.
Seafood is usually a good bet if you're trying to avoid highly spiced food. Fish is generally prepared in a fairly simple manner, usually fried (sometimes in breadcrumbs) or grilled and served with a twist of lemon or in a mild garlic sauce. You will, however, find some fiery fish curries, while chillied seafood dishes are also fairly common – chilli crab is particularly popular.
Vegetarian foodSurprisingly for such a Buddhist country, vegetarian food as a concept hasn't really caught on in Sri Lanka. Having said that, a large proportion of the nation's cooking is meat-free: vegetable curries, vegetable rottys, hoppers and string hoppers – not to mention the bewildering variety of fruit on offer. Colombo's numerous pure veg South Indian restaurants are a delight, while if you eat fish and seafood, you'll have no problems finding a meal, especially around the coast.
Desserts and sweetsThe classic Sri Lankan dessert is curd (yoghurt made from buffalo milk) served with honey or kitul (a sweet syrup from the kitul palm). When boiled and left to set hard, kitul becomes jaggery, an all-purpose Sri Lanka sweet or sweetener. Other characteristic desserts are wattalappam, an egg pudding of Malay origins which tastes faintly like crème caramel, but with a sweeter and less slippery texture. Kiribath is a dessert of rice cakes cooked in milk and served with jaggery – it's also traditionally made for weddings, and is often the first solid food fed to babies. A South Indian dessert you might come across is faluda, a colourful cocktail of milk, syrup, jelly, ice cream and ice served in a tall glass like an Indian knickerbocker glory. Ice cream is usually factory made, and safe to eat; the most widely available brand is Elephant House. You'll also find a wide selection of cakes, often in fluorescent colours and in a bizarre variety of curried flavours.
FruitsSri Lanka has a bewildering variety of fruits, from the familiar to the less so, including several classic Southeast Asian fruits introduced from Indonesia by the Dutch. The months given in brackets below refer to the periods when each is in season (where no months are specified, the fruit is available year-round). Familiar fruits include pineapple, mangoes (April-June & Nov-Dec), avocados (April-June) and coconuts, as well as a wide variety of bananas, from small sweet yellow specimens to enormous red giants. Papaya (pawpaw), a distinctively sweet and pulpy fruit, crops up regularly in fruit salads, but the king of Sri Lankan fruits is undoubtedly the jackfruit (April-June & Sept-Oct), the world's largest fruit, a huge, elongated dark-green monster, rather like an enormous marrow in shape, whose fibrous flesh can either be eaten raw or cooked in curries. Durian (July-Sept) is another outsized specimen: a large green beast with a spiky outer shell. It's very much an acquired taste: though the flesh smells rather like blocked drains, it's widely considered a great delicacy, and many also believe it to have aphrodisiac qualities. The strangest-looking fruit, however, is the rambutan (July-Sept), a delicious, lychee-like fruit enclosed in a bright-red skin that's covered in tentacles.
Another prized Sri Lankan delicacy is the mangosteen (July-Sept), which looks a little like a purple tomato, with a rather hard shell-like skin that softens as the fruit ripens. The delicate and delicious flesh tastes a bit like a grape with a slight citrus tang. Equally distinctive is the wood apple, a round, apple-sized fruit covered in an indestructible greyish bark, inside which is a red pulpy flesh, rather bitter-tasting and full of seeds. It's sometimes served with honey poured over it. You might also come across custard apples: greenish, apple-sized fruits with knobbly exteriors (they look a bit like artichokes) and smooth, sweet white flesh; guavas, smooth, round yellow-green fruits, usually smaller than an apple and with slightly sour-tasting flesh around a central core of seeds. Other exotic fruits you might encounter include soursop, lovi-lovi, sapodilla, rose apple, and beli fruit (not to be confused with nelli fruit, a kind of Sri Lankan gooseberry). Finally, look out for the tiny gulsambilla (Aug-Oct), Sri Lanka's strangest fruit – like a large, furry green seed enclosing a tiny, tartly flavoured kernel.
WaterIt's best to avoid tap water in Sri Lanka. Bottled water is available everywhere, sourced from various places in the hill country and retailed under a baffling range of names. Check that the seal hasn't been broken – but note that they're all usually pretty grubby.
Soft drinksInternational brands of soft drinks – Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Sprite – are widely available and cheap, but it's much more fun (and better for the Sri Lankan economy) to explore the glorious range of outlandish soft drinks produced locally by Olé, Lion and Elephant. These include old-fashioned favourites like cream soda and ginger beer, and unique local brands like Portello (which tastes a bit like Vimto) and the ultra-sweet, lollipop-flavoured Necta. Ginger beer is particularly common, and very refreshing – the Elephant brand uses natural ginger, which is meant to be good for the stomach and digestion.
The slightly sour-tasting coconut water (thambili) isn't to everyone's taste, although it's guaranteed safe, having been locked up in the heart of the coconut. It's also claimed to be an excellent hangover cure thanks to its mix of glucose and potassium, which also makes it good to drink if you're suffering from diarrhoea.
Tea and coffeeDespite the fame of Sri Lanka's tea, most of the stuff served up is usually fairly bland – and you won't find the marvellous masala teas of India. Normal tea is often called "milk tea" (ask for "milk and sugar separate" if you want to add your own or you might end up with a cupful of supersweet bilge). "Bed tea" is just ordinary tea brought to your room for breakfast. Coffee is sometimes a better bet. This is generally either Nescafé or locally produced coffee – the latter is usually unexciting but perfectly drinkable, although you're normally left with a big layer of silt at the bottom of the cup. Proper machine-made coffee is increasingly available.
Alcoholic drinksSri Lanka has a strong drinking culture – beer was introduced by foreign captives during the Kandyan period, and the islanders have never looked back. The island's two staple forms of alcohol are lager and arrack. Lager is usually sold in large (625ml) bottles; draught lager is rare. There's not a great choice of brands; all clock in with an alcohol content of just under five percent. The staple national tipple, the ubiquitous Lion Lager, is uninspiring but perfectly drinkable. More palatable beers include Carlsberg (brewed under licence in Sri Lanka), the delicately malty Three Coins, and Three Coins Riva, a good wheat beer. Anchor beer is also becoming increasingly popular: soft, creamy and a bit bland. Lion also brews a very dense stout, Lion Stout, which is virtually a meal in itself, as well as Lion Strong (eight percent a.b.v.), beloved by local alcoholics. As you'd expect, lager is relatively expensive in Sri Lankan terms, cheapest in a liquor shop and a bit more in most bars and restaurants. Imported beers, on the rare occasions you can find them, come with a hefty mark-up.
Two more distinctively local types of booze come from the versatile coconut. Toddy, tapped from the flower of the coconut, is non-alcoholic when fresh but ferments into a beverage faintly reminiscent of cider – it's sold informally in villages around the country, though unless you're travelling with a Sinhala-speaker it's difficult to track down. When fermented and refined, toddy produces arrack (33% proof), Sri Lanka's national beverage for the strong-livered – you won't go far before finding a group of voluble Sri Lankan men clustered around a bottle. Arrack is either drunk neat, mixed with coke or lemonade or used in tourist-oriented bars and restaurants as a base for cocktails. It's available in various grades and is usually a darkish brown, though there are also clear brands like White Diamond and White Label; the smoother, double-distilled arrack tastes faintly like rum. Imported spirits are widely available, but are predictably expensive. There are also locally produced versions of most spirits, including rather rough whisky, brandy, rum and vodka, as well as various brands of quite palatable lemon gin.


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The report shows the prevalence of state efforts to combat bullying over the last several years. From 1999 to 2010, more than 120 bills were enacted by state legislatures from across the country to either introduce or amend statutes that address bullying and related behaviors in schools. Twenty-one new bills were enacted in 2010 and eight additional bills were signed into law through April 30, 2011.
Out of the 46 states with anti-bullying laws in place, 36 have provisions that prohibit cyber bullying and 13 have statutes that grant schools the authority to address off-campus behavior that creates a hostile school environment.
"Every state should have effective bullying prevention efforts in place to protect children inside and outside of school," said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. "This report reveals that while most states have enacted legislation around this important issue, a great deal of work remains to ensure adults are doing everything possible to keep our kids safe."
The first Federal Partners in Bullying Prevention Summit, hosted in August 2010 by the Department and other federal agencies, exposed an information gap regarding anti-bullying laws and policies across the country. The summit brought together government officials, researchers, policymakers, and education practitioners to explore strategies to combat bullying in schools. To address this information gap and respond to requests for technical assistance, the Department composed Anti-Bullying Policies: Examples of Provisions in State Laws, a guidance document outlining common key components of state anti-bullying laws.
Following the Summit, the Department's Policy and Program Studies Service contracted researchers to compile the analysis on state laws and policies. In preparing the report, researchers reviewed and coded legislation and policy documents in every state across the country along with an additional sample of 20 local school districts. The report sought to address the extent to which states' bullying laws and model policies contained the key components identified in the December guidance. A follow-up study will aim to identify how state laws translate into practice at the school level.
To learn about more key findings and to read the full report, visit http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/opepd/ppss/reports.html#safe.


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Pha Taem National Park in Thailand's northeastern (Isaan) region is best known for its enormous three- to four-thousand-year old petroglyphs, adorning the steep vertical wall of a sandstone cliff overlooking the Mekong River and Laos. Known to be the world's largest grouping of prehistoric cliff paintings, more than 300 pictographs in red and ochre colors stretch over 180 meters of cliff wall and include subjects like an elephant, turtle, fish of different sizes, fish traps and storage jars, human-like figures, handprints, tools and utensils, farming and hunting scenes and geometric designs. Together they represent the finest prehistoric paintings in the country.
Besides the cliff paintings, impressive rock formations and graceful seasonal waterfalls are major attractions drawing park visitors. Located in the border province of Ubon Ratchathani, the park spans the most easterly points in the country and is a popular place for vacationing Thais to come and watch the sunrise to welcome in the New Year.
Click on photos to see a larger image.
But on my most recent trip there in December 2009, the most exhilarating highlight for me was none other than a wildflower field on a rocky plateau in full bloom and abuzz with bees. Perhaps it's because it's a new and completely unexpected experience, but more likely because of the captivating beauty of the vast plateau-top meadow – a little paradise for a nature lover like me.
It was all unplanned. I had just climbed back up the steep trail after viewing the petroglyphs and was waiting at the cliff-top Visitor's Center for the rest of my group of American travelers, who had decided to continue on the long trail, to return. While browsing local textile products (a main focus of my Northeast tour is visiting traditional weaving villages: see A Treasure of Northeastern Thailand: Weaving Villages) in the gift shop, a park official running the shop started asking me about my group.
Park rangers in the parklands of the Northeast seldom see casual groups of American travelers. They always seem eager to greet western tourists, but because most have a very poor command of the English language, they are limited to giving information about the sights to see through the Thai friends accompanying them.
I asked him whether the beautiful Soi Sawan ("Heaven's Necklace") waterfall was still flowing at this time of year. Not much, he replied, as it had been a particularly dry year. But he insisted that I should take my group to the last of the wildflower fields still in bloom, situated in the same section of the park as the waterfall. Since I hadn't visited the wildflower field before, I inquired about its accessibility – whether it's by a road we could drive up to or whether we had to hike in and how long a walk, etc. Our group had a packed schedule the previous day exploring Mukdahan, including the fascinating other-worldly terrain of Phu Pha Thoep National Park, and then driving a long distance on rugged roads to reach Khong Jiam in the late afternoon. It's getting close to mid-day and I had promised them a free afternoon to relax at our charming resort with sweeping views of the Mekong River, so if the wildflower field wasn't very accessible, I probably wouldn't be able to talk my group into going.
Noticing that a couple of the older people in my group had spent most of the morning waiting at the Visitor's Center since they found the trail to view the petroglyphs too steep and difficult to negotiate, the ranger hesitated for a moment, then picked up his phone and made a quick call. When he completed his call, he informed me that he's made special arrangements for a ranger at that section of the park (about 20 kilometers away) to take us to the meadow in our own vans.
Sure enough, when we arrived at the Soi Sawan waterfall parking area, a park official hopped into our van while another ranger lifted the barricade to a narrow unpaved road and in we entered. Along the way, I noticed signs pointing to a few other wildflower fields, but the ranger told us that those were done blooming and the only one still in bloom was the furthest one in. We also drove passed a handful of domestic tourists walking along the dirt road but I never saw them again. I thought to myself that if we had tried to walk in to the wildflower field, we probably would have given up like these tourists after finding nothing special at the first couple of bloomed-out fields.
The road finally dead ended. There was a storyboard with pictures of some of the wildflowers we would see in the field. Many of them had been named by HRH the Queen who's very fond of these wildflower fields and visited often at the end of the rainy season. Among the ones we would see were the striking deep purple-blue dusita (Utricularia delphiniodes) and the lovely orchid-like yellow soi suwanna (Utricularia bifida).
A pathway from the signpost opened up into an enchanting meadow carpeted with millions of tiny flowers waving in the breeze. It's a magical sight to behold and its all-encompassing aura, from open blue skies and fluffy clouds to the masses of colorful flowers and weeping boulders that water them, was something infinitely larger than photographs could ever capture or words could adequately describe. It didn't take long for most of the members of my group to drop down on their knees to take close-up pictures of the gorgeous flowers, as if to worship at nature's altar.
It was very quiet and peaceful there and we were the only people to be seen on the trail meandering through and around the vast meadow. A soft breeze played with the flowers, a light fragrance filled the air and the humming sound of bees could be heard all around as they busily gathered nectar from the flowers.
After soaking in the breathtaking scenery, I soon noticed close to the ground, interwoven in the tapestry of the beautiful and delicate flowers, a hidden gem – a colony of sundews (Drosera), a family of insect-devouring plants that commonly thrive in boggy areas. (They are so named because of the dew-like drops that cling to hairlike follicles or tentacles all around the plants, but these are not at all dewdrops but a sweet sticky secretion that both attracts and entraps the insects the plants feed on.) For an avid gardener like me, who holds a fascination for carnivorous plants and grows many varieties in my own Oakland garden, seeing so many sundews happily growing in their natural habitat was cause for much excitement. We soon also found a few patches of water-loving carnivorous nepenthes pitcher plants.
For these bog plants to survive, this field would have to maintain some measure of moisture year-round. Indeed the field was weeping with water perhaps seeping from underground springs. To be in the middle of a lovely bog in full bloom on a rocky plateau in the dry Isaan region during the dry season of a drought year was something quite extraordinary!
When I visit again in the future, I hope to see a glorious wildflower field complete with all the makings of paradise. I am hoping, too, that if I run short on time, that I'll be able to talk a park ranger into giving us the same kind of VIP treatment we so graciously received on my last visit.
Note: Finding the unexpected wildflower field was an example of the unplanned experiences that could happen on Kasma's trips; she was always open to finding something new and delightful. She retired from the trips in 2020. [note by Kasma's husband, Michael]
Pha Taem National Park Slide Show
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Written by Kasma Loha-unchit, June 2011.


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Coin flipping
Coin flipping, coin tossing, or heads or tails is the practice of throwing a coin in the air to choose between two alternatives, sometimes to resolve a dispute between two parties. It is a form of sortition which inherently has only two possible and equally likely outcomes.
The historical origin of coin flipping is the interpretation of a chance outcome as the expression of divine will.
Coin flipping as a game was known to the Romans as navia aut caput ("ship or head"), as some coins had a ship on one side and the head of the emperor on the other.[1] In England, this game was referred to as cross and pile.[1][2] The expression Heads or Tails results from heads and tails being considered opposite body parts.
During a coin toss, the coin is thrown into the air such that it rotates edge-over-edge several times. Either beforehand or when the coin is in the air, an interested party calls "heads" or "tails", indicating which side of the coin that party is choosing. The other party is assigned the opposite side. Depending on custom, the coin may be caught; caught and inverted; or allowed to land on the ground. When the coin comes to rest, the toss is complete and the party who called correctly or was assigned the upper side is declared the winner.
It is possible for a coin to land on its edge, usually by landing up against an object (such as a shoe) or by getting stuck in the ground (as famously happened during the December 8, 2013 NFL match up between the Philadelphia Eagles and Detroit Lions, which took place during a heavy snowstorm). However, even on a flat surface it is possible for a coin to land on its edge, with a chance of about 1 in 6000.[3] Angular momentum typically prevents most coins from landing on their edges unsupported if flipped. Such cases in which a coin does land on its edge are exceptionally rare and in most cases the coin is simply re-flipped.[4]
The coin may be any type as long as it has two distinct sides; it need not be a circulating coin as such. Larger coins tend to be more popular than smaller ones. Most high-profile coin tosses use custom-made ceremonial medallions.
Three-way coin flips are also possible, by a different process – this can be done either to choose two out of three, or to choose one out of three. To choose two out of three, three coins are flipped, and if two coins come up the same and one different, the different one loses (is out), leaving two players. To choose one out of three, either reverse this (the odd coin out is the winner), or add a regular two-way coin flip between the remaining players as a second step. Note that the three-way flip is 75% likely to work each time it is tried (if all coins are heads or all are tails, which occurs 1/4 of the time, the flip is repeated until the results differ), and does not require that "heads" or "tails" be called. A famous example of such a three-way coin flip (choose two out of three) is dramatized in Friday Night Lights (originally a book, subsequently film and TV series), where three high school football teams with identical records use a three-way coin flip – at a truck stop – to determine which two will advance to the playoffs.[5][6] A legacy of this coin flip was to reduce the use of coin flips to break ties in Texas sports, instead using point-systems to reduce the frequency of ties.
Use in dispute resolution
Coin tossing is a simple and unbiased way of settling a dispute or deciding between two or more arbitrary options. In a game theoretic analysis it provides even odds to both sides involved, requiring little effort and preventing the dispute from escalating into a struggle. It is used widely in sports and other games to decide arbitrary factors such as which side of the field a team will play from, or which side will attack or defend initially; these decisions may tend to favor one side, or may be neutral. Factors such as wind direction, the position of the sun, and other conditions may affect the decision. In team sports it is often the captain who makes the call, while the umpire or referee usually oversees such proceedings. A competitive method may be used instead of a toss in some situations, for example in basketball the jump ball is employed, while the face-off plays a similar role in ice hockey.
Coin flipping is used to decide which end of the field the teams will play to and/or which team gets first use of the ball, or similar questions in football matches, American football games, Australian rules football, volleyball, and other sports requiring such decisions. In the U.S. a specially minted coin is flipped in National Football League games; the coin is then sent to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and other coins of the special series minted at the same time are sold to collectors. The XFL, a short-lived American football league, attempted to avoid coin tosses by implementing a face-off style "opening scramble," in which one player from each team tried to recover a loose football; the team whose player recovered the ball got first choice. Because of the high rate of injury in these events, it has not achieved mainstream popularity in any football league (a modified version was adopted by X-League Indoor Football, in which each player pursued his own ball), and coin tossing remains the method of choice in American football.
In an association football match, the team winning the coin toss chooses which goal to attack in the first half; the opposing team kicks off for the first half. For the second half, the teams switch ends, and the team that won the coin toss kicks off. Coin tosses are also used to decide which team has the pick of going first or second in a penalty shoot-out. Before the early-1970's introduction of the penalty shootout, coin tosses were occasionally needed to decide the outcome of tied matches. The most famous instance of this was the semifinal game of the 1968 European Championship in Italy between Italy and the Soviet Union, which finished 0-0 after extra time. Italy won, and went on to become European champions.[7]
In cricket the toss is often significant, as the decision whether to bat or bowl first can influence the outcome of the game.
In duels a coin toss was sometimes used to determine which combatant had the sun at his back.[8] In some other sports, the result of the toss is less crucial and merely a way to fairly choose between two more or less equal options.
The National Football League also has a coin toss for tie-breaking among teams for playoff berths and seeding, but the rules make the need for coin toss, which is random rather than competitive, very unlikely. A similar procedure breaks ties for the purposes of seeding in the NFL Draft; these coin tosses are more common, since the tie-breaking procedure for the draft is much less elaborate than the one used for playoff seeding.
Major League Baseball once conducted a series of coin flips as a contingency on the last month of its regular season to determine home teams for any potential one-game playoff games that might need to be added to the regular season. Most of these cases did not occur. From the 2009 season, the method to determine home-field advantage was changed.[9]
Fédération Internationale d'Escrime rules use a coin toss to determine the winner of a fencing match that remains tied at the end of a "sudden death" extra minute of competition. Although in most international matches this is now done electronically by the scoring apparatus.
In the United States Asa Lovejoy and Francis W. Pettygrove, who each owned the claim to the land that would later become Portland, Oregon, wanted to name the new town after their respective hometowns of Boston, Massachusetts and Portland, Maine; Pettygrove won the coin flip.[10]
Scientists sometimes use coin flipping to determine the order in which they appear on the list of authors of scholarly papers.[11]
In December 2006 Australian television networks Seven and Ten, which shared the broadcasting of the 2007 AFL Season, decided who would broadcast the Grand Final with the toss of a coin. Network Ten won. In Australia it is commonly used in cricket.
In some jurisdictions, a coin is flipped to decide between two candidates who poll equal number of votes in an election, or two companies tendering equal prices for a project. For example, a coin toss decided a City of Toronto tender in 2003 for painting lines on 1,605 km of city streets: the bids were $161,110.00 ($100.3800623 per km), $146,584.65 ($91.33 per km, exactly), and two equal bids of $111,242.55 ($69.31 per km, exactly).
"Drawing of lots" is one of the methods to break ties to determine a winner in an election; the coin flip is considered an acceptable variant. Each candidate will be given five chances to flip a coin; the candidate with the most number of "heads" wins. The 2013 mayoral election in San Teodoro, Oriental Mindoro was decided on a coin flip, with a winner being proclaimed after the second round when both candidates remained tied in the first round.[12]
United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom, if a local or national election has resulted in a tie where candidates receive exactly the same number of votes, then the winner can be decided either by drawing straws/lots, coin flip, or drawing a high card in pack of cards.[13][14]
United States
In the United States, a coin toss determines the class of the senators of a state being added to the Union, with the new state's senators due to be entering the US Senate.[15]
Experimental and theoretical analysis of coin tossing has shown that the outcome is predictable, to some degree at least, if the initial conditions of the toss (position, velocity and angular momentum) are known. Coin tossing may be modeled as a problem in Lagrangian mechanics. The important aspects are the tumbling motion of the coin, the precession (wobbling) of its axis, and whether the coin bounces at the end of its trajectory.
The outcome of coin flipping has been studied by Persi Diaconis and his collaborators. They have demonstrated that a mechanical coin flipper which imparts the same initial conditions for every toss has a highly predictable outcome – the phase space is fairly regular. Further, in actual flipping, people exhibit slight bias – "coin tossing is fair to two decimals but not to three. That is, typical flips show biases such as .495 or .503."[16]
In studying coin flipping, to observe the rotation speed of coin flips, Diaconis first used a strobe light and a coin with one side painted black, the other white, so that when the speed of the strobe flash equaled the rotation rate of the coin, it would appear to always show the same side. This proved difficult to use, and rotation rate was more accurately computed by attaching floss to a coin, such that it would wind around the coin – after a flip, one could count rotations by unwinding the floss, and then compute rotation rate as flips over air time.[16]
Moreover, their theoretical analysis of the physics of coin tosses predicts a slight bias for a caught coin to be caught the same way up as it was thrown, with a probability of around 0.51,[17] though a subsequent attempt to verify this experimentally gave ambiguous results.[18] Stage magicians and gamblers, with practice, are able to greatly increase this bias, whilst still making throws which are visually indistinguishable from normal throws.[16]
Since the images on the two sides of actual coins are made of raised metal, the toss is likely to slightly favor one face or the other if the coin is allowed to roll on one edge upon landing. Coin spinning is much more likely to be biased than flipping, and conjurers trim the edges of coins so that when spun they usually land on a particular face.
Counterintuitive properties
Human intuition about conditional probability is often very poor and can give rise to some seemingly surprising observations. For example, if the successive tosses of a coin are recorded as a string of "H" and "T", then for any trial of tosses, it is twice as likely that the triplet TTH will occur before THT than after it. It is three times as likely that THH will precede HHT.[19] (See Penney's game)
The mathematical abstraction of the statistics of coin flipping is described by means of the Bernoulli process; a single flip of a coin is a Bernoulli trial. In the study of statistics, coin-flipping plays the role of being an introductory example of the complexities of statistics. A commonly treated textbook topic is that of checking if a coin is fair.
There is no reliable way to use a true coin flip to settle a dispute between two parties if they cannot both see the coin—for example, over the phone. The flipping party could easily lie about the outcome of the toss. In telecommunications and cryptography, the following algorithm can be used:
- Alice and Bob each choose a random string, "ljngjkrjgnfdudiudd" and "gfdgdfjkherfsfsd" respectively.
- Alice chooses an outcome for an imaginary coin flip, such as "tail"
- Bob sends Alice his random string "gfdgdfjkherfsfsd"
- Alice immediately computes a cryptographic hash of the string "tail ljngjkrjgnfdudiudd gfdgdfjkherfsfsd", which is 59dea408d43183a3937957e71a4bcacc616d9cbc and sends it to Bob
- Alice asks Bob: "heads or tails"?
- Bob says, for instance, "heads".
- Alice tells him she's just won, and proves it by showing the string "tail ljngjkrjgnfdudiudd gfdgdfjkherfsfsd".
- Bob can check that Alice didn't lie by computing the SHA-1 of the string himself
- Furthermore Bob by providing his own randomly generated string guarantees that Alice wasn't able to precompute an image pair of "tail/random string" or "head/random string".
The New Zealand lottery game Big Wednesday uses a coin toss. If a player matches all 6 of their numbers, the coin toss will decide whether they win a cash jackpot (minimum of NZ$25,000) or a bigger jackpot with luxury prizes (minimum of NZ$2 million cash, plus value of luxury prizes.) The coin toss is also used in determining the Second Chance winner's prize.
Clarifying feelings
A technique attributed to Sigmund Freud to help in making difficult decisions is to toss a coin not actually to determine the decision, but to clarify the decision-maker's feelings. He explained: "I did not say you should follow blindly what the coin tells you. What I want you to do is to note what the coin indicates. Then look into your own reactions. Ask yourself: Am I pleased? Am I disappointed? That will help you to recognize how you really feel about the matter, deep down inside. With that as a basis, you'll then be ready to make up your mind and come to the right decision."[20]
Danish poet Piet Hein's book Grooks includes a poem on a similar theme:
A PSYCHOLOGICAL TIP Whenever you're called on to make up your mind, And you're hampered by not having any, The best way to solve the dilemma, you'll find, Is simply by spinning a penny. No -- not so that chance shall decide the affair While you're passively standing there moping; But the moment the penny is up in the air, You suddenly know what you're hoping.
In fiction
George Raft became famous as the coin-flipping gangster "Guino Rinaldo" in the 1932 Howard Hawks/Howard Hughes film Scarface (1932). Bugs Bunny parodies Raft in the classic 1946 animated short film Racketeer Rabbit. Raft himself later parodied his own gangster persona as the character "Spats Colombo" in Billy Wilder's 1959 comedy Some Like It Hot: Raft sees another mobster flipping a coin and responds, "Where did you pick up that cheap trick?" Raft's coin-tossing established a distinctive motif used in numerous later gangster movies.[21]
In the climax of Sholay, Veeru and Jaidev decide their next strategy over their encounter with the villains by tossing a coin (they are in habit of deciding over the affairs between themselves this way). It is revealed at the end that the coin used by him is actually a trick coin that always come up heads.
The 1972 movie adaptation of Graham Greene's novel Travels with My Aunt ends with a coin toss that will decide the future of one of the characters. The movie ends with the coin in mid-air, leaving their fate unresolved.
The DC Comics supervillain Two-Face, (most famously as a member of Batman's rogues gallery), has a double-headed coin with one side defaced—a parallel to his actual character, because one side of his face is deformed from acid throwing—which he relies upon for all of his decisions. He will do evil if it lands on the defaced side, and good on the other side. The coin is also representative of alter-ego Harvey Dent's obsession with dualism and the number 2. In the film The Dark Knight, the coin starts out clean, and Harvey Dent (played by Aaron Eckhart) uses this trick coin to seemingly leave important decisions to chance ("Heads I go through with it"). The coin is later blackened on one side in the explosion that kills his fiancée Rachel Dawes and burns half of his face. In Batman Forever, Two Face, (portrayed by Tommy Lee Jones), flips his coin multiple times in one scene to see how far Bruce Wayne can come within range of his gun. After a number of tries, the scarred side finally comes up and he fires anyway.
Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead begins with a series of coin tosses that all come up heads, causing the characters to question the nature of chance and randomness.
In the video game Final Fantasy VI brothers Edgar and Sabin flip a coin in order to determine who succeeds the throne of Figaro. It is later revealed that Edgar used a double-headed coin in order to win, allowing Sabin to live without the burden of the kingdom. This coin is also seen if Edgar is present in the first encounter with the gambler Setzer, who is highly amused by it when it is used to trick him into providing his airship.
In the video game "Shenmue II", gang leader Wuying Ren carries a double-sided coin in each pocket, asking for a head or tail call before pulling the coin out and flipping the coin. This process guarantees him victory in the outcome of the coin toss, usually forcing protagonist Ryo into a dangerous situation. The trickery behind this method is revealed as the characters part ways at the end of the game.
In the Futurama episode The Farnsworth Parabox, Professor Farnsworth creates a parallel universe. The only difference between the original universe and the others is that every time someone flipped a coin, it landed on the opposite side. This leads to extremely different worlds and humorous confusion.
The DVD of Final Destination 3 has a special feature allowing the viewer to flip a coin apparently to determine the outcome of the movie; however, the outcome is fixed to maintain the plot, and the coin flip is ignored.
Isaac Asimov's short story The Machine that Won the War ends with a character revealing that he made his decisions based on coin tosses.
The final episode of the American television series JAG ends with an incomplete coin flip.
In the book No Country for Old Men (and the film made of it), Anton Chigurh, the story's anti-hero, occasionally flips coins for potential victims to decide whether or not to kill them. He allows people to place their life in the hands of divine providence, and those who refuse to choose are killed anyway, for their obstinacy and refusal to submit to Fate. The meaning of Chigurh's coin-flipping is left ambiguous (in both the book and the film), and has led to considerable discussion: commentators suggest, for example, that Chigurh views himself as simply following the will of the universe, or is "merely cruel,"[22] or that it is an inevitable outgrowth of his (perceived) atheism or that Chigurh is in fact a stand-in for fate, or alternatively that his adherence to chance is a way for him to deny responsibility for his actions or to displace that responsibility onto his victims.[23]
In the manga/anime of Hunter x Hunter by Yoshihiro Togashi, a servant of the Zaolydeck family challenges Gon and his companions, Leorio and Kurapica, to a game involving a coin flip. The game is simple: Yoshihiro flips the coin in the air and quickly snatches it before the coin falls, then Gon or his companions have to say which hand the employee caught the coin with. This proves to be incredibly difficult due to the unrealistic speed of the coin flipper's hands. Gon is very observant and is occasionally able to guess right. See Flipism.
In The Mentalist episode "Blood In, Blood Out" during season 2, CBI consultant Patrick Jane wins a wager by flipping a coin and it landing on heads 20 times in a row. It is later shown that he rigged the coin in his favor.
In the video game BioShock Infinite, there is a coin-flipping sequence early in the game. Protagonist Booker DeWitt is asked by the Lutece Twins to choose a side. He sometimes chooses "heads" but other times "tails"; the coin always lands on heads. This is tightly connected to a central subject of the narrative (constants and variables in different realities) and to a central thematic of the game (the illusion of one's choices having an impact).
Science fiction author and satirist Leo P. Kelly's novel The Coins of Murph depicts a post-apocalyptic world where all decisions are made by flipping coins, in order to prevent humanity from ever again reaching the level of technology required to conduct a nuclear war.
Coin landing on its edge in fiction
A coin toss has a theoretical third outcome, in which the coin comes to rest upright on its edge, rather than falling to either heads or tails. Such an outcome is fairly unlikely, having been estimated at approximately 1 in 6000 tosses on a hard and flat surface,[24] but is seen in fiction, often for comedic effect. Such an outcome usually results in either a tied coin toss, or victory to a person who successfully called "edge".
In the film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), a state governor has to select an interim Senator, and he is being pressured by two opposing factions to choose between their respective candidates, Mr. Hill and Mr. Miller. Unable to choose, he flips a coin in the privacy of his office, but it falls against a book and lands on edge. Consequently, he makes neither choice and chooses Mr. Smith.
This happened in the Copa America soccer game between Colombia and Paraguay.[25]
See also
- Bernoulli process
- Checking whether a coin is fair
- Flipism
- Penney's game
- Gambler's fallacy
- Rock-paper-scissors
- Two-up
- Two-Face
- Obverse and reverse
- 1 2 Allenunne, Richard (December 31, 2009). "Coin tossing through the ages". The Telegraph. Retrieved 2012-12-08.
- ↑ "Cross and Pile". Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Bartleby.com. 1898. Retrieved 2012-12-08.
- ↑ Murray, Daniel B.; Teare, Scott W. (1993-10-01). "Probability of a tossed coin landing on edge". Physical Review E. 48 (4): 2547–2552. doi:10.1103/PhysRevE.48.2547.
- ↑ Hoffman, Rich (December 8, 2013). Snowy comeback is an instant classic. Philly.com. Retrieved December 9, 2013.
- ↑ Bissinger, H. G. Bissinger (1990). "Chapter 13: Heads or Tails". Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream. Da Capo Press. ISBN 9780306809903. Retrieved 2012-12-08. The three teams are Permian, Midland Lee, and Midland High – which lost the toss. This was the 1988 season, and the three schools had identical 5–1 district records; overall records differed.
- ↑ Lee, Mike (November 7, 2008). "SAISD athletic director looks back on 1988's famous coin-flip". San Angelo Standard-Times. Retrieved 2012-12-08.
- ↑ "European Championship 1968". RSSSF. 1968. Retrieved 26 July 2014.
- ↑ "French Duels". Scribner's Monthly. 11: 546. 1876. Reprinted in "French Duels" (PDF). The New York Times. January 23, 1876.
- ↑ "Ownership approves two major rules amendments" (Press release). Major League Baseball. January 15, 2009. Retrieved 2012-12-08.
- ↑ Orloff, Chet. "Francis Pettygrove (1812–1887)". The Oregon Encyclopedia. Portland State University. Retrieved March 29, 2010.
- ↑ Example: Meredith, R. W.; Janečka, J. E.; Gatesy, J.; Ryder, O. A.; Fisher, C. A.; Teeling, E. C.; Goodbla, A.; Eizirik, E.; Simão, T. L. L.; Stadler, T.; Rabosky, D. L.; Honeycutt, R. L.; Flynn, J. J.; Ingram, C. M.; Steiner, C.; Williams, T. L.; Robinson, T. J.; Burk-Herrick, A.; Westerman, M.; Ayoub, N. A.; Springer, M. S.; Murphy, W. J. (2011). "Impacts of the Cretaceous Terrestrial Revolution and KPg Extinction on Mammal Diversification". Science. 334 (6055): 521–524. doi:10.1126/science.1211028. PMID 21940861. "First authorship determined by coin toss. [...] Last authorship determined by coin toss."
- ↑ Virola, Madonna (2013-05-16). "Coin toss breaks tie in mayoral race in Oriental Mindoro town". Philippine Daily Inquirer. Retrieved 2013-03-16.
- ↑ "Hague savours local victories". BBC News. May 5, 2000. Retrieved 2012-12-08.
There are two methods to decide the outcome in the event of a draw - either a coin is flipped or the parties draw straws.
- ↑ "The count". Vote2001. BBC News. February 17, 2001. Retrieved 2012-12-08.
He or she [the returning officer] can use any random method such as tossing a coin, but the recommended way is to ask each candidate to write their name on a blank slip of paper and place it in a container.
- ↑ "Frequently Asked Questions about a New Congress". United States Senate. Retrieved June 11, 2013.
- 1 2 3 Diaconis, Persi (11 December 2002). "The Problem of Thinking Too Much" (PDF). Department of Statistics, Stanford University.
- ↑ Landhuis, Esther (June 7, 2004). "Lifelong debunker takes on arbiter of neutral choices". Stanford Report.
- ↑ Aldous, David. "40,000 coin tosses yield ambiguous evidence for dynamical bias". Department of Statistics, University of California, Berkeley.
- ↑ "Coin Tossing". Wolfram MathWorld.
- ↑ Mackay, Harvey (28 May 2009). "Decision making defines the leader". Archived from the original on 24 July 2011.
- ↑ Bourne, Mark (2006). "Some Like It Hot: Collector's Edition". The DVD Journal.
- ↑ Rutter, Ben (June 15, 2005). "No Country for Old Dudes". n+1.
- ↑ Emerson, Jim (March 28, 2008). "No God for Anton Chigurh?". Scanners. Chicago Sun-Times.
- ↑ "Probability of a tossed coin landing on edge". harvard.edu.
- ↑ "Colombia vs Paraguay coin toss defies odds, stuns players and officials". espnfc.com.
- Ford, Joseph (1983). "How random is a coin toss?". Physics Today. 36 (4): 40–47. doi:10.1063/1.2915570.
- Keller, Joseph B. (1986). "The probability of heads". American Mathematical Monthly. Mathematical Association of America. 93 (3): 191–197. doi:10.2307/2323340. JSTOR 2323340.
- Vulovic, Vladimir Z.; Prange, Richard E. (1986). "Randomness of a true coin toss". Physical Review A. 33 (1): 576–582. doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.33.576. PMID 9896645.
External links
|Wikimedia Commons has media related to Coin flipping.
- Heads or Tails? (A discussion of the predictability of a coin toss; with references)
- The Not So Random Coin Toss (Brief blurb about Persi Diaconis' work, with a photograph of the coin-tossing machine)
- Dynamical Bias in the Coin Toss (by Persi Diaconis, Susan Holmes, and Richard Montgomery; very detailed)
- CoinToss website (Online coin toss)
- Flip a coin website (Flip a coin virtually)
- Whether divination by drawing lots is unlawful? (From the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas)
- The Casting of Lots (Discussion of making decisions by chance outcomes throughout history)
- Coin Tossing — mathworld.com (Contains information about counterintuitive properties of coin tossing)
- Leads in Coin Tossing by Fiona Maclachlan, The Wolfram Demonstrations Project.
- Simple "Flip coin" php implementation example.(Php code sample based on random function)


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Tuesday, October 23, 2007
The Christians and the Pagans Meet for Samhain: October 24th SynchroBlog
Okay, so that's what I read in the Book of Isaiah, and I believe it to be so.
"Heaven is My throne,
And earth is My footstool.
Where is the house that you will build Me?
And where is the place of My rest?
For all those things My hand has made,
And all those things exist,"
Says the Lord.
"But on this one will I look:
On him who is poor and of a contrite spirit,
And who trembles at My word."
Yet, human hearts often attach greater importance to one place, or time over another, and I believe that there is a God in this universe Who loves people so desperately that the Divine presence of love, grace, and power will appear to those who yearn for it. Sometimes that search for God in sacred times and spaces yields results not because God honors the place, but the yearning hearts which go there.
So it is that the Spirit of Truth appears on Halloween. People come to the evening of Samhain (pronounced Sow (like cow)-en) believing that the veil between the worlds just might be thinner on this night. They seek like they have not sought before, and perhaps - just perhaps the God of the universe peeks through the veil, and says hi.
Of course, all across my country Christians will hold prayer meetings, and some will fearfully ward off the evil spirits, which they perceive are forming in more organized cohorts than any other day of the year. Their superstitions concerning holy, and unholy times cause them to anticipate demons forming pacts of allegiance against the churches on this one day in the season. Meanwhile, the Witches and Pagans I know celebrate in hopes of touching the other world - that place of gods, goddesses, and spirits of the departed. It is not a place I choose to seek, but I wonder how different it is than my own desire to reach the Unseen God of the universe through His Son Jesus Christ - that is at least from a human level.
They want health. I want health. They want hope. I want hope. They want peace. I want peace. They want their needs fulfilled. So do I. From this simple human perspective we seek the same things. I seek them in Jesus, and I believe that He is the only way to the Father Who loves me. They seek these things through other names, and deities, and it may be that they experience divine goodness from Him they do not know, but Who loves them as much as He loves me.
I do not fear Halloween, but enjoy it. Before I was a Pastor it was simply another day. After I became a Pastor, Halloween became a day in which the veil between people became the thinnest. People were happy, and celebrated in costume. In costume they felt a little freer. They opened their doors to strangers and gave gifts, and knocked on my door and looked for gifts. They did things in family units, and they were open to things unseen. It became a day when the veil between us was thinner.
Now I live in a city where we have a whole month of Halloween. The veil between Christians and Pagans sometimes becomes thicker during this season, because Christians superstitiously fear this day, and the Pagans who celebrate it. I find that this month becomes thinner between myself and my Pagan friends. I am working to make this a time when the veil between the worlds becomes thinner, and they are working for the same thing. We may not agree on how it is done, or on Who we seek, but we do seek blessing together, and in this place we meet, and the veil between us gets thinner. Perhaps the veil to finding the Father will as well.
"Up rises awen from Samhain to Samhain. The spirit of deity rushes my soul like a storm.
-me ;-)
30 comments:
- Lainie Petersen said...
Beautifully written, Pastor Phil. I particularly liked your observation about the veil being "thicker" this time of year for Pagans and Christians. Sad but true.
- October 24, 2007 at 12:27 AM
Hi Phil,
This seems to be an area where you've done a lot of work. Can you give some suggestions on how Halloween can be used constructively to build bridges between Christians and others?
- October 24, 2007 at 1:22 AM
A very moving thinning of the veil allowing us to peek into your heart.
I love what you said about thinness applying not only between the living and the dead but the living and the living as well - a profound observation, full of awe.
Many blessings to you and yours.
- October 24, 2007 at 3:19 AM
Love that quote at the end there. The guy that came up with it must be particularly good at communicating between people of different spiritual perspectives. :)
'They want health. I want health. They want hope. I want hope. They want peace. I want peace. They want their needs fulfilled. So do I. From this simple human perspective we seek the same things. I seek them in Jesus, and I believe that He is the only way to the Father Who loves me. They seek these things through other names, and deities'
A particularly significant observation. When we remember that we're looking at these matters from a human perspective, with all the limitations that come with such a perspective, it isn't that hard to find what unites us and use that as a reminder not to let our differences divide us.
- October 24, 2007 at 7:19 AM
- Pastor Phil said...
Hi Lainie,
We sure do find ways to separate ourselves from others, don't we? I wonder if we are trying to cfreate our own holiness by doing so.
Thanks for your great addition to the series of blogs.
- October 24, 2007 at 8:37 AM
- Pastor Phil said...
Hey Tim,
Yeah - start by doing Halloween, and having fun. If you do Halloween, and in fact make your version as fun as anything out there people will allow you to share your faith in wacky ways, and they will not be offended.
We have done Pumpkin Festivals for kids. In Salem we provide live music on the street. We do Dream Interpretation - like Daniel did. This year we held an event called the Brimstone Chronicles, and people loved it - Witches included - not just Christians. We give away free hot cocoa. We don't have time to Trick to Treat, because we have 500,000 visitors coming to our streets here in Salem. The ways to creatively express our faith are without number, and only limited by our fears.
- October 24, 2007 at 8:43 AM
- Pastor Phil said...
Thanks Nic,
Happy Beltane bro.
- October 24, 2007 at 8:50 AM
- Pastor Phil said...
Thanks for being one of those cross-culture communicators yourself.
- October 24, 2007 at 8:51 AM
Insightful post as always, Pastor Phil. I too liked your mention of the veil between Christians and Pagans. Though I think that unfortunately, it's not so much a veil as a brick wall in some cases. Thank you for being one of what hopefully will be many exceptions someday.
- October 24, 2007 at 9:14 AM
- Dan said...
phil. its so true that everyone is really searching for the same thing. nice post.
- October 24, 2007 at 9:25 AM
- Alan Knox said...
Excellent post! I've read your comments on other blogs, but this is my first time to visit your blog. I'll be back.
- October 24, 2007 at 10:11 AM
- Lew A said...
Hey Phil,
I really enjoyed your post and insightful thoughts. Great post!
God's Glory,
The Pursuit Online Store
- October 24, 2007 at 11:44 AM
- Pam Hogeweide said...
Halloween became a day in which the veil between people became the thinnest
my fave line in this posting.
whenever i stop by your blog and read about your community in salem i feel inspired to come. maybe one of these samhain's i'll pack my elf ears and head east
(but next week i'll be packing my attitude and heading north! see ya at OTM!!!)
- October 24, 2007 at 11:45 AM
- Adam Gonnerman said...
Very nice post. Maybe you and I are thinking along similar lines. It's nice not being the only one.
- October 24, 2007 at 2:17 PM
- Pastor Phil said...
Hey Jarred,
Brick wall indeed. Perhaps you and I should buy jack hammers.
- October 24, 2007 at 2:18 PM
- Sally said...
"Halloween became a day in which the veil between people became the thinnest."- Phi I pary this will be a discovery for many , that bridges will be built and dialogue opened... and more than that love shown... perfect love that casts out fear. Excellent post thanks :-)
- October 24, 2007 at 6:40 PM
off subject a little... I wonder why people (past and present) believe in sacred times and places. I believe to a mild degree that certain times and events hold with them a "higher sacredness" or "spiritual thinness" but places I'm not so sure of. Even still I think this is because of human activity and belief and not because of God's pursuit of us which is consistent from day to day.
By the way. You gotta hear that Dar Williams song "the christians and the pagans". Great song, funny. It's about Christmas though not Halloween so nevermind.
- October 24, 2007 at 7:08 PM
- Pastor Phil said...
If only we could see some of the common cries in this human family we might treat one another differently. Thanks.
- October 24, 2007 at 10:51 PM
- Pastor Phil said...
Thanks for popping in. You are welcome any time.
- October 24, 2007 at 10:51 PM
- Pastor Phil said...
Thanks so much bro.
- October 24, 2007 at 10:52 PM
- Pastor Phil said...
Hey Pam,
If you ever visit, you will either become a regular returner, or you will want to move here. At least that has happened to many others. ;-)
See you Seattle.
- October 24, 2007 at 10:53 PM
- Pastor Phil said...
Thanks for the prayers. We need them greatly right now.
- October 24, 2007 at 10:54 PM
- Pastor Phil said...
I agree with you on the sacred space issue, but I alos realize that God responds to the faith of the individual, and that might include those who believe in sacred spaces. Good God - weird world.
Did you see that Dar Willliams is playing Newburyport in November?
- October 24, 2007 at 10:56 PM
- Pastor Phil said...
Adam G-man,
Thinking alike? I'm sorry. I'm working on sanity too. ;-)
- October 24, 2007 at 10:58 PM
- Agent B said...
"Christians superstitiously fear this day"
Ha. Christians...superstitious?
Very true observation.
- October 24, 2007 at 11:45 PM
- Pastor Phil said...
Hey Agent B,
That must have been a typo. I did not really mean that. Christians are totally free of superstition, and I am the Pope.
- October 25, 2007 at 12:08 AM
Wow. I really like what you've written. God's gifts are so good and even better when invested into His Kingdom.
May His light continue to shine ever more brightly and more see the Truth of Jesus in and through those who are His representatives on earth.
- October 25, 2007 at 11:01 AM
- David said...
If anyone has insight regarding this, it's you my friend.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, which in turn will help me articulate mine.
Be blessed...
- October 25, 2007 at 7:04 PM
- Yewtree said...
Hi, I posted some links to this and some Pagan Samhain blogposts at MetaPagan (in the interests of interfaith harmony):
Pagans talk about Samhain
Those Christians again!
Happy Samhain and blessings for All Hallows.
- October 26, 2007 at 12:44 PM
- Pete Aldin said...
Heh heh, nice post, Phil. It's true that God peeks through where people give him the chance. I've watched him incredibly overwhelm a Mormon young man, watched him heal someone in the midst of a church which worshipped its pastor not God, and seen him do amazingly miraculous things in my life when I've been the fairweather friend.
Can I just say though that Halloween BUGS ME!! :) Mainly coz I'm an Aussie and a lot of us are annoyed that it's infiltrated our culture over the last 5 years. If I could figure out a good way to connect with the kids that come by our house instead of giving them candy so they won't egg my windows, I'd be all over it... But they just want colorful lumps of sugar!!
- October 28, 2007 at 6:33 PM


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One of the most common tropes in science fiction is the ability to apply the image of a person over the frame of a robot, thus creating a visually identical copy of a human. Now, as Japanese startup Different Dimension Inc. (DDI) gears up to market a life-sized augmented reality robot, the world is one step closer to creating visual human doppelgangers.
In recent science fiction, such as Minority Report or the "I Dated a Robot" episode of Futurama, fictional technology is explored that showcases what it would be like to have either virtual reality mimic physical sensation, or a robot mimic reality in order to provide physical sensation. Different Dimensions is working on a system that combines a physical robot with an augmented reality headset(Opens in a new window) in order to achieve that seemingly sci-fi goal.The tech is eerily similar to that episode of Futurama. In the episode, Fry and company travel to the internet, where they discover a parody version of Napster that allows them to download the image of a celebrity and have it projected on a blank robot. Fry pirates Lucy Liu, and embarks on a journey of human-robot love. DDI's technology -- based on a 2006 project from Yokohama National University and the Japan Science and Technology Agency -- requires the use of an augmented reality headset. The robot can't go out on dates, but the end result could be considered the early stages for the kind of advanced technology shown in that Futurama episode. The robot is wearing what is essentially a full-body green screen suit, and a virtual character is projected over the robot when you look through the glasses, while the surrounding environment is captured and displayed through a head-mounted camera.
The original 2006 version, U-Tsu-Shi-O-Mi, caused a few problems, such as outlines of the green screen material protruding from behind thinner virtual models, and the rig only had the ability to playback prerecorded audio. DDI improved upon the 2006 model, reducing its size by 60% by removing the bottom half of the robot, as well as making it thinner in order to remove the protruding green screen outlines. DDI also changed the green screen material to feel more natural upon touch.
The new robot can move its neck, shoulders, elbows, and wrists, and uses sensors inside the joints to send the movement data back to the software -- called MMDAgent -- that dictates what the virtual character is doing. At the moment, though MMDAgent uses speech recognition to help the system perform real-time conversations, it projects an anime character, aesthetically reminiscent of characters from the newer Final Fantasy games. Check out a video of the 2006 U-Tsu-Shi-O-Mi below to get an idea:
DDI is putting this system on the market with preorders opening up in March, though the company does not currently have a website where you can stalk the process. The system will cost around $4,800 to $5,300, and DDI only expects to sell around 120 units during the first year of them being available.
Though we're not yet at the point where we can pirate celebrities, this tech is certainly (and perhaps eerily) on track.Now read: Google is jumping into the augmented reality market with Google Glass


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*notcot in home+decor , 00:30
Gym Views at Standard NY- 02.22.10
On gyms with views ~ had a chance to check out the gym at the Standard NY while i was there (it wasn't open when i stayed last time!) ~ and wow. Filled with mirrors, super empty, lots of brand new equipment… and amazing views! Not to mention fun super red drinking fountain… and you can even see the statue of liberty out of the port hole by the bathrooms! Take a peek at more pics on the next page!


text: Seen at the Bay Area Renaissance Festival in Tampa, Florida. The Renaissance Festival features a 16th Century European village with a dozen stages of fun, exciting, and renaissance styled entertainment. Over 80 artisans fill the Festival marketplace to display and sell their handcrafted wares for a truly unique shopping experience. Patrons can interact with hundreds of memorable characters roaming the village streets as well as view live armored jousting and combat throughout the day. The festival is annually held over a number of Saturdays and Sundays during February and March.-bayarearenfest.com


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Keynesians were right
On the analytical front: many economists these days reject out of hand the Keynesian model, preferring to believe that a fall in supply rather than a fall in demand is what causes recessions. But there are clear implications of these rival approaches. If the slump reflects some kind of supply shock, the monetary and fiscal policies followed since the beginning of 2008 would have the effects predicted in a supply-constrained world: large expansion of the monetary base should have led to high inflation, large budget deficits should have driven interest rates way up. And as you may recall, a lot of people did make exactly that prediction. A Keynesian approach, on the other hand, said that inflation would fall and interest rates stay low as long as the economy remained depressed. Guess what happened?I'm sure you readers know the answer. But the perpetually wrong will never admit it, because, well, they just don't do that. Confidence in one's wrongness gets you a gig in the TV punditry. Especially if it supports the preferred narrative. Thoughtful, nuanced analysis, not so much.
[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]


text: This year's Google I\/O Conference showcased an enthusiastic love affair between Android and its fans. Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of Android, Chrome and Google Apps, told conference attendees that Android phones and tablets are everywhere. Android now has 1 billion users who check their phones 100 billion times a day, take 93 million selfies and walk 1.5 trillion steps.\nEssentially, "everything Android" was the real theme of this conference. One session after another highlighted new products, from economy smartphones to fitness wearables to the updated entertainment world of Android TV and Chromecast \u2013 basically, a consumer's paradise. Rumors also floated about a new, less-expensive version of Google Glass, in addition to network-connected thermostats and smoke detectors from the labs of Google Nest.\n[ Features: 10 Highlights and 33 Important Takeaways From Google I\/O 2014 ]\nNow that the dust has settled from Google I\/O, here's a look at the most compelling announcements from the conference, along with some thoughts on what they mean for developers, business owners and consumers.\nAndroid Wear: Emerging as Leading OS for Wearables \nGartner research director Brian Blau says some of the biggest Google I\/O news surrounded wearable devices such as smartwatches. They come in multiple colors, styles and features, with the LG and Samsung Android Wear watches available now and the Moto 360 from Motorola anticipated by summer's end.\nHere, application developers face a challenge, Blau says. "The smaller form factor is certainly more convenient and accessible, but it makes apps look dumb and less functional. App developers will need to carefully balance when to use a smartphone and when to use a wearable device," which he sees consumers treating as an accessory.\nThat said, if Google can attract enough developers, and if they in turn create demand for the devices, Blau says Android Wear will be one of the leading operating systems for wearables.\n[ Commentary: Why Android Wear Is the 'New iPad' ]\nForrester Vice President and Principal Analyst Jeffrey S. Hammondhas been testing the Samsung Gear Live since Google I\/O. "I have to confess, I'm taking my phone out of my pocket a lot less. Scanning emails, messages, and even replying to texts and emails via voice is pretty slick," he says. Overall, Hammond adds, the platform works really well, but "I'd love to see a bit more battery life."\nThat may soon change. Android engineer Dave Burke told consumers that Google's latest Android OS upgrade will extend battery life on phones and tablets by 90 minutes while adding some 3-D graphics capabilities. Meanwhile, new security features will include personal unlocking via owner touch through familiar Bluetooth signal recognition and various other clues. These features aren't available on wearables yet, but they'll be added in the future.\nGoogle Drive for Work: 'Premium Offering for Businesses' \nGoogle Drive for Work is technically an upgrade to Google Drive, though the company's enterprise team describes it as a new, premium offering for businesses. It includes unlimited storage, advanced audit reporting and new security controls for $10 per user per month. In addition, businesses big and small can store single files as large as 5TB, more than any other desktop or laptop drive that's currently available.\n[ Analyses: Google Gets Down to Business with Android Work, Cloud Drive for Work and Google Gets Into the Weeds of Android Work ]\nScott Johnston, a director of product management at Google, says Google Drive for Work includes the benefits and guarantees of Google Apps for Business, along with access to all of Google's familiar productivity apps \u2013 Docs, Sheets, Slides, Sites and Hangouts \u2013 and enterprise-grade security and compliance. This makes collaboration possible in many more ways than before, he says.\nAndroid Auto: Putting Google Apps, Services in Your Car\nOne major Google I\/O hit was Android Auto. Blau says it's "a nice start at expanding [Google's] ecosystem into the car industry, but cars won't appear until later this year and even beyond then before most people can use this new platform."\nAndroid Auto, which follows in the footsteps of the Open Automotive Alliance announced in January, will offer many popular smartphone features on new models from more than 40 auto manufacturers later this year. Owners can tap the steering wheel or an onscreen button and talk to Android Auto, commanding it to locate, navigate and\/or communicate destinations; provide directions through Google Maps; chat with contacts via car phone, text message or email, and request tunes from the Play Music app.\n[ Related: Smart Cars Getting Smarter, But the Ride Isn't Perfect ]\nGoogle's voice input and text-to-speech systems use the familiar commands from Google Now, minimizing the learning curve for current users. "Clearly, there was a focus on enabling Google developers to engage with Android users in many new ways. Improvements to basic UI functionality will help the overall design aesthetic," Blau says. "Google hopes this focus on an improved cross-platform experience will mean more users will choose, and then adopt, the Android ecosystem."\nAbove All, Google I\/O About Developers\nFor all the consumer-facing news, Blau says that the real focus of Google I\/O is keeping Android application and Web developers happy. "Google desperately needs developers to be loyal to their platform, from cloud to code to analytics to lots of new platform services," he says. The volume of new APIs and services for developers announced at I\/O should keep developers busy for a long time, he adds.\nAs for businesses, Hammond says the new Google Cloud DataFlow has much potential for firms with big data needs. "Quickly standing up streaming data pipelines for predictive analytics can really be a challenge," he says, because seconds matter when analyzing in-flight, streaming data.\nCloud DataFlow "makes it much easier for developers to set up this sort of monitoring and real-time analysis of incoming data at scale," Hammond says. "Anything that makes it easier will prove attractive to the business I work with."


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12th Agora International Law Conference, AILC 2018
"Prospects and Challenges of 21st Century Law"
October 18-19, 2018
Oradea - Romania
Organized by:
Agora University, Juridical and Administration Science Faculty, Social Sciences Department
In collaboration with:
- "Alexandru Ioan Cuza" Police Academy, Bucharest, Romania
- Institute of Legal and Political Research, Republic of Moldova
- Romanian Forensic Association
- Romanian Association of Criminal Sciences
- National Association of Reserve and Retired Military Staff of the Ministry of Internal Affairs
- Euroregional Centre for Preventing and Fighting against Cross-Border Criminality
- Centre of Excellence for the Study of Crossborder Minorities of Oradea
- University Transilvania of Brasov, Faculty of Law
- Information Centre EUROPE DIRECT Agora University
- Jean Monnet Chair: The European Public Space
- Jean Monnet European Modules:
- The free movement of persons inside E.U
- Economic and Monetary Union
Conference Chair
PhD. Professor Elena-Ana IANCU
Satellite events: Exposition and BACStud2018:
Section dedicated to the Centenary of the Great Union on the subject of "The Development of Legal Sciences in Romania and the Republic of Moldova"
Pages of History 1917-1918. Exhibition. Partener: Museum of Crisis Country
Associated scientific event: conference on the subject of: The Role of Legal Professionals in the Realization and Accomplishment of the Great Union, 19th October 2018, 10.30 a.m. Location: Oradea Municipality City Hall, Traian Mosoiu Hall. The programme includes the following: Exhibition - Pages of History 1917-1918. Criș Land Museum is a partner; Visit to Aurel Lazăr Memorial House; Depositing a floral tribute at the statue of lawyer dr. Aurel Lazăr // Eveniment stiintific asociat: conferinta cu tema Rolul profesiilor juridice in realizarea si desavarsirea Marii Uniri, 19 octombrie 2018, ora 10,30. Locatia: Primăria Municipiului Oradea, sala Traian Mosoiu. In program sunt cuprinse urmatoarele: Expoziţie - Pagini de istorie 1917-1918. Partener este Muzeul Tării Crisurilor; Vizita la casa memoriala Aurel Lazar; Depunere coroana de flori la statuia avocat dr. Aurel Lazăr
Parallel Sessions:
Session I: The impact of legislative changes in judicial practice
Session II: The role of interdisciplinarity in legal sciences
Session III: The dynamics of crime in contemporary society
Session IV: Comparative Approaches to International Law
In the conference program will be able to enroll research teams, teams of specialists from Romania and abroad with online interventions. For this purpose the organizers will provide appropriate technical equipment and conduct discussions via video conference.
Accepted papers presented at AILC 2018 will be published in AGORA International Journal of Juridical Sciences, http://univagora.ro/jour/index.php/aijjs/index 1843-570X, E-ISSN: 2067-7677, indexed in many international databases.
Important Dates
- Register: October 05, 2018
- Paper Submission Deadline: October 05, 2018
- Notification of Acceptance/Rejection: October 10, 2018
- The fee payment: October 10, 2018
- Author's enrolment in the program of conference: October 12, 2018
8 Piața Tineretului
Oradea, BH 410526
GPS coord.: Lat. N: 47.048938421830755
Office: (+40) 259 427 398,(+40) 259 472 513
Fax: (+40) 259 434 925
E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com
Web: www.univagora.ro
Previous Editions
2017 - https://www.univagora.ro/conferinte/ailc/ailc2017/ - https://www.ovidan.ro/?p=articles.details.15668
2016 - https://www.univagora.ro/conferinte/ailc/ailc2016/
2015 - https://www.univagora.ro/conferinte/ailc/ailc2015/
2014 - https://www.univagora.ro/conferinte/ailc/ailc2014/
2013 - http://www.ovidan.ro/?p=articles.details.9374
2012 - http://www.ovidan.ro/?p=articles.details.7628
2011 - http://www.ovidan.ro/?p=articles.details.5936
2008 - http://www.ovidan.ro/?p=articles.details.1481