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Syria opposition to set up interim government
March 17, 2013
BEIRUT (AP) — Syria's main opposition group is launching its most serious attempt yet to form a rival government to President Bashar al-Assad's regime, convening in Turkey on Monday to choose an interim prime minister for areas the rebels control.
Twelve candidates are running, including economists, businessmen and a former Syrian Cabinet minister.
Some warn setting up such a government could close the door to negotiating an end to Syria's civil war and instead harden the battle lines even more.
Another obstacle is asserting the authority of a government picked by the largely exile-based opposition, especially in areas where Islamic extremist militias dominate.
The opposition Syrian National Coalition needs to take the reins in increasingly chaotic rebel-held areas where many services have broken down, but doing so means taking a political risk, said University of Oklahoma professor Joshua Landis.
"Obviously (the opposition) has been very frightened of trying, because it does not have a real social base on the ground, and it is worried that if it fails, it will get egg on its face," said Landis, who runs a blog called Syria Comment.
The deadlocked Syria conflict, which has claimed 70,000 lives and displaced about four million people, entered its third year this weekend.
Leading members of the coalition are meeting in Istanbul, Turkey, on Monday and Tuesday to pick a prime minister who would put together the interim government, said coalition spokesman Khalid Saleh. A vote is expected by Tuesday, he said.
Twelve candidates have been nominated, though the list could shrink if not all accept their nominations, Saleh said. The coalition released 10 names on Sunday but is not publishing the names of two contenders who live in areas under government control, he said.
Among the candidates are Osama Kadi, the coalition's economic adviser from London, Ontario in Canada; Ghassan Hitto, a longtime IT manager who recently moved from Dallas, Texas to Turkey; Assad Asheq Mustafa, a former Syrian agriculture minister and former governor of Syria's central Hama province, and Walid al-Zoabi, a real estate entrepreneur from Dubai.
Saleh described the candidates as technocrats. "Each has a minimum of 15 to 20 years of experience in his field," he said.
The 72 members of the coalition's general assembly are eligible to vote. If no candidate gets at least 37 votes in the first round, the top two would compete in a second round, Saleh said.
The Syrian government has portrayed those trying to topple it as foreign-led terrorists. The conflict erupted in 2011, initially as a largely peaceful uprising that, in the face of a harsh regime crackdown, turned into an armed insurgency and then into civil war.
Issam Khalil, a legislator from al-Assad's ruling Baath Party, echoed the regime's position that the opposition is pursuing foreign interests and is trying to "implode Syria from the inside." Those meeting in Istanbul want to intensify the conflict in Syria, not end it, he said Sunday.
The U.S. has been cool to the idea of a rival government in the rebel-held areas, saying the focus should be on a political transition.
Under a plan endorsed by the international community last year, al-Assad supporters and opponents would propose representatives for a transition government, with each side able to veto candidates. However, the plan did not address the key question of al-Assad's role.
Most in the Syrian opposition rule out negotiations with al-Assad, even on the terms of his departure from office.
Last week, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry affirmed his support for the plan, saying that only a transitional government accepted by both the opposition and the al-Assad government can allow Syrians to determine their future.
The leader of the Syrian opposition coalition, Mouaz al-Khatib, has also suggested he opposes the formation of a rival Syrian government, saying he feared it would deepen divisions in Syria.
Breaking with opposition consensus, the 52-year-old former preacher provoked a backlash last month when he offered to hold talks with members of the regime if it would help end the bloodshed.
The formation of the interim government was put off twice over such disagreements, but Saleh said coalition members voted last month to go ahead with the election. Al-Khatib, while still opposed, is deferring to the majority, Saleh said.
Analyst Fawaz A. Gerges said that the move is likely to block a political solution.
"By electing an interim Cabinet, the Syrian opposition will put an end to any possibility for a negotiated settlement with the Syrian regime," said Gerges, director of the Middle East Center at the London School of Economics. "They've decided to fight all the way."
With an interim government in place, the "war option would win over diplomacy," Gerges said.
It's not clear where an interim government would be able to operate.
The regime routinely attacks rebel strongholds with airstrikes and artillery, and any gathering of senior opposition politicians would be a prime target. More likely, government members would shuttle between Turkey and Syria, as some rebel military chiefs do.
Acceptance is another challenge.
In recent months, Islamic extremist militias, particularly the al-Qaida-linked Jabhat al-Nusra, have asserted dominance in key battle areas.
Al-Nusra and other Islamic extremist fighting groups don't recognize the authority of the Free Syrian Army and might not be inclined to take orders from an interim government.
Saleh played that down, saying that 85 percent of the fighting forces recognize the Syrian National Coalition. Once the government moves into Syria and starts providing services, "doubts will just vanish," he said.
Landis predicted that the interim government would face a rough start. Trying to assert authority "is a recipe for conflict, no doubt about it," he said, "but they've got to get down to the towns and offer a real alternative."
Associated Press writers Barbara Surk in Beirut and Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria, contributed.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.


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Bernstein, Leonard
Genius of theatre and concert hall
Every self-respecting symphony orchestra can dash off the Candide Overture in the time it takes to boil an egg. Tunes like 'Maria' and 'Tonight' are evergreens. So it may seem perverse to describe Leonard Bernstein as an unknown composer. The truth is that Bernstein was a musical Jekyll and Hyde. There was never any question about the quality of his musicals: with the exception of the bicentennial disaster, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, they were instant successes and have remained firm favourites.
The mould-breaking West Side Story is often revived on Broadway and in the West End – and also mounted by school amateurs at one end of the spectrum and prestigious opera houses at the other, among them La Scala and Bregenz. The first production of Candide, his satirical operetta, was a flop and took 30 years to shake into shape but it now works equally well on stage or in the concert version that Bernstein himself trail-blazed at the Barbican in what proved to be his last London appearance before his death in 1990, aged 72. Since then, Bernstein's lighter shows – On the Town and Wonderful Town – have, too, been frequently revived.
While he was alive and a superstar of the rostrum, other conductors steered clear of Bernstein's concert hall compositions so that recordings and performances, other than his own, were rare. His output was substantial, including two operas, three symphonies, three ballets, three song cycles, a song symphony (Songfest), a Mass and what in effect are concertos for violin (Serenade), flute (Halil) and cello (Meditations). But is this body of work any good? At the height of his fame as a conductor, his reputation was often under fire. In 1966 the New York critic Alan Rich wrote that listening to the Serenade was like 'sucking on a sugar-free lollipop'; the score, which many now see as his most beautiful abstract work, was dismissed as 'drab, tawdry and derivative'.
As Sibelius once observed tartly, whoever heard of a statue being erected in honour of a critic? Whereas the street outside New York's Lincoln Center has been re-named Leonard Bernstein Place and, yes, his music definitely does cut the mustard: conductors of the calibre of Previn and Tilson Thomas were the first to champion him (while he was still alive) and in the 1980s the LSO, with whom he'd already been working for 20 years, elected Bernstein their life president and mounted a festival in his honour. Since then his compositions have appeared in concert programmes played and broadcast all over the world.
Maybe Jekyll and Hyde, suggesting a split personality, is the wrong analogy. In his passport he described himself simply as 'musician' – pianist, conductor, teacher as well as composer – and he made no distinction between Broadway and Carnegie Hall. He was proud of his eclecticism and unashamed of writing melodies in recognisable keys – even if they sometimes followed hard on the heels of brutally aggressive atonal passages, as in his 'Kaddish' Symphony No. 3. At heart, Bernstein was a traditionalist who believed in the natural supremacy of good old-fashioned tonality, yet each of his three symphonies brings something new, such as the despairing mezzo voice that sings the Old Testament lamentation in his Symphony No. 1, or the variation techniques in No. 2 which precisely mirrors the form of WH Auden's The Age of Anxiety. 'All my music is theatrical,' Bernstein said later of the 'Kaddish'; much of it, too, is concerned with man's loss of faith in a barren age.
Bernstein's need to write music that is about something external to the notes laid him open to charges of histrionics, even of sentimentality, but when it is performed with conviction, and with strict attention to the composer's instructions, his music rarely fails to deliver the 'tingle' factor: one thinks of the unfolding majesty of the grand G major tune in the last of the Chichester Psalms (originally composed for a Broadway show with lyrics by Comden and Green) or the love music from On The Waterfront or perhaps best of all the uplifting closing chorus in Candide, 'Make Our Garden Grow'.
As he grew older, composing became more difficult and he gave up his New York conducting post at 50, intending to devote more time to composition. But the critical drubbing he received after Mass made him wary and happier when working as a teacher and conductor, where almost everybody appreciated his talents. He was lured back to Broadway by a collaboration with the lyricist Allan J Lerner on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. To examine the first 100 years of the US presidency seemed a good idea but it was muddied by a sub-plot concerning the place of black people in the nation and at the White House. The show died on Broadway, closing after five days, delivering an even worse blow to Bernstein's reputation than Bernstein's fundraising cocktail party for the Black Panthers pilloried by Tom Wolfe in Radical Chic.
But once again Bernstein pulled something out of the ruins, a belated bicentennial tribute, Songfest, for which he selected a dozen poems by four centuries of American poets. Bernstein's long-running love affair with the voice continued in several other late compositions, most importantly in the autobiographical opera A Quiet Place (1983) which revisits, 30 years on, the suburban family Bernstein created for Trouble in Tahiti. The less ambitious Arias and Barcarolles was conceived for two voices and two pianists; the Concerto for Orchestra ends with a baritone soloist. At the time of his death he was struggling to find a form for an opera he longed to write about the Holocaust. His need to create work of significance was sometimes like a millstone round his neck: arguably the happiest of his late compositions is the 1980 Divertimento, evoking memories of his Boston childhood.
Humphrey Burton

subset: commoncrawl


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McKay Lab
Ecology – Evolution – Genetics
We study the ecology, evolution and genetics of local adaptation in natural plant populations.
As sessile organisms, terrestrial plants are exposed to all extremes of local conditions throughout all stages of their life-history, often resulting in episodes of strong selection. This sessile nature also makes them particularly amenable to reciprocal transplant and common garden experiments – the basic tools for assessing local adaptation. Thus it is not surprising that the first studies of natural variation in adaptive traits began with plants (over 250 years ago!). Since then hundreds of studies have found evidence for local adaptation in plants.
What is missing is the knowledge of the traits and genes that confer adaptation to specific environments. An understanding of the traits involved in adaptation to particular stresses (e.g. drought) is needed for both applied (crop breeding, conservation, invasive species) and theoretical questions in ecology and evolution. In addition, once traits are identified, genetic data are needed to answer whether adaptations are due to:
1. Many genetic changes or only a few?
2. New mutations or older alleles that persist at some frequency throughout the species range and history?
Understanding the ecology and genetics of local adaptation is fundamental to our understanding of evolution and biodiversity.
2018 ROOTS Project Field Crew
Jack Studer, Helena Kragel, Anne Howard, Kevin Lehner, Kyle Evans, Eddie Kathrein
SUBTERRA Link
2015 Research Team


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Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin Reg # 99974-555
Jamil Al-Amin (formerly known as H. Rap Brown) has been moved to what is known in prison as "the hole". He was strip searched and placed in a cell with no bed, no control over the lights and no shower.
They have taken his Qur'an and all of his other personal property.
Please take some time contact the warden, and to get the word out to all of your contacts. We all need to write, call, fax or email Ron Wiley Warden ADX to inquire as to why Jamil Al-Amin has been placed in the hole. No information has been given as to why this transfer was made, but nothing could justify this inhumane treatment.
In the past when action has been taken by the public on Jamil Al-Amin's behalf, changes have been made that benefited him. Please remember to keep your correspondence brief and to the point, and avoid threats, rambling etc. We want positive changes to be made.
The address is:
Warden Ron Wiley
USP Florence ADMAX
U.S. Penitentiary
PO Box 8500
Florence, CO 81226
Phone: 719-784-9100
Fax: 719-784-9504
www.myspace.com/freetheimam// email@example.com


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Gaston Leroux
Our editors will review what you've submitted and determine whether to revise the article.
- Notable Works:
- "The Phantom of the Opera"
Gaston Leroux, (born May 6, 1868, Paris, Fr.—died April 15/16, 1927, Nice), French novelist, best known for his Le Fantôme de l'opéra (1910; The Phantom of the Opera), which later became famous in various film and stage renditions.
After leaving school, Leroux worked as a clerk in a law office and, in his free time, began writing essays and short stories. By 1890 he had become a full-time journalist, and from 1894 to 1906 he sailed the world as a correspondent, reporting back to Paris various adventures in which he took part, notably during the Russian Revolution of 1905. In the early 1900s he began writing novels, his first success being Le Mystère de la chambre jaune (1907; The Mystery of the Yellow Room), starring the amateur detective Joseph Rouletabille. A number of sequels followed, none quite so successful.
In 1910 The Phantom of the Opera appeared serially (before publication as a novel) and received only moderate sales and somewhat poor reviews. The melodrama of the hideous recluse abducting a beautiful young woman in a Paris opera house did not achieve international celebrity until the American actor Lon Chaney created the title role in the silent-film version of 1925. Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical The Phantom of the Opera (1986) brought Leroux's novel renewed fame.
Leroux published several other novels and a few plays but, except among mystery aficionados, never achieved wide fame as a writer of horror and crime stories.


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The editors and crew at SBM have an announcement that needs to be made. This morning, Dr. Amy Tuteur tendered her resignation and will therefore no longer be a blogger at SBM. Some of you might already be aware of this development because Dr. Tuteur has already announced her decision on her own blog. That is why we considered it important to post an announcement here on SBM as soon as possible.
While we are sorry to see Dr. Tuteur go and wish her well in whatever future endeavors she decides to pursue, over the last several weeks it had become clear to both the editors of SBM and Dr. Tuteur herself that, although Dr. Tuteur had routinely been able to stimulate an unprecedented level of discussion regarding the issues we at SBM consider important, SBM has not been a good fit for her and she has not been a good fit for SBM. Over the last few days mutual efforts between the editors and Dr. Tuteur to resolve our differences came to an impasse. Unfortunately for all parties, that impasse appeared to be unresolvable and resulted in Dr. Tuteur's decision to leave SBM.
As a result of Dr. Tuteur's departure, we will be adjusting the posting schedule in order to cover her normal Thursday slot. Final decisions have not been made yet, but we expect that every weekday will continue to be covered, with at least one post per weekday.


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Tribal Health Dental
Adapted By Angela Knight, LMFT
The impact of a natural disaster or traumatic event goes far beyond physical damage. The emotional toll can result in a wide range of intense, confusing, and sometimes frightening emotions. Just as it takes time to clear the rubble and repair the damage, it takes time to recover your emotional equilibrium and rebuild your life. There are specific things you can do to help yourself and your loved ones cope with the emotional aftermath of the traumatic event. Keep reading...
After-Hours Healthcare Coverage
We are dedicated to making sure that as a Patient of the Lake County Tribal Health Consortium, or Tribal Health Pediatrics and Obstetrics, that you receive the best Medical, Dental, and Human Service care we can provide, 24-hours a day, seven days a week. We also recognize that sometimes your healthcare needs arise when we are not open for service.
To meet that challenge we have contracted with FONEMED, an after-hours Nurse Triage and Healthcare Support Service. You can be connected to the service by calling the Lake County Tribal Health Clinic, or Tribal Health Pediatrics and Obstetrics, at any time we are closed.
Your call will be answered by a Registered Nurse. The Nurse will guide you and make every effort to support whatever your, or your families, healthcare need might be.
Calls to the FONEMED Nurse Hotline will end one of three ways, all in the best support for your care:
- The Nurse will guide you and help you resolve your healthcare need or
- The Nurse will provide short term Triage to get you through until we re-open or
- The Nurse will recommend that you seek immediate medical care at the nearest emergency department.
In all cases FONEMED will contact the Lake County Tribal Health Consortium, or Tribal Health Pediatrics and Obstetrics Clinic, on the next business day to let your Primary Care Provider know what happened. Our hope is that our partnership with the FONEMED will provide you with the 24-hour healthcare support that you and your family deserve.
Lake County Tribal Health was established to improve the physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, and social health status of the Native Americans of Lake County through the provision of culturally sensitive health care services.
We are committed to keeping our whole community healthy by providing access to affordable, quality health care.
Everyone has access to all our medical and dental services. Human services, public health, pharmacy and transportation services are also available to the Lake County local tribes.
HEALTH TIP - The Good News About Cravings
Maybe you have a sweet tooth and the thought of cutting back on sweets sounds almost as bad as cutting them out altogether. The good news is that cravings do go away and preferences change. As you eating habits become healthier, foods that you used to love may seem too rich or too sweet and you may find yourself craving healthier options.


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This guys kid is an aspiring artist. Only problem is, his interpretation of giraffes appear to be hairy penises. Not sure where his inspiration comes from, but that pen… I mean giraffe looks pretty happy!
This guy's little brother was tired of getting pushed around so he decided to take matters in to his own hands. What he doesn't realize is that his dad had no intentions in breaking up the fight. No need to spend his hard earned money on that Saturday night pay-per-view fight.
It turns out teaching your kids Jiu-Jitsu may not be the best idea. You might be taking a trip to the emergency room after some some grappling or a little ground and pound.


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2001 Toilet Paper Wedding Dress Contestants with Judge Mikie Russo (All Images Courtesy of Direct Contact PR)
Planning a Wedding can get pretty expensive; it is just a fact. Wedding dresses, especially, cost thousands of dollars for an outfit that (if you are very lucky) you will wear just once in your lifetime. That does not seem terribly cost effective to me. For some, saving money on weddings is more than a hobby, and barely less than an obsession. Laura Gawne and Susan Bain, the ladies who operate the popular websites Cheap Chic Weddings and T P Dress Contest have a few hints to help you save money on your wedding, and on the dress in particular. If you have a flare for design, why not consider making your dress out of Toilet Paper? Yes, I just typed that.
The 2017 edition of the annual Toilet Paper Wedding Dress Contest is now open, and Cheap Chic Weddings is thrilled to welcome their new Presenting Sponsor, Quilted Northern Toilet Paper! Since 2004, the Cheap Chic Weddings Toilet Paper Wedding Dress Contest has challenged creative minds from across the country to create a wearable, on-trend wedding dress and headpiece from only toilet paper, glue, tape and needle and thread.
2016 Toilet Paper Wedding Dress Contest Winner by Van Tran
Detail from 2016 Winning Design By Van Tran
Quilted Northern® is excited to supply toilet paper that has been crafted with the highest attention-to-detail for over 100 years – making it luxurious enough for a wedding dress. Contestants have until June 5, 2017 to submit their paper masterpieces. The Top Ten entries will be chosen, and then online voting will be open to the public.
The top ten dresses and their designers will be flown to New York City to participate in a live fashion show finale event at a fabulous Peerspace Event Space in New York City on July 20, 2017, where the top three winners will be chosen!
At the Finale Event, the dress entries will be judged by Cheap Chic Weddings founders, a representative from Quilted Northern®, a representative from Sponsor Ripley's Believe It or Not! and celebrity guest judges Actor, Singer, Producer and Author Jenna Ushkowitz, as well as Mikie Russo, Celebrity Party Planner and Lifestyle Expert!
TP Wedding Dress Contest Judge, Mikie Russo
"We are always excited to see what our talented contestants dream up." says Susan Bain, Co-Founder of Cheap Chic Weddings. "We can't wait to see how our contestants will work with the meticulously designed Quilted Northern® Toilet Paper! "We know it will be a wonderful match!" added co-founder Laura Gawne.
The Grand Prize winner will receive $10,000, the second place winner will receive $5000 and the third place winner will receive $2500.
Here's How to Enter:
First: Plan your design.
Second: Grab some Quilted Northern Toilet Paper (Quilted Northern Ultra Plush or Quilted Northern Ultra Soft & Strong, or Both), tape, glue and/or needle and thread (that's all you can use)! To help offset the cost of designing these memorable creations; Quilted Northern is providing coupons by request by emailing firstname.lastname@example.com.
Third: Make the dress and headpiece on your model or mannequin and take a few clear, well-lit, unaltered digital photos (front, back and side). The dress must be able to be worn by a human!
All photos and an Official Entry form are to be submitted to Cheap Chic Weddings at firstname.lastname@example.com by June 5, 2017 at 11:00 PM EST. There is no entry fee. The Judging Panel at Cheap Chic Weddings will judge the initial digital photo entries.
View the complete contest information at: This Link. Official contest rules along with lots of other wedding cost saving tips and information can be found at This Link. Good Luck!


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KusumaRegular price$4,150.00 Sale price
Pickup currently unavailable
Photography: All photography is designed, photographed and edited by Mark Jackson on location or in his studio.
Originals: Original works are handmade by Mark in his Arkansas studio using his proprietary silver and ink suspension method on solid panels he hand builds.
Dimensions: 39 x 39 in | 99 x 99 cm
Materials: Silver and ink suspension on wood panel
Hanging: Each original is constructed with an integrated french cleat for secure hanging, no framing necessary.
Finish: Gloss
- Allow 5-6 weeks for delivery
- All sales final - no returns or order cancellations
Available at I.D.E.A. Gallery inside Interiors Market 715 Miami Circle, Suite 200, Atlanta Georgia.
Free shipping on all domestic orders of works available through VELESERO in contiguous United States. Contact us for questions of more information.
Please allow 5-10 business days for your artwork to be shipped. All sales final.
Link to our Shipping Policy and Refund/Returns Policy.
Each original is built with an integrated french cleat for secure hanging, all that is needed is a level and screws. For larger works, we recommend locating at least one stud to maximize support.
If you are located in Northwest Arkansas and would like assistance installing the art, reach out to firstname.lastname@example.com, we are happy to assist with this.
Originals are made with an integrated french cleat on a cradled panel, ready to hang as-is. No extra framing is required.
All sales final. No returns or order cancellations. For more information here is a link to our Privacy Policy.
Also, please feel free to check out Terms and Services.


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Last week saw the third-to-last episode of Fox's sci-fi family drama Fringe. Despite the somewhat wonky fifth season, for me Fringe has represented the best sci-fi offering on network television since Joss Whedon's Dollhouse was cancelled.
For the uninitiated, here's a bit of background (lots more here) required for today's pedantic adventure. Warning if you haven't seen last week's episode: spoilers ahead. If you're already current on Fringe, skip past the background.
In the year 2167, a Norwegian scientist found that he could genetically enhance the mental abilities of humans, but the increased intelligence came at the loss of certain emotions. Parts of the brain that had once served as the basis for the human emotional experience had been reallocated for logic, reason, and higher thought. Imagine a brain that's mostly prefrontal cortex with an underdeveloped limbic system. The eventual success of the experiment led to the emergence of very smart yet emotionless humans.
These altered humans could not experience happiness, grief, jealousy, or anger. They had no sex drive, and thus could not reproduce. To remedy the problem, the future humans developed a technology that would grow new humans in a sort of hydroponic farm. These individuals were known to the protagonists of the show as The Observers. Thanks to this technology, Observers were typically born as fully mature adults.
Sometime in that future, the Observers made the Earth unlivable, ostensibly due to anthropogenic climate change and pollution. The Observers, aided by technology, decided to solve their problem by traveling back in time to the year 2015, where they could colonize the Earth and prevent the future environmental destruction of the planet. In the year 2036, our heroes are rapidly running out of time to enact The Plan which they hope will finally defeat The Observers and send them back to their own time.
Captain Windmark, chief executive of The Observers, stumbles upon a stereo while hunting down our heroes Peter, Olivia, Walter, and Astrid in an effort to prevent them from carrying out The Plan. He plays the music, cocks his head to the side like a lizard, and listens. The camera cuts to a shot of Windmark tapping his toes in rhythm with the music. Back to Windmark's face, looking vaguely confused.
The inference we are meant to make is this: despite the genetic alterations that gave The Observers their advanced intellect at the expense of their emotions, even Windmark can't escape his humanity. Underneath all the tech and all the genetic engineering, he can still be moved by a piece of music. Maybe, then, he isn't hunting down our heroes solely because it's the rational thing to do. Maybe he hates them. Even The Observers can't outrun their emotions.
Here's the problem. The Observers should not be able to dance.
Dancing, it turns out, is intimately connected to vocal learning. And if The Observers are born as fully mature adults, then for them, language must be innate and unlearned.
In 2009, a group of researchers sifted through hundreds of YouTube videos that claimed to contain evidence of dancing animals, including ferrets, dogs, horses, pigeons, cats, fish, lizards, snakes, owls, camels, chimpanzees, turtles, ducks, hamsters, penguins, and bears. The researchers measured how well the motion of the animals' bodies mirrored the rhythm of the music being placed. At the end of their analysis, the only videos that passed the synchronization test were ones that contained animals who were vocal learners. In all, the researchers found dancing in fourteen species of parrot, and in an Asian elephant. That's not to say that all those other species don't vocalize; of course they do. But their vocalizations are innate, not learned. Just like The Observers.
I'll concede the possibility that The Observers have some sort of Observer School where they rapidly learn language following their "birth," which, technically, would classify them as vocal learners, capable of dancing. But even if that were true, there's more.
Entrainment, or the ability to synchronize one's body movements to an external rhythm, can happen without explicit effort. Living among modern humans during the twenty-one years since The Invasion, Captain Windmark must have encountered some form of "external rhythm," at least once. That he was surprised by his toe-tapping suggests that dancing was a new activity for him. If he was capable of dancing, surely at some point, he would have spontaneously – without explicit planning – bounced his head or tapped his toes in the two decades he spent surrounded by the human culture he was so intent on destroying. In a 2010 paper, psychologists Marcel Zentner and Tuomas Eerola point out, "one of the most curious effects of music is that it compels us to move in synchrony with its beat. This behavior, also referred to as entrainment, includes spontaneous or deliberate finger and foot tapping, head nodding, and body swaying."
In their study, 120 human infants between the ages of 5 months and 2 years were placed on a parent's lap where they listened to a music clip (the parents were given noise cancelling headphones, so they could not accidentally guide the infants' actions). The researchers filmed the infants' movements, and analyzed them, much as the first research group had done with the animal videos.
Zentner and Eerola found that the infants easily entrained their motions to the rhythm of the songs that they heard, whether it was Mozart, a childrens' song, a simple tune, or even just a rhythmic drum solo. They spontaneously modulated their movements according to increases or decreases in tempo.
And the more synchronized they were, the more they displayed "positive affect." In other words, dancing made them happy.
Dancing, or more accurately, rhythmic entrainment, is an unlearned response to an external stimulus that occurs in members of species that have vocal learning, and that – at least among humans – results in increased happiness. This leaves us with three possible reasons that make Windmark's dance entirely impossible, or at least not a reflection of growing emotions.
First, not being a vocal learner, he should not have been able to tap his toes in sync with the song.
Second, even if we granted that Windmark was a vocal learner, capable of dancing, then he should not have been surprised by his toe-tapping, since entrainment is involuntary and he had surely been previously exposed to external rhythms.
Third, even if we granted that The Observers have vocal learning, and that Windmark's confusion can be explained by having never encountered music – not even an errant rhythmic drumbeat during his more than two decades surrounded by human culture – then dancing is still not evidence of emotion. Zentner and Eerola put it this way: "what may have generated positive affect in our infants is the interoceptive feedback from moving in time with rhythmic pulses." In other words, the emotional response was a consequence of dancing; dancing is not, itself, derived from emotion.
Update: The big bad himself, Captain Windmark (Michael Kopsa) appears in the comments to tell us that it was the other Observer who was toe-tapping. I maintain that my criticism remains intact, even if applied to the other Observer.
Lords of the dance: Are humans the only species that enjoy dancing?
Header image via Fox Broadcasting Co; Windmark photo from a screenshot of Season 5, episode 3, "The Recordist."


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Coach Tom Coughlin recently admitted to frustration at the New York Giants' inability to find common ground in contract talks with restricted-free-agent wide receiver Victor Cruz.
If the Giants truly are more focused on extending receiver Hakeem Nicks' contract, will that expose their flank for another team to take a run at Cruz?
NFL.com's Ian Rapoport hears there is already "a ton of interest" on Cruz, with "plenty of teams just waiting for their opening" once free agency kicks off.
Just 26 years old, Cruz is a sharp route runner with explosive run-after-catch ability. In addition to top-10 production over the past two years, the Eli Manning-to-Cruz connection already boasts more touchdowns of 70+ yards than all but two combinations in NFL history.
Cruz is sure to draw the first-round tender from the Giants. The question is if the traditionally slow restricted free-agent market will bear fruit for an impact slot receiver.
"There is enough interest in Cruz to make me think this could be the year someone bites on an RFA," Rapoport adds.
One team to watch is the St. Louis Rams, holding an extra first-round pick from last offseason's Robert Griffin III trade. With slot machine Danny Amendola ready to test the market, Cruz could entice the Jeff Fisher-Les Snead tag team to part with one of those high picks.


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26-sept.-2023 04:33
TopoGun 1.06 released
TopoGun 1.06 is now available for download. This is a free of charge upgrade for existing customers.
Remember that you have to uninstall any previous version of TopoGun and TopoGun License Server before installing the new version.
If you're using the Online activation model, you should return the license to the server, prior to uninstalling. In case you're using the Offline activation model, remember to write down your license activation details.
What's new:
- Numerous bugfixes.
- Improved user interface.
- The floating licensing server is now available as a Windows service too (TopoGun License Service), so there is no more need to run the server under a logged-in account.
- Right clicking when the Bridge tool is active switches to the SimpleEdit tool.
- Vertex Conforming is now fully multithreaded, using up to 256 CPU cores.
- Border Vertices and Border Edges on the fly calculus.
- The Show Borders option in the Options menu, to enable/disable border vertices and edges display. The border vertices and edges display characteristics can be tweaked in the Preferences window.
- Antialising for scene elements rendering. This option can be enabled/disabled in the Preferences window.
- There are no more Main or Secondary vertices and edges, the rendering pipeline and interface have been simplified.
- The Preferences window Colors tab was updated, in order to reflect the changes.
- The Steady Mouse feature allows you to create smooth mouse paths, with any tool you're using. The option can be enabled/disabled in the Options menu. Currently, its only real use is in conjunction with the Draw tool, in order to help you draw smooth lines. The Steady Mouse Radius can be modified in the Preferences window.
- The Reject Inner Faces feature helps in removing unwanted faces that are created in the interior of three or four sided tube-like meshes. The option can be enabled/disabled in the Options menu.
- Implemented a keepalive like command in TopoGun, TopoGun License Service and TopoGun License Server, in order to keep connections alive and not have them lost on timeout by some routers.


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A good idea—like lightning—seems to strike at random. Sometimes you spend the better part of a day looking for inspiration and never find it.
Sometimes you fill up an entire whiteboard brainstorming dozens of ideas—none of them worth doing.
And then there's those times when your muse decides to sucker punch you in the brain with a brilliant idea as you lay in bed at night. And unless you get up and jot it down, you run the risk of forgetting it forever.
Maintaining a steady flow of good ideas is a big part of many disciplines—whether you're an entrepreneur, a creator, a maker, or a marketer.
Creativity and the ideation process, even today, is still a bit mysterious. However, it is something you can get better at to produce good ideas reliably.
Where do ideas come from?
Before we talk about ideation, we need to look at what an idea really is.
We tend to take one of two perspectives when it comes to the origin of ideas, according to author of Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert:
- Ideas come about from sheer mental effort: Through force of will and focus alone, you can come up with ideas through the process of trial and error. However, this can be frustrating as it puts the burden entirely on the thinker.
- Ideas are a spontaneous gift from forces outside of our control: Back in the day (and still today), we'd imagine a "muse"— a creative spirit floating about us—that would possess us and give the gift of a good idea. This is a more abstract take on ideation and pretty inconvenient when you think about it.
In a way, the truth is a combination of the two: Everything you absorb from the world around you is processed in your brain—"ideas" are just the relationships between those things.
You might've been led to believe the right hemisphere of your brain is where all ideas come from, but that's not really the case.
Creativity actually involves different parts of your brain at different stages of the process, with the prefrontal cortex playing a big role in the spontaneous and deliberate discovery of new relationships between concepts.
Creativity is the process of connecting dots—each "dot" being an experience, a concept, or a piece of knowledge you've collected.
This is a recurring theme across many stories of invention and discovery.
The idea for Velcro was born when George de Mestral, a Swiss engineer, was hiking in the mountains and noticed cockle-burs stuck to his pants and his dog's fur. He connected the dots between the cockle-bur's hook and loop design and the real world applications they could have in fastening objects together, which is now used in shoes and even by NASA.
You're also probably familiar with the story of how Sir Isaac Newton allegedly defined gravity after observing an apple falling from a tree and connecting that to his existing knowledge of physics and math.
One of the beautiful things about ideation is how we draw upon what already exists to generate something different, simply by looking at existing concepts together in a new way.
Hats and cats, separately, are perfectly unassuming concepts. But combine the two and you end up with a pretty novel idea that people search for over 14,000 times a month on Google ("hats for cats"), and a seemingly silly concept becomes a potential low investment business idea 😉 .
Most great stories about ideas seem to have them come out of the blue. But people who have to be creative every day to make ends meet are living proof that it's possible to do it on demand.
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The four stages of intentional ideation
The creative process is perhaps best understood through the model outlined by Graham Wallis that's broken into four stages:
- Preparation: Outlining the problem and requirements, and gathering information.
- Incubation: Giving your mind time to digest and work through different combinations between everything you've amassed in the preparation stage.
- Illumination: The "aha!💡" moment when you come up with the beginnings of a working idea.
- Verification: Validating your idea by seeing if it meets all the requirements you set in the preparation stage.
If an idea doesn't pass the verification stage, you simply return to the incubation or preparation stages and try again.
Anyone who engages in creative problem solving on a regular basis is likely already going through this process intuitively.
But by developing an awareness of these stages, and applying tactics to help you along at each step, you become more efficient at it and can produce better ideas more reliably.
1. Preparation: Equipping yourself with information
The more information you have, the more possibilities there are.
This stage is all about knowing what cards you're holding and the rules of the game you're playing.
Ultimately, you'll need a firm grasp of your objective. Are you trying to come up with a catchy slogan? Are you trying to make a certain amount of extra cash?
This is also where you set your restraints for the verification stage: How big is your budget? What is your time limit? Who is the audience for the idea?
Make your problem as concrete as possible so you can start working backwards from there. (e.g. "I want to make $1,000 so I can go on a nice vacation in two months." or "I want to reach 10,000 new cat owners with a holiday marketing campaign").
If you're tackling a problem for a business you're involved in or want to start, a SWOT analysis can help you lay all your cards out on the table and consider potential internal and external obstacles and advantages.
Research is also a key part of this stage. And all good research starts by asking questions that will help you fill in missing information.
Write these queries out to guide your research and make the internet your ally:
- Use Google search to learn more about your problem and related topics
- Use Google Trends to identify hot topics and trends
- Use Reddit to get answers to your questions and eavesdrop on discussions that might reveal useful information
- Ask questions or find answers on Quora
- Look for existing solutions to your problem and how those ideas were executed
In theory, this process can go on forever, so try to push forward to the next step as soon as you can.
The creative process is messy and you'll likely revisit this stage if you don't turn up any good ideas.
2. Incubation: Connecting the dots until a picture forms
"I'm not procrastinating—my idea is just incubating."
It sounds like an excuse to do nothing, but it's the very reason why sometimes when you walk away from a problem, you suddenly come up with a solution.
In the incubation stage, we step back from the problem and everything we've accumulated in the preparation stage to give our minds a chance to connect the dots.
Recognize that incubation happens both passively and actively. Don't feel bad about taking a break or doing something else if you're not turning up anything good (this can actually bring about the next stage, as you'll soon find out).
However, you can and should warm up your creative muscles in some of the following ways:
- Free writing: Write about your problem. Just get every thought and idea down without worrying about grammar or spelling or whether it makes sense. Not only is this a good warm-up, our brains are good at spotting patterns, and so we might find something useful in the mess of words.
- Drawing a mind map: Write your problem in the middle of a whiteboard or on a piece of paper, then start clustering concepts together by literally draw lines where connections can be made. Use a piece of paper or a free tool like Coggle.
- Making a list and outlining your thought process: Using Workflowy (free), a piece of paper or a Google Doc, create a high level outline through bullet points of a potential solution, grouping them into groups and subgroups an so forth.
- Making a venn diagram: Draw two or more overlapping circles to create a venn diagram you can use to express differences in each circle and commonalities in the middle where they overlap. This is especially helpful for creating analogies and thinking up creative ways to explain something.
- Bouncing ideas off someone else: Two heads are better than one. Expose your problem solving process to someone you trust and apply the age old rule of improv, "Yes, and..." to pursue each train of thought as far as it goes instead of rejecting any of them too soon.
A large quantity of ideas are far more important at this stage than quality. There are no "bad ideas" at this point. You never know what connections will inspire something you can use, and at the very least this will prepare your mind for the next stage.
3. Illumination: Capturing the ideas that excite you
When it rains, it pours—especially during a brainstorm.
This is the eureka! moment. This is the part we all look forward to. This is when an idea is born in a flash of inspiration.
For inventors and entrepreneurs, these moments of illumination can sometimes become the basis for a good founding story.
It comes as a flood of insight, often when you least expect it. There's a reason for that. The brain is actually more prone to these flashes when your frontal lobe isn't fully engaged. Doing chores or other tasks where you can check out mentally can be a good way to distract yourself from the problem at hand and let it stew in your head until inspiration hits.
When it happens, though, capture as much of this insight as your mind can "see" while it's still firing on all cylinders. These moments are fleeting, so it's best to capitalize on them, following the trail of inspiration as far it goes.
Many entrepreneurs and career creators keep an idea journal of some kind handy for these moments. Usually it's a small book or a dedicated app—Evernote, Trello, Google Keep (what I use)—but it should be something you can keep on you at all times.
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4. Verification: Evaluating and tweaking your idea
Poke holes in your idea and see if it still floats.
This is the last stage where you check to see if the ideas you came up with actually meet your requirements.
Don't just aim to be objective here—actively play the role of devil's advocate and ask the hard questions. Be fine with killing your ideas if they don't fit your requirements or you can't adapt them to make them work.
At this point, it's also important to see how your potential idea has already been done. Truly original ideas are incredibly rare, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
By looking at how similar ideas have already been executed, you can see where you need to reinvent the wheel and where you don't, borrowing whatever works and improving upon it wherever you see opportunities. This is common in marketing where new ideas are inspired by competitors or even companies in different industries.
If a lack of certainty scares you away from an idea because it's too "out there" and outlandish, just remember Seth Godin's words:
"In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is failing. In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible."
If your primary goal has anything to do with capturing and keeping people's attention, different can be good as long as it aligns with your audience.
Embracing random and planned creativity
As much as we try, we won't always be able to turn on our creativity like a faucet whenever we need it. You can try to beat procrastination or find hacks to focus better, but there will always be times when you can't control your creative process.
Despite many claims about "the most creative times of day", there's actually a lot of variance in when famous creatives did their work.
The only real commonality is that creative people tend to rely on a routines to increase their creative output.
Whether you're a night owl or a morning person, consider making the most of your most inspired hours to make creativity a habit.
Instead of trying to copy every successful person's routine, learn to lean into your own.
Creativity is more like a muscle than a wishing well.
It's not something you run out of. It's something you feed and exercise, and push beyond its limits, so it gets stronger every time. Leave it alone and it atrophies and grows weak.
It all contributes to a stronger creative process. The more you consume in the world around you and the more often you connect it in clever ways, the better you get at it.
So read and learn about a bit of everything and find creative ways to "play": whether it's writing, drawing, freestyle rapping or anything that encourages you to combine concepts in novel ways.
Getting lightning to strike twice
While natural creative geniuses surely exist, anyone can be creative and become more creative by integrating ideation and the creative process into their lifestyle.
If creativity was a truly unreliable force, there would be no career artists or writers or comedians or YouTubers or serial entrepreneurs. These people have integrated the creative process into their very lifestyles—living, breathing, and embracing the ideation process every day—able to make lightning strike twice, thrice, and many more times when they need it and even when they don't.
However, the start of an idea alone isn't worth much. Nor does the creative process end when you start executing. You continue to connect the dots as you flesh out an idea and bring it to life. And that's where the real fun begins.


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How to make your website a conversion machine with A/B testing
Test, test, test, everyone has an opinion of what will work best when it comes to websites but you can't argue with data. We know marketers love data! (cute marketing pick up line, "I love you, like a marketer loves data!" )
Testing is a huge part of my everyday process on acquia.com. I currently have 8 active tests running for various parts of the website. I wanted to take you through my process and tools to help make your site a conversion machine. I am running Visual Website Optimizer to do a/b testing, multivariate testing and split URL testing. There are other services out there that do similar things with varying levels of implementation and price such as Optimizely, Google Website Optimizer and Vertser. Drupal also has many modules for testing. You can pick and try any of these as well.
Acquia alert: Visual Website Optimizer is offered as part of the Acquia Network subscription that offers support and tools to manage your Drupal website.
What to test?
The list can go on and should also change to meet your needs. If your goal is to increase lead form fill out you should be thinking of placement of your form, length of your form and copy before and after your form. You need to make sure when you are doing your testing you are comparing your changes to a control simultaneously. Meaning if you test CTA text one week and different CTA text the next week your results could be skewed by standard fluctuations in business. To get the best results have your test run against a control at the same time. (Most A/B tools will do this by default.) This is a good list to start thinking about:
- CTA copy
- Button CTA color
- Form on the page
- Position of form on the page
- Site menu items
- Picture of a person on the page
- More or less content on a page
- Adding and removing form fields to increase conversion
- Fonts and font colors
- Background colors
Start testing Once you've decided what you are going to test and how you will be setting up and tracking your test, create one!
Tips from Kate:
- Make sure you let your test run until you have significant data, don't make your conclusion too early! Here is a tool to calculate "statistical confidence" http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/ab-split-significance-calculator/
- Once you've found a winner doesn't mean you can't test it again with different variations, keep coming up with ideas and test them!
- Make your tests consistent site wide, if you are only testing elements on one page you will be all set but if you are testing menu item changes make sure that change happens everywhere to not confuse or frustrate your users.
- Show your tests to new visitors, this will ensure you don't interrupt the standard flow for your returning visitors.
- Don't let your gut or others opinions out weigh test results. Results don't always show the most pleasing combinations but could better your conversion rate. Don't reject results but do another test with parts of the previous test, maybe by trying combinations you'll find a pleasing yet well converting option.


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RALEIGH, N.C. -- NC State sophomore T.J. Warren is taking his high-scoring game to the NBA.
In a statement released by the school Tuesday, Warren, the Atlantic Coast Conference's player of the year, said he had ''a fun ride'' but was ready to enter the NBA draft.
''Playing in the NBA has been a lifelong dream of mine, and playing at NC State has prepared me well to achieve my dream,'' Warren said.
Behind Warren, the Wolfpack went from being picked to finish 10th in the ACC to reaching the NCAA tournament for the third consecutive year and beating Xavier in the First Four.
A 6-foot-8 forward, Warren led the ACC at 24.9 points per game -- good for third nationally -- while shooting a league-best 52.5 percent. He also led the team in rebounding at 7.1 per game.
Warren closed the regular season with 41 points at Pittsburgh and a career-high 42 points against Boston College, making him the first ACC player to go for 40 in consecutive games since December 1990 and only the seventh overall. He was the first NC State player to do it since program great David Thompson in December 1974 and the first ACC player to do it in consecutive league games since 1957.
Warren set school single-season records with 871 points and 31 20-point games.
''I truly believe he was the best offensive player in the nation this year, and although he is a great scorer, his rebounding and defensive improvement are often underappreciated,'' Wolfpack head coach Mark Gottfried said in a statement. ''I am excited for T.J. and want the very best for him. I believe in him and will miss having him in our program.''
A year earlier, Warren averaged about 12 points and shot an ACC-best 62 percent in a supporting role behind C.J. Leslie, Lorenzo Brown, Richard Howell and Scott Wood. He mulled an NBA jump last season but returned to a leading role after the departures of those upperclassmen as well as the transfer of freshman Rodney Purvis to Connecticut.
Warren dropped about 20 pounds to about 215 this year to better handle the load for an inexperienced team.
''I told him last year ... work on your game, get your mind right and come on back and show what you can do,'' his father, Tony Warren, said last week. ''And he did that.''
The elder Warren, a former Wolfpack player, had said he wanted his son to take his time and ''be 100 percent sure'' on his decision even as he expected him to be a top-20 pick.
NC State will also lose fifth-year senior Jordan Vandenberg and sophomore point guard Tyler Lewis, who said last week he would transfer to Butler. But NC State (22-14) returns second-leading scorer Ralston Turner (10.5 points) and adds a top-20 recruiting class featuring power forward Abdul-Malik Abu, and twin wings Caleb and Cody Martin.