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The 14-year-old girl victimized in the arson and attempted murder in her Langley Meadows home last month is creating a program to help other young women impacted by domestic violence.
"I want to do this because I have been through so much stuff and want to help other people in similar situations. I always felt like I'm alone and now I know I'm not," said the 14-year-old, in a statement released by her aunt Loretta Cella. Loretta is helping her create the outreach program that they hope to have ready for August.
The teen's father, Andre Harvey Richard, is currently in jail facing 13 criminal charges, accused of trying to kill his estranged wife and her two children by setting fire to their Langley Meadows home at 1 a.m on April 2.
The 14-year-old was allegedly assaulted by the accused when she tried to protect her mother from being attacked by him in her bedroom.
Loretta Cella, sister to the teen's mom, is founder of the Passion Foundation and her board of directors has voted to create a fund to get the outreach program off the ground. The aunt and niece aim to have it launch this summer at a Langley community centre or school, to help 10 to 20 young women impacted by domestic violence.
The new program will be called Healing Our Hurting Hearts Club, "a name my niece chose as a special space for girls to do just that," said Loretta.
The Passion Foundation is an organization that supports leadership development for young women around the world.
"A heart-wrenching incident took place in the early morning hours of April 2, when my family members' lives were turned upside down by acts of domestic violence and arson. My sister and her kids have been feeling a tremendous amount of pain on more levels than we can really speak to, but we are also very grateful for the outreach and support from everywhere.
"My niece has experienced deep trauma and continues to deal with the painful emotions associated with this event, but as a survivor of domestic violence she wants to create change for herself and others who may have had a similar experience."
This peer to peer program will include art, crafts, physical activity and formal leadership learning. This program will also give an opportunity for high school students to earn hours toward graduation.
Already an SFU student is donating time to create a logo, and the teen and a group of her close peers are finalizing the details of the program.
"My niece's goal is have a program package available for schools coming the fall 2014 with activities, program plans, resources, and an online platform for the girls," said Loretta.
Individuals and organizations who would like to support Healing Our Hurting Hearts can make a charitable contribution through the Passion Foundation website at passionfoundation.org or at firstname.lastname@example.com.


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A vocation (from Latin vocatio 'a call, summons'[1]) is an occupation to which a person is especially drawn or for which they are suited, trained or qualified. People can be given information about a new occupation through student orientation.[2] Though now often used in non-religious contexts, the meanings of the term originated in Christianity.
Senses Edit
Use of the word "vocation" before the sixteenth century referred firstly to the "call" by God[3] to an individual, or calling of all humankind to salvation, particularly in the Vulgate, and more specifically to the "vocation" to the priesthood, or to the religious life, which is still the usual sense in Roman Catholicism. Roman Catholicism recognizes marriage, religious, and ordained life as the three vocations.[4][failed verification] Martin Luther,[5] followed by John Calvin, placed a particular emphasis on vocations, or divine callings, as potentially including most secular occupations, though this idea was by no means new.[6]
Calvinism developed complex ideas about different types of vocations of the first type, connected with the concepts of predestination, irresistible grace, and the elect. There are the vocatio universalis, the vocatio specialis, only extended to some. There were also complex distinctions between internal and external, and the "vocatio efficax" and "inefficax" types of callings.[7] Hyper-Calvinism rejects the idea of a "universal call", a vocation, to repent and believe, held by virtually all other Christian groups.
In Protestantism, the call from God to devote one's life to him by joining the clergy is often covered by the English equivalent term "call", whereas in Roman Catholicism "vocation" is still used.
Both senses of the word "call" are used in 1 Corinthians 7:20, where Paul says "Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called".[8]
Concept Edit
The idea of vocation is central to the Christian belief that God has created each person with gifts and talents oriented toward specific purposes and a way of life. In the broadest sense, as stated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, "Love is the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being".[9] More specifically, in the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Churches, this idea of vocation is especially associated with a divine call to service to the Church and humanity through particular vocational life commitments such as marriage to a particular person, consecration as a religious dedication, ordination to priestly ministry in the Church and even a holy life as a single person. In the broader sense, Christian vocation includes the use of one's gifts in their profession, family life, church and civic commitments for the sake of the greater common good.
Christian views on work Edit
This section is written like a personal reflection, personal essay, or argumentative essay that states a Wikipedia editor's personal feelings or presents an original argument about a topic. (March 2023)
Many Christian theologians appeal to the Old Testament Book of Genesis in regards to work. According to Genesis 1, human beings were created in the image of God, and according to Genesis 2, Adam was placed in the Garden of Eden to "work it and keep it".[10] Dorothy L. Sayers has argued that "work is the natural exercise and function of man – the creature who is made in the image of his Creator."[11] Likewise, John Paul II said in Laborem exercens that by his work, man shares in the image of his creator.
Christian theologians see the fall of man as profoundly affecting human work. In Genesis 3:17, God said to Adam, "cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life".[12] Leland Ryken said out that, because of the fall, "many of the tasks we perform in a fallen world are inherently distasteful and wearisome."[13] Christian theologians interpret that through the fall, work has become toil, but John Paul II says that work is a good thing for man in spite of this toil, and that "perhaps, in a sense, because of it", because work is something that corresponds to man's dignity and through it, he achieves fulfilment as a human being.[14] The fall also means that a work ethic is needed. As a result of the fall, work has become subject to the abuses of idleness on the one hand, and overwork on the other.[citation needed] Drawing on Aristotle, Ryken suggests that the moral ideal is the golden mean between the two extremes of being lazy and being a workaholic.[15]
Some Christian theologians also draw on the doctrine of redemption to discuss the concept of work. Oliver O'Donovan said that although work is a gift of creation, it is "ennobled into mutual service in the fellowship of Christ."[16]
Ryken argues for seeing the call of God to a particular occupation as a reflection of the gospel call, and suggests that this implies vocational loyalty – "modern notions of job become deficient" and "the element of arbitrariness of one's choice of work" is removed.[17]
Modern vocation Edit
Since the establishment of Vocational Guidance in 1908 by the engineer Frank Parsons, the use of the term "vocation" has evolved, with emphasis shifting to an individual's development of talents and abilities in the choice and enjoyment of a career. This semantic expansion has meant some diminution of reference to the term's religious meanings in everyday usage.[18][unreliable source]
Literary clarification Edit
These books have attempted to define or clarify the term vocation.
- States of the Christian life and vocation, according to the doctors and theologians of the Church by Jean-Baptiste Berthier
- A Theology of the Laity by Hendrik Kraemer (ISBN 978-1-57383-031-7)
- Living Your Heart's Desire: God's Call and Your Vocation by Gregory S. Clapper (ISBN 978-0-8358-9805-8)
- The Fabric of this World by Lee Hardy (ISBN 978-0-8028-0298-9)
- Your Work Matters to God by Doug Sherman and William Hendricks (ISBN 978-0-89109-372-5)
- The Call by Os Guinness (ISBN 978-0-8499-4437-6)
- The Preaching Life by Barbara Brown Taylor (ISBN 978-1-56101-074-5)
- Let Your Life Speak by Parker J. Palmer (ISBN 978-0-7879-4735-4)
- Lay People in the Church: A Study for a Theology of the Laity by Yves M.J. Congar, O.P. Translated by Donald Attwater, 1959
- Luther on Vocation by Gustaf Wingren, 1957
- God at Work: Your Christian Vocation in All of Life by Gene Edward Veith Jr. (ISBN 1-58134-403-1)
- The Fabric of Faithfulness by Steven Garber (ISBN 0-8308-1994-0)
- Visions of Vocation by Steven Garber (ISBN 978-0-8308-3666-6)
See also Edit
References Edit
- ^ Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House Company, 1985), s.v. "vocation."
- ^ "Orientation". Merriam-Webster.
- ^ The OED records effectively identical uses of "call" in English back to c.1300: OED, "Call", 6 "To nominate by a personal "call" or summons (to special service or office);esp. by Divine authority..."
- ^ Pope John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, 11.4
- ^ Gustaf Wingren, Luther on Vocation
- ^ David L. Jeffrey, A Dictionary of biblical tradition in English literature, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1992, ISBN 0-8028-3634-8, ISBN 978-0-8028-3634-2, Google books See also Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Alcott Parsons, Ch.3, p. 79 & note 1.
- ^ Kenneth G. Appold. Abraham Calov's doctrine of vocatio in its systematic context, p. 125 and generally, Mohr Siebeck, 1998, ISBN 3-16-146858-9, ISBN 978-3-16-146858-2, Google books. See also Jeffrey, 815
- ^ King James Version
- ^ "Catechism of the Catholic Church – part 3, section 2, chapter 2, article 6". The Holy See. Retrieved 2023-03-11.
- ^ 2:15, English Standard Version
- ^ Sayers, Dorothy L. "Why Work?" (PDF). faith-at-work.net. Archived from the original (PDF) on Jan 18, 2012. Retrieved 29 July 2012.
- ^ English Standard Version
- ^ Leland Ryken, Work and Leisure in Christian Perspective (Portland: Multnomah, 1987), 120.
- ^ John Paul II, Laborem exercens, § 9.
- ^ Ryken, Work and Leisure, 176.
- ^ Oliver O'Donovan, "Christian Moral Reasoning," in David J. Atkinson and David H. Field (eds), New Dictionary of Christian Ethics and Pastoral Theology (Leicester: IVP, 1995), 123.
- ^ Ryken, Work and Leisure, 147.
- ^ Douglas J. Schuurman; Vocation: Discerning Our Callings in Life (Grand Rapids: Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2004) ISBN 978-0-8028-0137-1 pages 5 & 6
External links Edit
- The dictionary definition of vocation at Wiktionary
- Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate – national, non-profit, Georgetown University affiliated research center that conducts social scientific studies about the Catholic Church.

subset: commoncrawl


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STANFORD, Calif. -- Six consecutive goals stretching from the final 2:38 of the first half to the first 3:23 of the second overturned a 3-2 deficit and helped No. 3 Stanford blow past top-ranked Southern California 9-5 on Sunday at Avery Aquatic Center.
The win improved the Cardinal to 16-1 overall and 2-0 in MPSF play, and snapped USC's (20-1, 5-1 MPSF) 27-game winning streak which dated back to last season.
Cory Dodson, one of two Cardinal players to score twice Sunday along with Maggie Steffens, bookended the 6-0 run, starting it with a game-tying goal with 2:38 remaining in the second period then finishing a textbook three-on-two to put Stanford in front 8-3 with 4:37 remaining in the third period. Goalie Gabby Stone fed Kiley Neushul on the fast break, and, with Dodson and Ashley Grossman with her, Neushul swam in, whipped a pass across her body to Dodson who coolly finished into the far corner past USC goalie Flora Bolonyai.
The goal capped a run that, after Dodson's opener, continued with Anna Yelizarova's go-ahead penalty shot 45 seconds prior to halftime. The Cardinal got a stop defensively and took possession with 12 seconds remaining in the half. Kelsey Suggs moved the ball past half-tank and passed to Annika Dries, whose shot from deep on the left wing got off just before the buzzer and beat Bolonyai into the far upper-90 to give the Cardinal a 5-3 lead at the break and put momentum firmly on Stanford's side.
It took just 50 seconds for the Cardinal to extend its lead to three in the second half, as freshman Dani Jackovich outmuscled two Trojan defenders in front of the goal and pushed a goal through, forcing a USC timeout. Kaley Dodson fired home to the near post two minutes later before younger sister Cory's goal which made the advantage five.
While the offense deserved its plaudits, it was the Cardinal defense which really carried the day by limiting the MPSF's most proficient offense to a season-low five goals. The Trojans entered the game averaging 15.9 goals a game, but could find few answers against the determined Cardinal. Stanford goalie Gabby Stone made a career-high 17 saves in the contest, while her defense, paced by Dries, Grossman and Kaley Dodson, made numerous field blocks to further stifle the Trojans.
Colleen O'Donnell scored twice for USC, and broke the Cardinal's run with her second goal at 3:30 of the third period. But Stone and the Cardinal defense remained sturdy, surrendering just one more, a Kaleigh Gilchrist effort with 3:07 remaining in the game.
Stanford had taken an early 2-0 lead in the contest behind first-period goals from Jamie Neushul and Maggie Steffens, but USC used a 3-0 run of its own powered by scores from O'Donnell, Jennifer Steifel, and Monica Vavic to take a one-goal lead at the 3:03 mark of the second frame.


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I shared with them some of the decisions I made when writing Miss E. and discussed my original idea for the story, my choice to write in first person from the perspective of a high-school-age girl, and the evolution of the characters I created.
I recently had the opportunity to speak to the Clarence Book Review Club in Buffalo, New York. This is a wonderful group of people who love books and gather monthly to share their interest in reading, writing, and authors.
I shared with them some of the decisions I made when writing Miss E. and discussed my original idea for the story, my choice to write in first person from the perspective of a high-school-age girl, and the evolution of the characters I created.
Questions from School
How much planning for the story do you do before writing?
I think every writer would probably answer this question a little differently, so this is really just my answer.
For Miss E., I had four or five important events that I knew were going to happen in the story, including the very end. By the time I started writing, I'd replayed those events over and over in my mind until they were very clear, to the point that it was almost like watching a movie. When it came time to write those chapters, it was very easy, and I found myself looking forward to those points in the story so I could write them.
The spaces in between those events were less planned out. In some cases, I only knew that I had to get from point A to point B and sort of knew how I was going to get there, but I hadn't decided on all the details. Those chapters were often harder to write, usually where I got stuck, and sometimes rewritten later. I would have had an easier time with them if I'd planned more, but I also would have lost some of the spontaneity of the story. Some of my favorite parts of Miss E. were not planned and only happened because they felt right at the time. So while big-picture planning is important for the overall story, I don't think every detail needs to be outlined. A good story and interesting characters have a life of their own, and there needs to be room for the characters to grow and the story to evolve.
I also think the type of planning that is done for a book depends on the story. Miss E. has a main character who is actually based on a real person in American history. I knew it would be important to get that character right, to make her believable as a real person. So a lot of research and planning went into that one character. I did almost the opposite for Cross Country, the sequel to Miss E. In that book, the main characters take a road trip across the United States. While I had three or four characters in mind that they would meet along the way, I didn't plan out much about those characters, and other than their final destination, I didn't plan much of their route. That was all on purpose, because I wanted the writing process for Cross Country to be very much like a spur of the moment journey. I could see a little ways ahead and knew where I was eventually heading, but I'm definitely pleased with all the surprises that happened along the way.
What is your writing routine?
When I first started writing Miss E. I didn't really have a routine. I just wrote when I felt like it, and would sometime go months without writing. That's one of the reasons it took me almost three years to finish writing the book! Those breaks from writing made continuity in the story a challenge. I had to reread the last couple chapters each time I started writing again, and once I was done with the book, I reread the book cover to cover, almost all in one sitting, paying careful attention to consistency - was the voice the same the whole way through, did the characters seem the same… I had to do that because the book had been written over such a long period of time.
For Cross Country, I had a much better routine. Writing is not my only job, and I also have a family that likes to see me occasionally, so I don't write every day, but I do try to write at least two or three times each week. Some days I didn't feel like writing, but I made myself get started anyway, and usually once I started, things felt right and started to flow. Writing regularly made things much easier. I always felt like the story remained fresh in my mind, and when I sat down to write, the events and characters felt familiar, like I had only just left them and was stepping right back into the story.
My favorite time to write is at night after my kids and my wife have gone to bed. While they're still up, there's a different energy in the house. It's not that it's noisy (although sometimes it is), but because there are people around, I want to be with them and pay attention to them. Once I'm the only one awake, I'm able to put all my attention into the story and characters. I also feel that when a story is first being written, it's a private thing, something that's just between the story and the writer. So writing at night while everything around me is quiet and still helps with that too.
I also really like to listen to music while writing. Both Miss E. and Cross Country are set in the 1960s, so I created playlists that were full of songs from that era. That music helped create a mood for the stories I was writing, and because I was mostly listening to the same set of songs over and over again, the music became background and wasn't a distraction.
What is the editing process like?
Editing is such an important part of the writing process! I told my students that when I was a teacher, and now I know it for certain as a writer. Only the best of friends and maybe my mother would want to read one of my first drafts, but they'd never see it, because I wouldn't want to share it with anyone at that stage anyway.
I really like to write without any backing up to edit. I will sometimes reread a chapter before starting the next and make some small edits, but mostly I just like to move forward with the story and worry about editing later. That helps me get the story onto the page, but it also means that when it comes time to edit, there's a lot of work to be done.
After a book is finished, I'll read through it several times, each for a different reason. One read through, I'll look for consistency. Does the story have the same feel all the way through? Does the narrator use the same voice? Does one chapter flow into the next? A second time through, I'll focus in on areas that I know need more work, characters that need to be further developed, plot lines that need to be fit into the entire story. I'm never looking for things like typos and punctuation during all that, I'm focusing on story and characters and voice, but I'll certainly make those minor fixes too as I see them. I'll reread again and try to see the story as if I'm reading it for the first time - which is really hard to do because I've already read it so many times!
Then it's finally time to give the book to some readers. I am lucky enough to know some wonderful teachers and librarians who are willing to spend some of their reading time on a book that's not quite polished yet. Their feedback is so important and helpful. At this point in the process, I've been with the story for so long, I really need the opinions of someone looking at it for the first time. Their response to each chapter tells me how readers are likely to react. Are they curious? Are they confused? Do characters seem real? That feedback is very helpful.
One example from Miss E. is a transition that Bets goes through. At the beginning of the book she doesn't want to see her father go off to the war in Vietnam, but that's about as far as her opinion goes. She eventually ends up staging a protest against the war at a school pep rally. I had two or three early readers say how surprising and unexpected that event was. I wanted readers to be a little surprised, but I didn't want the protest to be totally unexpected. Rereading the chapters leading up to that event, I realized I hadn't given any clues that Bets was changing her thinking. As the writer, I knew it was happening so it made sense to me anyway, but for the reader, her actions just seemed out of character and way too surprising. I had to revise several chapters to fix that. So the feedback from those readers really had an impact on the story.
What do you do when you get stuck?
Thankfully that didn't happen too often. I guess there are different kinds of stuck. If I just wasn't motivated to write, I usually made myself sit down and write anyway. Sometimes I was stuck with a difficult chapter. I knew where the story needed to go and what needed to happen in that chapter, but I just wasn't clear on how I wanted to describe the events or dialog that needed to come next. At those times, I pushed through as best I could, knowing that I'd need to come back to that chapter to revise or maybe even rewrite entirely. But pushing though and at least getting something on the page helped me move on. Fixing a chapter later is much easier than staring at a completely blank page.
There were a couple times when I was writing Miss E. that I was struggling with what to write next. To get myself unstuck, I skipped ahead and wrote a chapter that was very clear in my mind, a chapter where I knew exactly what I wanted to write. Then, I could go back to the chapter I was struggling with and work toward the one I'd just written. It gave me a goal to move toward that felt closer and easier to reach, and because I knew exactly where I was headed, I had a clearer picture of what I needed to write in order to get there.
Was it difficult to get your book published?
Well, first of all, we need to rethink what it means for a book to be published. When we think of publishing, we tend to think of the traditional publishing process - sending a manuscript to publisher after publisher, and hoping maybe someone someday will like it enough to print it and put it in stores. There have been so many changes in the last five or ten years, that writers have a lot more options now. Publishing at it's simplest just means that a piece of writing has been polished to the point where it is ready to share and then it's made available to readers. You can do that by exporting a Google doc as an ePub and sharing with friends.
There's now a whole range of publishing options - everything from traditional publishing to self publishing, with many options in between. The route I took was somewhere in the middle, sometimes called Indie publishing. I didn't have a major publisher promoting my book, but I definitely didn't publish all by myself. There was an illustrator who created the cover and editors who helped polish the story and made sure the text was error free. Then there were others who turned what I'd written into an eBook and printed book, and finally put it out there in the world where people could buy it and read it. Maybe I could have done all that by myself, but I was glad I didn't need to.
So to answer the question, "Was it difficult?" Yes, it was. It took time and effort. It was a lot of work. But I always knew it was something I could do. There are enough publishing options available now that it someone has writing that they've worked to polish and perfect, and they really want to share it with readers, they'll be able to do it one way or another. Having a book published so lots of people can read it is definitely exciting, but actually writing the book in the first place is the greater accomplishment.
September 2019


text:
CRS: Agricultural Issues in the 109th Congress, October 6, 2006
From WikiLeaks
About this CRS report
This document was obtained by Wikileaks from the United States Congressional Research Service.
The CRS is a Congressional "think tank" with a staff of around 700. Reports are commissioned by members of Congress on topics relevant to current political events. Despite CRS costs to the tax payer of over $100M a year, its electronic archives are, as a matter of policy, not made available to the public.
Individual members of Congress will release specific CRS reports if they believe it to assist them politically, but CRS archives as a whole are firewalled from public access.
This report was obtained by Wikileaks staff from CRS computers accessible only from Congressional offices.
For other CRS information see: Congressional Research Service.
For press enquiries, consult our media kit.
If you have other confidential material let us know!.
For previous editions of this report, try OpenCRS.
Wikileaks release: February 2, 2009
Publisher: United States Congressional Research Service
Title: Agricultural Issues in the 109th Congress
CRS report number: RS22013
Author(s): Ralph M. Chite, Resources, Science, and Industry Division
Date: October 6, 2006
- Abstract
- A number of issues affecting U.S. agriculture have been or are being addressed by the 109th Congress. The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (P.L. 109-171), enacted in February 2006, included a net reduction in spending on U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) mandatory programs of $2.7 billion over five years, and the reauthorization of a dairy income support program. Other issues of importance to agriculture during the second session of the 109th Congress include the consideration of emergency farm disaster assistance; multilateral and bilateral trade negotiations; concerns about agroterrorism, food safety, and animal and plant diseases (e.g., "mad cow" disease and avian flu); high energy costs; environmental issues; agricultural marketing matters; the reauthorization of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission; and farm labor issues.
- Download


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For people with Down syndrome, family members, caregivers and professionals.
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There are two main factors to consider in a discussion of anesthesia in people with Down syndrome (DS): Many people with DS will undergo anesthesia more frequently than people without DS. People with
While many solid tumor cancers are less common in people with Down syndrome compared to people without Down syndrome, testicular cancer is one type of solid tumor cancer that is&am
Breast cancer screening recommendations have varied over time and continue to vary. Organizations have different recommendations for when women should start being screened for breast cancer and how of
We received a request for information on dysgerminomas in women with Down syndrome. Dysgerminomas are germ cell tumors that typically occur in the ovary. Testicular cancer is the comparable cancer in
Should men with Down syndrome (DS) undergo prostate specific antigen (PSA) blood testing for prostate cancer screening? The United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommends the followi
Is colon cancer screening recommended for people with Down syndrome? Please note that this handout discusses screening colonoscopies (i.e. colonoscopies performed to identify pre-symptomatic or unreco
What is a mammogram? A mammogram is a special type of x-ray that looks for breast cancer, which is the most common cancer among women. The United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recomme
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Annual premiums for employer-provided health insurance hit an average of $19,616 for a family this year, a rise of 5 percent over 2017, according to a new survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Employees paid an average of $5,547 for their coverage, with employers covering the rest.
The average premium for family coverage has risen 55 percent since 2008 — about twice as fast as wages, which are up 26 percent, and three times as fast as inflation, up 17 percent over a decade.
Faced with relentlessly rising health care costs, many companies have required employees to pay for more of their care before insurance kicks in, and the Kaiser survey found that deductibles are rising even faster than premiums. Among workers who have a deductible — about 85 percent of insured workers — the average deductible amount has risen to $1,573, a 212 percent increase since 2008. Deductibles have risen eight times faster than wages over the last 10 years, the survey said (see the chart below).
Kaiser President and CEO Drew Altman said that he expects health care costs to be an important political issue for the foreseeable future. "As long as out-of-pocket costs for deductibles, drugs, surprise bills and more continue to outpace wage growth, people will be frustrated by their medical bills and see health costs as huge pocketbook and political issues," Altman said.
Read a summary of the Kaiser Family Foundation's 2018 Employer Health Benefits Survey here, and the .


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The Secret Beyond Matter
The Religion of Darwinism
"What those [people] are engaged in is destined for destruction, and worthless is what they have been doing."(Surah al-A'raf, 7: 139)
Imagine a religion whose founder claimed to be a scientist, its holy book a treatise with a supposedly scientific message, and its devotees people who think of themselves as learned. This religion has penetrated into almost every civilization, every school of thought and every ideology; its adherents number in the hundreds of millions. In every field of specialization – history, sociology, philosophy, psychology, biology, etc. – it is a basic dogma, the "light that illuminates truth."
Actually, every one of you is acquainted with the religion outlined above. You encounter it in your daily life, read its propaganda in newspapers, and see its influence on television. This religion infiltrates your life at every moment; indeed, it is part of your life. Perhaps some of you, knowingly or otherwise, have come under the direct influence of this religion. It is the "religion of Darwinism."
You may say to yourselves, "Darwinism is not a religion, it is a scientific theory!" But there are many people in the world who are devoted to it. Some believe that evolution is a scientifically proven fact, and the world lies under the influence of this so-called scientific position.
This ideology is founded upon a series of errors. Our purpose in writing this book is to expose these errors and to show those who have fallen prey to them that the facade of scientific positivism is nothing more than an illusion. The theory of evolution, with its scripture, its devotees, its alleged answers and explanations concerning the origins of living things, its idols and beliefs, its closed-mindedness to criticisms and developments in science, is a pagan religion that denies the existence of God.
The fact that Darwinism is founded upon the denial of God (Allah) and that it is actually a pagan religion is something that a lot of people – even its followers – have only recently begun to state openly in articles, books and other writings; hence, you might find what you read in this book surprising. When you realize how intricate and widespread this religion is, you will ask yourself why you did not recognize this obvious fact long ago.
Darwinism is a false religion; yet, it is one of the largest and most widespread religions in the world. It has forcefully influenced people through its various methods of propaganda and of falsification and obfuscation. Over generations the number of its adherents has been growing. Unconsciously, people have become affected by this false religion and, with time, can become serious Darwinists.
But facts are being continually uncovered in the realm of science that this godless religion cannot tolerate. With every new development people are once again coming face to face with the reality of creation. The religion of Darwinism is losing strength before questions about how living things first came into existence, the flawless design and complex structure of living creatures, the variety in species, etc. Every day it loses one more lifeline, for it is a religion that is founded on blind faith and remains impotent in the face of developments in molecular biology, genetics, paleontology and biomathematics. The many recent discoveries in these branches of science show clearly and definitely that evolution is not true.
The only true fact demonstrated time and again by scientific advances is the reality of creation. If you look even with the naked eye at the living things around you, you will find the proof of an extraordinary intelligence, strategy and design. Whether you examine a microscopic sea creature, a single atom, a cell or any living organism, you find an astounding composition. This great intelligence, flawless planning and precise design in every part of nature comes from Allah, to whom all power and ability belong.


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The Objectivist Roundup is a weekly blog carnival for Objectivists. Contributors must be Objectivists, but posts on any topic are welcome.
Rational Jenn hosted this week's Objectivist Roundup. Go take a look!
You can submit your blog article to the next edition of The Objectivist Roundup using this submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found here. If you're an Objectivist blogger, you can get weekly reminders to submit to the carnival by subscribing to OBloggers @ OList.com.
Also, here are the ten most recent additions to the question queue for the Philosophy in Action Webcast. Please vote for the questions that you're most interested in hearing me answer!
Join us for the live webcast at www.PhilosophyInAaction.com on Sundays at 8 am PT / 9 am MT / 10 am CT / 11 am ET. In the meantime, check out the show's extensive archives by topic, peruse the upcoming question queue, and submit your own questions.


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(Edit: TSF has since found out that this gentleman is Travis Rettenmaier. Thanks to all the readers who helped us with IDing the fella.)
Lots o' rain today (thanks, Danny), so we are planting our cabooses at our friend's Brooklyn apartment to stay dry.
In the meantime, do any of you know who this guy is? He was practicing with Robby Ginepri on the grounds of the USTABJKNTC yesterday (this, of course, in preparation for the 2009 U.S. Open, which starts next week).
Need more help? We've got a few more pics after the cut…


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RE: st: Graphs With Log Scale: A Bug?
"Nick Cox" <firstname.lastname@example.com>
RE: st: Graphs With Log Scale: A Bug?
Wed, 28 May 2008 14:48:13 +0100
Please accept more responsibility for solving problems.
It is just a matter of (a) reading the help and (b) applying textbook formulae.
Here is a sketch:
local level = <your_choice, e.g. 95>
regress <whatever>
tempvar pred se ul ll
predict `pred'
predict `se', stdp
local level = (100 - `level') / 200
gen `ul' = `pred' + invttail(e(df_r), `level') * `se'
gen `ll' = `pred' - invttail(e(df_r), `level') * `se'
Vladimir V. Dashkeyev
Thanks for the answer. I did not use -predict- since this approach
does not provide a quick way for drawing confidence intervals. If I'm
wrong and there is a way to draw CI, please, let me know about it.
Thank you,
On Wed, May 28, 2008 at 4:21 PM, Nick Cox <firstname.lastname@example.com> wrote:
> My advice is to use -predict- after each model fitted to save the results in separate variables. Then draw one graph to get you want. I wouldn't approach this via -lfit- or
> -lfitci-. That will also oblige you to make explicit what you are doing.
> Nick
> Vladimir V. Dashkeyev
> Thanks for the reply. I should have emphasized in the first message,
> that I run -lfitci- of X on ln(Y) in both scenarios. The difference is
> in the scatter plot. In the first scenario I use ln(Y), and in the
> second -- Y with log scale option. I expected to get the same linear
> prediction line and the same scatter plot.
> But after I posted that question, I compared the graphs once again and
> realized that the real problem is with the Y axis scale. If I draw a
> scatter and prediction line on the same Y axis, everything is fine.
> Yet if I draw the same scatter with 2 Y axes I get different range of
> values on Y1 and Y2 axes. I need two Y axes for overlaid drawing of
> the scatter with -yscale (log)- option and linear prediction of
> X-ln(Y). Setting range on both axes to the same values did not help.
> They are very close but still shifted a bit. So the arrangement of
> observations and prediction line is not correct. So it's not a bug,
> but still a problem I have to solve.
> Is there any way to "tie" axis Y1 with axis Y2?
> Maarten buis
>> --- "Vladimir V. Dashkeyev" <email@example.com> wrote:
>>> I drew a two-way plot with a linear prediction line -lfitci- of X on
>>> natural logarithm of Y. Next, I drew the plot of X on Y with log
>>> scale option -yscale(log)-.
>>> To my surprise regression line changed its slope. The slope is
>>> greater with the -yscale(log)- option. I used the same X axis and
>>> the second Y-axis for the linear prediction graph .
>>> Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong?
>> This is not a bug: in the first scenario you are thinking that there is
>> a linear relationship between ln(Y) and X and you are showing the
>> predictions, while in the second scenario you are thingking that there
>> is a linear relationship between Y and X and then transforme the
>> predictions to a log scale. So the results are different because the
>> models are different.
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text:
It's gut-check time for the Seahawks
Nov 25, 2012, 4:33 PM | Updated: Nov 26, 2012, 10:03 am
By Mike Salk
It's time for the Seahawks to decide what they want to be this year.
Do they want to be a playoff team or an also ran? A team coming into its own or one building for next year?
Do they want to live up to their defense-first identity or will they play down to the national expectation for them?
Will they continue to make undisciplined mistakes or will they allow their talent to carry them to victories?
Will this be the day where they banded together for the stretch run or the day where suspensions ended their season early?
In Miami, the Seahawks failed to play up to their ability. They failed to put away an inferior team. They allowed themselves to get beat.
This team was built upon the twin concepts of elite defense and a power running game. Those two facets have a symbiotic relationship that should allow the Hawks to control the clock and tire out opponents. Faith in those units dictates nearly every coaching move made by Pete Carroll.
His decision to punt twice from inside the Miami 45-yard line makes sense for a team with an elite defense. His decision to limit passing attempts by budding superstar Russell Wilson makes sense in the context of an elite rushing attack.
But when your defense allows 189 yards on the ground? It ceases to be elite. When your defense allows 17 points in the fourth quarter? It ceases to be elite. When your defense allows consecutive scoring drives of 80, 82 and 68 yards? It ceases to be elite. And when your defense gives back two fourth-quarter leads and allows a game-winning drive? It ceases to be elite.
If this was the first defensive hiccup this season, we'd let it go. We'd blame the bye week, the travel, the start time, or even the offense. But this is becoming less the exception than the norm.
The Seahawks defense has struggled in five of its last six games. It gave up 388 passing yards against New England, 175 rushing yards in San Francisco, 12 of 16 third-down conversions in Detroit, 243 rushing yards against Minnesota and now 189 rushing yards in Miami.
That is a terrifying trend.
I know some will excuse their performance. One week it was against elite passer Tom Brady, another week it was elite rusher Adrian Peterson. This week, it will be the penalty that negated Bobby Wagner's second interception.
Those excuses all have validity in a vacuum. But trends trump isolated excuses, and right now this defense needs to press reset and get back to what it was designed to do.
Unfortunately, that could be even more difficult, depending on the appeals for Richard Sherman and Brandon Browner in their performance-enhancing drug suspensions.
Carroll said after the game that he shouldered much of the blame himself. He wondered if he was too lenient with a young team in giving them a full bye-week off. Certainly, the 10 penalties and sloppy play lends credence to this assertion. But problems with discipline have now cost this team two games (Miami and St. Louis) and someone is going to have to stand up and say enough is enough.
Things look bleak after losing another winnable road game. The possibility of life without Sherman and Browner makes things worse. But with New Orleans, Tampa Bay and Minnesota all losing, Seattle still controls its own wildcard destiny.
Sunday, Nov. 25 will be a watershed for the Seahawks. It will either be the beginning of the end of this season, or it will be a launching point for something special.
It is up to them.


text:
Herkimer diamond point ring US size 7
Herkimer diamond point ring US size 7
Sale Sold out
Regular price $75.00 USD
Regular priceUnit price per
Sale price
This herkimer diamond ring features a natural herkimer diamond that I set in a fine silver starry night bezel. Soldered onto a sterling silver double half round ring band.
US size 7
Shipping / FAQ
Shipping / FAQ
Updated on 6/24/2022 with new made to order processing times
Please read this fully before placing an order so you are aware of all my policies. Thank you.
I put so much love into creating high quality hand crafted jewelry. Quality over quantity so please have patience while I create your one of a kind made to orders.
Made to order/made to size: 1-2 weeks current processing time. (estimated are subject to change depending on current workload)
All orders come in a corrugated shipping box or shipping mailer and ships through USPS with tracking within 4-8 business days before shipping for ready to ship items. If you don't get a shipping notification within 4-8 business days please email me and I will check on the status. Please remember that business days don't include weekends. I take weekends off to spend with my family. Email response are made Monday mornings and Friday morning.
All made to order/made to size items processing times vary but please allow 3-4 weeks to finish your piece. If for any reason you need it sooner please email me before placing your order to see if I can accommodate.
While I try to get orders out sooner sometimes I do get behind. I am a one women business so please be patient with me. :)
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Due to the handmade nature of our products, there may be slight variations in color and/or craftsmanship.


text:
In this tutorial you will learn to create 3D Typography using the Perspective Tool, Blends and some of the new features of Adobe Illustrator CS6.
Step 1
Start by creating the text or shapes in 2D. This particular effect works best with bolder text with a wider surface area. If you are using text it is important that you Right Click > Create Outlines to change the font to paths. I have created my own font created using the Rectangle Tool (M) and the Pathfinder tools (Shift+Ctrl+F9). It's easier to use the smart guides to help you do this. Use Ctrl+U to put on guides
Step 2
Select each word and Group the letters together (Ctrl+G).
Step 3
On a new layer, draw a rectangle larger than the artboard which will be our background. Apply a radial gradient which transitions from a light center to a darker outer. Rename this layer "Background" and send it backward, behind the first layer.
Step 4
Select all of the word shapes and increase the Stroke Weight to 4pt.
Select Align Stroke to Inside, then add a Linear Gradient to the stroke. Edit the gradient so the two colors are exactly the same and change the opacity of one of the colors to 0%. The gradient should go from 100% (opaque) to 0% (transparent) top to bottom.
Step 5
Select the Fill and add a dark to light gradient to it vertically, so the stroke contrasts with the fill and gives us a highlight effect.
Step 6
Now we are going to create a simple gloss effect on each of the letters. First select the group of letters and press Ctrl+C to copy then Ctrl+F to paste directly in front once, then choose Right Click > Ungroup.
Use the Pen Tool (P) to draw a shape over the letters which cuts through diagonally (as below).
Select the shape and press Ctrl+C to Copy it. Select one letter then hold Shift and select the shape in front. Use the Pathfinder Intersect to cut off the excess part of the shape.
Repeat this for each letter.
Step 7
Select all of the new shapes made with the Pathfinder and select Align Stroke to Inside. Change the Transparency to Blending Mode Screen and with the stroke selected, hit the Reverse Gradient button to make the stroke transparent at the top rather than the bottom. With them still selected press Ctrl+C to copy then Ctrl+F to paste in front.
Step 8
With the Direct Selection Tool (A), select the node to the top right of the shape which you just copied and move it up slightly. It's useful to turn on Smart Guides (Ctrl+U) and View > Snap to Point for this. Repeat this for all letters
Step 9
Ensure all of the gloss effect shapes are selected and Group them (Ctrl+G).
Step 10
Switch on the Perspective Grid Tool (Shift+P) then use the Perspective Selection Tool (Shift+V) to adjust the nodes of the grid and make the grid look similar to the one below.
Step 11
Now we need to move the letters into perspective. The Perspective Grid Tool uses three grids which can be used to make a left face, right face and horizontal face to a pseudo 3D object. Each face can be selected using the icon which appears when the perspective grid is turned on.
We need to put our word onto one of these faces. Use the Selection Tool (V) to select all of the word then choose the Perspective Selection Tool (Shift+V) to drag the word into the bottom-left corner of the right grid. Notice how the word has been angled to the perspective grid.
Step 12
Next we will make the pseudo 3D effect. Select the word minus the grouped gloss effect on the front then copy it and paste it in front, (Ctrl+C then Ctrl+F).
Using the Perspective Selection Tool (Shift+V), hold the '5' key and dragging the word to move it backwards in perspective. This will become the back face of the 3D word (although it won't be seen). Send Backward (Ctrl+[) until it is behind the original word.
Step 13
Change the stroke and fill to one solid color which is slightly darker than the color of the original.
Step 14
Select both words (without the gloss effect) and choose Object > Blend > Make. Next go to Object > Blend > Blend Options. Change the spacing to specified steps and set the amount to 50.
Step 15
Double click on the blend to enter isolation mode then select and copy the front face of the word (minus the gloss). Then exit isolation mode and paste it in front of the group of gloss shapes then Send Backward (Ctrl+[) once. Change the Blending Mode to Soft Light.
Step 16
You can repeat the above steps for any other words you may want in your composition. I've used the same methods with different colors and stacked them on top of each other. For the cool word I started from the left perspective grid.
It's a good idea to put each word on a different layer to make selection easier
Step 17
Now use the Pen Tool (P) to add extra highlights and shadow details. This part is pretty much down to your creativity and how you want your type to look. I drew triangular shapes on the left side of each letter and set the Blending Mode to Screen.
Then I added a smaller highlight inside that one with a lighter color and also set the Blending Mode to Screen.
Use the Pen Tool (P) with the aid of Smart Guides to add a highlight to the side of each word (as below) and set it to Blending Mode Overlay, then add another shape with the same color and Transparency settings to make a stronger highlight.
You can also add in some shadow with the Pen Tool (P). Use a darker shade, set the Blending Mode to Multiply and lower the Opacity to 60% to make it slightly transparent.
Step 18
Now we are going to make a floor reflection. Selecting the different parts can get a bit tricky here so it may be useful to use the Layers panel. First of all, with the Direct Selection Tool (A), select the blend of the word at the bottom and press Ctrl+C, Ctrl+F to Copy and Paste in Front. Then use the Perspective Selection Tool (Shift+V) to move the blend down just underneath the word.
Step 19
In the Layers panel, Create New Layer and rename it "Reflection", then drag the new blend into the layer and place it just in front of the "Background" layer
Step 20
To flip it upside down, we will use Perspective Selection Tool (Shift+V). Select the front face, hold Alt and drag from the top-middle handle down to line up with the bottom so it is mirrored (this doesn't need to be perfect). Do this again for the back face of the blend.
Step 21
Double click on the blend to enter Isolation Mode then with the Direct Selection Tool (A), select the front face group and reverse the gradients on both the stroke and the fill.
Step 22
Exit Isolation Mode, then select the highlights on the side of the word and Group them (Ctrl+G).
Switch on the Perspective Grid and then activate the grid which corresponds with the highlights (in my case the left grid) then choose Right Click > Perspective > Attach to Active Plane.
With the Perspective Selection Tool (Shift+V) you should now be able to move the group in perspective. Move it down in perspective until it is aligned in the right place on the reflection (again, this doesn't need to be perfect). As before, hold Alt and drag from the middle handle to flip the highlights upside down.
Step 23
Next Group the highlights on the front face of the word then as before activate the corresponding grid (right) and choose Right Click > Perspective > Attach to Active Plane.
The other highlights and the word should already be attached to the correct perspective plane so hold Shift and select them also.
With the Perspective Selection Tool you should be able to move them down in perspective to be in line with the reflection and then drag from the middle handle and flip them upside down as before.
Step 24
The gradients on these also need to be reversed so double click to enter the group in isolation mode and reverse them in the Gradient panel.
Step 25
Now group all of the elements of the reflection and in the Transparency panel, double click on the box to the right of the selection preview to create an Opacity Mask.
Use the Rectangle Tool (M) to draw a rectangle which goes from the center of the image to the outside as below.
Step 26
Add a black to white gradient and with the Gradient Tool (G) direct it so the gradient is roughly parallel with the angle of the bottom of the reflection
Step 27
Press Ctrl+C then Ctrl+F and drag the middle-right handle to the left until the rectangle covers the other half of the reflection and adjust the gradient to be parallel with the bottom of the reflection on this side.
Then in the Transparency panel, click the selection preview box to exit the Opacity Mask editor.
Step 28
To add a shiny effect to the floor, first draw a rectangle. Turn on the perspective grid and resize it to meet the horizon line of the grid. Add a linear gradient as below and set the Blending Mode to Screen at 20% Opacity.
Step 29
Copy and Paste in Front then change it to a white to black radial gradient and leave the Opacity at 20% and the Blending Mode as Screen
Step 30
As a finishing touch select all of the elements except the background and rotate them slightly.
Final Image
And you're done... these techniques can be useful for drawing 3D perspective in other styles so keep experimenting!


text:
The CW's new Green Arrow TV show premiered last night, and they basically threw in everything. There's the love triangle. There's the tortured brooding character, on a dark mission that involves not wearing a shirt. There's a long stint on an island that's so thick with plot twists, the show actually name-checks Lost. And yet, it all mostly worked: Oliver Queen is a badass again.
Spoilers ahead...
The pilot starts off with a man in a green hood skittering his way along a series of rocks to get to a mountain peak. On the peak, he turns and fires an arrow into a pile of sticks on a beach, and they explode like they're a mobster's car. On the ocean nearby some men on a fishing boat see the explosion and say something in Mandarin to each other that must translate to, "Hey look! There's a huge explosion. Let's sail towards it," because one scene later, the guy is rescued. (But not before we pan over a Deathstroke mask with an arrow through an eye hole. Deathstroke!)
The man is Oliver Queen, who was believed to have perished in a shipwreck along with his father, Robert Queen, and sundry others, whom we'll get to later. In a hospital room, Oliver looks out of a window as his mother, Moira, talks to a doctor. The doctor tells her about his injuries, which include multiple fractures and "scar tissue over twenty percent of his body." Let me tell you, people, nineteen of that twenty percent has to be from his ass to his knees, because we see the rest of him and it looks just fine. CW superhero show fine. Moira walks up to Ollie and talks to him. He turns. The audience jumps back and cowers because he has now adopted the creepy detached serenity of a serial killer who is still rolling his last victim's tongue around the inside of his mouth before he swallows it and tries to speak. He will continue to act this kind of "normal" for the rest of the episode. Strap in, folks. Moira, for some reason, seems reassured, and hugs him.
In the next scene Oliver is being driven to his home in America in a car with what I believe are British Columbia license plates. When he gets in he grabs a mysterious box from the car and greets various staffers, including a maid named Raisa who he seems close to and who — let's hope — is his Alfred. He then turns to find Walter Steele, his dad's business associate who happens to have the name of a Green Arrow villain from the comics. He greets Walter with his bone-chilling smile and eyes that seem to be on stalks staring out of the pit of hell, and turns to his mother with the slightest change of expression which clearly means, "Why is this man in my house?" She giggles nervously and asks if he wants to go out to see a production of Hamlet that night (not really) — but the moment is saved by Oliver's sister, Thea, coming down the stairs. For the first time Oliver takes on an expression that doesn't inspire terror, and hugs her warmly. He ruins the moment by whispering "You were always with me," and mothers across America clutch their babies a little tighter without knowing why.
We cut to an office, which we are told is a legal aid office by two bantering, extremely-casually-dressed young lawyers. One lawyer, named Laurel Lance, explains that they're going after someone named Adam Hunt! He's bad! But he has money and they don't! Just then a broadcast interrupts their banter. I wonder what legal aid office has a constantly blaring television, but the two women just drop everything to watch TV and learn that Oliver Queen has been rescued. He was presumed dead, the reporter says, after having been lost at sea with his father, and a woman named . . . Sarah Lance.
Over at the Queen residence, dinner is going even worse than can be expected. Tommy Merlyn (another villain in the comics, but here Ollie's friend - Or Is He?), is explaining that Ollie missed such and such teams winning the Superbowl, a black president, "And Lost? They were all dead. I think."
Ollie nods and smiles because dead people on an island are so funny to him, randomly makes some remarks in Russian like a normal person would at a family dinner, and then says, without expression, "I didn't realize you wanted to sleep with my mother, Walter."
And it's official. Oliver Queen's first on-screen kill is dinner-table conversation. Moira awkwardly explains that she and Walter are married, and that they didn't do anything that would disrespect Ollie's father. Ollie says that he's fine with it, and then asks to be excused in such with such roiling creepiness that you can actually hear the other actors peeing on the floor a little.
To further prove his fineness, Ollie sleeps shirtless on the floor in front of an open window in the rain, flashing back to the night the boat sank. He's in the sack with Sarah, when suddenly the entire cabin turns upside down. She looks up at him blankly, and then gets sucked out towards the water like someone had taken hold of her ankles. Which, during the course of filming that scene, someone probably did. Next thing Ollie knows, he's in the water and his father hauls him into a lifeboat.
The next day, Tommy comes to take Ollie around town. Ollie wants to see Laurel. Laurel, as it turns out, is not thrilled to see him, since he was dating her when he snuck off on a boat with her sister. She starts off pretty polite, and talks to Ollie about the Adam Hunt case, with him warning her that Adam Hunt is a big deal, and she might not want to get involved. Ollie gets to the point and tells her to blame him for the affair with her sister. She informs him in no uncertain terms that she does blame him for that, and for much more besides. She wishes he had died instead of Sarah.
She shares that opinion with the mysterious people who kidnap Tommy and Ollie in the next scene, killing a bystander in the process. Ollie flashes back to night of the shipwreck again. His father, in the raft, is feeding him water, over the protestations of the other man in the raft. Ollie's father yells that if only one of them survives, it's going to be Ollie. The other man doesn't look happy with this, and I can't say that I blame him. Ollie wakes up and is tazed by people asking him what his father told him. "He told me I'm going to kill you," Ollie says. I swear to god, he actually says that. And then he follows through, because this isn't Smallville, where a supervillain will obligingly kill himself or fall into a coma or lose his memory. This is Starling City (Yes, not Star City. Starling City. Why? I don't know.), and superheroes kill here. They don't, however, keep a close watch on their unconscious best friends, and the way that those friends open their eyes a little too quickly.
The kidnapping has two main results. The first is that Ollie tells a police detective that a guy with a green hood saved him and Tommy. (The police detective is a complete asshole in ways that are inexplicable until you learn his name is Quentin Lance.) The second is Ollie gets a bodyguard named John Diggle (I expect named after Andy Diggle, a Green Arrow writer), who he either ducks or knocks out whenever things get interesting — and who is therefore completely irrelevant to this episode.
The plot for this particular episode arrives late, and it arrives inside the mysterious box that Ollie brought with him from the island. It's an old book full of names, one of which is Adam Hunt. What follows is the scenes most often seen in the trailers for the series. Ollie attacks Adam Hunt and shakes him down for money. Adam doesn't pay, so Ollie steps out on his own welcome home party to attack Hunt in his office building. (On the way he fights Constantine Drakon, another villain from the comics.) In a clear example of class warfare that I have to say the old goateed Ollie from the comics would have hated, he kills all the body guards, but leaves the rich guy who started all the trouble alive and unharmed. He does, however, shoot what I can only describe as a Hacker Arrow into the guy's wall, which subsequently transfers $40 million from Adam's account to the accounts of the people suing him. (The lead plaintiff is a D. Didio. Well-played, DC.)
Ollie heads back to the party where he has a quick conversation with Laurel (she still hates him), Tommy (he does everything but slap Ollie and announce that he knows everything, but Ollie just smiles at him with his dead-eyed serial killer face), Detective Lance (Ollie messes up and pretends he doesn't know Adam Hunt, even though he mentioned Hunt to Lance's daughter), and finally his sister Thea.
Thea, whom Ollie gave the nickname Speedy, is on drugs. (Roy Harper: "What the hell, people? I was on drugs for like, one issue in 1971. Will you never let this go?") When Ollie spots her buying them and tells her to leave the party, she does something that, upon reflection, makes her the most endearing character on the show: she whines like a family dog tied up outside an ice cream store. She whines so much, she should have her own vintage. She whines like a fly trapped between two panes of glass. This kid can whiiiiiine. This is a seventeen-year-old billionaire heiress with a, by all accounts, loving mother, and a brother who has spent half a decade as a castaway saying how she did "the best I can do, with what I had to work with." Ollie just steals her drugs, dumps them, and wanders on.
At last we come to the final scenes of the episode. The ones that should be ended with the music going, "dun Dun DUN!" Most series would be happy with one — but Arrow is so jam-packed, the pilot fits in three. That's just how this series is.
The first scene invovles a man I don't think we've seen before coming down some steps and saying, and again, this is actually what he says, "The police haven't identified the men I hired to kidnap Oliver, and they never will." The only way saying all this would make sense is if that guy is actually a police officer wearing a wire in order to gather evidence against the other person in the scene. That person is . . . Moira! She turns away saying that it's okay. She'll find another way to find out what her son knows.
The second is another flashback to the raft. The other man has commandeered the rest of the supplies and rations them out while holding a knife. This would have been a good idea, except the supplies won't feed everyone, and Ollie's dad brought a gun. He shoots the man, then turns to Ollie and tells him to survive, then shoots himself.
And the third is Tommy and Laurel meeting up in an alley. Tommy smarmily talks about how they hooked up while Ollie was "dead." Laurel says that it was a mistake, and now she has a purpose. She walks off, and the camera pans up, showing that Green Arrow has been listening in from above like a big psycho-killing, green-eye-shadow-mask-wearing stalker. Tommy yells after Laurel, "Dinah Laurel Lance, always trying to save the world." Dinah Lance? In a Green Arrow story? Get right out of town.
In the end, I liked this more than I was expecting. I only really like Green Arrow when he's Shaggy Beardo, a politically belligerent forty-something and DC's last surviving hippie. And I still think that using that character would have made for better and more original TV. But though Arrow has the usual usual klutzy exposition and over-the-top melodrama that CW superhero shows have, I like the fact that they're keeping up a mystery regarding Ollie's time on the island. I like that they packed the episode full of everything they could possibly think of. And I'm hoping they actually have Deathstroke appear somewhere in the series. If he does — he better have a goatee.
Next episode, though, it looks like the villain is China White, the villain in Andy Diggle's Green Arrow: Year One. We'll see what she has to offer.
And if you'd like to see our beginning estimates of Arrow, check out this episode of We Come From the Future. We definitely got the abs right.


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An administrator created a six node Virtual SAN cluster, created a fault domain, and moved three of the six nodes into that domain.
A node that is a member of the fault domain fails.
What is the expected result?
A. The remaining two fault domain members are treated as failed.
B. The remaining two fault domain members stay protected by the domain.
C. One of the non-member nodes will be automatically added to the fault domain.
D. VMware High Availability will restart virtual machines on remaining nodes in the domain.
Answer: A
Where is a Virtual SAN Fault Domain configured?
A. VMware Virtual SAN Cluster configuration
B. VMware High Availability Cluster configuration
C. Distributed Resource Scheduler configuration
D. Datacenter Advanced Settings configuration
Answer: A
Which statement is true for the Path Selection Plug-In VMW_PSP_MRU?
A. VMW_PSP_MRU is default for a majority of active-active and active-passive arrays.
B. VMW_PSP_MRU will remain on the selected path even if the state were to change.
C. VMW_PSP_MRU is recommended for Virtual SAN.
D. VMW_PSP_MRU will have no preferred path setting for the Plug-In.
Answer: D
Which two tasks does the Pluggable Storage Architecture (PSA) perform? (Choose two.)
A. Handles I/O queueing to the logical devices.
B. Handles physical path discovery, but is not involved in the removal.
C. Handles physical path discovery and removal.
D. Handles I/O queueing to FC storage HBAs.
Answer: AC
Which two statements are true regarding Storage Multipathing Plug-Ins? (Choose two.)
A. The default Path Selection Policy is VMW_PSP_MRU for iSCSI or FC devices.
B. The default Path Selection Policy is VMW_PSP_FIXED for iSCSI or FC devices.
C. VMW_PSP_MRU is typically selected for ALUA arrays by default.
D. VMW_PSP_FIXED is typically selected for ALUA arrays by default.
Answer: BC
What is the command to list multipathing modules on an ESXi 6.x host?
A. esxcli storage core list plugin –plugin-class=MP
B. esxcli storage core list plugin –class-plugin=MP
C. esxcli storage core plugin list –plugin-class=MP
D. esxcli storage core plugin list –class-plugin=MP
Answer: C
Which two solutions require Physical Mode Raw Device Mapping (RDM)? (Choose two.)
A. Direct access to the storage array device
B. Virtual Machine Snapshots
C. Hardware Acceleration
D. Guest Clustering across ESXi hosts
Answer: AD
A device's vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI) support status command line output shows:
naa.500253825002a865 VAAI Plugin Name: ATS Status: unsupported Clone Status:
unsupported Zero Status: supported Delete Status: unsupported
What is the corresponding VAAI support status in the vSphere Web Client?
A. Unknown
B. Supported
C. Not supported
D. Unsupported
Answer: A
Refer to the Exhibit. What will be the result of selecting the highlighted device?
A. Datastore will grow up to 200.01GB using the remaining free space on the device.
B. Datastore will add 200.01GB by adding the device as a second extent.
C. The device size can be expanded to be larger than 200.01 GB in size.
D. The device is not suitable for this operation.
Answer: A
An administrator observes that virtual machine storage activity on an ESXi 6.x host is negatively affecting virtual machine storage activity on another host that is accessing the same VMFS Datastore.
Which action would mitigate the issue?
A. Enable Storage IO Control.
B. Configure Storage DRS.
C. Enable the Dynamic Queue Depth Throttling option.
D. Configure the Disk.SchedNumReqOutstanding parameter.
Answer: A
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Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak has done it again. Speaking Wednesday at the Institute for National Security Studies, Barak warned that if Israel can't cut a deal with the Palestinians soon, it should consider surrendering Judea and Samaria in exchange for nothing.
Even the diehard leftists in the media had a hard time swallowing his words. After all, when Barak was premier, he oversaw Israel's unilateral surrender of South Lebanon. Barak promised that by giving Hezollah South Lebanon, Israel would force the Iranian proxy army to disarm and behave like a Western political party.
Then of course, there is the Gaza precedent. Ignoring the lesson of Lebanon, Barak's successor Ariel Sharon reenacted his unilateral surrender policy in Gaza. Like Barak, Sharon promised that once Gaza was cleared of all Jewish presence, it would magically transform itself into a Middle Eastern version of Singapore.
Both Barak and Sharon promised that their unilateral surrender policies would do more than merely transform Hezbollah and Hamas into liberal democrats. They said that by cutting and running, Israel would earn the love of the international community, and winning the love of the likes of Washington and Brussels, they said was the most urgent item on Israel's agenda.
Apparently Barak was referring to the same imperative when on Wednesday he said that Israel needs to act fast because, "We are on borrowed time. We will reach a wall, and we'll pay the price."
So yes, Hezbollah has taken over not just south Lebanon, but all of Lebanon. And true, there is no one in the Palestinian Authority today that is willing to accept the continued existence of Israel in any borders. But that just means we need the West to love us even more. And the only way to get the West to love us is by imperiling our very existence by handing our heartland over to people who wish to destroy our country.
Given the high value Barak and his comrades place on winning the love of the West, it is worth considering what motivates the West — or more to the point, the US, which leads the Western world.
Unfortunately, the situation is not pretty. US President Barack Obama's policies are just as irrational as the ones that Barak is urging Israel to implement in order to win Obama's support. And Obama's rationales for adopting these policies are just as divorced from reality as Barak's are.
The place where this irrationality is displayed most prominently today is in Obama's policy regarding Iran. As Michael Singh rightly noted Wednesday in the New York Daily News, under Obama, US policy towards Iran is based on the view, "that at the root of the Iran nuclear crisis is US-Iran conflict, and that the root cause of that conflict is mistrust."
This view is pure fantasy. No Iranian leader has ever given the US any reason to believe that this is the case. To the contrary, every Iranian leader since the 1979 Islamic revolution has made clear that the regime is dedicated to the destruction of the US and Israel. The Iranians do not wish to destroy the US and Israel because they distrust them. The likes of Ayatollah Khomeini, Ayatollah Khamenei, President Ahmadinejad and all of their comrades wish to destroy Israel and the US because they hate us. They hate us because as they see it, both nations represent forces that are antithetical to their revolution's goal of Islamic world domination.
Rather than accept this fundamental, but unpleasant truth, Obama and his advisors base their policy of engaging Iran on fairytales about non-existent fatwas that purportedly ruled out the development of nuclear weapons. As Vice Premier Moshe Ya'alon put it delicately this week, the Iranians are "laughing all the way to a bomb." Ya'alon explained, "During talks with world powers, the Iranians have managed to enrich 750 kilograms of uranium enriched to 3.5 percent, and 36 kilograms of uranium to 20 percent."
And while the Iranians were enriching all that uranium, according to satellite imagery published Wednesday by the Institute for Science and International Affairs they were destroying buildings at the Parchin nuclear site. The buildings in question were suspected of being used to conduct high explosive tests pertinent to the development of nuclear weapons.
And yet, despite Iran's obvious bad faith, and despite the fact that the much-touted sanctions against Iran have done nothing to slow the pace of its sprint to the nuclear finish line, the Obama administration insists on clinging to the fantasy that it can convince the Iranians that they can trust the US and therefore convince them to give up their nuclear weapons program.
Lacking any substantive means of defending this Tinkerbell-fairy-dust policy towards the most pressing threat to international security today, the only thing the Obama administration can tell increasingly distressed Israeli leaders is that we should trust them. They know what they are doing.
Allowing Iran to go nuclear isn't the only price Obama has been willing to pay in order to fulfill his fantasy of solving Iran's conflict with the US by building trust. He is also willing to destroy any chance of Syria becoming a responsible actor on the international stage.
Obama's willingness to sit on his thumbs for the past fourteen months as Syrian President Bashar Assad has killed as many as 15,000 of his countrymen owes in part to Obama's desire to win the trust of the ayatollahs in Teheran. Since Assad is Iran's client, any US move to overthrow him would weaken Iran. And since as far as Obama is concerned Iran doesn't have anything against the US, but simply suffers from a chronic lack of trust for Washington, it would be wrong to harm Teheran's interests by overthrowing the ayatollahs Syrian lackey.
Obama's Syria policy is not only a product of his fantasy-based policy towards Iran. It is also a consequence of his fantasy-based policy towards Turkey. Rather than intervene early in the conflict and support pro-Western forces in Syria as an alternative to Assad's tyranny, Obama outsourced the organization of the Syrian opposition to Turkey's Islamic Prime Minister Recip Erdogan.
In Obama's fantasy world, Erdogan is a great ally of the US. The fact that Erdogan has redefined Turkey away from the West and towards Teheran and the Muslim Brotherhood; rendered incoherent NATO's strategic mission; ended Turkey's strategic alliance with Israel; used advanced US arms to kill Kurdish civilians, and threatens war in the eastern Mediterranean over natural gas deposits that do not belong to him is irrelevant. All that matters is the fantasy that Erdogan is America's friend. And since Obama embraces this fantasy, he subcontracted the formation of the Turkish opposition to Erdogan.
Lo and behold, the opposition Erdogan established was dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood. And now, according to a report by Jacques Neriah from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, the Syrian opposition is dominated not only by the Muslim Brotherhood, but increasingly by al Qaeda. So whereas a year ago the US had an opportunity to build and shepherd into power a multiethnic, pro-Western Syrian opposition, in the throes of his fantasies about Iran and Turkey, Obama squandered the opportunity. As a result, today we are faced with the grim reality that the world might be safer leaving Assad alone than in intervening to overthrow him.
This brings us back to Barak, and the Israeli establishment that cannot rid itself of the notion that we need to give away the store to the Palestinians in order to win the support of the "international community," that is, in order to win Obama's support. But towards the Palestinians as well, Obama has embraced fantasy over reality. This week the US State Department had the bureaucratic equivalent of an apoplectic fit when it learned that US Senator Mark Kirk inserted an amendment into the State Department funding bill that will require the State Department to provide the US Congress with two pieces of information: the number of Palestinians physically displaced from their homes in what became Israel in 1948, and the number of their descendants administered by the United Nations Relief Works Agency, UNRWA.
The Palestinians claim that there are some five million refugees. They demand that Israel allow all of them to immigrate to its territory as part of a peace deal. UNRWA and the Palestinians claim that not only are the Palestinians who left Israel in 1948 to be considered refugees, their descendants are also to be considered refugees.
Estimates place the number of Palestinians alive today who were physically displaced from Israel at thirty thousand.
All Kirk wants is the information. And for his effort to bring some facts into the discourse about the Palestinian conflict with Israel, the State Department came down on him like a wall of bricks. In a letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Deputy Secretary of State Thomas Nides wrote that Kirk's "proposed amendment would be viewed around the world as the United States acting to prejudge and determine the outcome of this sensitive issue."
As far as the State Department is concerned, until the Palestinians and Israel reach an agreement, the US must keep faith with the international community by supporting a policy regarding Palestinian refugees that is both factually absurd and deeply hostile to Israel.
This policy is in perfect alignment with the US policy on Jerusalem. In late March we learned that in the interests of not prejudging the outcome of nonexistent negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians over eastern Jerusalem, the US refuses to recognize Israeli sovereignty not only over eastern Jerusalem, but over any part of Jerusalem. The fact that Jerusalem is Israel's capital is of no interest. The fact that US law requires the US government to recognize that Jerusalem is Israel's capital and locate the US Embassy in Jerusalem is irrelevant. To appease the international community, the US won't even recognize Israeli sovereignty over western Jerusalem.
So according to Barak and his associates, to prevent Israel's isolation by securing US support, Israel ought to ignore the lessons of the Lebanon withdrawal, the phony peace process with the PLO, and the withdrawal from Gaza and move full speed ahead with policies that will make it impossible to defend the country.
As for the US, to win the support of Europe, Iran and Turkey, Obama has adopted policies that enable Iran to become a nuclear power, make Assad the most attractive leader in Syria, empower the most anti-American forces in Turkey and pressure Israel to renounce its right and ability to defend itself.
Standing alone never looked so good.


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A report from America, previously published at Mises.org
On Monday, August 8, the S&P 500 stock-price index fell 6.7 percent to close at 1,119.46. The index fell 13.4 percent from July, and this was the fourth consecutive monthly decline. It has fallen 17.9 percent from its high of 1,363.61 in April this year.
Also, the index's growth momentum has fallen visibly. Year on year, the rate of growth declined to 6.7 percent from 17.3 percent in July.
The trigger for the plunge in stocks was Standard & Poor's lowering of the US Treasuries' rating from AAA to AA+. But while the trigger may have been this downgrade, the key factor that set in motion the plunge in stocks is the sharp deterioration in the state of the pool of real savings as a result of loose monetary and fiscal policies.
Normally, what matters for the stock market is the state of monetary liquidity.
As economic activity slows down, the demand for the services of the medium of exchange that money provides in the real economy declines. Therefore, a surplus of money or an increase in monetary liquidity emerges. As a rule this surplus is put to work in financial markets, including the stock market. Consequently, the prices of financial assets and stocks are pushed higher. (Remember, the price of an item is the amount of dollars paid for the item. Likewise the price of a stock is the amount of dollars paid per stock.)
For instance, the yearly rate of growth of industrial production fell from 3.5 percent in January 1974 to negative 12.4 percent in May 1975. The yearly rate of growth of the CPI fell from 12.3 percent in December 1974 to 9.4 percent in June the following year. Changes in the industrial production and the CPI can be seen as a proxy for changes in the demand for money.
As a result, the yearly rate of growth of surplus money climbed from negative 7.7 percent in March 1974 to positive 7.6 percent in May 1975. In response to the increase in liquidity, the S&P 500 climbed from 68.6 in December 1974 to 95.2 by June 1975 — an increase of 38.8 percent.
Historically, fluctuations in liquidity precede fluctuations in the S&P 500 stock-price index (see chart below).
For July this year, the growth momentum of liquidity displays a visible uptrend — the yearly rate of growth stood at 4.5 percent against 3 percent in June. So from a liquidity perspective the S&P 500 appears to be well supported. What's more, there is a growing likelihood that the Fed will embark on more money pumping.
So why then has the stock market declined despite a strengthening in the growth momentum of monetary liquidity? Most experts believe the reason is the S&P downgrade of US government debt and a weakening in some key economic data. The yearly rate of growth of real personal-consumption outlays fell to 1.8 percent in June from 2 percent in May. The ISM manufacturing index fell to 50.9 in July from 55.3 in June, while the ISM services index eased to 52.7 in July from 53.3 in the previous month.
The growth momentum of real AMS (the Austrian money supply[1] ) has been in an uptrend since April last year. After closing at 0.8 percent in April last year, the yearly rate of growth of real AMS jumped to 7.8 percent in July this year. (In June the rate of growth stood at 6.4 percent.) The increase in the growth momentum of real AMS should provide good support ahead for the ISM manufacturing and services indexes (see charts below). All other things being equal, an uptrend in the growth momentum of monetary liquidity coupled with a likely bounce in the yearly rate of growth of key economic data should be good news for stocks.
If the pool of real savings is in trouble, then various key economic data will have difficulty performing well. If the pool of real savings is falling, then an increase in liquidity is not likely to be employed in the stock market. The state of the pool of real savings dictates the economy's ability to generate wealth — that is, economic growth.
For instance, the yearly rate of growth of industrial production fell from 15.3 percent in January 1929 to negative 24.6 percent in October 1930. The growth momentum of the consumer-price index (CPI) also had a large fall during this period. The yearly rate of growth fell from negative 1.2 percent in January 1929 to negative 6.4 percent in December 1930.
In response to these large falls, the yearly rate of growth of surplus money increased from negative 16.6 percent in May 1929 to a positive figure of 25.5 percent by November 1930. Despite this strong increase in liquidity, the S&P 500 fell from 24.15 in October 1929 to 15.34 by December 1930 — a fall of 36.5 percent. The index in fact continued to slide falling to 4.4 by June 1932 — a fall of 81.8 percent from October 1929.
The inability of the increase in liquidity to affect the stock market from May 1929 to December 1930 was because of a fall in the pool of real savings. The ensuing depression and massive unemployment pushed people to stay out of any form of risky investment for safety reasons.
We maintain that, regardless of the downgrade by Standard & Poor's, if currently the percentage of wealth-generating activities out of all activities is still above 50 percent, then it is likely that the pool of real savings or the pool of funding is still growing. Consequently, real economic growth should follow suit. In this situation, the Fed could perpetuate the illusion that monetary pumping can grow the economy. Indeed, in this situation an increase in the money supply's rate of growth is likely to be associated with a rebound in various key economic data and with a strengthening in the stock market.
If, however, less than 50 percent of all activities are wealth generators, then more pumping will only make things much worse. (Loose policies will only further weaken the pool of real funding, deepen the economic slump, and deepen further the slide in stocks.)
Although we cannot quantify whether the pool of real savings is currently expanding or stagnating, we can definitely say that the loose policies of the Fed and the US government have weakened the pool. The fact that, despite the aggressive pumping by the Fed (QE1 and QE2), the economy remains depressed raises the possibility that perhaps the pool of real funding is stagnant or worse. Obviously in this case, given the fact that the Fed and the government will try to "revive" the economy, the downtrend in the stock market could last much longer. (Such policies will only undermine the pool of real funding further and delay meaningful economic recovery.)
But what about the fact that corporate earnings are doing very well? More than 75 percent of corporations in the S&P 500 index have exceeded earnings estimates of Wall Street analysts for the second quarter. Furthermore, most experts are of the view that corporate earnings will rise by 18 percent in 2011 and 14 percent in 2012.
We suggest that, irrespective of how supposedly well various companies are doing, if the pool of real funding begins to slide the performance of so-called good companies will follow suit.
While Standard & Poor's downgrade of US government debt has triggered the plunge in the stock market, the underlying cause behind the stock market's sharp decline is loose monetary and fiscal policies that have badly damaged the ability of the US economy to generate wealth. Historically, fluctuations in monetary liquidity have preceded fluctuations in the S&P 500 stock-price index. The recent visible strengthening in the growth momentum of monetary liquidity will be of little help to the stock market if the pool of real savings is stagnating or, worse, declining.


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Wales captain Sam Warburton misses France clash
Wales captain Sam Warburton has been ruled out of Saturday's 6 Nations clash against France in Paris.
The Cardiff Blues flanker has a stinger injury, a problem which normally affects the shoulder.
Ryan Jones takes over as skipper and wears the number six shirt, with Justin Tipuric starting at openside flanker.
Flanker Aaron Shingler misses out following last weekend's 30-22 defeat against Ireland, while one other change sees Ospreys hooker Richard Hibbard in for Matthew Rees.
Jones will be leading Wales for a record 30th time at the Stade de France, while Hibbard returns from injury to partner Gethin Jenkins and Adam Jones in the front row.
Interim coach Rob Howley has kept faith with the second row which lost to Ireland, with Jamie Roberts poised to win his 50th cap. Shingler replaces Tipuric on the replacements' bench and Lou Reed replaces Olly Kohn among the reserves.
Howley said: "We didn't start the tournament the way we wanted to on the weekend but Saturday is a chance for us to go out and show what we can do.
"We know that we will have to start well and start the way we finished the game against Ireland.
"It's disappointing to have Sam ruled out but Ryan comes in as captain with a wealth of experience.
"Playing France in Paris is always a huge match but we have worked hard as a squad this week and want to deliver a performance we know we are capable of."
Wales team to play France in Paris on Saturday
L Halfpenny (Cardiff Blues); A Cuthbert (Cardiff Blues), J Davies (Scarlets), J Roberts (Cardiff Blues), G North (Scarlets); D Biggar (Ospreys), M Phillips (Bayonne); G Jenkins (Toulon), R Hibbard (Ospreys), A Jones (Ospreys), A Coombs (Newport Gwent Dragons), I Evans (Ospreys), R Jones (Ospreys, capt), J Tipuric (Ospreys), T Faletau (Newport Gwent Dragons).
Replacements: K Owens (Scarlets), P James (Bath), C Mitchell (Exeter), L Reed (Cardiff Blues), A Shingler (Scarlets), L Williams (Cardiff Blues), J Hook (Perpignan), S Williams (Scarlets).


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Series: DreamMakers #1
Genres: Contemporary, Romance
Pages: 275
He's ready to lead the way
As the owner of DreamMakers Inc., Parker Wilson takes the skills he learned as a Ranger to help men win in the love department, using every resource available to plan the perfect date. But when a routine recon turns into an unexpected night of fiery passion, Parker's mission becomes personal—and he won't give up until Lynn Davidson is all his.
She's more than willing to follow
Lynn is a goner from the moment she lays eyes on the delectable Parker. She's tired of sticking to the straight and narrow. It's time to walk on the wild side, and what better way than in the arms of the most irresistible man she's ever met? But when their red-hot affair is threatened, it'll take a team effort to make their dreams come true.