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ARM Claims x86 Android Binary Translation on Intel SoC Hurting Efficiency
Subject: Processors, Mobile | April 30, 2014 - 07:06 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: Intel, clover trail, Bay Trail, arm, Android
While we are still waiting for those mysterious Intel Bay Trail based Android tablets to find their way into our hands, we met with ARM today to discuss quite few varying topics. One of them centered around the cost of binary translation - the requirement to convert application code compiled for one architecture and running it after conversion on a different architecture. In this case, running native ARMv7 Android applications on an x86 platform like Bay Trail from Intel.
Based on results presented by ARM, so take everything here in that light, more than 50% of the top 250 applications in the Android Play Store require binary translation to run. 23-30% have been compiled to x86 natively, 20-21% run through Dalvik and the rest have more severe compatibility concerns. That paints a picture of the current state of Android apps and the environment in which Intel is working while attempting to release Android tablets this spring.
Performance of these binary translated applications will be lower than they would be natively, as you would expect, but to what degree? These results, again gathered by ARM, show a 20-40% performance drop in games like Riptide GP2 and Minecraft while also increasing "jank" - a measure of smoothness and stutter found with variances in frame rates. These are applications that exist in a native mode but were tricked into running through binary conversion as well. The insinuation is that we can now forecast what the performance penalty is for applications that don't have a natively compiled version and are forced to run in translation mode.
The result of this is lower battery life as it requires the CPU to draw more power to keep the experience close to nominal. While gaming on battery, which most people do with items like the Galaxy Tab 3 used for testing, a 20-35% decrease in game time will hurt Intel's ability to stand up to the best ARM designs on the market.
Other downsides to this binary translation include longer load times for applications, lower frame rates and longer execution time. Of course, the Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 is based on Intel's Atom Z2560 SoC, a somewhat older Clover Trail+ design. That is the most modern currently available Android platform from Intel as we are still awaiting Bay Trail units. This also explains why ARM did not do any direct performance comparisons to any devices from its partners. All of these results were comparing Intel in its two execution modes: native and translated.
Without a platform based on Bay Trail to look at and test, we of course have to use the results that ARM presented as a placeholder at best. It is possible that Intel's performance is high enough with Silvermont that it makes up for these binary translation headaches for as long as necessary to see x86 more ubiquitous. And in fairness, we have seen many demonstrations from Intel directly that show the advantage of performance and power efficiency going in the other direction - in Intel's favor. This kind of debate requires some more in-person analysis with hardware in our hands soon and with a larger collection of popular applications.
More from our visit with ARM soon!
A Whole New Atom Family
This past spring I spent some time with Intel at its offices in Santa Clara to learn about a brand new architecture called Silvermont. Built for and targeted at low power platforms like tablets and smartphones, Silvermont was not simply another refresh of the aging Atom processors that were all based on Pentium cores from years ago; instead Silvermont was built from the ground up for low power consumption and high efficiency to compete against the juggernaut that is ARM and its partners. My initial preview of the Silvermont architecture had plenty of detail about the change to an out-of-order architecture, the dual-core modules that comprise it and the power optimizations included.
Today, during the annual Intel Developer Forum held in San Francisco, we are finally able to reveal the remaining details about the new Atom processors based on Silvermont, code named Bay Trail. Not only do we have new information about the designs, but we were able to get our hands on some reference tablets integrating Bay Trail and the new Atom Z3000 series of SoCs to benchmark and compare to offerings from Qualcomm, NVIDIA and AMD.
A Whole New Atom Family
It should be surprise to anyone that the name "Intel Atom Processor" has had a stigma attached to it almost since its initial release during the netbook craze. It was known for being slow and hastily put together though it was still a very successful product in terms of sales. With each successive release and update, Diamondville to Pineview to Cedarview, Atom was improved but only marginally so. Even with Medfield and Clover Trail the products were based around that legacy infrastructure and it showed. Tablets and systems based on Clover Trail saw only moderate success and lukewarm reviews.
With Silvermont the Atom brand gets a second chance. Some may consider it a fifth or sixth chance, but Intel is sticking with the name. Silvermont as an architecture is incredibly flexible and will find its way into several Intel products like Avoton, Bay Trail and Merrifield and in segments from the micro-server to smartphones to convertible tablets. Not only that, but Intel is aware that Windows isn't the only game out there anymore and the company will support the architecture across Linux, Android and Windows environments.
Atom has been in tablets for some time now, starting in September of last year with Clover Trail deigns being announced during IDF. In February we saw the initial Android-based options also filter out, again based on Clover Trail. They were okay, but really only stop-gaps to prove that Intel was serious about the space. The real test will be this holiday season with Bay Trail at the helm.
While we always knew these Bay Trail platforms were going be branded as Atom we now have the full details on the numbering scheme and productization of the architecture. The Atom Z3700 series will consist of quad-core SoCs with Intel HD graphics (the same design as the Core processor series though with fewer compute units) that will support Windows and Android operating systems. The Atom Z3600 will be dual-core processors, still with Intel HD graphics, targeted only at the Android market.
Continue reading our review of the Intel Bay Trail processor, Atom Z3770!!
Clover Trail+ versus ARM, the results may surprise you
Subject: General Tech | June 17, 2013 - 02:37 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: arm, clover trail, tegra 3
ARM might be in for more of a fight than we had thought if they want to keep their market share for the next generation of cellphones, assuming of course that they are sold in North America. The Register posted about research recently done contrasting performance and power efficiency between several phone CPUs; the Lenovo K900 with a 2.0GHz Atom Z2580, a a Samsung Nexus 10 with a dual core 1.7GHz Cortex-A15, a Galaxy S4 phone running a "big.LITTLE" Exynos Octa with paired quad-core Cortex-A15 and Cortex A7 and even a Asus Nexus 7 with an Nvidia Tegra 3. Those phones give a good representation of current generation technology and it seems that while the performance for the top phones was very similar, Intel's new ATOM did it with 2/3 the amperage, specifically an average of 0.85A as opposed to the 1.38A of the second lowest competitor. ATOM seems to have finally found a market segment it can do very well in as long as the price is right.
"The industry analysts at ABI Research pitted a Lenovo smartphone based on Intel's Atom-based Clover Trail+ platform against a quartet of ARM-based systems, and Chipzilla's system not only kept pace with the best of them, but did so using less power."
Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
- Optimized Binaries Provide Great Benefits For Intel Haswell @ Phoronix
- Samsung releases PCI-Express SSD for ultrabooks @ The Inquirer
- Intel 2014 Haswell-E to pack 8 cores, DDR4, X99 PCH and more @ VR-Zone
- Microsoft unleashes wave of Azure mobile updates @ The Register
- Critical Java SE update due Tuesday fixes 40 flaws @ The Register
- Blackberry 10.2 will support Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean apps @ The Inquirer
- Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie to come in late October, also optimized for older phones @ VR-Zone
- Letting Bluetooth take the wires out of your headphones @ Hack a Day
- Adding WiFi to a kid's tablet @ Hack a Day
- Intel bakes smaller, slower flash memory. Aah, now that's progress @ The Register
- TRENDnet AC1200 Dual Band Wireless USB Adapter (TEW-805UB) Review @ Madshrimps
- Computex 2013 Madshrimps Style @ Madshrimps
- AMD Today & Beyond Event @ SilverSpoon, Publika @ TechARP
- ModSynergy 10-Year Celebration Contest - USA and International Edition
A last ride down Clover Trail? Asus' VivoTab Smart ME400C
Subject: Mobile | May 10, 2013 - 06:56 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: clover trail, asus, VivoTab Smart ME400C, atom
While the new Atom processors that we discussed are a long way off you can still pick up some interesting devices powered by the current generation. The ASUS VivoTab Smart ME400C has a Z2760 @ 1.8GHz, 2GB DDR2 and a 64GB eMMC SSD which is not too shabby for a $400 device. The 1366x768 resolution screen might not be the best but at 10.1" it is a reasonable choice for ASUS to make. The Tech Report's testing showed you can expect about 10 hours of battery life and it is capable of running Windows 8 and legacy x86 software as opposed to the ARM powered WinRT tablets it competes with. They do recommend you purhase the TranSleeve and a bluetooth keyboard and mouse combo seperately as you will save a good amount of money doing so.
"This Windows 8 tablet has an Atom processor, solid battery life, and a $430 price tag. Is it compelling as a tablet, and can it really double as a productivity PC?"
Here are some more Mobile articles from around the web:
- MSI GT70 0NE @ Hardware.info
- Microsoft Surface Pro @ Hardware.info
- Toshiba Kirabook Review @ TechReviewSource
- CyberPowerPC FangBook @ AnandTech
- Acer Aspire R7 @ The Inquirer
- ASUS VivoTab Smart ME400 10.1 inch Windows 8 Tablet Review @ Legit Reviews
- Gigabyte P2742G Gaming Laptop @ Modders-Inc
- Acer Aspire S7-191 Touchscreen Ultrabook @ Tweaktown
- Lenovo IdeaPad Lynx Review @ TechReviewSource
- ASUS VivoBook X202E Laptop @ Hardware Secrets
- Acer Aspire E1-531 Laptop Review @ Madshrimps
- AVATAR Mercury Ultrabook AVIU-145A2 Review @ OCC
- Acer Aspire S7-391 Touchscreen Ultrabook @ Tweaktown
- Samsung 5-Series NP540U3C-A01 13.3-inch Ultrabook Notebook Review @ PCSTATS
- Samsung Galaxy Note II Phablet @ Tweaktown
- Sony VAIO Fit 14 Review @ TechReviewSource
- Giada Q11 Android OS Mini PC @ techPowerUp
- Cooler Master NotePal A200 Laptop Cooling Pad Review @ Ninjalane
- ADATA DashDrive Air AE400 Review @ Legit Reviews
- Spire Power Bank 4000 Battery Charger Review @ Legit Reviews
- Thermaltake GOrb II Portable Laptop Cooler @ Tweaktown
- TYLT PowerPlant Portable 5200mAh Battery Pack @ Tweaktown
- Noreve Sony Xperia Z Leather Case (Tradition - 21038T) Review @ Madshrimps
- BlackBerry Q10 @ The Register
- Samsung Galaxy S4 vs iPhone 5 head to head @ The Inquirer
- Samsung Galaxy S4 @ Hardware.info
- Samsung Galaxy S4 @ The Inquirer
IDF: ZTE Shows Off New Geek Android Clover Trail+ Smartphone
Subject: Mobile | April 10, 2013 - 08:46 AM | Tim Verry
Tagged: zte, geek, Android, android 4.2, clover trail, Intel, idf, atom z2580
During the Intel Developer Forum in Beijing, China, ZTE showed off its new Geek phone. The Geek is a 5" smartphone running Android 4.2 Jelly Bean and powered by a 32nm Intel Clover Trail+ processor.
The ZTE Geek is not quite ready for release, but the internals are now official. Specifications include a dual core Intel Atom Z2580 processor clocked at 2GHz (HyperThreading allows 4 total threads), an integrated SGX 544MP2 GPU clocked at 533MHz, 1GB of RAM, and 8GB of internal storage. A 2300 mAh battery provides power for the device and can be recharged wirelessly in the ZTE Geek.
Engadget goes hands-on with the ZTE Geek at IDF in Beijing, China.
On the outside, The ZTE Geek features a 5" capacitive multi-touch screen with a resolution of 1280x720 and Gorilla Glass protection. There is a 1MP fixed focus webcam above the display, and an 8MP camera with auto-focus and LED flash on the rear of the device.
The Geek smartphone is compatible with the following wireless connections:
- GSM: 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz
- UMTS: 900 / 2100 MHz
WiFi: 802.11 a/b/g/n at 2.4GHz
- DLNA, Wireles hotspot, Wi-Fi Direct, and Wi-Fi Display
- Bluetooth 3.0 LE
It also offers up an accelerometer, proximity, ambient light, compass, and gyro sensors. Engadget reports that the device on display at IDF is merely a prototype, and the glossy white finish and chassis material is subject to change. Naturally, there is no word yet on pricing, or when it will be released. The smartphone will likely not see an initial US release, however (if past Atom-powered phones are any indication).
What do you think about the ZTE Geek's design and specs? Personally, I'm still pining for the Lenovo K900 (another Clover Trail+ powered smartphone) to see a US release heh.
CES 2013: Lenovo Shows Off Clover Trail+ Powered K900 Smartphone
Subject: Mobile | January 9, 2013 - 04:07 AM | Tim Verry
Tagged: CES, smartphone, Lenovo, k900, Intel, clover trail, Android, ces 2013
Lenovo has shown off a new Android smartphone at CES. However, in an interesting twist the new Lenovo K900 is powered by an Intel Atom processor rather than an ARM SoC. The K900 smartphone is constructed of a stainless steel alloy and poly-carbonate material. Lenovo has managed to pack all the hardware in a 6.9mm thin chassis that weights 162 grams. It will come in one of four colors, including gold, silver, and grey in a brushed aluminum pattern and one that has a diamond-plate design on the back cover.
The K900 features a 5.5" IPS touchscreen display protected by Gorilla Glass 2 and with a resolution of 1920x1080. The chassis also hosts a front-facing webcam with an 88-degree field of view and a rear 13MP (F1.8) camera with a dual LED flash.
The outside is neat, but it is the internal specifications where the Lenovo K900 gets interesting. The smartphone is powered by an Intel Clover Trail+ SoC. While Intel is not yet providing details on the new processor, Engadget speculates that the SoC will be the Intel Atom Z2580, which is a dual core Clover Trail successor running at up to 2GHz. The K900 will also include 2GB of RAM and between 16GB and 64GB of internal storage (plus a microSD card slot). The phone will be running Android along with Lenovo's Le Phone skin on top (though it can reportedly be disabled).
All in all it looks like a really slick smartphone from the specifications list. Battery life and performance are still unknown, but I'm excited to see benchmarks of this once it is released. Unfortunately, it is not headed to the United States at this time. Instead, the Lenovo K900 will be available in China starting in April of this year. Pricing should be available closer to the product's release date. Engadget has the full press release along with hands on videos with the hardware.
PC Perspective's CES 2013 coverage is sponsored by AMD.
Follow all of our coverage of the show at http://pcper.com/ces!
Ultrabooks 2.0
Intel is a yearly presence at CES and typically have a few interesting things to talk about. Last year we got to see Will.I.Am on stage telling us all about how the Ultrabook has changed his artistic life. Oddly enough, things have not changed dramatically for the company. Ultrabooks have inherited the latest Ivy Bridge processors which were released last Spring. Medfield is still the primary cell phone processor for Intel.
The first area they covered is the cellphone market. Medfield is still the go-to processor and Intel claims that it has better performance and battery life than even the latest Qualcomm products. Intel is introducing a new reference phone for emerging markets around the world codenamed Lexington. Based on the Z2420 and the XMM6265 modem, this budget smartphone will be Android based with certain optimizations instituted by Intel in collaboration with Google.
Intel has achieved more wins throughout the next few months. Acer, Safaricom, and Lava will all be announcing new smart phones based on Intel silicon. Details of these products will be released later in the quarter.
Medfield will be replaced by Clover Tail+ and then further on with their next gen 22 nm product.
Samsung Launching ATIV 500T and 700T Windows 8 Convertible Tablets
Subject: Systems, Mobile | October 19, 2012 - 05:14 PM | Tim Verry
Tagged: windows 8, tablet, saumsung, Ivy Bridge, Intel, clover trail, atom, ativ 700t, ativ 500t
Samsung is the latest company to announce its fleet of dock-able tablet computers running the full version of Windows 8. Launched under the ATIV Smart PC brand, the company is offering up two models depending on the amount of computing horsepower you need to get work done. Specifically, Samsung is launching the Series 5 ATIV Smart PC 500T and the Series 7 ATIV Smart PC Pro 700T. Both models will be available for purchase on October 26th for $749.99 and $1,199.99 respectively.
Samsung Series 5 Slate: ATIV Smart PC 500T
The Samsung Series 5, also known as the ATIV Smart PC 500T is a 11.6" tablet powered by Intel's recently released Clover Trail-based Atom processor platform. It measures 11.6" x 7.2" x 0.38" and weighs 1.65 pounds.The tablet features a LED-backlit touchscreen display with a resolution of 1366x768. A 2.0 megapixel camera and dual 0.8W speakers are also included. The tablet itself can further be paired with a keyboard dock that has a full qwerty keyboard and touchpad.
Internal specifications include an Intel Atom Z2760 processor (running at 1.5 GHz and featuring dual cores with 256 KB each), 2GB of DDR2L memory, and a 64 GB solid state drive. Radios and networking gear includes 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 4.0. [The specifications sheet further claims Gigabit LAN support but there does not appear to be any Ethernet jacks on the tablet so I'm assuming it's solely marketing to say that it supports connecting to a Gigabit LAN (over Wi-Fi)...] The 500T is powered by a two cell, 30 watt-hour lithium-polymer battery.
The external IO ports include a micro HDMI port, one USB 2.0 port, a combination headphone/mic jack, a microSD card slot, and a docking connector.
The Samsung ATIV Smart PC 500T will come pre-loaded with the 32-bit version of Windows 8. The tablet itself is $649.99 and with the keyboard dock, it will be $749.99.
Samsung Series 7: ATIV Smart PC Pro 700T
If you need more computing power, Samsung is offering up its newest Series 7 slate, the ATIV 700T. This tablet is slightly thicker than the 500T at 11.6" x 7.2" x 0.5". It is also a bit heavier at 1.89 pounds versus 1.65 pounds with the 500T. That tradeoff in size nets you significantly better hardware, however. It features a LED-backlit touchscreen with a resolution of 1920x1080. It further includes the same 1.6W (2 x 0.8W) stereo speakers, but adds a second 8MP rear camera in addition to the 2MP front facing webcam.
Internally, the 700T is packing an Intel Ivy Bridge Core i5-3317U processor. This chip is a dual core part with HyperThreading for a total of four threads along with 3 MB of L3 cache. The 700T features 4 GB of DDR3 at 1600MHz and a 128GB solid state drive. Bluetooth 4.0 and 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi also comes standard. The 700T also has a larger 4 cell Li-Po battery (rated at 49 Wh) to power the faster Intel processor.
External IO includes one micro HDMI, one USB 3.0, a combination headphone/mic jack, docking connector, and a micro SD card slot.
The Series 7 ATIV Smart PC Pro 700T comes bundled with a dock as standard and it has a starting price of $1,199.99. It will come pre-loaded with the 64-bit version of Windows 8.
Read more about Windows 8 convertible tablets at PC Perspective.
Podcast #221 - Intel Clover Trail, AMD's Trinity Desktop APUs, the Samsung 840 SSD with TLC, and more!
Subject: General Tech | October 4, 2012 - 02:56 PM | Ken Addison
Tagged: trinity, TLD, ssd, Samsung, podcast, nand, clover trail, APU, a8, A10-5800k, a10, 830
PC Perspective Podcast #221 - 10/04/2012
Join us this week as we talk about Intel Clover Trail, AMD's Trinity Desktop APUs, the Samsung 840 SSD with TLC, and more!
You can subscribe to us through iTunes and you can still access it directly through the RSS page HERE.
The URL for the podcast is: http://pcper.com/podcast - Share with your friends!
- iTunes - Subscribe to the podcast directly through the iTunes Store
- RSS - Subscribe through your regular RSS reader
- MP3 - Direct download link to the MP3 file
Hosts: Ryan Shrout, Josh Walrath, Jeremy Hellstrom Allyn Malvantano, and Scott Michaud
Program length: 1:21:21
Podcast topics of discussion:
- Week in Reviews:
- 0:49:00 This podcast is brought to you by alxTech
News items of interest:
- 0:52:00 4TB Western Digital Hard Drives
- 0:53:45 Apple A6 uses hand drawn ARM cores
- 0:57:00 Steam for Linux beta in October
- 0:58:45 AMD Vishera Info Leaks
- 1:00:20 ASUS Shows silent Trinity APU builds
- 1:01:30 Why you care that AMD can't keep up
- 1:04:45 Kickstart TINY PCs
1:06:20 Hardware / Software Pick of the Week
- Ryan: Corsair Dominator Platinum Memory
- Jeremy: More gaming
- Josh: A fun, new combo!
- Allyn: Samsung SSD 840 - TLC, baby!
- Scott: Corsair HX 850W Power Supply
- Tim: Black Mesa: Source!
- 1:06:20 Hardware / Software Pick of the Week
- 1-888-38-PCPER or firstname.lastname@example.com
- http://pcper.com/podcast
- http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
- Closing/outro
Hardware Specifications
Ahead of the release of Windows 8 and the onslaught of Windows 8-based tablets that will hit the market next month, Intel is taking the cover off the processor that many of these new devices will be powered by, the Intel Atom Z2760 previously known by the codename of Clover Trail. Intel is claiming that the Atom Z2760 is the beginning of a completely new Atom direction, now a complete SoC (system-on-a-chip) design that lowers power requirements, extends battery life and allows Intel's x86 architecture to find its way into smaller and more portable devices.
At it's heart, Clover Trail is based on the same Saltwell CPU core design that was found in the Medfield processor powering a handful of smartphones over in Europe. That means the Atom lineup remains an in-order architecture with a dual-issue command structure - nothing incredibly revolutionary there.
Unlike Medfield though, the Atom Z2760 is a dual-core design that still enables HyperThreading for four-threaded operating system integration. The cores will run at 1.8 GHz and it includes 1MB of L2 cache divided between the two cores evenly. Memory is connected through a dual-channel 32-bit bus to low power DDR2 memory running at 800 MHz and capacities up to 2GB.
Continue reading our information on Intel's Clover Trail Atom Z2760 SoC!!


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Why This 'NYT' Article Is Good for Pizza
The New York Times's Oliver Strand gets his fingers in the flour in a story about make-it-at-home pizza today. Does this signify a new "pizza moment"? I certainly hope so. But let me qualify that a bit ...
For the last few years, there's been a pizzeria boom across the U.S., with folks opening new wood-burning "Neapartisanal" pizzerias left and right. Until recently, that's been pretty much what the press has focused on (and, yes, I will admit, Slice has been just as guilty in the past with the narrow lens).
But, parallel to that surge, there's been a make-it-myself movement quietly building momentum in kitchens and backyards everywhere. So while I say that the publication of this Times article may signify a "new pizza moment," in truth this MIM pizza moment has been happening all along. What's new is that it's finally getting the attention it deserves.
That's not to say that there haven't been websites like Pizza Therapy and PizzaMaking.com doing amazing work guiding DIY pizza enthusiasts to new highs and spreading the gospel. In fact, I would go so far as to say that these two sites are almost singlehandedly (or twohandedly?) responsible for incubating and nurturing the movement. But unless you already had an interest in making pizza, you might not have thought to seek out their considerable wisdom.
And then there are folks like NYC-based Mark Bello of Pizza a Casa, who teaches people how to make pizza at home.
So although the hardcore DIY pizzamakers among us would say that there's not all that much new in what Mr. Strand is preaching, he's got a much larger pulpit to shout from. And if that coaxes new folks or on-the-fencers into the mad, mad world of pizza obsessives, all the better. So, please, folks, send that Times link around to all the avid cooks and bakers you know, along with links to Pizza Therapy and PizzaMaking.com — and, while you're at it, Slice, since we're shaping up to have a fair amount of enthusiastic pizzamakers gathering here. The more, the merrier!
The "new" DIY boom will certainly lead to better pies at home and may even lead DIYers to better appreciate all the pizza out there in the world. That's a good thing.
Hasta la pizza!
Links to Copy/Paste and Forward to Your Friends
NYT DIY pizza article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/dining/19pizza.html Pizza Therapy: http://pizzatherapy.com/ PizzaMaking.com: http://pizzamaking.com/ PizzaMaking.com forums: http://pizzamaking.com/forum Pizza a Casa: Pizza a Casa Slice, a pizza blog!: https://slice.seriouseats.com/ Slice's Q&As with pizza freaks: https://slice.seriouseats.com/tags/Pizza+Obsessives Slice's Q&As with backyard pizzamakers: https://slice.seriouseats.com/tags/My+Pizza+Oven Slice's "Top This" series: https://slice.seriouseats.com/tags/Top+This Slice's "My Pie Monday" feature: https://slice.seriouseats.com/tags/My+Pie+Monday
This post may contain links to Amazon or other partners; your purchases via these links can benefit Serious Eats. Read more about our affiliate linking policy.

subset: commoncrawl


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I explained:
A good place to start would be selling the U.S. Postal Service. In order to provide us an increasingly low-quality, poorly-managed, inefficient, and unneeded service, Americans pay billions every year to fuel and maintain the USPS fleet of over 250,000 vehicles, its huge staff (it's the third largest employer in the US), infrastructure, and operations costs.
Well a libertarian friend and former schoolmate of mine sent in this photo to illustrate my point:
Captions anyone?
Thanks for the photo, George!


text:
To help combat fraud by tax preparers, the Internal Revenue Service created the Registered Tax Return Preparer program. Then, just before the tax season got underway, the agency was told by a federal judge that it doesn't have the authority to regulate the hundreds of thousands of tax preparers covered under the program.
Although some tax return preparers are licensed by their states or enrolled to practice before the IRS, many don't have to pass a government or professionally mandated competency test to prepare a federal return. When the IRS issued its last "dirty dozen" tax scams, tax return preparer fraud was third on the list.
Crooked tax preparers can do some dastardly things.
"Tax return preparers sometimes alter return information without their clients' knowledge or consent in an attempt to obtain improperly inflated refunds or to divert refunds for their personal benefit," wrote Nina E. Olson, the national taxpayer advocate, in her most recent report to Congress. "Often, the refunds are directed to an account in the preparer's control."
In other instances, preparers lure clients by promising large refunds even before reviewing their tax information.
The IRS program would have required any individual who is compensated for preparing or assisting in the preparation of a return to obtain a preparer tax identification number, pass a qualifying exam and complete annual continuing-education requirements.
Three independent tax preparers joined the Institute for Justice in challenging the IRS's authority to create the program. Recently, Judge James E. Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled against the agency.
Said Dan Alban, the lead attorney on the case: "The licensing requirements harmed the ability of mom-and-pop operations to compete with big tax preparation firms. Two of the three plaintiffs would have been put out of business because of the cost of complying with the regulations."
The ruling now means tax return preparers who would have been covered by the program are not required to complete competency testing or secure continuing education, the IRS said. However, all paid preparers are still required to have a preparer tax identification number.
There are tax professionals — attorneys, certified public accountants and enrolled agents — who were exempt from the program but are licensed by state or federal authorities and are subject to censure, suspension or disbarment from practice before the IRS in the event of wrongdoing. The ruling does not affect the regulatory requirements for these professionals.
Still hoping to continue with the regulatory program, the IRS asked the court to delay the ruling pending its appeal. The motion was denied.
"The IRS continues to have confidence in the scope of its authority to administer this program and is working with the Department of Justice to address all options, including a planned appeal," the agency said in a statement.
In response to the lawsuit, the IRS said it has established 250 testing centers, the program has cost more than $50 million to roll out and nearly 100,000 preparers have registered to take the competency test.
When the IRS first announced the program, I was in favor of licensing preparers. Though many tax professionals do their jobs well, there are enough unscrupulous preparers to warrant some changes. Olson, the national taxpayer advocate, has recommended that Congress enact a federal registration, examination, certification and enforcement program for unenrolled tax return preparers. "Creating a class of certified return preparers is a very positive step toward combating fraud," she said in her report.
But perhaps Judge Boasberg has it right. He said his ruling doesn't require the IRS to dismantle its entire registration scheme.
The IRS "may choose to retain the testing centers and some staff, as it is possible that some preparers may wish to take the exam or continuing education even if not required to," Boasberg said in his decision. "Such voluntarily obtained credentials might distinguish them from other preparers."
And some preparers might still take the exam in case his ruling is reversed on appeal, "just as the IRS may similarly decide it is financially more prudent not to shutter the centers in hopes of an appellate victory or congressional action," Boasberg wrote.
"We have no opposition to preparers going through the program voluntarily," Alban said. "If you are in the market looking for a new tax preparer, there could be value in selecting one with the registered tax return preparer certification. Keeping it voluntary allows consumers to decide what's important rather than the IRS."
I see great service to consumers in the IRS preparer program. So until things are settled, Boasberg offers a good compromise.
Readers may write to Michelle Singletary at The Washington Post, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071 or singletarym@washpost.
com. Personal responses may not be possible, and comments or questions may be used in a future column, with the writer's name, unless otherwise requested. To read previous Color of Money columns, go to postbusiness. com.


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LETTER- It's all ego
As an architect and a veteran of an architecture school (read: agenda indoctrination centers), I can spot an architectural agenda from the next galaxy. David McNair may not be aware [On Architecture, May 11, 2006, "Gulf Coast rebuild: Form should follow function"]– and I regret to inform him– that architects in general (and academic ones even more so) are all about ego.
The tell-tale quote in his article: "I came up with some schematic designs, then handed them off to my students." The students wouldn't dare come up with something from their own creative minds lest they be excommunicated from architecture school forever.
However, the gist of the article was correct. The Gulf Coast is the new front line in the architectural agenda wars.
Rebecca Lively AIA
Honolulu, Hawaii


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Shrek and Po have found a new home.
DreamWorks Animation, the Glendale studio behind such hit animated franchises as "Shrek," "Kung Fu Panda" and "Madagascar," has signed a five-year deal with 20th Century Fox, which will distribute its movies beginning next year.
Fox replaces Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks' partner since 2006. The two companies' relationship began souring in 2011 as DreamWorks Chief Executive Jeffrey Katzenberg sought to pay a lower fee and Paramount Chairman Brad Grey formed a competitive animation unit at his studio.
DreamWorks hired former Disney distribution President Chuck Viane last fall to advise the studio on its options, including the possibility of distributing its own movies. By this summer, however, the company abandoned the option of releasing its own films and focused on intense talks with Fox and Sony Pictures.
Continue reading >>
-- Ben Fritz and Richard Verrier, Los Angeles Times


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Barrens Topminnow
Fundulus julisia
About This Animal
SIZE: 4 in (10.2 cm)
RANGE: Found only on the Barrens Plateau of middle Tennessee
HABITAT: Springs, pools and slow current areas of spring-fed streams
DIET: Aquatic insects and freshwater plankton
ON EXHIBIT: Tennessee River Gallery in River Journey
These attractive minnows swim near the surface of the water feeding on tiny insects such as mosquito larvae. They spawn by scattering their eggs into heavily vegetated areas. The aquarium mimics these spawning grounds by adding yarn mops for the fish to hide and spawn in. These can be seen in the Barrens topminnow breeding lab in the Tennessee River gallery.
The barrens topminnow teeters on the brink of extinction. It is found in three locations in Middle Tennessee. The Tennessee Aquarium is involved in a captive breeding and reintroduction project to help save this species. Learn more about how the Aquarium staff is working to restore Barrens Topminnows.


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Other than George Thorogood & the Destroyers, nothing says 'bad to the bone' like the ARIES modular aluminum Jeep bumper. On the day it was born, all the engineers stared in wide wonder because they realized they had created a monster - a lightweight, muscle-packed, shape-shifting monster. That's right. This ARIES modular Jeep bumper is made with hardened T6 aluminum alloy, giving it wicked strength and a weightlessness that will keep your Jeep light on its feet. It features a six-piece customizable design that can go from a smooth riff to full-on blood-sucking rock mode faster than a Stratocaster in the hands of a rock legend. It also allows you to create the exact look you want for your Jeep... and that is pretty b-b-b-bad.
Check Out These Best Sellers


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Wednesday, February 22, 2006
From Italy to New York via London
Then I noticed that the onset of me noticing this pronunciation coincided with my moving to New York, and that the people who I heard saying this were all non-young (50+) native New Yorkers. This is the same group of people who still have a lovely but fading trait of New York English: the pronunciation of the /t/ in "bottle" not as a flap, but as a glottal stop. You know, like a parody of a Cockney accent: 'Ow many bo'les, Guv?
I'll admit that I don't know why New Yorkers say (said?) this, whether it was at one point a generalized Cockney-like tendency to turn flaps into glottal stops (glo'al stops?). I could research it, but I don't have time. So instead I'll offer the following theory, based on nothing at all. There's nothing like mucking up an empirical science by making up theories without any evidence. The mind, when encumbered by data, is free to go many wondeful, strange, factually incorrect places.
My theory is that in New York at some point the glottal stop/t/ occured more often than only in the word "bottle." How widespread I don't know. I know that in London there is a fundamental sociolinguistic between those who turn their /t/s into glottal stops, and those who leave them as devoiced, aspirated /t/s -- flapping isn't an option in that area. Perhaps such a distinction once existed in New York as well, perhaps even borrowed directly from London. Thus "bottle," a humdrum everyday word, preserved a basolectal pronunciation with a glottal stop, while "Italy," a word associated with high culture (Europe! What could be fancier?) retained an acrolectal /t/. As I have said on many occasions, I just made that up, but I think it might be true.
Lest you mourn the passing of "Italy" with a /t/ and "bottle" with a /ʔ/, there are plenty of other New Yorkisms which are thriving. Some of my favorites include using the word "Spanish" to refer to anyone of Spanish-speaking heritage, which New Yorkers of all ages and social/ethnic backgrounds do. In fact, a chapter in the Yiddish textbook I use in my classes lists "shpanish" as one of the main ethnic groups in New York. Another striking New Yorkism is calling any surface you walk on "the floor," indoor or out. This is more limited sociolinguistically, but still widespread among all age groups. But the absolute winner is "standing on line." I think for New Yorkers this is like "pop" is for me (as opposed to soda/coke): although New Yorkers claim that they can say "on line" or "in line," in reality they only say the former. Since "in line" is ubiquitous everywhere else, New Yorkers are misled into thinking they say it too. Furthermore, just as us "pop" sayers have no problem with "soda," while "soda" sayers can't stand "pop," so New Yorkers are deaf to "in line," but many of us immigrants to New York passionately hate "on line." Me, I love it. Not that I'd ever say it.
8 comments:
- the chocolate lady said...
Ever heard this one? I once knew a woman who pronounced "Italy" as "I?ly"--two syllables with a glottal stop. It was a cooking class, so we had to say "Italy" all the time.
- Ben said...
Wow, how cool. Never heard this myself (except maybe from people faking Cockney accents in movies). What sort of person was she? New Yorker? What age? What background?
I think this either supports or disproves my theory. It's a hell of a theory that the same evidence can either support or disprove, eh?
- Gheuf said...
I stumbled on your blog via languagelog and have been reading it since the post on "Torino."
I think that the aspirated t in Italy is not confined to that word alone: it's a general hypercorrection people use who would normally use the stigmatized glottal stop for intervocal /t/. For example, a friend of mine from Rhode Island tells me she deliberately changed her pronunciation of "Latin" from /lae?in/ to /laethin/ because she thought the glottal stop pronunciation sounded bad. It's interesting that all of our examples are normally pronounced with a syllabic consonant after the /t/ by people who don't use the glottal stop (/laetn/, etc.).
- Ben said...
Excellent point. I know the /laethin/ pronunciation well; my school's rival was called The Latin School, and all the students called it /laethin/, which I thought spoke volumes about them and what was wrong with their school. But I'm biased. I know other people who say /laedin/, (one of whom is a Classicist, unfortunately) as well as /ridin/ for written, etc.
Good point about the glottal stop/flap distinction in American English. It's not all before all syllabic consonants that /t/ becomes a glottal stop, but just before /n/. Think of metal/medal.
And I can't resist asking about your name: is it a form of Jeff? or omething more exotic?
- the chocolate lady said...
This was eighteen years ago, and I think she must have been about forty then. She claimed Italian heritage and had an Italian name, and I *think* she was from New York.
- Neddie said...
The glottal-stop in "bottle" isn't restricted to New Yorkers; it's characteristic of the whole Northeast, and it isn't restricted to that word. A computer-programmer friend of mine betrayed her Bostonian origins the other day to me in conversation when she told me to push a particular "buh'in" on my screen.
- Gheuf said...
A lot of people ask me about the name. I just chose it cuz I like its appearance. At first I wanted to pronounce it [ɣœf] but now I tend to tell people [ɡuf].... Sorry I don't have a more exciting etymology.
- Ben said...
Neddie -
I know what you're talking about with the whole button thing. Me, I'd say that I (and most Americans) also have a glottal stop in the word, but what sets us normal people apart from the buh'in phenomenon you describe is that we put our mouths in a position to say /t/ before we make the glottal stop, whereas some people make the glottal stop right after the vowel. But this is slightly different from "bottle," because in button the /t/ comes before a syllabic /n/, and in "bottle" it comes before an unstressed vowel. So notice, for instance, how you pronounce the /t/ in "batten", versus "battle." The former's a weird glottal stop thing, and the latter is a flap.
Gheuf -
How 'bout I call you Goif? That'll learn ya. Reminds me of someone who pronounced Goethe as "Geeth," which I think is beautiful.


text: Do you happen to know what the USB problems are? I read some report on anandtech that stated systems based on the AMD-768 seemed to work fine, but there are persistent rumors of problems. Ivan... On Tue, 5 Feb 2002, Trent Piepho wrote: > On Tue, 5 Feb 2002, Ivan Pulleyn wrote: > > The main quirk I noticed when playing w/the Asus board: NO USB (not > > even 1.x) support. If, for some reason, you need it you are forced to > > use a USB2.0 PCI card. The Tyan boards have good old-fashioned USB1.x > > support on-board. This means you basically can't use USB console > > switches with the Asus. > > >From the reviews I've read, the 760MPX chipset has a broken USB1.x controller > that sometimes doesn't work. Asus gives you a usb2.0 card (does it work with > linux?) while tyan makes you buy your own if you want working usb. > > _______________________________________________ > Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf at beowulf.org > To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf >


text:
Without a doubt, motorcycle racing is quite a big deal in Southern California. After all, take a count of all the Supercross, motocross, desert racing and speedway bikes competing in the area.
And don't forget about the Globe of Steel, a 16-foot round cage with eight motorcycle riders roaring around at speeds approaching 65 mph that is part of the 133rd edition of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus. When it was first performed more than 100 years ago, it was originally billed the Globe of Death and featured all-men troupes.
No more. Ringling Bros. has toned down the name of the act (although there the have been fatalities in the past and the featured riders are actually a family group from Paraguay with a female member). It's only at the end of the nine-minute act of complex maneuvers, preformed at constant speeds with inches to spare achieved after more than 15 years of practice, that the audience can identify her from the troupe of brothers and cousins.
"We perform 400 shows a year and there is always the possibility (during the performance) that anything can happen," said Carmen Torres while preparing for a show in Central California. "What I do is not the hard part, it's having to contend with the possibility that something could happen with the bikes and the possibility that a lot of things could go wrong.
"That is why we check and maintain our (Honda and Suzuki) motorcycles every day, and I take care of my own bike because I trust my own work."
And it's all about trust for the riders.
"If you put friends and you put eight bikes inside the globe, they don't know what each other will do," Carmen said. "We are 100 percent trust. I trust my brother, he trusts me and we know what we need to do. It's more easy to do."
Not that it's easy. In the sphere, the riders circle counterclockwise in one direction (to avoid head-on collisions) and anything can happen, such as drive chains sticking or snapping, or an overheated tire blowing.
Carmen's brother Ariel is the group leader and started the family act after watching the other riders in the globe.
"It was a lot like being on a motocross course condensed into a 16-foot, spherical space," he said. But before joining Ringling Bros., the family perfected its act working for Circo Nacional de España, Circo Hermanos Muños, Circo del Sol and Circo Tejedos.
"When I saw my brothers riding (in the globe) it became my dream to perform with them," said the 30-year-old Carmen, who has been riding for 19 years. "I then decided that's what I wanted to do."
There is a challenge.
"You have to be strong because it is very hard to do," she said. "At the end of the show I take off my helmet and shake my hair. I love to see everyone's reactions when the crowd realizes a female has just performed such death-defying acts."
The "Greatest Show on Earth" has 13 shows remaining at Staples Center through July 15 and 10 shows from July 18-22 at Citizens Business Bank Arena in Ontario.
New NASCAR alliance
In the past, NASCAR has not taken it well when its teams, owners or drivers tried to organize. For the time being, the sanctioning body is taking a low profile in the wake of the new business association by nine multi-car teams, the Race Team Alliance.
Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates, Hendrick Motorsports, Joe Gibbs Racing, Michael Waltrip Racing, Richard Childress Racing, Richard Petty Motorsports, Roush Fenway Racing, Stewart-Haas Racing and Team Penske are in the group. Those teams fielded 25 of the 43 cars in Sunday's race at Daytona. Rob Kauffman, co-owner of Michael Waltrip Racing, was elected as the chairman.
Just don't call it a union.
"Calling it a union would be incorrect. A union would be for employees," Kauffman told The Associated Press. "The right way to characterize it would be a business alliance. Unions are about employees directly trying to negotiate something. The RTA is pooling together to look at things we can be doing better.
"No one is looking to start a fight or be controversial."
The teams are looking to cut costs regarding travel and insurance, not hurt the sport.
"To me the key word is collaboration. People in the media, a fight is always more interesting coverage than nothing, but we're really focused on collaborating and working on things we can do," said Kauffman. "As Chip (Ganassi) said, this is a long-term process, our goal for this organization is to be around for a long time.''
NASCAR is seeking more information on the group before taking a stance.
"It is apparently still in development and we're still learning about the details, so it would be inappropriate to comment right now," NASCAR said in a prepared statement Monday. "(Our) mission, as it has always been, is to create a fair playing field where anyone can come and compete. Our job is to support and strengthen all of the teams, large and small, across all of our series, and we'll continue to do that. "
It remains to be seen.
Racing around SoCal
There will be a family reunion July 19 at Irwindale Speedway when three generations of the racin' Gillilands — 56-year-old Butch, 37-year-old David and 14-year-old Todd — compete in a Super Late Model race. Butch and David, the pole-sitter last weekend in Daytona, have enjoyed success at the half-mile oval, but this will mark Todd's debut. In the Late Model series, Toni McCray won two events last Saturday and now trails Ryan Partridge by 18 points at the halfway point. Partridge has five wins in 10 races and McCray has three. … San Bernardino's Pirate Speedway hold its 11th card of the season Friday night on the Orange Show grounds. Pee Wees to the 500cc speedway class are on the card in addition to adults on minibikes. Racing starts at 8 p.m. … It's the weekly Thursday Night Thunder tonight at Irwindale Dragway starting at 5 p.m. … Perris Auto Speedway will host a Saturday night card that features Street Stocks, Super Stocks, Modifieds, American Factory Stocks and CDCRA Dwarf Cars in the PASSCAR Series. USAC/CRA defending champion and points leader Damion Gardner won last week's Firecracker 40. … It's ARP Battle at the Beach Saturday at Ventura Raceway with VRA Sprint Cars, Senior Sprints, Dwarf Cars, IMCA Modifieds, Hobby Stocks, Focus Midgets, Junior Midgets and Mini Dwarfs.


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One of the biggest short-term threats to the profitability of the U.S. biodiesel industry is the rising price of soybeans, which forces the industry to turn to feedstocks other than soybeans or shut down or slow down operations, according to Kenneth "Pete" Moss of FBA Consulting, Memphis, speaking at the AgTechnology Field Day at Agricenter International, Memphis.
"I believe the biodiesel industry is somewhat a victim of its own success. We've grown rapidly, and with all the construction activity and plants coming on line, we're seeing a lot of speculation in the soybean market right now. Soybean oil should be in the 25-cent per pound range."
Instead, with soybean futures at around $8.50 a bushel, Chicago Board of Trade soybean oil futures had climbed to almost 40 cents a pound by July 18, noted Moss. "It takes 7.5 pounds of soybean oil to make a gallon of biodiesel. Forty cents a pound times 7.5 equals $3 per gallon invested in the oil itself. That's before you do any processing. That's a pretty expensive starting point to make biodiesel.
"Once soybean oil prices get too high, biodiesel plants have to either shut down, slow down or use animal fat or some other type of oil."
Corn futures have also risen with the booming ethanol industry, however, U.S. producers planted a huge corn crop this year, keeping downward pressure on corn futures.
"We can expect quite a bit of volatility in the markets. This fight for acres between soybeans and corn is quite interesting, and for a farmer, it makes it tough to know what to plant from one year to the next."
One way to solve the problem that high soybean and corn prices have on biofuel profitability is through the development of crops and technologies that put more cheap feedstock on the market, according to Moss.
"We need to plant or produce different crops like high oil soybeans, canola, camelina (a weed with 40 percent oil), castor, algae, high oil corn, high starch corn and cellulose. I know there have been efforts to produce canola here in the Mid-South and to be quite honest, the problem is we didn't know where to process it."
Moss noted that oil could be removed from corn currently being used in the production of ethanol. "There's no reason to do what we're doing now, sending the oil to the ethanol plant. If oil is worth $600 a ton, why sell it for $100 a ton?"
The Mid-South also needs local processing plants tied to these crops "where a farmer has a place to deliver and get the value from it. We believe there are whole new markets here."
Moss said his company plans to work with Agricenter International to introduce new crops to the biofuel industry. "But we're not going to stop there. We're also going to put in pilot processing plants so we can grow crops and process them into either biodiesel or ethanol right here on a pilot scale. We can have a model for farmers wanting to know how to put it all together."
There should be plenty of financial incentive to develop the type of agricultural model Moss envisions, especially with oil and fuel prices spiraling upward. "In 1995, crude oil prices were around $20 a barrel. Today, we're up around $75 a barrel. Meanwhile diesel fuel in 1995 was 50 cents a gallon. Today, it's over $2 a gallon.
"In 2005, Hurricane Katrina spiked the market for diesel fuel, which had an impact on the economy. But what it really pointed out was the vulnerability of our fuel economy. It doesn't take much crisis to upset the balance and create dramatic swings."
Moss noted that a July 17 report from the National Petroleum Council said the petroleum industry alone could not meet projected soaring demand for oil, which could hit 120 million barrels per day by 2030 — from the present-day level of 84 million barrels per day.
"In China, there is a car for every 800 people. If they just double the number of automobiles, it represents a tremendous amount of fuel usage. We in the United States are not the primary drivers of high fuel costs. It's coming out of the Asian region."
In addition, "all the things we process from petroleum are getting more and more expensive because the price of petroleum is going up. From biofuel production, we have biochemicals, bioplastics, functional fluids and other fiber products that we can generate and have the production capabilities here in the Mid-South."
According to Moss, the outlook for biodiesel production under favorable economic conditions shows a rise to 2.7 billion gallons by 2017. Under unfavorable conditions, the increase is to 1.4 billion gallons by 2017. Meanwhile, biodiesel has been growing at a rate of over 100 percent per year since 1999, "a remarkable growth pattern."
Biofuel is here to stay, Moss says. "The market today really seems to be pulling biofuels. That's a big difference compared to previous attempts to push it into the market."
e-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com


text: On Thu, 9 Jan 2003 mgb at mgbeckett.com wrote: > Thank you to everyone for their concern. > Unfortunately the UK lacks the wildlife for proper > stacking out of users over anthills. > The use in this system is actually very secure - there > is a 6 foot gap between the cluster and the nearest > internet cable :-) > > I have a Linux cluster running an MPI job - I want a > python script on the master to cycle through all the > nodes checking for local error logs as part of the > testing. > > I was looking for a simple technique which didn't put > any load on the working nodes. "any load" is the question. If your script cycles and checks ten times a second, not many tools or methods will work without a load, right? If it cycles and checks ten times a minute, the load will likely be barely visible using ssh as a medium, and still invisible on top of either rsh or nfs (the VERY simplest way to solve your problem would be to have the local error logs written to an NFS mount where you could just open them, read them, and close them again, or better yet just stat them to see if they've changed and open them only if). Or if it is a smallish cluster, you could just run tail -f on the files. If you check once every ten minutes, you could just about have the nodes email their current log file to you or something else immensely heavyweight and still generate no significant load. Monitoring is just another parallel process. It has the same sort of scaling with granularity as any other parallel task. If your nodes support NFS, I'd be VERY inclined to try it first, as the code is bone simple and you can adjust the sampling granularity to ensure that load stays at "zero" due to the sampling itself. If they don't, I'd change them so that they do and STILL use nfs, unless you're e.g. running scyld, in which case you'll have to talk to them about what tools might work (or if any tool is even needed). Note that any sort of "tail -f"-like tool is going to do better than getting the entire file every time you want to scan it. The minimum "cost" of getting a remote file is stat, open, read/encapsulate/send over the network, close. You'd much rather avoid as much of this as possible by opening it only once and sending only the new text at the end. The second thing to try if you just can't or won't use NFS is a real remote logger. There are syslog-like tools out there already for the particular purpose of monitoring logs on a network of machines and sending it via daemon to a central location. One of these is almost certainly going to be better than anything you cobble together on your own that has to actually fetch the files every time they are to be scanned. rgb Robert G. Brown http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/ Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305 Durham, N.C. 27708-0305 Phone: 1-919-660-2567 Fax: 919-660-2525 email:rgb at phy.duke.edu


text: On Wed, 24 Sep 2008, Robert G. Brown wrote: > On Tue, 23 Sep 2008, Donald Becker wrote: > > >> XML is (IMO) good, not bad. > > > > I have so much to write on this topic, I'll take the first pot shot at RGB > > ;-) > > > > XML is evil. Well, evil for this. > > Oh, it's fine. I've gone the rounds on this one with Linus Himself (who > agrees with you, BTW:-). And he's smart and good looking... we have some things in common. Especially the good looking part. > I'd argue -- persuasively I think -- that the evil was not in XML per se > but in various other aspects of ganglia such as its flexibility and > ability to absorb and report back "any" statistic. That's part of the evil. A cluster stat system shouldn't be completely flexible. There are a core set of things that it must report, and it must report them regularly. If it's not required, you can't depend upon them. That makes the end tools difficult or impossible to write. They end up using their own reporting system. > Now, Linus did argue equally (or even more:-) persuasively that the > overhead associated with converting /proc itself to use XML per se was > too great and sure, he's probably correct. The way the Linux kernel reports values is pretty much a tangent. The values we need to report are mostly independent of the kernel details. Yes, it's been a pain to re-work the BeoStat system for the 2.2, 2.4 and 2.6 kernels. But XML wouldn't have changed that. People would still have changed what the numbers mean, perhaps even more freely with the mistaken belief that XML would magically allow old tools to understand very different meanings for the numbers e.g. free memory. > right data objects are and how they relate to other objects and are most > naturally arranged. The data view thus produced is self-documenting to > the extent sensible tag names are chosen, manifestly hierarchical (it Hmmm, this is a hot-button issue. The value are not self-documenting. Ganglia is a good example. There are values that it reports just because the kernel reports them. And other values that you have to read the code to understand. Values like "load_one" and "proc_total". What is "proc_total"? What can I do with it? (The answers: it's approximately "ps x | wc", and it's mostly useless since it doesn't eliminate baseline system processes.) > Usually, the best possible tradeoff is one that doesn't, one that yields > the best of both worlds. For example, XML would be just great if it > were possible to construct an a priori tag dictionary, create a map from > tags to information-theoretically minimal binary (where every tag in > most problems could be reduced to one or at most two bytes in length), > and install the DICTIONARY on both sender and receiver ends. ... > This would > effectively compress the actual XML to where the overhead associated > with sending the message is down to perhaps 10-40% of the raw binary > message, not an unreasonable price to pay for trivial library-based Ahhh, you are describing a different class of system than XML. Something closer to AML, although reading the documentation for AML will hurt your brain. When I first heard about XML I assumed that it was this type of system -- one that described how to automatically decode tightly-packed objects. Something that you would have in a file header, before a million records. Or send once at the beginning of a six month connection that handles millions of cluster stat packets. That's would be exactly the right kind of system here. Except there isn't one in common use. So we have had to manually write one-off structure encoders and decoders. It's not a big deal, but it could/should be easier and better. The only down-side is that we can't fire up WireShark and understand the UDP packet contents. > xmlsysd is -- I think -- very nicely hierarchically organized. It > achieves adequate efficiency for many uses a different way -- it is only > called on (client side) demand, so the network isn't cluttered with > unwanted or unneeded casts (uni, multi, broad). It is "throttleable" -- > the client controls the daemon on each host, and can basically tell it The very first implementation of what later became BeoStat did this. There was only a single client, a display GUI, and it told the nodes how and how often to report. That turned out to be a bad design. No other tools could rely upon the reporting stream contents, and it couldn't be used for liveness indication. Once we redesigned to a send-only system that reported once per second it became generally useful. For a concrete example: the GUI might not care about CPU utilization percentages and not gather the numbers. But when we run a MPI process mapper (a mapper is a one-off, at-this-instant layout scheduler) we don't want to wait while those numbers are requested and reported. We want to support both continuously-running (GUI display tools) and start-exit (extract data, analyze, report) usage. > Well, both of them have to be sent by the network. One can choose UDP > or TCP for either one, and each has advantages and disadvantages (with > -- gulp -- the same tradeoffs between reliability and robustness and > speed). There are trade-offs between UDP and TCP. But UDP is the right model for stats. I pretty much don't care about old numbers. I'll go further -- I want to forget old numbers. If there is a problem, communication or processing, that blocks updates for a minute, I want the numbers to look stale. And I would rather get the new stats right away than process and post a series of old messages. > Actually, from here on down -- with the exceptions of choosing to > use xml to encapsulate the return, TCP instead of UDP, and allowing the > client side to control and throttle the daemon so that one can tune the > impact of the monitoring to the demands of the cluster and task, the two > things sound very similar -- as they should be, given that they're both > N>3 generation tools. The bottom line for all of this isn't "mine is better than yours". I would like to see a common cluster state/status/statistics reporting system. It doesn't have to look exactly like BeoStat, but I expect a good one wouldn't be too far from the current BeoStat design. -- Donald Becker becker at scyld.com Penguin Computing / Scyld Software www.penguincomputing.com www.scyld.com Annapolis MD and San Francisco CA


text:
September 13, 2001
Los Angeles — A UCLA multi-family housing forecast for Los Angeles County predicts that the apartment market will experience slower growth for the rest of 2001, mirroring the slowdown that is affecting all segments of the economy. But the long-term investment outlook is bullish for local apartment buildings as rents are likely to continue increasing, according to the report presented today by UCLA Anderson.
In the short run, the multi-family housing market in Los Angeles County will see slower but still substantial rent growth, small increases in capitalization rates and slower price appreciation, predicts Stephen Cauley, associate director of UCLA Anderson's Richard S. Ziman Center for Real Estate and a lecturer in real estate investment.
"We're predicting slower growth and price appreciation but we're still in positive territory," Cauley said. "This is an optimistic forecast based on the current economic slowdown continuing at about the same pace for the remainder of the year. However, if we have a more substantial economic slowdown, all bets are off."
Projections show that the price-per-unit for a typical Los Angeles County apartment has slowed from an 11.1 percent increase in 2001 to a projected 4.6 percent increase by 2002.
In addition to the economic slowdown, factors that limit property appreciation include a "feedback" effect created by changes in the labor market, as well as by changes in the number of immigrants coming to or leaving Los Angeles, Cauley said.
In looking at the demographic factors driving the demand for apartment units, Cauley said the dramatic rise of the Latino population will have a large effect on the rental market. The largest increase of renters is among the Hispanic population in Los Angeles. By the year 2005, nearly 50 percent of Los Angeles County residents will be Hispanic, compared to 26 percent whites. Nearly 10 percent of renters are African American and close to 15 percent are Asian.
"The growth of Latino renters is where the action is in terms of the Los Angeles County apartment market," Cauley said. "This is an area where demand for apartments is going to grow in proportional amounts, represented through rents and building prices." Latino areas such as East Los Angeles and the northeast San Fernando Valley are among the areas with the biggest population growth and thus the biggest demand for housing.
Demand for apartments also is driven by the increasing bifurcation of income levels in Los Angeles County. An increasing portion of the population will never be able to afford homeownership, Cauley said. As this segment of the population continues to increase, the region will see a long period of sustained growth in demand for apartments.
In his presentation, Cauley also points to an imbalance between the location of new construction and areas with the greatest increases in demand.
Despite the current slowdown, Cauley is still bullish about the multi-family housing market in the long run, as high single or low double-digit rents increases are predicted for the foreseeable future. However, he cautioned that the market would suffer in the event of such circumstances as the stock market falling to 7,000, a major oil price shock, or political response to the affordable housing crisis.
Cauley made his predictions as part of the third annual Multi-Family Housing Forecast Conference, conducted by the Ziman Center at UCLA Anderson's Korn Convocation Hall. The conference brings together research and practice, providing participants with the latest information upon which to base critical business decisions. Speakers and panelists included industry, community and government leaders, and academics, who examine opportunities for those who own, build, develop, manage or invest in multi-family housing.


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So.. I'm looking for a job - junior position doing data analysis with some minor automation (R, Python) - and I consequently have a few alerts pop up involving data analysis and the like.
Earlier, Dice emailed me a job recommendation for "Data Administrator." Not knowing what that was - and it sounded interesting enough - I took a look at the job description.
It's all fine and dandy for most of the the scope of work, but... take a look at the "Daily Operations" section:
The Data Administrator provides the expertise to acquire, manage, manipulate, and analyze supply chain data and report results. This position reports to the Global Supply Chain Coordinator.
- Database Management – 40%
- Develop databases and data systems necessary for projects and department functions, considering both back-end organization of data and front-end accessibility for end-users;
- Maintain existing Access and Excel databases; suggest and implement improvements
- In collaboration with others, develop and implement data collection systems that optimize data quality
- Proactively identify problematic areas and conduct research to determine the best course of action to correct the data
- Provide technical support and training for database users, including creation of technical training manuals and training powerpoints
- Research, test and lead in the adoption of new approaches to maximize effective and efficient reporting
- Data Analysis and Reporting – 40%
- Interpret data and develop recommendations based on findings
- Analyze and problem-solve issues with current and planned systems as they relate to the integration and management of data (for example, review for accuracy in inventory reconciliation on a per-office basis)
- Identify, analyze, and interpret trends or patterns in complex data sets
- Consolidate reports and data from field offices and track submission rates
- Create and present quality dashboards
- Write reports summarizing data for senior management
- Daily Operations – 20%
- Data entry for tracking of international procurement transactions
- Maintain information such as traveler data profiles, conference call accounts/codes, T-Mobile documentation, etc
- Manage departmental procurement and travel including traveler schedules, visas, per diem processing, computer equipment, office supplies, etc
- Manage departmental intranet pages and shared drives, including organizing resources and ensuring that documents are up-to-date and accurate.
- Proactively identify ways to streamline operational processes in order to promote overall departmental efficiency
- Required Knowledge/Skills
- Proficient in MS Access, including previous experiencing designing, creating, and managing databases
- Proficient in MS Excel, including knowledge of pivot tables, and V-Lookups, and macros
- Ability to present complex information in an understandable and compelling manner
- Experience developing technical training materials including manuals and presentations; experience training others both in person or remotely
- Preferred Qualifications
- Bachelor's in Information Management, Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, or related fields
- Supply Chain background or experience
- Previous data analyst experience
- Required Knowledge/Skills
Buying airplane tickets, reserving hotel rooms, dealing with conference call codes, organizing files, managing office supply inventory....?
That sounds more like a combination between "data analyst" and "administrative assistant" than anything like a "data administrator."
I suppose it's nice that their honest about it all, but it strikes me as a touch strange.
I certainly hope it has more to do with the company being a "highly efficient" charity than a general trend in the job market for the jobs I'm looking for.


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MINNEAPOLIS—The University of Minnesota is trying to head off problems with high risk drinking by requiring freshmen to take an alcohol education class.
The university sent out emails to incoming freshmen this summer with a link to the online class. Each of the 1,672 new students were required to complete the first part of the course by welcome week.
The course is a combination of surveys, questions and videos about alcohol safety and how students use and think about alcohol. Students take the second part of the course next month after they've been in school for a while.
Dave Golden helped establish the course at the University of Minnesota. Golden tells KSTP-TV ( http://bit.ly/16tYVRT) hundreds of other universities are using the class, including the University of Wisconsin.
Information from: KSTP-TV, http://www.kstp.com


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Helpline Launches Magnet Campaign to Get the Word Out
SIOUX FALLS - Dialing 211 any time of day will connect a caller with dozens of resources. But not everyone knows about the 211 Helpline Center. That's why the Helpline is asking for volunteers to spread the word through the Drive 2 Help campaign.
It's as easy as displaying a magnet on the back of your car. The Helpline's goal is to distribute 2011 car magnets. About 400 have already been given out.
"The more widespread the message is out there the better people can reach help through 211," said Janet Kittams-Lalley, Executive Director of the Helpline Center.
The Helpline Center assists callers with everything from finding quality child care, suicide and crisis support, volunteer services and military and family support.
The Helpline gets its resources and information from as many as 3,000 agencies. Anyone can call. Businesses and churches are also encouraged to get magnets for employees and their congregations. If you are interested in getting involved you can call 211 or go to the Helpline Center web site.


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My 8 Favorite Holiday Treats
There is a lot of baking that goes on in my house during the Christmas season. Whether it is with the kids, by myself, with family members or with friends, baking is a great way to enjoy the holidays. Not only is making these holiday goodies fun, it is also satisfying. For your belly that is.
This is a list of my family's favorite holiday treats that we bake every year. Did yours make the list?
Chocolate mint brownies
I can't seem to get enough mint during the holidays, and there is no better mate for mint than chocolate, especially a rich gooey brownie.
Peanut butter blossoms
My husband's favorite by far, these peanut butter flavored mini cookies are topped with a Hershey's Kiss, making for the perfect bite of peanut butter and chocolate.
Spritz cookies
Buttery bite sized cookies that melt in your mouth are the best way to describe these Christmas classics.
Eating this holiday treat is like eating a cloud. Light and airy with a hint of vanilla flavor.
Ginger snaps
These small cookies have become one of my recent favorites. I just love their crispness and bite of ginger.
Chocolate sugar cookies
These cookies are the best compromise to my husband's love of sugar cookies and my love of chocolate. These can be festively decorated to showcase the season, but are delicious plain too.
Peppermint fudge
One of my dear friends makes this every year. It is the only fudge I look forward to and eat, during the holidays. It combines the texture and richness of fudge, with the flavor of the holidays.
Almond roca
A rich, crunchy, and buttery filling, coated with a thin layer of chocolate and sprinkled with almonds make this one of my family's favorites. It is surprisingly easier to make than you think.


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Latin American literature, the national literatures of the Spanish-speaking countries of the Western Hemisphere. Historically, it also includes the literary expression of the highly developed American Indian civilizations conquered by the Spaniards. Over the years, Latin American literature has developed a rich and complex diversity of themes, forms, creative idioms, and styles. A concise survey of its development is provided here. For a history of literature written in Portuguese in Brazil, see Brazilian literature.
The colonial period
When the sails of Christopher Columbus's ships rose above the horizon on October 12, 1492, the peoples of what the Europeans would call the New World possessed their own forms of artistic verbal expression: from prayers, hymns, and myths to theatre of various kinds. But even the most advanced pre-Columbian civilizations lacked alphabetic writing, so their "literature" was exclusively oral (if one includes various mnemonic ideographs and pictographs), kept by the memory of individuals entrusted with that task and by the collectivity. A substantial number of these oral narratives were preserved, thanks to the efforts of friars, priests, and chroniclers as well as native historians who learned to read and write, and the narratives' themes, characters, topics, and even metaphors have been periodically adopted by Latin American literature. In the latter half of the 20th century, much work was done to recover and study pre-Columbian literature, including that part of it created in the aftermath of the European invasion.
The first European poetry to be heard in the New World was most surely the ballads sung by Columbus's sailors in their settlements on the island of Hispaniola (now comprising the states of Haiti and the Dominican Republic). These romances (narrative poems with eight-syllable lines), which harkened back to the Middle Ages, continued to be composed and sung in all areas where the Spaniards settled. More sophisticated poetry, following Italian Renaissance metres and themes, began to be written shortly thereafter in the capitals of the viceroyalties (or vice-kingdoms) of Mexico and Peru. These cities became the centres of European culture in America. The viceroyalty comprising what is today roughly Mexico, parts of the southwestern United States, and Central America was called the Viceroyalty of Nueva España (New Spain), and the one centred in Peru was the Viceroyalty of Peru. Because the viceregal capitals were organized like European courts, literary activity thrived there throughout the colonial period. There were poetic contests, theatre, public recitations, and literary gatherings like those of the academies and universities of Europe. With the development of the printing press in the 15th century, the Spanish empire depended more and more on the written word. Writing in all areas, particularly in law and religious doctrine, became paramount in the empire's daily life. The creation of a native elite, able to write and imbued with Western culture, was crucial to the empire's functioning, so colleges and universities were founded: a college in Mexico in 1536 and a university in 1551, a university in 1538 in Hispaniola, and a university in Lima in 1551. For learning purposes, large numbers of cartillas, or alphabet cards, were shipped from Spain.
The earliest literary activity
Although there must have been some early stirrings in Hispaniola, literary activity in the Western sense (that is, written forms that had a conscious literary purpose and employed an alphabetic language) began with the Hispanicization of Mexico City. The former Aztec capital was already a major metropolis when the Spaniards took over, and they strove earnestly to compete with the institutions of the vanquished, particularly in religion but also in theatre, poetry, and all forms of oral literature. Mexico City soon became a cultural centre, with poets, many of them born in Spain, who were attuned to every trend back in Europe. Poets already recognized in Spain, such as the Sevillian Gutierre de Cetina and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, lived in Mexico, as did Spanish-born prose writers such as the famous author of picaresque novels Mateo Alemán. The first Mexican-born poet to attain renown was Francisco de Terrazas, who composed fine sonnets in the Petrarchan style, probably during the last half of the 16th century.
The most distinguished composition to issue from these endeavours was Grandeza mexicana (1604; "Mexican Greatness" or "The Magnificence of Mexico City"), a long poem in praise of Mexico City by Bernardo de Balbuena. A highly elaborate piece, Balbuena's poem celebrates Mexico City as the crossroads of all worlds, a global centre through which flowed goods coming from Spain's Asian imperial outpost in the Philippines (and brought to Mexico's Pacific shores by the Manila Galleon) on their way to Veracruz, where they were picked up by the fleets that would take them, via Havana, to Seville, Spain. Focusing on the economic richness brought about by so much trade, Balbuena exults in the beauty of the city's horses, monuments, markets, fruit, and pageants.
The epic form proved to be the most important manifestation of Renaissance-style poetry in the first century of the colonial period. More specifically, these were poems written in the manner of Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando furioso and Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata. The best of all the epics written about the conquest of the New World was by far Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga's La Araucana (1569–89; The Araucaniad). The young soldier and courtier began the poem while engaged in campaigns against the Araucanian Indians of what is today Chile. While the poem has been praised for the authenticity lent by the fact that the poet was a participant in the wars he describes, and also for the very positive portrayal of the Araucanians, its deepest value lies in the poetic genius Ercilla brought to it. He was a powerful and refined poet, the supreme master of the eight-line octava real stanza in the Spanish language, and he had a great sense of the dramatic. Praised by Miguel de Cervantes in Don Quixote, Ercilla is considered a major writer in both the Spanish and Latin American canons.
Pedro de Oña's Arauco domado (1596; Arauco Tamed) was a worthy successor on the same theme, though it is both rhetorical and derivative. Oña, a native of the region, is named in conventional histories of literature as the first great Chilean poet. He has never achieved the popularity of Ercilla, however.
A Caribbean example of this epic tradition is Espejo de paciencia (1608; "Model of Patience"). Written in Cuba by the Canarian Silvestre de Balboa y Troya de Quesada, it is about the defeat of a French pirate who abducts a local ecclesiastic for ransom, and it reflects anti-Protestant fervour in the Spanish empire.
Chronicles of discovery and conquest
Yet what has been commonly considered, retrospectively, the most important 16th-century writing in the Americas is the chronicles of the discovery and conquest of the New World. This group of documents includes narrative accounts, legal documents (depositions, reports, arguments, etc.), and full-fledged histories. Because of their foundational aura, the most celebrated of the texts are Columbus's letters and reports to the Catholic Monarchs and their functionaries. There is an added charm in Columbus's awkwardness of style (Spanish was not his native tongue), his difficulties in describing objects unknown to Europeans, and his huge mistakes. In spite of these often attractive flaws, his accounts constitute a substantial legacy in the discourse of the West. The most egregious of Columbus's errors was, of course, his belief that he had arrived somewhere in Asia, which led to his adopting the name "Indies" for the lands he "discovered." Hence the misnomer "Indians" for all the natives of the American continent.
Columbus's letters and reports were quickly disseminated in the original and in Latin translations. Using these and other early accounts, the Italian humanist Peter Martyr d'Anghiera wrote, during the last years of the 15th and early years of the 16th century, the first history of the New World: De Orbe Novo decades (1516; De Orbe Novo: The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr d'Anghiera). Whereas Columbus was a navigator who could write a little, Peter Martyr was steeped in culture; during the 16th century his elegant Latin tract enjoyed a wide readership all over Europe.
While the discovery of the Caribbean was an astonishing event to Europeans, the discovery of Mexico was dazzling. Here were hitherto unknown civilizations that not only were populous and spread over vast territories but also had splendid cities and complex forms of government, arts, crafts, and religious practices. Knowledge of the conquest of Mexico was provided by its Spanish protagonist Hernán Cortés, whose Cartas de relación (1519–26; Letters from Mexico) told of the tortuous campaign by which a few hundred Spaniards took over the powerful Aztec empire, aided by gunpowder, horses, cunning, and the resentful peoples who were subject to Aztec rule. Cortés was a vigorous writer, with a flair for the dramatic and an eye for the kind of details that would captivate the European reader. He described battles but also customs, costumes, rituals, and the elaborate protocol of the Aztec court. Cortés was a master at self-dramatization and self-promotion. His haughty attitude provoked one of his soldiers, Bernal Díaz del Castillo, to write a prolix account of the conquest 50 years after the event. He wanted to give the common soldier's perspective. Díaz del Castillo's prodigious memory allowed him to recall vividly many of his companions, down to the names and colours of their horses. The Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España (1632; The True History of the Conquest of Mexico) is a monumental volume written by a man who claimed to have little formal education, which may explain the book's particular immediacy and charm. It is an invaluable source of information on both the common lives of the soldiers and the customs of the natives they defeated. Most memorable is Díaz del Castillo's description of the astonishment Spaniards felt at the sight of Mexico City, which he likens to the marvels found in the romances of chivalry. While not literary in the formal sense of Renaissance poetics, the Historia verdadera is literature in a modern sense in that it places authenticity above all rules of style or decorum. Nothing escapes the author's gaze; no detail is too insignificant or even repulsive. Of all the books to have come out of colonial Latin America, his is the one still most read.
But no book coming from the Spanish dominions attained a wider readership at the time than Bartolomé de Las Casas's Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (1542; A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies). Originally a Spanish settler, Las Casas was appalled at the treatment of the Indians by the rapacious Spaniards. He became a Dominican friar, steeped himself in the law, and began to write bitter denunciations of the conquistadors' actions; these he directed to the Spanish crown, whom he considered innocently unaware of what was being perpetrated in the monarch's name. In 1526 Las Casas also commenced the Historia de las Indias (selections appear in History of the Indies), a voluminous history of the conquest of the New World. It was not published in his lifetime, but Las Casas did publish a summary, the Brevísima relación, as a polemic, hoping that it would have an immediate and telling impact. It did, probably beyond his expectations. Las Casas's accusations were a factor in the issuance of the "New Laws" that went some way toward ending hereditary Spanish grants of land and Indians, thus limiting the Spaniards' use of natives for labour. His little book took on a life of its own abroad, being translated into several European languages and used by Spain's enemies to elaborate what has come to be known as the "Black Legend," a lurid account of what occurred to the Indians at the hands of the Spaniards. Brevísima relación became, in short, part of the religious polemics and wars between Spain and countries under the sway of the Protestant Reformation. Written in a dramatic style and perhaps exaggerating the atrocities perpetrated on the Indians, it was both a polemic and an appeal. Las Casas is known as "the Apostle of the Indians" and is revered in Latin America. He remained a controversial figure in Spain until the 20th century.
Historians of the New World
By the turn of the 17th century, most of the conquest of America had been accomplished, and historians, some appointed by the Spanish crown, attempted to provide a comprehensive overview of the event. Whereas at first chroniclers had prevailed—some of whom, such as Columbus and Cortés, had been protagonists—now the historians took over. Other than Las Casas, Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo and official court historian Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas continued the work that Peter Martyr had begun. The most significant among these new writers, however, was Garcilaso de la Vega, El Inca, the son of a Spanish conquistador and an Inca woman of noble lineage. Because of his combined heritage, Garcilaso, who was born in Peru but spent most of his adult life in Spain, is commonly considered to be the first truly Latin American writer. His masterpiece is Los comentarios reales de los Incas (1609, 1617; Royal Commentaries of the Incas, with a foreword by Arnold J. Toynbee), whose second part is called Historia general del Perú (General History of Peru).
The Comentarios reales tells the history of the Inca empire, providing a detailed description of all aspects of Inca culture. It is also the story of Garcilaso's maternal family, based on his own recollections of what his relatives told him and on the oral and written testimony of others. Garcilaso's avowed purpose is to correct the Spanish histories of the conquest of the Andes (hence the title "commentaries"), which were written by men who did not even know the Quechuan languages spoken by the natives of Peru. He gives a dramatic account that combines autobiography, ethnography, and history, all cast in an elegant and precise prose style. The Historia general del Perú relates the tale of the Spanish conquest and the civil wars among the Spanish, in which Garcilaso's father played a prominent, though controversial, role (he was accused of aiding those rebelling against the crown). It is the story of Garcilaso's paternal family, told in excruciating detail for it was intended to clear his father's name before the Spanish authorities.
Garcilaso is the most prominent of the native historians of the conquest because his book is of such a high literary quality and also because of his mixed heritage. In the 20th century his fellow Peruvian Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala was also intensively studied. Guamán Poma's lengthy and wide-ranging El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno (1612–15; "The First New Chronicle and Good Government," translated in abridgment as Letter to a King) is written in a very faulty Spanish, laced with Quechua words and troubled by Quechuan syntax, which gives his work an authentic and dramatic tone. The book is illustrated with Guamán Poma's primitive but trenchant full-page drawings of the events he narrates. Its author accuses the Spaniards of not abiding by their own Christian doctrine, which he himself has adopted, and demands the restoration of native leaders to local rule. The Primer nueva corónica is a laboriously told history that includes lore and descriptions of native customs and practices. Guamán Poma did not have much impact on Latin American literature and historiography because his manuscript was not discovered and published until the 20th century.
While historians were interpreting the events of the conquest and debating their consequences, literary life in the Spanish empire continued unabated. Renaissance poetry, as well as other cultural manifestations, soon evolved into Baroque forms, particularly in the viceroyalties of Mexico and Peru. A distinctive kind of Baroque art developed in colonial Latin America, a style that has come to be known as the Barroco de Indias, or "Baroque of the Indies," arguably the first authentic artistic style to emerge in the region.
The Barroco de Indias
In poetry, the Barroco de Indias begins with a gleeful acceptance of the manner originated by Luis de Góngora y Argote, the great Spanish Baroque poet, who had brought about a veritable revolution in poetic language. Góngora's poetry is difficult, laden with mythological allusions, bristling with daring metaphors that strain the limits of the language, and syntactically complex. He soon had numerous and ardent praisers and detractors in Spain and the viceroyalties. Among the poets, whatever their status, he was mostly admired and imitated. In fact, gongorismo is practically a whole poetic movement in colonial Latin America, affecting poetry through the 17th century and well into the 18th.
Baroque poetry is known for its vicious satires. Góngora, for example, delighted in heaping invective on his literary rivals. Viceregal courts outdid the Spanish court in pomposity, constantly providing ample targets for their poets to exercise satirical wit. Whereas Balbuena's Grandeza mexicana (1604) praised Mexico City, Mateo Rosas de Oquendo's Sátira hecha por Mateo Rosas de Oquendo a las cosas que pasan en el Pirú año de 1598 (1598; "Satire Written by Mateo Rosas de Oquendo About Things Happening in Peru in the Year 1598") satirized Peru. The Spanish-born wanderer lived for some time in Tucuman and Lima, where he turned a caustic eye on colonial society. Lima itself, profiting from silver mines in Potosí, now had literary academies, luxurious goods, and various forbidden pleasures, all of which called forth an elaborate invective from Rosas de Oquendo. He was surpassed in his criticism of colonial doings, however, by Juan del Valle y Caviedes, a shopkeeper who was also Spanish-born. Caviedes, the best-known satirical poet of the Barroco de Indias, focused on the frailties of the human body, to the extent that some readers believed him to be syphilitic as well as misanthropic. His most important work was Diente del Parnaso ("The Tooth of Parnassus"), a collection of 47 poems not published until 1873. These are given over to ridiculing the hapless doctors of Lima, who killed more often than they cured. Caviedes, as did other poets of the Barroco de Indias, found the scholastic "science" of the time lacking and showed a modern impatience with its crude methods of observation and reliance on received authority.
Probably the best practitioner of Gongorist poetry in colonial Latin America was Hernando Domínguez Camargo, a Jesuit born in Bogotá. Domínguez Camargo wrote a voluminous epic, Poema heroico de San Ignacio de Loyola (1666; "Heroic Poem in Praise of St. Ignatius Loyola"), praising the founder of the Jesuit order, but he is best remembered for a short ballad titled "A un salto por donde se despeña el arroyo de Chillo" ("To a Waterfall Where the Chillo Brook Crashes"). The said brook is portrayed as a bolting horse that smashes himself against rocks at the bottom of a waterfall, presenting an image of grotesque beauty typical of the Baroque.
The Barroco de Indias peaks in the poetry of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, who has become a canonical figure in Spanish-language literature. Sor Juana's life was dramatic: she rose to fame from illegitimacy and a precarious childhood. Invited to the viceregal court, she shone there and was later admitted to a convent, where she suffered a saintly death while assisting the victims of an epidemic. Despite all misguided efforts to make her a heretic, Sor Juana was a pious Catholic nun. As a writer, she was versatile, putting forth poetry, prose, and plays. Her extended philosophical poem Primero sueño (1692; "First Dream," Eng. trans. Sor Juana's Dream) ranked alongside Góngora's Soledades in the breadth and depth of its aspirations. "The Respuesta a Sor Filotea" (written 1691; "Answer to Sor Filotea," included in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Poems, 1985) is an early instance of feminism in its argument that women should be permitted to have intellectual interests. Sor Juana's love sonnets manage to be at the same time playful and profound. Her secular and religious plays are well-crafted. Along with Garcilaso de la Vega, but surpassing his literary accomplishments in both quality and quantity, Sor Juana stands at the apex of colonial letters. Her modern perspectives foreshadow the work of the 18th century and beyond.
Learn More in these related Britannica articles:
Brazilian literature
Brazilian literature, the body of written works produced in the Portuguese language in Brazil.…
children's literature: Latin AmericaAgain applying the chosen criteria, familiar patterns are recognizable: unevenness, as compared with the United States; belatedness—in Argentina the
cuento infantilis hardly detectable before 1900; and especially an unbalanced polarity, with didacticism decidedly the stronger magnet. The close connection of the church…
history of Latin America: The central areas in the mature period…a time most of the writers were acquainted with both hemispheres, but by the later 17th century locally born Spanish figures were becoming prominent, such as the famous poet, dramatist, and essayist Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a Jeronymite nun of Mexico. The late 16th and early 17th centuries…
Pablo Neruda…was perhaps the most important Latin American poet of the 20th century.…
Jorge Luis Borges…become classics of 20th-century world literature.…
More About Latin American literature5 references found in Britannica articles
Assorted References
- children's literature
- history of Latin America
contribution of
- Borges
- Neruda
- In Pablo Neruda
- Rabassa


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Business Meetings
The majority of time at business meetings is
reserved for ACNM members to debate motions that have been proposed by other
ACNM members regarding important issues and opportunities facing the midwifery
profession and the ACNM organization. Business meetings are open to all
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participate! To learn more, visit our ACNM
Business Meeting Motions FAQ page.
Closing ACNM Business Meeting: Saturday, May 17, 10:15 - 11:45am
How to Submit a Motion: Complete the 2014 ACNM Business Meeting Motion Form and e-mail it to [email protected] with the subject line: Motion form. Motion forms will also be available at the Annual Meeting.