text:
Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives
by Leonard MlodinowBy showing us the true nature of chance and
Editorial Reviews
The New York Times
A "drunkard's walk" is a type of random statistical distribution with important applications in scientific studies ranging from biology to astronomy. Mlodinow, a visiting lecturer at Caltech and coauthor with Stephen Hawking of A Briefer History of Time, leads readers on a walk through the hills and valleys of randomness and how it directs our lives more than we realize. Mlodinow introduces important historical figures such as Bernoulli, Laplace and Pascal, emphasizing their ideas rather than their tumultuous private lives. Mlodinow defines such tricky concepts as regression to the mean and the law of large numbers, which should help readers as they navigate the daily deluge of election polls and new studies on how to live to 100. The author also carefully avoids veering off into the terra incognita of chaos theory aside from a brief mention of the famous "butterfly effect," although he might have spent a little more time on the equally famous n-body problem that led to chaos theory. Books on randomness and statistics line library shelves, but Mlodinow will help readers sort out Mark Twain's "damn lies" from meaningful statistics and the choices we face every day. (May 13)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Product Details
- 9780307377548
- Publisher:
- Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
- Publication date:
- 05/13/2008
- Sold by:
- Random House
- Format:
- NOOK Book
- Pages:
- 352
- Sales rank:
- 151,476
- File size:
Read an Excerpt
Peering through the Eyepiece of Randomness
I remember, as a teenager, watching the yellow flame of the Sabbath candles dancing randomly above the white paraffin cylinders that fueled them. I was too young to think candlelight romantic, but still I found it magical-because of the flickering images created by the fire. They shifted and morphed, grew and waned, all without apparent cause or plan. Surely, I believed, there must be rhyme and reason underlying the flame, some pattern that scientists could predict and explain with their mathematical equations. "Life isn't like that," my father told me. "Sometimes things happen that cannot be foreseen." He told me of the time when, in Buchenwald, the Nazi concentration camp in which he was imprisoned and starving, he stole a loaf of bread from the bakery. The baker had the Gestapo gather everyone who might have committed the crime and line the suspects up. "Who stole the bread?" the baker asked. When no one answered, he told the guards to shoot the suspects one by one until either they were all dead or someone confessed. My father stepped forward to spare the others. He did not try to paint himself in a heroic light but told me that he did it because he expected to be shot either way. Instead of having him killed, though, the baker gave my father a plum job, as his assistant. "A chance event," my father said. "It had nothing to do with you, but had it happened differently, you would never have been born." It struck me then that I have Hitler to thank for my existence, for the Germans had killed my father's wife and two young children, erasing his prior life. And so were it not for the war, my father would never have emigrated to New York, never have met my mother, also a refugee, and never have produced me and my two brothers.
My father rarely spoke of the war. I didn't realize it then, but years later it dawned on me that whenever he shared his ordeals, it was not so much because he wanted me to know of his experiences but rather because he wanted to impart a larger lesson about life. War is an extreme circumstance, but the role of chance in our lives is not predicated on extremes. The outline of our lives, like the candle's flame, is continuously coaxed in new directions by a variety of random events that, along with our responses to them, determine our fate. As a result, life is both hard to predict and hard to interpret. Just as, looking at a Rorschach blot, you might see Madonna and I, a duck-billed platypus, the data we encounter in business, law, medicine, sports, the media, or your child's third-grade report card can be read in many ways. Yet interpreting the role of chance in an event is not like intepreting a Rorschach blot; there are right ways and wrong ways to do it.
We often employ intuitive processes when we make assessments and choices in uncertain situations. Those processes no doubt carried an evolutionary advantage when we had to decide whether a saber-toothed tiger was smiling because it was fat and happy or because it was famished and saw us as its next meal. But the modern world has a different balance, and today those intuitive processes come with drawbacks. When we use our habitual ways of thinking to deal with today's tigers, we can be led to decisions that are less than optimal or even incongruous. That conclusion comes as no surprise to those who study how the brain processes uncertainty: many studies point to a close connection between the parts of our brain that make assessments of chance situations and those that handle the human characteristic that is often considered our prime source of irrationality-our emotions. Functional magnetic resonance imaging, for example, shows that risk and reward are assessed by parts of the dopaminergic system, a brain-reward circuit important for motivational and emotional processes. The images show, too, that the amygdala, which is also linked to our emotional state, especially fear, is activated when we make decisions couched in uncertainty.
The mechanisms by which people analyze situations involving chance are an intricate product of evolutionary factors, brain structure, personal experience, knowledge, and emotion. In fact, the human response to uncertainty is so complex that sometimes different structures within the brain come to different conclusions and apparently fight it out to determine which one will dominate. For example, if your face swells to five times its normal size three out of every four times you eat shrimp, the "logical" left hemisphere of your brain will attempt to find a pattern. The "intuitive" right hemisphere of your brain, on the other hand, will simply say "avoid shrimp." At least that's what researchers found in less painful experimental setups. The game is called probability guessing. In lieu of toying with shrimp and histamine, subjects are shown a series of cards or lights, which can have two colors, say green and red. Things are arranged so that the colors will appear with different probabilities but otherwise without a pattern. For example, red might appear twice as often as green in a sequence like red-red-green-red-green-red-red-green-green-red-red-red, and so on. The task of the subject, after watching for a while, is to predict whether each new member of the sequence will be red or green.
The game has two basic strategies. One is to always guess the color that you notice occurs more frequently. That is the route favored by rats and other nonhuman animals. If you employ this strategy, you are guaranteed a certain degree of success but you are also conceding that you will do no better. For instance, if green shows up 75 percent of the time and you decide to always guess green, you will be correct 75 percent of the time. The other strategy is to "match" your proportion of green and red guesses to the proportion of green and red you observed in the past. If the greens and reds appear in a pattern and you can figure out the pattern, this strategy enables you to guess right every time. But if the colors appear at random, you would be better off sticking with the first strategy. In the case where green randomly appears 75 percent of the time, the second strategy will lead to the correct guess only about 6 times in 10.
Humans usually try to guess the pattern, and in the process we allow ourselves to be outperformed by a rat. But there are people with certain types of post-surgical brain impairment-called a split brain-that precludes the right and left hemispheres of the brain from communicating with each other. If the probability experiment is performed on these patients such that they see the colored light or card with only their left eye and employ only their left hand to signal their predictions, it amounts to an experiment on the right side of the brain. But if the experiment is performed so as to involve only their right eye and right hand, it is an experiment on the left brain. When researchers performed those experiments, they found that-in the same patients-the right hemisphere always chose to guess the more frequent color and the left hemisphere always tried to guess the pattern.
Making wise assessments and choices in the face of uncertainty is a rare skill. But like any skill, it can be improved with experience. In the pages that follow, I will examine the role of chance in the world around us, the ideas that have been developed over the centuries to help us understand that role, and the factors that often lead us astray. The British philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell wrote,
We all start from "naive realism," i.e., the doctrine that things are what they seem. We think that grass is green, that stones are hard, and that snow is cold. But physics assures us that the greenness of grass, the hardness of stones, and the coldness of snow are not the greenness of grass, the hardness of stones, and the coldness of snow that we know in our own experience, but something very different. In what follows we will peer at life through the eyepiece of randomness and see that many of the events of our lives, too, are not quite what they seem but rather something very different.
In 2002 the Nobel committee awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics to a scientist named Daniel Kahneman. Economists do all sorts of things these days-they explain why teachers are paid so little, why football teams are worth so much, and why bodily functions help set a limit on the size of hog farms (a hog excretes three to five times as much as a human, so a farm with thousands of hogs on it often produces more waste than the neighboring cities). Despite all the great research generated by economists, the 2002 Nobel Prize was notable because Kahneman is not an economist. He is a psychologist, and for decades, with the late Amos Tversky, Kahneman studied and clarified the kinds of misperceptions of randomness that fuel many of the common fallacies I will talk about in this book.
The greatest challenge in understanding the role of randomness in life is that although the basic principles of randomness arise from everyday logic, many of the consequences that follow from those principles prove counterintuitive. Kahneman and Tversky's studies were themselves spurred by a random event. In the mid-1960s, Kahneman, then a junior psychology professor at Hebrew University, agreed to perform a rather unexciting chore: lecturing to a group of Israeli air force flight instructors on the conventional wisdom of behavior modification and its application to the psychology of flight training. Kahneman drove home the point that rewarding positive behavior works but punishing mistakes does not. One of his students interrupted, voicing an opinion that would lead Kahneman to an epiphany and guide his research for decades.
"I've often praised people warmly for beautifully executed maneuvers, and the next time they always do worse," the flight instructor said. "And I've screamed at people for badly executed maneuvers, and by and large the next time they improve. Don't tell me that reward works and punishment doesn't work. My experience contradicts it." The other flight instructors agreed. To Kahneman the flight instructors' experiences rang true. On the other hand, Kahneman believed in the animal experiments that demonstrated that reward works better than punishment. He ruminated on this apparent paradox. And then it struck him: the screaming preceded the improvement, but contrary to appearances it did not cause it.
How can that be? The answer lies in a phenomenon called regression toward the mean. That is, in any series of random events an extraordinary event is most likely to be followed, due purely to chance, by a more ordinary one. Here is how it works: The student pilots all had a certain personal ability to fly fighter planes. Raising their skill level involved many factors and required extensive practice, so although their skill was slowly improving through flight training, the change wouldn't be noticeable from one maneuver to the next. Any especially good or especially poor performance was thus mostly a matter of luck. So if a pilot made an exceptionally good landing-one far above his normal level of performance-then the odds would be good that he would perform closer to his norm-that is, worse-the next day. And if his instructor had praised him, it would appear that the praise had done no good. But if a pilot made an exceptionally bad landing-running the plane off the end of the runway and into the vat of corn chowder in the base cafeteria-then the odds would be good that the next day he would perform closer to his norm-that is, better. And if his instructor had a habit of screaming "you clumsy ape" when a student performed poorly, it would appear that his criticism did some good. In this way an apparent pattern would emerge: student performs well, praise does no good; student performs poorly, instructor compares student to lower primate at high volume, student improves. The instructors in Kahneman's class had concluded from such experiences that their screaming was a powerful educational tool. In reality it made no difference at all.
This error in intuition spurred Kahneman's thinking. He wondered, are such misconceptions universal? Do we, like the flight instructors, believe that harsh criticism improves our children's behavior or our employees' performance? Do we make other misjudgments when faced with uncertainty? Kahneman knew that human beings, by necessity, employ certain strategies to reduce the complexity of tasks of judgment and that intuition about probabilities plays an important part in that process. Will you feel sick after eating that luscious-looking seviche tostada from the street vendor? You don't consciously recall all the comparable food stands you've patronized, count the number of times you've spent the following night guzzling Pepto-Bismol, and come up with a numerical estimate. You let your intuition do the work. But research in the 1950s and early '60s indicated that people's intuition about randomness fails them in such situations. How widespread, Kahneman wondered, was this misunderstanding of uncertainty? And what are its implications for human decision making? A few years passed, and Kahneman invited a fellow junior professor, Amos Tversky, to give a guest lecture at one of his seminars. Later, at lunch, Kahneman mentioned his developing ideas to Tversky. Over the next thirty years, Tversky and Kahneman found that even among sophisticated subjects, when it came to random processes-whether in military or sports situations, business quandaries, or medical questions-people's beliefs and intuition very often let them down.
Suppose four publishers have rejected the manuscript for your thriller about love, war, and global warming. Your intuition and the bad feeling in the pit of your stomach might say that the rejections by all those publishing experts mean your manuscript is no good. But is your intuition correct? Is your novel unsellable? We all know from experience that if several tosses of a coin come up heads, it doesn't mean we are tossing a two-headed coin. Could it be that publishing success is so unpredictable that even if our novel is destined for the best-seller list, numerous publishers could miss the point and send those letters that say thanks but no thanks? One book in the 1950s was rejected by publishers, who responded with such comments as "very dull," "a dreary record of typical family bickering, petty annoyances and adolescent emotions," and "even if the work had come to light five years ago, when the subject [World War II] was timely, I don't see that there would have been a chance for it." That book, The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, has sold 30 million copies, making it one of the best-selling books in history. Rejection letters were also sent to Sylvia Plath because "there certainly isn't enough genuine talent for us to take notice," to George Orwell for Animal Farm because "it is impossible to sell animal stories in the U.S.," and to Isaac Bashevis Singer because "it's Poland and the rich Jews again." Before he hit it big, Tony Hillerman's agent dumped him, advising that he should "get rid of all that Indian stuff."
From the Hardcover edition.
Meet the Author
Leonard Mlodinow received his doctorate in physics from the University of California, Berkeley, was an Alexander von Humboldt fellow at the Max Planck Institute, and now teaches about randomness to future scientists at Caltech. Along the way he also wrote for the television series MacGyver and Star Trek: The Next Generation. His previous books include Euclid's Window: The Story of Geometry from Parallel Lines to Hyperspace, Feynman's Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life, and, with Stephen Hawking, A Briefer History of Time. He lives in South Pasadena, California.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Customer Reviews
Average Review:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
this book on statistics is just too complicated for the aver. reader.
any book on stats should be generous with many charts or graphics.
very hard to read, even though i'm a seasoned statistician i find it hard to follow. i expected a lot more.
only good for maybe some professionals but not just general public.
Just finished this book and learned alot of interesting new ideas regarding the role of probability/chance in our lives. Found it fascinating as a physician, follower of my IRA investments, and as a mom. Ideas are laid out in a concise organized fashion. They are illustrated by a combination of anecdotes and more mathematical explanations which are pretty painless. It does not set out to be a comprehensive textbook on the idea of randomness, but to introduce and explain it to lay people such as myself.
If you've enjoyed any of Gladwell Malcolm's or Simon Singh's books, you should definitely try this one!
Leonard Mlodinow wrote an easy to read guide to influences of chance in our everyday life and shows how to benefit and how to evade unnecessary misfortunes.
The author explains all the necessary theoretical groundwork of stochastics and statistics 101 in a simple manner without employing any formulas. The latter makes the book accessible to anyone who is not too inclined towards mathematics, but slows reading for those knowledgeable in the field. Furthermore, he introduces the propositions in their historical context, thereby giving a catchy overview of the people and places involved. The examples he has picked are from a wide range of everyday situations, e.g., baseball, box-office performance, cancer in the vicinity of nuclear power plants, casino gambling, crime scenes, executive performance, gender guessing of twins, lotteries, medical diagnoses, Pearl Harbor, wine tastings, etc. These vivid illustrations raise the awareness of the random impacts in the reader¿s surroundings - influences that Mlodinow shows are generally under- or overestimated beacuse the human intuition is incapable of truly conceiving randomness. After reading this book you will have learnt three things: 1. Theory to do all sorts of calculations of randomness 2. Historical and biographical knowledge of great mathematicians 3. How randomness rules your life and what you can do to succeed anyway The only downside of the book trying to convey all those three messages is that you should not expect 220 pages filled with ¿How Randomness Rules Our Lives¿. (Therefore, it is a four-star book for me. However, once you know this - before the purchase - it is a five star book. That¿s how expectations influence or perceptions; see around p. 133 in the book.) The last 16 pages are dedicated references to other works that allow the interested reader to dig deep into the scientific realm of the topic. Enjoy the book! Jan Dominik Gunkel |
I have spent a great portion of my life observing the success (and sometimes failure) of using SPC in the workplace. This realm has been used and abused under many names such as TQM, Continuous Improvement, etc. What has always escaped me was the ability to use statistics to predict a supervisor or manager's success. Indeed, it may well be the most frustrating aspect of my career in human resources and production management.
Leonard Mlodinow provides great insight into the relationship between talent and success. While I have always believed in a person being in the right place at the right time, this book reinforces and bolsters the evidence that chance plays a greater role than what we suspect. The organization I currently work for is in the throes of bankruptcy. In the last few weeks, a very intelligent, loyal, and competent CEO resigned (?) and has been replaced by another intelligent and competent CEO. He was `swamped by the effect of the uncontrollable elements of the system' as written in the book. As pointed out on page 188, the board made a change in management due to an `illusion' of control over chance events. To actually see it and then to read an exact prediction in a book tells me we should heed the work of this author. He knows of which he writes. I am really interested in his `unequal influence' section and plan to do more experimental validation of this phenomenon in the near future. This book is relevant, compelling, authoritative and well-researched. I would recommend it to anyone in the field of business. I hope you find this review helpful. Michael L. Gooch, SPHR - Author of Wingtips with Spurs Cowboy Wisdom for Today's Business Leaders. |
Fascinating, fun review of history, mathematics, human nature, and how things come together in life.
When i lesrned these subjects in school we learned the analytical techniques. The fun of this book is the everyday applications and the charming anecdotes. Also the broad overview and comparison of probability and statistics and the historical development is a great component of the book.
I really enjoyed Feynman's Rainbow by the same author, and this book is good too. It does a good review of the history of the study of randomness and has interesting little stories related to all the protagonists.


text:
10 ways your website can project professionalism
Show Summary | Posted by warrior007 2524 days ago | Category: Web Design
With a couple tips and tricks you will be able to make your website project professionalism, making you a serious contender with the big guys. Learn more here.
Tweet This | Share to Facebook | Discuss | Bury

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History
by Erik Larson, Isaac Monroe Cline (Other), Isaac Monroe ClineEditorial Reviews
Isaac Cline, one of the government's first professional weathermen, predicted with confidence that hurricanes posed little threat to the town of Galveston, Texas.
He discovered how wrong he was on September 8, 1900, when the bodies of dead children started floating into the train station. By the end of the day, the deadliest natural disaster in American history had claimed the lives of at least 8,000 people and destroyed thousands of homes in the bustling seaside town.
Isaac's Storm, drawing on eyewitness accounts, meteorological research, and Cline's own reports, weaves a tale of that fateful hurricane and the families it touched. When the ocean swells descended on the island, children were ripped out of windows, restaurants collapsed with diners inside, and Cline himself narrowly survived by climbing aboard floating wreckage and drifting out to sea.
The residents of Galveston received virtually no warning from the country's newly created weather service, which failed to recognize the storm's severity. When the rains started, children danced in the puddles, built rafts, and teased pets into jumping off porches into water. Several hours later, they were swept away when the ocean came over the wharf and engulfed the buildings.
At the turn of the century, the nation was bolstered by advances in engineering and science and swollen with "technological confidence." There was speculation that man could control the weather with cannon blasts and forest fires. So how did the hurricane manage to elude the crackerjack team of men in the country's first weather bureau?
Isaac's Storm details the bureau's formation and its historic context. Critics of the U.S. Signal Corps, the agency in charge, were widespread at the time. Some argued that it was not the place of man to study the weather, which was God's province. Others, including Mark Twain, simply pointed out that they weren't very good at it.
The storm, which started forming over Africa, passed over the Atlantic, gathering force as it approached Cuba. Weathermen there recognized its deadly potential, but their American counterparts were reluctant to be criticized for causing a panic. They also failed to notice when it took an odd left turn and started heading toward the Gulf of Mexico rather than the Atlantic states, where it was predicted to hit.
With harrowing detail, Isaac's Storm describes the events of that day and the fateful errors in judgment that led up to it. Blending meteorological science with history, it also offers an insightful look at American attitudes toward nature.
"They collected readings of temperature, pressure, and wind and based solely on those determined whether a storm existed or not.... Cuban meteorologists had the same instruments as their American counterparts, and took the same measurements, but read into them vastly greater potential for evil. The Cubans wrote of hunches and beliefs, sunsets and foreboding. Where the Americans saw numbers, the Cubans saw poetry," writes author Erik Larson.
Isaac Cline watched the falling barometer in Galveston, but nothing in the daily dispatches suggested the storm was headed in his direction. His brother Joseph, also employed by the weather bureau, watched the ocean's ominous signs and begged to differ. But for a few sea captains caught in the storm far offshore, nobody knew it had turned into a monster until it raked Galveston, precariously built on a narrow island spit.
When the storm subsided, thousands of bodies were loaded on barges and taken out to sea. The death toll stands higher than that from any other hurricane or natural disaster in American history, including the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. By detailing the events, errors, and consequences of that historic day, Isaac's Storm serves as a reminder that the forces of nature can defy logic and astound scientists in any era.
Jennifer Langston
The Christian Science Monitor
But if a major hurricane does menace the New England coast, Isaac's Storm will not be the most comfortable book to have by the bedside as the wind shrieks and the waves rise.
The storm in question - its designation as Isaac's is another question - is the hurricane that struck Galveston, Texas, on Saturday, Sept. 8, 1900. It was a storm of truly frightful proportions, turning a thriving, bustling city into a wasteland of rubble in which were buried the bodies of as many as 8,000 of its residents.
Erik Larson's accomplishment is to have made this great-storm story a very human one - thanks to his use of the large number of survivors' accounts - without ignoring the hurricane itself.
The storm crossed Cuba on Sept. 4 and was predicted to turn north toward the Atlantic coast. Instead, it steered across the Gulf of Mexico and made landfall just south of Galveston. The conventional wisdom of the time held that Galveston's sloping offshore shelf would temper the force of storm-driven waves, and there are accounts of children playing in the surf just hours before the hurricane-force winds drove the sea over the beach and far into the city.
By early evening, Larson writes, ''the sea had erected an escarpment of wreckage three stories tall and several miles long'' that was ''so tall, so massive that it acted as a kind of seawall'' - except that as the waves shoved it forward, ''it scraped the city clean of all structures and all life.''
This is clearly more than ''Isaac's storm.'' Building the story around one character is a useful device, but perhaps it was done mainly as an (over-)reaction to the impersonality of Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm.'' True, Isaac Cline is an easily identifiable character, and there is a serious question about whether, as head of the weather bureau, he fatally underestimated the potential for destruction from a storm hitting Galveston. But curiously, the story seems to stall whenever Cline becomes the focus - and too often Larson has to pump up his central character with ''what was Isaac thinking'' speculation. And frankly, Larson's bit players too often upstage Cline.
Among the incidents that capture the physical and emotional impact of the storm surge is that experienced by merchant (and amateur meteorologist) Samuel O. Young. His house was six blocks in from the beachfront, and his family was safely out of town, so Young stayed, watching the storm's progress from his second-floor windows. Curious about ''a heavy thumping that seemed to come from a downstairs bedroom,'' he went to investigate. Looking down the stairwell, he saw that the water had risen almost to the top step. ''The heavy thudding ... had to be furniture. A bureau, perhaps, bumping against the ceiling as the water rose and fell.''
By that time, in the early evening, only one other house still stood in Young's immediate neighborhood: that of a family named Youens. As Young watched, he saw it ''begin a slow pirouette.'' In his account, ''Mr. Youens' house rose like a huge steamboat, was swept back and suddenly disappeared.'' Knowing that the parents and their two children had remained inside, he said, ''my feelings were indescribable as I saw them go.''
And there are dozens of other vividly recounted incidents that could be singled out to illustrate the dimensions of the story and Larson's skillful telling of it.
It is a tribute to his control of his material - and of his writing - that there is only one moment at which he seems to have allowed his emotional response to overtake the story.
''Suddenly,'' Larson writes, ''the prospect of watching their children die became very real'' for families trapped in their houses. ''Whom did you save? Did you seek to save one child, or try to save all, at the risk of ultimately saving none? ... And if you saved none, what then? How did you go on?''
The sophisticated reader may find the emotionalism unsettling, a lapse in literary judgment. But ultimately, as the accounts of just such situations multiply thumping like Mr. Young's furniture at the reader's consciousness - that series of questions universalizes the account of one storm in one place at one time. The storm, the place, the time, after all, could be here and now.
Boston Globe
In a crucial scene in Isaac's Storm, Erik Larson's bestselling history of the 1900 Galveston hurricane, meteorologist Joseph Cline warns some residents that they should evacuate before a storm hits their town. But another meteorologist -- his older brother, Isaac -- insists they should stay. The debate takes place on Sept. 8, 1900 -- shortly before the hurricane slams into the thriving Texas town and kills thousands of people in a cataclysm that remains the most fatality-heavy natural disaster in U.S. history.
Isaac's Storm takes place in an era when the field of meteorology was just getting off the ground. While weather-watchers like Isaac and Joseph Cline had a strong faith in their scientific abilities, they obviously didn't have the technology that could have blessed their forecasts with more accuracy.
Despite his failings as a scientist, it is Isaac rather than his brother who has gone down in Galveston-area legend as the Paul Revere who warned residents to leave before the hurricane raged into town. Nearly two weeks after the storm, the New York Evening Sun noted that "the warnings which were sent out by Dr. [Isaac] Cline are said to have saved thousands of lives along the coast."
But in the new book's account, Isaac is an incompetent rather than a soothsayer, misreading the fatal portents in the atmosphere. Now Larson, a Time magazine contributor who started researching his book five years ago, has run into some local resistance to his revisionist take.
Meteorologist Lew Fincher, vice president of the Houston chapter of the American Meteorological Society, thinks Larson has made Isaac a scapegoat. Fincher defends Isaac's role in the hurricane: "I think he studied everything he could. He was going by the knowledge that they had with them in the bureau."
According to Isaac's Storm, the two brothers barely spoke after the storm; by the time they both died -- within a week of each other in 1955 -- they hadn't been in touch "for years." But Fincher says that he has read both brothers' journals and that Larson overdramatized their relationship: "I think that he was trying to come up with a personal conflict to make the book more human. I've read a lot on both of those guys, and there's nothing out of the ordinary that any brothers wouldn't have experienced."
According to Fincher, Larson neglected to read an account in a book that was published shortly after the storm, The Story of the Galveston Flood, in which the brothers are quoted speaking of each other quite warmly. The cold, stilted tone of their letters he shrugs off as a combination of their very formal Victorian higher education and their military background. On a scientific note, he takes exception to Larson's classification of the hurricane as a Category 5 storm: "I'd call it a 4, maybe a 3." (Nevertheless, he considers Larson's book "a great read.")
Larson, however, is adamant in his insistence that his reporting is dead on. "There's pretty good evidence that the legend is not completely accurate," he said on the phone from his Seattle home. "Most likely [Isaac] did go to the beach and warn some people -- but did he warn 6,000? I don't see how that is possible." Alluding to documents he found at the National Archives, he said that two accounts point to Isaac's telling some people to stay in Galveston.
As for the strain in the brothers' relationship, Larson says that he assumed it was common knowledge and insists that he had no authorial motive to bend the truth: "It would have been an equally good story if they hadn't have been rivals, but you've got to call them as you see them." Larson says that one formidable expert, Neil Frank (whom Fincher calls "the Babe Ruth of hurricanes"), mentioned the rivalry to him. When pressed for the source of his information about the epic silence between the brothers, he referred to Frank and to an article in the Southwest Quarterly. (Neither is cited in the book as a source for the information.) Larson maintains that he, like Fincher, read the journals of both men very closely and that the tension is unmistakable. According to Larson, although Joseph endured the storm with his brother, his lengthy account of it never mentions Isaac. "It's either funny or very tragic," Larson says.
As far as his classification of the storm, Larson concedes the controversy but stands by his reasoning. "Officially it was a 4," he says. "Having spent two and a half years of intense research on this storm, I'm convinced it was a 5. The bottom line is that no one can know for sure." (After all, nobody back then had Air Force planes to monitor oncoming storms.) Larson also says that he gave the manuscript to Hugh E. Willoughby, a leader in the field of hurricane research, and Willoughby had no problem with the classification. ("Any lingering errors are entirely my fault, not his," Larson's acknowledgment notes, using the standard formula.)
The meteorological journal Weatherwise cited a host of what it deemed factual errors in Isaac's Storm, which didn't prevent it from giving the book a rave review. Putting it in a class with Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm and Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air -- hugely popular books that have also been called into question for their accuracy -- Weatherwise calls Larson's narrative "reading at its best."
NY Times Book Review
Daniel Hays, author of My Old Man and the Sea
"Isaac's Storm so fully swept me away into another place, another time that I didn't want it to end. I braced myself from the monstrous winds, recoiled in shock at the sight of flailing children floating by, and shook my head at the hubris of our scientists who were so convinced that they had the weather all figured out. Erik Larson's writing is luminous, the story absolutely gripping. If there is one book to read as we enter a new millennium, it's Isaac's Storm, a tale that reminds us that there are forces at work out there well beyond our control, and maybe even well beyond our understanding."
Alex Kotlowitz, author of The Other Side of the River and There Are No Children Here
"There is electricity in these pages, from the crackling wit and intelligence of the prose to the thrillingly described terrors of natural mayhem and unprecedented destruction. Though brimming with the subtleties of human nature, the nuances of history, and the poetry of landscapes, Isaac's Storm still might best be described as a sheer page turner."
Melissa Faye Greene, author of Praying for Sheetrock and The Temple Bombing
Product Details
- 9780375708275
- Publisher:
- Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
- Publication date:
- 07/28/2000
- Edition description:
- First Vintage Books Edition
- Pages:
- 336
- Sales rank:
- 16,881
- Product dimensions:
- 5.10(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.70(d)
Read an Excerpt
Washington, D.C.
Sept. 9, 1900
To: Manager, Western Union
Houston, Texas
Do you hear anything about Galveston?
Willis L. Moore,
Chief, U.S. Weather Bureau
The Beach
September 8, 1900
Throughout the night of Friday, September 7, 1900, Isaac Monroe Cline found himself waking to a persistent sense of something gone wrong. It was the kind of feeling parents often experienced and one that no doubt had come to him when each of his three daughters was a baby. Each would cry, of course, and often for astounding lengths of time, tearing a seam not just through the Cline house but also, in that day of open windows and unlocked doors, through the dew-sequined peace of his entire neighborhood. On some nights, however, the children cried only long enough to wake him, and he would lie there heart-struck, wondering what had brought him back to the world at such an unaccustomed hour. Tonight that feeling returned.
Most other nights, Isaac slept soundly. He was a creature of the last turning of the centuries when sleep seemed to come more easily. Things were clear to him. He was loyal, a believer in dignity, honor, and effort. He taught Sunday school. He paid cash, a fact noted in a directory published by the Giles Mercantile Agency and meant to be held in strictest confidence. The small red book fit into a vest pocket and listed nearly all Galveston's established citizens--its police officers, bankers, waiters, clerics, tobacconists, undertakers, tycoons, and shipping agents--andrated them for credit-worthiness, basing this appraisal on secret reports filed anonymously by friends and enemies. An asterisk beside a name meant trouble, "Inquire at Office," and marred the fiscal reputations of such people as Joe Amando, tamale vendor; Noah Allen, attorney; Ida Cherry, widow; and August Rollfing, housepainter. Isaac Cline got the highest rating, a "B," for "Pays Well, Worthy of Credit." In November of 1893, two years after Isaac arrived in Galveston to open the Texas Section of the new U.S. Weather Bureau, a government inspector wrote: "I suppose there is not a man in the Service on Station Duty who does more real work than he. . . . He takes a remarkable degree of interest in his work, and has a great pride in making his station one of the best and most important in the country, as it is now."
Upon first meeting Isaac, men found him to be modest and self-effacing, but those who came to know him well saw a hardness and confidence that verged on conceit. A New Orleans photographer captured this aspect in a photograph that is so good, with so much attention to the geometries of composition and light, it could be a portrait in oil. The background is black; Isaac's suit is black. His shirt is the color of bleached bone. He has a mustache and goatee and wears a straw hat, not the rigid cake-plate variety, but one with a sweeping scimitar brim that imparts to him the look of a French painter or riverboat gambler. A darkness suffuses the photograph. The brim shadows the top of his face. His eyes gleam from the darkness. Most striking is the careful positioning of his hands. His right rests in his lap, gripping what could be a pair of gloves. His left is positioned in midair so that the diamond on his pinkie sparks with the intensity of a star.
There is a secret embedded in this photograph. For now, however, suffice it to say the portrait suggests vanity, that Isaac was aware of himself and how he moved through the day, and saw himself as something bigger than a mere recorder of rainfall and temperature. He was a scientist, not some farmer who gauged the weather by aches in a rheumatoid knee. Isaac personally had encountered and explained some of the strangest atmospheric phenomena a weatherman could ever hope to experience, but also had read the works of the most celebrated meteorologists and physical geographers of the nineteenth century, men like Henry Piddington, Matthew Fontaine Maury, William Redfield, and James Espy, and he had followed their celebrated hunt for the Law of Storms. He believed deeply that he understood it all.
He lived in a big time, astride the changing centuries. The frontier was still a living, vivid thing, with Buffalo Bill Cody touring his Wild West Show to sellout crowds around the globe, Bat Masterson a sportswriter in New Jersey, and Frank James opening the family ranch for tours at fifty cents a head. But a new America was emerging, one with big and global aspirations. Teddy Roosevelt, flanked by his Rough Riders, campaigned for the vice presidency. U.S. warships steamed to quell the Boxers. There was fabulous talk of a great American-built canal that would link the Atlantic to the Pacific, a task at which Vicomte de Lesseps and the French had so catastrophically failed. The nation in 1900 was swollen with pride and technological confidence. It was a time, wrote Sen. Chauncey Depew, one of the most prominent politicians of the age, when the average American felt "four-hundred-percent bigger" than the year before.
There was talk even of controlling the weather--of subduing hail with cannon blasts and igniting forest fires to bring rain.
In this new age, nature itself seemed no great obstacle.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Meet the Author
Erik Larson, a contributor to Time magazine, is the author of The Naked Consumer and Lethal Passage (Crown, 1994). His work has appeared in The Atlantic, Harper's, and other national magazines. He lives in Seattle.
Brief Biography
- Hometown:
- Seattle, Washington
- Date of Birth:
- January 1, 1954
- Place of Birth:
- Brooklyn, New York
- Education:
- B.A., University of Pennsylvania, 1976; M.S., Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, 1978
Customer Reviews
Average Review:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
I love to read history books, however some can be hard to get into. This is not the case with this book! I read it in less than a week. It was very well written and gave a gripping account of a horrible storm. It really makes you realize how lucky we are today to have advance hurricane warnings!
This was very well written with a great deal of historical research presented in a very readable, non-dry narrative. The book chronicles events leading up to and including accounts of the hurricane of 1900 that wiped out Galveston. It is seen in large part via the chief meteorologist there at the time. This is not the usual type of book I would read. I expected to be bored by the meteorology information, and though there was some in the first of the book I didn't find enthralling, it was worth reading to understand the whole picture. Once the actual hurricane accounts started, I couldn't put the book down! The 1900 hurricane in Galveston was a tragedy that could have been mitigated greatly in terms of massive loss of lives had only the warning signs been investigated. There was arrogance on the part of the main meteorologist in Galveston, and in addition there were also in-house political issues among U.S. weather service leaders and personnel that stifled communication or collaboration. The accounts of the survivors who lived through the hurricane are horrifying but riveting.
I couldn't help but read this once I saw it. My wifes grandfather survived the storm as in infant. He was was born in August of 1900 and the storm came the next month. His mother told him their two story home floated down the street with them in it. My mother in law gave me a pendulum clock that I am looking at. She said it floated in Angelo's restaurant. I can still see water stains on its face as I write this. I don't think I understood what people in my family knew about this event until I read Isaac's Storm. I go to Galveston and wonder why some many homes are being built on the beach.Don't they know what happened? It will happen sadly again. I survived Carla in the center of the storm in 1961 in Port Lavaca. I know what can happen. After Galveston and after New Orleans you would think others would know. They don't. Darrell Cameron Houston Resident
Isaac's Storm was a great book. It takes place in Galveston, TX on September 8th and 9th, 1900. There was a hurricane offcoast and Washington DC told Isaac Cline that it was no threat, it was great weather, so he believed them. But he saw the ocean get worse and worried. When he figured out that this was a bad hurricane, it was too late for many people. The city was destroyed and about 6000 people were dead, including his wife and kid. Issac carried it on his shoulders that it was his fault, that he was careless once, and a horrible hurricane hit. This book's message is that man's faliure to predict when, where, and how a storm will hit can lead to a horrible ending. Isaac's Storm has 6 chapters, each one leading up to the storm. Each one, telling a little bit more about this misunderstanding, and Isaac's training. This book is perfect for teenagers and up. It is a great weather adventure story. I love this book, I think that it has a great balance between the actual storm and it's effects on so many people and the people that try to prevent storms like the category 5 hurricane that hit Galveston.
I had always heard of this terrible hurricane and I wanted to read about the actual event. I did not expect this book to be so captivating and entertaining. The impending doom is an underlying current throughout the book. The author inserts many personal perspectives including the weather forecaster's family along with many other Galveston residents. The reader gets a visual and factual perspective of life at the turn of the century and the crude tools used to predict the weather. This lack of technology and lack of communication led to the deaths of over 10,000.
I recommend this book without any hesitation. The research is well done, the vision of life in 1900 and the unspeakable power of God's power is wonderfully presented by Mr. Larson.
I could hardly stop reading this book. It was touching and horrifying at the same time as Mr. Larson told the story of the deadly Galveston Hurricane. He is very good at telling a story from brief documented facts. I've enjoyed all of his books and would recommend any of them. I learn so much history while enjoying a good read.
Since I live in Galveston and having been here thru Ike, I found this book very vivid, emotional excellent!
Compelling and full of period details
I actually heard this in the audio version and had to have the book for myself! I was hooked from the beginning, anyone interested in history, this is a MUST READ!
This is story of a tragic event in American history. The book brought history to life and keeps you in engaged to the very end. This book made me appreciate weather stations even more.
Good book but not my favorite one by Larson, ive read all of his except Dead Wake. This book was a little slow for me through most of it until the storm hits, then it comes alive and fascinating.
Issac's Storm just topped my list as my favorite non-fiction book, next to Devil in the White City. I was really able to put myself in the shoes of the citizens there that day, experiencing the storm first hand. Incredible detail provided. Amazing that this is non-fiction. Once the storm hit, I couldn't put the book down. I read straight through - simply captivating. How terrible to have been there. Great read, and informative.
I wish that the street maps were full size. Their miniscule size in the e-book version made them useless. It would have been helpful to have a readable map to reference since so much of the story referred to specific street locations.
I felt frustrated that the actual Galviston storm narrative doesn't really begin until you've read about a third of the way through. I didn't mind the technical weather related information....but the extensive background info of characters that had no major role in the story was tiresome. The actual storm experiences (once they finally started) told from different points of view and vantage points was riviting and put a face on this terrible tragedy. After reading this book I will never again hear about a hurricane's aftermath in the news without feeling empathy for the souls effected.
Finally, I would love to have seen some before and after photos of the city included in the book. A good read.
Hello Mr. Larson,
I encountered and read your book twice and once, respectively. The first time was in Prof. Hughes' class. I live very close to Galveston Texas in Deer Park. I was born almost a quarter of a century ago. The book's title is a little misleading, I think. The storm did not belong to any man. However, the truth in the title I glean from this hope: "Any occurrence is only real if it is shared." That hope is why I write. I traveled unconventionally through six South Western states before my twenty first birthday. My twenty first birthday passed as I sat at a wooden table in Richardson State Hospital. I suppose I needed something like help. There were no experienced women in there to make love to me like so many had back home. Perhaps we should rethink medicine, no?
The second encounter with your book occurred I think in 2012. The guard passed by my cell with a cart of books and I recognized the title and so chose it. I didn't read it because I spent the rest of that day and long into the night studying the map in the first few pages. Galveston is the closest body of salt water to me. I recently jogged along the shore there with music in my earphones. The ocean can be medicine. How that the ocean could be so soothing and yet so destructive. I suppose Mr. Bruce Lee said it well when he suggested his pupils (?) "Be like water."
Your friend,
Joseph Mark Augustini
713 322 6483
A good read as are all Larson's works. Very enjoyable
Well researched. It held my attention great book
Very interesting and compelling story of the hurricane and how it affected the area. Love how the author puts the story together.
Very interesting
The detail in this book is amazing and very interesting. I recommend it highly.


text:
Around and around we go, as New York's Congregation Shearith Israel plans to appeal a ruling last month, when it lost control over the oldest synagogue in the U.S.
Manhattan's Shearith Israel and Newport, Rhode Island's Jeshuat Israel are both claiming ownership over silver, colonial-era rimonim. A judge will soon declare the lawful owner.
When a woman learns the art of Torah chanting, she realizes she is part of a new religious tradition—as well as a very old, sacred one


text:
I hate my handwriting lol.
Mine's bad and I know it. Thank goodness for computers.
Hmm I'll have to take a pic later. I'm in the middle of cleaning
Quoting AllofFive19:
I think your handwriting is fine.Mine is horrible
I sure did. I'm very critical of my handwriting.
Quoting erikays:Did you scan this into your comp? Looks neat! Quoting AllofFive19:
My handwriting is actually quite nice (when I am not rushing through things), but I'm on the road as I type this and have no way to scan a copy of it now.
Already Joined? LOG IN
© 2017 CMI Marketing, Inc. All rights reserved.


text:
originally a calling away, an interruption, a distraction, is used in Britain, though not in U.S., as a stylish synonym for vocation or calling, which it is properly in antithesis. This has destroyed a useful differentation; but vocation has retained the idea of 'calling'; a man is fortunate if his avocation, in the sense of his occupation, is also his vocation.
H.W. Fowler A Dictionary of Modern English Usage 2nd Edition
Sign up
Need help? firstname.lastname@example.com


text:
Wasafi Records Presents The East African Super Star Singer, Diamond Platnumz featuring the West African heavyweight music group made up of a twin brothers PSquare channel their inner Lionel Richie in this mega Pan-African collaboration titled Kidogo. The song, which samples the classic "All Night Long", was recorded in Nigeria back in January.
The Song Kidogo was produced by Shirko (Tanzania) and Laizer (Wasafi Records), mixed by V-Tek.
448 total views, 1 views today


text:
A film titled 'Police begin anti-faulty-brake drive! Drastic campaign against lax motorists brings quick results' Police conducts a free anti faulty brake test in Berkeley in California. A cop checks car's wheels. Driver takes the car to country side and it is thrown from a cliff into water.
Clouds move in the sky. A college student lies in the grass with his hands behind his head, then joins two fellow students of differing nationalities as they enter the main gate of a college. Exteriors of the college building. A young engineer draws designs. Young woman draws a sketch. A youngster examines corn and makes notes. A man reads a medicine book. International Houses in New York, Chicago and Berkeley, California. Individuals arrive at International House Berkeley buildings. Interiors of the building. Student named Carlos walks up the steps. He is greeted by a staff person who escorts him inside. In the lobby, Alan Blaisdell, Executive Director of Berkeley's International House, meets him and escorts him upstairs.
A Football Match between California and U.C.L.A. (University of California, Los Angeles) Teams at Berkeley in California. A huge crowd gathers in the spectator area to watch the match. The California Golden Bears wins the match. California Golden Bears scores 20 against a score of 7 of U.C.L.A. team.
A football match between the California Golden Bears and the University of Southern California Trojans in Berkeley, California. People gather in a stadium to watch the match. The match in progress. People cheering for the teams. The California Golden Bears win the match 21-7.
Hiller's coaxial bladed helicopter is demonstrated and helicopter delivers cigarettes to veterans in the U.S. Berkeley, California: "Hiller Copter" on ground. It is coaxial bladed helicopter, a ship which has rigid blades and no tail rotor. Stanley Hiller, 19 year old inventor demonstrates his coaxial bladed helicopter at Berkeley football stadium. Boston, Massachusetts: Filene's Department stores deliver cartons of cigarettes to patients at the Veteran's Hospital with an ultra modern helicopter. The Helicopter takes off and lands at Veteran's Hospital in West Roxbury. Cigarettes are distributed to veterans.
Old graduates of University of California gather for Charter Day in Berkeley, California. Traditional procession of gowned dignitaries marks 63rd Anniversary of University of California. Buildings in background. Trees lined on sides of the road. A huge crowd seated.


text:
Tagged with: Hasselblad
Tech Posted 02/04/2014
Hasselblad Introduces 'Elite' HV Camera
Swedish camera maker Hasselblad unveiled recently their latest high-end model, the "Elite" HV. It features a 24.3MP full-frame sensor and a Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T* 2,8/24-70 ZA lens, as well as... -
Tech Posted 11/03/2013
Hasselblad Stellar Special Edition Collection
Denmark-based Hasselblad has produced quality camera products for over 50 years. Their latest release is a "Special Edition" range of their Stellar Collection. The line consists of a trio of...


text:
Original Air Date: February 25, 2010
From General Practice to Profitable Practice - Building a Prepaid Decompression Business
Presenter: Joseph Mannella, DC
Many chiropractors have added decompression to their practice, but some still struggle to make it prosperous. Establishing a business based on prepaid decompression patients requires a plan. Learn from a DC who has successfully implemented one.
You Will Learn How To:


text:
« back to Designing Woodworking Projects forum
Forum topic by jerrells | posted 10-18-2013 01:37 PM | 1229 views | 0 times favorited | 1 reply |
Does anyone have a plan, or a source for a plan for and Old Fashion Shoe Shine Box like the one pictured. I have searched and do not find anything. I need as detailed plan as I can find for this customer. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for any help. -- Just learning the craft my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ practiced. |


text:
You're more than welcome to Edit the info or Upload a manga chapter for share. You can also keep track this manga by subscribe the RSS feed or Bookmark it.
Released: | Author(s): | Artist(s): | Genre(s): |
2003 | Age | Takao Ukyou | Comedy, Harem, Romance, School Life, Shounen |
Based on the game by Age, spin-off of the Kimi ga Nozomu Eien game.
From Solaris-SVU:
Takeru and Sumika have been neighbors and friends since they were little, but when a mysterious girl arrives, and is found in bed with Takeru, their daily lives will be thrown into chaos.


text:
Longfellow Peak, Vulture Peak | [ Sizes: Orig | Med | Small | Thumb ] | |||
Camas Ridge dominates the lower half of this image; Longfellow Peak (right) does a good job on the upper half. Vulture Peak (with snow on its two summits) is to the left of, and behind, Longfellow. South Vulture is the left portion of the Vulture massif. Vulture and Longfellow are two of almost everyone's favorite GNP peaks, are quite difficult to reach, and thus not climbed with any frequency. Photo by Vernon, July 5, 2007. | Image Data
Image ID: 328953 Hits: 1266 Lat/Lon: 48.65800°N / 113.892°W Object Title: Longfellow Peak, Vulture Peak |


text:
Luxury Dark Chocolate Yule Log Recipe
With Delicious White Chocolate & Hazelnut Filling.
It is a Christmas tradition within my family for us all to get together for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. To share the burden of the workload of cooking on Christmas Day, each of the family members take charge of one of the courses. This year was my turn to do the desserts, Christmas cake and Chocolate Yule Log. Over the next few weeks I will post some of the recipes I used, and will start with my simple yet luxurious Chocolate Yule Log.
I was given the most amazing Chocolate Yule Log recipe by my younger sister, Jenny. This is a really simple and fail-safe Chocolate Yule Log recipe and the white chocolate filling with toasted hazelnuts provides a luxurious and refreshing dimension compared to the usual boring cream fillings. This is a very naughty yet extremely yummy delight that all the family will enjoy.
(Serves 8 people)
Cup (60g) plain flour
tablespoons cocoa powder
½ cup
(90g) caster sugar
butter, melted and cooled
tablespoon caster sugar, extra
white chocolate, chopped
½ cup
(125ml) cream
hazelnuts, toasted and finely chopped
dark chocolate chopped
½ cup
(125ml) cream
(Confectioner's) sugar to dust
1. Brush
a 30x35cm (approx. 11.8 x 13.8 inches) Swiss roll tin with oil or melted butter and line the base and sides
with baking paper (Note: If you don't have a tin this size, it is okay to use a slightly smaller tin and have a thicker sponge). Preheat the oven to a moderate 180 degrees C (350 degrees
F/gas mark 4). Sift the flour and cocoa powder together twice. Using electric beater, beat the eggs and sugar
together for 5 mins or until light and fluffy and increased in volume.
2. Sift
the flour mixture over the eggs and pour the butter around the edge of the
bowl. Using a large metal spoon, gently
fold the mixture together to incorporate the flour and butter. Take care not to over mix and lose too much
3. Spread
the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for about 12 mins, or until the
sponge springs back to the light touch.
Sprinkle the extra caster sugar over a clean tea towel. Turn the sponge out onto the tea towel, close
to one end. Role up the sponge and tea
towel together length ways and leave to cool completely.
4. To
make the filling, put the white chocolate in a small heatproof bowl. Bring a small pan of water to the boil, then
remove from the heat. Add the cream to
the chocolate and stand the bowl over the pan of water making sure the base of
the bowl does not touch the water, until the chocolate is soft. Stir until smooth. Repeat with the dark chocolate and cream for
the topping. Leave the white chocolate
mixture until it has cooled to room temperature and is the consistency of cream.
Leave the dark chocolate mixture until it cools to a spreadable
5. Using
electric beaters, beat the white chocolate mixture until soft peaks form – do not
over beat. Unroll the sponge, remove the
tea towel and paper, and spread with the filling, finishing 2cm from the
end. Sprinkle with the hazelnuts. Re-roll the sponge, and trip the ends. Cut one end off on the diagonal and place
alongside the log to create a branch.
6. Please
the roll onto the serving plate and spread the dark chocolate topping over
it. Run the tines of the fork along the
length of the roll to give a 'bark'
effect. Just before serving, dust
generously with icing sugar.


text:
754 photos found.
Zombies...I Hate Zombies by Breck Jones
Zombie walk. Marcha zombie. by tania medina
Zombies by Marco Banda
zombie's childhood by Mariel Argüello
zombie by dutch masterson
Zombie Clown by John Shanahan
Zombie teen by CameraKimmi
Zombie by RunningWolf .
ZOMBIE!? by Cory Young
Zombie Newly Weds by Jean-Jacques Halans
All "zombie" in Photos: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next »


text:
Cosmically Cool Planet Research! Day Three: Researching with Digital and Print Text
Lesson 11 of 19
Objective: SWBAT build their knowledge about a planet by reading print and digital sources. SWBAT to answer self-generated research questions about their planet, taking notes.
Big Idea: The students continue reading informational text in digital and print forms about the planet they're researching. They answer questions that they generated and take brief notes on notecards.
Welcome to a series of ten lessons on planet research! This set of lessons is part of a larger unit my district is implementing all about the topics of space and books with great word choice. My grade level completes a research report or project for each of our six thematic units. This happens to be the fifth research project my students are completing this year.
I loved completing these lessons because none of my students' reports came out the same - even those who researched the same planet! The design of this unit was inquiry-based, so students chose the direction of their report. Some were interested in the history of their planet - how it got its name, who discovered it, etc. Others wanted to know if there were features similar to Earth, or why their planet had so many moons.
I've included the Planet Research Packet in this section of my lesson on each day. I refer to page numbers as I walk you through each day of this series of lessons, however I left page numbers off, in case there were pages you didn't want to use. You may notice that my student samples vary slightly from the packet I've provided for you. I made changes to the packet as I noticed things that could be made better. I hope you and your astronomers find these resources helpful as you research planets! Thank you! (See Resource File: Planet Research Packet)
*Clipart in my lesson picture purchased from ScribbleGarden on Etsy
Resources (1)
Resources (1)
Review: I review yesterday's lesson about taking notes from digital and print sources. We go through our checklist on page five of our packet including copying a few words, no plagiarism, copy accurately, stay on topic, and writing the most relevant information only. I also borrow a few exemplary notecard samples from students to display as a review. I also show the students how to apply the Readability app to the articles they're reading. (See Resource File: Planet Research Packet - Page 5)
Resources (1)
Resources (1)
Lesson: I want to adjust my instruction to meet the needs of my students. Yesterday, during independent research time, I noticed that the students had the most questions about what to do if they couldn't find an answer to a question they has posed. So, I begin by modeling that today. I have posed the question, "What satellites have taken pictures of Venus?". I chose this question because I know that I won't be able to answer it, however I can model for students how I'll still inquire about photos of Venus, just in a different way. I pull up one of our research sites and we begin reading to find the answer. We quickly notice that we can answer questions about the first satellite to take pictures of Venus, and decide to modify our question. I explain to students that it's okay to change a question, but they should try to keep it about the same topic that they were interested in. In this case, we are still learning about satellites and pictures of Venus.
Resources (1)
Resources (1)
Independent Research
Similar to yesterday, I move around the room assisting with reading and note taking as needed. Most of the students were doing well yesterday, but I have a few I'll check in with first. The students continue to answer questions they've generated about their planet. (See Resource File: Student Sample Three and Four)
Resources (2)
Review: We review and celebrate today's learning.
Peek at Tomorrow's Mission: I let the students know that we'll have our final research session tomorrow. They'll want to make sure they have up to five notecards, each with a different question, and answers in the form of notes. If they have more, that's great!
Here are some additional resources you may find helpful if you're working on a space-themed unit.
Do We Wish Upon a Shooting Star, or Falling Rock?: This document is an informational passage that includes multiple choice questions. My students need practice with these types of questions, including those with multiple answers, questions with Part A and Part B, and fill in the blank. I teach in Illinois, and our students will be taking the PARCC Assessment beginning next year. I hope these types of tasks will help prepare my students for these tests, as well as our end-of-unit assessments, and overall mastery of the standards. The focus of this assignment are standards RI3.1, RI3.4, and RI3.7. (See Resource File: Shooting Star, or Falling Rock MC Practice)
Resources (1)
Resources (1)
Similar Lessons
Ice Cream: The Full Scoop!
Environment: Suburban
Choosing Structure and Design for Informational Writing Projects (Day 7 of 15)
Environment: Rural
Questioning: I wonder...
Environment: Suburban
- UNIT 1: Generational Stories, Favorites that are Retold, and Native American Unit
- UNIT 2: Ocean Inspired Unit
- UNIT 3: Creative, Inventive, and Notable People of the Turn-of-the-Century
- UNIT 4: The People, The Preamble, and the Presidents ELA Government Unit
- UNIT 5: Out of this World! Exploring Enriching Literature and Cosmically Cool Informational Text
- UNIT 6: Ancient Greece, Dragons, Gods, and Giants!
- LESSON 1: The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane Day 1 of 8: Chapters 1-3
- LESSON 2: The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane Day 2 of 8: Chapters 4-6
- LESSON 3: The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane Day 3 of 8: Chapters 7-10
- LESSON 4: The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane Day 4 of 8: Chapters 11-14
- LESSON 5: The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane Day 5 of 8: Chapters 15-17
- LESSON 6: The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane Day 6 of 8: Chapters 18-21
- LESSON 7: The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane Day 7 of 8: Chapters 22-25
- LESSON 8: The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane Day 8 of 8: Chapters 26-Coda
- LESSON 9: Cosmically Cool Planet Research! Day One: Prepare for Launch!
- LESSON 10: Cosmically Cool Planet Research! Day Two: Researching with Digital and Print Sources
- LESSON 11: Cosmically Cool Planet Research! Day Three: Researching with Digital and Print Text
- LESSON 12: Cosmically Cool Planet Research! Day Four: Researching with Digital and Print Text Continued
- LESSON 13: Cosmically Cool Planet Research! Day Five: Word Choice Day!
- LESSON 14: Cosmically Cool Planet Research! Day Six: Begin Rough Drafts
- LESSON 15: Cosmically Cool Planet Research! Day Seven: Rough Drafts Take Two
- LESSON 16: Cosmically Cool Planet Research! Day Eight: Final Drafts
- LESSON 17: Cosmically Cool Planet Research! Day Nine: Text Features and Publishing
- LESSON 18: Cosmically Cool Planet Research! Day Ten: Space Museum
- LESSON 19: Text and Text Features: Critiquing and Redesigning Day 1 of 1


text:
« back to Power Tools, Hardware and Accessories forum
Forum topic by okacookie | posted 07-29-2014 08:43 PM | 1530 views | 0 times favorited | 26 replies |
Hi everyone, Well I finally managed to get a good deal on a Delta 50-850. Got it for $150 and I also traded a weedeater that has not been running well anyway. To my surprise the guy threw in all of the flex hose he had, clamps, connections and even a free standing dust hood. My question is I was planning on running a 30amp 220v breaker to run my table saw, and at some point a planer once I get some more spare cash. My question is is it safe to run both my table saw (Ridgid r4513) and this dust collector on the same breaker. It looks like each one is about 7 amps on 220v. Obviously if I get a large planer I won't be able run both at the same time, but I could probably switch back to 120v for the DC. Thanks, |
26 replies so far
#1 posted 07-29-2014 10:15 PM |
I can not speak as an electrician, nor will I recommend doing it. I will say that I am currently doing it, and have been for about a year…. but don't do it ;) -- Who is John Galt? |
#2 posted 07-29-2014 10:23 PM |
don't start both at the same time -- david - only thru kindness can this world be whole . If we don't succeed we run the risk of failure. Dan Quayle |
#3 posted 07-29-2014 10:40 PM |
It is not commonly done as most 240 volt items are on a dedicated circuit. Just before I retired I did a multiple outlet 30 amp 240 volt circuit in an airplane hanger. New code just came out July 1, but I doubt if that changed. Glad I don't have to buy the new code book every three years any more ;-) -- Bob in WW ~ "some old things are lovely, warm still with life ... of the forgotten men who made them." - D.H. Lawrence |
#4 posted 07-29-2014 11:09 PM |
Yeah I figured starting both at once would be a bad idea :). Can you put 20a outlets on a 30a breaker? I like to be to code if possibly for liability reason, because with my luck the house would burn down and they would blame that. |
#5 posted 07-29-2014 11:17 PM |
No. -- Shooting down the walls of heartache. Bang bang. I am. The warrior. |
#6 posted 07-29-2014 11:25 PM |
i been running my tools one a 30 amp breaker like i say one tool startup at a time building a bigger shop here -- david - only thru kindness can this world be whole . If we don't succeed we run the risk of failure. Dan Quayle |
#7 posted 07-29-2014 11:32 PM |
make sure you size the wire for the breaker. The receptacle is inside a box and would probably be okay. The breaker protects the wiring inside the wall. |
#8 posted 07-29-2014 11:36 PM |
What's right and what will work are 2 different things. You can put a 15A recept on a 20A ckt (like your kitchen recepts) or a 40A recept on a 50A ckt. The problem isn't combining the load, it's the 20A receptacles. The fact that it will be 240v doesn't matter. You could pull 2-12/2s or a 12/4, or put 2-20A recepts on a 12/2. Any of these options are fine with code, but you can't put a 20A recept on a 30A ckt. Technically. -- Shooting down the walls of heartache. Bang bang. I am. The warrior. |
#9 posted 07-29-2014 11:39 PM |
Code probably requires a permit with inspection in most areas. 20 amp devices are only legal on a 20 amp circuit. You need 30 map outlets on a 30 amp circuit. -- Bob in WW ~ "some old things are lovely, warm still with life ... of the forgotten men who made them." - D.H. Lawrence |
#10 posted 07-29-2014 11:42 PM |
Well, based on what you say it could be possible, but you may have issues with extended use. Running two power tools in the future will not be a problem as its extremely unlikely you would run a TS and planer at the same time. I've made it my policy for many years to have two circuits for the shop for the big tools. One dedicated to my big DC and another series of outlets to hook the rest of my 220v tools up. I've added a 3rd for my 3 phase but that was a got to. I also have one 20a 110 circuit for hand tools. One suggestion though split your lights and don't have them on the same circuit. -- Sooner or later Liberals run out of other people's money. |
#11 posted 07-29-2014 11:42 PM |
right you are fridge and bob why i'm building a real shop now all to code -- david - only thru kindness can this world be whole . If we don't succeed we run the risk of failure. Dan Quayle |
#12 posted 07-29-2014 11:46 PM |
I ran a dedicated circuit for each of the 220 power tools and have 5 receptacles on each 110V receptacles. I ran 2 different circuits for the lights. If something happens that trips the breaker I don't want to have to feel my way to light. Should only lose half the lights unless I have the entire shop go off line. If you ever trip a main you have a real problem |
#13 posted 07-29-2014 11:59 PM |
A little more details on why I am asking this. I have very limited breaker space left. I only have 100A service, and I only have a handful of open spots left. I already have installed my lights on their own circuit and have installed one outlet on its own 20a breaker. In the near future when I plan on tearing down my drywall and insulating my one car garage I will extend this to at least 4 outlets, and install a second 20a with another 4 outlets. This will leave me enough room to add one 220v breaker. This will leave me one open spot to add two more circuits for future remodels in the main house (half the house is on one breaker for some reason). I may do the extension cord idea with a few outlets on it. That way only one outlet will be wired to the panel. |
#14 posted 07-30-2014 12:19 AM |
okacookie, is all this wiring going into your garage? If so, consider installing a subpanel in your garage instead of individual circuits run from your main panel will give you better flexibility, not to mention the convenience of not having to go inside the house when you trip a breaker. I have 100A service in my home and only had room for 2 more breakers. My electricians initially told me they could only run two circuits to my one-car garage. I asked if they could do a subpanel, and they said yes (I don't know why I had to suggest it instead of them). I had them install a 60A subpanel (apparently the max in my case), two 20A/240V circuits, and two 20A/120V circuits. I'm running my lights on the 15A circuit that was already in the garage. Another thing the installers told me for the 120V circuits was that a shared circuit requires GFCI receptacles, while a dedicated circuit does not. -- Ask an expert or be the expert - http://woodworking.stackexchange.com |
#15 posted 07-30-2014 12:40 AM |
My panel is in my garage luckily so this makes all of these expansions pretty easy. I have considered a sub panel, but I wish I could just upgrade to a 200a service. That will not be in the cards due to cost most likely. Chris |
Have your say...
You must be signed in to reply.
Forum | Topics |
Woodworking Skill Share
11471 |
1660 |
367 |
294 |
1158 |
4250 |
Designing Woodworking Projects
6125 |
Power Tools, Hardware and Accessories
25775 |
CNC Woodworking
155 |
Hand Tools
4876 |
Jigs & Fixtures
1270 |
Wood & Lumber
5671 |
Safety in the Woodworking Shop
1278 |
Focus on the Workspace
1938 |
Sweating for Bucks Through Woodworking
1135 |
Woodworking Trade & Swap
4433 |
LumberJocks.com Site Feedback
2110 |
Coffee Lounge
8454 |


text:
Transdermals vs. M1T
It will not take much reading to realize that M 1-T is quite toxic. IMO and based on my experience, you can gain a similar amount of muscle on a 1-T/4-AD transdermal cycle, although the gains will come half as fast. I have tried both, and although I plan to run additional transdermal cycles, I may never run another M 1-T cycle (even though I have 3/4 of a bottle of M 1-T left). I hope that helps.
Agreed, alot of people feel like absolute **** while on M1T. I guess it all depends on how M1t affects. I hardly had any sides on m1t and gained just as much as i did on a transdermal cycle in 2 weeks as compared to 5. depends on how it affects you...
Guys, I know this has been stated before, but please remember that although this is legal for the time being dont use this as an excuse to use this compound. It is very serious and should only be used by those who know what they are doing. please use some sort of injectable base (or transdermal), at least a 4-ad. The best would be test. When one peruses through steroid boards, he is encouraged not to do a dbol only cycle. Test is ALWAYS encouraged as a base. This will not only ensure optimal gains, but also optimal health. Im not saying that it is safe to use performance enhancing drugs, but one should be smart about it. DONT USE SOLELY DUE TO THE FACT THAT IT IS LEGAL. This is absolutely stupid. also as chemo et al have stated that it isnt a good idea to use multiple orals at the same time. Dont use orals on top of orals for these "legal" cycles. Please research before using anything. Make sure that both diet AND training are in check. Yes, DS has made it possible for these compounds to make it to us, but please dont abuse this priviledge for those who know what we are doing. Keep safe all of you and good luck.
Great posts guys.
I fully agree that transdermals are nearly as effective, but gains will take 4-6 weeks vs 2-3 weeks on m1t. Transdermals are much safer, and should definitely be the cycle of choice for those new to androgens. I'm pretty experienced, but I've never felt anything like the M1t flu. I have 4 1/2 bottles left & may end up dumping it on ebay. - 01-19-2004, 10:21 AM
the m1t flu? What the hell is that?
I was on m1t and barely got any side-effects on a pretty hefty dose. Some minor lethargy is all i could attribute to the m1t. Just read up and take precautions and you'll be fine - 01-19-2004, 10:25 AM
Originally Posted by bellicose
If all you experienced was gains, consider yourself very lucky. - 01-19-2004, 10:43 AM
I stacked M1T and D-bol I got great and I mean reallygreat gains. But my liver values are just now getting back to normal. And it's been almost a month and half since I cycled. My Doc told me he should kick my ass (me and my doc are cool like that) for risking liver damage like that. The only good thing that came out of it is that my Doc told me he would monitor me during my cycles. Since he can't stop an adult from doing what the wants.
Originally Posted by BUFF STUFF
Do this at your own risk! Now that I'm a lil bit wiser in the game I would never stack 2 Methyls ever again.
Similar Forum Threads
1test vs. m1t water retention
By ps24eva in forum AnabolicsReplies: 5Last Post: 08-02-2015, 05:56 PM -
Trying to find 4AD transdermals and M1T caps...
By drew6236 in forum AnabolicsReplies: 1Last Post: 06-14-2004, 01:55 AM -
1ad vs mohn vs m1t
By trevor in forum AnabolicsReplies: 9Last Post: 06-03-2004, 06:26 PM -
fina vs. m1t
By ps24eva in forum AnabolicsReplies: 23Last Post: 03-21-2004, 12:41 PM -
1-test vs M1T? Were gonna shut you down!!
By Yimen E.Cricket in forum AnabolicsReplies: 0Last Post: 12-15-2003, 03:36 AM


text:
Monday, April 23, 2012
spring it on
{Zara jacket and heels, Proenza Schouler x Target sweatshirt, F21 skirt, Chanel wallet, MNG by Mango necklace}
You know that feeling when you have your eye on something, and really, really want it? Well that was me when I saw this mixed media jacket. Obsessed really. When the jacket was finally available stateside I missed out on it several times, it was sold out in hours- since I waned a bit on the price. But alas the right size has finally made it into my closet, and is now a go-to in my daily outfit choices. I'm sure this won't be the last you've seen of my new favorite jacket!
28 comments:
I am super jealous of your jacket. youhavenoidea.
Twitter: @GlamKitten88Amazing outfit! Love how that jacket gives it an extra edge!
Chocolattesbox.blogspot.comYes, I know the feeling! Hoorah for it being yours! I need that skirt, it looks so spot-on perfect with the heels. LOVE this look so much!
ReplyDeletei feel/felt the same way about the jacket! then i tried it on and thought it was too big on me. NOW that i see it on you, i want it all over again. you look great!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)


text:
Described as a national treasure, the 15-mile Potomac gorge from River Bend Park to Roosevelt Island is the primary focus of shooting assignments exploring evocative spring landscapes of this beautiful and ecologically significant area. Attention to photographic seeing and refinement of style and vision is emphasized on walks of up to three miles in Maryland, Virginia, and the District.
Get them most out of your digital camera in this full-day, hands-on workshop that gives a head start on producing great shots.
Processing your own 35mm or 120mm black-and-white film is cost-effective, and typically provides better results. Get all the skills you need to begin at this information-packed, hands-on session.
This photography course is designed as a follow-up to Introduction to Studio Portraiture and explores the creative lighting controls of the studio.
This course provides a thorough introduction to the 35mm camera and the basics of photo darkroom techniques. Learn how to use your camera, compose a photograph, develop film, and make a print in the Smithsonian Associates' well-equipped darkroom.
This non-darkroom course is designed for beginners who want to learn how to use their digital SLR camera as a creative tool. The goal is to gain skill in technical aspects of photography so that they can concentrate on composing beautiful images.
Whether you want to work in digital or film, this course offers a solid foundation for new photographers ready to learn the basics. Topics include camera functions, exposure, metering, working with natural and artificial light, and composition.
Learn how to get your photos seen and sold. This valuable session covers strategies to get your photos seen by the public, such as juried exhibitions, photo contests, showing in alternative spaces (bookstores and coffee shops), art festivals, galleries, and websites.
This darkroom-focused class is geared for photographers with basic darkroom skills and beyond, who are interested in taking their work to the next level. Students benefit from small-group lectures, individual instruction, and independent work to gain confidence in a specific area.
Great shoots start with great locations—and Washington offers plenty of unbeatable visual inspiration. Learn to capture this vibrant city and sharpen your way of thinking about shooting outdoors as you deploy a minimal amount of equipment and a lot of fresh perspective.
Go beyond taking random photographs and develop a cohesive body of work that is uniquely yours. Review some contemporary photographers' work and define the characteristics that are incorporated into their portfolios.
Get a better practical understanding of elements such as simplicity, balance, and natural lighting and how they can contribute to taking better and more unique photographs.
Get the most out of your digital mirrorless or SLR camera by taking part in this one-day class, which includes a shooting session on the Mall; and an in-the-field discussion of technical elements along with composition, light, and other aesthetic considerations.
In this workshop designed for intermediate photographers, participants develop a greater understanding of the complex relationship among aperture, shutter speed, and ISO and how a camera's exposure meter views a scene.
Learn how to get digital photos printed accurately and custom cut windows in mat board. Classes cover inexpensive online printing labs, paper choices, aspect ratios, printing techniques, mat board choices and sources, and mat-cutting tools.


text:
That April sparkled. I sat on the cafe terraces with friends; I went for walks in the forest of Chantilly with Herbaud, who had come back from London; our quarrel had evaporated of its own accord. On the first of May it snowed, there were only a few stunted slips of lily of the valley to buy on the street corners. But the air was warm again that evening when the great V's stood out against the sky and when all Paris was out in the streets singing and dancing.
Sartre was still in New York, Bost was in Germany. I spent the evening with Olga, Mme Lemaire, Olga Barbezat, Vitold, Chauffard, Mouloudji, Roger Blin, and a few others.'
From Force of Circumstance by Simone de Beauvoir, Penguin 1968
Paris Post War: Art and Existentialism 1945-55 at the Tate Gallery until 5 September. Sponsored by the Independent and supported by the French Embassy in London.
Independent readers can get admission at the concessionary ticket rate of pounds 2.50 (full price pounds 4) every Monday from 10am-1pm. Discounts on catalogues, some Tate shop merchandise and extended Friends Membership (15 months for pounds 25), are also available to readers at these times. These offers are only available on presentation of that day's copy of the Independent.
- More about:
- Arts
- Diplomacy
- New York City
- New York State


text:
Active Tags
Click tags to the right to narrow your search. Unclick tags to remove.
Tourist Trap
— A train tour across Europe & Asia is a front for slavers.Busty Jessica's Amazing Weekend Ch. 02
— Busty Jessica's encounter with the wild women continues.Black Alexis Dominates White Ch. 15
— Black Girl's level of control over white staff escalates.African Girl Maid For English Rose Ch. 02
— English rose's power over African maid.White Women in Michigan
— He served his country, now he serves white women.Ebony Invader
— Black woman puts him in his place.Wimp Loses to Young Black Boss Ch. 04
— Wimp husband continues to be humiliated by young black boss.Learning the Chocolate Life Ch. 02
— Black Mistress takes me further down the road.White Woman Dominates Black Females
— White woman dominates black and Hispanic ladies.Learning the Chocolate Life
— Dominant black woman proves chocolate is better than vanilla.Big Black Woman's Slave Fetish
— Uncircumcised Jew makes black woman's dream true.Black Man's Slave Fetish
— White mistress strap-ons submissive black man.Black Man's Slave Fantasy
— White woman strap-ons black man out of love.Black Couple Slave Dreams
— Bisexual Irishman entertains black BBW and husband.A Submissive Black Couple
— Sexy policewoman dominates submissive black couple.Black Lesbian's Submission
— Black BBW submits to blonde dominatrix.Black Female Submissives
— White Mistress dominates big black women.Black Mistress-White Bitch Ch. 01
— A white lady begins to learn her place.Blonde Fucks Blacks Ch. 11
— Sexy white woman dominates black man with dildo.Black Beat
— A lesson in femdom opens up a couple's horizons.Black Mistress-White Bitch Ch. 07
— Suze learns a new word the hard way.The Secret of My Sluttiness Ch. 04
— Our hero gets a chance to get even.All Black Men Love Strapons
— White Strapon Mistresses go after all Black Men.At the Movies
— Mind fuck at the cinema.I Lost the Poker Game Ch. 03
— Sean gets used & abused - & discovers he likes it.Blonde Fucks Blacks Ch. 05
— Blonde woman & girlfriends do Black men with dildos.A Mistress on the Plantation
— Sexy white Domme meets gorgeous black woman.Mistress Trinity - Visit 04
— Black Domme takes his ass again and performs CBT.Mistress Trinity - Visit 03
— Black femdom takes his white boi ass.Mistress Trinity - Visit 02
— Black Domme allows him to lick her again.Steve to Stevie to ?? Ch. 02
— Stevie is taken to Ms Storm's house.Active Tags
Click tags to the right to narrow your search. Unclick tags to remove.
Please, separate your tags with comma: anal orgasm, oral sex.
Read the Literotica Story Tag FAQ for more information on these tags.