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2012 Career Mentorship Symposium
Thank you to all the participants at the Symposium on March 7, 2012. The event was a great success, with 114 participants, including foreign-trained engineers, employers and service providers. We will be posting proceedings of the symposium soon.
Alberta's economy is rapidly picking up again, and the Engineering industry is experiencing this more than most. According to EngineersCanada.ca, growth in engineering employment is well above the average for all employment in Alberta. Skilled immigrants are the largest solution to labour needs, but there are barriers to connecting Edmonton's global talent with industry, as well as challenges with recruitment and retention.
ERIEC's 2nd Annual Career Mentorship Symposium will provide resources and tools to employers as well as foreign-trained professionals, and focuses on the successful labour market integration of Edmonton's pool of skilled immigrants!
The goal of the event is to connect Internationally Trained Engineers with local employers in the engineering field, and to provide opportunities for learning, networking and career development.
This one day symposium will provide a dynamic venue for local industry professionals and internationally trained engineers to network and learn.
Time: 8:30 am to 3:30 pm
Date: Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Venue: Matrix Hotel, 10640–100 Ave, Edmonton
This is a cost free event.
For the Industry Professional:
- Explore practical tools and strategies for interviewing culturally diverse candidates from Canada's experts on hiring immigrants.
- Identify best practices and tools for onboarding/retention of Edmonton's global talent and enhance your organization's intercultural competence.
- Connect with job-ready, internationally-trained engineers and promote your organization as an employer of choice.
- Demonstrate corporate leadership and a commitment to a diverse workforce.
For the Immigrant Professional:
- Gain valuable professional development advice that you can apply to effectively navigate Edmonton's labour market in the field of engineering.
- Learn information about resumes and interviews from industry HR professional.
- Participate in a motivation and informative session from one of Canada's leading speakers on immigration and diversity.
- Gain experience and knowledge of Canadian culture as it relates to the field of engineering.
- Network with industry professionals
For industry professionals, please register here.
For immigrant professionals, you need to contact your career coach or call Jill at 780–497-8866 or email [email protected] to register.
Registration deadline: March 2, 2012
Session and Presenter Information:
Breakout #1a – Interviewing Culturally Diverse Candidates (for industry professionals)
This session will consist of a walk-through of hireimmigrants.ca, a one-stop shop website providing employers with the tools and resources they need to better recruit, retain and promote skilled immigrant talent. Touching on each stage of an organization's human resources life cycle, hireimmigrants.ca profiles relevant examples and innovative practices of employers across the country. The purpose of this website is to assist hiring decision makers and business leaders – who drive Canada's economy – to source, select, and develop skilled immigrants as creative contributors to the Canadian workforce. Participants will also gain insight on interviewing culturally diverse candidates and will take part in a fun and interactive interviewing simulation exercise.
Presenter: Munira Ravji, Marketing and Partnership Specialist, ALLIES/Maytree, Toronto, ON
Munira Ravji is the Marketing and Partnership Specialist with ALLIES (Assisting Local Leaders with Immigrant Employment Strategies), Munira supports local efforts and employers in Canadian cities to successfully adapt and implement programs that further the suitable employment of skilled immigrants. Through a series of multi-stakeholder initiatives, ALLIES and local partners contribute to building a stronger Canada by using the talents, connections and experience of skilled immigrants who have made Canada their new home. She is also responsible for the marketing of hireimmigrants.ca and roadmap tool, both being valuable resources aimed at employers who are interested in, or already successfully recruiting, integrating and retaining skilled immigrant talent here in Toronto, and across Canada.
Breakout #1b – Insider Advice on Marketing Yourself (for immigrant professionals)
This session will provide insight into effective self-marketing, including the following:
- How to create a compelling and professional resume
- How to give yourself the best chance to make it to an interview
- Once in the interview, things you should and shouldn't say
- What to do after the interview
Presenter: Michael Gentry, VP Human Resources, Stantec, Edmonton, AB
Mike Gentry was educated at the University of Phoenix: Human Resources Management. For over 30 years Mike has been a Senior Human Resources leader with strategic and tactical experience in employee relations, compensation, staffing, benefit design/administration, policy development, leadership development, training, conflict resolution, SOX compliance and maintaining a union free work environment.
Mike has been a VP, Operations for Semblant Technologies, responsible for Human Resources, External Operations, Procurement and alliance negotiations. He also lead all HR functions for Corporate and Las Vegas properties supporting 10,000+ team members of The Las Vegas Sands Corporation. Prior to that Mike supported HR functions for 24,000 employees located in the US, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, UK, Korea, Japan, China and France for Amkor Technology Inc. His stint with The Boeing Company, as Director, Corporate Employee & Union Relations, saw his responsibilities focus on the design, implementation and audit of Employee Relations policies, programs and practices in all their US facilities. Mike held a similar position with McDonnell Douglas Helicopters prior to Boeing.
Keynote Speaker: Nick Noorani, President & CEO, Destination Canada Information Inc, Vancouver, BC
Nick Noorani – 6 Win-Win Strategies for Hiring, Retaining and Leveraging Immigrants
Hiring and retaining immigrants in the Canadian labour market is no longer a matter of "what if" or "one day." Our demographics demand it. Smart business practices depend on it. And it's the right thing to do. Immigrants in our workplaces are here to stay — now the only question left is what to do with them. How can employers treat them fairly and leverage what they have to offer for everyone's benefit? Immigrant advocate and diversity expert Nick Noorani will explain his "6 Win-Win Strategies for Hiring, Retaining and Leveraging Immigrants." These strategies cover the basics of hiring and retaining immigrants in today's labour market, from interviewing best practices to mentorship initiatives. But, beyond that, Nick will explain how you can leverage the benefits immigrant employees bring to your organization, creating a win-win scenario for all.
When Nick Noorani speaks, he inspires his audience of Canadian immigrants into action. Why? Because he's been in their shoes. Like the newcomers who come listen to his marquee speech "7 Success Secrets for Canadian Immigrants," Nick came to Canada in 1998 with hopes for a better life.
Born in Mumbai, India, Nick came with a world of international experience in the advertising business, but he faced many challenges in his new Canadian home, and he noticed that many other immigrants were also struggling.
The savvy marketer recognized an opportunity — not to mention an important social cause — when he saw one and, in 2000, Nick co-authored the hugely successful book Arrival Survival Canada, subsequently published by Oxford University Press. The idea for spinning the book into a monthly magazine, Canadian Immigrant, came to Nick in a dream. He launched Canada's first national magazine for all immigrants in 2004 and later sold the magazine to the Star Media Group in Toronto in 2007, while retaining his position as publisher. Nick also developed the magazine's Lilian To Scholarship, giving away $55,000 of education to newcomers annually, and its national Top 25 Canadian Immigrant Awards.
But for Nick, the magazine has always been just one part of a journey that earned him the sobriquet "social entrepreneur and immigrant advocate." In 2005, he became the host of his own weekly radio show called "Ask Nick" on Radio Canada International. In 2008, Nick launched an online networking site called ImmigrantNetworks.ca. And, in addition to countless hours spent volunteering with newcomers one-on-one, he has served on numerous community boards.
In August 2010, Nick resigned from the Canadian Immigrant magazine to launch Destination Canada Information Inc., a company dedicated to helping international students and immigrants before they arrive in Canada. He continues to speak to thousands of immigrants, inspiring them to go after success, as well as speaking to audiences of employers, service providers and stakeholders who work with or support immigrants in Canada.
Breakout #2a – Onboarding/Retention of Internationally Trained Employees (for industry professionals)
This interactive, collaborative session will seek to identify some best practices and tools for the onboarding and retention of internationally trained professionals. Participants will be encouraged to engage one another and speak to their own personal experiences, to highlight challenges, successes, potential blindspots, and lessons learned in their own organizations. Jake will bring his experiences as a linguistic and intercultural researcher in multiple workplace contexts, from health care to industry, and guide the discussion towards practical suggestions for creating a more integrated diverse workforce
Presenter: Jake Evans, Intercultural Communication Facilitator, Centre for Excellence in Intercultural Education, NorQuest College, Edmonton, AB
Jake Evans graduated from the University of Alberta with a BSc in EAS and Linguistic Anthropology, and shortly thereafter moved to Vancouver to complete his CELTA at Kwantlen University College. Upon completion he accepted a position designing and delivering rural-based ESP to the UCA (Unión de Cooperativas Agropecuarias) Miraflor in northern Nicaragua. Six months of ice-cold showers convinced him a more urban experience was called for, and he moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina where he worked as a language consultant, primarily delivering ESP at the managerial level in large multinational corporations (such as HSBC and Roche), but also designing curriculum, translating, and training cross-culturally. Jake works as an intercultural communications facilitator with the Centre for Excellence in Intercultural Education where he's engaged in applied linguistic and intercultural research and in delivering intercultural and ELT workshops for corporate clients for NorQuest College. He is bilingual (English/ Spanish) and is currently doing his Master's degree in International Relations at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.
Breakout #2b – 7 Success Secrets for Canadian Immigrants (for immigrant professionals)
This no-nonsense presentation answers the age-old question: what do I need to do to succeed in Canada? It provides immigrants with tips they can put to use immediately – secrets that were developed by interviewing accomplished immigrants in Canada, to get at the reasons for their success. Their answers were turned into a seminar that has already benefitted thousands of immigrants.
Nick Noorani, President & CEO, Destination Canada Information Inc, Vancouver, BC
See above for bio.
An Immigrant Journey: From China to Edmonton
Susan will share her experience as an internationally trained engineer and her efforts to establish herself professionally in Edmonton.
Presenter: Susan Liu, Mechanical Engineer in Training, Hyduke Energy Services , Nisku, AB
In June 2008, Susan travelled across the world from China to Canada with the hope of giving her son a better future. Despite having a university degree in mechanical engineering and 10 years work experience in the field, she still experienced barriers to finding a professional job in Canada. Susan will share her journey and experiences toward establishing her professional career in Edmonton.
An opportunity to network and connect employers and service providers to Internationally Trained Professionals. Internationally Trained Professionals can browse the marketplace to learn about services available and gather corporate information. Employers can secure a table to present corporate materials, swag or other information, and meet skilled engineers who are looking for employment.
ERIEC thanks the following organizations for their support and sponsorship of this event:


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Digital Piracy... The Debate Continues
Submitted by Kristin on March 24, 2002 - 11:48pm
This story discusses recent developments in the digital content protection debate. Researchers recently announced that software alone cannot prevent digital piracy. There is much opposition, however, to a proposed bill that would require hardware manufacturers to develop anti-copying devices and other digital piracy prevention features.

subset: commoncrawl


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IMPORTANT NOTICE: The CAP Study has moved from UNSW to The University of Sydney on 10th December 2018. This will have no impact on the study or your participation. However, please note that the study is now being conducted under the auspices of the University of Sydney, and the study has received approval from the University of Sydney Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC 2018/845). Your data will now be stored at the University of Sydney, under the same conditions that it was stored at UNSW. If you are concerned about the way this study is being conducted or you wish to make a complaint to someone independent of the study, please contact Manager, Ethics Administration, University of Sydney, quoting the study title and protocol number.
Telephone: +61 2 8627 8176
Email: [email protected]
Fax: +61 2 8627 8177 (Facsimile)
For any questions, please contact the study coordinator [email protected].
The University of Sydney would like to thank you for taking part in the CAP Study surveys at school over the past 6 years.
Your participation in the study has been very important in helping us to better understand and reduce harms among young people.
You are invited to complete the last CAP Study survey. You will be reimbursed $30 upon completion of the survey,
and go in the draw to win an iPhone each year. This survey asks you questions about yourself and about your activities, and your reasons for engaging in those activities.
The purpose of the survey is to understand different experiences such as the use of alcohol and other drugs and how they interact over the long term.
If you decide to participate, all you will need to do is complete this confidential questionnaire. It should take no longer than 40-60 minutes,
and will ask general questions about your personality, behaviour, and the activities you engage in.
All information you provide will be strictly confidential, except as required by law and/or duty of care.
Once again, thank you for your previous and ongoing participation.
The CAP team.
Instructions on how to complete the survey can be found here.
For you or someone you know.


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AX7 / D365 Extensions: Extend the Init Method on a Form
Today's plan? I would like to extend the init() method of a D365fO form. The goal is to get the selected line from the caller after the newly opened form is initialized.
Form Init Method Extension
Like said before, I would like to get the callers record when opening a new form. In this example I will retrieve the CustAccount when opening the InventNonConformance Form.
Find the form that you want to extend in the AOT, right click it and hit "Open designer".
Now we have two options to extend the init method on the form. Option one is to open the "Events" node and hit "Copy event handler method" on the "OnIntialized" event. OnInitialized is a post event, OnInitializing the opposite, a pre event.
Option tow is to open the "Methods" node and copy an event handler for the init() method from here.
I added both options in one class to show you the difference, when it comes to get the caller record. First the "OnInitialized" event, then the post event handler.
The difference is minimal, in both cases we will call args().record() from the FormRun object. When using the post handler on the init method, we will have to get this FormRun object first, not a big thing, we have just to call the getThis() method on the provided arguments of the handler. The rest of the code is pretty self explaining.
If you have any questions, feel free to comment below.
If we select a customer and hit "Non conformances" from the "SELL" node on the CustTable form, we will see the following infolog.


text: Follow these guidelines to ensure a fun and relaxing trip. By Vera Gibbons May 31, 2007 A vacation home can be great for families and large groups. But know what you're signing up for. Here are five costs, policies and circumstances you should anticipate.1. Beach? What beach? You went online and found a listing for a waterfront cottage that sounded perfect for a vacation getaway. But when you got there, the house wasn't anywhere near the water. Hundreds of Web sites now list rental properties, and, says Emily Glossbrenner, coauthor of How to Make Your Vacation Property Work for You!, there are "many instances" of such tall tales. Always book through a reputable site -- such as Vrbo.com or HomeAway.com -- that provides pictures, contact information and insights from past renters. Sponsored Content 2. You'll pay extra for Grandma. Renting a vacation home is the most affordable and convenient plan for large families. But beware of hidden costs, such as fees for additional guests, pets, house cleaning, air conditioning and Web access. To eliminate surprises, make sure all these details -- plus your move-in and move-out dates and payment schedule -- are spelled out in a contract. At the very least, says Glossbrenner, get it in writing in an e-mail, "so you have a paper trail if you need to go to small-claims court." 3. The baby has a fever? That's too bad. Don't expect a refund. "There's no level of protection in this industry," says Brian Sharples, chief executive officer of HomeAway.com. "You can try to get your money back, but owners and managers will rightfully say they can't give it back." Typically, if you cancel within 30 days of your stay, you will lose all the money you've paid. If you think you might cancel your plans and get stuck with the bill, buy travel insurance. To compare policies, go to InsureMyTrip.com. Figure coverage will run about 5% of the total cost of your trip. Advertisement 4. Your new best friend likes Liza with a z. Going in on a group house is an ideal way to cut costs for a summer-weekend getaway. But it could cost you your sanity. Just ask Pierce Mattie of New York City, who spent many sleepless nights at his shared summer house on Fire Island. Why? Because his seven housemates blasted show tunes at all hours. Now Mattie won't go in on a group house without written guidelines that spell out everything from the schedule to sleeping arrangements to how costs will be shared. 5. Renters are slobs. Owners have their problems, too. "The most common complaint is cleanliness," says Christine Karpinski, author of How to Rent Vacation Properties by Owner, who has rented out her condo in Panama City, Fla., for more than ten years. "The same people used to call me year after year to tell me about all the cleaning they had to do when they got there -- that there were Pringles underneath the couch or something," says Karpinski. She recommends including a cleaning fee in the price of the rental and requiring a reservation deposit that converts to a security-and-damage deposit when renters arrive.


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How you present your message on the World Wide Web is the key component of a successful business. RKcom Web Design provides tailored services to each client, with full-serve and self-serve components. Understanding our clients needs is our specialty and graphic design is our passion. Web design is about creating an easy to use, simple to navigate platform that clearly and effectively communicates a company's mission.
We take the time to understand your business and listen to your ideas before starting on your new website design. No matter what type of website you are looking for we will create a stunning online presence for your business!
Contact us today to discuss your project by calling 989-506-4705
Should I have a mobile friendly website? YES!
People are using mobile devices to search the internet – in some cases MORE than the traditional desktop.
Important Article Regarding Responsive Websites:
Examples of mobile friendly / responsive websites we've designed:
Click on any of the images below to get a real-time example of what a responsive / mobile site looks like designed by RKcom :
Improve the flexibility of your website & speed of updating
Content management is a great way to ensure that your website is never out of date and in turn will not give the impression your business is behind the times.
Benefits of a CMS Website Design By RKcom
- CMS Content Editing
Easily edit your website content 24/7 without HTML knowledge. No more waiting for someone else to edit your website for you! No special programs needed!
- CMS Design Cost
Make changes to your cms website without hiring a Professional. No more PAYING someone else to make changes for you!
What is WordPress and Why Use It To Develop Your Next Website?
WordPress is a software in which we build the website on. In the past, programmers had to build websites from scratch using HTML. It would take a long time to develop and when complete, you would have to hire the programmer to make even the smallest change to your website. WordPress has dozens of benefits but I've listed the top three below:
- 100% Customizable! – Any way you can dream up your website growing and expanding in the future, WordPress can make it happen. I've built company sites, eCommerce, 20+page websites, small websites – all on the same platform. We can do anything with it.
- .
- Easy to Use! – You have FULL control over your own website with WordPress. You don't have to hire someone to add content or make little changes – you can do it all if you want. It's as easy as using Microsoft Word. All you need is some training which I provide. You'll receive a PDF file with step by step instructions on how to use your new site!
- .
- Google Loves It! – Search engines react very well to WordPress sites. You can think of a plugin as a mini-program created to enhance WordPress. There are over 100 million plugins developed. With a normal HTML site, it can take 1-3 weeks for Google to index a page of your site in their search engine. With WordPress, a page can be indexed in a couple hours. You'll get better and faster ranking which results in more traffic and exposure. That coupled with a unique design and content strategy, we'll convert those leads into customers!
- .
We're here for You!
We take care of the whole cms website design and Content Management System installation process for you! WE can also help you purchase a Domain Name to setting up the Hosting, Designing the site and Marketing it, right through to Maintaining the site after it's completed! RKcom Web has FREE 1 on 1 Support forever! No monthly fees!
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) helps users find your website on search engines like Google, Bing.com and Yahoo. We create visual appealing websites that rank as good as it looks is vital for your websites' success.
- 91% of buyers go to a supplier's website before calling.
- If they don't find what they need, 80% choose another supplier.
- 1. The best search phrases that customers use to find your type of business
- 2 . Proven methods that get your website listed high in the major search engines.
- 3. Links on other websites and directories that bring interested customers to your website
- 4 . Website content that turns your website into an important one in your industry!
Thank you for your interested in our company! It's important to us to understand what your needs are. Please take the time to fill out a short form to provide us with a brief outline of your project. We'll respond within 24 hours or sooner with a price quote!
This form will give us an immediate idea of what your needs are, what type of website your interested in having designed and how we can help you.
[contact-form-7 id="934″ title="Free Quote"]


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Get to Getry
Find Shadowstalker Getry at Warsong Farms.
The Scourge agent that's overseeing the abduction and transformation of Horde soldiers into undead monsters is using the northwest farm as a spawning glade. Shadowstalker Getry has been staking out that monster for the past week and has gathered some vital information that might allow us to end this menace.
Get to Getry and see if you can help him put a stop to this Scourge assembly line. You'll find Getry at the abandoned tower on the northwest border of these farms.
You will also receive:
- 90 (if completed at level 120)
- 10 reputation with Warsong Offensive


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Recently, I tried to install antivirus and anti-malware programs like AdAware and AVG/Avast but nothing seemed to work. After I have gone thru the installation process, the notice dialog box indicated that there is insufficient files to run the program.
The operating system on my PC is Windows XP SP1. What seem to be the problem?


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Drone Victim Search
A downloadable game for Windows
A recent terrorist event destroyed many blocks of the city, search for the victims as fast as possible.
Deploy the drone selecting an area on the map
Locate victims and scan them
Locate hazards and mark them
The rescue team efficiency depends on you, good luck!
-MouseClick: Press UI buttons, select cluster
-W,S,LStickUp-Down: Throttle
-A,D,LStickLeft-Right: Yaw
-Up-DownArrows, RStickUp-Down: Forward,Backward
-Left-RightArrows, RStickLeft-Right: Strafe Left-Right
-X, X Button: Hold to scan Victim or Hazard
-T, RStickClick: Activate Thermal Camera
You're part of an humanitarian team trying to aid people in a city recently sieged by modern warfare. Controlling a drone with the task of doing recon in the area by searching of human victims, marking structural weaknesses in the buildings and hazards.
All this as part of the "planning" phase of a SAR operation that helps the rescue team in doing their work in the most efficient and fast way possible.
*Project result of the class Serious Games at the Cologne Game Lab in THKöln
Rodolink - Linkedin, Twitter
Install instructions
**Administrator access needed to install the game
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.


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Revision of scales of pay of Grade I of the C.S.S and the posts of Under Secretary to the Government of India
Government of India
Ministry of Finance
(Department of Expenditure)
New Delhi -2, dated the 6th August, 1962
Shri Rabi Ray,
Deputy Secretary to the Government of India
The Accountant General, Central Revenues,
New Delhi
Subject :- Revision of scales of pay of Grade I of the C.S.S and the posts of Under Secretary to the Government of India.
I am directed to refer to this Ministry's letter of even number dated the 18th April, 1962 on the subject mentioned above.
2. It has been brought to the notice of this Ministry that these orders do not fully cover a case where an officer was officiating in Grade I of the C.S.S on 1-7-1959 (and had his pay fixed in the scale of Rs.900-50-1200) and was later on reverted and again reappointed to officiate in Grade I either from or before 1.4.1962 or after 1.4.1962.
3. In such cases the pay in the scale of Rs.900-50-1250 from 1-4-1962 or a later date as the case may be, will be fixed under the provisions of Audit Instruction 1 below F.R.22 as stated in paras 1 and 3 of the letter dated the 18th April, 1962 referred to above.
4. The President is, however, pleased to decide that if the pay so fixed is equal to the pay as fixed for the officer on 1-7-1959 in the scale of Rs.900-1200 then the service rendered in the pre-revised scale of Rs. 800-1150 which would have counted for increment at the stage fixed for him in the revised scale of Rs.900-50-1200 under rule 11 of the Central Civil Services (Revised Pay) Rules, 1960 (had he not reverted) shall also count for next increment in the scale of Rs.900-50-1250 after fixation of initial pay.
Yours faithfully,
Deputy Secretary to the Government of India.


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"Innumerable suns exist; innumerable earths revolve about these suns in a manner similar to the way the seven planets revolve around our sun. Living beings inhabit these worlds." The Italian philosopher-astronomer Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for these words in the year 1600.
Not surprisingly, then, even four hundred years later, Darren Williams is a bit more circumspect. "We are starting to gain confidence that planetary systems are common, Jupiter-sized planets are common—maybe Earths are common too," says the Penn State graduate student in astronomy.
Speculating about the existence of life on these planets—life beyond Earth—has long ceased to be a capital offense. Recently, however, such speculation has taken a large step forward in terms of scientific respectability. In early August, NASA caused a media flurry by announcing (prematurely, some scientists suggest) the discovery of what may be fossil evidence of primitive life on Mars: tiny one-celled tubules encased in meteor fragments. Only sightly less dramatic are a series of recent astronomical observations. For the first time we have clear evidence of planets outside the solar system.
Penn State astronomer Alexander Wolszczan discovered one such set of planets in 1994. Analyzing radio waves emitted by a pulsar, the burned-out remnant of a neutron star, Wolszczan detected the presence of three bodies in orbit around it, spaced similarly to the way Mercury, Venus, and Earth are placed in relation to the sun. Within the last 15 months, there have been several more "sightings." In October 1995, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz of the Geneva Observatory announced the detection of a large planet orbiting the star 51 Pegasi, some 40 light years distant. In January 1996, Geoffrey Marcy and R. Paul Butler of San Francisco State University and the University of California at Berkeley reported the existence of still larger planets circling 47 Ursae Majoris (in the Big Dipper) and 70 Virginis, about 35 light-years away. In June, George Gatewood of the University of Pittsburgh made public his discovery of two potential planets orbiting Lalande 21185, only 8.1 light-years away.
These planets are massive, Jupiter-sized (or larger) bodies in fast orbits—the ones easiest to detect. And in fact, none of them has been seen directly. Their presence has been deduced by gravitational effects on their parent stars. But if we can "see" these few, the thinking goes, then there must be many more planets out there. And if so, some of them are bound to look, and act, like Earth.
For James Kasting, the search for extraterrestrial life breaks down into two very down-to-Earth deductive steps: Determining habitability, i.e., where in the universe life could possibly be, given what we know; and recognizing habitation, i.e., once we've determined where to look, knowing what to look for. Kasting, professor of geosciences at Penn State, has been influential in the development of the concept of the habitable zone, that region around any star that can support liquid water on a planet's surface.
In order to host life, Kasting writes, "a planet must satisfy a number of conditions. . . . It must have water, carbon dioxide (for photosynthesis), and other volatile compounds (ones containing N, P, and S) available at its surface. It must have sufficient mass to hold onto an atmosphere and it must be in an orbit that is stable over long periods of time. It also needs to have a stable climate that is, at the very minimum, conducive to the continued presence of liquid water."
The basic determinant of climate on a planetary scale is distance from the sun. The habitable zone, then, is the range of distances that is neither too close nor too far, i.e., too hot or too cold.
On Earth, or any other planet with water, this range is extended by a negative feedback system: the carbonate-silicate cycle. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere dissolves in rainwater, creating a weak acid which wears away silicate rocks on land. Byproducts of this weathering are carried by rivers and streams into the ocean, where they are made into calcium carbonate shells by snails and other mollusks. When the snails die, their shells are buried in the crustal sediment. Then, as tectonic plates collide, the crust gets subducted: parts of it are driven downward, and at high sub-surface temperatures the geochemical process is reversed: calcium carbonate is broken down into silicates, which are released as CO 2 by volcanoes.
Within the habitable zone, this system regulates itself according to temperature. "Weathering requires liquid water," Kasting explains. If the Earth were farther from the sun, temperatures at the surface would drop. Weathering would slow, and carbon dioxide would begin to accumulate in the atmosphere. The resulting increase in the greenhouse effect would push temperatures back up again. If Earth were closer, on the other hand, warmer temperatures would cause increased weathering, CO 2 levels would fall, and the climate would begin to cool.
Beyond a certain point in either direction, however, and the system shuts down. Too far, and carbon dioxide starts to condense, forming clouds that block out the sun's rays, and everything freezes. Too close, and the oceans boil away.
Even so, the habitable zone is fairly roomy—big enough to harbor plenty of planets circling plenty of stars. But are such planets really likely to contain life? Not according to French astronomer Jacques Laskar.
In 1993, Laskar published the results of a study suggesting that conditions for life around the universe might not be rosy. Laskar's focus was not solar distances but planetary dynamics, and in particular the way planets wobble in their orbits. The technical terms for these motions are precession and nutation.
The obliquity of a planet is the angle of its spin axis—that imaginary rod that skewers a planet through the poles—in relation to the plane of its orbit. In Earth's case, this angle is a modest—and reasonably steady—23.5 degrees, enough of a tilt to account for our seasons. Because of Earth's obliquity, in the northern hemisphere the winter sun stays low in the sky, casting its rays obliquely across the landscape. In summer it climbs to more nearly overhead, an angle much better for warming.
We living organisms depend, maybe more than we know, on the stability of Earth's obliquity. A shift in tilt as small as 1.3 degrees, scientists reckon, could trigger an Ice Age. At higher obliquities, greater than say 54 degrees, the poles would actually receive most of the sun's radiation, and the equator only a small fraction—the reverse of today. At 90 degrees, here in Pennsylvania, the sun would not set between mid-May and mid-August, and not rise from late November to the middle of February. The equator would grow a permanent ice cap.
Obliquities this high would present a couple of basic problems for life as we know it. One is surface temperature. Our northern hemisphere, in this scenario, would be a very different place, with summer temperatures averaging a hellish 120 to 140 F at Pennsylvania latitude, and 180 to 200 F at the North pole. "We have to consult the biologists," Williams says, "but I think DNA breaks down at about 200 F. So it's doubtful that life as we know it—water-dependent, carbon-based life—could exist in such an environment." Even if it could, the winters would pose a different challenge. "A microbial life form might be able to survive high temperatures," Williams speculates, "but six months later it would have to fend off temperatures as low as -50 F. It would have to be very migratory to survive."
Yet Laskar's results suggest that all of the interior planets of the solar system, including Earth, have experienced high obliquities at one time or another. Over the course of their evolutions, in fact, the obliquities of Venus, Earth, and Mars have fluctuated widely—and unpredictably. These planets have wobbled all over the place.
Mars, Laskar showed, still does, its obliquity varying chaotically between 0 and 60 degrees. The only thing that saved Earth from a fate worse than Mars', he says, was hooking up with the moon.
A little orbital mechanics may be in order here. Earth is a body in complex motion. It rotates, of course, once every 24 hours. At the same time, on a different time scale, it revolves around the sun. But there are other, subtler, motions which must also be accounted for. Earth's imperfection as a sphere, for one thing, adds a motion called precession, akin to the wobbling of a spinning top. Earth wobbles, as noted above, only slightly and in very slow motion, its obliquity oscillating from 22 to 24 degrees every 40,000 years.
Meanwhile, however, the gravitational pull of the other planets in the solar system, especially the giants Jupiter and Saturn, causes a different kind of precession: a wobble in the plane of Earth's orbit. Imagine the orbital plane as a solid object, a spinning Frisbee or a dinner plate, with the sun a dollop of mashed potatoes in its center, and Earth a wad of chewing gum stuck to its outer rim. The insistent tug of these outer, larger planets against the sun's stronger pull causes the plate to wobble as it spins.
The real action, in terms of shifting obliquity, comes when these two types of wobble—the planetary and the planar—stumble onto the same frequency. Then you get what's known as a spin-orbit resonance: in synch, the two motions combine their energy, creating a much larger force. It's not unlike the kind of timing it takes to keep a hula-hoop spinning around your hips, or to successfully push a child's swing. For a planet, however, resonance means chaos, as two small competing wobbles become one huge concerted one.
What saves Earth from falling into a spin-orbit resonance, Laskar says, is the moon. Because of its size and proximity, the moon exerts a strong gravitational pull of its own on our home planet—a pull which turns out to be a stabilizing influence. The lunar effect acts to accelerate Earth's global precession, maintaining it at a steady frequency well higher than the torpid wobbling of the orbital plane. Take the moon away, Laskar says, and keep things otherwise the same—give Earth the same mass, orbital position, rotation rate, etc.—and Earth's obliquity would fluctuate between 0 and 85 degrees.
Laskar's finding, Darren Williams says, has broader implications for the probability of life on other planets. "We think the moon is the result of an accident of accretion, that it was formed by a chance collision between Earth and a Mars-sized object," he explains. If this is so, "then statistically, many other Earths should be moonless." On these "Earths," Laskar's result suggests, because of high and chaotically fluctuating obliquities, the presence of life would not be likely.
As a first-year astronomy graduate student in 1994, Williams took Kasting's seminar on the origins of Earth and Moon. When Williams subsequently came to Kasting looking for a project for his thesis, Kasting thought of Laskar's work. He, Kasting, had been interested in testing Laskar's conclusion in the light of his own research. Williams' astrophysics background made him an ideal candidate for the job.
As a first attempt, Williams and Kasting determined surface temperatures on a hypothetical high-obliquity Earth, a world whose angle toward the sun was 90 degrees. "We found enormous swings in temperature, especially on high-latitude continents," Williams remembers. This finding seemed to confirm Laskar's pessimism. "But this was really just a detailed back-of-the-envelope calculation," Williams notes. Then, in 1995, he won a three-year NASA graduate fellowship, enough funding to build a climate model that would enable him to go deeper into the problem. Immediately, things started to look more complicated. The harsh surface effects of high obliquity, Williams soon found, would likely be negated—or at least substantially softened—by certain factors not accounted for in Laskar's theory.
The placement of continents on a planet, for one thing, has a big impact. Surface temperature varies greatly depending on whether that surface is land or water. A land mass heats and cools quickly. Ocean, on the other hand, has a much higher heat capacity. It warms very slowly, absorbing great quantities of radiation that would otherwise escape through the atmosphere. Over ocean, there's less seasonal variation. "That's why the temperature in Maine doesn't swing as wildly as that in Oklahoma," Williams says.
On our present Earth we have a continent at the South Pole, and an ocean (currently an ice cap) at the North, and continents scattered through the mid and higher latitudes between. But if all the Earth's land mass were gathered at one Pole, and the rest of the planet was ocean, the effects of high obliquity at the surface would largely depend on where on the globe you were measuring. At the land-mass end, temperatures would swing by 200 degrees F. At the ocean end, however, the temperature variation would be significantly lessened.
Even more important, Williams found, is the atmospheric density of carbon dioxide. Earth's is very low: 3x10-4 bar. There's relatively little to insulate us from the sun's scorching rays. But on a planet with a thicker CO2 blanket, the heat from those rays would be evenly distributed. "In a dense CO2 atmosphere," Williams says, "you have very efficient heat transport between latitudes." On Venus, which has a 90-bar atmosphere, the difference in surface temperature between the equator and the poles is a mere 3 F. Seasonal extremes are minimal.
What kinds of planets are likely to have denser atmospheres? Those that are farther from their stars than Earth from Sun—but not too far. The carbonate-silicate weathering cycle, remember, is temperature-driven. As surface temperature drops with increased distance from the sun, weathering decreases, and carbon dioxide begins to accumulate. Up to a point, anyway, temperatures remain stable.
Williams thinks the number of Earth-like planets with thick atmospheres will turn out to be pretty substantial. So, evidently, does NASA. In the past few years the space agency has made a major priority of finding out what lies beyond our galaxy. Informally, the mission is known as "Planet Finder."
Seeing distant planets, especially small planets like Earth, is beyond the capacity of current telescopes. The meager light reflected from these dark objects is completely overwhelmed by the radiance of their parent stars. In the infrared range, however, Williams says, this "swamping" effect is significantly lessened. "With an infrared telescope you could possibly resolve the light from an Earth-like planet, and separate that light from the parent star." Even in infrared, however, the task would require a very big telescope deployed in space, beyond the muddiness of Earth's atmosphere. A gigantic telescope—with a mirror 60 meters or more in diameter. Were such a telescope even technically feasible, its cost would be prohibitive.
The answer is a sophisticated imaging trick known as interferometry. Two small telescopes deployed at some distance from one another are trained on the same star, aligned so that each one receives the exact same pattern of light waves. The image from one of these telescopes is then inverted so that, laid atop one another, the reverse images completely cancel out the star's light. What's left is only the light of any planets that may be nearby. In effect, the combined instruments act as a single giant telescope.
NASA hopes to deploy such a space-based system within a decade. Once in orbit, proponents say, the interferometer should be able not only to make out small Earth-like planets in distant corners of the galaxy , but to check them for signs of life. Kasting recently gave a talk to Planet Finder brass on detecting the telltale presence of ozone in a planet's surrounding atmosphere.
But before they go looking for life, astronomers will need to know which planets are the likeliest places to look.
"What we have determined so far," Williams says, "is that high obliquity would not necessarily rule out a climate suitable for life." Only a small subset of planets would be rendered inhospitable by the tendency to wobble wildly, he adds: those with thin atmospheres and without large moons. One of his tasks over the next two years will be to narrow things down even further. He will do so by posing what-ifs: setting up various hypothetical scenarios on his model and observing the results. What if the Earth's moon were larger? Smaller? Farther away? (When formed, Williams notes, the moon was two to three Earth radii from Earth; now it is at 60 Earth radii and fading.) Then he'll take Earth and moon together and place them in a different kind of solar system, just to see what happens.
"In the future," Williams says, "we will probably discover other solar systems. Then we will have to check these out. Is the system likely to be stable? What planets within it might be habitable?" This kind of modeling, he hopes, will help lay the crucial groundwork for the Planet Finder mission.
"We hope to be able to tell them where to point their telescope."
Darren M. Williams is a Ph.D. student in the department of astronomy and astrophysics, Eberly College of Science, 406 Davey Laboratory, University Park, PA 16802; 814-863-7947. His adviser, James F. Kasting, Ph.D., is professor of geosciences in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, 211 Deike Building, 865-3207. Williams' research is funded by a graduate fellowship from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.


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Klikk for større bilde
HAWAII - RTS - 1000mm w/2.4Ghz Radio (1M Class Racing Yacht)
På lager
Hawaii - 1M (RTS = Ready To Sail) - Sailboat
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Hawaii 1000 2,4Ghz is an high quality sailboat in the 1M - class. Measures 1000mm. The boats sail surface measures above half a square meeter and the boats total hight is 2.15m. In addition, this is a very buitifull boat and the hull is developed of high quality fiberglass.
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Extrema Outdoor Belgium will take place from 6 to 8 June on the wonderful location in Houthalen-Helchteren.
Since birth, the festival has more attention for the underground -scene in electronic music. We can expect names such as Solomun, Ten Walls Joris Voorn, Tale Of Us, Jamie Jones and Finnebassen. In addition stages such as Defected In The House , Diynamic, Hot Creations, Ants, and also the Belgian collective Feestgedruis will be present.
Young talents could compete for a place on Extrema Outdoor this Month and the final winner is DJ Kapibara.
Visitors who want to experience the festival in true VIP-style will be treated as both The Jane and Pure C are ready to deliver the finest tasteful dishes in our country. Syrco B comes along on Saturday and on Sunday Sergio Herman and Nick Bril.
Extrema Outdoor is also a Quality Nights event.
EM Magazine will be present at Extrema Outdoor 2014. (JL)


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Electric Moon Jolts The Solar Wind
With the moon as the most prominent object in the night sky and a major source of an invisible pull that creates ocean tides, many ancient cultures thought it could also affect our health or state of mind – the word "lunacy" has its origin in this belief. Now, a powerful combination of spacecraft and computer simulations is revealing that the moon does indeed have a far-reaching, invisible influence – not on us, but on the Sun, or more specifically, the solar wind.
Unlike Earth, the moon is not surrounded by a global magnetic field. "It was thought that the solar wind crashes into the lunar surface without any warning or 'push back' on the solar wind," says Dr. Andrew Poppe of the University of California, Berkeley. Recently, however, an international fleet of lunar-orbiting spacecraft has detected signs of the moon's presence "upstream" in the solar wind. "We've seen electron beams and ion fountains over the moon's day side," says Dr. Jasper Halekas, also of the University of California, Berkeley.
Full Story: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/electric-moon.html
Astronomers And Students From Williams College To Study The Transit Of Venus
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., May 30, 2012 – The June 5 transit of the planet Venus across the face of our Sun, a rare event that won't recur until 2117, is the subject of detailed study by a team of faculty and students from Williams College and their collaborators around the country and the world. They will be observing the event from the 10,000 foot location of the University of Hawaii's Mees Solar Observatory on Haleakala, a dormant volcano on Maui, in a Science Park of telescopes there that is soon to contain the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope. Their work is sponsored by a research grant from the Committee for Research and Exploration of the National Geographic Society.
Full Story: http://communications.williams.edu/news/5_30_2012_pasachoff_venus/
Stellar Archaeology Traces Milky Way's History
Unfortunately, stars don't have birth certificates. So, astronomers have a tough time figuring out their ages. Knowing a star's age is critical for understanding how our Milky Way galaxy built itself up over billions of years from smaller galaxies.
Jason Kalirai of the Space Telescope Science Institute and The Johns Hopkins University's Center for Astrophysical Sciences, both in Baltimore, Md., has found the next best thing to a star's birth certificate. Using a new technique, Kalirai probed the burned-out relics of Sun-like stars, called white dwarfs, in the inner region of our Milky Way galaxy's halo. The halo is a spherical cloud of stars surrounding our galaxy's disk.
Those stars, his study reveals, are 11.5 billion years old, younger than the first generation of Milky Way stars. They formed more than 2 billion years after the birth of the universe 13.7 billion years ago. Previous age estimates, based on analyzing normal stars in the inner halo, ranged from 10 billion to 14 billion years.
Full Story: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2012/25/
NASA Preparing To Launch Its Newest X-Ray Eyes
PASADENA, Calif. — NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, is being prepared for the final journey to its launch pad on Kwajalein Atoll in the central Pacific Ocean. The mission will study everything from massive black holes to our own sun. It is scheduled to launch no earlier than June 13.
"We will see the hottest, densest and most energetic objects with a fundamentally new, high-energy X-ray telescope that can obtain much deeper and crisper images than before," said Fiona Harrison, the NuSTAR principal investigator at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., who first conceived of the mission 20 years ago.
Full Story: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-147
Mars Missions May Learn From Meteor
Scientists have tried to find out how the planet's environment came to contain methane gas, which contains carbon – a substance found in all living things.
They found that meteorites, which continually bombard the surface of Mars, contain enough carbon compounds to generate methane when they are exposed to sunlight.
Scientists planning future missions to Mars could use the findings to fine-tune their experiments, potentially making their trips more valuable.
Full Story: http://www.ed.ac.uk/news/all-news/300512-mars
ALMA Turns Its Eyes To Centaurus A
Centaurus A is a massive elliptical radio galaxy — a galaxy which emits strong radio waves — and is the most prominent, as well as by far the nearest, radio galaxy in the sky. Centaurus A has therefore been observed with many different telescopes. Its very luminous centre hosts a supermassive black hole with a mass of about 100 million times that of the Sun.
In visible light, a characteristic feature of the galaxy is the dark band that obscures its centre . This dust lane harbours large amounts of gas, dust and young stars. These features, together with the strong radio emission, are evidence that Centaurus A is the result of a collision between a giant elliptical galaxy, and a smaller spiral galaxy whose remains form the dusty band.
To see through the obscuring dust in the central band, astronomers need to observe using longer wavelengths of light. This new image of Centaurus A combines observations at wavelengths around one millimetre, made with ALMA, and observations in near-infrared light. It thus provides a clear view through the dust towards the galaxy's luminous centre.
Full Story:http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1222/
There's More Star-Stuff Out There But It's Not Dark Matter
More atomic hydrogen gas — the ultimate fuel for stars — is lurking in today's Universe than we thought, CSIRO astronomer Dr Robert Braun has found.
This is the first accurate measurement of this gas in galaxies close to our own.
By taking a new look at some archival data, Dr Braun, Chief Scientist at CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science in Sydney, Australia, has discovered that galaxies around us are hiding about a third more atomic hydrogen gas than previously calculated.
Full Story: http://www.csiro.au/en/Portals/Media/Atomic-hydrogen-gas.aspx


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Starting a business is not for everyone… or is it? I've come to the conclusion that if it is not for everyone, then it is certainly for most people. I'm not talking about necessarily starting the next Apple or even running a small local Mom and Pop shop for that matter. But I do think that most people should be running their own show independent from their employer (even if they love their job and wouldn't dream of leaving!)
I've gained a bit of a reputation recently in some circles for helping others get jobs (or, at least interviews). My day job brings me in contact with a lot of business owners, so when a position becomes available, there is a pretty decent chance that I will hear about it. But when someone tells me that they are looking for a job, I almost always ask them why they don't go into business for themselves.
This was the case recently when a friend of mine (who has a job but isn't getting a lot of hours), mentioned that he was looking for another part time job. When I mentioned that perhaps he run his own side business – he explained that the idea frightened him. But while he was envisioning buildings, overhead, employees, etc., I was envisioning something much simpler – like posting an ad on Kijiji or Craigslist. You know… advertising his skills and seeing what happens.
If you've got a skill or service to offer, then starting your own business doesn't have to be complicated. And it doesn't have to be a replacement for a job with a steady income either – if you need the security of regular employment (and there is absolutely no shame in that!), it can simply be a side gig. And if your side mushrooms into something even more profitable than your day job? All the better!
Need more reasons to start your own business?
It helps to keep you sharp – Even the best jobs can get routine – having your own gig helps you stay creative and passionate about what you do. It can arguably even make you a better employee.
You'll develop new skills – I started my business because of my writing ability – but in the process, I've developed stronger accounting and negotiation skills.
It offers security – No one should be completely reliant on their employer. I personally know more than a few people who have been totally blindsided by a layoff or business closure.
More money – I might not have purchased those designer sunglasses before when all I had was my regular salary – but now who knows? Maybe even save up for that paddleboarding excursion in Costa Rica! (And I'm also socking more away for retirement as recommended by my financial advisor)
It's fun! – And really, do you need another reason?


text: Elizabeth Bartelme, born in the early 1920s in Wisconsin, lived also in Iowa and Minnesota and graduated from the College of St Catherine in St Paul, Minnesota. Already interested in writing and zealous in advocating renewal in the life of the Church, she contributed articles to The Catholic Worker and Commonweal Magazine. After Miss Bartelme, known to her friends as "Betty," came to New York City, she worked in publishing, first at the Frick Museum and eventually as a respected book editor in the Catholic Book Departments of three publishing houses: Pantheon, Macmillan, and Doubleday. In addition Miss Bartelme was a long-time professor at Hofstra University. Throughout her life she remained close to her two brothers and their wives and families. Elizabeth Bartelme died in 2008 at the age of 87.


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The GSM Association (GSMA), which organises the Mobile World Congress (MWC) telecom show every year has announced a list of speakers who will be making their keynote address at the show. The list includes the who's who of the industry and next year's show seems to be one of the most stellar ones in the past four years that I have attended. What's more, Google will, for the first time, exhibit at the show and like last year, its CEO Eric Schmidt will make a keynote address. I recall listening to him in a packed auditorium where he announced that at Google, "it's mobile first." MWC 2011 will take place in Barcelona from February 14-17. Here's a list of some of the speakers at the show:
· Paul Otellini, President and CEO, Intel
· Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft
· Stephen Elop, President and CEO, Nokia
· Ryuji Yamada, President and CEO, NTT DoCoMo
· Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO, Research In Motion
· Masayoshi Son, Chairman and CEO, SoftBank
· Carol Bartz, CEO, Yahoo!
· Daniel Hajj, CEO, América Móvil and Telcel
· Randall Stephenson, Chairman, CEO and President, AT&T
· Li Yue, President and CEO, China Mobile
· Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO, Google
· Peter Chou, CEO, HTC
· Paul Jacobs, Chairman and CEO, Qualcomm
· Jack Dorsey, CEO, Square
· Evan Williams, Co-Founder, Twitter
· Vittorio Colao, Chief Executive, Vodafone
· Sir Martin Sorrell, Chief Executive, WPP
It will be a tough MWC to cover next year as we will have to make a tough choice of whether to cover all the new product launches or listen to some of the biggest names in the industry.


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"From Imaginary to Virtual Worlds": An Interview with Historian Michael Saler (Part One)
Confessions of an Aca-Fan 2013-12-20
This is the third in a series of interviews I am conducting with key contemporary thinkers writing about the concept of world-building. Previous instalments in this series featured Mark J. P. Wolfe (Building Imaginary Worlds) and an exchange between Ian Condry (The Soul of Anime) and Marc Steinberg (Anime's Media Mix). More to Come.
I am embarrassed to say that my copy of Michael Saler's book, As If: Modern Enchantment and the Literary Prehistory of Virtual Reality (2012) sat on my book shelf for several years before I got past the cover and the table of contents. What a foolish mistake that was! I've found the book to be an invaluable reference point for many discussions I have been having since I really dug deep into this book last summer. At first glance, the book would seem to be a series of case studies looking at early 20th century authors, especially those associated with what we would today call genre fiction, and their readers. His central figures are Arthur Conan Doyle, J.R.R. Tolkien, and H.P. Lovecraft. This alone would make the book of interest to me and many of you who read this blog, especially given the continued influence of these three key popular writers on our culture. Each not only produced compelling fictional characters and worlds, but also thought deeply about their craft and especially the ways that popular arts might enhance the life of the imagination.
Saler sees these writers as emblematic of a larger shift in the "structure of feelings" within modern culture, identifying the kinds of change in mind-set which needed to take place before adult readers would actively engage in these richly detailed depictions of worlds which exist only in our imaginations. He asks us to think about the "As If" status of these works, which often demand a sense of ironic spectatorship and an openness to play and performance. It is this new kind of cultural relationship between readers and these imagined worlds which paved the way for the emergence of modern fan culture, and this rich cultural and social history takes us along the path by which many of the kinds of speculation, appropriation, and affective investment we associate with today's fans first emerged.
Beyond this, he's interested in the ways that these writers went beyond words on the page to engage with a range of other media production practices in order to deepen the reader's sense of immersion. This process of documentation and authentication has strong parallels with the tactics and techniques being explored in contemporary forms of transmedia storytelling, which has similarly placed the act of world-building at the center of the storyteller's craft.
I am hoping that showcasing this remarkable work via my blog can help call it to the attention of those of us who work on contemporary media and do not yet know how urgently we need to learn what Saler has to tell us about the origins of these practices in the late 19th and early 20th century. Since I rediscovered the book some months ago, I have been shoving it at my students and urging them to read it closely, so let me use this interview to introduce you to a book you need to not only have on your library shelf but to engage with actively. In this three part exchange, Saler explains the changes enabled our modern sense of imaginative play with literary texts.
A key subtitle in your introduction describes a movement "from imaginary to virtual worlds." Can you define the key terms here and explain why and how this shift has occurred from your perspective? For example, you have a somewhat broader conception of a virtual world than what surfaces most often in discussions of new media and so it seems important to be clear about your terms from the start.
Because I was examining changing orientations to fictional world building from the eighteenth century to the present, I tried to distinguish among three different terms: "imagined world," "imaginary world," and "virtual world." Fiction has always provided "imagined worlds," but in late nineteenth century Europe and North America we start to see a new form of literary fantasy that established the template for "imaginary worlds" today, many of which have become "virtual worlds."
These imaginary worlds differed from earlier imagined worlds in two ways. First, they were influenced by literary realism, with its emphasis on highly detailed, empirically "objective" accounts of reality. Realist writers rejected romanticism, which in turn provoked others to resurrect literary romance in the late nineteenth century. The authors of what became known as the "New Romance" objected to the content of literary realism – its disillusioned focus on contemporary social issues – but were indebted to the realists for their style.
The numerous imaginary worlds of the 1880s and 1890s were far more empirically detailed and logically cohesive than their predecessors, adapting the outlook of scientific naturalism in their descriptions of marvelous locales, characters and plots. Contemporaries noted that the New Romance could be distinguished by its combination of the fantastic narratives of earlier gothic and romantic authors with the stylistic objectivity of the realists. (For this reason, I don't think "late Gothic" is a good term for works such as She or Dracula; "gothic" was not often used by contemporaries to refer to these works, whereas they did invoke the "New Romance." When we use "late Gothic" to discuss many of the fantastic works of the fin de siècle, we risk losing sight of their distinctive attributes.)
Innovation in printing technologies, such as half-tone lithography, enabled writers of the New Romance to "document" their imaginary worlds with photographs, and they used many other corroborating "paratexts" as well (footnotes, charts, glossaries, chronologies, etc.) Of course, maps and footnotes had been used occasionally by earlier writers – one thinks of the map in Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719), or the footnotes employed by Sir Walter Scott in his historical romances a century later – but the authors of the New Romance often went out of their way to substantiate their imaginary worlds by including as many of these "paratexts" as possible, outdoing the literary realists at their own game.
H. Rider Haggard's She (1886), for example, is full of documentary illustrations, including photographs of the potsherd that the protagonists use to discover the lost world of Kor, reproductions of its multilingual inscriptions, corroborating footnotes, and so on. As If surveys many other imaginary worlds of the New Romance that provided the reader with similar evidentiary material. These were truly "spectacular texts"; their attempts to reconcile fantasy with scientific objectivity not only distinguished the New Romance from the earlier gothic, romantic, and sensationalist fictions, but also provided the model for subsequent SF and Fantasy imaginary worlds.
In addition to being indebted to realism, the imaginary worlds of the New Romance were also beholden to another literary mode of the time, aestheticism. The aesthetes emphasized the autonomy of their fictional worlds, promoting the idea of "art for art's sake." Similarly, writers of the New Romance created autonomous imaginary worlds divorced from the social, moral, and utilitarian impulses of Victorian literature.
Tolkien called these imaginary worlds "secondary worlds," emphasizing their distinction from the lived reality of the "primary world." He thought that this characteristic typified fairy tales and other works of fantasy, but the sharp distinction between primary and secondary Worlds was actually historically specific, originating in the late nineteenth century: William Morris's The Well at the World's End (1896), for example, was one of the first fantasy worlds that took place in an entirely invented locale. Tolkien was sensitive to the autonomy of Secondary Worlds because he too was attracted to aestheticism, as were many other creators of imaginary worlds in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – including Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, E. R. Eddison, and H. P. Lovecraft.
So currents of both realism and aestheticism distinguished the "imaginary worlds" of the late-nineteenth century New Romance from earlier "imagined worlds." The characteristics of these imaginary worlds – a reconciliation of reason and the imagination; a wealth of paratexts; an emphasis on autonomy or "the world for the world's sake" – also typify many of today's imaginary milieus of science fiction and fantasy.
These early imaginary worlds also engendered novel forms of social media that anticipated our current ways of inhabiting secondary worlds and relating them to the primary world. Venues devoted to imaginary worlds, such as letters pages in fiction magazines, fanzines, clubs, and conventions, emerged between the 1890s and the 1930s, allowing fans to "live" in these worlds for prolonged periods of time, often in the company of other fans. This was a new practice; while vogues for imaginary characters and worlds had occurred before (one thinks of the enthusiasm for Richardson's Pamela, Goethe's Werther, and Dickens' Little Nell), they were brief and did not involve the prolonged and communal habitation of the imaginary worlds.
The latter practice transformed literary imaginary worlds into "virtual worlds" that transcended any particular reader, author, or text. Middle-earth, for example, began as a literary imaginary world, and subsequently assumed a life of its own through the ongoing and communal efforts of its fans. They explored and elaborated it, transforming it into a virtual world that could be experienced in an immersive and participatory manner.
You are tackling the development of fantasy literature and fandom from the perspective of a historian. What does your discipline bring to the table that might be different from forms of fan studies that come from media studies or literature scholars?
Conceptions of the "imagination, "reality," "fantasy," "fiction," etc. are all historical; they change over time and across cultures. Imagined worlds have existed since antiquity, but the ways in which they have been understood and used vary tremendously. (For example, Paul Veyne's Did the Greeks Believe in their Myths? demonstrated how the ancient Greeks' ideas about "myth" and "truth" were sharply different from our own.) Imagined worlds of all sorts must be understood contextually if we are to grasp their cultural appeals, social functions, and potential benefits and dangers.
In As If, I wanted to explore several historical changes in the conception of imagined/imaginary worlds. Why was there a remarkable expansion of imaginary worlds in Europe and North America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? Why was this period the first in Western culture in which adults began to live in these fictional worlds communally, persistently, and self-reflexively, ironically "believing" and disbelieving in the fiction at the same time? What were the links between these phenomena and increased references to the "virtual" and the "vicarious"? It became clear that the fin de siècle is critical to our understanding of virtual reality today, because this period witnessed a concerted and self-aware embrace of the imagination, virtuality and artifice.
Indeed, the practice of turning imaginary worlds into virtual worlds began with Sherlock Holmes, the first "virtual reality" character in Western literature. As I mentioned, while there were brief vogues for other fictional characters before, nothing compared to the Holmes phenomenon, in which adults no less than children pretended that his world was real, inhabiting it in a communal fashion for prolonged periods of time.
Holmes fandom was the template for subsequent fan subcultures dedicated to fictional worlds and characters. By exploring the literary prehistory of virtual reality, I hoped to highlight some of the benefits and pitfalls of our current obsession with imaginary world and fictional characters. While the technologies involved in virtual reality today are more sophisticated than in the past, in important respects our approach to virtual worlds echoes the methods that began to be forged in the late nineteenth century.


text: Same Day Delivery Service ONLY $50.00. Apply this to all orders that are ordered after 5:00 PM to be delivered on the following day. Also, apply to all orders that are for delivery on the same day as the order was placed. Please call the office at NC 910-575-2700 SC 843-215-2700 to confirm availability prior to processing the order.


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Del E. Webb Corporation Photographs
Selected black and white photographs of Del Webb construction projects and of Del Webb with several celebrities and professional athletes.
Images were chosen from the Del E. Webb Corporation Records by ASU Del E. Webb School of Construction staff for presentation in a forthcoming exhibit.
Mime Type
Resource Type
- 1 Image
- 1 Public
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6 Ft Solid Birch Workbench Top – This 24″ W x72″ L x 1 3/4″ thickness will give you a sturdy and spacious work surface. You will just have to drill some bench dog holes, add some quick release vises and build your own base. A free plan is included.
There are many different types of workbenches for all kinds of applications, and these can include:
Does your house look empty or need some organizing or storage devices? Do you have books and magazines scattered around on the floor lying about on your counters? One great way to help organize your home is to add open shelf bookcases or wooden chests that serve as storage devises. You can go out and spend a lot of money on these items for lesser quality products, or you can do it yourself, and build your own.
Making the top in two halves minimizes warping. High-density hardwoods such as oak, birch, maple and Beech about 1 in. thick is suitable. A one-piece top of I-in. hardwood plywood might also do nicely. Cross support cleats should also be hardwood and the top should be fastened with heavy wood screws, lag crews or carriage bolts. Be sure fasteners are well counter bored below the surface. On my first model set the screws flush with the surface and frequently hit those with carving chisels until I finally set them deeper.
Before you start the project, you need to get the right workbench designs. Even if you don't have any experience on building projects, there are strategies available on workbench designs with which you can build a workbench of your own. It must draw attention to everything that you will need to build a workbench. It should contain the exact measurements and standard size of your workbench. The workbench plan should have the dimensions, styles or designs of your project.
Is your workbench a cluttered mess? Stuff everywhere? Got a place for everything but nothings ever in its place?
Creating woodworking projects and be a lot of fun and relaxing, since you get to take your mind off the stressful parts of your life while you are working on your projects. Adding a bookcase or wooden chest to a room can make your home feel more inviting, and knowing that you built that piece of furniture yourself will make you want to show it off to your family and friends. Adding this type of furniture to your home can also allow you to store some of your stuff, which will help make your house feel more open and clean.
The biggest inhibition is that many are down right scared that accidents might occur.
If you are going to work in a dedicate location then building a custom workbench is an option. Your first consideration is height. Height is important for two reasons. First and most important is you must make sure that the bench can be set at a comfortable level for your height. Make sure as you are working you will not have to slouch your back or bend your elbows more then 90 degrees. Second, your workbench also can act as a support for your stock as you work on other tools. Having the table top of your bench set to the same height as your table saw is essential for working on big pieces of wood and you do not have somebody else to assist you.


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Google Warns BBC: Post on Merrill's O'Neal May Be 'Forgotten'
A Google notice that it would block some search results for a seven-year-old British Broadcasting Corp. blog post on former Merrill Lynch Chief Executive Stan O'Neal is raising questions and confusion about the new European Union "right to be forgotten" privacy rules weeks after their introduction.
Under the rules, according to a person familiar with Google's data-takedown process, EU residents who aren't public figures can request removal of search results that come up in searches of their own name that they consider outdated and prejudicial. It wasn't immediately clear how the rules applied to the BBC post, titled "Merrill's Mess," in which the only person mentioned was Mr. O'Neal, a U.S. citizen of considerable renown.


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Suppose that she was living at your place and when she breaks up, she leaves bags of her stuff behind.
What do you do?
The best approach is to contact her and give her a deadline: a couple of weeks to a month is usally reasonable.
Say something like:
"You still have a couple of bags at my place - As you can imagine I don't really want this stuff around... Can you pick them up in the next couple weeks? - I would appreaciate that - Thanks!"
If you don't hear from her, send her one last reminder and after that either get rid of it or bring it to one of her family members or friends.
You warned her!
It's her stuff, not yours!
She is the one who should be taking care of it!
If she doesn't care, neither should you!


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We're very pleased to announce the Paisley Pokemon League will be hosting another Pre Release at Comicrazy. You can sign up here.
The events will take place on the 23rd, 29th and 30th of July. It's a ton of fun and if you haven't been to a pre release before here's what to expect.
Pokémon TCG: Burning Shadows Prerelease tournaments allow players to receive and play with cards from the upcoming Sun & Moon—Burning Shadows expansion up to two weeks before the expansion's official release date!
Each participant receives a Prerelease box containing a 22-card Evolution pack, four 10-card booster packs, and an exclusive foil promo card. The Evolution pack provides a solid foundation which, along with the booster packs and Energy provided by the Tournament Organizer, is used to construct a 40-card deck. Evolution packs and booster packs are available while supplies last.
Tournament Organizers are provided with 3 packs per player to use as prizes. The prize structure will vary by event—some events may award 3 packs to every participant, while others will award packs based on number of wins or finish order. Contact the Tournament Organizer for details.
What do I need to know?
- Bring your Player ID card, if you have one. If you don't have a Player ID, one will be given to you at the event.
- See the Pokémon Tournament Rules for more information about what to bring to an event.
- Make sure you arrive on time. If you are late for registration, you may not be able to play in the event!
- To participate in the event, you must be a player in good standing and abide by the Tournament Rules.
- See the Legal Notice for certain eligibility requirements and other information, including information concerning limitations on The Pokémon Company International's liability.
Pretty awesome eh? Well what are you waiting for? Get signed up NOW!!!
Space is very limited and our last 2 pre releases have sold out at the pre booking stage.
About The Author
John is the owner of Comicrazy an online comic shop and owner of the only specialist comic shop in Paisley, near Glasgow Scotland. John is not a trained writer but likes to share news and reviews when he can.


text: With over 15 years of experience in the world of lighting, we are here to offer our services all year round. Through the years we have worked closely with many different companies, and our friendly and experienced trade team will be able to assist with tailoring your display to your specific needs. Our product range is constantly expanding, and we are well equipped to illuminate town centres, shopping centres, corporate events and weddings to name but a few. There is no job too small!


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Most of us are unfortunate to have credit card debt. It is just so easy to pay for just about everything with your credit card, and not think about the penalties of high interest rates or having a enough funds to pay the money back. If you are like many Americans and have found it easy to whip out your credit card for purchases then you need to find ways to pay off credit cards.
There are debt relief companies available if you have found yourself in over your head in credit card debt. These companies do charge fees, but offer such services as credit card consolidation, debt settlement and debt reduction. These services do scar your credit report, but may be the only option for some.
There are other ways to pay off credit cards. One option is to get a second job. Use the income from your second job to make payments one your credit card debt. If you get paid twice a month or more, then make multiple payments on your card each month. By making more than one payment every month you will get yourself out of debt faster, and end up paying less in interest.
Another option is to sell some of your assets. This can be difficult, but if you have items laying around the house that you do not use then you may want to consider selling them. The more you sell the more money you will make. Additionally, high end items will bring more of a profit. The down side to selling items, is you do not always get the amount of money you think the items is worth. Either way you can use the money to pay of your credit card debt, depending on how much you sell and how much debt you have.
Monique Rowe is a guest writer that writes for Paying Paul.


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Why don't they market that?! I would eat the hell out of some OMNI-FRÜT Loops! Delicious and efficient!
Omni-Früt is best Früt!
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Cinematic Subtlety: The Politics of Ironman
There is a moment in the opening act of Jon Favreau's Ironman in which Tony Stark and his fellow prisoner Yinsen are visited in their cell--really a cave somewhere in the mountains of Afghanistan--by their captors. I happen to be this guy who can recognize Arabic when it is spoken and thus knew that the bad guys were speaking Arabic and Yinsen, an Afghan whose native language might be Dari, Pashto or even Farsi, but certainly not Arabic, responded in that language. A few moments later, Stark and Yinsen are having a conversation and Stark asks Yinsen how many languages he speaks. Yinsen's reply is that he doesn't speak enough to cover all of those spoken amongst their captors.
In that ever so brief exchange, the film acknowledged that Yinsen speaks at least three languages (English, Arabic and whatever his native language may be) and that the militants who operate in that region of the world are an amazingly polyglot bunch comprising some mixture of Pashtuns, Persians, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Turkmen, Bosnians, Chechens and a handful of Arabs. This is precisely the sort of undemonstrative cue that assumes an informed audience that John Ford used in The Searchers but that one would not expect from a 21st Century comic book superhero movie.
Political movies are generally problematic because they are usually either obvious and obnoxiously preachy or they are too timid to commit to anything controversial for fear of turning off too many viewers. The thing about politics, though, is that if what you are saying isn't controversial, it probably isn't worth saying. The political content of Ironman avoids all this because it asks questions about some truly paradoxical stuff in American foreign policy, but also avoids making any naive conclusions about them.
In the scene in which Stark is demonstrating his company's new high-tech missile to the gathered dignitaries, he makes a comment about how the enemy will be afraid to come out of their caves. This seemingly throwaway line actually says a lot about the attitudes and assumptions of Americans in regards to our current enemies. Later in the film, when Obadiah Stane goes to Afghanistan to retrieve Stark's original Ironman suit from his captor, Stane makes a comment about how it was always technology that kept that part of the world behind. Taken together, these two comments reveal something of the impotence Americans felt in the face of what happened on September 11, 2001. Like, if these people are able to use our technology to destroy two of the largest and most robust structures on the face of the planet in a plan hatched in a cave in Afghanistan, we must be fucked. These scenes also point out the ironic doubling of cowardice in the current conflict against terror: They hide in caves while we hide behind our technology.
Although I think this was a relatively rare phenomenon, there were certainly some right-leaning critics of the film who pigeonholed it as a typical left-wing, anti-corporation, anti-military film. Still others coming from the left decried the film's portrayal of brown-skinned Muslims as the villains. Both readings are ultimately simplistic and basically ignore what is really going on. Insofar as there is a villain in the film, it is the double-dealing plutocrat Obadiah Stane. Sure he pays a group of presumably Muslim militants to kill Stark, but this is only one portrayal of Muslims in the film--the other and more affecting is as victims of just the sort of amoral business practices Stane engages in. Moreover, I would argue that the movie's primary moral barometer is none other than Colonel James Rhodes, a military officer in charge of the development and procurement of new weapons technology.
The film does ask some basic questions about the morality of arms manufacture as a means of earning a living, but it does so without pretending to have all the answers. As Stark himself points out, many of the technologies his company developed that have helped people around the globe were made possible with military money. Questions are asked, complexities are exhibited and acknowledged, people are left to come to their own conclusions--this is what politically and philosophically serious films do.
Posted by david e. ford, jr at 6:30 PM
Labels: Iron Man, Ironman, Ironman Movie, jon favreau, Robert Downey Jr., September 11, terrorism, Tony Stark
1 comment:
- sat nav memory said...
Iron Man isn't the most well-known or beloved title in the Marvel comic book canon, yet the film adaptation proves to be as plucky, as confident, and as polished as if it were the keystone.
- February 23, 2010 at 6:02 AM
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If it's on Netflix you'll find it with our search engine. Search below to get started.
98 m -
Sports & Fitness
The 1991 University of Michigan men's basketball recruiting class in which five freshman known as The Fab Five revolutionized college basketball. This film covers the success, cultural changes, scandal, and of course The Timeout.


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TORONTO – When Toronto FC selected Kyle Bekker with the third overall pick in January's SuperDraft, many were celebrating the beginning of the professional career of a true hometown hero, and perhaps a guy who was the future of the Canadian national team.
On the eve of his first Amway Canadian Championship tournament, the rookie midfielder is ready for his close-up. Bekker says he's focused on two things: getting better as a player and helping TFC achieve their team goals.
"I have just been trying to work hard and to be ready when the coach calls upon me," Bekker (above right) told MLSsoccer.com ahead of Wednesday's ACC semifinal first leg vs. the Montreal Impact (7:30 pm ET, Sportsnet/TVA Sports). "We now get to play the Impact again and we weren't too happy with how things went the first time in Montreal. Hopefully we can have a better performance this time around."
"Overall, I think things are going well for me. I'm just trying to work hard each day in practice and looking forward to the games on the weekend. I just want to keep doing everything that the coaching staff asks of me," Bekker added.
READ: Kick Off: TFC reportedly eye EPL veteran, fans come together in New York for "#BostonStrong"
After making his professional debut in Toronto's season opening 1-0 loss to Vancouver last month, Bekker has been limited to two substitute appearances for the Reds.
Given that the Oakville, Ontario, native is both Canadian and a high draft pick, many TFC supporters are looking at the Boston College product as a player who needs to be playing regularly in order for him to realize his potential not just as a TFC midfielder, but also as a possible core performer for the national team.
According to Toronto FC head coach Ryan Nelsen, where a player is from and where he was drafted mean little in the grand scheme of things. Bekker, like all of the players on his squad, is going to have to earn his minutes and then capitalize on his opportunities when he gets them.
"It doesn't matter what people expect," Nelsen told MLSsoccer.com. "What matters is what is in and about this club. It's about his teammates and everybody at Toronto Football Club.
"Over the last three to four weeks, Kyle has been great. It's hard when there are a lot of expectations on certain players and sometimes it can kind of affect you mentally. He has to learn, like everybody, that the professional environment has different standards, that it is more ruthless and that it is about coming to work every day. You can't take days off."
"To Kyle's credit, he is adapting brilliantly. He has been fantastic and I have no doubt that he will be an incredible player in the future when it is his time."
With experienced and established veterans such as Robert Earnshaw, Terry Dunfield, Danny Califf and Darren O'Dea on Toronto's roster, Nelsen sees the perfect role models for young players such Bekker to learn the ins and outs of being a top level professional.
READ: TFC's Canadian Championship defense could bolster league form
"I think they have to have strong characters around the club and quality senior players, which we have here. They are coming from being, I suppose, big fishes in small ponds to being smaller fish in big ponds," Nelsen said. "When you see the work ethic of the older guys and that their standards are a bit different, it helps. It helps young guys realize that they have to be patient. It is a whole different world now."
"They are experienced players, so they have a lot of knowledge. I try to ask them as many questions as I can, so I can improve all of the little things in the game. I'm just trying to get that much smarter," Bekker said.
With Toronto currently missing some key players due to injury and in the midst of a run of six games in 18 days, in four cities and over two competitions, the likelihood is high that Bekker is going to get his chance to impress at some point over the next couple of weeks.
"Everybody is going to play. And they have to understand that when they get their opportunity, they have to take it. There are a lot of games coming up and everybody will be playing," Nelsen said.


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Miaow!! Hello Kitty! I've finally been commissioned to make this all time favourite cartoon character for a very lucky 3 year old girl named Isabelle.
As usual, I prepared the board. To make it extra special I added on some pink edible glitter on it.
The cake flavour was not on my cake list but it was a macadamia nut cake with raspberry jam filling and covered with white chocolate ganache...yumm..I wish I had a chance to see it once it was cut.
Client wanted a bow around the bottom so that's exactly what I did.
Then the birthday girl's name. I like that they only put her name down instead of the whole Happy Birthday.. message. I mean it seems logical that toddlers only recognise how the cake looks most of the time and not quite anything that's written on it.
Then I attached the yellow button nose and the pink bow.
The pink bow was kinda tricky. I had to follow the cartoon exactly as the client didn't want an actual 'bow' bow on the head. So I made it as close as possible to the character's bow and added some glitter to the middle to tie in with the glitter on the board.
Okay I had some problems with my air brush machine today so I opted for the Wilton's Color Mist food color spray in pearl white. Worked the same and never dissapoints :)
The I cut out the eyes and whiskers with black chocolate fondant.
Added two tiny flowers flanking the birthday girl's name and I was done.
View from the front side. It was quite a thick cake at about 4 inches high. I baked three layers and 3 separate times in the Hello Kitty cake pan.
A closer look at the name with flowers.
There you have it...a Hello Kitty cake! Okay..bye-bye for now Kitty....:)


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Welcome to our new site.
We would like to announce the launch of our new service website. You can find information about all the latest news reports and services. Our primary goal is to keep you in the know on the most recent events related to the antiques industry and introduce you to any new services that will be available soon.


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Is Jack truly a Phage, or is he masquerading as one? Fnar is still missing the nose that a certain bird stole, so it is possible that Jack is indeed Wrath. What say you, Ms. Bhunny?
PS: Sam doesn't seem to be a stereotypical Blind. She's actually able to carry on safe, normal conversations. Too bad she won't be able to get any fear from Fnar.


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In the men's 9-ball competition, what used to be a 16-player single-elimination field split evenly between world-beaters and international unknowns in past World Games was a field of nearly all top-echelon players in Taiwan. Souquet began his march to the final with an 11-6 win over Radiv Reljic of New Zealand, before surviving a dicey match against Leonardo Didal, the lone Filipino in the field.
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