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Monday, 3 August 2015
Hellbeast Strictly Come Dancing Team
"More synchophony than a Land Raider's tappets."
by Judge Hilda Bracket.
Posted by John Lambshead at 16:48
2 comments:
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Welcome to my strange alternative world of wargaming with toy soldiers: a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books (HG Wells, Little wars)

subset: commoncrawl


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Bike Racks Help Library Expand After-School Program
Categories: Active Living, Healthy Places, Physically Active
Prior to participating in the Rack It Up! program, school-aged visitors to the Jaffrey Public Library would often drop their bicycles on the lawn and driveway in front of the building. Knowing the high cost of purchasing a new bike rack from her experience at the Stephenson Memorial Library in Greenfield, NH, Library director Julie Perrin recognized the Rack It Up! program as a great opportunity.
"Having worked in a library with no bike racks and understanding how difficult fundraising to purchase them can be, Rack It Up! was a wonderful opportunity for the library and for the community," says Perrin.
Thanks to the program, the library installed a bike rack in the summer of 2017 that can hold eight bicycles. The rack was placed in a safe and convenient spot along the side of the driveway. However, many of the kids visiting the Library did not notice the new rack and continued to drop their bicycles in front of the building. To address this issue, the library installed a sign that directed the kids to the new bike rack. The driveway and lawn in front of the library doors have been safe and clear ever since.
According to Julie Perrin, having a safe and secure place to store bicycles allowed the library to expand their Afterschool Fun program, which is timed to allow students to ride their bicycles from the school to the library. In an effort to encourage more kids to ride bicycles, the library lowered the age requirement (with parental permission) for students visiting the library after school.
Library Director, Julie Perrin, poses with the new bike rack in front of the Jaffrey Public Library. The library received the bike rack for free through the Rack It Up! program with funds from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the Healthy Monadnock initiative.


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My 9 year old is way too playful and doesn't want to spend time doing any work. We come up with several plans but they don't last longer than a couple of days. Very poor organizing skills and that drives me mad. How can I re-inforce positively and be kind ?
Not poor organization skills
Submitted by Alan Forrester on
Your child doesn't have poor organisation skills, he doesn't want to do the work you're setting for him. To see the difference, look at something he actually enjoys: cycling, drawing, physics, video games. You'll see that when he enjoys doing soemthing he has not trouble organising it.
Whatever he likes doing try to find ways to help him do more of it. If what he likes changes, find ways to help him do what he likes doing.
Why? Well, you value competence and your child's happiness. So pick what he's competent and good at and help him do more of it and he will be both competent and happy.


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WITH Strobe Talbott in the No. 2 job at the State Department, the Clinton administration may be moving to fix what officials judge is one of their largest foreign-policy problems: communication.
A frustrated White House has long worried that it wasn't getting the word out about its foreign-policy successes. In particular, officials felt that this fall too much attention focused on stumbling United States action in Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia. Meanwhile, the US got little credit for steady work in areas such as aid to Russia and management of trade relations with Japan.
Mr. Talbott is an expert at the interaction of policy and publicity. As deputy secretary of state, an appointment expected to be announced Dec. 28, he would bring media savvy to a job usually held by unobtrusive bureaucratic managers.
As far as Secretary of State Warren Christopher is concerned, it also can't hurt that Talbott is a major FOB, or Friend of Bill's. President Clinton and Talbott met at Oxford University in England, where they both were Rhodes scholars. Criticism of Clinton administration foreign policy has already taken down one Cabinet official, Defense Secretary Les Aspin, and Mr. Christopher appears determined to not suffer the same fate.
Currently Talbott serves as special ambassador at large and adviser on Russia and the other former Soviet republics. He was picked over more senior officials for the No. 2 post.
It is not a foregone conclusion, of course, that communication is the administration's major foreign-policy problem. And as adviser on Russia, Talbott has been a large force in the formation of an aid policy that is now under review as a result of the strong showing by nationalist forces in the recent Russian election.


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Just like the rest of the family physician population, direct primary care (DPC) piqued the interest of students who attended the National Congress of Student Members here on Aug.7-9, and they responded by adopting resolutions on the topic. The congress was held during the 2014 AAFP National Conference of Family Medicine Residents and Medical Students.
Sarah Franklin, of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences College of Medicine in Little Rock, discusses a resolution she co-authored that asks the Rural Health Member Interest Group to include student and resident representatives.
Congress participants also adopted resolutions that focused on helping students become part of the solution in medically underserved rural areas, as well as measures that addressed student loan forgiveness, among other topics.
Direct Primary Care
The first of two substitute resolutions on DPC that students adopted calls for the AAFP to provide educational activities and seminars on this model of care during the 2015 National Conference. It also asked the AAFP to explore the creation of an online database of family physicians who practice DPC and would be willing to serve as mentors to family medicine residents and students.
Brian Blank, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, was a co-author of both original resolutions and testified in a reference committee hearing that he was excited about the AAFP's recent support of the DPC movement. He acknowledged that the Academy had already organized a number of regional conferences intended to train physicians who are interested in converting their existing practices to the DPC model. But Blank said he and his fellow co-authors sought specifically to call for DPC education and resources to extend to the student and resident level.
Story highlights
- AAFP medical student members met recently in Kansas City, Mo., to consider resolutions intended to help guide AAFP policy decisions.
- The National Congress of Student Members adopted resolutions on topics that included direct primary care, serving rural areas and student loan forgiveness.
- The students also called for the AAFP to consider updating educational resources on buprenorphine/naloxone training for family medicine residents and creating a health policy and legislative advocacy opportunity for medical students.
"We are asking that the AAFP consider expanding those options for folks who are interested, especially when they are in residency and medical school," said Blank. "Because it is not something lots of students have exposure to. What's exciting is that the students and residents who do have exposure to it really come away feeling like they are in control of their future in primary care."
The second measure asked the AAFP to create a DPC startup toolkit for family physicians interested in establishing a DPC practice from the ground up. The toolkit would include information gleaned from current AAFP regional DPC workshops that could be tailored to this group.
"There is a very big difference between being in a current practice where you may have signed contracts with insurance companies and that sort of thing" and starting a DPC practice from the ground up, said Blank, noting that a toolkit currently being developed by the AAFP speaks more to resolving issues associated with moving from an existing practice to the DPC model. "This is asking, 'If you are starting from scratch and are just leaving residency, how do you approach adopting the DPC model?'"
Underserved Rural Areas
Students also sought to determine what they and residents could do to increase interest in practicing in underserved rural areas around the United States.
One resolution students adopted requested that the AAFP appoint one student and one resident representative to the Working Group on Rural Health.
Resolution co-author Sarah Franklin, of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences College of Medicine in Little Rock, said finding physicians to serve rural areas logically starts with reaching out to students and residents.
"We all know of the present and serious physician shortages in the United States and the great need we have for physicians in underserved areas, which are often rural areas," she testified. "(Students and residents) are the future of medicine in these underserved areas."
Students also adopted a substitute resolution that asked the AAFP to encourage rural medicine education and networking through the Rural Health Member Interest Group's resources and collaborative efforts.
Liberty Foye, of the East Tennessee State University James H. Quillen College of Medicine in Johnson City, spoke to the value of rural health care education. Foye, who is in the rural primary care track at her school, said that although there are excellent programs on rural health care at universities around the United States, these programs alone are not going to solve the shortage of rural physicians.
Alexander Pappas, of the Medical University of South Carolina College of Medicine in Charleston, speaks about a resolution he co-authored that asks the Academy to oppose any effort to cap student loan forgiveness under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program.
"If the AAFP were able to reinforce the rural health care education of these programs (with additional resources), that would expose more medical students to rural education and get them interested, curious and out in rural communities," Foye said.
Student Loan Forgiveness
Arguably, student loan debt is always top-of-mind for medical students. Small wonder, then, that the students took exception to a provision in the administration's proposed 2015 budget that seeks to cap the federal Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program at $57,500 per person.
In response, students adopted a combined resolution that calls for the AAFP to oppose any effort to cap student loan forgiveness under the PSLF Program. The measure also asks the AAFP to advocate that PSLF eligibility be expanded to include all federal educational loans held by family medicine physicians.
Alexander Pappas, of Medical University of South Carolina College of Medicine in Charleston, co-authored one of the original resolutions and testified that family physicians should show solidarity with other public service students and professionals in universally opposing a cap on the PSLF Program.
"We believe, specifically, as young doctors who have longer training and a higher debt burden, that there should be a specific exemption for medical practitioners," said Pappas. "This should help attract people to primary care and the types of service work that are meaningful to our specialty."
A co-author of the second resolution, Blair Cushing, of the University of North Texas Health Science Center College of Osteopathic Medicine in Fort Worth, said that although the AAFP has existing policy regarding medical student debt and its repayment, the authors thought there were certain areas that hadn't been addressed.
"In particular, medical students often have many additional sources of debt, including additional loans they are taking out to cover the costs of either their education or (related items)," Cushing said.
Other Issues
Students also adopted measures that call on the AAFP to
- revise its Recommended Curriculum Guidelines for Family Medicine Residents on Substance Use Disorders(174 KB PDF) to include buprenorphine/naloxone training;
- consider revising the Recommended Curriculum Guidelines for Family Medicine Residents on Nutrition(9 page PDF) to include the potential benefit of culinary nutrition education;
- create a health policy and legislative advocacy opportunity for medical students looking to design, develop and execute national advocacy projects;
- advocate for universal access to the hepatitis C virus drug sofosbuvir (Sovaldi) regardless of ability to pay; and
- recognize recently retired AAFP Vice President for Education Perry Pugno, M.D., for his many years of service to the Academy, its members and family medicine by exploring the recognition of one student and one resident with an award in his honor to be presented during the National Conference to individuals who exemplify dedication to leadership in family medicine.
Related AAFP News Coverage
2014 National Conference
Students, Residents Elect New Leaders to Represent Them
2014 National Congress of Family Medicine Residents
Residents Embrace DPC Practice Model, Tackle Student Debt
News and Views From 2014 AAFP National Conference
2014 National Conference
FPs Have Pivotal Role in Innovative Care Delivery, Speaker Tells Students, Residents
Additional Resources
Storify: National Conference: Day One(storify.com)
Storify: National Conference: Day Two(storify.com)
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News Archives
Keep an eye on our Twitter and Facebook pages since we often post quickie updates there when we're on-the-go.
During tours, we do our best to cover setlists in real-time on Twitter. If you want to tweet a show in, just DM or @ us on the day and tell us to watch your stream that night.
Tori is touring in 2017 to support the release of Native Invader. The European legs runs from early September through early October and the North American leg runs from late October to early December. We do not know if additional dates elsewhere will be added.
It's been quiet on the tour front since the second round of North American dates went on sale last week (and we hope that everyone secured good seats during the pre-sale/general sale madness that ensued) but a few developments have evolved over the past couple days.
First, the second Oakland show has been removed from both ToriAmos.com and Everything Tori. Since the second show was never listed on the Paramount's website or Ticketmaster, it seems pretty likely that this date was always optional and depended on the first night selling out before the second night would go on sale — exactly what happened in Oakland last tour. Since tickets are still available for the July 13th show, it should be no surprise that the second show never went on sale. However, what the removal of the second show from the official tour dates indicates, we do not know. While it is not out the question that the hold on 14th has been released, it's also possible that they are just trying to drum up sales for the show on the 13th.
The other concert date that has been a conundrum is Atlanta but Live Nation has added a listing for the show which shines the following light on the mystery:
THIS SHOW IS PART OF THE 2009 LIVE NATION SUMMER CONCERT SERIES. SERIES AND MINI-SERIES TICKETS ARE ON SALE SUNDAY, JUNE 14TH AT 10:00AM! Series and Mini-Series tickets for the 2009 Live Nation Summer Concert Series, Atlanta's most popular concert series, ARE ON SALE SUNDAY, JUNE 14TH AT 10:00AM! Tickets for the full series or any combination of two or more shows will be available online at www.chastainseries.com or charge by phone by calling Chastain Tickets at (404) 233-2227.
ToriAmos.com and Everything Tori now say pretty much the same thing but also indicate that single-event tickets will be available for purchase on Saturday, June 27th at Noon Eastern.
Given this, it seems unlikely to us that there will be an iTunes presale for the Atlanta show at this point but there is still time for us to be proven wrong.
Finally, there is still the matter of whether or not any other European dates will be added. The information we heard previously about Polish dates (Zabrze on October 8th and Warsaw on October 10th) seemed pretty concrete but there is still no official confirmation from either the venues or Tori's management. Tori has also said she's coming to Russia on this tour so hopefully that still works out. Whether or not any other dates in Europe — or elsewhere in the world for that matter — will be added though remains to be seen.


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So, today was the day I decided to start trying new recipes, which I had aimed to be a positive side-effect of the experience. The first one I wanted to try was a really simple recipe for Vegan spring rolls I found at PepperAnn's Blog .
For the non-German speakers amongst you, I shall re-post the recipe here:
You Need:
– Rice paper / pancakes
– Random vegetables
– Oil
– Some spices or soy sauce
– Bowl of Warm water
You can find the rice pancakes in Health Foods on Market Street for only 1.79. (picture taken from GoodnessDirect
– Cut up the vegetables into small cubes, put them into a nice big bowl. Throw in some spices in (I used Tesco's 'Chinese 5 Spices' mix) and a bit of soy sauce.
– Heat up about 0.5cm of oil in your pan.
– Start soaking two rice pancakes in the bowl of warm water for a minute or so.
– Take the first one out and spoon about 2 TS of your vegetable mix on it. Fold the rice pancake carefully leaving one corner open, then take the second pan cake out of the bowl and fold it around that corner.
– Put the rolls in the pan.
– Cook until they're nice and crispy, for around 3-5 min.
– BE CAREFUL with the hot oil! If you have a deep-fryer, use that – but frying them in the pan should work perfectly as well.
– You will have to actually use two layers of pancakes for each roll. I did attempt to save some by using one layer, but all that happen is that the rolls fall apart and it's a big mess. So, unless you make your rolls really small so you have several layers of the one pan cake around it, just use two.
– Make sure not to put the roles too close to each other in the pan, they will stick! Also try to use a plastic cooking utensil and store them on a ceramic plate – the rice pancakes will stick to anything wooden like there's no tomorrow.
The camera unfortunately died in the process of making the spring rolls. Since they were so yummy, though, I shall make them again soon and then post some pictures.
On a slightly unrelated note, this is the perfect spring-roll-cooking soundtrack: Blue Foundation
Guten Appetit! Enjoy!


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- North America
- United States
- Mississippi
- Buena Vista Church (historical)
- Search
Traveling Luck for Buena Vista Church (historical) Mississippi, United States
The timezone in Buena Vista Church (historical) is America/Rankin_Inlet
Morning Sunrise at 05:27 and Evening Sunset at 18:52. It's Dark
Rough GPS position Latitude. 31.8192°, Longitude. -91.3175°
Morning Sunrise at 05:27 and Evening Sunset at 18:52. It's Dark
Rough GPS position Latitude. 31.8192°, Longitude. -91.3175°
Weather near Buena Vista Church (historical) Last report from Vicksburg, Vicksburg / Tallulah Regional Airport, LA 83.3km awayTemperature: 27°C / 81°F
Wind: 0km/h North
Cloud: Sky Clear
Satellite map of Buena Vista Church (historical) and it's surroudings...
Geographic features & Photographs around Buena Vista Church (historical) in Mississippi, United States
Local Feature A Nearby feature worthy of being marked on a map..
- Buena Vista Church (historical) (0km)
- Buena Vista Landing (2.2km)
- Gilliam Landing (3.4km)
- Kempe Bend (3.7km)
- Kempe Bend (5.2km)
- Goldman Lower Landing (5.4km)
- Bieller Landing (historical) (5.6km)
- New Zion Church (historical) (6.3km)
- Rodney Bend (6.4km)
- Rodney Bend (7km)
- Rodney Cutoff (8.2km)
- Harper Landing (8.3km)
- Durango Landing (historical) (8.5km)
- Durango Plantation (8.5km)
- Locust Ridge Plantation (8.9km)
populated place a city, town, village, or other agglomeration of buildings where people live and work.
- Buena Vista (historical) (1.6km)
- Ashland (4.7km)
- Goldman Landing (4.7km)
- Millerfield (historical) (5.8km)
- Hedgeland (6.1km)
- Chamblee (7.9km)
- Goldman (7.9km)
- Waterproof (8.4km)
- Locust Ridge (8.8km)
lake a large inland body of standing water.
- Rodney Lake (4.5km)
- Rodney Lake (6.2km)
- Blue Hole (7.2km)
- Cypress Grove Lake (7.8km)
- Cypress Grove Lake (7.9km)
- Little Holmes Lake (7.9km)
inlet a narrow waterway extending into the land, or connecting a bay or lagoon with a larger body of water.
- Gilliam Chute (0.3km)
- Long Bayou (3.6km)
- Baptizing Slough (6.2km)
- Choctaw Bayou (6.4km)
Accommodation around Buena Vista Church (historical)
Quality Inn Natchez 337 Devereaux Dr, Natchez
Devereaux Shields House 709 N Union, Natchez
Comfort Suites Vidalia 100 Front St, Vidalia
island a tract of land, smaller than a continent, surrounded by water at high water.
- Buena Vista Island (2.2km)
- Rodney Island (6.1km)
- Island Number Onehundred and Twelve (7km)
- Services Island (8.4km)
oilfield an area containing a subterranean store of petroleum of economic value.
- Buena Vista Oil Field (1.7km)
- Gilliam Chute Oil Field (2.9km)
- Rodney Island Oil Field (7.6km)
levee a natural low embankment bordering a distributary or meandering stream; often built up artificially to control floods.
- Kempe Bend Revetment (4.5km)
- Old Kempe Bend Revetment (6km)
- Browns Field Revetment (8.7km)
bar a shallow ridge or mound of coarse unconsolidated material in a stream channel, at the mouth of a stream, estuary, or lagoon and in the wave-break zone along coasts.
- Kemps Bend Bar (3.9km)
- Rodney Island Bar (6.4km)
- Waterproof Bar (8.3km)
stream a body of running water moving to a lower level in a channel on land.
- Harper Bayou (6.7km)
- Burnett Chute (7.6km)
- Float Bayou (8.2km)
administrative division an administrative division of a country, undifferentiated as to administrative level.
- District 7 Parish Governing Authority District (8.7km)
- Ward Seven (8.8km)
basin a depression more or less equidimensional in plan and of variable extent.
- Bell Cow Lake (1.8km)
- Brushy Lake (3.5km)
swamp a wetland dominated by tree vegetation.
- News Lake (3.5km)
- Twin Lakes (4.6km)
church a building for public Christian worship.
- Cypress Grove Church (7.2km)
- Waterproof United Methodist Church (8.2km)
area a tract of land without homogeneous character or boundaries.
- Spithead Towhead (3.9km)
school building(s) where instruction in one or more branches of knowledge takes place.
- Waterproof High School (7.9km)
cemetery a burial place or ground.
- Myrtle Grove Cemetery (6.7km)
Wikipedia entries close to Buena Vista Church (historical)
- Waterproof, Louisiana city o city
- St. Joseph, Louisiana city o city
- Clayton, Louisiana city o city
- Fayette, Mississippi city o city
- Natchez State Park park
- Newellton, Louisiana city o city
- Vidalia, Louisiana city o city
- Natchez (Mississippi) landmark landmark
- Natchez-Vidalia Bridge bridge landmark
- Ferriday, Louisiana city o city
- Ridgecrest, Louisiana city o city
- West Ferriday, Louisiana city o city
- Sicily Island, Louisiana city o city
- Grand Gulf Nuclear Generating Station building landmark
- Port Gibson, Mississippi city o city
- Wisner, Louisiana city o city
Airports close to Buena Vista Church (historical)Monroe rgnl(MLU), Monroe, Usa (132.8km)
Esler rgnl(ESF), Alexandria, Usa (135.6km)
Jackson international(JAN), Jackson, Usa (167.8km)
Alexandria international(AEX), Alexandria, Usa (168.1km)
Baton rouge metro ryan fld(BTR), Baton rouge, Usa (187.8km)


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Here are some recommended reading lists on a small number of topics I've had the good fortune and privilege to study at length. Perhaps you'll find something that interests you.
If I could recommend only one writer, it would be the late Mark Fisher, who taught me how to think and who continues to haunt everything I write. Other writers and thinkers who matter tremendously to me, yet who rarely appear below include Rachel Carson, Stanley Cavell, and Richard Rorty. Although relatively few of these lists include works of fiction, two novelists who have affected everything I write are J. G. Ballard and William S. Burroughs.
"The short course"
I consider these texts absolutely essential for coming to terms with the manifold conditions of our existence. These are core texts that inform and support everything that follows. I work on short, (hopefully) pithy reviews as time permits.
1. Jacques Rancière – The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation (1991, originally 1987)
Rancière shows us that learning and teaching are processes that exceed or even explode the historical, institutional constraints that transform education into a disciplinary operation by means of which an authoritative teacher supposedly transmits information to a docile, receptive student. In other words, Rancière disarticulates the process of learning from the various modes in which it is typically defanged. Instead, he shows how learning is the primary function of applied natural intelligence. If this is true, then how we approach not just formal education, but learning and teaching in all contexts, must change fundamentally. For example, instead of emphasizing certification, content, metricization, or standardization, a good teacher will focus on motivating students to exercise error-tolerant, interminable strategies of inquiry and revision. These are, in fact, strategies that everyone already employs, e.g., to navigate the world. More abstractly, Rancière argues that these apparently pedagogical insights translate into a radical conclusion about the human – namely, that all humans are equally naturally intelligent. This is because intelligence is not aggregative, such that an individual can be more or less intelligent than any other individual. Rather, intelligence is a basic faculty – the capacity to learn, or to update beliefs on the basis of interactive, motivated engagements with any content or problem whatsoever.
2. Paul Feyerabend – Against Method (2010, originally 1975)
Feyerabend shows us how the logic of inquiry proceeds without the assistance of any programmatic method at all – and he argues that it's a good thing, too. He uses detailed case studies from the history of science to demonstrate the crooked path by means of which knowledge finds its way and then gets supplanted. However, Feyerabend's point is not merely that the history of inquiry is a patchwork, but that how we form inquiries in the first place benefits tremendously from this condition of epistemological anarchism. Abductive and heuristic reasoning are the best tools we have for producing knowledge or pursuing inquiries. Accordingly, Feyerabend dismisses the refuge of methodology as a fantasy at best – and, more likely, a disciplinary tool by means of which generative ideation and perceptive speculation get shut down. (See also his "How to Be a Good Empiricist: A Plea for Tolerance in Matters Epistemological" [1971].) Ultimately, and ironically, given his many late provocations to contrary, Feyerabend ends up disclosing his own profound loyalty to reason, understood properly. As Feyerabend famously claims, when it comes to epistemology and method, "Anything goes." But this is actually a fundamental insight underlying the operation of reason, because reason is a contingent process according to which any prior belief or statement undergoes tests that produce its own revision.
3. Charles Sanders Peirce – The Essential Peirce, Volumes 1 [Selected Philosophical Writings' (1867–1893)] and 2 [Selected Philosophical Writings (1893-1913)] (1998)
4. Samantha Frost – Biocultural Creatures: Toward a New Theory of the Human (2016)
5. Reza Negarestani – Intelligence and Spirit (2018)
6. Manuel DeLanda – A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History (1997)
7. Quentin Meillassoux – After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency (2010, originally 2006)
8. F. W. J. Schelling – Philosophical Inquiries into the Essence of Human Freedom (2006, originally 1809)
9. Wilfred Bion – Experiences in Groups (1990, originally 1961)
10. J. L. Austin – How to Do Things with Words (1975, originally 1962)
Left political realism
I often find myself frustrated with how contemporary political theoretical vocabularies can serve as flybottles for our thinking. These texts break with, revise, and unsettle those vocabularies in highly generative ways.
Aeschylus – Oresteia (2013, originally 400s BCE) and Sophocles – Antigone (2013, originally c. 441 BCE)
Hannah Arendt – The Human Condition (2018, originally 1958)
Aristotle – Politics (2013, originally 300s BCE)
Cătălin Avramescu – An Intellectual History of Cannibalism (2009, originally 2003) and Grégoire Chamayou – Manhunts: A Philosophical History (2012, originally 2010)
Roberto Esposito – Communitas: The Origin and Destiny of Community (2010, originally 1998) and Immunitas: The Protection and Negation of Life (2011, originally 2002)
Jean-François Lyotard – Libidinal Economy (1993, originally 1974)
Niccolò Machiavelli – The Chief Works and Others, Volume I (1989, originally 1530s)
Friedrich Nietzsche – Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (2011, originally 1886) and On the Genealogy of Morality (2017, originally 1887)
David Roden – Posthuman Life: Philosophy at the Edge of the Human (2014)
Sheldon Wolin – Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought (2016, originally 1960)
The ecological crisis
Much of my work involves the ecological crisis. The ecological crisis is not reducible to climate change alone, for climate change is only a symptom of a deeper, relational crisis of nature that the dominant planetary culture embodies. Rather than abandoning the very idea of a philosophy of nature, such an approach needs to be contested, reclaimed, and reinvented. "It is only if thinking about nature always involves more nature than can be thought that nature is in fact being thought."
Christopher Alexander – The Nature of Order, Volumes 1-4 (2002-2004)
Roberto Esposito – Bios: Biopolitics and Philosophy (2008)
Arran Gare – The Philosophical Foundations of Ecological Civilization: A Manifesto for the Future (2016)
Donna Haraway – "A Cyborg Manifesto" (1985) and Laboria Cuboniks – "Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation" (2014)
Paul Kingsnorth – Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist and Other Essays (2017)
Aldo Leopold – A Sand County Almanac (1968, originally 1949) and The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays (1991, originally 1904-1947)
Bruno Latour – Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime (2017)
Val Plumwood – Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (1993) and Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason (2002)
Jeff Vandermeer – The Southern Reach Trilogy (2014)
Lebbeus Woods – Radical Reconstruction (2001)
Ontology is a philosophical term that refers to the study of various conceptual schemas of the real. The topic is abstract and complicated, but these texts will steer you well.
Gilles Deleuze – Difference and Repetition (2004, originally 1968) and The Logic of Sense (2004, originally 1969)
Heraclitus – Fragments (1979, originally 500s-400s BCE)
David Lewis – On the Plurality of Worlds (1986) and Jacques Roubaud – The Plurality of Worlds of Lewis (1995, originally 1991)
Stephen Mumford – Laws in Nature (2004)
Jean-Luc Nancy – Being Singular Plural (2000, originally 1996)
F. W. J. Schelling – First Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature (2004, originally 1799) and The Ages of the World (2019, first draft originally 1811)
Gilbert Simondon – L'individuation psychique et collective (2007, originally 1989); for translated excerpts, see "The Genesis of the Individual" and "The Position of the Problem of Ontogenesis"
Baruch Spinoza – Ethics in The Collected Works of Spinoza, Volume I (1986, originally 1664-1665)
Alfred North Whitehead – Process and Reality (1978, originally 1929)
William C. Wimsatt – Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings: Piecewise Approximations to Reality (2007)
At present, intellectual discourses about war are consistently underrated. Warfare is a paradigm case of a complex, theory-laden, and value-saturated material process that takes place at multiple spatiotemporal scales, and much can be learned from these discourses.
Antoine J. Bousquet – The Scientific Way of Warfare: Order and Chaos on the Battlefields of Modernity (2010) and The Eye of War: Military Perception from the Telescope to the Drone (2018)
Caleb Carr – The Lessons of Terror: A History of Warfare against Civilians (2002)
Thomas Hammes – The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century (2006)
Chris Hedges – War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning (2002)
Sebastian Junger – War (2010)
David Kilcullen – Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla (2013)
Frans P. B. Osinga – Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd (2006)
Thucydides – The War of the Peloponnesians and the Athenians (2013, originally 400s BCE)
Sun Tzu – The Art of War (2007, originally 400s BCE)
Harold A. Winters – Battling the Elements: Weather and Terrain in the Conduct of War (2001)
Jacques Derrida – The Politics of Friendship (2006)
Philip K. Dick – The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982)
Michel Foucault – History of Madness (2006, originally 1961)
Alexandre Kojève – Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit (1980)
Alasdair MacIntyre – After Virtue (1981) or Whose Justice? Which Rationality (1988)
Jacques Rancière – Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy (1999, originally 1994)
Gillian Rose – Love's Work (2011, originally 1995)
Carl Schmitt – The Concept of the Political (2007, originally 1932)
Slavoj Žižek – The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)
Honorable mentions: Peter Brown – Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (2000, originally 1967), Hélène Cixous – "The Laugh of the Medusa," John P. McCormick – Machiavellian Democracy (2011), Hanna Fenichel Pitkin – Fortune Is a Woman: Gender and Politics in the Thought of Niccolò Machiavelli (1984)
Louis Althusser – Philosophy of the Encounter: Later Writings, 1978-1987 (2006)
Alain Badiou – Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism (2003, originally 1997)
Hans Blumenberg – Shipwreck with Spectator: Paradigm of a Metaphor for Existence (1996, originally 1979)
Herman Melville – The Confidence-Man (originally 1857)
F. W. J. Schelling – The Ages of the World (2000, originally 1815)
Carl Schmitt – Land and Sea: A World-Historical Meditation (1997, updated in 2015, originally 1954)
Clare Spark – Hunting Captain Ahab: Psychological Warfare and the Melville Revival (2000)
Jacob Taubes – Occidental Eschatology (2009, originally 1947)
Urbanomic – Collapse: Philosophical Research and Development (ed. Robin MacKay), Volumes I-IV
Honorable mentions: Louis Althusser – Machiavelli and Us (2011, originally 1995), Ray Brassier – Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction (2007), Peter Fenves – Late Kant: Towards Another Law of the Earth (2003), Haruki Murakami – 1Q84 (2011), Alastair Reynolds – Chasm City (2003), Carl Schmitt – The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum (1950, 2003), Carl Schmitt – Theory of the Partisan (2007, originally 1963)
Jack Judith Halberstam – The Queer Art of Failure (2011)
Nick Land – Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings, 1987–2007 (2011)
Bruno Latour – An Inquiry into Modes of Existence: An Anthropology of the Moderns (2013)
Quentin Meillassoux – L'Inexistence divine (1997, digital circulation, excerpted in translation in 2011)
Reza Negarestani – Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials (2008)
Isabelle Stengers – Thinking with Whitehead: A Free and Wild Creation of Concepts (2011, originally 2002)
Bernard Stiegler – Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus (1998, originally 1994)
Geoff Waite – Nietzsche's Corps/e: Aesthetics, Politics, Prophecy, or, the Spectacular Technoculture of Everyday Life (1996)
Peter Watts – Starfish (1999)
Honorable mentions: Robert Aickman – The Collected Strange Stories of Robert Aickman (2000), Jack Judith Halberstam – Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters (1995), Peter Hallward – Badiou: A Subject To Truth (2003), Peter Watts – Blindsight (2006)
Sara Ahmed – The Promise of Happiness (2010)
Jessica Benjamin – The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Domination (1988)
Lauren Berlant – Cruel Optimism (2011)
Joshua Foa Dienstag – Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit (2006)
Lee Edelman – No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (2004)
Jill Frank – A Democracy of Distinction: Aristotle and the Work of Politics (2005)
Shirley Jackson – The Haunting of Hill House (originally 1959)
Ernst Jünger – The Forest Passage (2013, originally 1951)
Marion Milner – The Suppressed Madness of Sane Men (1987)
Donald Winnicott – Playing and Reality (2006, originally 1971)
Honorable mentions: Laird Barron, "The Forest" (2007), Philip Rieff – Freud: The Mind of a Moralist (1977, originally 1959), Steven Shaviro – Without Criteria: Kant, Whitehead, Deleuze, and Aesthetics (2012)
Neal Asher – Dark Intelligence (2015)
Mark Epstein – The Trauma of Everyday Life (2014)
Iain Hamilton Grant – Philosophies of Nature after Schelling (2006)
Ernst Jünger – Eumeswil (2015, originally 1977)
Carolyne Larrington (trans.) – The Poetic Edda (2014)
Armand Marie Leroi – The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science (2014)
Thomas Pradeu – The Limits of the Self:Immunology and Biological Identity (2012)
Neil Roberts – Freedom as Marronage (2015)
Elaine Scarry – The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (1987)
J. Peter Euben – The Tragedy of Political Theory: The Road Not Taken (1990)
Honorable mentions: Neal Asher – The Technician (2011), Robert J. Richards – The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe (2002), Daniel W. Smith – Essays on Deleuze (2012), Mick Smith – Against Ecological Sovereignty: Ethics, Biopolitics, and Saving the Natural World (2011)
Jurgis Baltrusaitis – Aberrations: An Essay on The Legend of Forms (1989)
Manuel DeLanda – Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy (2013, originally 2002)
Francis Fukuyama – Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy (2015)
Yuk Hui – The Question Concerning Technology in China: An Essay in Cosmotechnics (2016)
Donna V. Jones – The Racial Discourses of Life Philosophy: Négritude, Vitalism, and Modernity (2011)
Paul Kingsnorth – The Wake (2014)
Jimmy Casas Klausen – Fugitive Rousseau: Slavery, Primitivism, and Political Freedom (2016)
Thomas W. Laqueur – The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains (2015)
Cixin Liu – The Dark Forest (2015, originally 2008)
Andrea Wulf – The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World (2015)
Honorable mentions: Andrew Culp – Dark Deleuze (2016), Richard Gavin – Sylvan Dread: Tales of Pastoral Darkness (2016), Aviezer Tucker and Gian Piero de Bellis (eds.) – Panarchy: Political Theories of Non-Territorial States (2015), Miguel Vattar – The Republic of the Living: Biopolitics and the Critique of Civil Society (2014)
Elisabeth Bronfen – Night Passages: Philosophy, Literature, and Film (2013, originally 2008)
CCRU – Writings 1997-2003 (2015, Urbanomic)
Philippa Foot – Natural Goodness (2001)
Alan Moore – Providence (2015-2017)
Joshua Ramey – The Hermetic Deleuze: Philosophy and Spiritual Ordeal (2012)
William Clare Roberts – Marx's Inferno: The Political Theory of Capital (2016)
James C. Scott – Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (2017)
Adam Scovell – Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange (2017)
Étienne Souriau – The Different Modes of Existence (2015, originally 1943)
Eduardo Viveiros de Castro – Cannibal Metaphysics (2014)
Honorable mentions: Greg Bear – Blood Music (2014, originally 1985), Richard Gavin – The Benighted Path: Primeval Gnosis and the Monstrous Soul (2015), Project Itoh – Genocidal Organ (2012, originally 2007), Tim Larkin – When Violence Is the Answer: Learning How to Do What It Takes When Your Life Is at Stake (2017), Sean McFate – The Modern Mercenary: Private Armies and What They Mean for World Order (2017), Matthew Levi Stevens – The Magical Universe of William S. Burroughs (2014)
Georges Bataille (et. al) – The Sacred Conspiracy: The Internal Papers of the Secret Society of Acéphale and Lectures to the College of Sociology (2018, originally 1930s)
Mark Fisher – k-punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher (2004-2016) (2018, Repeater)
Jill Frank – Poetic Justice: Rereading Plato's Republic (2018)
Sebastian Junger – Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging (2016)
Alexandre Kojève – Atheism (2018, originally 1931)
Helmuth Plessner – Political Anthropology (2018, originally 1931)
Roberto Saviano – ZeroZeroZero: Look at Cocaine and All You See Is Powder. Look Through Cocaine and You See the World. (2015)
Simon Sellars – Applied Ballardianism (2018)
Emma Wilby – The Visions of Isobel Gowdie: Magic, Witchcraft, and Dark Shamanism in Seventeenth-Century Scotland (2010)
Ludwig Wittgenstein – The Mythology in Our Language: Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough (2018, originally 1931)
Honorable mentions: K. K. Edin – The Measurements of Decay (2018), Jeff Love – The Black Circle: A Life of Alexandre Kojève, Thomas Nail – Lucretius I: An Ontology of Motion (2018), Roy Scranton – We're Doomed. Now What?: Essays on War and Climate Change (2018), Mariam Thalos – Without Hierarchy: The Scale Freedom of the Universe (2013), Tim Weiner – Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (2008), Ryan White – The Hidden God: Pragmatism and Posthumanism in American Thought (2015)
Richard Adams – Watership Down (1996, originally 1972)
Marcus Aurelius – Meditations (2003, originally 161-180 CE)
Ellen Kennedy – Constitutional Failure: Carl Schmitt in Weimar (2004)
Ludwig Klages – Of Cosmogonic Eros (2018, originally 1922)
Alexandre Kojève – The Concept, Time, and Discourse (2019, originally 1991)
Bruno Latour – Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime (2018)
Serge Margel – The Tomb of the Artisan God: On Plato's Timaeus (2019, originally 1995)
Petra Mendik – A Bloody and Barbarous God: The Metaphysics of Cormac McCarthy (2016)
Thomas Moynihan – Spinal Catastrophism: A Secret History (2019)
Michael Surya – Bataille: An Intellectual Biography (2010)
Honorable mentions: Cinzia Arruzza – A Wolf in the City: Tyranny and the Tyrant in Plato's Republic (2018), K.D. – Headless (2015), Geoff Mann and Joel Wainwright – Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of Our Planetary Future (2018)
Barry Gewen – The Inevitability of Tragedy: Henry Kissinger and His World (2020)
M. John Harrison – Viriconium (2005, originally 1971-1985)
Timothy Jarvis – The Wanderer (2014)
Laurence Lampert – How Philosophy Became Socratic: A Study of Plato's "Protagoras," "Charmides," and "Republic" (2010)
Trevor Paglen – Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon's Secret World (2009)
Honorable mentions: Stephen Kinzer – Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (2019), Mark Nelson and Sarah Hudson Bayliss – Exquisite Corpse: Surrealism and the Black Dahlia Murder (2006), Jan Patocka – Plato and Europe (2002, originally 1972-1977), Thomas Rid – Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare (2020), Patrick Stuart – Deep Carbon Observatory – Remastered (2020, originally 2014)


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Coronavirus Update - We are pleased to say that we are currently open and despatching as normal at this time.
Home > French > French Books > Learn French Activity Books
Product Code: 2188
On order - more stock arriving soon
Lucy Montgomery
An attractive first introduction to French. A novel colouring book with 24 pages to colour, this book teachers colours, numbers 1 - 10 and first basic words.
Pages are:
Skoldo - J'aime Colorier is suitable for early language learning and parents / teachers using this book with their children need not have any previous knowledge of the language.
A complete English / French vocabulary list is provided at the front of the book, and a pronunciation guide features at the back.
Recommended for ages 3 - 6 years.
Paperback, 24pp, 210 x 210mm
Very reasonable price for a simple resource, will use as a gift to English toddler.
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Spelling & Vocabulary Software for Homeschoolers
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SpellQuizzer is a software product that helps children master their spelling and vocabulary. Using SpellQuizzer you can create custom word lists to match any spelling or vocabulary curriculum you are using or just to focus on a child's "problem words". Best of all: SpellQuizzer makes spelling and vocabulary practice
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Since you can create your own word lists, SpellQuizzer complements any spelling or vocabulary curriculum. You can create lists of words straight from the coursework your child is using or compile your own lists of words that you have noted your child having difficulty with. You can also download and use our growing library of downloadable spelling and vocabulary lists for SpellQuizzer (including our
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Getting a child to practice his or her spelling or vocabulary words can be a struggle. When done manually it's a slow and tedious process for the child as well as for you. SpellQuizzer makes it fun and easy. You'll no longer have to struggle to get your child to sit still while you go over his words with him. With SpellQuizzer, children can enjoy practicing their spelling and vocabulary words. SpellQuizzer takes the fight out of the equation.
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Belong to a homeschool group or co-op? SpellQuizzer makes it easy to export your word lists to share with other SpellQuizzer users and to import lists other users have created. A group of homeschoolers who are working with the same curriculum can share their lists via email or make them available for download on the web. That way homeschool families can share their lists rather than each family having to create each list independently.
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Using SpellQuizzer, you can create word lists and make audio recordings of the words in the lists. When the your child uses SpellQuizzer the software quizzes him, playing each word back to him one at a time, checking his spelling as he types in the words. SpellQuizzer corrects him when he types in a word incorrectly, and re-quizzes him on any words he missed once the first pass is completed. Just set up the child's list in SpellQuizzer and have him spend no more than five to ten minutes a day letting SpellQuizzer quiz him. By the end of the week he will have mastered the words he's been practicing with SpellQuizzer.
SpellQuizzer is ideal for...
Practicing the words in your homeschool curriculum. Just input the words used in your the spelling curriculum you are using and SpellQuizzer will help reinforce your child's lessons.
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Practicing the problem words that your child repeatedly misspells. Everyone has their own problem words that they have difficulty getting right. With SpellQuizzer you can create one or more custom lists of the words that your child struggles with. As the saying goes, "practice makes perfect". SpellQuizzer makes practice easy.
Learning words that can not be sounded out phonetically.
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Hosted by National Law University, Delhi (NLU Delhi) the Y.K. Sabharwal Moot Court Competition aims to foster and cultivate interest in constitutional law and philosophy. The Competition aims to challenge participants to engage in research on cutting-edge questions plaguing the best scholars in the field. The Competition shall be held in New Delhi, the city where the Constitution came to life.
- Only one team can submit memorials from an institution and all participants in a team must be from the same institution.
- The competition is open to students currently registered in any 5-year integrated undergraduate law degree/ 3-year undergraduate law degree/ LL.M in India.
Structure of the Competition
Twelve (12) teams will be selected through memorial eliminations to participate in the oral rounds in Delhi from 5th – 7th October 2018.
The Competition will require the participants to work on two (2) problems. The first problem will be used for memorial eliminations, preliminary oral rounds, and the Quarter-Finals. The second problem will be used for the Semi-Finals and the Finals.
Provisional Registration
Provisional Registration must be done by sending a mail expressing interest to [email protected]. This mail must also contain the contact details of the Moot Court Committee's Convenor/Faculty-in-charge.
Note: Participation in the moot court competition is by invitation only. However, the Universities/Colleges (and not individual teams) may send an email indicating an interest to participate in the competition. The Organising Committee shall retain discretion to consider such applications
Important Dates
Moot Problem-I to be released: Second week of June 2018
Last date for seeking clarifications on Moot Problem-I: 30th June 2018
Clarifications to Moot Problem-I: 5th July 2018
Deadline for Registrations: 20th July 2018
Deadline for submissions of Memorials: 14th August 2018
Release of Moot Problem-II: 20th August 2018
Memorial Elimination Results: 10th September 2018
Written Submissions for Moot Problem-II: 1st October 2018
Oral Rounds: 5th – 7th October 2018
Email: [email protected]


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42 Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming.
43 But know this, that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into.
44 Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.
45 "Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his master made ruler over his household, to give them food in due season?
46 Blessed is that servant whom his master, when he comes, will find so doing.
47 Assuredly, I say to you that he will make him ruler over all his goods.
48 But if that evil servant says in his heart, 'My master is delaying his coming,'
49 and begins to beat his fellow servants, and to eat and drink with the drunkards,
50 the master of that servant will come on a day when he is not looking for him and at an hour that he is not aware of,
51 and will cut him in two and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Devotional Thoughts for The Sunday for All Departed Priests
by Rev. Fr. Paulose T. Peter, NY
"Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come" Matt. 24:42
The second coming of our Lord is one of the cardinal principles of our faith and the scriptures are replete with references to it. Though scriptures do not offer a clear idea as to when exactly it will happen, we do get a preview of how it may happen (1 Thessalonians 4:15-17). The writer of the Gospel in today's passage instructs us how to prepare ourselves for that 'day'. The punch phrase Matthew uses to best express his thought is "keep watch" or "Be alert". Here are a few points to ponder.
1. Anticipate the unexpected:
Our own lives are full of ups and downs, twists and turns and most of them happen in the most unexpected ways. Our lives are subject to change with or without notice. Moses spent the first 40 years of his life as a prince in the royal court of Egypt (Acts 7:22, 23), enjoying all the comfort and luxury such a life offered. He grew up with good education, power and affluence. Scanning his early years, we would not have guessed that he would spend the next several years as a poor shepherd and herdsman (Acts 7:29, 30). We would have thought that at the age of 80, Moses would probably spend the rest of his life as a shepherd. Not a chance. He lived another 40 years as a prophet, receiving the Ten Commandments from God and becoming the undisputed leader to lead the nation of Israel from slavery to freedom. He lived three lives prince, shepherd, prophet - in one lifetime. With all the glamour he received during the third lap of his life, even the end did not happen the way he may have planned or hoped for. God said to him that he can see the promised land but not cross over Jordan to enter it. (Deut. 3:27). Lesson: Never rush to believe that our lives are settled and that future is secured and etched in stone. The life of Moses took many unexpected turns. Nevertheless, he remained faithful regardless of what happened. We should also do the same.
2. Never rely on our own strength:
Moses was called by God to lead the Israelites from slavery to freedom. He thought God made the wrong choice because he had very poor communication skills (Ex. 4:10-13). Moreover, he was asked to take on the powerful Pharaoh when he was already old in years. Moses would have ventured to meet that challenge if he was a young man. He had no army and every tide was against him to accomplish such a formidable task. Moses thought he had all the good arguments not to go for the job God commissioned him with. Yet he was a winner. Lesson: Let us not underestimate Gods power. We should not discount our ability to serve God. When we put our trust in God, we are given the ability and the tools to step up to the challenge. "Unless the Lord builds the house, they who build it labour in vain. Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain" (Ps. 127).
3. Gods time table is different from ours:
As a young man, Moses killed an Egyptian (Acts 7:24). He was seething with the strength of his youth. That was the right time he would have willingly ventured into unchartered waters. But he was called to deliver Israel at a time when he was not at all fit to take up such a risky job. When certain things happen in our lives, dont we sometimes ask why now? When Lazarus died, his sister's complaint to Jesus was, where were you all this time? If you had come earlier her brother would not have died, she said. God does not follow our time schedule. Lesson: Never question Gods timing. He knows what He is doing. Many plans are made by men, but it is the purpose of God that prevails (Prov. 19:21).
4. Keep watch so that our life after death is better than the life on this earth:
All our dreams in life do not necessarily come true. A wife builds her dreams around the husband and suddenly the husband is taken away. A husband builds his dreams around his wife and suddenly the wife is taken way. Things do not always happen the way we want them to be. Moses led the Israelites into the promised land but he himself could not enter it. Moses may not have entered the promised land during his lifetime but I firmly believe that he entered the promised places God has prepared in the heavenly abode for all those who love him because Moses was faithful and steadfast in God's service.
Let us pray that all those departed priests whom we remember today and who faithfully served in the Lord's vineyard be given a place of rest and peace in the heavenly country. We need to keep watch. We need to be alerted to the fact that we are not like evergreen trees. More than ever, we need to regulate our lives now, not later. Learn to anticipate the unexpected, never rely on our own strength, know that Gods timetable is different from ours and keep watch so that our next life is better than the present one.
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I have to admit...I'm a cabbage soup lover but I don't like my cabbage soup bland. Some people like it with just cabbage and stewed tomatoes and if that floats your boat, that's cool. But the chunkier it is (with more vegetables) the more apt I am to eat cabbage soup because I'll stay full a little longer.
So I'm going to share my Best Ever Cabbage Soup recipe with you.
Feel free to add ingredients to it or even take something away if you don't like it.
You can even add ground turkey meat if you like.
Some people refuse to eat anything without protein so it's really up to you. It's going to be low calorie anyway so ground turkey won't hurt it as long as you drain the turkey meat well. I'd even rinse it with warm water to make sure I got the "grease" out of it.
Keep in mind that you can also add ground beef or sausage but of course, you'll also have more calories.
So here's my recipe if you like chunky cabbage soup...
- Start with 3 cups of non-fat beef broth. If you prefer chicken, that's fine but the beef broth is more flavorful.
- You'll need one head of cabbage, quartered and then separated.
- You'll need non stick cooking spray. Olive or butter flavored is fine.
- You'll need 2 cloves of garlic, chopped.
- 1/2 cup chopped onion. I prefer red onions because they have more flavor.
- 1/2 cup chopped carrots.
- 1/2 cup chopped zuchhini.
- 1/2 cup green beans.
- 1/2 cup yellow squash.
- 1/2 cup mushrooms.
- 1 can of stewed tomatoes.
- 1/2 teaspoon of basil.
- 1/2 teaspoon of oregano.
- Salt and pepper.
Now that you've got all of your ingredients (except the cabbage and green beans)...spray a pan with your non-stick cooking spray and add all of your vegetables and your seasonings. Let them saute for 5 to 10 minutes until your veggies are tender and your onions are glistening.
Put your cabbage in a pot with your broth and let it come to a boil. Once your pot is boiling, reduce to a simmer and add your veggies from the pan.
Let it simmer until the cabbage is tender and and VOILA...best cabbage soup ever!!
Want to lose even more weight?
Drink Iaso Tea with it!
Lose 5 pounds in 5 Days with Iaso Tea!


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Module code: LLMP 5218
Module description
The module examines the law relating to noise pollution. It examines a range of issues which include: the characteristics of noise as a pollutant; the law of nuisance (public and private) as applied to noise; the interrelationship between tortious liability and statutory controls; Part III of the Control of Pollution Act 1974; statutory nuisance proceedings under the Environmental Protection Act 1990; constriction site noise; noise abatement zones; and miscellaneous statutory controls.
Contact hours per student per year
Tutorials: 2 hours (optional)
Additional costs: Students may choose to purchase one or more textbooks relevant to the module. Students may choose to attend the optional Study days and incur travel/accommodation costs.
At DMU there is always something to do or see, check out our events for yourself.
DMU is a dynamic university, read about what we have been up to in our latest news section.
Read about our mission and vision and how these create a supportive and exciting learning environment.


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This whitepaper is outdated. Please read the FAQ for more information.
A decentralized back-end infrastructure utilizing distinct blockchains
A generic decentralized back-end would allow to process data in an open and trusted way. The data would be available and verifiable by digital signatures for everyone and would not be hidden in a private back-end. And therefore, the data would be safe from modifications, hacks or censorship. This papers discusses such a decentralized infrastructure and it's own crypto currency. The core of this infrastructure is the Heleus CoreChain, a blockchain that acts as a thin validation layer for everything. SideChains, which are created by developers and act as the base for their services, process and store the validated data. For paid services, developers can integrate different types of
in-app purchases (features, subscriptions and consumables) based on the Heleus Coin.
In the last years, the blockchain technology and especially the peer-to-peer crypto currencies based on it became more and more popular. They allow open, transparent, replicable, immutable and direct online payments without the need for a financial institute or any other third-party entity. With thousands of different currencies, including the most popular like Bitcoin, Monero, Ethereum and Ripple, there doesn't seem to be a need for another one. And it is true, there is no need for another crypto currency just for the purpose of having one more. And the blockchain technology is so interesting and has much more to offer than simply transferring money from one account to another.
The idea of Heleus is to use the blockchain technology as a base for a decentralized back-end infrastructure. The goal is to build a self-contained and self-sustaining software ecosystem with it's own crypto currency. On the one hand, this will allow new types of apps and services with a focus on open and transparent data models and on the other hand, it gives the Heleus Coin a purpose beyond just being a crypto currency.
To understand the principle of Heleus it is important to understand the three pillars it is based on. The first pillar is the CoreChain. It basically acts like any other blockchain by validating input, handling transactions and managing all the accounts. The second pillar are the SideChains (we will call them chains from now on). Developers build their services by using the chain technology, which store all the data that's relevant to their services. The third pillar is the Heleus Coin and the
in-app purchases. Users that want to use services based on Heleus do not send coins directly to the developers or share their accounts with them. Instead, they buy features, subscriptions or consumables, which allows them to operate on the chains.
This paper gives a brief overview of Core and its subsystems and is not intended as a complex and in-depth analysis. Fore more details, please refer the source code of Heleus.
Heleus uses the blockchain technology as the base for its decentralized infrastructure. Unlike other implementations, Heleus does not utilize one huge and monolithic blockchain. Every service based on Heleus uses its own unique blockchain, called SideChain or just chain. To organize all the chains, to validate all the transactions and to handle all the accounts and their balances Heleus uses a blockchain called the CoreChain.
The Heleus Coin, the crypto currency used by Heleus, can only be transferred from and to accounts in the CoreChain. Chains use another concept for payment,
in-app purchases. If developers want to charge a fee from the users for their services, they can issue different sorts of in-app purchases.
Validation Layer
The Heleus CoreChain acts as the validation layer for all the data that is relevant to an account or to a chain. The CoreChain actually validates and stores a few types of transactions itself, the CoreTransactions, and their content like account registration, coin transfer from one account to another,
in-app purchases and other things. But the CoreChain does not store chain transactions at all.
Explicit Registration
Accounts and chains require an explicit registration in the CoreChain. For an account, the issuer has to submit a request containing the public signing key from a generated pair of signing keys. The result of this request is a unique account id. All following transactions for this account require the account id and a digital signature from the private signing key.
A valid account is required to create a chain. The account owner submits a request to register a new chain and receives a unique chain id. After the registration the account owner can setup the service and
in-app purchases for the chain.
The blockchain is a powerful technology but to some extended it is very restricted. Most crypto currencies have exactly one huge blockchain and the possibilities to store data in it are very limited.
To Fork or not to Fork
This leads to one big problem: If developers have specific demands and requirements – beyond simple payments – that they want to solve with blockchain technology, they are usually forced to run their own blockchain. This is done by creating, for example, an incompatible fork of an already available crypto currency. The developers can now implement all the required features into the fork, but these changes are not compatible with the original anymore. Therefore, they have to build and run their own infrastructure.
Heleus solves this problem of incompatible forks with the use of chains. Developers simply create chains that act just like forks, but are still compatible with Heleus.
Distinct Databases
A chain basically works like a database, decoupled from the CoreChain. The developers define what kind of transactions are allowed and what kind of purchases are required.
The initial release of Heleus will act as a simple NoSQL database, which can store and retrieve arbitrary text or binary values combined with a customizable validation-layer.
Custom Signing Keys
Every transaction on the CoreChain or a chain must contain a valid digital signature from the account that issued the transaction – Heleus uses Ed25519 for the digital signature. To be able to sign transactions, every account has a unique pair of signing keys. A public key, stored in the account itself and therefore available to everyone that can be used to validate the digital signature and a private key that is used to create a valid signature.
Using digital signatures is a great way for authentication and to generate trust. For a crypto currency, it's a negligible task to sign all transactions, as a common person has probably a manageable amount of transfers per month. But this is problematic for a back-end where every transaction must be signed (think about a messenger app where you had to sign every message). This would imply that an account has to share its private signing key with other (untrusted) services to make it useable. And that's a really bad idea. As soon as the private signing key is shared with someone else the owner basically loses the control over the account. Malicious services can simply transfer all the money to others account or publish the private signing key on the internet.
Heleus Core uses a simple technique to solve this problem by utilizing custom pairs of signing keys for chains. Before an account can send requests to a chain, the owner must authorize it. This is done by sending a signed request to the CoreChain containing a newly generated public signing key and the id of the desired chain. On success of this request the newly generated public signing key is added to the chain and the account owner can send authorized requests to the chain by signing all transactions with the new private signing key. If the private signing key for a chain is lost, the account owner can authorize the chain again with a new pair of signing keys or revoke the old one.
The separation of the signing keys for the CoreChain and the chains is a big increase in security. Sharing the key of a chain can't harm the account at all as it's not possible to transfer money to other accounts. And if a key is lost or misused, the account owner can always revoke it.
Heleus should be a complete, self-contained and self-sustaining software ecosystem. To achieve this goal and to minimize the external influence, it has its own crypto currency, the Heleus Coin. While it is possible to send money from one account to another account, like it is possible with all the other crypto currencies, the main purpose is to pay for the services based on Heleus.
To make the payments replicable, account owners don't send coins directly to the developers account, they pay for
in-app purchases. These in-app purchases are defined by the developer and have usually a special purpose. Exemplary, when account owners buy a three month subscription for a service, they can use the service back-end for the duration and the purpose of that subscription.
Another purpose of these
in-app purchases is the simplification of the payment process. Usually, in a crypto currency, all transactions must be signed with the private signing key of the account owner. And depending on the app or service, this can require a lot of work, depending on the amount of transactions. And this might seduces account owners to give their private signing keys to untrusted apps or services to simplify this process, which is an absolute no-go that could lead to the loss of all the money in an account. Using the subscription example from above, the account owners only have to sign the purchase transaction of the subscription once and will receive a special subscription token that can be used until it expires. To make the system more flexible, different types of in-app purchases are available in Heleus. Developers can mix all the different types, they are not forced to stick to a single type.
Features. A feature is a simple one-time purchase. When users buy a feature for an app or service, they can use it forever.
Consumables. A consumable is a product that can be used for one time and is depleted afterwards.
Subscriptions. A subscription works like a feature, but only for a certain period of time. The developers decide how long a subscription is valid (there is actually no hard time limit, a subscription can last a few seconds or various month).
As Heleus is a decentralized infrastructure and more than just a virtual currency, one of the important requirement for the consensus algorithm is a short transaction time. It is not a big problem for a simple money transfer to take minutes, hours – as it's currently the case for Ethereum and Bitcoin with their Proof of Work consensus algorithm – or even days for a conventional wire transfer.
But these high delays are not acceptable for back-ends or apps; image you have to wait hours before your friends receive a text in a messenger. You will probably have uninstalled the app before the first text was sent.
This makes most of the current consensus algorithm like Proof of Work or Proof of Stake with their high block times and long confirmation times not really usable. And as every node in a network that uses these algorithms "fights" for itself and tries to be the fastest to gain the reward for generating the next block in the blockchain is not helpful either.
The goal for the Heleus consensus algorithm is to have the nodes in the network "work together" and not "fight each other" and achieve short block- and confirmation-times. As a note, Ripple uses a similar approach where – simplified – 80% of the network have to agree on a transaction.
Proof of Council
For network consensus of the CoreChain, Heleus uses a quorum based voting system called Proof of Council. To speed up the processing time, not every node in the network is part of voting system, but only a small subset, the council.
Finding consensus is done in two phases. In the first phase, every member of the council collects transactions, validates them and shares them with the rest of the council. After a certain amount of time, a council member publishes the list of its validated transitions to all of the other members, which starts phase two, the voting rounds. In that phase, every member votes for this list. If more than 80% of the members agree, the list will be published as proposal to the rest of the network.
If not enough members agree with a proposed list, they have to share the reason for the disagreement with the issuer of the list. The issuer can now modify the list and remove transactions. This new list will be published to all the council members and the next voting round starts. These voting rounds take place until enough members agree on a list.
It is also possible that another member publishes its own list during the voting rounds, due to network delays or a strong disagreement with the proposed list. In this case, if a proposed list does not get the required 80% of the votes, the list with the most votes during this round will be used as a base for the next voting round.
With the description of Proof of Council, it is easy to define the block- and confirmation-time. Phase 1 and phase 2 can run in parallel as the council can run the voting rounds for the current list while already collecting transactions for the next list. Therefore, the block-time is the maximum time required for either phase 1 or phase 2. The confirmation-time is exactly the same time as the block-time as every proposed list will be confirmed with the next list.
With an exemplary duration of two second for phase 1 and with the assumption that phase 2 should usually take less time than phase 1, the average transaction duration is four seconds plus the network delay.
Council Members
As mentioned before, one of the goals of the consensus algorithm is to make the nodes in the network "work together" and not "fight each other". This is achieved by selecting a variety of different members into the council and these members can be classified into three different groups. The first group contains the members from the most active chains, the second group contains members from randomly selected chains and the last group are just random members that may or may not belong to a chain. Every group has the same amount of members.
With the selection of these three groups coupled with a random factor, Heleus tries to have a high diversity in the council and to prevent 51% attacks to the network.
With m > 1 members per group, the total number of votes v is
v = (3 + 1) * m
While there are only three groups, the factor is four. The reason for this is the fact, that the members of the most active chains have two votes, while all the other members have only one vote. For a successful vote vsuccess, more than 75% of the votes have to agree
vsuccess = v - m + 1
and for vote vfailure to fail, at least 25% have to disagree
vfailure = m
With an exemplary member count of five per group, there are a total of 20 votes. Of these 20 votes, 16 are required for a successful vote and five are required for a vote to fail. This shows that positive votes of all three groups are required for the council to find agreement.
Spectre Nodes
Finding consensus in a distributed network is a hard problem. Even with a perfect algorithm, different external problems arise, like network latency or the failure of nodes.
To prevent Heleus Core from becoming non- responsive – for example a certain number of members crash and make it therefore impossible to reach the 80% of the votes – special nodes, called spectre nodes, watch the network and council all the time. After a certain amount of time or if they detect malicious behavior, they can complete or overrule the vote of the council.
The purpose of the spectre nodes is to intervene, when the network does not behave as intended and not to disrupt every vote. The long time goal is to get rid of the spectre nodes in the future, when the Heleus network reaches a certain size and robustness. But at the beginning, they will be an important part of Heleus.
Chain Consensus
Consensus for chains works different from the CoreChain consensus. A chain collects all own validated transactions and bundles them in its own block. And instead of validating every transaction through the council, a block needs only at least one valid vote from every council group. With three valid votes, the chain sends a meta transaction to the CoreChain to validate the block. If the council accepts the block, all the included transactions are automatically validated.
The purpose of this separate process is to prevent the council from collapsing. High frequency chains, that maybe have hundreds of transactions a second, would jam the council. Therefore the chain processes all transactions. And the transaction will be validated by a small amount of members only. This ensures fast transactions and a high throughput.
Rewards / Mining
There will be a reward for providing computing power. Every member of the council will be rewarded with Heleus Coins. Developers that use Heleus as their base technology should be rewarded for their hard work. If a developer creates a popular service, they might even run it without
in-app purchases, and still get enough money for it.
For the last group, the random members, there will be selection process. Maybe through a Proof-of-Work algorithm or maybe otherwise. How the selection process works will be decided in the future.
For all members, there will be an reputation system. The reputation will be based on e.g. response times, processing time, up time etc. The higher the reputation is, the higher will be the reward. The reason for a reputation system is to reward fast, long-living and reliable members.
With the blockchain as a base, it's own crypto currency and distinct chains, Heleus is more than just a crypto currency, it is a generic back-end. Heleus is made by developers for developers and at the end of the day, they decide if and what they want to use. They can only use the payment system and integrate it into their already existing services without a lot of work. Or they can build new and amazing stuff based on the chains. Heleus might not be the best fit for every service back-end out there, but with the blockchain as a base and the replicable and immutable operations that protects the data from modifications, hacks or censorship it's a great alternative for all the black-box-services.
Better Security
Traditionally, every transaction in the classical blockchain must be signed with the private signing key of the account owner. This can be a clumsy and bothersome process. And sharing the private signing key with unknown apps and services requires a lot of trust and maybe results in the loss of all the coins in an account.
Through the use of the subscriptions and consumables model, all apps and services use their own pair of signing keys. Therefore, they have no access to the owner's account. This makes it impossible for untrusted or rogue apps and services to harm an account or steal coins.
Faster Transactions
With the goal to establish a decentralized app and service infrastructure, transactions have to processed in a short period of time; in an acceptable timeframe for the users.
With the Heleus Proof of Council consensus algorithm, transactions require only seconds and not minutes or hours like in Ethereum or Bitcoin. Furthermore, Heleus is designed with high scalability in mind utilizing multiple Councils at the same time in the future.
Decentralized Back-end
Bitcoin and Ethereum are decentralized cryptocurrencies, but they are based on a huge monolithic blockchain. Heleus Core tries to resolve this problem of a monolithic blockchain by utilizing chains.
Everyone can create new chains. What is done in a chain is up to the creator. Developers can implement smart contracts on the chain or assets management or whatever they want and use these in their services or offer it to other developers. And users can easily and securely use these apps and services. The CoreChain on the other hand just acts as a thin validation layer.
No historic burdens
The biggest problems with blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum, except the slow transaction times, are their consensus algorithms. Both – Proof or Work and Proof of Stake – have big drawbacks. Basically, the person or company with the deepest pockets always wins. Either by buying the best mining equipment available or by utilizing their high stake.
This will not be the case in Heleus, as the Proof of Council consensus algorithm tries to balance the members by selecting nodes from the top apps and services and on the other hand from a random selection.
Easy Integration
Heleus was not made to build just another crypto currency. The idea is to build a decentralized infrastructure that's easy to integrate into other apps and services.
With the subscriptions and consumables model, which is also used by most of the popular app stores available, app and service developers have a powerful tool that's easy to integrate.
The ultimate goal is to have a simple payment system and the power of the a public trusted blockchain combined.
Faster Development
The CoreChain of Heleus is only a really thin validation layer. The real "action" happens on all the chains.
Therefore, it is much easier to add new features to the Heleus Core infrastructure. Smart contracts, interaction with other blockchains, assets management and many other interesting fields won't be part of the CoreChain, they will be developed as chains. Maybe by us or maybe by the community.
The separation of the CoreChain and the chain is one of the most interesting parts in Heleus Core and will make it the most flexible blockchain technology in the future.
Most of the terminology in this paper should be known for people that payed attention to crypto currencies. For new readers, here is a short recap of the most important terms.
The term transaction can be ambiguous in combination with a crypto currency as it has a different meaning in the finance and software sector. For Heleus Core, the term transaction is used as synonym for an arbitrary valid operation on the blockchain. Therefore, a transaction can be the transfer of money from one account to another, the storage of a binary blob or any other valid type of operation.
Digital signatures are used as method of authentication. Instead of using passwords or encrypted connections, transactions are signed with the private signing key of the issuer. This produces a digital signature that can be verified by everyone with the public signing key of the issuer. Heleus Core uses Ed25519.
A block is a collection of different transactions. Validated transactions are accumulated over a certain period of time and bundled together in a block. This time is known as block-time.
A chain is a sorted list of blocks. To accomplish the correct order of the chain and the validity of a block, every block contains a reference to the previous block.
An account stores the current balance and the public signing key of the issuer. Unlike other crypto currencies, an account must be registered and the registrar receives a unique id for that account.
A node is a running instance of the Heleus Core software. It's a single peer that spans, with the help of other nodes, the whole peer-to-peer network. For crypto currencies that use Proof of Work as consensus algorithm, a node in the peer-to-peer network is often called a miner.
To operate on the blockchain, valid requests must be sent to it. A valid request usually consists of the operation type, the required payload for this transaction and a valid signature from the sending account. Requests are send to a public node.
In a peer-to-peer network, consensus means that the nodes try to find agreement on a decision across the network. In case of Heleus Core the nodes try to find consensus which submitted transactions are valid.
To join all the dots, it is often useful to give an example how everything works and go into details that were previously left out. In this case, the example is a simple image rights management app where photographers can upload their images combined with some meta-data and prove that they are the creators. But in an open way with the help of Heleus and not in a closed-blackbox-way. And to reduce the confusion, the example is split into two parts, the first parts shows what the developers have to do and the second part focuses on the users.
The Developers
These are the required steps to setup and run the chain for the example app. Every Heleus node is also a public endpoint, therefore the app can directly communicate with this node and no other back-end code is required.
- Generate a valid Ed25519 signing key.
- Create an account with the generated signing public key.
- Create a chain based on the newly created account.
- Add a new "image"
in-apppurchase to the chain. In this case the consumables type is used. The idea is that for every uploaded image, the user needs to have at least one valid "image" consumable.
- Write a custom validation-layer that validates the input data from the transaction, in this case if the meta-data has the correct format and that the image is really an image (the custom validation-layer is optional).
- Setup and run a Heleus node for this chain. To run a trusted node for this chain, a valid chain signing key pair is required.
The Users
This part assumes that the user already installed the Heleus wallet, created an account and transferred enough Heleus Coins to it. This mostly contains what actually happens in the background in Heleus. For the users, it's just some buttons that need to be pressed.
- The first step involves authorizing the chain. The app generates it's own Ed25519 signing key and sends it with some meta-data to the Heleus Wallet. The wallet app opens and the user can accept or reject the request from the app.
- The next step requires to buy the consumables. The behavior is nearly the same in the previous step. A "buy" button redirects the user from the app to the wallet app where the user sees the "image" in-app purchase added by the developer. The user buys the amount of consumables needed and switches back to the app.
- The two steps above might sound complicated, but the user actually doesn't have to do a lot as most of it is done automatically by the app in the background. And it is also possible to combine the first two steps. The step to add the user to the chain can be delayed and combined with the first in-app purchase.
- Finally, the user is known to the chain and has consumables to be able to upload images. The user takes a picture with the app, adds some meta-data and submits it. The app builds the correct transaction as defined by the developer, signs it with the apps signing key and sends it to the endpoint of the node. The endpoint from the chain makes some initial validations (valid account, valid signature, consumable available) and runs the custom validation-layer. If everything is correct, the transaction is bundled with all the other transactions in a chain block. When the block is validated, the chain sends the block meta-data to the council. The council will check the data and if everything looks fine, it is accepted. The CoreChain stores a reference to the block and the chain gets notified that the block was accepted and stores all its transactions permanently.
- When the transaction is stored in the chain the user gets a notification in the app and everything is done. The image and the meta-data are now stored in an open, transparent, replicable and immutable way and is available to everyone.


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Over the past year or two, I have found myself wondering about a better life with personas. Are personas giving us enough or can we do more? Real people's needs, attitudes and behaviours shift or change over time and sure, there will always be new people that fit a persona, but should we be okay with letting people go? That might be okay for an entertainment app, but it probably is not okay if you want to provide long term customer value.
Have you ever been on the end of a long string of feature requests, either from users or management? These feature requests are usually very specific in how you are supposed to implement it. So much so that you, as a UX Designer or Product Owner, you sometimes feel like a tool. Well, there is a very simple way to change that. All it is going to take is for you to ask one simple question, and that question is: "What are you trying to achieve?"
"What makes this question so special?", you may ask. Let me explain. This question does three things.
"Be the change you want to see in the world" ~ Not Gandhi
After "What are you trying to achieve?", my second-favourite and most used question, is "Why?"
Anyone who has ever engaged the inquisitive mind of a four-year old has had the experience of answering the dreaded follow-up question of 'but why?'. While this line of questioning has lead to many frustrated adults, this line of thinking has inspired the problem-solving approach employed by some of the top companies and leaders in the world.
Are you really doing Agile? If you are not doing iteration on your work, then are you getting the benefits of doing Agile?
The idea behind Agile was to be more flexible to users and market changes. Waterfall takes years to develop a piece of software and by the time you hit the market, you are no longer relevant. With Agile, you can build a MVP and iterate on your product as you try and find the right market fit. If you are only adding new features during sprints, without iteration, then you have just broken Waterfall down into smaller pieces. This is what I like to call "Mini-Waterfall".
What is your company doing?
Links & References
Every company does their UX a bit differently. It all depends on resources available, are you a start-up or large company and the influence of your existing business-developer processes.
I worked for an ecommerce company and work were usually handed down from the top, in the form of "We need to redesign application X" or "We want a new application X". My first response is always: "But why?". Why do you need to redesign? Why do you want to build a new product? What is wrong with the current product?