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This is the web site of Moonlight Pianos, a company registered in England and Wales.
Our postal address is 5 Pine Close, New Haw, Surrey, KT15 3BW.
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Memorial Bucket List
I have two bucket lists.
One is filled with checkable items such as "Drink a beer at Fenway with Sully Erna" or "Convert a baseball fan from the Yankees to the Red Sox." The second is a list of things I feel I need to do for others. Most of my second list is filled with volunteer activities that center around my community and my beloved home of New England. Recently I had the opportunity to add a new item to my list, and that item is this:
Honor Flight New England is a non-profit organization created solely to honor America's veterans for all of their sacrifices. Through generous donations we transport our heroes to Washington, D.C., to visit and reflect at their memorials AT NO COST TO THE VETERAN. Top priority is given to the senior veterans – World War II survivors, along with those other veterans who may be terminally ill. Donations to Honor Flight New England can be made by credit card from our website. You may also donate by mail. Please send the donation to:
Honor Flight New England
PO Box 16287
Hooksett, NH 03106
My understanding is that they are also in need of volunteers to chaperone the Veterans on their visits to the Memorials. Due to limited resources funds would not be available to cover the cost of transportation for the volunteers, but anyone within the Washington D.C. area could donate their time and efforts for such a worthy cause. Check out their website for more information.

subset: commoncrawl


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Mark Anderson landed in the NFL with a splash: runner-up in defensive rookie of the year voting after 12 sacks in just situation duty as a pass rusher.
When he got to the New England Patriots, he understood why he was there: to tackle quarterbacks. All but one.
If I touched Tom Brady I would be out of there the next day, Anderson said, laughing. I never hit him. But when I came here, kind of like in my rookie year, I wanted to show the team what I could do. I love the system. Its fun right now.
It was definitely fun for Anderson again in 2011 as he signed with New England last Aug. 5 and tied for the team high with 10 sacks. Actually it was more than fun; it was a career rebirth after he had gone from his lofty rookie results (including a Super Bowl trip) to being handed Alex Browns starting job to being cut as his production declined to miniscule.
After the Bears released Anderson in 2010, he had a brief stop with the Houston Texans. Not a high point, more like a stopover, he said.
Then New England called and didnt have to ask twice, particularly with the impression Bill Belichicks made on Anderson. Call it a touch of awe.
He knows everything, Anderson said, shaking his head. He knows about players from other teams. He knows about backups on other teams. He knows weaknesses and tendencies. You have to admire a guy like that. He knew my strengths and weaknesses before I joined the team.
Things did not end well in Chicago for Anderson, although there is no rancor or bitterness in his tone, only a little sadness, as he recalls times there. He still stays in touch with former teammates Anthony Adams, Adewale Ogunleye and Tommie Harris and still holds coach Lovie Smith in the highest possible regard.
Coach Smith and coach Belichick are similar in that they are both players coaches, Anderson said. They know when it is time to work and they know when it is time to rest your guys...
Chicago was a good experience because I learned a lot. I learned what to do and what not to do. I learned how to approach certain situations. I used what I learned in Chicago and Houston to help me when I came here. It has worked out for me.


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General Information
Aberdeen Indoor Bowling Club opened in October 1963 and has 12 rinks.
Currently there are 1813 members.
The Club is open all year apart from Christmas Day, Boxing Day, !st & 2nd January and local holiday Mondays during the summer period.(May to August)
The Club is also closed on Sundays during this summer period.
The stadium opens @ 8.30a.m. Monday to Friday and 9.00a.m. Saturday & Sunday.
The stadium closes @ 10.30pm Monday to Thursday, 11.00p.m. Friday & Saturday & 10.30p.m. on Sundays.
The Annual subscription is at present:-
Full Member £70.00
Social Member £35.00
Concessionary Member £32.50
& £10.00 for junior Members. (Up to 18 years of age.)
Payment of fees is due by August 31st for the following season.
Direct Debit facilities are available.
Rink fees are currently £3.00 per two hour session.
There are full Bar & Catering facilities within the Club.


text: for those that are lazy, cheap or older, but still need to do something between sessions: Monday, Wednesday, Friday (or every other day): * 3 sets of 14 push-ups (no time limit between sets) * 35 squats (no weights) Tues, Thurs, Sat: * 50 sit-ups Also, try to get in a 30 minute walk every day. The faster the better. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When starting this routine, only do one set of 14 push-ups, 20 squats (or when you start feeling the burn), 30 sit-ups and a shorter/slower walk. After a week or two, add another set of pushups, few more squats, more sit-ups and longer/faster walks (never rush into any training routine, or risk injury). Do the exercises slowly and deliberately, don't just jam through them. Form is everything. This abbreviated "workout" will just be enough to get you popping up on your board, not have rubber legs during bottom turns and a little cardio so you don't burn out in an hour. I've done this even just 2 weeks before a trip and it helped a lot. It won't do much for your paddling (don't know what will, other than maybe a specialized weight machine). I've found that if I surf even only as little as 3 days a month, it keeps paddling muscle activated. But, if I skip even one month, my next session is super weak. Of course, there's a lot of factors that go into that (body type, years surfing, etc), so ymmv.


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Life as Emotion: Three Models
If I am convinced of one truth about narrative art, it is that plot is its least important element. This does not mean that so-called "plotless" works are superior to more conventional narratives, or that plot doesn't matter. The point is rather that two works of art that are identical in plot may nonetheless vary almost entirely in quality, because the plot matters not in itself but in the way it serves as a platform for those innumerable small details that really determine the success or failure of works of art. Of course, the reality is that plot cannot be so neatly separated out from the rest of the work—the "plot" of a work is really just an abstraction. Enforcing an extreme separation between plot and the other elements yields a picture in which the plot seems to spin frictionlessly in the void, failing to meaningfully engage with the other elements of the work of art. So we must avoid this pitfall.
I think a parallel train of thought may be applied to our lives and our actions. What I want to say is that the "plot" of our lives, the actions we take, is somewhat immaterial next to the moods and emotions within which we act. Two lives with similar "plots" may nonetheless greatly differ in how admirable they truly are. A parallel worry arises, however: in this case, emotions can seem to spin frictionlessly, failing to engage with action in any significant way. This occurs when the mental is split too thoroughly from the bodily, when our mental life is taken to be a sort of efficient cause of our actions, where it is then possible to totally sever this link, until our actions and our moods bear no relation. (I am indebted to Stanley Cavell's essays "Music Discomposed" and "A Matter of Meaning It" from his Must We Mean What We Say? for clarifying my thinking on this point.)
But of course our moods and our actions are only dissociated at a broad level of description—just as is the case for the mood and plot of a work of art. In actual fact, mood shows itself through the myriad of small details that differentiate actions/plots that are indistinguishable when described in purely general terms. In that respect it is simply a mistake to treat two plots as the same, or the actions of two distinct people, however similar they might be. The real conclusion of the foregoing, then, is really that, generally speaking, it is the small, subtle details that matter, in life and in art, more than the abstract descriptions that simplify matters and obscure these details.
With that in mind, I want to present three distinct models of life as an emotion or a mood, and explore somewhat their consequences. The first comes from the first half of Kierkegaard's Either/Or, the second from Beckett's Molloy, and the third from Emerson's journals. First, Kierkegaard:
My life achievement amounts to nothing at all, a mood, a single color. My achievement resembles the painting by that artist who was supposed to paint the Israelites' crossing of the Red Sea and to that end painted the entire wall red and explained that the Israelites had walked across and that the Egyptians were drowned. (Either/Or, 28)
The image here is one of life as a single mood, lacking in detail and variation. The passage is from the journal of the aesthete whose papers comprise the first half of Either/Or, and needs to be considered in that context. In fact, the aesthete's moods vary wildly from moment to moment, yet he says that his life achievement amounts to "a mood, a single color." I think the key to unlocking this puzzle is the reference to the painter. The painter, in simply painting a red canvas, has more than anything else evaded his task. The event he was commissioned to paint was rich and dramatic, yet his painting is dull and monochrome. Internally, his wild fluctuations lack any sort of consistency, and in such a way that, externally, all he can manage is one thing, with no variation. The inner turbulence makes for outer monotony. One reason for this, I think, is that for the aesthete, the inner and outer really are quite decoupled, in just the unhealthy way I described above.
Next, Samuel Beckett. The quote comes from the first half of his novel Molloy, in which the dying Molloy rambles about his life, reliving it as he retells it. Molloy is dying, decomposing, and he presents a wretched physical appearance. As he writes, he occasionally reflects on his writing, and the passage I want to explore is one such reflection:
But it is only since I have ceased to live that I think of these things and the other things. It is in the tranquility of decomposition that I remember the long confused emotion which was my life, and that I judge it, as it is said that God will judge me, and with no less impertinence. To decompose is to live took, I know, I know, don't torment me, but one sometimes forgets. And of that life too I shall tell you perhaps one day, the day I know that when I thought I knew I was merely existing and that passion without forms or stations will have devoured me down to the rotting flesh itself and that when I know that I know nothing, am only crying out as I have always cried out, more or less piercingly, more or less openly. (Molloy, 21)
Again we have a model of life as a single emotion, in this case, a "long confused" one. (I believe we are supposed to read this as "long, confused" rather than "long-confused.") Here it is not so much a single color as it is a picture whose subject you can't make out, whose boundaries are blurry, whose content is opaque. The long confused emotion is a picture of the Greek ideal of self-knowledge thwarted, and perhaps the suggestion is even that it is impossible. In any case, this internal confusion does become external: shortly after the quoted passage, Molloy writes, "A confused shadow was cast. It was I and my bicycle." The confusion of his emotion extends even to the shadow he casts.
Finally, Emerson. Emerson wrote the journal in question when he was around twenty-four years old. (I don't have an exact date, but the previous dated entry was six days before his twenty-fourth birthday.) Emerson muses:
Robinson Crusoe when in any perplexity was wont to retire to a part of his cave which he called his thinking corner. Devout men have found a stated spot so favorable to a habit of religious feeling that they have worn the solid rock of the oratory with their knees. I have found my ideas very refractory to the usual bye laws of Association. In the graveyard my muscles were twitched by some ludicrous recollections and I am apt to be solemn at a ball. But whilst places are alike to me I make great distinction between states of mind. My days are made up of the irregular succession of a very few different tones of feeling. These are my feasts & fasts. Each has his harbinger, some subtle sign by which I know when to prepare for its coming. Among these some are favorites, and some are to me as the Eumenides. But one of them is the sweet asylum where my greatest happiness is laid up, which I keep in sight whenever disasters befall me & in which it is like the life of angels to live. (Selected Journals 1820-1842, 147)
Kierkegaard's aesthete has a theoretical understanding of his mood(s), but no real control over them: they fluctuate wildly, and all they amount to is, in the end, a single color. Beckett's Molloy, on the other hand, seems to lack even that degree of self-knowledge. He can only recognize his life as a "long confused emotion"—he cannot make it out any better than that. Emerson, by contrast, while somewhat at the mercy of his moods, has at least figured out how to manage them when they come, and so it is a life of feasts and fasts. And while only the feasts are "like the life of angels to live," no doubt the fasts are spiritually rigorous and make the feasts possible. Unlike the aesthete, then, Emerson has found some friction, and so, to borrow Nietzsche's delightful phrase (from The Gay Science), he may paint his happiness on the wall.
If readers know any other passages on this theme, by all means let me know in the comments.
Beckett's Sisyphean Recurrence
Yesterday saw the passing of two important eras of my life: my first year of graduate school, and my first reading of Samuel Beckett's Molloy. Anything I could say about the former would be the most unendurable sort of autobiography, so I'll concentrate here on the latter. In numerous previous posts on this blog, I've made reference to Nietzsche's eternal recurrence, a piece of poetry/metaphysics that will not leave my thoughts for any extended period of time. But this interest in Nietzsche has also made me sensitive to other views of recurrence. My post on Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice explored one of these, though I got rather sidetracked into a discussion of Kierkegaard there. Here I wish to explore a conception of recurrence put forward in (and exemplified by) Samuel Beckett's Molloy. I can hardly claim to understand the work well enough to present a comprehensive theory, but I hope to at least indicate some areas where fruitful questions might be asked. [All citations are to Molloy, in the Grove Press edition of Three Novels. Additionally, there are spoilers, insofar as a book like Molloy can have spoilers.]
Molloy, roughly speaking, is the autobiographical tales of one man, or two men, or two halves of the same man. It is split into two parts, one told from the perspective of Molloy, one from the perspective of Jacques Moran. They are not distinct people, not fully, at least. Each gives a report of his movements, Molloy in one nearly 85-page paragraph (with a brief introduction) and Moran in the more formal style of a "report." I don't wish to speculate on their exact relation here (except insofar as I have to, below), but what is clear is this: as Moran's report goes on, he becomes more and more similar to Molloy.
A persistent theme of the novel (and, I am told, the two that come after it in the trilogy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable) is the (in)ability of language to capture the truth of things. Molloy speaks of "a passion for truth like mine" (30), and Moran goes to great pains to make it clear both what he will include and exclude in his report. But truth is elusive, and it isn't far into the novel that the reader loses whatever sense of the meaning of 'truth' she brought going in. I take as my jumping off point one passage on this theme, from roughly midway through Moran's report:
And in the silence of my room, and all over as far as I am concerned, I know scarcely any better where I am going and what awaits me than the night I clung to the wicket, beside my idiot of a son, in the lane. And it would not surprise me if I deviated, in the pages to follow, from the true and exact succession of events. But I do not think even Sisyphus is required to scratch himself, or to groan, or to rejoice, as the fashion is now, always at the same appointed places. And it may even be they are not too particular about the route he takes provided it gets him to his destination safely and on time. And perhaps he thinks each journey is the first. This would keep hope alive, would it not, hellish hope. Whereas to see yourself doing the same thing endlessly over and over again fills you with satisfaction. (128)
The Sisyphus myth is a favorite of the existentialists. Camus, of course, famously wrote that we must consider Sisyphus happy—it is perhaps this essay (published 1942) that Beckett refers to when he says that rejoicing is the current fashion (Molloy was written between 1946 and 1950). My interest here is the vision of recurrence set out in this passage, which is implicitly expanded by the novel itself, which in many respects exemplifies it.
Nietzsche's eternal recurrence is a good foil to get the discussion started, because the point Nietzsche emphasizes with respect to his recurrence—that every detail is exactly the same, that Sisyphus must take the same route each time, and each time scratch, groan, and rejoice at "the same appointed places"—is exactly what Beckett denies in his recurrence. As the first few sentences of the Beckett quote indicate, Moran invokes Sisyphus in order to justify his inevitable deviance from "the true and exact succession of events." Moran likens his task of giving a report of his year of wandering to Sisyphus' task of rolling a rock up a hill.
This is more than just a reference: it is a very telling analysis of just what Moran is doing in writing his report. Retelling his story is, for Moran, a form of reliving it, not in that metaphorical sense in which we "relive" events in our heads, but in a very real, literal sense. This is established at various points in the novel. Unfortunately, I did not mark them down, so I can only give slight indication of the evidence for this point, but it includes the way tense is used in the book, the temporal paradox established at the beginning of the book, and various other clues. (This all applies every bit as much to Molloy as to Moran.) Molloy and Moran tell their stories and, equally so, they relive them. But they relive them with differences.
Writing itself is thus a Sisyphean task, a rolling yet again of the old stone up the old hill. What is the effect of this repetition? Moran again has an answer. He gives two possibilities. If one does not know one's situation, if one believes that this is the first (and only) time, then one has a "hellish hope". Success is perceived as an option. But what if one recognizes that one's task is unending, ever renewing? What if Sisyphus, rolling his rock up the hill, knows that when he reaches the top, it will roll back to the bottom? Well, if Moran is to be believed, this fills him with satisfaction. (And if I use 'one' too frequently in this paragraph, it is in Kafka's sense: "One works so feverishly at the office that afterwards one is too tired even to enjoy one's holidays properly. But even all that work does not give one a claim to be treated lovingly by everyone; on the contrary, one is alone, a total stranger and only an object of curiosity. And so long as you say 'one' instead of 'I,' there's nothing in it and one can easily tell the story; but as soon as you admit to yourself that it is you yourself, you feel as though transfixed and are horrified." From his unfinished short story, "Wedding Preparations in the Country".)
I think the novel exemplifies this in several ways. (I remember Moran's half better, so I will focus there.) Very shortly into his report, Moran explains his satisfaction that the "slightly libertarian view" that work on Sunday "was not of necessity reprehensible" has been "gaining ground" (87). As becomes increasingly clear, religion for Moran is a matter of habit, but certainly not of spirituality. (Moran's relationship with the mysterious Youdi is another matter.) This pattern of crosses becoming habits also recurs later in the work, when Moran's leg begins to stiffen painfully: "My leg was no better, but it was no worse either. That is to say it was perhaps a little worse, without my being in a condition to realize it, for the simple reason that this leg was becoming a habit, mercifully" (141). To bear a cross is painful, but allows hope. When that cross becomes a habit, however, it is no longer a burden. Satisfaction is then possible, but not hope.
This satisfaction is connected with another theme of the novel, the loss of will. Molloy begins his report by telling the truth: "the truth is I haven't much will left." Moran's report, which is I believe temporally prior to Molloy's, though it comes later in the novel, is to a great extent the story of how Moran gradually loses his will. (As I read, I went back and forth on whether Moran and Molloy's tales are two different relivings of the same events, or whether they are distinct. I now lean fairly strongly toward the latter.) So, once the novel is arranged in its proper temporal sequence, it shows a basically linearly decreasing will. Hold that thought.
At one point toward the end of Moran's report, he brings up the subject of hope again:
And on and off, for fun, and the better to scatter them to the winds, I dallied with the hopes that spring eternal, childish hopes, as for example that my son, his anger spent, would have pity on me and come back to me! Or that Molloy, whose country this was, would come to me, who had not been able to go to him, and grow to be a friend, and like a father to me, and help me do what I had to do, so that Youdi would not be angry with me and would not punish me! Yes, I let them spring within me and grow in strength, brighten and charm me with a thousand fancies, and then I swept them away, with a great disgusted sweep of all my being, I swept myself clean of them and surveyed with satisfaction the void they had polluted. (156)
For he who is convinced of his Sisyphean nature of his task in living, hopes may be dallied with as a form of amusement, but ultimately they must be swept away. Here we see explicitly that Moran is dispensing with hope; he recognizes the nature of his task. But Moran cannot be said to be satisfied, for he lives in fear of the retribution of the mysterious Youdi.
Now pick up the thought left hanging: the linear decrease of Moran/Molloy's will as the book goes on (temporally speaking). I want to suggest that the mechanism by which recognizing the Sisyphean nature of one's task makes (Beckettian) satisfaction possible is by diminishing one's will. When one knows the starting point and destination, and knows that one will be looping through them endlessly, the only room for the will in Beckettian recurrence is in matters of detail: where one scratches or groans. And as one carries out the task, again and again, I suggest that these details start to matter less and less. Satisfaction is achieved when one relinquishes control even over these details. It is no accident that Beckett illustrates this point by the example of scratching an itch, a largely meaningless gesture that is more a response to an urge than to deliberation or volition generally conceived.
We have seen hope (if only as a plaything), but is there any image of satisfaction in the book? There is, but only at the very end of Molloy's section. There he writes, in his finally three sentences, "I longed to go back into the forest. Oh not a real longing. Molloy could stay, where he happened to be." By going back into the forest, Molloy would be in effect scratching an itch. He does not crawl back, however, and says that his longing is "not a real longing." Instead, he can stay where he is, and let happen whatever may happen. In this act I think we see the final remnants of Molloy's will vanish, voluntarily ceded. He has achieved a sort of Beckettian amor fati. Molloy is satisfied.
Tangential addendum
When I wrote this sentence—"It is no accident that Beckett illustrates this point by the example of scratching an itch, a largely meaningless gesture that is more a response to an urge than to deliberation or volition generally conceived"—I had a thought that does not fit into the rest of this post, but which I wanted to write down lest I forget it. At numerous points in the book, especially in Moran's section, religion (which of course emphasizes the importance of free will) is connected to a horror of the body. Moran even at one point openly admits to wanting to impart such a horror to his son. Beckett I think follows Nietzsche in associating Christianity with revulsion of what is bodily, with its base urges and lusts. The will is thus supposed to command and suppress the desires, along the model of Plato's chariot. Beckett, in choosing scratching an itch as his example of where one has freedom in life, is connecting the will to control over one's reactions to such bodily urges and longings. Moran begins the novel with a very strict set of rules for what such reactions he will tolerate, but as he loses his will, these deteriorate, until at least he can say, "And when I passed my hands over my face, in a characteristic and now more than ever pardonable gesture…" The gesture was, I am fairly sure, one that was explicitly listed as unpardonable before. I do not recall the exact place where this happened and could not find it on a quick search. But if I am wrong that it was explicitly mentioned, nonetheless, "now more than ever pardonable" indicates fairly clearly that it was previously at least less pardonable.
Aesthetics and Objectivity II
It's nearing the end of paper writing season and I have no clue what I'm going to do for the final section of one of my papers, so now is as good a time as any to revisit a perennial concern of mine: the possibility for objectivity in discourse about art. I wrote a post on this subject a couple months ago, in which I stated that my goal was to move between two equally unpalatable poles: "pure" objectivism and "pure" subjectivism. My goal here is to introduce an apparatus (drawing on the work of Rudolf Carnap and Huw Price) in which to think about these poles, in order to make it clearer that there indeed can be a middle ground between the two.
One vice of that earlier post was that I did not give a very explicit, very clear definition of objectivity. Since the term is used in so many different ways, that is a serious flaw, though I tried to mitigate it through context clues. However, while reading parts of Carnap's Der Logische Aufbau der Welt recently, I came across a superb definition. (As it happens, reading Carnap has been quite eye opening, stripping me of a great many of my prejudices about logical empiricism. Carnap was a genius and a philosopher quite congenial to my general way of thinking, despite my many points of disagreement with him.) Carnap defines objectivity along two poles (The Logical Structure of the World, §66, George translation):
The requirement that knowledge be objective can be understood in two senses. It could mean objectivity in contrast to arbitrariness: if a judgment is said to reflect knowledge, then this means that it does not depend on my whims. […]
Secondly, by objectivity is sometimes meant independence from the judging subject, validity which holds also for other subjects. It is precisely this intersubjectivity which is an essential feature of "reality"; it serves to distinguish reality from dream and deception.
In just a couple sentences, Carnap has cut through a vast swath of issues. First off, it is useful to understand just how these two concepts are separate, by seeing how you can have either without the other:
Intersubjectivity without non-arbitrariness: This position is exemplified by cultural relativist views (in any domain)—or at least by certain extreme forms of cultural relativism. What is right or acceptable is just what is deemed right or acceptable by the lights of a particular culture. Thus, within that culture, there is intersubjective validity because there is an intersubjective standard by which to evaluate the relevant statements: just check what is deemed appropriate by that culture. However (and this is where the restriction to extreme forms of cultural relativism comes into play), what the culture deems acceptable or appropriate is entirely arbitrary, a result of what we might call communal "whims". That is, there are no normative restrictions on what the culture may deem acceptable.
Non-arbitrariness without intersubjectivity: This possibility is more difficult to see, but it is possible. A view that would fit this model is one that suggested that e.g. questions about the value of a work of art that say that a person cannot give reasons for her view that have any force for other people, but that her opinion is nonetheless not arbitrary. For instance, she might base her appreciation for a work of art on a rigorous attempt to relate the work to her experiences, ignoring those experiences that don't matter. Her judgment is then justified in a way that not just any judgment would be, but because her experiences are her own and not shared, there nevertheless is not intersubjective validity.
What is most useful about Carnap's two axes of objectivity is that there is no mention of 'truth'—presumably in part because he wished to avoid the metaphysical excess of the correspondence theory of truth, in which a statement is true just in case it corresponds to some fact about the world. If one holds such a theory of truth, then there is an immediate temptation to think that objectivity is a matter of grasping truth in this sense. Science then becomes the paradigm of objectivity: the claims of science correspond to the facts. Moreover, once this view of truth is in place, it becomes very difficult to even see how there could be objectivity about normative matters such as ethics and aesthetics, because it becomes very difficult to see just what an evaluative fact might be. This is the jumping off point for J.L. Mackie's error theory (specifically, his argument from queerness). Mackie in effect asks what an evaluative fact might be, finds the very idea weird (rightly so, I think), and diagnoses our moral discourse as a thoroughgoing error: we think we are making true claims, but we are not, because there are no evaluative facts to correspond to our claims.
Carnap is having none of this, and in fact I think diagnosed Mackie's error nearly 50 years in advance: "However, we must here clearly distinguish between a certain kind of language usage and the assertion of a thesis" (The Logical Structure of the World, §178). It is not at all obvious, and in fact I think it manifestly incorrect, to see our moral discourse as implicitly committed to the thesis that there is a special sort of evaluative fact. Of course, many people certainly do believe in such facts, and this belief certainly shapes how they talk. But this is not something inherent to moral discourse. While Carnap would disagree with me about the possibility for some degree of objectivity about evaluative judgments, it is not on the grounds that there is no special class of moral facts. (When I say Carnap would disagree, I mean the later Carnap. The Carnap who wrote the Aufbau in fact made explicit room for the construction of values within his system.)
When I said above, "science then becomes the paradigm of objectivity," I was not being dismissive. Science is the paradigm of objectivity, and Carnap lets us see why. Good scientific practice fights against arbitrariness and attempts to maximize intersubjective validity (I will say more about what this amounts to shortly). The sciences are rife with disagreement (which is essential to their flourishing), but they have mechanisms to eventually resolve this disagreement. This allows them to enjoy a degree of objectivity that is unparalleled in any other domain.
Recognizing scientific inquiry as a paradigm of objectivity in this way does not make us lose sight of the possibility for objectivity (in different degrees) in other domains. This is because Carnap's conception of objectivity allows us to see both axes as axes, i.e. as defining a continuum. Once we have this in view, we can see how there is room for objectivity in other domains, even if they are not as paradigmatically objective as scientific inquiry.
Why bother with all of this? One big motivation—for all sides, I would wager—is the phenomenon of disagreement. In my last post on the subject I discussed disagreement at some length, and I'll discuss it more here. Another, related, aspect of the issue is the need to hold other people accountable. How we think about objectivity in various domains will change how we go about holding one another accountable for their claims, and how we react to disagreements. In the rest of this post, I want to relate these issues to an essay I recently read by Huw Price, "Truth as Convenient Friction" (published in his recent collection of papers entitled Naturalism Without Mirrors). In that paper, he discusses three norms of discourse, which I want to relate to the phenomena of disagreement. My end goal is to motivate a view in which we recognize the need for a norm of truth in aesthetic discourse, and to connect this to the discussion of objectivity above.
When considering the phenomenon of disagreement, it is useful to start by considering the marvelous closing sentences of Nelson Goodman's delightful book, Ways of Worldmaking (emphasis added):
The vaunted claim of community of opinion among scientists is mocked by fundamental controversies raging in almost every science from psychology to astrophysics. And judgments of the Parthenon and the Book of Kells have hardly been more variable than judgments of the laws of gravitation. I am not claiming that rightness in the arts is less subjective, or even no more subjective, than truth in the sciences, but only suggesting that the line between artistic and scientific judgment does not coincide with the line between subjective and objective, and that any approach to universal accord on anything significant is exceptional.
My readers could weaken that latter conviction by agreeing unanimously with the foregoing somewhat tortuous and in a double sense trying course of thought.
What Goodman so rightly emphasizes, particularly in the italicized portion, is that disagreement is rampant in all walks of life. Science, as I said, is a paradigm of objectivity, but not because it lacks disagreement. Nevertheless, the fact of widespread disagreement in ethical and aesthetic matters is routinely used as an objection to views that think that such discourse can be objective. The reason why such arguments are not simply mistaken on their face is that disagreement in the sciences looks different from disagreement in other areas. In at least certain respects, disagreements in the sciences are more tractable than those in the arts. (Goodman, I should note, is sensitive to this. In a footnote to the passage just quoted, he writes, "The reason that earlier theories but not older works may be rendered obsolete by later ones is often, I think, that the earlier theories insofar as sound, are absorbed into and are rederivable from the later while works of art, functioning differently as symbols, cannot be absorbed into or derived from others." I have added emphasis to an important and astute point—the point that gives the lie to Mackie's error theory.)
One reason why scientific disagreements tend to be tractable in a way that aesthetic disagreements are not is that, when a scientific question is sufficiently well-formulated, it tends to have a single correct answer. Much of the most interesting scientific work lies not in determining the answer to such questions, but in learning just which questions to ask. Questions in aesthetics, on the other hand, don't seem to admit of such unitary answers. Compare: (a) What is the charge of an electron? (b) Are Bach's Brandenburg Concertos better or worse than Beethoven's fifth symphony? The former question has a determinate answer, which at this point we know to a fairly high degree of precision. The latter question, on the other hand, does not obviously have a correct answer, and if it does we sure as hell don't know how to find it. Nor is there any real prospect of us somehow "discovering" the method for finding it at some point in the future.
Part of this is because the comparison is unfair. The scientific question is just the right question to ask, part of a very clear theoretical framework established through a great deal of conceptual and empirical work. The aesthetic question, on the other hand, is precisely the wrong sort of question to ask (at least, not without a very clear context given). It is an argument for another day why it is the wrong question, but see my "screed" to the right for a brief indication of my thoughts. Here are some better questions: (c) What is the mood of the piece? (d) Does it establish this mood effectively? (e) What is the piece saying? (f) Should one listen? — These questions also may not have unitary answers, but they are at least more worthwhile questions to ask, and the reasons they don't have unitary answers are more interesting. (I have more to say about what questions are interesting in my post Why write about art?)
I think part of why people take disagreement in normative discourse to cut against objectivity is that they take questions like (b)—the bad sort—to be the paradigm sort of question in those areas. But that is hardly the full explanation. It is also because disagreement about even the better sorts of questions do not seem tractable to anything like the same degree as those in science. I think that these arguments can be overcome. I argued in my last post on the subject that certain forms of subjectivism lose sight of the very possibility of disagreement, so I won't rehash that here. However, I do want to look at Huw Price's discussion of norms of discourse, and relate them to the phenomenon of disagreement more generally.
Price discusses three norms of discourse, each more stringent than the last: (1) sincerity, (2) warranted assertibility, (3) truth. These are norms of discourse in the sense that we can and sometimes do hold people accountable for failing to uphold them.
The first norm, sincerity, requires that when people make some claim, they advance it sincerely, i.e. it requires that people honestly express their opinions. This norm may be suspended for rhetorical or other purposes, e.g. when one person plays devil's advocate, but in most contexts it holds (and even in the case of playing devil's advocate, the norm may hold insofar as the person is expected to make it clear what she doing). One way of distinguishing a lie from just any false claim is by noting that a lie violates the norm of sincerity.
People who hold hardline subjectivist views about aesthetics generally hold aesthetic discourse only to norms of sincerity. It is possible to explore people's motivations for their views on works of art, but ultimately you cannot fault someone for the opinion they hold. You can only fault them for being insincere. For just this reason, it is inappropriate on such views to talk about reasons for evaluating works of art one way or another, taking the notion of a reason to involve at least some intersubjective rational force. You can only speak of motivations. This norm of discourse thus does not require objectivity in either sense: a person's judgment may be totally arbitrary ("I just like it") and it has no claim to intersubjective validity whatsoever. On both axes, an aesthetic discourse that involved only a norm of sincerity would be a paradigm of subjectivity. As Huw Price notes, there is no room for disagreement if such a norm is all that is available. If you sincerely express your opinion and I sincerely express mine, we may have different opinions, but we cannot disagree. As I argued in my previous post on this topic, I think this fact is enough to make us wish to avoid such a form of discourse at all costs if we can, so I will not belabor the point here.
The second norm, warranted assertibility, comes in both personal and communal forms. The personal form says that a speaker is incorrect to make an assertion, not only if she does not sincerely believe it, but also if she does not have adequate grounds for believing what she asserts. This norm basically amounts to requiring that one be able to justify one's claims and opinions. We can take one another to task for expressing opinions that are not well-founded, where 'well-founded' here means well-founded by the speaker's own lights. (Price gives the example of beliefs that are not well-founded "on the grounds that they [do] not cohere with the speaker's other preferences and desires.")
Allowing this norm makes possible a more moderate subjectivism about aesthetics. While opinions may be quite arbitrary and subjective, they cannot be totally arbitrary—they are held at least to standards of minimal coherence. Moreover, it makes possible what Price calls 'no-fault' disagreements—disagreements where neither party is at fault (where nobody is wrong). However, there is still a very real sense in which parties to such disagreements "slide past one another," as Price puts it. Because there is no norm beyond minimal personal justification, there is no disagreement in a fully robust sense. There is no real prospect of resolving our disagreements, and the reason is because there is no real intersubjectivity.
This can be overcome by considering a communal form of warranted assertibility, where one is justified in making a claim only if that claim is warranted by the standards of her community. On one view, the community imagined is some ideally rational future community (when we reach "the end of inquiry"). But, from my perspective, it is not clear what such a community would look like, it is clear that no such community actually exists, and it obvious that we have no way of judging one another by the standards of such a community, seeing as we are not one. (Price makes all of these points, but I arrived at them independently of him.) Thus I will focus on a more modest norm of warranted assertibility, in which one is warranted in asserting something just in case one is justified in believing it by the lights of one's actual community.
This needs to be handled with care. If taken too crudely, it lapses into a strong cultural relativism, with all its flaws. (How, for instance, could an individual justifiably dissent from the cultural norms, if those norms determine what is justified?) We might, however, imagine that both the personal and communal forms of warranted assertibility are used, which allows for a picture of critique in both directions. The risk this runs, however, is that disagreements still slide past another. When personal and communal warranted assertibility disagree, what arbitrates the disagreement? The problem is that personal warranted assertibility has no intersubjectivity, which means it cannot really engage in an intersubjectively compelling critique of communal norms. Moreover, while communal norms are intersubjective, one can still say, with Price: "My manners are not those of the palace, but so what?" There must be some account of why communal norms should apply to me, why I should be beholden to them. So the picture of mutual critique I suggested is, in fact, a ruse.
This argument, which I have adopted almost wholesale from Price's paper, leads to the need for a third norm, the norm of truth. The title of the paper is "Truth as Convenient Friction", which indicates the role the norm of truth plays: it introduces the friction needed to get disagreements to stop sliding past one another. Price: "We could be aware that we have different opinions about what is warrantedly assertible, without that difference of opinion seeming to matter. What makes it matter is the fact that we subscribe to a practice according to which disagreement is an indication of culpable error, on one side or other; in other words, that we take ourselves to be subject to the norms of truth and falsity."
When we hold other people to the norm of truth, we take them to task for saying false things. We take there to be "facts about the matter" (please do not read this metaphysically) that transcend what any particular person is warranted in asserting at a particular time, and when people disagree, they are culpable in the sense that at least one of the parties to the disagreement is at least partially wrong.
It is easy to see how the norm of truth plays a key role in scientific inquiry, and helps us to make sense of scientific disagreement. Let me illustrate by example. In the 1910s, Alfred Wegener proposed his theory of continental drift. For several decades, there was sharp disagreement among scientists, with many (even most) still holding to immobilist theories. Wegener's theory eventually won out, of course, but that did not fully happen until the 1960s. We can say about this case that, in those intervening decades, both sides satisfied the norms of warranted assertibility (and sincerity, I presume) in that both sides could offer compelling, empirically acceptable reasons for preferring one theory over the other. In hindsight, we nevertheless praise those who supported Wegener's theory, because Wegener's theory was the true one. (This is really very crude, and it sidesteps the myriad issues of scientific realism. But I can only fit so much in a single post.) Scientists can agree to disagree, as the saying goes, but only temporarily. Agreeing to disagree, for a scientist, is an uneasy state to be in.
If my reasons for wanting to save disagreement in the aesthetic realm are compelling, then we have good reason for wanting a norm of truth for aesthetic discourse as well. Nevertheless, it is just this fact of widespread, seemingly intractable disagreement in such discourse that makes such a norm seem impossible to have. I want to offer a diagnosis of this apparent impossibility, and point the way toward seeing how we can have such a norm.
One reason why aesthetic disagreement seems to rule out the possibility of such a norm is that our concept of 'truth' is, I think, strongly connected to the existence of a single right answer. Regarding empirical questions, such as, what is the charge of an electron?, the existence of a single correct answer is straightforwardly comprehensible. Price never makes this point explicitly, but I suggest it is implicit when he says, "Assertoric dialogue requires an intolerance of disagreement."
But in the aesthetic domain, even when we move away from crude questions like (b) earlier and toward more sophisticated interpretive and evaluative questions, it is still difficult if not impossible to get a grasp on there being a single right answer. The reason for this, I suggest, is that disagreements in aesthetics are (or ought to be) something between pure fault and pure no-fault disagreements. They are fault disagreements in that we think (or should think) that it is possible to be wrong, to have bad opinions. But they are no-fault disagreements in that the resolution of such disagreements can indeed be a stable agreement to disagree. Such agreement to disagree is possible precisely because, while we recognize a norm of truth that extends beyond the norms of sincerity and warranted assertibility, we do not think that there exists a single correct answer, for any deviance from which one is culpable.
This creates problems because it stands in tension with our sense that we can only speak of truth where there is a single right answer. There are two ways to resolve this tension. One way is simply to get over that prejudice, and to allow talk of 'truth' and 'knowledge' even in evaluative discourse. I tend to favor this strategy on the grounds that I think banishing such terminology from aesthetic and moral domains is dangerous, as it creates a temptation to fall into the sort of subjectivist positions I find intolerable. (Of course, keeping the terminology is dangerous, too, as it leads to the opposite temptation of falling into an equally intolerable and implausible objectivism. But I think this temptation is easier to resist, as it looks much less attractive in today's philosophical landscape.)
In general, then, I am happy to speak of aesthetic truth, aesthetic knowledge, and of art as a "way of knowing" (to use a troubled but lovely phrase). But it is also useful to have a terminological distinction at hand for when it is necessary. For this, I return to the Goodman quote I introduced a long way back, specifically this sentence: "I am not claiming that rightness in the arts is less subjective, or even no more subjective, than truth in the sciences…" Here Goodman draws a distinction between truth and rightness, leaving "truth" to the sciences while speaking about "rightness" for the arts. As I understand Goodman, truth is a species that falls under the genus of rightness. Crudely characterized, we can imagine truth as the special case of rightness where a well-formulated question has a single correct answer. (This probably will not do on closer inspection, but it's good enough for now.)
The reason this distinction is apt is that while our sense of 'truth' seems to involve the existence of a unitary correct answer, the same is not true of our sense of 'right', for I am sure we are all familiar with the phrase, "there are multiple right answers" (which is of course distinct from "there are no wrong answers"). Having a notion of rightness allows for a healthy pluralism that has room for agreeing to disagree in the long run (i.e. not just temporarily, with the hope that in the future the disagreement will be resolved).
This should let us see how aesthetic discourse can be objective. It is not arbitrary because we cannot take just any position that suits our whims—we must take due care to ensure, as best we can, that we are right. And it is substantially intersubjective because we must be able to offer reasons that can justify our position to another, showing why we are justified in taking ourselves to be right. It is not purely intersubjective because we cannot take consensus even as an ideal (as we might in science), but it is nevertheless much more than merely subjective.
I hope I have gone some small way to showing how we might save the objectivity of aesthetic discourse.


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Built-in TNC firmware update information
Last updated : May 20, 2011
The TM-D710A/E, RC-D710's built-in TNC firmware has been updated from Version 1.01 to Version 1.02 as follows.
KENWOOD is offering the firmware updating program to the TM-D710A/E and the RC-D710 owners.
You can update the firmware by connecting the TM-D710A/E Operation Panel (RC-D710) to the PC by using an optional Programming Cable
(PG-5G, or PG-5H Serial communications cable)
Updated items : (Version 1.01
[May 20, 2011]
Updates the following feature.
When a communications error between the built-in TNC and the operation panel CPU occurs, the built-in TNC will be automatically reset.(To enable the function, please also update the
Operation Panel firmware
to Version 2.10 or later.)
Updated items : (Version 1.00
[February 29, 2008]
Updates the following feature.
Works with the data logger of the "WeatherLink
for APRS, with Streaming Data Logger" (Davis Part No. 06540) as well as the data logger of the "WeatherLink
for Vantage Pro2™, Windows, Serial Port" (Davis Part No. 06510SER).
Note : Please set the "BAUD RATE" (Menu No.602) to 9600bps for stable working performance.
Revises the following symptom.
When "UIFLOOD" (Menu No.619) is set to "ON" and "SUBSTITUTION" is set to "NOID", may not digipeat an AX.25 Version1 frame correctly.
Applicable models/units :
The firmware updating program is applicable for following models/units.
Models: TM-D710A / TM-D710E / RC-D710
Serial numbers: From S/NO.905xxxxx through S/NO.B14xxxxx approx.
You can find the serial number imprinted on the TM-D710A/E's TX/RX unit (main body) bottom side or on the RC-D710's rear side; it consists of an 8-digit number beginning with "S/NO."
You can check the firmware version of your TM-D710A/E (RC-D710) built-in TNC by the following procedures.
Turn the Power ON.
Press [TNC] to enter APRS mode.
Turn the Power OFF.
Press [PF1] + Power ON.
Then the TNC's firmware version appears in the upper right of the LCD display.(Above the Operation Panel's firmware version)
The TNC's firmware version does not appear in NORMAL mode or PACKET mode.
The built-in TNC firmware version indication function works only on the TM-D710A/E (RC-D710) Operation Panel firmware Ver.1.12 or later.
Operating Environments
Operating System (OS)
2000, Windows
XP, Windows Vista
, Windows
PLEASE NOTE : The .NET Framework 2.0 (Service Pack 1 or later) which is available for download from
Microsoft download center
must also be installed. (Windows Vista
, Windows
7 users do not need to install the .NET Framework.)
How to check if the .NET Framework 2.0 (Service Pack 1 or later) is installed in your Windows
2000 / XP : Open the Control Panel and select Add/ Remove Programs, then scroll through the list of applications.If you find the name of the "Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0" (Service Pack 1 or later), you do not need to install it again.
Faster than the recommended CPU for each OS.
System Memory (RAM)
Larger than the recommended System Memory for each OS.
Free Hard Drive Space
Larger than the recommended Free Hard Drive Space for each OS.
Peripheral Devices
A display with resolutions higher than VGA.(640 x 480)
A keyboard and a mouse, or other pointing devices.
An RS-232C interface.(Corresponding to COM1 to COM20).
An optional programming cable.
(PG-5G, or PG-5H Serial communications cable)
If you do not want to lose user data, save the data using the
Memory Control Program MCP-2
before updating the firmware and write the data back after updating the firmware.
Usage Notes
Users may not assign, rent, lease, redistribute, or resell the software.
Users may not revise, change, translate, merge, de-compile, or reverse engineer the software.
The quality and performance of the software is not warranted for the applicability of any users. KENWOOD Corporation shall not assume liability for any defects, nor warrant anything other than is expressly provided in the agreement. The selection and introduction of the products as well as the results there from shall be upon the liability of the users.
KENWOOD Corporation shall own all copyrights and other intellectual properties for the software and all manuals and documents attached to the software. The user shall be allowed to use, not to resell, the software by obtaining a license from KENWOOD Corporation. While the media in which the software is stored is possessed by the user, the ownership for the software itself shall be reserved for KENWOOD Corporation.
Installation :
Extract the downloaded file "TM-D710_RC-D710_Tnc_V102E.zip" into a designated folder.
In the designated folder, a folder labeled "TM-D710_RC-D710_Tnc_V102E" will be created.
In the folder labeled "TM-D710_RC-D710_Tnc_V102E", the firmware updating program "TM-D710_RC-D710_Tnc_V102_e.exe" and "TM-D710_RC-D710_Tnc_e.chm" are automatically created.
Click to read the firmware updating procedure.
Uninstalling :
Delete the folder labeled "TM-D710_RC-D710_Tnc_V102E" manually using the Explorer or an alternative method.
If you agree with the details listed above, click the following link to download the firmware updating program.
(The latest version includes all previous updates.)
Latest update: TM-D710/RC-D710 TNC Firmware Update Version 1.02 (May / 2011)
TM-D710_RC-D710_Tnc_V102E.zip : 295KB download
Windows is a registered trademark or trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries.
Windows Vista is a registered trademark or trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries.
.NET Framework is a registered trademark or trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries.
APRS is a registered trademark of WB4APR (Bob Bruninga).
Global Site


text:
As the affiliate channel continues to become more sophisticated, it is
becoming increasingly difficult to categorise affiliates based on their
promotional type.
With boundaries becoming blurred, affiliates should be assessed on their individual merits rather than grouped by their traditional category.
Historically, affiliates have been classified by their promotional type on the assumption that their methods of driving traffic will be the same. For example, all voucher code sites will all be classified as such, as will cashback sites and price comparison sites.
By using categorisation, advertisers have been able to stipulate how much commission will be paid to each affiliate type. If they want to pay lower rates to voucher code affiliates to offset the cost of offering the discount, this can be applied to all voucher code sites promoting the campaign.
There is a significant amount of crossover between affiliates' promotional methods and how they are generating traffic to their sites will vary. This will have ramifications on their target audience and the type of customers they are able to deliver to an advertiser.
Voucher code sites are a good starting point to understand why affiliate categorisation is problematic. It is widely assumed that voucher code sites will get the majority of their traffic through consumers searching for a brand plus discount related terms.
While it is highly likely that a significant amount of traffic will be generated this way, it neglects a number of other promotional methods utilised.
The top voucher code sites have extensive email databases with engaged members. They are also able to rely on social media to distribute timely deals to their loyal followers. Typically users of these sites can be seen as being loyal to the voucher code site rather than the brands themselves.
It also ignores the fundamental fact that these are now mature shopping destinations in their own right with traffic far outstripping the vast majority of advertisers they promote and loyal customers.
Similarly, the top cashback sites are continually evolving to offer members the best offers available. With voucher codes also being offered by the likes of Quidco, can they be classified as simply just a cashback site?
All this points to a fundamental issue with affiliate categorisation, it is far too simplified. It is no longer suitable to say that an affiliate is using a single method of promotion to drive traffic to advertisers. Or indeed that, because they have a similar method of promotion, they attract the same customers.
Aside from the case of voucher code sites and cashback sites, a considerable amount of publishers are being classified as content affiliates.
What is to say that affiliate sites that offer content are not using additional promotional methods such as PPC or listing voucher codes on their sites? In fact, voucher code and cashback sites could argue their case for being content sites as they are now offering more and more content that is relevant to their user base.
How should affiliates be classified?
Rather than classifying affiliates by their promotional type and offering commissions based on this, advertisers would be better advised to understand the value of an individual affiliate's traffic and reward them accordingly.
The value can be assessed on metrics that are important to individual advertisers but this could include elements such as; the split of new vs. existing customers, average order values or the lifetime value of customers driven by each affiliate partner.
Further information on assessing value through the affiliate channel can be found in a case study here.
In summary, affiliate categorisation is outdated. There is so much cross-over in promotional types with affiliates relying on more than one particular method to gain traffic. They are now using a number of various methods is order to attract visitors and to keep them returning to their sites.
Advertisers need to demonstrate the ability to be flexible and understand affiliates on their own individual merits and reward them accordingly, only then will the commissions offered start to reflect the value gained.


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Cylance Inc.
IRVINE, CALIFORNIA, September 7, 2016 - Cylance® Inc, the company that is revolutionizing cybersecurity through the use of artificial intelligence to proactively prevent advanced persistent threats and malware, was named in a report today released by Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) with the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform as having played a critical role in discovering, halting and remediating the data breach at the United States Office of Personnel Management in 2015. The report says that the company's CylancePROTECT product was first used following discovery of the compromise to positively identify and stop the APT attack attributed to "Shell Crew" and/or "Deputy Dog" hacker teams, commonly associated with Chinese origin, and says, "The significance of the cutting edge preventative technology offered by Cylance in responding to the OPM data breach cannot be understated."
"We consider it an honor to have been able to help stop and clean up this vicious attack," said Stuart McClure, founder, president and CEO at Cylance. "The OPM breach, and countless others like it, is exactly why we were compelled to apply artificial intelligence to fighting hackers, whether state actors, rogue hackers, organized criminal groups, or cyber terrorists. Our mission is to protect everyone under the sun and we are just getting started."
"We knew at Assurance Data that CylancePROTECT was game-changing technology when it was first released," said Matthew Morrison, president and CEO at Assurance Data, a long-time channel partner of Cylance and a leading information security consultant for the federal government. "Seeing for ourselves how advanced malware was slipping past traditional endpoint security products, we recommended CylancePROTECT to the Office of Personnel Management and recommended its use on all computers and servers."
US-CERT issued a report on April 24, 2015, stating that OPM discovered suspicious activity on its networks on April 16, 2015. On April 17, 2015, Jeff Wagner emailed OPM's then Chief Information Officer Donna Seymour to report that Cylance officials were "coming in to help with the forensics" because "it was their tool that found the malware." Today's report notes that "CylancePROTECT was the first tool that OPM used after the agency learned its network was compromised, and the tool immediately found malware and set about cleaning OPM's enterprise."
The report quotes OPM's IT Security Officer Jeff Wagner as saying that Cylance was able to find things that other tools could not "because of the unique way that Cylance functions and operates. It doesn't utilize a standard signature of heuristics or indicators, like normal signatures in the past have been done, it utilizes a unique proprietary method." For more information about how CylancePROTECT helped OPM and how it can help prevent future data breaches, visit www.cylance.com/breachprevention.
About CylancePROTECT
CylancePROTECT is true next-generation antivirus for endpoint security in the age of advanced persistent threats and rapidly mutating malware that signature-based antivirus tools can't identify. At the core of Cylance's unprecedented malware identification capability is a revolutionary machine-learning research platform that harnesses the power of algorithmic science and artificial intelligence. It analyzes and classifies hundreds of thousands of characteristics per file, breaking them down to study their "DNA" in order to discern whether an object is "good" or "bad" in real time.
About Cylance® Inc.
Cylance is the only company to offer a preventive cybersecurity solution that stops advanced threats and malware at the most vulnerable point: the endpoint. Applying a revolutionary artificial intelligence approach, the Cylance endpoint security solution, CylancePROTECT®, analyzes the DNA of code prior to its execution on the endpoint to find and prevent threats others can't, while using a fraction of the system resources associated with endpoint antivirus and detect and respond solutions that are deployed in enterprises today. For more information visit: www.cylance.com


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In a break from our normal reports on the markets, we are sharing news about the AgYield Simulator and the "AgYield Simulator Challenge".
AgYield's philosophy and approach to working with our grower clients, is full transparency and education. We ensure that our growers fully understand the strategies we develop for them and their operation - the best mix of crop insurance, cash sales, and hedging (if applicable). Along with that understanding is education.
Building upon the notion of education, we have developed a program called the AgYield Simulator. The Simulator, based on the software we use with growers every day, is the most dynamic and realistic educational resource for teaching risk management.
Using the AgYield software, this state-of-the-art platform simulates a full 36-week growing season in a fraction of the time. Participants are faced with real-life scenarios including constantly changing weather, USDA reports and fluctuating market prices. All participants start at a "level playing field", with equal number of acres in corn and soybeans, each with the same costs and yields for each crop. From there, they must build and manage their own risk management strategy including crop insurance, futures/options contracts and cash grain contracts and learn how to adapt to the ever-changing price and yield conditions. The objective is to teach the value of proactive risk management in a risk-free environment that encourages hands-on, active participation.
The Simulator is being used in classrooms, Extension meetings and beyond. When used in the classroom, the program facilitates discussion, encourages relevant questions and keeps students engaged even outside the classroom.
Currently, some of the Ag universities and schools using the Simulator include:
Iowa State University
University of Illinois
Purdue University
University of Arkansas
Kansas State University
University of Nebraska
Michigan State University
Ohio State University
University of Wisconsin - Platteville
Joliet Jr. College
Illinois State University
Ft. Hays State University
Northeast Iowa Community College
Riverland Community College
….And more schools to begin using the Simulator in the Spring semester
Taking the Simulator beyond the classroom, we have created the "AgYield Simulator Challenge". This is an inter-collegiate competition, where student-led teams manage their school's "Challenge" team and compete with other schools for risk management "supremacy"!
The winning school will have bragging rights, bring positive exposure to their Ag program and win the cherished AgYield Simulator Challenge Trophy. The trophy will be passed from winner-to-winner each semester, with the winning school's name engraved. (Think the Stanley Cup trophy for NHL hockey.)
We are providing the AgYield Simulator to Ag schools at no charge. We do not want cost to prevent professors and educators from using an educational resource that can better prepare students for their careers - whether that's returning to the family farm, or pursuing any career path in agriculture.
Whether you're currently an educator, student, or alumni, we encourage you to follow our Twitter account (@AYSimChallenge) for regular updates on the "Challenge" and in-class Simulators.
We hope you support the students participating in the various in-class Simulators, as well as the "AgYield Simulator Challenge".
If you'd like to explore having the Simulator as part of your classroom, Extension meeting, winter grower meeting, marketing club meeting, etc., we invite you to contact us at [email protected] or call us on 855-266-6241.
Thank you and all the best,
The AgYield Team


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Steam Bikes Mod for Minecraft 1.7.2/1.7.10
Steam Bikes Mod for Minecraft 1.7.2/1.7.10
Steam Bikes for Minecraft 1.7.2/1.7.10 is a mod that adds to your game world, cool bikes, Steampunk. Since very little until that comes out modifications to this version of the game, we highly recommend to download this mod.
It's really cool addition, you will feel with him "on a horse". You should download it for free, the developers have tried their best and did a good job as a whole.
How to install:Download and install Minecraft Forge.
Download the mod.
Go to %appdata%.
Go to the .minecraft/mods folder.
Drag and drop the downloaded .jar (.zip) file into it.
If one does not exist you can create one.
Play and enjoy!
Download Mod:Minecraft 1.7.2
Steam-Bikes-1.7.2.zip [122 Kb]
Minecraft 1.7.10
Steam Bikes 1.7.10.zip [123 Kb]


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This article has been archived. It is still available for reference purposes, but may contain out of date information.
Office of Student Conflict Resolution (OSCR) would like to formally invite you to our first Community Dialogue for the Statement Amendment process on April 9th at 5:30 p.m. at the Trotter Multicultural Center. This dialogue, focused specifically on our student community members, will be an opportunity for folks to learn more about the process and how to propose amendments, and to start sharing thoughts and ideas about what amendments might be appropriate for this cycle.


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No place for me.
no one am i,
neither ground was given, nor mine was the sky!!
Many tears were gifted,
to let smiles dry,
many dreams were ruined , and desires tend to die!!
All aspects were viewed, prior to apply,
each path was designed,
to ensure me sigh!!


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9:00am PT by Kate Stanhope
Reunited 'Taxi' Cast Reveals Unusual Rehearsal Method on 'Must See TV' Tribute (Exclusive Video)
The castmembers of Friends — well, almost all of them — aren't the only ones getting back together to pay tribute to longtime TV director James Burrows.
NBC's upcoming primetime special, Must See TV: An All-Star Tribute to James Burrows, also will reunite the casts of classic sitcoms such as Cheers, Will & Grace and Taxi, and The Hollywood Reporter has an exclusive video of the latter reunion.
In the video from the special, which celebrates Burrows' 1,000 episodes behind the camera, the surviving members of Taxi look back on when Christopher Lloyd joined the sitcom full-time midway through season two.
As Tony Danza explains, it was a bit of a bumpy transition in the beginning. In addition to Lloyd himself, Danza is joined by Carol Kane, Marilu Henner. Judd Hirsch and Danny DeVito, who also shared a surprising anecdote about the cast's unusual, to say the least, rehearsal process.
Watch the exclusive clip below.
Must See TV: An All-Star Tribute to James Burrows airs Sunday at 9 p.m. on NBC.
Kate email@example.com @katestanhope


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Hit here,
I've set up MiniMAD with a bunch of DMX recordings that I can cycle through (this is for a LED installation), and it works ok. Is there a way to export an entire madmapper file with support for scenes and transitions? I could record a very large sequence, but I'd like to be able to transition between senes on the fly and maintain transitions.
Thanks for the help!


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The Suits actress opens up about her relationship for the first time
Meghan Markle has spoken out about Prince Harry for the first time, and OMG, it's too cute.
The American actress, 36, appears on the cover of Vanity Fair's October issue, in which she reveals just how serious her and Hazza's relationship is.
And? Well, it sounds pretty damn serious.
See: Love Island's Camilla (And Prince Harry's 'Ex' Talks Meghan Markle
She says: 'We're a couple. We're in love. I'm sure there will be a time when we will have to come forward and present ourselves and have stories to tell, but I hope what people will understand is that this is our time.
'This is for us. It's part of what makes it so special, that it's just ours. But we're happy. Personally, I love a great love story.'
Meghan and Harry, 32, are fiercely private, and have only been spotted together a handful of times.
But nevertheless, the Suits star has been plunged into the limelight since they went public last year.
Now she's opened up about the attention, saying: 'It has its challenges, and it comes in waves—some days it can feel more challenging than others.
'And right out of the gate it was surprising the way things changed. But I still have this support system all around me, and, of course, my boyfriend's support.'
See: Priyanka Chopra On Meghan Markle And Prince Harry Getting Married
Happily, she's not getting the speculation affect her relationship.
Latest Stories
Meghan continues: 'I can tell you that at the end of the day I think it's really simple. We're two people who are really happy and in love.
'The people who are close to me anchor me in knowing who I am. The rest is noise. Nothing about me changed. I'm still the same person that I am, and I've never defined myself by my relationship.'
This is all so lovely. We really, really hope there's wedding bells to come.


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Currently viewing the tag: "Raider Klan"
Video : SpaceGhostPurrp – Osiris of the East
By rocky On June 26, 2012 · Leave a Comment · In Culture
Take a look at the visual for SGP's 'Osiris of the East' which is off his debut studio album Mysterious Phonk : The Chronicles of SpaceGhostPurrp . You can buy the album digitally on iTunes.
Whatever you do just make sure you don't sleep on SpaceGhostPurrp and Raider Klan, they've steadily been putting out heat and building momentum with each live show and mixtape.
Tagged with: Hip-Hop • Music • Osiris of the East • Raider Klan • Rap • SGP • SpaceGhostPurrp • Video
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HUNTSVILLE, Ala. - As Huntsville City Schools continues the search for its next superintendent, the board interviewed Verna Ruffin.
Ruffin currently works as superintendent of Jackson-Madison County Schools in Tennessee. She said she wants to come to Huntsville because she's an agent of change, and has a history as such.
During her interview, she mentioned multiple times being impressed but Huntsville's school buildings and programs.
"I just see that this is an amazing place," she noted, "with potential beyond imagination. I can assure you that not all districts have that."
She did see areas of improvement. One of those lies in the district's morale.
"I think there's some mending that needs to occur," she said, emphasizing the need for more trust. "I think there's some healing that needs to occur. I think there needs to be unity that needs to occur in the community. Anytime you have the kind of change that you've just gone through, you can't just skim over that." She added that she believes the board and superintendent need a unified vision that she can then carry into the community.
Ruffin said she would be excited to make progress on desegregation if chosen for the job, because that is another area where Huntsville needs continued change.
"I see a lot of progress toward that, but still a lot of needs in the academics and the accessibility and the success of students," she told the board. "I think that's continued work that Huntsville will still have to do. I see, if I were chosen as superintendent, playing a vital role in that."
Ruffin said she already has experience working toward equality in schools, both before and after they've reached unitary status.
"I think we should expect great things out of all children, and if children are struggling we need to add additional supports to help them succeed," she said. "I really do believe that all children can learn, and the doors need to be opened for access. And the you have to assure that they're successful when they do that."
Ruffin also expressed a desire to go through Huntsville's budget, should she get the job.


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Mar 14, 2019
A Mini-Solar Farm Is Floating in a Dam of Liquid Copper Waste
Bloomberg News,
(Bloomberg) -- Chile has found another use for dams that hold the liquid waste from massive copper-mining operations: power generation.
Calling it the first project of its kind in the world, Anglo American Plc has installed 256 photovoltaic panels at the tailings dam for its Los Bronces complex in Chile. The panels are floating atop the sometimes-toxic ground minerals and effluents blasted out of rocks dug up at the mine. The pilot project is expected to generate 150,000 kilowatt-hours a year and help power the operations there, the company said in a statement on Thursday.
While it's not much electricity in the grand scheme of things, Chile Mining Minister Baldo Prokurica hailed the solar project as yet another example of how the country -- the world's largest cooper producer -- is leading the way in improving how miners treat waste. Chile was the first to ban so-called upstream dams, which are cheaper to maintain but have led to deadly accidents, such as the collapse of one at a Vale SA mine in Brazil that killed at least 180 people in January.
"We are advancing toward a more sustainable mining activity by actively developing new solutions and stimulating other ways of thinking and working," said Patricio Chacana, vice president of operations at Los Bronces.
The panels at Los Bronces were specially designed to resist the extreme conditions of the Andes mountains where the mine sits. At 3,400 meters (more than 11,000 feet) above sea level, the area is constantly hit with snow and heavy rains. The panels can withstand winds of 210 kilometers (130 miles) an hour, according to the company.
Preserving Water
Another upside: Anglo said the panels will shield the liquid in its dam from direct sunlight, reducing evaporation by 80 percent and improving water recovery rates, the company said. Recycled water makes up about 45 percent of an operation's total water demand.
Aside from the solar project, Chile's government is also looking to start a pilot to monitor the operations of tailings deposits live, Prokurica said. Local communities would receive phone alerts should an emergency occur at one of the dams, he said. The country already regulates the minimum distance between urban centers and mining waste deposits.
To contact the reporter on this story: Laura Millan Lombrana in Santiago at firstname.lastname@example.com
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Luzi Ann Javier at firstname.lastname@example.com, Lynn Doan, Joe Richter
©2019 Bloomberg L.P.


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Oman's Quiet Diplomacy
Posted by jonathanfryer on Sunday, 9th November, 2014
Oman is probably the most low-key of the Gulf states, certainly when compared with the UAE's Dubai or Qatar. But it is the one with the greatest sense if history; for centuries, Omani merchants were key players across the Indian Ocean and down the East coast of Africa and its navy was a force to be reckoned with. For the first two decades of my life, it was largely a closed country, as the old Sultan was mistrustful of modernity and the West — understandably if one reads how the Omanis were mistreated by the Portuguese and then outmanoeuvred by the British. All that changed in 1970 when Sultan Qaboos took power, and he started to use the country's oil-wealth to build up its infrastructure, as well as to raise the living standards of his people. Moreover, while some of the other Gulf States have trumpeted with great fanfares their activities in international diplomacy, Oman has done so quietly. It was one of the first Arab states to accept that someone who had been to Israel should not therefore be a prohibited visitor. And today there are efforts underway to further the Western dialogue with giant neighbour Iran, with the US and the EU represented at the highest diplomatic level at talks in Oman's capital, Muscat (which I left this morning to fly to Salalah). Sultan Qaboos himself is unfortunately detained by medical treatment in Germany, so unable to greet the participants, as I am sure he would have wished. He will also miss National Day celebrations here on 18 November. But when he went on the radio on Wednesday to say he is doing OK, cars full of flag-waving young men took to the streets of Muscat in celebration. Oman may not pass the Westminster-model democracy test, but on so many levels it is an undoubted success, including in its quiet diplomacy. And many Omanis say they like things the way they are — so long as Sultan Qaboos is in charge.


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I've never had a Tweet go viral like this before. My small contribution to the tweets of those angry about the GOP effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act has been retweeted a little over 1,300 times as of now. That's not a lot for famous people, but it's more than I've ever gotten. It freaks me out a little. It also makes me wonder. Why this one out of the 70,000 or so I've done over the years?
I don't know, but I can guess.
I like to kid around on Twitter. Hey, who doesn't? But while I think I can get a laugh every once in a while, I'm not Patton Oswalt. Some of my jokes have travelled far on Twitter, thanks to a well-known person thinking they're funny. (Don't think I don't appreciate that, @anamariecox and @mogaffney.) But they're mordant little musings at best, not timeless bon mots.
I'm also a bit of a politics nut. I think about politics a lot. I pay attention to political news. I try to place current political questions in historical context, if only to explain them to myself, and I fret about the impact of political decisions on me and mine. But most people aren't concerned about politics that way. It's a dull, frustrating subject, filled with acronyms, jargon, and cant. I get upset when Paul Ryan and his merry band of saboteurs want to force dynamic scoring on the Congressional Budget Office. (If you're curious about why that's bad, read here.) But I can understand how the jargon itself can dampen curiosity about what it means or why it matters. Politicians understand it too, which is why they try to fill any controversial proposal with the right combination of jargon and focus-group-tested buzzwords needed to slide it past people with busy lives and little time.
But repealing the Affordable Care Act has effects that are large, deeply personal, and hard to spin. Most adults, especially most adults who've been sick themselves or have had to care for sick loved ones, know the difference between good insurance and bad. They know what it means when coverage is restricted, when medications are no longer included, or when pre-existing conditions start counting again. Also, many have made life decisions based on the ACA. They've left their jobs to start businesses or to freelance. Losing insurance means having to shut that down to job hunt, or to keep going and hope that that cough doesn't turn out to be indicative of something serious. This isn't like some abstruse beltway argument that, though important, is easy to get lost in. This is going to hit people hard in ways that are profound and obvious. Some who lose their insurance will go broke, and yes, some will die.
I take it personally, mainly because Paul Ryan's about to stick my insurance, which has seen me through depression and a nasty case of shingles, in the shredder. And though my tweet is stated dryly–Twitter is where we all go to be flip–there's anger behind it, and somehow it was just the right combination of glibness and righteous outrage to strike a nerve.
I'm glad to know the nerve is there to be struck. Maybe it means there's enough feeling out there to stop this nonsense before it goes any further, or to make sure that, if Republicans go through with their dismal plan, they'll pay with their jobs.
1,581 retweets now.
Good thing I turned my iPhone's notification sounds off.


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Herzegovina plays host to Keto Health Revolution
By Marika Sboros
How easy is it to stay not just low-carb but keto (very low-carb) over the holidays, specially winter? Easy enough – when you know how. Just ask Greek nutritional therapist and keto evangelist Apollonas Kapsalis.
He and Croatian wife Roberta are the power-couple behind the popular Greek Goes Keto website.They have arranged a unique keto event in Mostar, Herzegovina on December 8, starting at 17h00 (CET). Their aim: to begin the Keto Health Revolution in Herzegovina's winter high-carb heartland.
If you can't be there in person, they are livestreaming via Greek Goes Keto Facebook page. I will join them via Skype for a brief chat.


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The science behind air quality – 40 years of cooperation in Europe and beyond
Long before negotiations on the UNECE Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution started in the late seventies, countries in Europe established scientific cooperation across borders to tackle the problem of air pollution, acid rain, and die-back of forests.
In particular, it was the need to compare data and share experiences that led to the development of a programme for the monitoring and evaluation of long-range transmission of air pollutants under the auspices of UNECE. When the first meeting of the steering body to this programme was opened in August 1977, the Cooperative Programme for Monitoring and Evaluation of the Long-range Transmission of Air Pollutants in Europe (EMEP) was born.
Maneuvering through political tensions between East and West during the Cold War period, the programme has since developed into the backbone of the science-policy interface for the Convention. The exchange of experience and know-how through EMEP's network of scientists over the years enabled continued progress towards ever more refined, accurate and comparable data. Among the most important achievements of EMEP is bringing together scientists and policymakers in the UNECE region for common and productive dialogue to support progress in improving air quality.
Today, as more and more industrializing countries are facing problems linked to severe air pollution, debates around how to tackle air pollution are resurfacing in international forums. With its 40 years of experience, EMEP's contributions to these debates are more relevant than ever.
At the age of 40, EMEP is working on persisting and new challenges, such as exposure to particle pollution, which is now responsible for almost half a million premature deaths in Europe per year. EMEP also increasingly works with other regions, such as the Arctic and parts of Asia, to tackle some of the global challenges posed by air pollution.
Celebrating the 40th anniversary of EMEP during the Third Joint session of the Working Group on Effects and the Steering Body to EMEP (Geneva, 11 to 15 September 2017) the EMEP Steering Body emphasizes the importance of international cooperation on both the science and policy levels, and highlights the need for strengthened cooperation beyond the UNECE region to reduce air pollution worldwide.


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About Us
Andover Liquors is a full service liquor store located in the Shawsheen Plaza, on route 28 in Andover, MA. Established in 1976 by the Hoffman family…it's been a fixture in the town since the doors opened. Now under the (not so) new ownership of local resident, Bob Gilbert…Andover Liquors hopes to take your liquor purchasing to the next level.
— Andover Liquors — Shawsheen Plaza — 209 N. Main St Andover MA 01810 — (978) 470-0500 — www.andoverliquors.com


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THE Human Rights Foundation, in line with its mission to rehabilitate, educate and provide opportunities for inmates of Nigerian prisons to be productive citizens, recently launched a reality television programme tagged Take it Back.
Throwing light on the TV show and its expected impact on the lives of inmates, Executive Director of the Foundation, Victor Fakunle, explains that Take it Back is basically a means of gaining lost grounds because, according to him, a lot of the times, after going through the rigours of getting the inmates released, they have nowhere to go.
"Take it Back is basically a reformation project, a rehabilitation project that focuses on behavioural change and at the same time brings entertainment to the public. Basically, we will be giving the inmates a platform where they will be showcasing their creativity," he says.
Set to begin airing in the third quarter of the year, Fakunle says that auditions start in this month of May. "The competition will be within Lagos State. Lagos State is the pilot project and we have five major prisons here and so we will have contestants who will be competing with each other within all these prisons. We believe that a lot of people for the first time will see what goes on inside the prisons," Fakunle adds.
Lending her voice to the project, the Deputy Comptroller of Prisons Leticia Onwuli, who represented the Lagos State Comptroller of Prisons, said that Take it Back falls in line with their activities. "We are doing our bit so far, but he came with this explanation that he wants to take our inmates to the television. We are looking forward to it. We have been trying in our own little way to reform them. We have been doing this by training them in various vocations," she said.


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Flowery notebook
I made this notebook for my "invisible friend" this year, using one of the book blocks we'd already readied in the summer. We are improving our hardcover technique!
Almost all the materials used for this one were bought: the bookcloth for the spine, the flowery cover fabric, the red headband, the endpapers, the greyboard and of course the tools, glue and thread. The pages were found in a print-shop's dumpster though, and the bookmark was a present's wrapping tape.
Between using found or bought materials, the main difference is that most materials we buy are beatiful and made on purpose for bookbinding, which makes the job a lot easier and the results look a lot fancier. For example, the grey bookcloth I used for the spine is reinforced, so it won't wrinkle and it is a lot easier to work with it than with the regular flower fabric I used for the cover. I think if we bought a lot of nice supplies it would be very easy to make a lot of beautiful notebooks. But I find the input of chance and found materials is what makes each of our books unique!
I am pretty happy with the result, even though I should have put some greyboard inside the spine and in the end it felt a little flimsy. I hope it lasts a long time, though!
Fotos de TAU*MH / Photos by TAU*MH


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The Spanish teacher is a tacaholic. She also happens to be my child. So the following (although horrible) is a tale that needs to be told.
During pregnancy two (or three?) I was asked to grab something from her purse for one of her numerous offspring. "Where? What does it look like?" Then I paused. "Why is there half a nasty taco in your purse?"
Ms. W paused "Um. That was from the other night. I finished most of it. I guess I stuck it in my purse for later."
"EWW. You have a problem"
Ms. W informed me that I WAS NEVER to talk about this again. She so did not have a problem.
Except that a few months later…"Why does your purse stink?"
Ms. W stopped cleaning a kid "Uh. Well, I guess I left a taco from taco bell in my bag."
I informed her that this was now a pattern of behavior and could not be overlooked. She said that I NEVER NEEDED to talk of this again.
But…a few months later I found part of a taco in the concession stand after she was working in there. (she was raising money to take students to Spain) Again the edict to NEVER TALK OF THIS AGAIN.
A few months ago, when moving her into her new home I found a stash of packets containing taco sauce in her closet. Someone is a tacaholic.
Do they have a TA for this problem?