Question: Who was the screenwriter for A Night in Sickbay?
Answer: Rick Berman<|endoftext|> @wikileaks_world.

Allowing rare exceptions, almost everyone in Turkey considers oneself a muslim. According to U.S. diplomacy (2005), around 98% of the Turkish population are muslims.  This , however, is shallow information, as it is necessary to totally review the concept of ‘being a muslim’ to understand specific ‘turkish islamism”’. While Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir are somehow liberal cities, outside these big centers most people  practice Islam in the traditional way. The general conclusion is that although the state tries to gather muslims in Turkey into a single body, there are several differentiated sects and tribes of them in the country.

Religious structure was established in the 1924 Constitution, after the liberal revolution guided by the national hero Ataturk installed an ideological secular state, formally known in Turkey as Kemalism.  The Kemalist doctrine proposes equality regarding the relationship between the state and religious sects. Apart from the possible benefits, it still implies the end of the traditional Muslim society (, where each religious sect  enjoyed a degree of autonomy, with their own leadership, collecting their own taxes and living according to their own system. In an attempt to implement this new social order, the Directorate for Religious Affairs (Diyanet) was created  “to  execute  the works concerning the beliefs, worship, and ethics of  Islam,  enlighten the public about their religion, and administer the  sacred  worshipping places”.

With these actions the Turkish government is essentially trying to reconstruct and portray Turkey as a moderate Islamic society:

Turkey has the reputation of being the home of “moderate Islam” because it combines a “secular” political system with a tolerant strand of Sunni Islam (…) The majority of Turks subscribe to the Hanafi school of Sunni Islam. The Hanafi school is one of the more open-minded and tolerant strands of Sunni Islam.” (05ANKARA6106)

Standardization, however, is never without resistance. In this case, the problem is that Diyanet is always seen as adjacent to the Sunni majority, the religious majority in the country and currently in power. It is obvious that the Sunni Shafi’i and the Alevi sects do not have the same support by the state as the dominant Sunni Hanafi. This works in the same way as the Armenian Greagorians, Roman Catholics, Syriac Orthodox, Chaldean Catholics, Greek Orthodox,  Bulgarian Orthodoxes, Georgian Orthodoxes and Protestants , all of which are also neglected by the government. Cables 05ANKARA1511, 05ANKARA1935 and 05ADANA191 express the Christian persecution in Turkey, especially in the South, performed by the  Directorate for Religious Affairs (Diyanet). To solve this bad reputation Diyanet has been designing “outreach programs”, aimed specifically towards certain religious groups so as to integrate or model them after what they believe will serve the nation.

State funds are used to construct mosques, but the state spends no money on Alevi houses of worship, Jewish synagogues, or Christian churches. All Muslim school age students are required to take classes in the Hanafi-Sunni tradition of Islam, regardless of their personal sectarian beliefs. Non-Muslim students are not required to take these courses, but alternative courses are not offered by the state. Private religious classes are illegal and proselytizing by non-Muslims, while not illegal, is viewed with great suspicion and actively discouraged”. (05ANKARA6106).

For a  more specific example, Cable 07ANKARA747,  describes the attempt made by Diyanet to reach out to the important Alevi group: “Diyanet Foreign Relations Vice Chair Mehmet Gormez recently told us that the Diyanet is increasing its outreach efforts to Alevis to dispel the notion that the Diyanet is an exclusively Sunni organization”.

“The new programs include more in-depth training on Alevism for Sunni religious

officials, government sponsored trips to Europe for Alevi religious leaders to support Alevi education and plans to publish a definitive Alevi history.This attempt, however, has been carried out for the wrong reasons, according to Alevi organizations. They have accused Diyanet of being “authoritative” and “insincere” in its actions. For example, Pir Sultan Abdal Alevi Association President Kazim Genc said that  “Diyanet remains an exclusive, discriminatory Sunni organization.  The Diyanet employs only Sunnis, and only meets with Alevi groups that share its views”

Many leaders have also pointed out that these “outreach plans” are merely carried out to please the European Union in their demand for equality towards Alevis, and a general feeling of failure and resentment is present:

“Many of Turkey’s Alevis have long found it offensive that the GOT does not recognize them as a distinct relgious group or allow them to freely practice their religion (…)Alevis want the government to treat Alevism equally in public school religion courses and in the allocation of public funds for the construction and administration of cem houses.”

The headscarf polemic

In April 2007, Military performed an intervention on politics to prevent the election as president of a Abdullah Gul, a person whose wife wore the headscarf. The banning of the headscarf  has always been a strong symbol of the secular state established by Ataturk’s revolution. At the end, Abdulla won the presidential elections and in 2008 AKP, leaded by him, in a joint with MHP- Nationalist Movement Party -, passed a law allowing wearing headscarves in universities. Turkey’s chief prosecutor, Abdurrahman Yalçınkaya, asked the Constitutional Court to close the AKP – Justice and Development Party – with accusations of ‘anti-laicistic activities’. The case was concluded on 30 July 2008 with the judgment that the AKP had been at the centre of activitiesviolating secularism. After deliberating for three months, Constitutional Court decided not to close the party, AKP was deprived of half of the grant provided by the Treasury.

Regarding this matter, a cable from 2008 classified by Ambassor Ross Wilson points out that Endorgan “allowed himself to be  goaded by the National Action Party (MHP) into putting the  headscarf ban at the head of the reform queue.  For this  short-term populist win, he sacrificed a larger  constitutional reform package that would have significantly  strengthened Turkey’s democracy. (…)  These and other missteps exacerbated fears among  many that Erdogan was going too far, too fast; that there  were no effective constraints on the AKP (especially after  the military’s botched intervention last spring); and that  fundamentalists might soon dominate the bureaucracy,  judiciary, universities, etc., to change Turkey in dangerous  and permanent ways”. (08ANKARA691).

Control for political objectives

The crusade for control over religion for political purposes has turned the supposed free, secular turkish state into on that “actively monitors and represses religious expression ( …). The Turkish state hires and trains all religious officials (imams and muftis); appoints them to their posts; and pays their salaries. The state writes the sermons that most of the imams deliver at Friday prayers; picks which imam in each mosque gets to deliver the Friday sermon; and uses undercover intelligence officials to monitor their activities.”. (05ANKARA6106).

These actions are opposed to the ideals of the 1924 revolution of a secular and fair state. The seem to follow the political will to adapt Turkey to western standards as a part of the project of joining the E.U. This has forced the leading party, AKP to adopt insincere behaviors regarding its objectives and legality. Although known as religious oriented party and supporting religion in the ways we exposed above, AKP is officially and publicly a secular party, since Turkish constitution and party law bans parties formed around sectarianism, ethnicity or regionalism. On this subject 05ANKARA6106 states that: “nonetheless, AKP is an Islam-oriented political party. The leaders and grassroots members of AKP largely come from the Refah and Fazilet parties, banned for Islamic extremism in 1998 and 2001 respectively” (…)A variety of Embassy contacts assert that AKP,s senior leadership does not really believe in religious tolerance, but merely pretends to support tolerance in an effort to court Western favor and promote Turkey,s EU membership bid”.

In cable 04ANKARA7211, the crude political ambitions of Turkish politicians is revealed as ambassador Eric Edelman reported that “We have also run into the rarely openly-spoken, but widespread belief among adherents of the Turk-Islam synthesis that Turkey’s role is to spread Islam in Europe, “to take back Andalusia and avenge the defeat at the siege of Vienna in 1683” as one participant in a recent meeting at AKP’s main think tank put it”.

The result is that, “while Turkish law explicitly denies religiously-derived ideas and sentiments any place in the public square, religious institutions are not only under strict state control, but are in fact an integral part of the Turkish State apparatus”. (03ANKARA4767).

Thus, the fake secular political system has problems that require an urgent solution to turn Turkey into a country with reasonable levels of religious freedom. The selective subsidies given to religious infrastructure, the manipulation of religious education and the privileges given to Sunni beliefs and traditions are crippling the bold ideals of the Turkish republic

 @wikileaks_world.

Allowing rare exceptions, almost everyone in Turkey considers oneself a muslim. According to U.S. diplomacy (2005), around 98% of the Turkish population are muslims.  This , however, is shallow information, as it is necessary to totally review the concept of ‘being a muslim’ to understand specific ‘turkish islamism”’. While Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir are somehow liberal cities, outside these big centers most people  practice Islam in the traditional way. The general conclusion is that although the state tries to gather muslims in Turkey into a single body, there are several differentiated sects and tribes of them in the country.

Religious structure was established in the 1924 Constitution, after the liberal revolution guided by the national hero Ataturk installed an ideological secular state, formally known in Turkey as Kemalism.  The Kemalist doctrine proposes equality regarding the relationship between the state and religious sects. Apart from the possible benefits, it still implies the end of the traditional Muslim society (, where each religious sect  enjoyed a degree of autonomy, with their own leadership, collecting their own taxes and living according to their own system. In an attempt to implement this new social order, the Directorate for Religious Affairs (Diyanet) was created  “to  execute  the works concerning the beliefs, worship, and ethics of  Islam,  enlighten the public about their religion, and administer the  sacred  worshipping places”.

With these actions the Turkish government is essentially trying to reconstruct and portray Turkey as a moderate Islamic society:

Turkey has the reputation of being the home of “moderate Islam” because it combines a “secular” political system with a tolerant strand of Sunni Islam (…) The majority of Turks subscribe to the Hanafi school of Sunni Islam. The Hanafi school is one of the more open-minded and tolerant strands of Sunni Islam.” (05ANKARA6106)

Standardization, however, is never without resistance. In this case, the problem is that Diyanet is always seen as adjacent to the Sunni majority, the religious majority in the country and currently in power. It is obvious that the Sunni Shafi’i and the Alevi sects do not have the same support by the state as the dominant Sunni Hanafi. This works in the same way as the Armenian Greagorians, Roman Catholics, Syriac Orthodox, Chaldean Catholics, Greek Orthodox,  Bulgarian Orthodoxes, Georgian Orthodoxes and Protestants , all of which are also neglected by the government. Cables 05ANKARA1511, 05ANKARA1935 and 05ADANA191 express the Christian persecution in Turkey, especially in the South, performed by the  Directorate for Religious Affairs (Diyanet). To solve this bad reputation Diyanet has been designing “outreach programs”, aimed specifically towards certain religious groups so as to integrate or model them after what they believe will serve the nation.

State funds are used to construct mosques, but the state spends no money on Alevi houses of worship, Jewish synagogues, or Christian churches. All Muslim school age students are required to take classes in the Hanafi-Sunni tradition of Islam, regardless of their personal sectarian beliefs. Non-Muslim students are not required to take these courses, but alternative courses are not offered by the state. Private religious classes are illegal and proselytizing by non-Muslims, while not illegal, is viewed with great suspicion and actively discouraged”. (05ANKARA6106).

For a  more specific example, Cable 07ANKARA747,  describes the attempt made by Diyanet to reach out to the important Alevi group: “Diyanet Foreign Relations Vice Chair Mehmet Gormez recently told us that the Diyanet is increasing its outreach efforts to Alevis to dispel the notion that the Diyanet is an exclusively Sunni organization”.

“The new programs include more in-depth training on Alevism for Sunni religious

officials, government sponsored trips to Europe for Alevi religious leaders to support Alevi education and plans to publish a definitive Alevi history.This attempt, however, has been carried out for the wrong reasons, according to Alevi organizations. They have accused Diyanet of being “authoritative” and “insincere” in its actions. For example, Pir Sultan Abdal Alevi Association President Kazim Genc said that  “Diyanet remains an exclusive, discriminatory Sunni organization.  The Diyanet employs only Sunnis, and only meets with Alevi groups that share its views”

Many leaders have also pointed out that these “outreach plans” are merely carried out to please the European Union in their demand for equality towards Alevis, and a general feeling of failure and resentment is present:

“Many of Turkey’s Alevis have long found it offensive that the GOT does not recognize them as a distinct relgious group or allow them to freely practice their religion (…)Alevis want the government to treat Alevism equally in public school religion courses and in the allocation of public funds for the construction and administration of cem houses.”

The headscarf polemic

In April 2007, Military performed an intervention on politics to prevent the election as president of a Abdullah Gul, a person whose wife wore the headscarf. The banning of the headscarf  has always been a strong symbol of the secular state established by Ataturk’s revolution. At the end, Abdulla won the presidential elections and in 2008 AKP, leaded by him, in a joint with MHP- Nationalist Movement Party -, passed a law allowing wearing headscarves in universities. Turkey’s chief prosecutor, Abdurrahman Yalçınkaya, asked the Constitutional Court to close the AKP – Justice and Development Party – with accusations of ‘anti-laicistic activities’. The case was concluded on 30 July 2008 with the judgment that the AKP had been at the centre of activitiesviolating secularism. After deliberating for three months, Constitutional Court decided not to close the party, AKP was deprived of half of the grant provided by the Treasury.

Regarding this matter, a cable from 2008 classified by Ambassor Ross Wilson points out that Endorgan “allowed himself to be  goaded by the National Action Party (MHP) into putting the  headscarf ban at the head of the reform queue.  For this  short-term populist win, he sacrificed a larger  constitutional reform package that would have significantly  strengthened Turkey’s democracy. (…)  These and other missteps exacerbated fears among  many that Erdogan was going too far, too fast; that there  were no effective constraints on the AKP (especially after  the military’s botched intervention last spring); and that  fundamentalists might soon dominate the bureaucracy,  judiciary, universities, etc., to change Turkey in dangerous  and permanent ways”. (08ANKARA691).

Control for political objectives

The crusade for control over religion for political purposes has turned the supposed free, secular turkish state into on that “actively monitors and represses religious expression ( …). The Turkish state hires and trains all religious officials (imams and muftis); appoints them to their posts; and pays their salaries. The state writes the sermons that most of the imams deliver at Friday prayers; picks which imam in each mosque gets to deliver the Friday sermon; and uses undercover intelligence officials to monitor their activities.”. (05ANKARA6106).

These actions are opposed to the ideals of the 1924 revolution of a secular and fair state. The seem to follow the political will to adapt Turkey to western standards as a part of the project of joining the E.U. This has forced the leading party, AKP to adopt insincere behaviors regarding its objectives and legality. Although known as religious oriented party and supporting religion in the ways we exposed above, AKP is officially and publicly a secular party, since Turkish constitution and party law bans parties formed around sectarianism, ethnicity or regionalism. On this subject 05ANKARA6106 states that: “nonetheless, AKP is an Islam-oriented political party. The leaders and grassroots members of AKP largely come from the Refah and Fazilet parties, banned for Islamic extremism in 1998 and 2001 respectively” (…)A variety of Embassy contacts assert that AKP,s senior leadership does not really believe in religious tolerance, but merely pretends to support tolerance in an effort to court Western favor and promote Turkey,s EU membership bid”.

In cable 04ANKARA7211, the crude political ambitions of Turkish politicians is revealed as ambassador Eric Edelman reported that “We have also run into the rarely openly-spoken, but widespread belief among adherents of the Turk-Islam synthesis that Turkey’s role is to spread Islam in Europe, “to take back Andalusia and avenge the defeat at the siege of Vienna in 1683” as one participant in a recent meeting at AKP’s main think tank put it”.

The result is that, “while Turkish law explicitly denies religiously-derived ideas and sentiments any place in the public square, religious institutions are not only under strict state control, but are in fact an integral part of the Turkish State apparatus”. (03ANKARA4767).

Thus, the fake secular political system has problems that require an urgent solution to turn Turkey into a country with reasonable levels of religious freedom. The selective subsidies given to religious infrastructure, the manipulation of religious education and the privileges given to Sunni beliefs and traditions are crippling the bold ideals of the Turkish republic dreamed in Ataturk´s revolution. As of now, “Islam as it is lived in Turkey is


 much soil is "forever" on the cover. Truth be told, all the clean and earth in the cover for an ordinary size room would, if heaped together, make a hill an inch or so high. Notwithstanding when you think your cover is spotless, it isn't. Actually, numerous sensitivity sufferers essentially can't have covered in their home consequently. Supplanting your cover with hardwood or tile will significantly decrease the measure of them.

Change your heater channel

Your heater channel has the activity of expelling dust skimming around noticeable all around. In addition, changing the channel enables your heater to last more.

Change bedding week by week

This one influences many individuals to recoil. One of the clean's essential parts is dead skin cells. People are continually shedding skin cells and ranges where we invest loads of energy have high groupings of these cells. Also, your bed would be one of these spots. Delicately roll the sheets up while transforming them to keep the cells from getting away into the air.

While cleaning, utilize a device that catches the tidy. Quill dusters and dry garments don't dispose of tidy they basically move it around. Rather utilize something that catches the clean like a Swiffer or utilize clean on a fabric.

The passage of tidy into the house and getting kept on an assortment of items is in charge of the earth and tidy that collects inside the house. These are so little in the measure that ceasing their entrance is practically outlandish for the greater part of us. In this way, a clean evidence house is one which is made or orchestrated such that there is the negligible passage of tidy particles inside the house. This justifies the maxim that avoidance is superior to cure.

It is smarter for individuals to make plans such that there is no gathering of tidy as opposed to enabling the tidy to settle in and after that approaching the considerable procedure of cleaning. For the individuals who jump at the chance to have substantial windows for good air dissemination, clean may be a plausibility alongside the air.

The least difficult thing that one can do is to finish the house with things that don't get tidy and different particles effectively. One such fixing in the house that is inclined to tidy settlement is a little decoration. The more adornments in the houses, the more you will have cleaning to stress over. Dealing with these items is an exceptionally tedious activity thus much time disappears from routine cleaning because of this.

Air purifiers cut down on the cleaning dusts that enter alongside air. The floors and dividers ought to be as smooth as could be expected under the circumstances. Divider paints turn out in different structures which give a smooth covering on the divider surface. This doesn't give particles a chance to get stored. Regardless, if tidy is discovered such paints permit smooth evacuation of the clean by a straightforward wiping activity. Thus the floors ought to have tiles and hardwood, with the goal that the clean does not stay off in the cleft.

If your home has covered all around, at that point the possibility of clean staying in the cover strands and hairs is high. Expelling these clean particles isn't just a cerebral pain for you, yet additionally for the housekeeper service suppliers. Moreover, steam cleaning these will bring about further use. Utilizing hard wooden floors and tiles is hence more efficient as they keep going longer than rugs on the floor.

If you need to have idealized cleaning of the home, at that point you ought to request that the cleaning offices vacuum the house amid the doing of the cleaning services. You ought to have a decent quality vacuum cleaner in your home.

Keeping textures like upholstery is likewise to be kept to a base. The utilization of dehumidifiers is an awesome help in expelling mugginess from the air, as the nearness of moistness gathers tidier. The beddings ought to be routinely changed and cleaned, particularly if there are kids thinking about them. Pets are another stress for individuals under the rundown of things to be kept clean. You can do everything without anyone else's input or ask a skillful cleaning organization to deal with such things.<|endoftext|>Question: What genre is These Days?
Answer: alternative rock<|endoftext|>A taste for Makers : “…uncorny, human sized drama”

February 2002 (and still a favourite…!)

“…Copernicus’ aesthetic objections to [equants] provided one essential motive for his rejection of the Ptolemaic system….”

– Thomas Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution

– Ben Rich, Skunk Works

– G. H. Hardy, A Mathematician’s Apology

I was talking recently to a friend who teaches at MIT. His field is hot now and every year he is inundated by applications from would-be graduate students. “A lot of them seem smart,” he said. “What I can’t tell is whether they have any kind of taste.”

Mathematicians call good work “beautiful,” and so, either now or in the past, have scientists, engineers, musicians, architects, designers, writers, and painters. Is it just a coincidence that they used the same word, or is there some overlap in what they meant? If there is an overlap, can we use one field’s discoveries about beauty to help us in another?

If you mention taste nowadays, a lot of people will tell you that “taste is subjective.” They believe this because it really feels that way to them. When they like something, they have no idea why. It could be because it’s beautiful, or because their mother had one, or because they saw a movie star with one in a magazine, or because they know it’s expensive. Their thoughts are a tangle of unexamined impulses.

Most of us are encouraged, as children, to leave this tangle unexamined. If you make fun of your little brother for coloring people green in his coloring book, your mother is likely to tell you something like “you like to do it your way and he likes to do it his way.”

What goes through the kid’s head at this point? What does he think “great artist” means? After having been told for years that everyone just likes to do things their own way, he is unlikely to head straight for the conclusion that a great artist is someone whose work is better than the others’. A far more likely theory, in his Ptolemaic model of the universe, is that a great artist is something that’s good for you, like broccoli, because someone said so in a book.

Once you start to examine the question, it’s surprising how much different fields’ ideas of beauty have in common. The same principles of good design crop up again and again.

A lot of bad design is industrious, but misguided. In the mid twentieth century there was a vogue for setting text in sans-serif fonts. These fonts are closer to the pure, underlying letterforms. But in text that’s not the problem you’re trying to solve. For legibility it’s more important that letters be easy to tell apart. It may look Victorian, but a Times Roman lowercase g is easy to tell from a lowercase y.

Problems can be improved as well as solutions. In software, an intractable problem can usually be replaced by an equivalent one that’s easy to solve. Physics progressed faster as the problem became predicting observable behavior, instead of reconciling it with scripture.

In software, it means you should give users a few basic elements that they can combine as they wish, like Lego. In math it means a proof that becomes the basis for a lot of new work is preferable to a proof that was difficult, but doesn’t lead to future discoveries; in the sciences generally, citation is considered a rough indicator of merit.

Good design is often slightly funny. This one may not always be true. But Durer’s engravings and Saarinen’s womb chair and the Pantheon and the original Porsche 911 all seem to me slightly funny. Godel’s incompleteness theorem seems like a practical joke.

I think it’s because humor is related to strength. To have a sense of humor is to be strong: to keep one’s sense of humor is to shrug off misfortunes, and to lose one’s sense of humor is to be wounded by them. And so the mark– or at least the prerogative– of strength is not to take oneself too seriously. The confident will often, like swallows, seem to be making fun of the whole process slightly, as Hitchcock does in his films or Bruegel in his paintings– or Shakespeare, for that matter.

Good design may not have to be funny, but it’s hard to imagine something that could be called humorless also being good design.

Good design is hard. If you look at the people who’ve done great work, one thing they all seem to have in common is that they worked very hard. If you’re not working hard, you’re probably wasting your time.

In art, the highest place has traditionally been given to paintings of people. There is something to this tradition, and not just because pictures of faces get to press buttons in our brains that other pictures don’t. We are so good at looking at faces that we force anyone who draws them to work hard to satisfy us. If you draw a tree and you change the angle of a branch five degrees, no one will know. When you change the angle of someone’s eye five degrees, people notice.

When Bauhaus designers adopted Sullivan’s “form follows

 and clean that cover holds. It is essentially astonishing how much soil is "forever" on the cover. Truth be told, all the clean and earth in the cover for an ordinary size room would, if heaped together, make a hill an inch or so high. Notwithstanding when you think your cover is spotless, it isn't. Actually, numerous sensitivity sufferers essentially can't have covered in their home consequently. Supplanting your cover with hardwood or tile will significantly decrease the measure of them.

Change your heater channel

Your heater channel has the activity of expelling dust skimming around noticeable all around. In addition, changing the channel enables your heater to last more.

Change bedding week by week

This one influences many individuals to recoil. One of the clean's essential parts is dead skin cells. People are continually shedding skin cells and ranges where we invest loads of energy have high groupings of these cells. Also, your bed would be one of these spots. Delicately roll the sheets up while transforming them to keep the cells from getting away into the air.

While cleaning, utilize a device that catches the tidy. Quill dusters and dry garments don't dispose of tidy they basically move it around. Rather utilize something that catches the clean like a Swiffer or utilize clean on a fabric.

The passage of tidy into the house and getting kept on an assortment of items is in charge of the earth and tidy that collects inside the house. These are so little in the measure that ceasing their entrance is practically outlandish for the greater part of us. In this way, a clean evidence house is one which is made or orchestrated such that there is the negligible passage of tidy particles inside the house. This justifies the maxim that avoidance is superior to cure.

It is smarter for individuals to make plans such that there is no gathering of tidy as opposed to enabling the tidy to settle in and after that approaching the considerable procedure of cleaning. For the individuals who jump at the chance to have substantial windows for good air dissemination, clean may be a plausibility alongside the air.

The least difficult thing that one can do is to finish the house with things that don't get tidy and different particles effectively. One such fixing in the house that is inclined to tidy settlement is a little decoration. The more adornments in the houses, the more you will have cleaning to stress over. Dealing with these items is an exceptionally tedious activity thus much time disappears from routine cleaning because of this.

Air purifiers cut down on the cleaning dusts that enter alongside air. The floors and dividers ought to be as smooth as could be expected under the circumstances. Divider paints turn out in different structures which give a smooth covering on the divider surface. This doesn't give particles a chance to get stored. Regardless, if tidy is discovered such paints permit smooth evacuation of the clean by a straightforward wiping activity. Thus the floors ought to have tiles and hardwood, with the goal that the clean does not stay off in the cleft.

If your home has covered all around, at that point the possibility of clean staying in the cover strands and hairs is high. Expelling these clean particles isn't just a cerebral pain for you, yet additionally for the housekeeper service suppliers. Moreover, steam cleaning these will bring about further use. Utilizing hard wooden floors and tiles is hence more efficient as they keep going longer than rugs on the floor.

If you need to have idealized cleaning of the home, at that point you ought to request that the cleaning offices vacuum the house amid the doing of the cleaning services. You ought to have a decent quality vacuum cleaner in your home.

Keeping textures like upholstery is likewise to be kept to a base. The utilization of dehumidifiers is an awesome help in expelling mugginess from the air, as the nearness of moistness gathers tidier. The beddings ought to be routinely changed and cleaned, particularly if there are kids thinking about them. Pets are another stress for individuals under the rundown of things to be kept clean. You can do everything without anyone else's input or ask a skillful cleaning organization to deal with such things.<|endoftext|>A taste for Makers : “…uncorny, human sized drama”

February 2002 (and still a favourite…!)

“…Copernicus’ aesthetic objections to [equants] provided one essential motive for his rejection of the Ptolemaic system….”

– Thomas Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution

– Ben Rich, Skunk Works

– G. H. Hardy, A Mathematician’s Apology

I was talking recently to a friend who teaches at MIT. His field is hot now and every year he is inundated by applications from would-be graduate students. “A lot of them seem smart,” he said. “What I can’t tell is whether they have any kind of taste.”

Mathematicians call good work “beautiful,” and so, either now or in the past, have scientists, engineers, musicians, architects, designers, writers, and painters. Is it just a coincidence that they used the same word, or is there some overlap in what they meant? If there is an overlap, can we use one field’s discoveries about beauty to help us in another?

If you mention taste nowadays, a lot of people will tell you that “taste is subjective.” They believe this because it really feels that way to them. When they like something, they have no idea why. It could be because it’s beautiful, or because their mother had one, or because they saw a movie star with one in a magazine, or because they know it’s expensive. Their thoughts are a tangle of unexamined impulses.

Most of us are encouraged, as children, to leave this tangle unexamined. If you make fun of your little brother for coloring people green in his coloring book, your mother is likely to tell you something like “you like to do it your way and he likes to do it his way.”

What goes through the kid’s head at this point? What does he think “great artist” means? After having been told for years that everyone just likes to do things their own way, he is unlikely to head straight for the conclusion that a great artist is someone whose work is better than the others’. A far more likely theory, in his Ptolemaic model of the universe, is that a great artist is something that’s good for you, like broccoli, because someone said so in a book.

Once you start to examine the question, it’s surprising how much different fields’ ideas of beauty have in common. The same principles of good design crop up again and again.

A lot of bad design is industrious, but misguided. In the mid twentieth century there was a vogue for setting text in sans-serif fonts. These fonts are closer to the pure, underlying letterforms. But in text that’s not the problem you’re trying to solve. For legibility it’s more important that letters be easy to tell apart. It may look Victorian, but a Times Roman lowercase g is easy to tell from a lowercase y.

Problems can be improved as well as solutions. In software, an intractable problem can usually be replaced by an equivalent one that’s easy to solve. Physics progressed faster as the problem became predicting observable behavior, instead of reconciling it with scripture.

In software, it means you should give users a few basic elements that they can combine as they wish, like Lego. In math it means a proof that becomes the basis for a lot of new work is preferable to a proof that was difficult, but doesn’t lead to future discoveries; in the sciences generally, citation is considered a rough indicator of merit.

Good design is often slightly funny. This one may not always be true. But Durer’s engravings and Saarinen’s womb chair and the Pantheon and the original Porsche 911 all seem to me slightly funny. Godel’s incompleteness theorem seems like a practical joke.

I think it’s because humor is related to strength. To have a sense of humor is to be strong: to keep one’s sense of humor is to shrug off misfortunes, and to lose one’s sense of humor is to be wounded by them. And so the mark– or at least the prerogative– of strength is not to take oneself too seriously. The confident will often, like swallows, seem to be making fun of the whole process slightly, as Hitchcock does in his films or Bruegel in his paintings– or Shakespeare, for that matter.

Good design may not have to be funny, but it’s hard to imagine something that could be called humorless also being good design.

Good design is hard. If you look at the people who’ve done great work, one thing they all seem to have in common is that they worked very hard. If you’re not working hard, you’re probably wasting your time.

In art, the highest place has traditionally been given to paintings of people. There is something to this tradition, and not just because pictures of faces get to press buttons in our brains that other pictures don’t. We are so good at looking at faces that we force anyone who draws them to work hard to satisfy us. If you draw a tree and you change the angle of a branch five degrees, no one will know. When you change the angle of someone’s eye five degrees, people notice.

When Bauhaus designers adopted Sullivan’s “form follows function,” what


 out dogs. Try as he may, the dominant Mute Swan pair on the Long Water can't keep them off it for long.

The Black Swan's number one girlfriend was in one of the ponds in the Italian Garden.

This is probably because she too came on to the Long Water and the dominant swan chased her in that direction. She can get out, of course, and there is another Mute Swan on the pond, an adult, to show her the way out if she doesn't know. But it's a bit of a hike to the nearest place where she can get down to the lake, and I expect to see the Black Swan back with girlfriend number two tomorrow.

The Egyptian Goose family near Bluebird Boats had lost another chick. They were sensibly keeping the four survivors under a waste bin where the gulls couldn't swoop on them.

Less sensibly, they had a pointless territorial dispute with another pair of Egyptians. The male rushed off to chase the others away, and when he came back in triumph the female walked over the meet him. It is at moments like this that the young get taken.

The other Grey Heron nest on the island had a heron in it, though it may have been one of the pair from the first nest simply using it as a place to stand while gathering twigs.

I am not absolutely sure that the first nest is occupied, but sometimes when I pass I can see a vague outline sticking just over the top. This may not even be a heron, it might be an Egyptian.

Another Heron was looking almost invisible in the reeds on the little artificial island in the Long Water.

They are not as well camouflaged as Bitterns, which have the colour and pattern of the reeds and stand with their heads pointing up, but they do quite well.

There were two pairs of Mandarins at Peter Pan.

Pied Wagtails are not worried by breaking waves. They just sprint out of the way.

The pair of Dunnocks in the leaf yard were chasing each other about. This one stayed still just long enough for a picture.

This Treecreeper was very near the place on the east side of the Long Water where I saw one a few days ago. There must be a nest here.

Just along the path, one of the young rabbits had come out into the clearing opposite Rudolf Steiner's bench. They are growing up fast.

  1. Have Bittern's ever been seen in the park?
    I saw one at WWT Barnes a few weeks ago, and I wondered whether they had ever diverted to here?

    1. No, never. For questions like this, see the right hand column of the blog.

  2. On Saturday afternoon I saw the Black Swan join a large group of swans and ducks being fed on the north side of the Dell restaurant. It was half-snapped at by a young female, fully white-feathered, and retreated a bit; came back and was snapped and hissed at by a similar-aged young male swan, and then gave up and swam off. This is so completely unlike the behaviour of this animal to date I rather suspect we're in one of those films centring around the substitution of identical twins...

    1. Suppose he can't always bully the others. But he was his usual self today, barging adult Mute Swans out of the way. He is not as aggressive as when he first arrived, though, when his conduct was monstrous.<|endoftext|>Question: Who is the father of Al Gore?
Answer: Albert Arnold Gore<|endoftext|>True Faith

Saturday morning and I am about to head back out to Metairie; I just got an email that my computer is repaired and ready for pick-up! This is very exciting, obviously–I am terribly relieved to not have to buy a new one–and I am excited to have a desktop computer again. Hurray for a big screen to make up for my failing eyes! I am also going to be dropping off books later today at the library sale, and donating beads to ARC of New Orleans; the living room is slowly being dragged back from hoarder’s hell and starting to look functional and bearable and usable again, which is incredibly lovely. I managed to hang one of the laundry room doors by myself yesterday; this morning I’ll also be rehanging the other door, clearing up more space and opening up the living room even further.

We finished watching The Crime of the Century last night–quelle surprise, disgusting piece of shit Marsha Blackburn helped pass a bill gutting the DEA’s ability to investigate and punish drug companies for lying to the public, reminding viewers again she’s always been trash and a cosplay Christian without a soul–and the documentary is further evidence that our country and our system has been corrupted and is broken. It’s more than a little infuriating to know that so many people have died and/or become addicted thanks to the complicity of our elected officials, and there is never any accountability for corporations or the rich. Back in the 1990’s I used to simply shake my head and thin we are becoming very similar, as a nation, to 1780′ France and the last days of Czarist Russia and when it comes the second American revolution will be far worse than either of those revolutions, which were widespread and incredibly bloody…I hope I don’t live long enough to see it or experience it, quite frankly. I had an idea–when don’t I have one?–back then for a book about a dystopian future after the collapse of our government and society; dystopias aren’t so much in vogue anymore, but it’s still a valid idea and concept, but it’s been foremost in my brain lately.

We also started watching Halston on Netflix last night, and it’s quite fun; definitely worth watching for the acting, and Ewan MacGregor is fantastic in the title role. I’ve actually been thinking about the 1970’s a lot lately; not sure why I’ve been going down this nostalgic trip down memory lane, but I have been and so Halston kind of plays into that for me. It has everything to do, no doubt, with my idea to write a book about a suburban serial killer, a la the Candyman/Gacy, called Where the Boys Die; I’ve been looking up things ( has copies of my high school yearbooks even; mine were lost years ago) all over the place when I get bored and when I don’t feel like reading or writing. What will eventually happen with that, I don’t know–if anything–but I realize this morning that I haven’t been writing much this month–I’ve definitely been off, if not my rocker, but my game. I kind of have been ever since my desktop computer ceased functioning properly; I don’t think getting my computer back is going to be some kind of magic cure-all, but it should be a start.

After I dropped off the computer at the Apple Store and while I was waiting for my next appointment, I stopped at the Barnes and Noble on Veterans’ to kill time. I can’t remember the last time I set foot in a B&N; obviously it was pre-pandemic, but it was much longer ago than that, obviously. It was a bit strange to be in such a public space (the Apple Store opens two hours before the rest of the mall, so walking through the almost-deserted halls and past all the closed stores had a sort of Night of the Living Dead feel to it–I know that’s probably not the right zombie/Romero film, but I’ve actually never seen any of those so sue me) but B&N was more confined and had more people–it was still pretty empty, but it was a strange experience. But it was lovely being in a bookstore–I resisted the urge to spend hundreds of dollars and limited myself to a lovely, inexpensive B&N edition of The Iliad and The Odyssey–and it was also interesting to walk around looking at books and seeing so many friends on the shelves, tables, and end-caps. The MWA handbook, How to Write a Mystery, was prominently displayed on the NEW RELEASES shelves, and I found myself examining books and just enjoying being around books.

Speaking of which, I started reading Robyn Gigl’s By Way of Sorrow, and am enjoying it. I need to get it finished, though, so I can read From Here to Eternity on my trip next week (yikes, I leave on Thursday).

So, my plan for today is to get my computer set up again, rehang the other door, run those errands and swing by the grocery store as well. With all of these other things taken care of, I also intend to clean today so tomorrow I will have the day free to answer emails, do some writing, and go to the gym….then it’s three days of work and the trip to Kentucky, and then before I know it, May will be ending and it will be June. #madness.

And on that note, I need to get cleaned up so I can head out to the Lakeside mall. Happy Saturday, Constant Reader!

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Connecting to %s<|endoftext|>Florida isn't just an attractive retirement destination for its climate, it's also very tax friendly.

Planning for a successful

 and preen, with grass and a fence to keep out dogs. Try as he may, the dominant Mute Swan pair on the Long Water can't keep them off it for long.

The Black Swan's number one girlfriend was in one of the ponds in the Italian Garden.

This is probably because she too came on to the Long Water and the dominant swan chased her in that direction. She can get out, of course, and there is another Mute Swan on the pond, an adult, to show her the way out if she doesn't know. But it's a bit of a hike to the nearest place where she can get down to the lake, and I expect to see the Black Swan back with girlfriend number two tomorrow.

The Egyptian Goose family near Bluebird Boats had lost another chick. They were sensibly keeping the four survivors under a waste bin where the gulls couldn't swoop on them.

Less sensibly, they had a pointless territorial dispute with another pair of Egyptians. The male rushed off to chase the others away, and when he came back in triumph the female walked over the meet him. It is at moments like this that the young get taken.

The other Grey Heron nest on the island had a heron in it, though it may have been one of the pair from the first nest simply using it as a place to stand while gathering twigs.

I am not absolutely sure that the first nest is occupied, but sometimes when I pass I can see a vague outline sticking just over the top. This may not even be a heron, it might be an Egyptian.

Another Heron was looking almost invisible in the reeds on the little artificial island in the Long Water.

They are not as well camouflaged as Bitterns, which have the colour and pattern of the reeds and stand with their heads pointing up, but they do quite well.

There were two pairs of Mandarins at Peter Pan.

Pied Wagtails are not worried by breaking waves. They just sprint out of the way.

The pair of Dunnocks in the leaf yard were chasing each other about. This one stayed still just long enough for a picture.

This Treecreeper was very near the place on the east side of the Long Water where I saw one a few days ago. There must be a nest here.

Just along the path, one of the young rabbits had come out into the clearing opposite Rudolf Steiner's bench. They are growing up fast.

  1. Have Bittern's ever been seen in the park?
    I saw one at WWT Barnes a few weeks ago, and I wondered whether they had ever diverted to here?

    1. No, never. For questions like this, see the right hand column of the blog.

  2. On Saturday afternoon I saw the Black Swan join a large group of swans and ducks being fed on the north side of the Dell restaurant. It was half-snapped at by a young female, fully white-feathered, and retreated a bit; came back and was snapped and hissed at by a similar-aged young male swan, and then gave up and swam off. This is so completely unlike the behaviour of this animal to date I rather suspect we're in one of those films centring around the substitution of identical twins...

    1. Suppose he can't always bully the others. But he was his usual self today, barging adult Mute Swans out of the way. He is not as aggressive as when he first arrived, though, when his conduct was monstrous.<|endoftext|>True Faith

Saturday morning and I am about to head back out to Metairie; I just got an email that my computer is repaired and ready for pick-up! This is very exciting, obviously–I am terribly relieved to not have to buy a new one–and I am excited to have a desktop computer again. Hurray for a big screen to make up for my failing eyes! I am also going to be dropping off books later today at the library sale, and donating beads to ARC of New Orleans; the living room is slowly being dragged back from hoarder’s hell and starting to look functional and bearable and usable again, which is incredibly lovely. I managed to hang one of the laundry room doors by myself yesterday; this morning I’ll also be rehanging the other door, clearing up more space and opening up the living room even further.

We finished watching The Crime of the Century last night–quelle surprise, disgusting piece of shit Marsha Blackburn helped pass a bill gutting the DEA’s ability to investigate and punish drug companies for lying to the public, reminding viewers again she’s always been trash and a cosplay Christian without a soul–and the documentary is further evidence that our country and our system has been corrupted and is broken. It’s more than a little infuriating to know that so many people have died and/or become addicted thanks to the complicity of our elected officials, and there is never any accountability for corporations or the rich. Back in the 1990’s I used to simply shake my head and thin we are becoming very similar, as a nation, to 1780′ France and the last days of Czarist Russia and when it comes the second American revolution will be far worse than either of those revolutions, which were widespread and incredibly bloody…I hope I don’t live long enough to see it or experience it, quite frankly. I had an idea–when don’t I have one?–back then for a book about a dystopian future after the collapse of our government and society; dystopias aren’t so much in vogue anymore, but it’s still a valid idea and concept, but it’s been foremost in my brain lately.

We also started watching Halston on Netflix last night, and it’s quite fun; definitely worth watching for the acting, and Ewan MacGregor is fantastic in the title role. I’ve actually been thinking about the 1970’s a lot lately; not sure why I’ve been going down this nostalgic trip down memory lane, but I have been and so Halston kind of plays into that for me. It has everything to do, no doubt, with my idea to write a book about a suburban serial killer, a la the Candyman/Gacy, called Where the Boys Die; I’ve been looking up things ( has copies of my high school yearbooks even; mine were lost years ago) all over the place when I get bored and when I don’t feel like reading or writing. What will eventually happen with that, I don’t know–if anything–but I realize this morning that I haven’t been writing much this month–I’ve definitely been off, if not my rocker, but my game. I kind of have been ever since my desktop computer ceased functioning properly; I don’t think getting my computer back is going to be some kind of magic cure-all, but it should be a start.

After I dropped off the computer at the Apple Store and while I was waiting for my next appointment, I stopped at the Barnes and Noble on Veterans’ to kill time. I can’t remember the last time I set foot in a B&N; obviously it was pre-pandemic, but it was much longer ago than that, obviously. It was a bit strange to be in such a public space (the Apple Store opens two hours before the rest of the mall, so walking through the almost-deserted halls and past all the closed stores had a sort of Night of the Living Dead feel to it–I know that’s probably not the right zombie/Romero film, but I’ve actually never seen any of those so sue me) but B&N was more confined and had more people–it was still pretty empty, but it was a strange experience. But it was lovely being in a bookstore–I resisted the urge to spend hundreds of dollars and limited myself to a lovely, inexpensive B&N edition of The Iliad and The Odyssey–and it was also interesting to walk around looking at books and seeing so many friends on the shelves, tables, and end-caps. The MWA handbook, How to Write a Mystery, was prominently displayed on the NEW RELEASES shelves, and I found myself examining books and just enjoying being around books.

Speaking of which, I started reading Robyn Gigl’s By Way of Sorrow, and am enjoying it. I need to get it finished, though, so I can read From Here to Eternity on my trip next week (yikes, I leave on Thursday).

So, my plan for today is to get my computer set up again, rehang the other door, run those errands and swing by the grocery store as well. With all of these other things taken care of, I also intend to clean today so tomorrow I will have the day free to answer emails, do some writing, and go to the gym….then it’s three days of work and the trip to Kentucky, and then before I know it, May will be ending and it will be June. #madness.

And on that note, I need to get cleaned up so I can head out to the Lakeside mall. Happy Saturday, Constant Reader!

Leave a Reply

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Connecting to %s<|endoftext|>Florida isn't just an attractive retirement destination for its climate, it's also very tax friendly.

Planning for a successful retirement requires more than choosing the


Question: What is the capital of Jask County?
Answer: Jask<|endoftext|> as between each of the 10 renditions of the complete copy syllable and the complete model syllable.

We also compared student and model song trill rates, measuring the rate of five examples of each student song type and each model. Because copies may be sung slightly faster or slower than model rates, we report the rate comparisons between student rendition and model as the absolute value of the per cent difference [100 × (student rate − model rate)/model rate].

(e) Signal synthesis and analysis

All songs were digitized at 25 kpts s−1, analysis bandwidth of 0–10 kHz. Trill rates were measured from the waveform (time resolution = ±2 ms). The maximum and minimum frequency for a song were measured from a spectrogram (256 point fast Fourier transform (FFT), frequency resolution = 98 Hz, time resolution: 10.2 ms) at −36 dB relative to the maximum level of the signal. Cross-correlation comparisons were performed between pairs of spectrograms (128 point FFT, frequency resolution = 195 Hz, time resolution = 5.1 ms).

3. Results

The nine males sang a total of 20 song types, 17 of which were judged to be copies of tutor songs (representative tutor and student songs illustrated in figure 2; audio files provided in the electronic supplemental material). Males learnt solely from the undegraded tutor models (binomial test: p = 0.002; table 1). The three pupil songs not assigned as copies had no similarity to any models. All syllables assigned as copies matched their respective models note for note. Copy accuracy (table 1) was comparable to previous studies of swamp sparrow copy quality and confirmed our visual assessments [12,13].

Figure 2.

Sonograms of representative tutor and student songs. (a) Undegraded tutor model (type B, table 1), (b) degraded tutor model (type L, table 1), and (c) student copy of undegraded tutor model type B.

All of the undegraded models were learnt by at least one male. Thirteen of the 17 student syllables unambiguously matched a unique song type in the undegraded model group. Two males sang song type M, and two males sang song type N, both of which had a variant present in both the undegraded and degraded groups. The high cross-correlation scores for these copies indicate very good matches to the respective undegraded variant (table 1). Furthermore, the trill rates of these songs were much more similar to those of their respective undegraded variants than to the degraded variants (5.1 ± 2.9% versus 27.3 ± 3.2% absolute trill rate difference to undegraded syllable types M and N versus degraded syllable types M and N, respectively). Thus, we are confident that males rejected all degraded song models, and that all undegraded songs were copied by at least one test subject.

4. Discussion

Our results clearly indicate that young male swamp sparrows differentially copy undegraded songs in the song-learning process. In fact, males rejected all degraded song models in our experiment. This result has broad implications for the role of cultural selection in acoustic adaptation of learnt signals. If birds preferentially learn less degraded songs, then songs would differentiate over time between habitats with different sound transmission properties. Cultural selection on song quality may therefore help explain the widespread pattern of habitat-dependent song diversification among bird species [3].

Our study is, to our knowledge, the first to provide strong support of the hypothesis that cultural selection can drive habitat-dependent diversification of learnt signals. An earlier study tested this hypothesis using Carolina wrens (Thryothorus ludovicianus) [14]. Four males were exposed to undegraded songs and songs degraded by playback in an echoic room. Although males learnt more undegraded than degraded songs, only song models that were twice as degraded as naturally degraded song models were rejected. This study's interpretation was limited by its small sample size, by the artificial method of producing degraded song models, and by the fact that males did not reject song models with levels of degradation that they would encounter in a natural learning scenario. Our study found that all test subjects rejected naturally degraded song models, thus providing, to our knowledge, the first robust test of Hansen's hypothesis.

Our study does not address another mechanism proposed to explain acoustic adaptation of learnt signals, which is adult vocal plasticity. In some species, adults can adjust their singing behaviour (e.g. increase amplitude or preferentially sing particular song types) to transmit more effectively in their current environment [15]. Most studies on adult plasticity have been directed at behavioural responses to anthropogenic (e.g. urban noise) or natural ambient noise levels that can fluctuate dramatically over short time periods. However, individual vocal adjustment to environmental conditions alone cannot explain widespread habitat-dependent song differentiation across species. Cultural selection and vocal plasticity are not mutually exclusive. Cultural selection is a process that occurs over generations (e.g. from tutor to pupil), whereas adult vocal plasticity allows individuals to respond to immediate changes in the sound transmission environment. This study should inspire additional research on the developmental and behavioural mechanisms underlying habitat-dependent diversification of learnt signals.

All animal work was approved by the Duke University IACUC (protocol no. A240-96-5).

We thank B. Ballentine for song type copy identification, the Pymatuning Laboratory of Ecology for logistical help, the Pennsylvania Game Commission (special use permit no. 25-96) and the Mason Farm Biological Reserve for access to field sites. Financial support was provided by a grant from the National Science Foundation to S.N. (IBN-94-08360).

  • Received May 10, 2012.
  • Accepted May 31, 2012.

View Abstract<|endoftext|>

Pet Refuge receives 5,000 cans of Friskies

MISHAWAKA, Ind. -- A local animal relief shelter is feeling a more relief after receiving cans of cat food.

The Pet Refuge on West Sixth Street in Mishawaka is getting 5,000 cans of cat food from Friskies.

All they had to do was enter the best original cat video contest of 2012 on the company's website.

Now, depending on how many times the video is liked on Facebook or is shared, they could get even more food.

Voting does not start until Oct. 22.

Share this article:<|endoftext|>Article Text

Download PDFPDF
Injury representation against ballistic threats using three novel numerical models
  1. Johno Breeze1,
  2. R Fryer2,
  3. D Pope3 and
  4. J Clasper4
  1. 1Academic Department of Military Surgery and Trauma, Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, Birmingham Research Park, Birmingham, UK
  2. 2Land Battlespace Systems Department, Defence Science & Technology Laboratory, Fareham, UK
  3. 3Physical Sciences Department, Dstl Porton Down, Salisbury, UK
  4. 4The Royal British Legion Centre for Blast Injury Studies at Imperial College London, London, UK
  1. Correspondence to Maj Johno Breeze, ST5 Registrar Maxillofacial (Head and Neck) Surgeon, Academic Department of Military Surgery and Trauma, Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, Birmingham B15 2SQ, UK; johno.breeze{at}

Injury modelling of ballistic threats is a valuable tool for informing policy on personal protective equipment and other injury mitigation methods. Currently, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and Centre for Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI) are focusing on the development of three interlinking numerical models, each of a different fidelity, to answer specific questions on current threats. High-fidelity models simulate the physical events most realistically, and will be used in the future to test the medical effectiveness of personal armour systems. They are however generally computationally intensive, slow running and much of the experimental data to base their algorithms on do not yet exist. Medium fidelity models, such as the personnel vulnerability simulation (PVS), generally use algorithms based on physical or engineering estimations of interaction. This enables a reasonable representation of reality and greatly speeds up runtime allowing full assessments of the entire body area to be undertaken. Low-fidelity models such as the human injury predictor (HIP) tool generally use simplistic algorithms to make injury predictions. Individual scenarios can be run very quickly and hence enable statistical casualty assessments of large groups, where significant uncertainty concerning the threat and affected population exist. HIP is used to simulate the blast and penetrative fragmentation effects of a terrorist detonation of an improvised explosive device within crowds of people in metropolitan environments. This paper describes the collaboration between MoD and CPNI using an example of all three fidelities of injury model and to highlight future areas of research that are required.

  • Injury
  • Numerical
  • Military
  • Ballistic
  • Coverage
  • Model
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  • Contributors Planning: JB, DP, RF, JC. Conducting: JB, DP, RF, JC. Reporting: JB, DP, RF, JC.

  • Competing interests None.

  • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

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<|endoftext|>• 4

  • 9442

How many cups is 1/2 pounds of confectioner's sugar?

Answer »
nutcakes added over 2 years ago

One pound of powdered sugar is about 3-3/4 cups measured (between 3-1/2 and 4 cups

 as between each of the 10 renditions of the complete copy syllable and the complete model syllable.

We also compared student and model song trill rates, measuring the rate of five examples of each student song type and each model. Because copies may be sung slightly faster or slower than model rates, we report the rate comparisons between student rendition and model as the absolute value of the per cent difference [100 × (student rate − model rate)/model rate].

(e) Signal synthesis and analysis

All songs were digitized at 25 kpts s−1, analysis bandwidth of 0–10 kHz. Trill rates were measured from the waveform (time resolution = ±2 ms). The maximum and minimum frequency for a song were measured from a spectrogram (256 point fast Fourier transform (FFT), frequency resolution = 98 Hz, time resolution: 10.2 ms) at −36 dB relative to the maximum level of the signal. Cross-correlation comparisons were performed between pairs of spectrograms (128 point FFT, frequency resolution = 195 Hz, time resolution = 5.1 ms).

3. Results

The nine males sang a total of 20 song types, 17 of which were judged to be copies of tutor songs (representative tutor and student songs illustrated in figure 2; audio files provided in the electronic supplemental material). Males learnt solely from the undegraded tutor models (binomial test: p = 0.002; table 1). The three pupil songs not assigned as copies had no similarity to any models. All syllables assigned as copies matched their respective models note for note. Copy accuracy (table 1) was comparable to previous studies of swamp sparrow copy quality and confirmed our visual assessments [12,13].

Figure 2.

Sonograms of representative tutor and student songs. (a) Undegraded tutor model (type B, table 1), (b) degraded tutor model (type L, table 1), and (c) student copy of undegraded tutor model type B.

All of the undegraded models were learnt by at least one male. Thirteen of the 17 student syllables unambiguously matched a unique song type in the undegraded model group. Two males sang song type M, and two males sang song type N, both of which had a variant present in both the undegraded and degraded groups. The high cross-correlation scores for these copies indicate very good matches to the respective undegraded variant (table 1). Furthermore, the trill rates of these songs were much more similar to those of their respective undegraded variants than to the degraded variants (5.1 ± 2.9% versus 27.3 ± 3.2% absolute trill rate difference to undegraded syllable types M and N versus degraded syllable types M and N, respectively). Thus, we are confident that males rejected all degraded song models, and that all undegraded songs were copied by at least one test subject.

4. Discussion

Our results clearly indicate that young male swamp sparrows differentially copy undegraded songs in the song-learning process. In fact, males rejected all degraded song models in our experiment. This result has broad implications for the role of cultural selection in acoustic adaptation of learnt signals. If birds preferentially learn less degraded songs, then songs would differentiate over time between habitats with different sound transmission properties. Cultural selection on song quality may therefore help explain the widespread pattern of habitat-dependent song diversification among bird species [3].

Our study is, to our knowledge, the first to provide strong support of the hypothesis that cultural selection can drive habitat-dependent diversification of learnt signals. An earlier study tested this hypothesis using Carolina wrens (Thryothorus ludovicianus) [14]. Four males were exposed to undegraded songs and songs degraded by playback in an echoic room. Although males learnt more undegraded than degraded songs, only song models that were twice as degraded as naturally degraded song models were rejected. This study's interpretation was limited by its small sample size, by the artificial method of producing degraded song models, and by the fact that males did not reject song models with levels of degradation that they would encounter in a natural learning scenario. Our study found that all test subjects rejected naturally degraded song models, thus providing, to our knowledge, the first robust test of Hansen's hypothesis.

Our study does not address another mechanism proposed to explain acoustic adaptation of learnt signals, which is adult vocal plasticity. In some species, adults can adjust their singing behaviour (e.g. increase amplitude or preferentially sing particular song types) to transmit more effectively in their current environment [15]. Most studies on adult plasticity have been directed at behavioural responses to anthropogenic (e.g. urban noise) or natural ambient noise levels that can fluctuate dramatically over short time periods. However, individual vocal adjustment to environmental conditions alone cannot explain widespread habitat-dependent song differentiation across species. Cultural selection and vocal plasticity are not mutually exclusive. Cultural selection is a process that occurs over generations (e.g. from tutor to pupil), whereas adult vocal plasticity allows individuals to respond to immediate changes in the sound transmission environment. This study should inspire additional research on the developmental and behavioural mechanisms underlying habitat-dependent diversification of learnt signals.

All animal work was approved by the Duke University IACUC (protocol no. A240-96-5).

We thank B. Ballentine for song type copy identification, the Pymatuning Laboratory of Ecology for logistical help, the Pennsylvania Game Commission (special use permit no. 25-96) and the Mason Farm Biological Reserve for access to field sites. Financial support was provided by a grant from the National Science Foundation to S.N. (IBN-94-08360).

  • Received May 10, 2012.
  • Accepted May 31, 2012.

View Abstract<|endoftext|>

Pet Refuge receives 5,000 cans of Friskies

MISHAWAKA, Ind. -- A local animal relief shelter is feeling a more relief after receiving cans of cat food.

The Pet Refuge on West Sixth Street in Mishawaka is getting 5,000 cans of cat food from Friskies.

All they had to do was enter the best original cat video contest of 2012 on the company's website.

Now, depending on how many times the video is liked on Facebook or is shared, they could get even more food.

Voting does not start until Oct. 22.

Share this article:<|endoftext|>Article Text

Download PDFPDF
Injury representation against ballistic threats using three novel numerical models
  1. Johno Breeze1,
  2. R Fryer2,
  3. D Pope3 and
  4. J Clasper4
  1. 1Academic Department of Military Surgery and Trauma, Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, Birmingham Research Park, Birmingham, UK
  2. 2Land Battlespace Systems Department, Defence Science & Technology Laboratory, Fareham, UK
  3. 3Physical Sciences Department, Dstl Porton Down, Salisbury, UK
  4. 4The Royal British Legion Centre for Blast Injury Studies at Imperial College London, London, UK
  1. Correspondence to Maj Johno Breeze, ST5 Registrar Maxillofacial (Head and Neck) Surgeon, Academic Department of Military Surgery and Trauma, Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, Birmingham B15 2SQ, UK; johno.breeze{at}

Injury modelling of ballistic threats is a valuable tool for informing policy on personal protective equipment and other injury mitigation methods. Currently, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and Centre for Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI) are focusing on the development of three interlinking numerical models, each of a different fidelity, to answer specific questions on current threats. High-fidelity models simulate the physical events most realistically, and will be used in the future to test the medical effectiveness of personal armour systems. They are however generally computationally intensive, slow running and much of the experimental data to base their algorithms on do not yet exist. Medium fidelity models, such as the personnel vulnerability simulation (PVS), generally use algorithms based on physical or engineering estimations of interaction. This enables a reasonable representation of reality and greatly speeds up runtime allowing full assessments of the entire body area to be undertaken. Low-fidelity models such as the human injury predictor (HIP) tool generally use simplistic algorithms to make injury predictions. Individual scenarios can be run very quickly and hence enable statistical casualty assessments of large groups, where significant uncertainty concerning the threat and affected population exist. HIP is used to simulate the blast and penetrative fragmentation effects of a terrorist detonation of an improvised explosive device within crowds of people in metropolitan environments. This paper describes the collaboration between MoD and CPNI using an example of all three fidelities of injury model and to highlight future areas of research that are required.

  • Injury
  • Numerical
  • Military
  • Ballistic
  • Coverage
  • Model
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  • Contributors Planning: JB, DP, RF, JC. Conducting: JB, DP, RF, JC. Reporting: JB, DP, RF, JC.

  • Competing interests None.

  • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

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How many cups is 1/2 pounds of confectioner's sugar?

Answer »
nutcakes added over 2 years ago

One pound of powdered sugar is about 3-3/4 cups measured (between 3-1/2 and 4 cups.) Sor for 1/2 pound, use 1-7/8th cup.


 carrying. At each day’s destination, the Dhutanga monks will assemble to perform chanting and practice meditation together.

Throughout the day as they’re walking, the monks will observe the practice of silence and mindfulness and always carry a tranquil countenance and refined deportment of virtuous individuals who have trained themselves well.  They will not be distracted by the heat or the hot surface under their feet, but will continue to walk gracefully and peacefully along to greet faithful supporters who have gathered to sprinkle marigold petals on the path and to enthusiastically welcome the Dhutanga monks walking pass their homes or offices.

The pilgrimage will bring joy to everyone participating and blessings to the land walked by these noble monks – like a cool rain delivering happiness, delight and brightness.

Dhutaṅga is how monks take their disciplinary training to another level for the purpose of ridding themselves of defilements.  Dhutaṅga is about living light so that monks have more time to focus on meditation and practicing mindfulness. Dhutanga monks eat only one meal per day, take up residence outdoors, and consume only food that they receive from alms rounds. They keep personal possessions to a bare minimum and typically journey barefoot.

This year’s Dhammachai Dhutaṅga is from 2 to 30 January 2016, covering seven provinces: Pathum Thani, Nonthaburi, Supanburi, Ayudhya, Nakon Pathom, Samutsakorn, and Bangkok.  During a Dhutaṅga training, monks get to practice endurance, fortitude, compassion, giving, team spirit, concentration, awareness, and moment-to-moment meditation. As they journey barefoot, they meditate, share inner peace, and spread loving-kindness to all living beings.

The 1,131 monks on the Dhammachai Dhutaṅga pilgrimage come from different parts of Thailand. Yet, they are united by the mission to train themselves and to spread the message that “inner peace is prerequisite to external peace in any society and the world at large”.  Their peace journey also serves a tribute to honor the Buddha and the late Meditation Master Phramongkolthepmuni who rediscovered the Buddha’s key knowledge about the innate Body of Enlightenment (the Dhammakaya) which had been lost to the world about 500 years after His passing.

Although the annual Dhammachai Dhutaṅga pilgrimage is primarily for monks, many who had the opportunity to witness the group pilgrimage were inspired to learn and to practice the Buddha’s teachings.  It is one thing to know Dhamma from written or spoken words; it’s another to live it.  As the monks walk, they are putting their Dhamma practice to test.  It is obviously easier to meditate or to keep one’s mind still in a cool and quiet environment, and we all should find time to do that. But the fact is most of us live in an ever-expanding urban society and face many challenges – some of which are outside our control.  The only thing we ever have complete control over is our mind.  Therefore, it is important for us to train our mind to be calm and cool no matter where we are.  The Dhammachai Dhutaṅga monks are living proofs that inner peace is possible anywhere, under any condition – cold rain or scorching sun – and it begins from within.  They can do it, and so can you.

First time in history: Dhammachai dhutanga will transport the Buddha’s Relics to the international Buddhist Park in Nong khai

The pilgrimage to transport the Buddha’s relics will pass through six provinces: Ayutthaya, Saraburi, Nakhon Ratchasima, Khon Kaen, Udon Thani, and Nong Khai. Everyone will have a chance to pay reverence to the Buddha’s relics and over one thousand Dhutanga monks making the journey and help pave the pilgrimage route with marigold flower. This opportunity to accumulate great merit will lead to prosperity, longevity, peace and happiness for you and your family and the country of Thailand.<|endoftext|>Question: What genre is Tharg the Mighty?
Answer: science fiction<|endoftext|>News release

Severe turbulence led to loss of control of an ExpressJet flight in September 2014 near London, Ontario

Richmond Hill, Ontario, 06 July 2016 – Today, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) released its investigation report (A14O0165) into the loss of control occurrence near London, Ontario, involving an ExpressJet Airlines flight. There were no reported injuries to the 3 crew members or 26 passengers, and the aircraft was not damaged.

On 5 September 2014, an Embraer 145LR departed Grand Rapids, Michigan, destined for Newark Liberty International Airport, New Jersey. After departure, the aircraft deviated north of its intended track into Canadian airspace to avoid a line of thunderstorms, and climbed to its cruising altitude with the intention of navigating its way through them. The aircraft flew through a large thunderstorm that it could not avoid and encountered severe turbulence. The flight crew lost control of the aircraft and it descended rapidly, losing approximately 4000 feet, before they were able to regain control. The aircraft continued to its destination, where it landed safely.

The TSB investigation found that the flight crew anticipated that they would be able to navigate between thunderstorms. However, as the flight progressed, the line of thunderstorms intensified, and the intended route became obstructed. As well, the report observed that, during the loss of control, the flight crew momentarily applied flight control inputs that exacerbated the roll attitude of the aircraft. As a result, recovery time and altitude loss were increased. The investigation further found that when flight crews operate an aircraft outside of manufacturer recommendations and its limitations, there is a risk of compromising flight safety, resulting in injury to the occupants or damage to the aircraft.

Following this occurrence, ExpressJet Airlines improved dispatcher use of flight-following software, and developed policy and procedures related to adverse weather phenomena. ExpressJet Airlines also developed a training module for all ﬂight crew members to promote severe weather avoidance and weather radar utilization techniques to identify developing storm activity.

For more information, contact:
Transportation Safety Board of Canada
Media Relations
Telephone: 819-994-8053<|endoftext|>Dismiss Notice
Join Physics Forums Today!

Problem Solving

  1. Oct 24, 2011 #1
    1. Slay the dragon
    A knight needs to fight a dragon with 100 heads. The knight has 4 major moves each able to cut off a number of heads: Thrust (5 heads), Slash (15 heads), Chop (17 heads), and Berserk Slash (20 heads). However, for each attack the dragon grows back heads: Thurst (24 heads), Slash (2 heads), Chop (14 heads), and Berserk Slash (17 heads). The dragon can only be killed if the knight uses an attack that cuts of exactly all its remaining heads. (i.e. if the dragon has 10 heads left, it can't be killed in one attack, but if it has 20 it can). What is the minimum number of attacks required to kill the dragon?

    2. Strangely Familiar
    You are the communications engineer reporting directly to the commander of a communications intercept RVU (Radar Viewing Unit) which scans frequencies for possible enemy information on threats and reconnaissance. You have just intercepted a transmission, but part of it is garbled due to bad weather. The intercept is:
    A ? D F ? H J ? L
    where ? represents a garbled letter. What are the garbled letters? What advice do you give to your commander?
  2. jcsd
  3. Oct 31, 2011 #2

    I like Serena

    User Avatar
    Homework Helper

    1. Slay the dragon
    11: for instance 5 slashes, 5 chops, finishing it off with a berserk slash<|endoftext|>The Ego and the Italy

In Love Falls, novelist Esther Freud watches a daughter come to know her distant father

In Esther Freud's new novel, Love Falls, 17-year-old Lara dreams of Prince Charles "and his black Jamaican girlfriend searching for his trousers in her room. They giggled and flirted and made lustful, lascivious comments . . . and [Lara] had to hide under the covers for fear they would fall on to her bed." Now what would Freud's great-grandfather Sigmund have made of that?

Esther Freud is the daughter of painter Lucian Freud (and the sister of fashion designer Bella, grandchild of architect Ernest, niece of politician Clement, and grandniece of child psychologist Anna—goodness, what a family!). Unlike the illustrious Sigmund, this younger Freud doesn't much care for the interpretation of dreams, nor for the vagaries of the unconscious. (The detailing of Lara's dream is a rare exception.) A gentle materialist, Freud situates herself in her characters' conscious minds—what they see, taste, and touch, what they actively desire. Unconscious yearnings don't much interest her.

In her five previous novels, Freud has drawn on bits of her own life. "All my work is autobiographical in some way," she has said in interviews. Her best-known book, Hideous Kinky, details the childhood years spent living in Morocco with her sister and hippie mother. The other books aren't

 at the location arranged by the staff and sleep in tents that they’ve been carrying. At each day’s destination, the Dhutanga monks will assemble to perform chanting and practice meditation together.

Throughout the day as they’re walking, the monks will observe the practice of silence and mindfulness and always carry a tranquil countenance and refined deportment of virtuous individuals who have trained themselves well.  They will not be distracted by the heat or the hot surface under their feet, but will continue to walk gracefully and peacefully along to greet faithful supporters who have gathered to sprinkle marigold petals on the path and to enthusiastically welcome the Dhutanga monks walking pass their homes or offices.

The pilgrimage will bring joy to everyone participating and blessings to the land walked by these noble monks – like a cool rain delivering happiness, delight and brightness.

Dhutaṅga is how monks take their disciplinary training to another level for the purpose of ridding themselves of defilements.  Dhutaṅga is about living light so that monks have more time to focus on meditation and practicing mindfulness. Dhutanga monks eat only one meal per day, take up residence outdoors, and consume only food that they receive from alms rounds. They keep personal possessions to a bare minimum and typically journey barefoot.

This year’s Dhammachai Dhutaṅga is from 2 to 30 January 2016, covering seven provinces: Pathum Thani, Nonthaburi, Supanburi, Ayudhya, Nakon Pathom, Samutsakorn, and Bangkok.  During a Dhutaṅga training, monks get to practice endurance, fortitude, compassion, giving, team spirit, concentration, awareness, and moment-to-moment meditation. As they journey barefoot, they meditate, share inner peace, and spread loving-kindness to all living beings.

The 1,131 monks on the Dhammachai Dhutaṅga pilgrimage come from different parts of Thailand. Yet, they are united by the mission to train themselves and to spread the message that “inner peace is prerequisite to external peace in any society and the world at large”.  Their peace journey also serves a tribute to honor the Buddha and the late Meditation Master Phramongkolthepmuni who rediscovered the Buddha’s key knowledge about the innate Body of Enlightenment (the Dhammakaya) which had been lost to the world about 500 years after His passing.

Although the annual Dhammachai Dhutaṅga pilgrimage is primarily for monks, many who had the opportunity to witness the group pilgrimage were inspired to learn and to practice the Buddha’s teachings.  It is one thing to know Dhamma from written or spoken words; it’s another to live it.  As the monks walk, they are putting their Dhamma practice to test.  It is obviously easier to meditate or to keep one’s mind still in a cool and quiet environment, and we all should find time to do that. But the fact is most of us live in an ever-expanding urban society and face many challenges – some of which are outside our control.  The only thing we ever have complete control over is our mind.  Therefore, it is important for us to train our mind to be calm and cool no matter where we are.  The Dhammachai Dhutaṅga monks are living proofs that inner peace is possible anywhere, under any condition – cold rain or scorching sun – and it begins from within.  They can do it, and so can you.

First time in history: Dhammachai dhutanga will transport the Buddha’s Relics to the international Buddhist Park in Nong khai

The pilgrimage to transport the Buddha’s relics will pass through six provinces: Ayutthaya, Saraburi, Nakhon Ratchasima, Khon Kaen, Udon Thani, and Nong Khai. Everyone will have a chance to pay reverence to the Buddha’s relics and over one thousand Dhutanga monks making the journey and help pave the pilgrimage route with marigold flower. This opportunity to accumulate great merit will lead to prosperity, longevity, peace and happiness for you and your family and the country of Thailand.<|endoftext|>News release

Severe turbulence led to loss of control of an ExpressJet flight in September 2014 near London, Ontario

Richmond Hill, Ontario, 06 July 2016 – Today, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) released its investigation report (A14O0165) into the loss of control occurrence near London, Ontario, involving an ExpressJet Airlines flight. There were no reported injuries to the 3 crew members or 26 passengers, and the aircraft was not damaged.

On 5 September 2014, an Embraer 145LR departed Grand Rapids, Michigan, destined for Newark Liberty International Airport, New Jersey. After departure, the aircraft deviated north of its intended track into Canadian airspace to avoid a line of thunderstorms, and climbed to its cruising altitude with the intention of navigating its way through them. The aircraft flew through a large thunderstorm that it could not avoid and encountered severe turbulence. The flight crew lost control of the aircraft and it descended rapidly, losing approximately 4000 feet, before they were able to regain control. The aircraft continued to its destination, where it landed safely.

The TSB investigation found that the flight crew anticipated that they would be able to navigate between thunderstorms. However, as the flight progressed, the line of thunderstorms intensified, and the intended route became obstructed. As well, the report observed that, during the loss of control, the flight crew momentarily applied flight control inputs that exacerbated the roll attitude of the aircraft. As a result, recovery time and altitude loss were increased. The investigation further found that when flight crews operate an aircraft outside of manufacturer recommendations and its limitations, there is a risk of compromising flight safety, resulting in injury to the occupants or damage to the aircraft.

Following this occurrence, ExpressJet Airlines improved dispatcher use of flight-following software, and developed policy and procedures related to adverse weather phenomena. ExpressJet Airlines also developed a training module for all ﬂight crew members to promote severe weather avoidance and weather radar utilization techniques to identify developing storm activity.

For more information, contact:
Transportation Safety Board of Canada
Media Relations
Telephone: 819-994-8053<|endoftext|>Dismiss Notice
Join Physics Forums Today!

Problem Solving

  1. Oct 24, 2011 #1
    1. Slay the dragon
    A knight needs to fight a dragon with 100 heads. The knight has 4 major moves each able to cut off a number of heads: Thrust (5 heads), Slash (15 heads), Chop (17 heads), and Berserk Slash (20 heads). However, for each attack the dragon grows back heads: Thurst (24 heads), Slash (2 heads), Chop (14 heads), and Berserk Slash (17 heads). The dragon can only be killed if the knight uses an attack that cuts of exactly all its remaining heads. (i.e. if the dragon has 10 heads left, it can't be killed in one attack, but if it has 20 it can). What is the minimum number of attacks required to kill the dragon?

    2. Strangely Familiar
    You are the communications engineer reporting directly to the commander of a communications intercept RVU (Radar Viewing Unit) which scans frequencies for possible enemy information on threats and reconnaissance. You have just intercepted a transmission, but part of it is garbled due to bad weather. The intercept is:
    A ? D F ? H J ? L
    where ? represents a garbled letter. What are the garbled letters? What advice do you give to your commander?
  2. jcsd
  3. Oct 31, 2011 #2

    I like Serena

    User Avatar
    Homework Helper

    1. Slay the dragon
    11: for instance 5 slashes, 5 chops, finishing it off with a berserk slash<|endoftext|>The Ego and the Italy

In Love Falls, novelist Esther Freud watches a daughter come to know her distant father

In Esther Freud's new novel, Love Falls, 17-year-old Lara dreams of Prince Charles "and his black Jamaican girlfriend searching for his trousers in her room. They giggled and flirted and made lustful, lascivious comments . . . and [Lara] had to hide under the covers for fear they would fall on to her bed." Now what would Freud's great-grandfather Sigmund have made of that?

Esther Freud is the daughter of painter Lucian Freud (and the sister of fashion designer Bella, grandchild of architect Ernest, niece of politician Clement, and grandniece of child psychologist Anna—goodness, what a family!). Unlike the illustrious Sigmund, this younger Freud doesn't much care for the interpretation of dreams, nor for the vagaries of the unconscious. (The detailing of Lara's dream is a rare exception.) A gentle materialist, Freud situates herself in her characters' conscious minds—what they see, taste, and touch, what they actively desire. Unconscious yearnings don't much interest her.

In her five previous novels, Freud has drawn on bits of her own life. "All my work is autobiographical in some way," she has said in interviews. Her best-known book, Hideous Kinky, details the childhood years spent living in Morocco with her sister and hippie mother. The other books aren't so