text:
U.S. adds 250,000 jobs in October, along with fat pay bump
Economists expected nonfarm payrolls grew by 200,000 in October with the unemployment rate forecast to hold at a multi-decade low of 3.7%. "These are incredible numbers", President Donald Trump co...
China Premier Li Keqiang is optimistic on US-China relations
The Nikkei was up 2.3% in Tokyo, the Hang Seng climbed 3.35% in Hong Kong and the Shanghai Composite was up 3%. Chinese tech stocks traded in the USA are surging Thursday after President Donald Tru...
Drunk Japan Airlines Pilot 'Almost 10 Times Over Limit', Arrested
Jitsukawa admitted to the improper conduct at Uxbridge Magistrates' Court in west London on Thursday and will remain in custody until he is sentenced on November 29. Officers carried out a blood test ...
Aurora Cannabis (ACB) Shares Gap Up to $7.97
There has been negative move seen around 50 SMAs. The Average True Range is an exponential moving average (14-days) of the True Ranges. Narrowing in a bit closer, the 5 month price index is 1.16390, t...
Drunk baggage handler falls asleep in cargo hold and flies to Chicago
Police say the handler, who did not have a cell phone during the flight, told them he was intoxicated and had fallen asleep. An American Airlines baggage handler fell asleep on the job and ended u...
Iran began trading oil on the Tehran stock exchange
In July, First Vice-President Eshaq Jahangiri said Iran would be looking to offer oil via the stock exchange to counter the U.S. sanctions on the country's oil exports. The United States has 8...
Tesla Summon to get manual control 'like big RC car'
Tesla chief executive Elon Musk has revealed that an updated version of the vehicle manufacturer's Summon feature will be introduced in less than six weeks. Summon, part of Tesla's driver-assist S...
US employment costs rise more than forecast as pay picks up
Total compensation for civilian workers in the United States increased 2.8 percent over the last 12 months, the report said - up from 2.5 percent. Wages have been the missing piece in the economic...
Trump asks officials to draft possible trade deal with China
The yuan also rallied to 6.8966 to the dollar - its best rate since mid-October - having hit 6.9302 earlier in the morning and is well off the 10-year lows around 6.97 on Thursday. In Beijing , that ...
Japan Airlines hit by new crew drinking incident
He was found to have 189mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood in his system - the legal limit for a pilot is 20mg. A Metropolitan Police spokesman said Jitsukawa pleaded guilty to exceeding the alcohol l...
Starbucks All-New Holiday Cups Actually Have A Christmas Theme This Year
But then you'd have to buy... doing the math... five holiday Starbucks drinks this season to recoup the cost. "Looking back at our heritage, we found something lovely in our own story, with attracti...
Italy's economy stalls as eurozone slows down
Draghi also insisted that the European Central Bank will keep interest rates at historic lows until late next year to support growth and encourage inflation towards the goal of just below 2.0 percent....
Chinese yuan weakens to 6.9574 against USD Tuesday
China's yuan hit a fresh 10-year low against the US currency yesterday, pushed lower by worries about slower growth in the domestic economy and a sharp escalation in the US-China trade war. A U.S. ...
Elon Musk: Teslas Will Soon Follow Their Owners 'Like a Pet'
Announcing major improvements for Tesla's Autopark ( Summon ) feature, CEO Elon Musk has said the company's electric vehicles would be able to find a parking spot and even read signs for parking i...
China's Official Manufacturing PMI Slides to 27-Month Low
That missed expectations for 50.6 and was down from 50.8 in September - although it remains above the boom-or-bust line of 50 that separates expansion from contraction. Earlier this month China's cent...
Trump releases new 'sickening,' 'racist' campaign ad | Campaign Trail
The Bracamontes video is one of at least two fear-based ad campaigns Trump has promoted on Twitter in recent days. The captions read: "Illegal immigrant, Luis Bracamontes , killed our people!" Tr...
Volkswagen launching autonomous ride-hailing service
The Israeli government supports the venture and will share required infrastructure and traffic data, the companies said. Both Mobileye co-founder and CEO Amnon Shashua and Volkswagen stated in 2017 ...
Britain, EU strike financial services deal — BREXIT
In a letter accepting his proposal of a November 21 evidence session, committee chair Hilary Benn said he was "disappointed" with the new Brexit Secretary's failure to follow the pattern of regu...
Lion Air crash: Flight recorders retrieved from sea
No survivors are expected. So far, Basarnas, military and police personnel have retrieved 49 body bags with human remains of at least a dozen people, said the Director of the National Police Hospita...
Ryanair changes luggage rules for second time in a year
The bag must be small enough to fit under the seat in front. They can pay between €6 - €8 to put it in the overhead locker above them. This means the Irish carrier is cutting the volume of cabin b...
Another exec out amid sex harassment tension at Google
In Silicon Valley, women also are becoming fed up with the male-dominated composition of the technology industry's workforce - a glaring imbalance that critics say fosters unsavory behavior akin to a ...
Victor of KFC's Baby Harland Naming Contest announced
KFC have given $11,000 to a couple who named their daughter after the chain's founder Colonel Sanders. KFC announced in August it was offering $11,000 in college tuition to the first baby named Harl...
RBI VS Centre face-off: What is Section 7 of RBI Act
Commenting on the rift between RBI and Centre, RSS economic wing head Ashwani Mahajan said that RBI Governor Urjit Patel must refrain his other officials from making differences in public. While it ...
No relief for home sellers as housing slump enters its second year
Property prices fell 0.7% in the city in October, the data showed, bringing the decline in the past 12 months to 7.4%. Over the past 12 months, the average median price in the capitals slumped 4.6%. "...
Canada Post strikes spread to PEI and Joliette, Que
Those three facilities process a million parcels a day. We need a contract. In a statement, Canada Post warns the Montreal walkout will have a significant impact on operations, since it is an import...
Q2 Results: Tata Motors Reports Greater-Than-Expected Loss On JLR Woes
Jaguar Land Rover has announced a £2.5bn turnaround plan after it slumped to a quarterly loss. Britain's biggest carmaker, owned by Indian conglomerate Tata, booked a £90 million pre-tax loss in th...
Safety alert over drones that drop out of sky after power failures
The incidents involved the flying devices "falling directly to the ground", according to the regulator. Some of the drones were damaged, but there are no reports of injuries or damage to property. C...
AA predicts petrol price drop for November
Likewise, as against the recommended increase of Rs13.22 per litre in the price of high speed diesel by the regulator, government has approved an increase of Rs6.37 per litre. It also added that if ...
GM offers buyouts to 18K salaried workers in North America
GM shares jumped almost 7 percent in early trading Wednesday to $35.76. The strong profit from GM's China joint venture came even with a budding tariff war with the USA and uncertainty over sales ...
India's war on red tape is working, says World Bank
PM Modi tweeted that he was "delighted". Commerce and industry minister Suresh Prabhu said the rise was because of a combination of factors. Jaitley pointed out that the areas where India needs ...
Hyundai and Kia to introduce solar roof charging system
Hyundai and Kia announced that the two automakers intend to bring solar-roof charging technology to its vehicles as early as 2019. The system will have the capability to charge the batteries of e...
Reese's Halloween Candy Converter Will Exchange Disappointment For Reese's
A company spokeswoman told the news outlet that, according to a survey commissioned by Reese's, 90% of Americans wish they could trade or have traded unwanted Halloween Candy. "What'd you expect from ...
Philip Hammond accused of gambling with the public finances
Despite differences over Northern Ireland, he said the two sides were "not far" from agreement over the terms of the so-called "backstop", which could see the whole of the United Kingdom remain in a t...
Brent oil prices dips on rising supply, global market woes
Oil has been caught in the global financial market slump this month, with equities under pressure from the trade conflict between the world's two largest economies, according to Asian Oil & Gas. At 14...
Cuadrilla halts fracking activity after latest quake
It followed two seismic movements of 0.8 on Friday and Saturday. "Well integrity has been checked and verified". There were fresh calls to stop fracking after it was again suspended at Cuadrilla's s...


text:
'Vulnerable blind female' assaulted and verbally abused on train
British Transport Police are looking to speak to the victim and any witnesses to the incident
British Transport Police (BTP) are appealing to find a 'vulnerable blind female' who was assaulted and verbally abused on a train.
The incident occurred on board a train travelling from Sheffield to Stockport between 12.15pm and 12.55pm on September 19.
The woman was pushed out of her seat and verbally abused by a group of drunk passengers.
Officers attended and identified the suspects at the scene, but are now appealing for witnesses to the incident to get in touch.
A spokesperson for BTP said: "In particular, the victim is still yet to come forward. Officers would urge her to get in touch so they can get her account of the incident and offer their support.
"If you have information about the incident, please contact BTP by texting 61016 or calling 0800 40 50 40 and quoting reference 260 of 19/10/18.
"Alternatively you can phone Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111."

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
"Bring Enough for Everyone": What We Lose When We Lose Public Education
January 21, 2014 by Lita Kurth Leave a Comment
Did your schoolteachers say, "Don't bring [candy, toys, coveted items] to school unless you bring enough for everyone"? Mine did. Maybe they recognized how incapable children are of understanding the fundamental injustice of wealth inequality, of some people having immensely desirable things that for some reason cannot be attained by others.
Those who endured segregation tell many tales of that awful day when they had to answer that question: Why can't I go there? Why them and not me?
Two-Tier Public Education
It strikes me now that where I grew up, people thought school should be, as much as possible, a place of equality. Now, even public schools have gone to a pay-as-you-go model with an amazing number of private companies with vested interests running the art classes, music classes, field trips, clubs, and sports. There are few luxuries and overwhelmingly, they are reserved for those who have means.
For example, at a high school I know of, a teacher runs a for-profit SAT-ACT tutoring company which he promotes at school meetings, offering prep classes—using school facilities— that parents have to pay for (There is always a vague mention of "scholarships for those on free and reduce lunches," which requires poor kids or their parents to step up, identify themselves as poor, and see if there are enough scholarships. In my experience, there have never been more than one or two. "And when that's gone, there's no more" as my mother used to say.)
It wasn't always like this
I went to a public high school in a small town during the 1970's. It was new. It had shiny new Chemistry and Biology labs with a Bunsen burner and a sink at every desk. There were good microscopes for every student or two. It had a big theatre with banked seats and several small theatres. It had a planetarium. It had fully equipped Wood Shop and Electric Shop classrooms and fully equipped Home Ec classrooms with sewing machines and kitchen ranges. It had band and orchestra practice rooms. It had five choirs and special practice rooms. Our school competed in choral events and toured for three days in our own state and another state. We didn't have to pay for our own robes, nor our coach, food and hotel (beyond a very small stipend which I could afford with my babysitting money)—although we did sell the records we cut and some choirs sang for pay in small venues.
We had a Debate class and students didn't pay for the hotel or lunch when we went to a tournament in a far-away town. We had a Math Club that competed at other schools. Of course, we had a student newspaper regularly printed, and a yearbook put together by students and sold for a reasonable sum.
Naturally, we had a football, basketball, and baseball team. Physical Education offered soccer, field hockey, tennis, gymnastics, basketball, volleyball. Oh, and as electives, even poor kids could take golf and skiing.
We had unionized teachers who taught besides the basics, Sociology, Psychology, Ethnic Studies, Computer Science, Debate, Theatre, Ecology, Business courses such as Typing and Bookkeeping. We had an active chapter of Future Farmers of America. We had Drivers' Ed. with school cars as well as a lab with simulators. We had a main library and several specialized study centers with their own books. Our library held subscriptions to dozens of magazines and newspapers. Foreign languages included Spanish, French, and German, and we had a language lab with practice tapes and booths.
I'm relying on my memory, so undoubtedly I'm forgetting some other amenities. The only parents who chose private schools were those who wanted a religious education. There were some rich people in town, but most of the school's population was not professional; it was farmers and workers. People were willing to be taxed to have a great education, and they didn't seem to begrudge poorer kids a great education. My college roommate also went to a fine public school where her Spanish class went to Mexico. These aspects of education were not considered outrageous.
Reserving the Best for the Richest
I live in a much richer area now, but the public school my daughter attends is a pale shadow of my former high school. It offers plays in a theatre shared with the middle school, or in the cafeteria. Some of the plays are farmed out to a nonprofit with low-paid assistants. It does offer AP courses, but the science labs don't have much equipment. When swimming classes for regular students were supposed to happen, the larger group had to do something else so that the few members of the Water Polo club could use the pool instead. Archery was supposed to be offered, but that too was cancelled because the field had to be improved for the baseball team.
Even with parents fund raising on a regular basis, students still need to buy some of their own books. The yearbook costs around $100, more than a day's work for a minimum wage parent, and of course, students make their own way to field trips which are often on Saturdays. This ensures that most of the school day is spent on "skills and drills," notecards, tests, and outlines.
I read in a newsletter that one teacher is leading a few students on a tour of Eastern Europe, obviously not with public support. So here and there, the more privileged parents arrange for special experiences. No one dreams of a Home Ec lab with sewing machines and ranges, or Drivers Ed using actual cars, though these classes are of critical importance to the poor. And the worst is that even the staff and some of the teachers don't see a problem with the enormous opportunity gap. It seems to be accepted that school, like the community around us, is divided into haves and have-nots. Why should it be different from the outer world where some students go to Africa for six weeks during the summer, and others can't go to the community center two blocks away for fear of being jumped by a gang.
Never Going Beyond the 'Hood
In the eighteenth century, most French peasants, except for soldiers, lived their entire lives within five miles of their homes. Small schools set up in poor neighborhoods offer a similarly restricted horizon: no sports competition with other schools, except cross-country, no choice of electives, lots of books and study sheets, not too much experiential learning. Unlike at a big high school where students at least have a chance of inter-class mingling, students at a small school in a poor neighborhood garner little social capital. And poor kids get into college but can't stay there; they can't find a place to be at home, a way to survive the disparities or have an identity they can stand.
Democracy is an Investment
It's guaranteed that the U.S. will lose its edge in the coming generations. We have chosen to throw away generations of research on how learning happens and with it, the students who needed real learning, the kind that leaves you with actual capabilities and confidence. In the name of saving money (to spend instead on locking people up), we have supplanted real expertise with spurious business models and "gamed" statistics. (For example, a public charter school can't kick students out, but it can declare that anyone with less than a B average will have to repeat the entire year—or switch to a truly public school that has to accept everyone. That massages their statistics nicely.)
We give teachers at the poorest schools an impossible job and then turn our backs, expecting them to be superhuman. "Waiting for Superman" is in that sense, very aptly named.
Parents still want a great education for their kids, but some who aren't even religious send kids to private religious schools because that's where the money is. The rest have been cowed into lower expectations. It's no coincidence that the TV airwaves are stuffed with winner-take-all shows. This is our model for school and society now: enormous windfalls for the winner; frenzied fruitless efforts for the rest.
Filed Under: Classism in K-12 Education Tagged With: education, kids, public school
About Lita Kurth
Lita Kurth grew up in rural poverty in Northern Wisconsin, but excellent public schools, low tuition, and a modicum of financial aid allowed her to attend college (University of Wisconsin). Starting out as an historian at UC Berkeley, she switched gears, working as a fund raising researcher and grant proposal writer until returning to get a degree in English Composition (San Francisco State) followed by an MFA in creative writing (Pacific Lutheran Rainier Writers Workshop). She has taught at numerous colleges and universities and currently teaches part-time at De Anza College, retaining a passionate interest in the suffering and injustice that still exists in the lives of poor and working class people, as well as other justice issues. She has published essays, reviews, stories, and poems, and is at work on a novel, The Rosa Luxemburg Exotic Dance Collective.
Class Action inspire action to end classism and extreme inequality by providing tools, training and inspiration to raise awareness, understand the relationship of class and race, shift cultural beliefs about social class, build cross-class solidarity and transform institutions and systems.


text:
Q: Сделал проверку для загрузки файлов, если больше 5 мб то выводить сообщение, что файл большой. Дело в том, что в общем все работает, работал с одними файлами, меньше и больше 5 мб. Все работало, скрипт отвечал, но потом решил другие файлы проверить, больше 10мб скрипт выводит что загружено, почему? Проверил около 10 файлов с размером больше 5 мб, некоторые загружает а некоторые нет. Это в chrome проверял, а в mozilla firefox вообще загружаю файл меньше 5 мб, ответ приходит, что он больше 5 мб. Что за фигня?
Вот обработчик
if($_FILES['myfile']){
    if(file_type($_FILES['myfile']['type']) AND $_FILES['myfile']['size'] < 5242880){
        $dir = "../demo/";
        $file_name = date("dyHmis");
        $file_type = file_type($_FILES['myfile']['type']);
            if(move_uploaded_file($_FILES['myfile']['tmp_name'], "$dir$file_name$file_type")){
            $namemuz = $_FILES['myfile']['name'];
            $str = substr($namemuz, 0, -4);
            $direct = "http://mackay.kz/music/demo/";
            $urltrack = "$direct$file_name$file_type";

                    mysql_query("INSERT INTO `mackaykz_music`.`demos` (`namedemo`, `link`) VALUES ('$str', '$urltrack');");
            }
    }else{
            echo 'недопустимо';
    }
}

Вот js
    onComplete : function(file, result) {
              if(result == "недопустимо"){
                  $("#uploadtrack").text('Загрузка трека');
                  $("#filemassage").html('Извините, но файл привышает размер 5 мб.');
                  this.enable();
              }else{
                  $("#uploadtrack").text('Загрузка трека').animate({position: 'relative', top: '-45px'},60);
                   $("#sendermodalwin").fadeIn(50).animate({position: 'relative', top: '-54px'},60);
                   var str = file.substring(0, file.length - 4);
                    $('#namedemostrokes').text(str);
                  $("#filemassage").html('Демка была загружена:
' + str +'
<audio autoplay controls src="' + result +'" ></audio>');
                    $("#linkdemomain").text(result);
                  this.enable();
              }
    }

A: Проверяйте
$_FILES['myfile']['error']

Там содержится код ошибки, а значит загрузка не была завершена, поэтому размер файла 0, что меньше 5млн по условию проверки.
Помимо этого Ваш код уязвим к SQL-инъекциям по двум позициям: в filename и mime можно передать что угодно. Проверяйте эти данные прежде чем вставлять их в запрос к базе данных.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


1977 QUEEN ELIZABETH SILVER JUBILEE WELSH STUDIO POTTERY PLATE.
Please click on the "ROYAL COMMEMORATIVE" link at the end of the list to the left to open the full royalty catalog or "COMMEMORATIVES" to open everything else. Royalty items are in approximate date order. Commemoratives include Military, Political, Winston Churchill, Boer War, Crimea war, World War I & II, Paragon Patriotic, Worlds Fairs, Temperance, ABC Plates etc.
Size: 10 3/4" - 27cm.
An unusual royal commemorative Silver Jubilee 1952-1977 stoneware plate. The rear has the impressed marks 'J.H.(Probably Janet Hamer) and 'Ponthir' (A town in south east Wales). In good condition with a little loss of color (lower left). No chips or cracks.


View basket "Cheese Paddle (Small)" has been added to your basket.
Patrick Francis Diamond Silk Tie in Navy and Purple. This 100% Irish Made Genuine Silk Tie is from the famous Irish designer Patrick Francis and features intricate designs inspired by the Book of Kells. This is a thoughtful choice for your corporate visitors and conference speakers who deserve a sumptuous Celtic gift to remind them of time spent with you.


text:
Q: oc.lazyload not working with ui-router, js loaded but controller not initialized I'm trying to use ui-router with lazyload, from chrome I can see the required js is loaded but angular throws an error.
From the error I can tell the controller is not initialised, attached the router code:
var app = angular.module('aaaaa', ['oc.lazyLoad', 'ui.router']);

app.config(function($stateProvider, $urlRouterProvider) {
  $urlRouterProvider.otherwise('/pages/dashboard');

  $stateProvider.state('index', {
    url: '/pages/:name',
    templateUrl: function($stateParams) {
      return 'templates/' + $stateParams.name + '.html';
    },
    controllerProvider: function($stateParams) {
      return $stateParams.name;
    },
    resolve: {
      loader: ['$ocLazyLoad', '$stateParams', function($ocLazyLoad, $stateParams) {
        var url = 'templates/controllers/' + $stateParams.name + '.js';
        console.log(url);

        return $ocLazyLoad.load({
          name: 'aaaaa',
          files: [url]
        });
      }]
    }
  });
});

Am I missing something?

A: I would refactor your resolve.loader function as such:
loader: ['$ocLazyLoad', '$stateParams', function($ocLazyLoad, $stateParams) {
  var url = 'templates/controllers/' + $stateParams.name + '.js';

  return $ocLazyLoad.load(url).then(function () {
    return $stateParams.name;
  });
}]

Now, when ocLazyLoad has successfully loaded your controller code, we return the name of your controller (I'm assuming it's actual name matches that of $stateParams.name, as that is how you are referring to it in the controllerProvider).
And then in the controllerProvider:
controllerProvider: function (loader) {
  return loader;
}

controllerProvider nowadays accept the resolved values, not just stateParams - as per the following commit: ui-router#851f8e46.
This was introduced in 0.2.14 and has since been changed again, it now has support for resolved values in the templateUrl function aswell.

So as an aside, you could pass loaded into your templateUrl function as opposed to `$stateParams.name if you upgrade to 0.2.15. One value to rule 'em all?

For the heck of it, I would put a debugger statement at the top of your controllerProvider function beforehand to inspect the $stateParams.name and ensure it is the same as that of $stateParams.name inside the resolve.loader function. For the heck of it.

Also, it could prove very helpful to see the error thrown, the dev console output as well as the implementation details of your controller / module.

A: Problem resolved.
In the separate controller file, you can't write this,
app.controller ('xxx', [ ... ]);

Instead, use
angular.module('xxxx').controller ('xxx', [ ... ])

I don't know why yet, but it worked.


text:
<?php

namespace gordian\reefknot\input\validate\prop;

/**
 * Test class for AnyOf.
 * Generated by PHPUnit on 2012-01-01 at 13:59:48.
 */
class AnyOfTest extends \PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase
{

	/**
	 * @var gordian\reefknot\input\validate\prop\AnyOf
	 */
	protected $object;

	/**
	 * Helper for building mock props
	 *
	 * @param mixed $value
	 * @param bool $isValid
	 * @return gordian\reefknot\input\validate\iface\Prop
	 */
	protected function makeStubProp ($value = NULL, $isValid = true)
	{
		$studProp	= $this -> getMockBuilder ('gordian\reefknot\input\validate\iface\Prop')
					-> disableOriginalConstructor ()
					-> getMock ();

		$studProp	-> expects ($this -> any ())
					-> method ('setData')
					-> will ($this -> returnValue ($studProp));

		$studProp	-> expects ($this -> any ())
					-> method ('getData')
					-> will ($this -> returnValue ($value));

		$studProp	-> expects ($this -> any ())
					-> method ('isValid')
					-> will ($this -> returnValue ($isValid));

		return ($studProp);
	}

	/**
	 * Sets up the fixture, for example, opens a network connection.
	 * This method is called before a test is executed.
	 */
	protected function setUp ()
	{
		$this -> object = new AnyOf (array ('props' => array ($this -> makeStubProp (111, true))));
	}

	/**
	 * Test that NULL values pass validation.
	 */
	public function testIsValidNullPasses ()
	{
		$cfg	= array (
			'props'	=> array (
				$this -> makeStubProp (123, false),
				$this -> makeStubProp (456, false),
				$this -> makeStubProp (789, false)
			)
		);

		$this -> object	-> setConfig ($cfg)
						-> setData (NULL);

		$this -> assertTrue ($this -> object -> isValid ());
	}

	/**
	 * Test that validation passes if the value is valid for one property
	 */
	public function testIsValidOneValidPasses ()
	{
		$cfg	= array (
			'props'	=> array (
				$this -> makeStubProp (123, false),
				$this -> makeStubProp (456, false),
				$this -> makeStubProp (789, true)
			)
		);

		$this -> object	-> setConfig ($cfg)
						-> setData (789);

		$this -> assertTrue ($this -> object -> isValid ());

	}

	/**
	 * Test that validation passes if the value is valid for all properties
	 */
	public function testIsValidAllValidPasses ()
	{
		$cfg	= array (
			'props'	=> array (
				$this -> makeStubProp (123, true),
				$this -> makeStubProp (456, true),
				$this -> makeStubProp (789, true)
			)
		);

		$this -> object	-> setConfig ($cfg)
						-> setData (123);

		$this -> assertTrue ($this -> object -> isValid ());

	}

	/**
	 * Test that validation fails if the value is invalid for all properties
	 */
	public function testIsValidAlllInvalidFails ()
	{
		$cfg	= array (
			'props'	=> array (
				$this -> makeStubProp (123, false),
				$this -> makeStubProp (456, false),
				$this -> makeStubProp (789, false)
			)
		);

		$this -> object	-> setConfig ($cfg)
						-> setData (191);

		$this -> assertFalse ($this -> object -> isValid ());
	}

	/**
	 * Test that trying to configure with no data triggers an InvalidArgumentException
	 *
	 * @expectedException \InvalidArgumentException
	 */
	public function testSetConfigEmptyThrowsException ()
	{
		$cfg	= array ();
		$this -> object -> setConfig ($cfg);
	}

	/**
	 * Test that trying to configure with no prop data triggers an InvalidArgumentException
	 *
	 * @expectedException \InvalidArgumentException
	 */
	public function testSetConfigNoPropsThrowsException ()
	{
		$cfg	= array ('foo' => 'bar');
		$this -> object -> setConfig ($cfg);
	}

	/**
	 * Test that trying to set a props with invalid data triggers an InvalidArgumentException
	 *
	 * @expectedException \InvalidArgumentException
	 */
	public function testSetConfigInvalidPropsThrowsException ()
	{
		$cfg	= array ('props' => pi ());
		$this -> object -> setConfig ($cfg);
	}

	/**
	 *
	 * @expectedException \InvalidArgumentException
	 */
	public function testSetConfigInvalidPropsThrowsException2 ()
	{
		$cfg	= array (
			'props' => array (
				new \stdClass (),
				new \stdClass (),
				new \stdClass ()
			)
		);
		$this -> object -> setConfig ($cfg);
	}

	/**
	 * Test that trying to set an empty props triggers an InvalidArgumentException
	 *
	 * @expectedException \InvalidArgumentException
	 */
	public function testSetConfigEmptyNeedleThrowsException ()
	{
		$cfg	= array ('props' => array ());
		$this -> object -> setConfig ($cfg);
	}

	/**
	 * Test that valid needles can be passed to the object
	 */
	public function testSetConfigPasses ()
	{
		$cfg		= array (
			'props' => array (
				$this -> makeStubProp (123, false),
				$this -> makeStubProp (pi (), true),
				$this -> makeStubProp (array (1, 2, 3), false),
				$this -> makeStubProp ('The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog', true)
			)
		);
		$this -> object -> setConfig ($cfg);
		$this -> assertSame ($this -> object -> getConfig (), $cfg);
	}
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


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text:
Try To Act Normal
It's life that's unsatisfactory.
A Taste of TESOL
I let a couple of days pass without writing anything because my feelings of uselessness in retirement were gnawing at me. Weeks slipped by, but a remedy turned up.
Two years ago I accompanied my wife on a sabbatical to Lucca, in Tuscany, where we went to school to learn some Italian. The method by which the Koinè Center taught us was communicative: all Italian, generous encouragement to speak, little correction of errors as long as what we said was comprehensible. After three months I came away with enough language to converse with a patient native speaker, read the newspaper and derive something (though at times not much) from Italian talk radio. To Italians who, hearing my American accent wanted to exercise their English, I explained, Sono qui per imparare l'Italiano, and they would graciously let me have my way.
Once we got home, lest I lose what I didn't use, I read and discussed La Coscienza di Zeno with a retired Italian teacher, and wrote little stories for him, until he went back to Napoli for the summer. I replaced those lessons by joining a Meetup group of Italian speakers, where I met a woman who had lived in Italy and Spain, spoke those languages fluently, and made her living teaching English as a second language by what, she explained, was the communicative method my Italian school in Lucca used.
What was teaching like? How did she get into it? We chatted in Italian, and afterwards in English. She started in Europe with no more qualification than being a native speaker, but there are courses that teach you how, and give you a certificate. Hmm… Might I sit in on a class to see what it's like?
Over these weeks I have visited free ESL classes for new immigrants in a public school as a guest fly-on-the-wall, and visited a TOEFL preparation class a member of my writers' group teaches at a nearby college. I get it: the victories and humiliations of my months in Lucca helped me understand what was going on and appreciate the teachers' grace and professionalism.
I wanted to do it myself, so I visited, applied to and interviewed at three schools around the city that teach you to Teach English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL, which is about the same as Teach English as a Second Language, TESL, and Teach English as a Foreign Language, TEFL). The courses run full time for four weeks, certify if you pass that you know how, and cost two and a half times my 1963 medical school tuition.
I might have signed up on impulse for one that started four days after my visit, but I have given hostages to fortune: commitments to be places, do things, travel on non-refundable airline tickets. While I mulled the possibilities, the teacher at the free ESL class dubbed me a volunteer sort-of-teacher's-aide, and let me teach part of a lesson. I thought it would be easy, but I mistook where the class was, tried something a bit too hard, and felt I'd bombed–but (after she had tidied up the mess I had made, with aplomb) she said that everyone does that at first, and not to worry.
For now I shall continue to sit in, and study my calendar for the fall. Stay tuned.
Unnecessary X-ray Vision: the Doctor as Superman
The art and science of unnecessary radiation has come a long way since I was a boy. The recent New York Times article and the comments thereto don't quite convey the flavor of where we used to be.
At the end of WWII I was a small boy living in middle class comfort in a not-yet fashionable side street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. My educated parents, an assistant district attorney and a high school Spanish teacher, cared about my health and promoted it about as well as anyone in their position at the time.
My mother made sure I had orange juice for breakfast, and I had to finish my glass of whole milk before before she administered my vitamins and tonics. Vegetables bought fresh from Mr. Mazella's shop four blocks away graced our table. My father smoked a pipe, my mother cigarettes. They took me to a pediatrician for checkups.
At every checkup good old Doctor Anderson poked, prodded and listened, but he got the real inside story by performing a fluoroscopy. In a dim room filled with banks of science-fictiony equipment they sandwiched me stripped to my skivvies between a huge machine behind me and a cold flat plate in front of me. Dr. Anderson, who had covered his white coat with what I remember as a thick red rubber apron with a high bib and a hem that touched his shoes, stood across the room. My mother, wearing her fashionable suit, sat erect on a steel stool beside him. I watched them over the top of the plate as he donned red ski goggles and commanded the machine with a device connected to a cable wrapped in shiny metal. The room darkened. The machine buzzed and hummed as a Halloween image of my bones and organs danced on a screen on their side of the plate. I enjoyed it in a mirror on the wall behind them, reversed left for right.
Doctor Anderson narrated a leisurely tour of my organs, pointing out items of special interest with the same six-foot wooden pointer a later ancient history teacher would use to locate Athens and Sparta on a pull-down map in the front of the classroom. My mother's cigarette glowed brighter than the image in the mirror as I learned to control the show by holding my breath, swallowing, coughing.
The fluoroscopy was the last diagnostic procedure of the checkup. Inoculations came next, and afterward I dressed so my mother and I could receive pronouncements and prescriptions in twin leather chairs across the huge desk from the doctor.
I liked seeing my innards on the screen so much that in later years I went half a mile out of my way home from school to wiggle my toes in the shoe-fitting fluoroscope at a Thom McAn store. Now, of course, I find the idea that Dr. Anderson's fluoroscopic examination led to any therapeutic decision preposterous, and dismiss the shoe machine as a sad manifestation of a dark age.
No harm has come to me from all that radiation, so far. As an orthopaedic surgeon I wore a radiation badge to track what was going on in the hours I spent around x-ray machines. Now my dentist shields my thyroid and gonads with lead when she makes images of my teeth. As low as the radiation dose from airport backscatter machines may be, the harm is stochastic; that is, every little bit adds its little bit to the risk of harm. I haven't been offered such a screening yet, but since the complications of a patdown (delay, embarrassment) are easier to get past than the complications of radiation (cancer), I might decline the machine.
It's good we are more aware of the issues. Everyone should pay attention, and bring to the question of which x-ray to have, if any, the same horse-sense she would employ in buying, say, a new refrigerator.
Images courtesy of New Haven Health and National Museum of Health and Medicine
Rest for the Tired Mind
What tires the mind is apt to be a computer task: finishing an article by a deadline; sorting a year's paperwork for taxes; doing something about enough email so that what remains in the inbox will fit on one screen. I work at it until I can do no more, and then what? I could walk outside or work out at the gym, or see if someone wants to meet for a cup of coffee. But in the moment I consider what might be possible, I am sitting before this lovely, powerful device that connects me to worlds beyond my reach, facts I don't know, and a universe of possibility through its colorful screen.
Computer games lurk a few keystrokes away. Think of it: I don't have to move, and in less than a minute I shall be delighting in the easy elegance of this device. But I haven't done well at the games I've tried, or cared much for them. I'll admit my incoordination and inexperience, but stand up for my gloomy sense that such play wastes time and attention, and therefore life. (Before you dismiss my attitude as a loser's whine, remember that I had sufficient sitzfleisch for medical school and dexterity for orthopaedic surgery.)
I did get caught up in computer mahjong solitaire, where I found something soothing in applying my full attention to a puzzle that was simple but not easy, and surprisingly satisfying when won. The swoosh sound the virtual pieces make when they disappear from the board has a certain appeal. But I tired of it, even though it reminded me of my brief flurry with real mahjong, when the physical tiles in their leather box possessed some of the shiny appeal of my computer.
People I love and respect play solitaire games a lot, computer and otherwise. My better half recovers from writing lectures by playing Sudoku, or solo computer Scrabble; as I write she is sharing a new enthusiasm for KenKen with one of the twin house guests whose presence has kept me from blogging for a week. They are amused and absorbed, but I have found something I like better.
A search for a passage I wanted to quote from a book I read when I was ten led me to Project Gutenberg, from where I discovered Distributed Proofreaders. As they scan old books which have passed out of copyright, they need the texts to be proofread to correct errors in the OCR output. You can volunteer to do some on line, at your convenience. (It's the same kind of sharing as the SETI@home screensaver, which you can think of as the same kind of relief for your computer's mind.) Distributed Proofreaders shows you how to do it. A page or two takes about as long as a game of mahjongg, and demands the same kind of attention. For me, it provides a similar satisfaction when I win (i.e. finish a page). You can do as little as a single page or as many pages as you want. And participation offers two additional rewards.
First, you get to read about something you might never have dipped into otherwise. In the few weeks I have been doing this I have read from Experiments on Animals, The Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville, Principles and Practice of Fur Dressing and Fur Dyeing, Metapsychical Phenomena and Lorenzo de' Medici, the Magnificent—among others. And second, what you accomplish when you finish a page helps the world in a way that playing with images that disappear when you are done does not. Try a page; you might like it.
Images courtesy of Mia Bruksman, Shurikane and Liz West.
I Was a Cheerful Omnivore
When I get caught up in a book, I'm apt to recommend it as if it were the best book I'd ever read, because at that moment it's the only one in my head. David Grossman's To The End of the Land grabbed me that way.
I want the friends I recommend a book to to share my experience undiluted and undistorted, to read the book as I did, unladen with either expectations or knowledge. This austerity infuriates my wife. Why should I read it, she demands, if you won't even say what it's about?
Okay. It's about a family in a land at war, and what that does to those who go off to war, and to the others. The piece I want to hold on to for a moment appears when a boy between his childhood and becoming a soldier demands his parents explain to him where meat comes from. Wishing to spare their son that knowledge of killing, their awkward answer makes him a vegetarian for some years of his adolescence. That decision of his set against other decisions he makes, moved me, and ought to move you. Enough said.
To the End of the Land is set in Israel and translated from the Hebrew; its protagonists are Jewish; kashrut is in its air. A few weeks after I read it, I stumbled across Eat Not This Flesh, Frederick J. Simoons's fascinating (I was going to say, 'delicious') scholarly account of food avoidances in many cultures through history. He explores people who eschew pork, or beef, or fish, or fowl, or dogs, or horses, and the religious, historical, practical and cultural reasons they do so. I couldn't put it down.
Let me offer you a taste. In 1973, Simoons tells us, nutritious, low-fat, reasonably priced, legally slaughtered horsemeat was subject to federal inspection, and a horsemeat shop in Connecticut set up fifteen franchises in New England and New York which sold 4000 to 5000 pounds a day. Tongans learned to like horsemeat from European missionaries, and from the mid-1950s (many of them Mormons) migrated to Utah, where they purchased horses to eat. This impaired their public image and made their children the butt of jokes in school. When in 1983, a Hartford, Connecticut packing company sold horse patties and steaks in Utah through the Harmon's, Inc. supermarket chain, stock sold out quickly—until public protest by 200 horse lovers led Harmon's to stop selling it and leave the Tongans on their own. (pp.192 ff.)
Or a bit further afield:
"Dog eating in modern sub-Saharan Africa is found mainly in the rain forest and adjacent savannas of West Africa and the Congo Basin, where to some groups it is a preferred form of flesh. […] Dog eaters in central Nigeria have special names for dog parts, which derive from a perceived resemblance between the dog and a Peugeot 404 station wagon. The dog itself is called 404 station wagon; its head, gearbox or loudspeaker; its legs, 404 wheels […]" (p.229)
For what it's worth, I don't think I've eaten a dog, but I found my cavallo in Puglia the sweetest pot roast ever. This should help establish my credentials as a cheerful omnivore. I wasn't always: this skinny kid whose mother had a cooking disorder, as a New Yorker cartoon had it, grew from liking nothing into an adventurous eater, married a marvelous cook, and when I found myself responsible for feeding myself, I discovered that if I apply to making dinner about a third of the care, planning and attention to detail that orthopaedic surgery demands, the results will delight me, please others and nourish all. I like sharp knives, cast iron, good wines, and the savory better than the sweet. I admire the work of Michael Pollan and Mark Bittman. (I'll write about appetite another time; despite everything, when I got out of bed this morning I weighed the same as I did the month Buddy Holly and the Crickets recorded That'll be the Day.)
With all this in my head, I picked up Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals. Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food had made me aware of the subsidized corn monoculture and the evils of factory farms, and led a portion of a locally grass-fed beefalo into my basement freezer. Foer's book, however, upset me. I hadn't realized how completely factory farming, with its cruelty to animals, brutalization of employees and impairment of the quality and healthfulness of meat most Americans eat has replaced the kind of farm or ranch I thought my animal protein came from. And the way Foer writes about his concern for his son and the example he would set by eating and feeding him food from these places resonated with the feelings Ofer's vegetarianism in To the End of the Land provoked.
Foer has become a vegetarian, and he has made me uncomfortable. Might I stop eating animals over these issues? I don't think so, but the truth is that I don't know. I frown on activists who don't bear witness themselves: I stopped smoking cigarettes in 1963 in the era of the Surgeon General's report because it would have been wrong to go to medical school as a smoker. Now I shall take more interest in where the animals I eat come from, and how they got here from there. I can cook hearty, tasty meatless meals that will satisfy me and many vegetarians, but the dinner table I share with another omnivore matters, too. Give up meat? For good? Is that what the question is?
A Little Perio and a Little Anatomy
Fear and ignorance led me to stall for three months between my dentist's suggestion that I see a periodontist and my doing so. When in the sixties I told my thesis director, an obsessive Austrian with military posture, that I wouldn't be in the lab the next afternoon because I had to see a periodontist, he barked, "Don't!" I jumped. Why not? "Once the gum dentists get a hold on you, they never let go!" I took that for a warning, not humor, and declined the attentions that first gum dentist offered, but in the army a few years later, I let a full bird colonel do terrible things to me for reasons, which, in retrospect, did not convince, and after that I steered clear.
Nevertheless, here I was again with deep pockets and deep pockets. It turned out that the man she referred me to had treated an old friend of mine, who spoke well of him. The periodontist in person was clear, kind, straightforward, young enough to remember his training and old enough for humility about what treatment could achieve. We set a date for him to scale my roots.
He greeted me, acknowledged that my experience of the injection could be negative, characterized the swab and the needle stick to follow as 'little,' but never said 'just.' Once numbness had set in, he went to town on my upper teeth while I, soothed by Donizetti through ear buds, ignored him. I rinsed. Now for the lowers, he said. Is your tongue numb? It was not, nor were my lower teeth. When the block doesn't work you go high and wide, he said, and injected more anesthetic.
More minutes, but no less feeling. My gum dentist frowned. Let me give it a try, he proposed, but his first ultrasonic dig left me ready to betray the movement and confess anything. Yet one more injection scarcely dulled what I felt when I tapped my tooth and left the sensation of my tongue and the skin over my jaw intact.
Something like this had happened before. Other dentists who had had trouble numbing my left lower teeth opined that I had an anatomical variation that made the block hard to do, but in the end they always succeeded. This periodontist and I stared at each other: it was a node, a moment of decision. I will try to be good, I mouthed carefully, if you will try not to compromise what you have to do.
What followed rated solid sixes and sevens with a scattering of eights and a nine or two for crown jewels. When it was over, my shirt was soaked, my mind addled, yet that second part of the procedure seemed quicker than the upper half. In the afternoon I felt wrecked and couldn't concentrate so I put in some miles on an exercise bike at the gym. I needed cocktail hour and a night's sleep to regain my composure.
The next day, with half my mouth still unscaled, I wondered how rare my odd wiring might be. A 2007 article in the Journal of Dental Education quotes an anesthesia handbook to the effect that the standard inferior alveolar block I had is "one of the first clinical skills students learn in dental school," but it has a fifteen to twenty percent failure rate when properly administered. Another article blames improper technique for more failures than anatomic variation. Other less familiar ways to block the nerve named Gow-Gates and Akinosi may have higher rates of success without more complications, but seem to be used less because "alternatives to the conventional inferior alveolar nerve block remain, for the most part, absent from formal predoctoral dental training in the United States."
The Gow-Gates technique, described here, may, indeed, have been the way my periodontist did my last, partially successful injection. Note that Doctor Spiller calls the external target for the tip of the needle the "intertragal notch" (the notch between the tragus and the antitragus), while the illustration he provides labels that structure "intertragic." Today, looking back, I consider my experience in the chair to have been troublesome rather than tragic. In a few weeks I shall return to that chair with my ignorance reduced; I'll estimate my fear as the day gets closer.
The Stock Market and Matters of State
When the Dow put its toe over the (arbitrary) 12,000 line I was reminded of how much I valued the wisdom I found some thirty-odd years ago in Mamis and Mamis's When to Sell. Their subtitle is Inside Strategies for Stock Market Profits, but I thought then, and see even more clearly now, that what they had to say should be proclaimed no less on Main Street and Pennsylvania Avenue than on Wall Street.
The authors' main point is that amateur investors are most comfortable sitting with losses because they cling to the hope that the stock they bought would go up rather than see its decline for what it is, evidence that the stock is not doing what they supposed it would do. Hope is not a strategy. "By not selling," they write, "by tightly holding on to his stocks, the investor never has to face reality."
This is not to say that the wise investor must realize every small loss that comes his way, or that he should cash in every small gain—only that he must acknowledge that the changes are real. The price of my stock or my soybeans may go up this afternoon, or it may go down, but right now it is what it is, and that's all I can get for it, and it might be better to take that than to lose more. The past is gone and the future doesn't exist. You have to decide without being certain, and sometimes you will be wrong.
I read When to Sell for the first time during an unhappy year toward the end of a marriage. Waist-deep in unhappiness, shame and lawyers, my commitment to the idea of (permanent) marriage remained deeper and wider than the commitment anyone would make to a stock, which should be no more than the money one paid for it. But wishing and hoping had not made things better, so I moved on.
Beyond the personal, the authors recognize the application of their idea to the political. With regard to Viet Nam, they quote Peter Bourne to the effect that
"The overwhelming desire for the success of policies to which a strong emotional attachment has been made also leads to an attempt to alter those facts over which one has control, making them consistent with the outcome that is desired. It is as though there is an expectation at a magical level that events over which one has no control will then also fall into the desired pattern."
More precisely, it is not the facts, but the selection and report of the facts that a public figure may control. When the audience is the nation, when the motive to control morphs from a hapless hope for magic through passivity before the momentum of past decisions to a wicked wish to impose a personal goal on everyone else, decisions get made that don't serve the people who pay and bleed for them.
Even though a member of the body politic may not be privy to all the intelligence the president has about bank regulation or Afghanistan or global warming, she has the right, even a certain obligation, to consider what she does know and form an opinion. The real control the small investor has over his stocks is not over what the price is, which is the fact of the situation, but over whether or not he sells. In regard to matters not of stocks but of state, the citizen who thinks it's time to sell or prefers we go the distance need not wait for a phone call from a pollster to express that opinion. She has a vote, but need not wait for an election. Anyone with a pen or a phone can let elected representatives and editors of newspapers and their friends and their networks know what they think.
Image courtesy of hmerinomx via Flickr.
Of Posts, Pests and Pasts
It's snowing again, daylight pale, hues muted. I have set myself the morning task of writing another post, yet I find myself immobile, gazing out at individual snowflakes swirling through the spaces between the branches of trees, telephone poles, mounds of snow on cars; studying shapes, contours, textures. All that detail delights me.
Some years back, as part of an effort to see the world as it is, I set out to teach myself to draw. I bought a sketch pad, pencils and an eraser, and made all-but-daily efforts to render what I saw: strangers in public places, buildings and statues, landscapes, flowers, objects on tables. It was hard to do, and absorbing; it made the rest of the world fade out in a way that pleased me. Trying to render what I saw made me look harder, and as I did so, and moved the pencil on the paper, what I drew became my own. Ruskin was right: drawing also changed the way I visit art museums. Once I stopped comparing my results with, say, Ingres's, I could enjoy trying to figure out how the master did what he did—but I also enjoyed envisioning what he must have seen, in order to draw it that way.
I think the trick isn't in the doing, it's in the seeing. For me, the hard part of learning to do surgery was not manipulating the tools, but seeing, and understanding, the structures that needed to be fixed. Once you get a good look at the problem (and that requires making the incision in the right place), you ought to be able to do something about it. After that some surgeons make it look hard, others make it look easy, and there will be differences in how things come out, just as two students copying from the blackboard will do so with different handwriting.
In any case, I took yesterday's bright sunshine and uncommitted morning to make my first visit to the MFA's new Arts of the Americas wing. Another time I may write more about visiting museums and about that museum. For now, let me say that during the hour before the school groups and their vocal docents arrived, when I had the nineteenth-century floor almost to myself, the richness of the collection overwhelmed me. When the alarm on my phone reminded me that I had to go home to meet the Orkin man, it was hard to tear myself away.
He parked nearby and rang the doorbell. He had negotiated pest control services with my wife a year ago, while I was away. After six pest-free years we had canceled periodic carpenter ant treatments only to find a thousand of them in a porch under repair two years later. When he came to control them, he found termites in the wood pile, though not in the house.
We exchanged pleasantries and started our tour in the basement. The treatment of pests in old houses was likely to be chronic, he remarked. I understood: it was something like periodontia. He chuckled. We swapped periodontist stories. Complete cures were an ideal, I said, and since I had been an orthopaedic surgeon, I knew whereof I spoke.
He fixed me with an odd squint. Oh, where did you work? I told him. You fixed my ruptured Achilles, he proclaimed. He told me his name. I studied his face. He showed me his (gratifyingly fine) scar. He had done so well that he had returned to playing over-40 league soccer until he ruptured his anterior cruciate ligament in another game, and after he recovered from that, he gave up soccer.
That he had done so well made me feel good. The moment was a welcome change from my habit of mind which remembers patients who did not do well more easily than the ones who did. It's a habit I don't like, but I haven't been able to break it. The transaction with a patient has always felt more 'over' when he feels 'completely cured' than when he is left with symptoms, or can't return to his previous level of function. Of course, who of a certain age can function the way he once did?
So maybe this bad habit of mind which has plagued me over the years is just another failure to see and accept the world as it is. I can't help how I see things, but I am beginning to get the idea that the way I see them may not be the way they look to someone else.
Notes from the Blizzard of 2011
Without television and Internet and computer models we should have expected nothing. The eleventh turned raw and damp before the cloudy sky faded to black with nothing falling out of it. The next morning I awakened to silence, and snow so deep it muted the high-pitched part of the sound of steel scraping asphalt.
I bundled myself in a warm sweater and padded downstairs. Furnace working, steps and sidewalk a foot deep, more falling fast. City plows had already constructed a three-foot rampart across the mouth of our driveway. If the newspaper had been delivered—unlikely—black truths and yellow journalism alike lay concealed under a white blanket. I went downstairs to drink coffee I had roasted in fading sunshine the morning before.
What do you do on a snow day when all quotidian obligations are canceled or postponed? Curl up with a good book? Skype the meteorologically better-favored? Push toward a new blog post? Light up a joint and spend the day in bed? Start a new game of Diplomacy? Or shovel your snow?
We live on a corner, where we get more light in summer and more snow in winter. A few years back, the city built a traffic-calming bulge on our corner where plow drivers leave me compacted wads of other peoples' snow to dig. But shoveling snow offers the same secret obsessive satisfactions as washing the blackboard did in school.
Snow on the sidewalk outside my house, which is not my property, becomes as much my responsibility as what falls in my driveway, which is. Because the city forbids me to abandon my snow in the public street, and because my house and my neighbor's bound our shared driveway so closely, I must carry what falls into it out to the street shovelful by shovelful, and away from the driveway's mouth, to pile it on top of the rampart the plow makes at the edge of the sidewalk. The pile I construct must be secure as an igloo to avoid collapse either way.
How much snow confronted me? On our 160 feet of sidewalk the city demands a walkway three feet wide, but that looks stingy, and the melt-freeze after a storm can turn so narrow an alley into a skating rink, even salted. Out of concern for mothers pushing prams and oldsters pulling shopping carts I do four. So let's see. Four feet times 160 feet means 640 cubic feet of snow for each foot that falls before I start the steps or the path or the driveway. A good eight hundred cubic feet for each foot that falls, and they predicted a foot and a half.
According to Reade Advanced Materials, freshly fallen snow weighs ten pounds a cubic foot, and compacted snow, like what the plows leave, thirty. Call it twenty on average, though the weathermen warned that our blizzard would bring wet, heavy snow. I would have over a ton of snow to lift two or three feet when I started and four or even five as I built the rampart taller. I had only to lift what fell along the sidewalk, but I would have to carry what landed in the depth of the driveway more than the length of a car, some thirty feet.
I used to pride myself on shoveling my own snow, and enjoyed the exercise. I saved the price of a gym and enjoyed brief interactions with neighbors and passers-by, eyes rolled at nature's perfidy, a thank you for shoveling, a grim eyes-front march across my territory to duck away from my effort, as if I might expect a tip.
Alas, my lumbar spine has aged faster than the rest of me. Three years ago, when a snow storm coincided with a low back storm, I tried to take less in each shovelful, slow down, but it hurt. When a young teenager offered his services, I negotiated a price, but he did a poor job and sulked when I told him so, so I paid him off and resolved not to employ him again.
In the aftermath of that storm my thigh and calf burned for a week. One time in years past when we were away, the local landscape company did a crappy job, and the fee they proposed as the next winter approached was outrageous. The responsibility for the snow which had been a sometimes burdensome part of the texture of life here became a worry, worsened by having to admit to another bit of age and infirmity.
On Craigslist I was lucky enough to find a young man who shovels snow the way I would if I were able. He is about thirty, with a young son who sometimes accompanies him when he shovels, and well-spoken; in his other life he may be a graduate student. After each snow storm he bills me what his work is worth, and either of us can cancel at any time. Knowing that he will help eases my terror.
Terror? Snow may be heavy, but it isn't terrible. It may fall at inconvenient times, and if it freezes on the pavement, provoke worry in a litigious society. But if you wait long enough it will go away by itself. The terror comes from knowing that my body is as transient as the snow, that my waning capacity to move snow is another hint of changes to come.
Snow is beautiful, too, so for now I shall enjoy it.
A Figure of Speech
My Times Digest, which I receive by email, today reported
Headless Bodies in Acapulco
The once thriving resort area of Acapulco suffered another blow on Saturday with the discovery of 19 bodies, 15 of them headless, from a round of assaults that bore the earmarks of organized crime.
I went to the New York Times site to get a link, and found
Bodies Found Beheaded in Assaults in Acapulco
The once thriving resort area of Acapulco suffered another blow on Saturday with the discovery of 28 bodies, 15 of them headless, from a round of assaults overnight that bore the earmarks of organized crime.
Things change, but they're still below fifty percent. I don't mean to make light of this, but bad news gets worse with a bad choice of words. For the record, I'm against crime, beheading, and unmindful use of stock phrases.
Image courtesy of Sjors Provoost via Flickr.
What Do You Recommend?
The other night a robot from a polling organization telephoned to ascertain my opinion about the economy, the recovery, and the stock market. The robot spoke in the friendly voice of a midwestern female of a certain age, rather like my college roommate's mother. I communicated my responses to her by pressing buttons on my telephone keypad. For every question she offered me a 'don't know' option, but out of several dozen I needed it only once, not because I didn't know what that question was about, but because I thought the offered answers were equally wrong. I try to stay informed—I read the newspaper every day, prefer C-SPAN to game shows and listen to internet radio—and I was happy to share the opinions I have.
The next days brought news I considered bad: the assassination of Punjab governor Salman Taseer by his bodyguard because of his opposition to the Pakistani blasphemy law, and Professor Alan Gribben's decision to edit the word 'nigger' out of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn because it might offend contemporary sensibilities.
I know how I feel about assassination, censorship, and giving needless offense: I am against them all.
But what if the robot had asked me what we ought to do in or about Pakistan or Afghanistan? I'm not sure. The national leaders who look after my safety and make the tactical decisions know more about what's really going on than I do, and I do believe it's in my interest for them to keep some of that to themselves. I study the faces of the young men and women who have died, presented in silence at the end of a newscast that has recited the cost of what we are doing in dollars, and in my sadness I'm unconvinced that what we are getting for the price is worth it. But I'm uneasy about my gut reaction because I don't trust the reliability or validity of what I have been told—despite my regular consumption of publicly available information.
"Don't eat out of the chemistry set."
—The Author's mother.
I do, however, have a thought about the new editions of Twain. Just as the red Jell-O I used to enjoy once was labeled 'Imitation cherry flavor,' the new editions should be labeled 'IMITATION LITERATURE' and, 'Warning: The Poet Laureate (or Secretary of Education) has determined that reading politically altered books may be detrimental to your appreciation of American history and literature.'
Search trytoactnormal.com
Mark Bittman's blog


I need your help, friends and family! I had a gum graft done on Friday and can only eat "soft foods" for 30 days! I'm going to get tired of mac & cheese real fast. So, if you have any great "soft food" (i.e. pasta, soups, etc.) recipes, please share them with me. I'm desperate!
I'm experiencing the need to eat only soft foods and have devised some very delicious recipes that I'm happy to share.
1. Chicken sections simmered in spaghetti sauce until ready to fall off the bone. Serve with Capellini pasta or Angel Hair pasta (capellinin is thinner than the angel hair) which can be chopped up if needs be.
2. Flour chicken sections, brown in large skillet on both sides using as little cooking ouil as possible for the browning. and thin strips of jalapeno or bell pepper between each chicken piece, sprinkle a few chopped garlic cloves over all, place a tomato slice on each piece of chicken (optional) you could top the meat with any sliced veggies of your choice even chopped bacon. pour in enough water or broth you prefer or cream of mushroom soup diluted with water to a depth that will not flow over skillet, cover and simmer on low heat for about 45 mins. to an hour checking once in a while to make shure chicken is not sticking to skillet bottom. about 20 minutes before you have reached your desired tenderness place baby potatoes between chicken pieces, cover and let simmer again...checking doneness in 15 mins. to avoid potatoes becoming mushy.
OTHER suggestions:cooking any chunks of meats or meatballs in spaghetti sauce.
Shepards pies using varied ground meat.
Chopped cabbage lightly browned then simmered in tomato sauce.
soft biscuits covered in creamed chipped beef or any small pieces of left over meats.
Cottage cheese with canned fruit, avacado, berries and etc.
Meatloafs with mashed potatoes and gravy.
Swedish meatloaf with egg noodles.
Macaroni, Tomato and Cheese casserole.
French Tortiere pie covered with creamed corn or gravy.
Pan fried or baked fish with Bearnaise sauce and a side of clam chowder.
Tuna sandwiches, egg salad sandwiches, deviled or ground ham salad sandwiches.
The list stops when your imagination does.


text:
Das Municipio Camaguán ist eines von 15 Municipios des Bundesstaats Guárico im Zentrum Venezuelas. Die Hauptstadt ist Camaguán. Andere Dörfer sind Uverito, gelegen am Fluss Guárico, und Puerto Miranda am Río Apure.

Wirtschaft

Die Bevölkerung lebt vorwiegend von der Landwirtschaft und Viehzucht.

Verwaltung
Der Bezirk setzt sich aus drei parroquias civiles zusammen: Camaguán, Puerto Miranda und Uverito.

Municipio in Guárico

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Israeli 13-year-old stumbles on Byzantine-era tombstone
WATCH: Ignoring history, Palestinians claim Jerusalem was always Arab
PA erases mention of agreements with Israel in school textbooks
Palestinians attend school in Judea and Samaria (AP/Nasser Nasser)
AP/Nasser Nasser
WhatsApp Email https://worldisraelnews.com/pa-erases-mention-of-agreements-with-israel-in-school-textbooks/
Palestinian academic textbooks have long demonized the Jews and generally denied Israel's existence.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) has introduced new textbooks to this year's school curriculum that makes virtually no mention of any of the past agreements and negotiations designed to establish peace between Israel and the PA, reports Ynet.
According to the report, there is no mention of the 1997 Hebron Protocol, which was an agreement on the redeployment of Israeli forces in the city of Hebron; the 1998 Wye agreement, which was a land-for-peace agreement between PM Benjamin Netanyahu and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat; the 2000 Camp David Summit's peace negotiations between then Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Yassar Arafat; nor the 2003 Road Map to Peace, which was a plan that then U.S. President George W. Bush formulated to bring about the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
The only agreement that is mentioned in this year's PA textbooks is the 1993 Oslo Accords, which is spoken of in an unfavorable light towards Israel.
"The constraint of the Zionist occupation to recognize the PLO after the first Intifada in 1987 contributed to the return of senior PLO officials and its institutions. To the West Bank and the Strip," one textbook reads, as quoted by Israeli news site Ynet.
Blue and White leader Benny Gantz blasted the PA's decision.
"If the agreements with Israel were in fact removed from the textbooks, that is first and foremost harming the Palestinian youth," Gantz said.
"The ability to achieve a better future starts with educating future generations to peace, tolerance, coexistence, and not to incitement and the glorification of suicide terrorists. Erasing the past is a destruction of the hope for a better future," he said.
Palestinian academic textbooks have long demonized the Jews, generally denied Israel's existence in history as well as in current affairs. When the Jewish state was mentioned, it was blamed for various problems in the region.
Benny GantzPalestinian AuthorityPeace AgreementsSchool Textbooks
I found a very interesting article on World Israel News! Click to read this: --> https://worldisraelnews.com/pa-erases-mention-of-agreements-with-israel-in-school-textbooks/


I hardly ever call for a taxi in Cuzco. Peruvian city streets are flooded with taxis and you can simply wave your hand to hail a cab most anytime anywhere. Occasionally you want to call a cab, maybe you're in a really quiet residential area where there are few taxis, or perhaps it's late at night. The taxis you call from a central dispatch are supposed to be legal and safe, not some guy with a car moonlighting. Calling a cab from a central dispatch is considered safer than hailing a cab in the street but only once I've heard of a girl getting robbed in a taxi in Cuzco – and I'm not quite sure what to believe of her story.
The other day I had to be at the airport early for a flight to Lima and I decided to call a taxi to our apartment. I figured it would be quicker than to go out in the street and hail a cab at that early hour. The dispatcher told me my taxi would arrive in 6 minutes, which was about right. I hopped in and we were on the way to the airport.
While riding in the back of the cab I could listen to the dispatcher call her drivers over the radio. It was quite entertaining. The dispatcher would talk sweet and funny as long as she was getting her way with the drivers but change in an instant to a condenscending angry tone when she didn't get her way. She complained to 2 drivers that they took too long to get where they were going, she fussed at another for going to the wrong apartment building and at one point she yelled at driver "If you don't want to work then don't come to work!" I think she's good at her job but probably doesn't have a boyfriend.
I called to get a licensed taxi but instead I got overcharged and the guy was moonlighting. Oh well. Then I checked in for my flight to Lima… Yippie, center seat! That's okay, for my next flight I'll have the left front seat.
I miss my baby goose while I'm away on a trip to deliver airplanes.
This entry was tagged Cuzco, legal, taxi. Bookmark the permalink.
Now THAT is the bike I would have killed for when I was 6 years old!!!!!
I agree, taxis in Peru are pretty cheap if you don't just take the first one that comes by. I just wrote a post on a good experience we had with a taxi driver in Cusco. http://unevensidewalks.com/our-lost-bag-and-taxi-chase-in-peru/ Check it out! There ARE still good people left in this world!


text:
Texas : Features : People :
LOCAL PERSONALITIES
People with brains, panache, or character. Sometimes all three.
BLIND, YES
But she gathers seashells
by Sandy Fiedler
Jacel and her seashells. Photo by author
"I play in the water and pick up shells. I feel them with my feet while I'm wading," says Jacel, age 90. Every summer her family takes her to the beach along the Gulf Coast of Texas where she gathers seashells. Her total blindness isn't a total handicap.
"I'm living a good life yet. I enjoy my days. They are filled up," says Jacel (pronounced Jay'-cel), who still lives independently in her home.
Jacel was born in 1910, in Waco, Texas. When she was seventeen years old, a doctor told her that she would be blind within a year, most likely due to aftereffects from a case of measles. The prognosis caused her to break off her engagement to her fiancé. However, he persisted and they eventually married.
Her last of three children was completing high school when she became almost completely blind. How is it she kept her eyesight for so many years defying the doctor's one-year prediction?
"I did a lot of praying all those years. I think the Lord helped me through," she reflects. "I've had the Spirit of the Lord all my life. Ever since I can remember, God has been with me," she reflects.
When her eyesight deteriorated at age 48, she still had enough vision to distinguish large objects and colors. After she and her husband James retired to Palestine, Texas, they traveled into Canada and Mexico and places in-between. She climbed mountains and toured Carlsbad Caverns.
"I kept up with him. He'd tell me what things looked like; then I could 'see them.'"
When her husband became too ill to drive, undaunted, she walked to the neighborhood grocery store by following the curb. Sometimes she would ride a bicycle with a basket to carry her purchases.
Her blindness became total about 15 years ago, several years after her husband died. She sees nothing but black. To get her groceries, she began using TRAX Transportation Service, funded by state and federal moneys, private donations, and optional fares for passengers over age 60.
A few years ago, she had a heart attack and in the hospital a social worker told her that the could get housekeeping help through an organization funded by the state of Texas. This service sends a woman to do housekeeping, such as cooking, vacuuming, and laundry, for two hours each day during the week.
On weekends, however, Jacel takes care of herself entirely, cooking her own food in the microwave or preparing a simple stovetop meal like soup. She makes her morning coffee and juice.
"I know all my furniture. If I just touch something, I know where I am in the house. I know where everything is in the kitchen and I place items into the refrigerator so that I remember just where they are when I need them."
Conveniences include a talking clock and a talking wristwatch, and her telephone speed dial is set with numbers of relatives and emergency help. Remarkably, she cuts her own shoulder-length hair.
Jacel is a voracious "reader."
Jacel
Photo by author
Through a free service of the State of Texas Public Library in Austin, she receives audiobooks. When she has completed several books, she puts them in a special addressed mailer, sets them on a table on her front porch, and the mailman picks them up, postage-free.
She reads five or six books per week. "One night this week, I read all night and had to sleep some the next day," she says with a smile. She has the complete Bible on tape, also.
"I read so much that I don't have time to watch much television," she notes. But she allows herself two hours of TV "watching" a day. At 5:00 p.m., she turns on the TV for the local and national news. "I like to keep up with what's going on, and I always watch Wheel of Fortune."
When someone at church assists her in walking from one room to another, she'd rather touch hands than have someone take her arm. "I can walk more freely," she states independently. Jacel uses a white cane when she walks in the yard. "I could have a seeing-eye dog, but I don't really want it. It would get in my way."
"All my family loves me and I love them. I have a good family. They're all happy and very busy. I like to see them busy. But they check on me."
It is said that if you meet an older person who is a cantankerous grouch, old age didn't make him that way - he was that way when he was young, too.
Jacel must have been a sharp, happy, contented young person. Her attitude now is the product of 90 years of facing circumstances as they came, with the Spirit of the Lord to help her. She has found a way to circumvent obstacles, while accepting what she could not change. Long hours in late life could be empty and lonely. Then is the time to draw on previously developed interests and make them pay out.
"I'm just a person whose got to live while I'm living." Jacel says firmly. "I've always been that way."
Blindness? Jacel hardly notices it. She's too busy gathering the life's seashells.
This page last modified: February 9, 2004