text:
Alexander Lives! Part II
(This post is a week late because of out of town business.)
But not everyone grieved, and the new King was immediately faced with revolts from Sicily to the far east. Philip first dealt with Syracuse and its coalition, using the force mustered for the invasion of Italy. Late in 297 he was able to leave Antigonus' son Demetrius to finish reestablishing control of Sicily, while old Ptolemy had arrived in the Peloponnesus to stamp out small revolts, during which the Spartan dual kingship came to an end. Philip meanwhile moved east to deal with revolts by his governors in Media and Bactria, gathering a mixed Greek-Asiatic force, which reached the Iranian plateau in 295. Media was easily pacified, but there he encountered Greek troops fleeing the occupation of the Indus valley by Chandragupta and learned that Seleucus had been killed. The King made a momentous decision and sent envoys to recognize Chandragupta's conquest and Bactrian independence, deciding to withdraw the frontiers of the empire west to a line from the Caspian Gates south along the eastern boarder of Persis. Seleucus' son Antiochus Philopater, was made viceroy of the entire Persian heartland.
Back in Babylon in 293 Philip decided to move the capital to Alexandria and ordered the Old Royal Road west of Babylon refurbished and a spur built south to Egypt. With the empire momentarily at peace he turned to domestic activities, especially Hellenization, and began a program of encouraging poorer Greeks to settle in western Asia, particularly Syria-Palestine and along the route to Babylon. Because of continued Macedonian resistance, his father's experiment with joint Greco-Iranian units was abandoned, and Asian troops were henceforth used almost exclusively in the east. Despite calls by his more aggressive generals to revive the Italian campaign, the King decided to postpone it in favor of more consolidation. Then suddenly he was dead, killed when thrown from his horse in 290.
The heir, Alexander IV, was still in his early teens, and his grandfather's old Companion Ptolemy was established as Regent. Until his death in 283 Ptolemy continued to advise the King, even after he achieved his majority, but Alexander was not cut from the same cloth as his predecessors and fell into a life of indolence, the court filling with sycophants. The administration of the empire fell upon the shoulders of its governors and viceroys, who began passing their power on to their own sons. Revolts, all stirred by Greek and Macedonian adventurers, were successfully suppressed with little direction from Alexandria. In 263 the viceroy in Macedon, Demetrius' son Antigonus Soter, having spent the later 270s smashing Gauls on both sides of the Danube, decided to expand his power by "liberating" the Greek cities in Italy, which had by now fallen under Roman control. Experienced only in fighting barbarians, however, his poorly led army was twice defeated by the Roman legions, and the enterprise was abandoned. Intimidated by the Macedonian fleet, Rome was content with repelling the invasion, but was now clearly eyeing Sicily, whose garrisons were beefed up by Antigonus.
Alexander died in 258 and was succeeded by his son Perdiccas III, who after three years of incompetent rule was assassinated, perhaps by his younger brother, who succeeded him as Philip IV. Philip is generally considered the last of the great Temenid kings, and during his long reign the empire was as united as it ever would be. While he confirmed the position of many of the governors inherited from his brother, he attempted to regain control of the offices, fearing any long tenure of power could provide a dangerous local power base. Unfortunately, that was already the case in Macedon and Babylonia, and for all his ruthlessness Philip hesitated plunging the empire into civil war and tolerated the powerful Antigonid and Seleucid families. He signed a treaty with Rome delineating spheres of influence: Spain and Gaul, where the Romans already had colonies, would be off limits to the empire, and while both parties were free to send raids into the area north of the Alps and the Adriatic, neither could establish any permanent facilities. Apart from periodic punishment of various barbarians off the northern and eastern frontiers and an expedition up the Nile, he refrained from serious military operations and oddly, patronized the arts.
Incredibly, Philip ruled until 209, dying at the age of 80, still loved and feared by his subjects. He had outlived all his sons, and a nephew took the throne as Alexander V. Trouble began almost immediately. In Pella Demetrius, son of Antigonus Soter, contested the succession, asserting that the Macedonian troops did not accept Alexander, and in 208 he began moving forces into Asia Minor, replacing the local governors with his own men. Alexander mustered what forces he could and moved north to bar the Cilician Gates, summoning Antiochus, great grandson of Philopater, from the east, where he was embroiled with the troublesome Parthians. Fortunately for the King, whose hastily collected forces would have serious trouble facing Demetrius, the Illyrians, quiet for several generations, poured into Macedon and more threatening, Syracuse was said to have appealed to Rome for liberation from the Macedonian yoke. Leaving what forces he could, Demetrius rushed back west and sent his fleet back from the Aegean to Sicily to block any attempt by the Romans to cross to the island.
Coming west, Antiochus affirmed his loyalty to the King, if only to see the rival Antigonids crushed, and 207 was spent clearing Asia Minor and raising new troops. The following year Alexander invaded Europe, while Antiochus returned to the east to deal with a Parthian invasion of Media through the Caspian Gates. The Illyrians had been subdued, but now outmatched by the King, Demetrius retreated into the Macedonian highlands and offered the Gauls land in Thrace if they aided his cause. This caused the Thracian tribes to enthusiastically support the King, and soon Demetrius' Macedonians were deserting in ever increasing numbers. He fled to Italy and sought asylum with the Romans.
Alexander spent two more years in the ancestral homeland and the lands to the north, repairing the damage done by Demetrius and executing every member of the Antigonid family he could get his hands on. In early 2003 came news of a usurper in Alexandria claiming to be a surviving son of Philip and raising an army, his funds most likely supplied by Antiochus, now surnamed Parthicus. The following year the King easily defeated the usurper, who had been unable to secure Gaza and had remained in the Delta, but he was killed in the battle under suspicious circumstances. Alexander's youngest son, still a boy, was proclaimed King as Alexander VI by the Macedonians in the army, while his eldest brother, serving as viceroy in Pella, was elevated as Philip V by his Macedonians and immediately began collecting an army. With a promise of autonomy he recruited Alexandria Hesperia and Numidia to his side, raised troops in Sicily and sent several delegations to the Parthians.
Antiochus collected his forces from his eastern frontier and marched toward Anatolia, while Philip secured the Ionian cities and cleared the Cilician Gates of the small Seleucid detachment there. Remembering the destruction of Carthage, the Phoenician cities declared for Antiochus, who had reached the upper Euphrates by 200. But the grand battle never materialized. From east and west came the news: the Parthians were swarming into Media and the Romans had invaded Sicily. Antiochus agreed to recognize Philip as the true King, and Philip in turn formally ceded all the territory east of the Euphrates to Antiochus and guaranteed his right to recruit from the Greek cities. King Antiochus I returned home to face the Parthians, the Phoenician cities submitted and Philip's boy king brother was dead by the time the small force dispatched by the King reached Alexandria. Philip took his army back to Macedon, where he confirmed that the Romans, never very good at siege craft, were bogged down before the walls of Syracuse. Sending his western allies home with specific instructions and more promises, he began planning the recovery of Sicily, where Syracuse was now singing a very different tune.
Sailing unopposed from Epirus in 198, he landed in Lucania and secured Tarentum and its convenient port through treachery. At the same time Alexandria Hesperia and its Numidian and Libyan allies put ashore near Agrigentum and began moving eastward, meeting only scattered Roman resistence. Leaving a covering force at Syracuse, the Roman consul T. Quinctius Flamininus hastened westward to intercept the invaders with his two legions and half his allied infantry, while the other consul, P. Cornelius Scipio, already on his way south from Massilia with two legions, began a forced march. Two legions under the praetor M. Porcius Cato left Rome for the south, while one of the Spanish legions was recalled.
Despite his weakness in cavalry Flamininus was able to defeat Philip's African allies, the remnants of which took refuge in Agrigentum, which had gone over to their side the moment they had landed. Leaving a legion and some of his allied infantry to besiege the city, he headed towards Messana. On the mainland Philip, despite his "liberate Italy" proclamation, had managed to attract only a few Lucanian and Bruttium tribes; the Greek cities refused to open their gates. He decided to face Cato's army before Scipio brought up his forces and began moving north on the Via Appia, discovering to his astonishment that Cato was already approaching Beneventum. The armies met east of the Appenines just south of Venusia, and again to Philip's surprise Cato's force of perhaps 25,000 immediately offered battle though outnumbered by more than 5000. In a drawn out struggle the Romans slaughtered Philip's Greek infantry but could make little headway against his phalanx and finally began a withdrawal as the King's horse began to seriously threaten their flanks. Cato managed to get most of his retreating army into Venusia, but he had lost almost a third of his men. Philip offered terms, which were promptly refused, and learning that Flamininus had managed to slip across the straits to Rhegium, he headed back south. Meanwhile, Syracuse had fallen, freeing the rest of Flamininus' army, and the African army in Agrigentum, judging the war in Sicily lost, negotiated an armistice and free passage off the island. The invasion of Sicily, designed to draw Roman troops from the peninsula and his invasion, had failed completely, and Philip realized the whole adventure had been ill conceived. Leaving a large garrison in Tarentum, he began shipping his forces back to Greece before the sailing season ended.
Rome refused to accept anything but unconditional surrender, and stationing his fleet in the Adriatic, the King began assembling in Macedon forces from fall over the empire. The counterattack did not come until 196, as Rome spent the intervening year securing its position in Sicily and dealing with problems in the Po valley. A new Roman fleet cleared the way across the Adriatic, easily handling the more experienced Greek sailors with their boarding tactics. Four legions were shipped to Greece, while Athens and other cities revolted. It took the Romans almost three years to break into Macedon, and there they met Philip at Dion in the biggest battle ever fought: T. Sempronius Longus and Gn. Domitius Ahenobarbus led more than 40,000 men against Philip's 55,000. By nightfall Philip and his Companions lay dead on the field, along with perhaps 25,000 Greeks and Romans. The King's eldest son, now Alexander VI, fled with his remaining troops to Anatolia, where a number of revolts had erupted. The Romans declared the Greeks free and placed the exiled Demetrius on the Macedonian throne. The empire had lost the homeland and all its European possessions.
The dynasty began a downward spiral. Alexander was assassinated in 193 while on campaign in Cappadocia, to be followed by Alexander VII, Perdiccas IV and Alexander VIII in scarcely two decades. Although the Romans kept Demetrius and his successor Antigonus on a short leash during this period, a Gallic invasion of Anatolia and internal revolts, some prompted by Rome, were chipping away at the empire. Adding to the troubles were the Seleucids, who seized control of Syria-Palestine when they were finally driven from Mesopotamia by the Parthians. By the middle of the century the Alexandrine empire, once stretching from Numidia to the Indus, had been reduced to Lower Egypt, Cyrene and the fortress of Gaza and under the child King Philip VI was being governed by a constantly scheming coterie of advisors. Prematurely aged from his sybaritic life, Philip died suddenly in 142 and a nephew was elevated as Alexander XII. Within the year he was dead, the victim of a coup launched by a Sicilian Greek mercenary, who promptly proclaimed himself Sosistratus I, ruler of Egypt. The ancient Temenid dynasty was at an end.
In the century following the demise of Alexander the Great's empire the Romans slowly moved into the lands of the oikumene, ending the second Antigonid dynasty in Macedon when its kings refused to stop meddling in Greece and occupying Anatolia and Syria in order to prevent the Parthians from doing so. Thus, the Romans became rulers of the Hellenic world, and while the Alexandrine empire had disappeared, the work of the Temenid kings in Hellenizing Anatolia, Syria-Palestine and Lower Egypt remained. The urban centers and even some of the rural populations of these regions were thoroughly Greek; even the curious and obstinate Judeans, having lost the most fanatic zealots of their invisible god in a failed revolt, were Hellenized. The Romans would preserve this inheritance intact for another half millennium and pass the Greek legacy on to the new states that would arise in Europe.
Finally, there has long been speculation about the course of Mediterranean and Western history had Alexander the Great not died on the eve of the planned invasion of Italy. At that time Rome had not yet crushed the Samnites or occupied the southern peninsula, and while already a formidable power, she was not the unstoppable force that she would become even a generation later. Her victory at Dion clearly demonstrated the dreadful efficiency of the legions against the Macedonian phalanx and Greek heavy infantry, but facing those troops under the leadership of Alexander would have been a different matter altogether. The destruction of Roman power would certainly have left Hellenism dominant in the Mediterranean, and the West might now be speaking Greek derived languages. On the other hand, Roman will and her manpower base in central Italy would very likely have confronted Alexander with a long and exhausting campaign, something he could ill afford, given, ironically, the immense size of the empire and above all the propensity of the Greeks to dissension and revolt. Further, there is little reason to believe, given the history of the post-Alexander III oikumene, that a Greek Mediterranean could produce the long-term stability that allowed the Roman Republic/Empire to establish classical civilization so well in western Europe that its core could survive the devastation of the barbarian migrations. And in any case, it was essentially Hellenic civilization that was passed on by Rome.
Leave a comment Posted in Alexander the Great, Alexandria, alternate history, Carthage, history, Macedon, Roman empire, Rome, Seleucids, Sicily
Alexander Lives! Part I
(I agreed to write for a conference in Athens later this year a short paper about Alexander the Great. When Alexander died in Babylon in 323, the Macedonian army named his soon to be born son, Alexander IV, as Lord of Asia and his half-wit half-brother Philip Arrhidaeus king of Macedon, a certain recipe for disaster. This was followed by the Wars of the Successors, a generation of conflict among Alexander's officers for control of the empire, resulting in the 280s in the three great Hellenistic kingdoms, all run by Macedonians: the Atnigonids in Macedon and Greece, the Selucids in the Asiatic part of the empire and the Lagids (Ptolemies) in Egypt. For the next century these three duked it out with one another, while in the west Rome crushed Carthage by 201. The Romans then defeated the Antigonids in 196 and again in 168 and the Seleucids in 189; the weakling Lagids came to an end with Cleopatra VII's suicide in 30. Rome ruled the Mediterranean world. What if Alexander had not died of malaria in 323? [I need to leave town for a bit and may not get the next installment done by next Thursday.])
[For convenience the dating system associated with the Judean preacher is used.]
Once the fever had passed, Alexander's first act was to order the construction in Babylon of a massive new temple of Marduk, whom he believed had saved his life. He then dispatched Craterus to take over the governorship of Macedon and Greece from the aging Antipater and made further arrangements for another restructuring of the army and the training of 20,000 Persian youths brought west by Peucestas. The expedition to circumnavigate Arabia then got underway, with the King accompanying the fleet, which would keep the land forces supplied. The sparse populations along the coast posed no problem, but the heat was debilitating, especially for the army, and it rapidly became more difficult to gather food and even water. Reaching the point where the Arabian Peninsula turns south and west and getting a better idea of just how big Arabia was, Alexander created a smaller squadron of ships, provided them with all the supplies that could be spared and sent them on. He meanwhile led the remaining forces back to Babylon, a march that many said outdid the Gedrosia in hardship.
Back in the capital the King was pleased to discover that Roxane had delivered a boy, whom he named Philip, to the delight of the Macedonian veterans. He attended to the administration of the empire and the training of the new Greco-Persian units, which were something of an experiment in mixed light forces of the kind that had worked well in the mountains to the east. Towards the end of the year he traveled to the Phoenician coast to inspect the new fleet being assembled in the Mediterranean, then spent the winter in Alexandria, indulging himself in ordering new temples built around the Hellenic world, including a splendid monument to his father in the ancestral Temenid royal burial grounds in Aigeai.
In the spring of 322 Alexander got word that his tutor, Aristotle, had died, and he ordered a period of mourning throughout the Greek world. He spent most of 322 mustering forces and supplies for a march west along the African coast and dispatched a squadron of ships south in the Red Sea to meet the expedition coming from the east. The Greek cities in Sicily, which had congratulated him on his return from the east, were now beginning to make dire predictions of what threats would emerge should the Carthaginians seize the entire island and consolidate their position there. Meanwhile, Craterus was compelled to take an army north to deal with Paeonian tribes that had been raiding into Macedon.
The African army began its march westwards in the spring of 321. The coastal towns of Cyrene had submitted to Alexander when he entered Egypt a decade earlier, but the heat and constant need to feed and water his forces without devastating the area's inhabitants meant fairly slow progress. At the site of modern Benghazi the King left a force to build yet another Alexandria and continued westward along the coast with the bulk of the army and navy, driving into the territory of tribes nominally allied to Carthage. Sandstorms and constant harassment by the desert tribes, who seemed to spring out of nowhere, slowed progress greatly, however, and with growing supply problems Alexander decided to turn back and winter at the new Alexandria. The western desert had proved a much greater challenge than the Sinai had back in 332.
During the winter the King learned that the fleet sent around Arabia had sailed up the Red Sea to Egypt, and he ordered that bases be established along the route to facilitate trade. He had been sending out mounted units to reconnoiter the coast, especially regarding water supplies, and contact the tribes along the route. With the treasure of the old Persian Empire at his disposal buying the Libyans away from Carthage was easily done, and when the army was ready to march in the spring, he sent to the Punic capital demanding an alliance and the evacuation of their troops from Sicily. Their answer, delivered a few weeks later, was a surprise raid on Alexander's fleet, during which his transports suffered heavy damage and his Phoenician crews revealed an extreme reluctance to attack their Punic cousins.
Sending the Phoenicians back to Alexandria with instructions that new crews and more warships and transports were to join him as soon as possible, Alexander characteristically moved quickly, trusting his new Libyan allies to provide information about the enemy and the land. By summer's end he had reached Leptis Magna, well into Carthaginian territory. The extremes of heat and cold had once more taken a toll on his army, and he decided to rest here where supplies were plentiful and await the reinforcements coming by sea. Soon enough the Carthaginian navy reappeared, this time in greater numbers, and Alexander was forced to beach his supply vessels and guard them with troops while his outnumbered and outrowed warships were so roughly handled that they were soon fleeing and heading for the shore. The enemy fleet departed, and the next day the King sent the surviving naval units east to meet the reinforcements and continued the march to Carthage. If he could take an army though the Hindu Kush, he could certainly traverse this region.
A week's march from Carthage his way was blocked by the enemy army. The force was larger than his and composed of Libyans and mercenaries, most of them veterans from the Sicilian campaigns, and cavalry from Numidia. Ptolemy suggested that the King simply buy the army from its Carthaginian leaders, but he replied "I will not purchase a victory." While some of the King's newly raised units performed poorly and his smaller cavalry force had a time of it with the Numidians, his Macedonians and Greeks broke through the enemy center, at which point the Numidians fled and the infantry surrendered. Alexander promptly hired the mercenaries and gave the Libyans the option, eagerly taken, of joining his army.
Within a month Carthage and the other Punic towns had surrendered. Knowing that he could not yet deal with their navy, Alexander had offered terms that left the Carthaginians in possession of their emporia, excepting in Sicily, and their commercial empire, but they were bound in an alliance. They in turn supplied ships to transport Alexander's disabled troops east and to find his long overdue fleet, which in fact had been wrecked in a storm and had turned back to Alexandria. He meanwhile continued west to accept the surrender and alliance of the Numidian king, who agreed to supply cavalry to the King's army. Taken once more by his "longing," Alexander wished to continue on to the Pillars of Heracles, named after his ancestor, but Ptolemy and the other Companions managed to convince him that having been on the march for almost three years, he needed to return to the heart of the empire.
In 317 Alexander was back in Babylon, once more replacing governors who had failed. Later in the year he returned to Pella for the first time in seventeen years, there to meet his mother and host massive banquets celebrating the Macedonian achievement. He also celebrated by taking a small army into Illyria, which had been conspiring with the Dardani to invade northern Macedon. Completely surprised, the Illyrians were easily crushed, and the King established a chain of fortresses to watch over them. The following year he took a larger force north and was joined by several Thracian tribes eager to benefit from the campaign against the Dardani and Triballi, who were duly crushed and scattered. The easternmost territory was awarded to the Thracians, and in addition to more fortresses, Alexander settled old veterans in a new city on the Danube, Alexandria Istria.
The King decided in 315 to begin preparing an expedition to settle affairs in Sicily, where the removal of the Carthaginian menace had led to a destructive free-for-all among the Greek cities, Syracuse leading the way as the strongest player. A new fleet was ordered from the Phoenicians and the Athenians, who were reminded of the humiliation they had suffered at the hands of Syracuse a century earlier, and Alexander himself attended to training a younger generation of Macedonians and Greeks. Late in the year, however, word of trouble in India finally reached the west. An Indian adventurer, Chandragupta, having established himself along the Ganges, had engineered revolts in the northern Indus valley and was pressing Alexander's ally Porus. Engaged in the preparations for Sicily and not fully understanding the extent of Chandragupta's resources, Alexander dispatched Seleucus with a largely Asiatic force with a strong contingent of Greek mercenaries.
Having intimidated Tarentum, Croton and Rhegium into alliance, in 314 Alexander invaded Sicily, where Syracuse under the tyrant Agathocles had formed a coalition of
Sicilian cities to resist the invasion. By 312 he had defeated several Greek armies and gained the entire island except Syracuse, which was put under siege. It took almost a year to take the city, after which Alexander organized the Greek cities of Sicily into a confederation similar to that in Asia Minor. Now, most all the Greeks, except those in Italy, were under Macedonian control, and Alexander began planning an incursion into Italy, where the fledgling Roman Republic was still dealing with the Samnites. Alexander of course saw this as another step in his dream of reaching the Pillars of Heracles.
Late in 311, however, the King learned that Seleucus had been unable to stop Chandragupta, whose forces were pressing Porus and threatening to seize the passes west into Afghanistan. Alexander determined, with no little enthusiasm, that it was time for him to return to India. The Macedonian-Greek forces destined for Italy instead moved to Babylon, where they were joined by newly raised Asiatic troops. The army spent the winter of 310/309 in Ecbatana, where Alexander discovered that the Scythians had poured across the Jaxartes and were plundering Sogdiania and Bactria. In the spring the King moved into these provinces and after months of pursuit finally forced the major Scythian force into a battle, where it was annihilated. He wintered in Kabul, where he was joined by Seleucus and the remnants of his army, informed that Porus had sided with Chandragupta. In 308 Alexander moved east, dividing the army into three contingents, as he had done almost two decades before. Debouching into the north Indus watershed, he once again faced Porus, who was once again defeated. This time, however, the Indian prince was sent west under guard, and the area was placed under the control of Seleucus, who was left with a substantial garrison of Greek mercenaries.
Once more Alexander built a flotilla and proceeded down the Indus, meeting Chandragupta's huge army not far south of Porus' kingdom. Thinking wistfully of Darius, the King took on an Indian army at least twice the size of his own and as at Gaugamela won a crushing victory. And once again the leader escaped, fleeing eastward. Alexander repeated his journey down the Indus, reestablishing garrisons in the major towns, and then followed the route west taken by Craterus years before. In 306 he was back in Babylon, where the news was uniformly bad.
He learned that two years earlier Antipater's son Cassander had procured the assassination of Craterus and proclaimed Philip Arrhidaeus king of Macedon, asserting his pure Macedonian blood in contrast to Alexander's son, who was only one quarter Macedonian. The King's most able governor in Asia Minor, Antigonus, had promptly marshaled his forces and marched on Europe, where he defeated and killed Cassander in a particular bloody battle and having little choice, had the pathetic figure of Arrhidaeus executed. The King's position in Macedon had been restored, but his long absence in the east and the coup in Macedon had led to the revolt of Syracuse and Carthage, which had regained its Sicilian fortress of Lilybaeum.
Alexander immediately moved to Pella, where he found that Cassander had executed his mother, Olympias. Overwhelmed by grief and anger dwarfing that following the death of Hephaestion, Alexander killed everyone even remotely associated with Cassander and then took an army northeast to slaughter every barbarian he could lay his hands on. In 303 he invaded Sicily a second time, this time accompanied by his son, and after another siege captured Syracuse again in 302, this time to make the streets run with blood, seemingly a sacrifice to his mother. Carthage was next, and while an army marched from Alexandria, the King landed his Sicilian army to the west of Utica, his warships, led by the Rhodians, fending off attacks by the Punic navy. A Carthaginian army of Greek and Italian mercenaries was easily defeated, and united with the force from Alexandria, he besieged the Punic capital. It took the better part of two years to take the city, and the final assault would be long remembered, as Alexander was treated to a stiff dose of Semitic fury. The devastated city was settled with Greeks and renamed Alexandria Hesperia.
It was now 299 and Alexander returned to Babylon to spend the year dealing with administrative problems, dispatching his son Philip to occupy Kolchis and the southeastern shore of the Black Sea. The following year he again prepared for the invasion of southern Italy, moving his fleet and army to Epirus. It was there, preparing to cross to the peninsula, that Alexander, known as the Great and considered a god by many, suffered an apparent heart attack and after lingering for two days died.
The world held its breath, and Philip III succeeded his father as ruler of the oikumene. The body was taken to Aegiai, where the tribute of an empire reaching from Numidia to India was spent to inter Macedon's greatest king. Across this vast landscape Macedonian soldiers wept as they received the news of his death and consoled themselves with the thought that he was now a god, looking down upon them from the heights of Olympus. The greatest hero since Achilles was dead.
Leave a comment Posted in Alexander the Great, Alexandria, alternate history, Carthage, history, Macedon, Sicily
What a Choice!
Why is there no Democratic Policy Guide to match the Republican version? Well, most simply, while Democrats are as self-serving and dependent on big money as their Republican friends, their party is not nearly so blatantly anti-science, pro-Christian, heartlessly pro-wealth and abusive of females as the GOP. The Democrats may not do as they say, but what they say – with some glaring exceptions – generally makes sense for an industrialized society in the 21st century. Their geopolitical thinking of course appears firmly rooted in the 20th century, but even that is attractive contrasted with the Republicans, all of whose policies seem appropriate for the Gilded Age (excepting of course that the Robber Barons of that time actually produced goods and services for the country). The economic ignorance – or dissimulation – of the GOP is breath-taking, especially considering that even a superficial knowledge of the last hundred years of American history reveals that laissez-faire capitalism can only damage a modern society and generate massive economic inequality. They are classic extremists, who have set the bar very high. What positions would Democrats need to take to be as radically to the left as the Republicans are to the right? Stalinism? Maoism?
Now, candidate Obama. Granted, he actually knows (or has people who know) some basic economics (e.g., austerity and deficit pay-off are the worst thing to engage in during a recession) and granted, he inherited a mammoth mess and has lately faced a hostile Congress (including his own party). But his actions bespeak a man who cannot be bothered to exert himself to fight for his promises and who is just as enamored with the apparatus of national security and the power of the government, especially the Presidency, as any red-blooded conservative. In fact, this may be the one area where the Democrats outdo the Republicans: hypocrisy.
Being a "progressive" politician apparently does not mean any more commitment to the truth than being a conservative does. His campaign lies are not as staggering as those of Paul Ryan, but the lies are there (Obama: 1 of 50 statements false; Romney, et al.: 1 of 10), and he avoids the serious media as diligently as Mitt. After all, they check facts. Better to talk to People magazine and friendly local radio stations than the White House Press Corps with their annoying regard for facts. Better the social networks, where disregard for truth is pretty much part of the system.
Obama promised the most transparent White House ever. That used to be emblazoned on the official White House web site, but I can no longer find it. Wow! Are they being honest about their need to be opaque? All governments want to control their image and avoid letting the public know anything embarrassing, but the present administration might be considered the most opaque ever had it not been preceded by the Bush administration. Actually, in one area of image control Obama is outdoing his predecessor. In 1917 Congress passed the Espionage Act, which, as the name suggests, was designed to provide the government with the tools to prosecute those supplying American secrets to a foreign power, i.e., spies. In the 95 years since then the Act has been used on nine occasions to prosecute Americans responsible for leaking classified information not to a potential enemy state but rather to the American media, and thus the American public. Of those nine instances of the Espionage Act being thusly misused six fall under the Obama administration. And now he is apparently putting incredible pressure on London to get Julian Assange in a position where he can be extradited to the United States.
Only one aspect of the Bush security apparatus has been eliminated, torture in interrogations, which probably still goes on in the back rooms and undisclosed locations of our countless intelligence agencies. Otherwise, Guantanamo remains open, detainees will receive military trials, we still have detention without trial and none of the provisions of the Constitutionally questionable Patriot Act have been rescinded. On other fronts, the "too-big-to-fail" banks are now even bigger, and the financial industry appears to be no more regulated now than it was when the economy collapsed. We are still in Afghanistan, and despite the fact that both the American and Afghani peoples do not want us there, despite the increasingly obvious evidence that the war is a failure, we will be keeping – and losing – our troops there for another year. Is he afraid of "looking weak" or perhaps the huge collection of war contractors have been on the horn to their purchased congressmen? To be fair, however, were the Republicans in control, we would be sending more troops to Afghanistan and would still be in Iraq.
Oh, the drones. Clearly, Bush was a piker when it came to blowing up people around the world, and if anything, Obama is even more oblivious to international law than Bush was. He has no concern for national sovereignty beyond our own, and while his rhetoric on the Middle East was promising, he has done absolutely nothing in that area except to get more entangled in Israel's plans to wage a war of aggression. Perhaps I am unfair here, because who knows what is going on behind the closed doors of diplomacy? On the other hand, his Attorney General has publically assured us that all of his boss' activities around the globe are perfectly legal according to international law, a staggering expression of self-serving nonsense.
There seems to be something wrong with Barack Obama, something that goes beyond just being another politician, but for all his faults he and his party are so much better than the increasingly screwball Republicans that were the economy in slightly better shape he would not have to campaign at all. Nevertheless, I am sick of voting for the lesser of two evils and will drop out of the system. I am tempted to think in Baader-Meinhof terms and hope that Romney and friends have their chance to ruin the country and demonstrate how utterly wrong they are about most everything, but it is after all my country, and all they are likely to produce is extremism from the other end of the political spectrum. The nation is in serious trouble.
1 Comment Posted in Afghanistan, America, Bush, campaigning, contemporary affairs, Democrats, Espionage Act, government, Mitt Romney, Obama, politics, Republicans, war on terror


text:
include $(TOPDIR)/rules.mk

PKG_NAME:=3ginfo
PKG_VERSION:=20220707
PKG_RELEASE:=1

include $(INCLUDE_DIR)/package.mk

define Package/3ginfo/Default
	SECTION:=net
	CATEGORY:=Network
	TITLE:=Information about status of 3G/4G modem
	MAINTAINER:=Cezary Jackiewicz <cezary@eko.one.pl>
	PKGARCH:=all
endef

define Package/3ginfo
$(call Package/3ginfo/Default)
	DEPENDS:=+3ginfo-text +uhttpd
endef

define Package/3ginfo-lite
$(call Package/3ginfo/Default)
	TITLE+= (lite version)
	DEPENDS:=+comgt
endef

define Package/3ginfo-qmisignal
$(call Package/3ginfo/Default)
	TITLE+= (qmi signal)
	DEPENDS:=+uqmi +uhttpd
endef

define Package/3ginfo-text
$(call Package/3ginfo/Default)
	TITLE+= (text version)
	DEPENDS:=+comgt
endef

define Package/3ginfo-text/conffiles
/etc/config/3ginfo
endef

define Build/Compile
endef

define Package/3ginfo/install
	$(CP) ./files/* $(1)
endef

define Package/3ginfo-lite/install
	$(CP) ./files-lite/* $(1)
	$(CP) ./files-text/usr/share/3ginfo/mccmnc.dat $(1)/usr/share/3ginfo-lite
	$(CP) ./files-text/usr/share/3ginfo/scripts/probeport.gcom $(1)/usr/share/3ginfo-lite
endef

define Package/3ginfo-qmisignal/install
	$(CP) ./files-qmisignal/* $(1)

	$(FIND) $(1) -type f -name '*.js' | while read src; do \
		uglifyjs "$$$$src" -o "$$$$src".1 && \
		mv "$$$$src".1 "$$$$src" || true; \
	done
endef

define Package/3ginfo-text/install
	$(CP) ./files-text/* $(1)
endef

define Package/3ginfo-text/postinst
#!/bin/sh
[ -n "$${IPKG_INSTROOT}" ] || {
	ln -sf /usr/share/3ginfo/cgi-bin/3ginfo.sh /usr/bin/3ginfo
}
exit 0
endef

$(eval $(call BuildPackage,3ginfo))
$(eval $(call BuildPackage,3ginfo-lite))
$(eval $(call BuildPackage,3ginfo-qmisignal))
$(eval $(call BuildPackage,3ginfo-text))

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Hecla mine reports contract employee killed in fatal bear mauling
Jeremy Hsieh, KTOO - Juneau
Hecla Greens Creek Mine. (Photo courtesy Hecla Mining Company)
Hecla Greens Creek Mine says bears fatally mauled a contract employee at their mine today.
Alaska State Troopers have identified the victim as 18-year-old Anthony David Montoya of Hollis, Oklahoma. In a news release, Hecla said he worked for Timberline Drilling based in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Montoya's body will be sent to the State Medical Examiner in Anchorage.
Troopers also noted more specifics about the bears involved — a sow and two cubs. All three bears were killed before troopers arrived.
This is the second fatal bear incident involving an Alaska mine employee in as many years. Twenty-seven-year-old contractor Erin Johnson of Anchorage was killed in June 2017 by a black bear at the Pogo Mine in Interior Alaska.
Hecla said authorities will investigate. Around 11:45 a.m. today, company spokesman Mike Satre said state troopers were en route. Satre said the company is investigating and still learning details about what happened.
"We have never had any injury incident related to bears since we have been in operation," Satre noted.
The mine opened in 1989.
Satre said bear safety is a standard part of employee training.
"In general, every single one of our employees and our contracted workforce receive bear hazard training during their site specific training that is required before they work on a mine site," Satre said. "And then we do everything we can to make sure anything that we do, any of materials, do not become attractive to bears and have them on our mine site."
Mine officials expressed condolences to the victim's friends, family and colleagues.
Jeremy Hsieh is the deputy managing editor of the KTOO newsroom in Juneau. He's a podcast fiend who's worked in journalism since high school as a reporter, editor and television producer. He ran Gavel Alaska for 360 North from 2011 to 2016, and is big on experimenting with novel tools and mediums (including the occasional animated gif) to tell stories and demystify the news. Jeremy's an East Coast transplant who moved to Juneau in 2008.
Previous articleMeet Cuckoo Gupta
Next articleAlaska News Nightly: Monday, Oct. 1, 2018

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Drawings by a young up and coming artist.
Have you been naughty or nice this year? Satan Claws knows and he's coming to getcha!
What can I say, Its a Werewolf playing guitar. Sort of like 'School of Rock' meets 'Dog Soldiers'.


text:
Q: HTACCESS.. Restrict acces xml file from out I have xml file. i use it as db. how can i restrict access to this file..
i checked more than one option its worked but owner (website) also cant access this xml file..
How can i restrict acces this file from outside but the website can use this xml..
i`ve checked
chmod 700

and
ErrorDocument ### index.php -- Example of format
ErrorDocument 404 /index.php -- Working example
php_flag display_startup_errors off
php_flag display_errors off
php_flag html_errors off
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?site\.com(.+) [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(xml)$ - [F]

A: You don't need mod_rewrite for this:
<Files /db.xml>
   Order Allow, Deny
   Deny from all
</Files>

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


The appointment of Ms Van Coller – who has extensive business leadership experience – was approved by the Board of Dube TradePort and was supported by the Executive Council of the KwaZulu Natal provincial government last week.
"We are extremely pleased to be able to appoint a CEO with the experience and vision to take Dube TradePort to the next level of development," board chairperson Dr Bridgette Gasa said today.
"These are exciting times for Dube TradePort, and we have no doubt Ms Van Coller will be able to provide leadership and focus to the strong management team we already have in place – particularly when it comes to her business experience, strong leadership and negotiation skills and understanding of strategy," Dr Gasa said.
With expertise in manufacturing, oil and gas, pharmaceuticals and fast-moving consumer-goods (FMGC), Ms Van Coller is well positioned and looking forward to heading one of KwaZulu Natal's flagship economic development projects.
"Dube TradePort forms a key part of the province's economic growth strategy, and I look forward to ensuring that it continues to play a vital role as the backbone of an efficient, integrated economic development zone for the province," said Ms van Coller. ?
To download images, please follow this link.


As expected Xiaomi has launched the Redmi 4A in the Indian market with not so amazing price like it was supposed to be. Xiaomi has the most successful smartphone range in as a "Redmi Series" priced between Rs 7,000 to Rs 14,000 and now additional to the line-up is the new Redmi 4A the cheapest Redmi Smartphone among others.
As far as specifications are concerned, the Xiaomi Redmi 4A sports a 5-inch HD (720p) IPS display, and is powered by Qualcomm's 64-bit Snapdragon 425 quad-core chipset paired with Adreno 308GPU. The smartphone comes with 2GB of RAM, and 16GB of internal storage that can be expanded using a microSD card.
For photography, the Redmi 4A is equipped with a 13-megapixel primary camera of aperture f/2.2 and 5-element lens, accompanied by a single LED flash, and a 5-megapixel selfie camera up front with an aperture of f/2.2.
The only thing which makes it different from Redmi 3s is that the Redmi 4A doesn't come with a huge battery. Instead there is a 3,120mAh unit underneath. There's also no fingerprint sensor onboard.
Connectivity options include hybrid sim setup, 4G with VoLTE support, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS. On the software front, the smartphone runs on Android Marshmallow-based MIUI 8. It also comes with Infrared Sensor.
The Xiaomi Redmi 4A is priced at Rs 5,999, and the device will be exclusively on sale via Amazon India, and first sale will take place on March 23. According to me it should be priced at Rs 5,000 but you can't blame Xiaomi as it's the taxes & Duty that make Redmi 4A slightly expensive.
Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 now available on Offline stores too; Here's How to buy one?


Dozens of elderly South Koreans have crossed the heavily fortified border into North Korea for heart-wrenching meetings with relatives most haven't seen since they were separated by the turmoil of the Korean War.
The weeklong event at North Korea's Diamond Mountain resort comes as the rival Koreas boost reconciliation efforts amid a diplomatic push to resolve a standoff over North Korea's drive for a nuclear weapons program that can reliably target the continental United States.
They were to reunite with their long-lost North Korean relatives on Monday afternoon at the start of a three-day reunion. A separate round of reunions from Friday to Sunday will involve more than 300 other South Koreans, according to Seoul's Unification Ministry.
Park Hong-seo, an 88-year-old Korean War veteran from the southern city of Daegu, said he always wondered whether he'd faced his older brother in battle.
After graduating from a Seoul university, Park's brother settled in the North Korean coastal town of Wonsan as a dentist in 1946. After the war broke out, Park was told by a co-worker that his brother refused to flee to the South because he had a family in the North and was a surgeon in the North Korean army.
Park fought for the South as a student soldier and was among the allied troops who took over Wonsan in October 1950. The US-led forces advanced farther north in the following weeks before being driven back by a mass of Chinese forces after Beijing intervened in the conflict.
"I want to ask them what his dying wish was and what he said about me," Park said in a telephone interview last week. "I wonder whether there's a chance he saw me when I was in Wonsan."
Analysts say North Korea sees the reunions as an important bargaining chip and doesn't want them expanded because they give its people better awareness of the outside world. While South Korea uses a computerized lottery to pick participants for the reunions, North Korea is believed to choose based on loyalty to its authoritarian leadership.


Volkswagen, still recoiling from their 2015 emission scandal, faces yet another costly lawsuit. U.S. semiconductor supplier Broadcom recently filed a claim against Volkswagen for $1 billion. Broadcom's lawsuit concerns Volkswagen's integration of various patents into its navigation and entertainment system. Toyota and Panasonic were also hit with patent infringement lawsuits from Broadcom earlier this year.
Patent issues are not new to the auto industry and have occurred since George Seldon sued Henry Ford in 1903. However, in an age where cars can speak and drive themselves, the growing number of IP lawsuits demanding royalties threatens to raise transaction costs and impede innovation.
We've seen it happen before. Enforcing exclusive IP rights in the biomedical sphere led to widespread patent fragmentation. Research and development costs skyrocketed as companies were required to purchase countless licenses for basic yet requisite technology. Increased operating costs and subsequent litigation led to unaffordable products and substandard down-stream research.
However, carmakers face a more significant challenge because outside industries invent the technologies they need. Thus, the informal patent sharing system that emerged in biomedical subgroups will not materialize to provide relief in the auto industry.
Nevertheless, Volkswagen attempted to address this issue. They retained talent and provided funds to make Audi, one of their brands, a leading development center. But their efforts were not enough. In the race to make energy efficient and develop autonomous vehicles, Volkswagen spent an unsustainable $13.1 billion on research and development in 2017. Consequently, CEO Herbert Diess intends to develop a 10-year plan to slash research costs by partnering with rival companies.
An increase in IP litigation, stringent environmental regulations, and consumer pressure require other car companies to follow suit. Further, the auto-industry's growing dependence on large-scale tech licensing necessitates industry collaboration. Without this shift, carmakers will not be able to endure nor avoid the patent prosecution and subsequent settlements that historically inhibit affordable innovation.


text:
https://www.nhregister.com/connecticut/article/Clinton-won-t-face-more-fallout-from-email-11327069.php
Clinton won't face more fallout from email scandal, Connecticut professors say
Damage was done before FBI announcement
Published 6:23 pm EDT, Tuesday, July 5, 2016
FBI Director James Comey walks to the podium to make a statement at FBI Headquarters in Washington Tuesday.
Photo: Cliff Owen — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The political damage to Hillary Clinton had already hit before the FBI concluded she was "extremely careless" about use of private email servers while serving as secretary of state, according to local political science professors.
Members of Connecticut's congressional delegation, meanwhile, said the announcement means Clinton can focus on issues voters care about, especially jobs.
"It's already done the damage it's going to do, and it's done some damage," said Arthur Paulson, professor emeritus of political science at Southern Connecticut State University. He pointed out that both Clinton and Donald Trump, presumptive nominees of the Democratic and Republican parties, have high unfavorability ratings.
FBI Director James B. Comey announced Tuesday that the agency would not recommend Clinton face criminal charges for putting sensitive material on private servers but called her actions "extremely careless."
"Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case," Comey said.
"Most of the people who are going to vote for her have already forgiven her," Paulson said, although he said Clinton's explanation that she did not send or receive emails that were classified "at the time" is "a ridiculous standard to go by. Did she or did she not send or receive emails that were irresponsible to receive over a private server?" Paulson asked, adding that being irresponsible doesn't mean her actions were criminal.
He pointed out that the State Department's Office of the Inspector General issued a report in May that was critical of the way Clinton handled her email accounts. While Trump will campaign on the issue, Paulson said, "If he overdramatizes it, it could almost be counterproductive for him."
Both candidates are disliked by a large portion of the electorate, Paulson said.
"It certainly is unusual for both nominees of the major parties to actually be in the negative in their public opinion polling," he said. However, "the problems within the party are steeper on the Republican side than they are on the Democratic side" because many GOP leaders have avoided endorsing Trump.
Gary Rose, chairman of the Department of Government, Politics and Global Studies at Sacred Heart University, said the FBI's conclusion that Clinton "was careless but not criminally liable … will confirm what people were thinking. The damage has already been done and I don't see how this report is going to hurt Hillary."
Rose said both Hillary and former President Bill Clinton "can spin stuff especially well. … She had already told people that she realized she was careless … and I think a lot of people have already agreed with it without knowing all the facts," Rose said. "By the time the general election is in full swing I don't think it's going to be a real problem for her."
Since Hillary Clinton and Trump "both have the highest unfavorable ratings since we've been polling," in the end their low numbers will be "a wash," he said. Rose said the number of people who can be persuaded to switch their vote is small because of "the polarization of the electorate over the years."
He said while many voters do not trust the Clintons, her supporters are "more concerned about policy issues."
Three members of the state's Democratic congressional delegation said Comey's announcement means Clinton can move on to talk about more substantial issues.
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., called the conclusion "unsurprising to me as a former prosecutor because of clear, apparent lack of criminal intent" by Clinton.
"The decision was made by law enforcement professionals based on the facts and law," Blumenthal said. "My hope is that the campaigns will focus on issues that matter most to the American people, like jobs and economic progress."
He called Comey, who served as deputy attorney general under Republican President George W. Bush, "a prosecutor of tremendous integrity." Comey was appointed FBI director by President Barack Obama in 2013.
Blumenthal said that "using the separate email system was a mistake, as Secretary Clinton herself has acknowledged, but the issues that matter most to the outcome of the election are jobs and economic progress, investment in infrastructure and education and other core concerns to the American people." He said other primary concerns are taking care of veterans and filling the vacancy on the Supreme Court, as well as other vacancies that likely will occur in the next four years.
At a press conference in Hartford about providing funds to fight the Zika virus, U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., was asked about Comey's conclusion that using private servers for sensitive emails was not serious enough to prosecute Clinton.
"This isn't surprising," Murphy said. "We've expected this announcement for a very long time. I'm frankly sorry it took this long to clear her name and hopefully this campaign can return to the issues that really matter to the American people. People in this state have been really frustrated that this campaign so far has been about emails and immigrant bans instead of jobs and education and health care. My hope is this marks a turning point where we can get away from name calling and start talking about real issues."
U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3, said the FBI announcement recommeding that no charges be filed against Clinton was "what the public has been waiting to find out." She said voters are concerned about "what's happening to their jobs" and about their families' financial stability. DeLauro said Clinton talks about "the issues that people care about — the serious economic crisis that people in this country are faced with."
U.S. Rep. Elizabeth Esty, D-5, issued a statement saying only, "I thank the FBI for conducting a thorough, impartial investigation."
Call Ed Stannard at 203-680-9382.


text:
December 27, 2018 by Bohdan Raczynski
A Loudspeaker That Can Play Square Waves?
This article describes a DSP (Digital Signal Processing) technique developed to correct loudspeakers' frequency domain and time domain distortions. Performance improvements, observed using square wave excitation, are documented here in time domain and frequency domain. This article was originally published in audioXpress, June 2010.
September 1, 2018 by Joao Martins
The Danish Loudspeaker 100-Year Anniversary Book
Over the years, audioXpress and Voice Coil magazines have published several company profiles on speaker manufacturers. In 2015, a book was published to celebrate 100 years of the loudspeaker and, in particular, the remarkable contributions of the Danish loudspeaker industry (audio and electronics industry in general is the fourth largest exporting industry in Denmark). This is a valuable book that anyone interested about the loudspeaker industry needs to read.
Meyer Sound Granted Patent on Phase Inversion Filter for its Bluehorn Studio Monitor System
Introduced to the market in September 2017, following several years of research, Meyer Sound has now been awarded a United States patent on proprietary digital technologies that enable its Bluehorn studio monitor system to reproduce complex musical signals with absolutely flat frequency and phase response across the full audio bandwidth, an unprecedented achievement in high-power studio monitors.
Electro-Voice Launches EVC Compact Loudspeakers for Fixed Installations
The latest member of the Electro-Voice EV-Innovation family of installation-dedicated loudspeaker systems, the five-model EVC series was designed to bring superior sound quality for small/medium-sized installations with more affordable and more reliable systems than ever before. The series features unique technology including Automatic Saturation Compensation (all models) and a Variable Intensity (VI) model, all with similar voicing and looks, and matching mounting and input panel accessories.
Danley Sound Labs Introduces the MINI 180 Loudspeaker: Even Coverage Across 180 Degrees
Led by legendary acoustician Tom Danley and his handpicked team of engineers, Danley Sound Labs has once again developed a loudspeaker that solves a technical problem without compromising on its trademark sound quality. The new Danley MINI 180 provides even, seamless coverage across 180 degrees (by 90 degrees vertical) using Danley's patented technology. Its operating frequency range is 149Hz to 20kHz (+/-3dB) with impressively linear phase response across that range and across the beam width.
PMC Impresses at High End 2018 with New fenestria Flagship Loudspeaker
In what is its most significant product launch for the high-end consumer market, at High End 2018, PMC Speakers (The Professional Monitor Company Limited) introduced its new Fact loudspeaker range and launched fenestria, a flagship speaker which also represents a completely new approach from the famous British brand. Detailing every single aspect of the new design, and explaining all its technology innovations, the company impressed visitors and the specialized press at the Munich show.
Harman Professional Announces Availability of JBL C221 and C222 Two-Way ScreenArray Cinema Loudspeakers
Harman Professional Solutions announced that its new JBL C221 and C222 two-way ScreenArray cinema loudspeakers using patent-pending Dual Dissimilar Arraying Technology are now shipping in limited quantities, with full availability in May 2018. These next-generation cinema sound loudspeakers deliver the latest JBL technology in a compact and accessible form factor, helping small- and mid-sized cinemas upgrade to improve coverage and smooth sound reproduction at an accessible price point.
April 11, 2018 by Vance Dickason
Loudspeaker Measurement Tools from Physical Lab
Physical Lab, based in Senden, Germany, is a fascinating company in that it not only manufactures loudspeaker test solutions directly aimed at speaker development and research, but also provides several engineering services for the loudspeaker industry. This article highlights the three loudspeaker measurement accessories that Physical Lab manufactures — the Physical Lab Mini Reference Amplifier, the Physical Lab Imp Box, and the Physical Lab ISO Box. The article was originally published in Voice Coil, December 2017.
January 17, 2018 by Stuart Yaniger
Fresh From the Bench: Vanatoo Transparent Zero Powered Speakers
During the AXPONA 2017 show in Chicago, IL, Stuart Yaniger visited the Vanatoo room and was greatly impressed with the small and inexpensive proposition of the Transparent Zero powered speakers. After getting a pair into his lab for extended listening and measurement, in January 2018, audioXpress published an extensive and detailed review, because, as Yaniger writes, "I think the engineering is enough to merit the high ratio of words to price."
October 18, 2017 by Mike Klasco
Advanced Engineering Simulation Software
Simulation software for speaker design has been around since the 1970s. With the introduction of the IBM PC and DOS operating system in the early 1980s, Thiele-Small (T-S) simulation software for enclosure design became a must-have for speaker system designers. For the most sophisticated design efforts, there are now magnetic circuit design software and finite element analysis (FEA) cone and thermal prediction simulation software. This article was originally published in Voice Coil, March 2017.


Dr. Franklin asks Sinclair to intermediate with an alien family who, because of their religious beliefs, refuse to allow surgery that would save their dying child. Silvana Gallardo as Dr. Maya Hernandez. Jonathon Kaplan as Shon. Tricia O'Neil as M'Ola. Stephen Lee as Tharg.
Some outside influence has interfered with the Minbari religion in the past.
The Children of Time, a minor race with strong religious beliefs, would rather let one of their number die than allow invasive surgery, which they believe destroys the soul.
Franklin's willingness to break the rules for a cause he believes in, though indicative of a strong moral character, seems likely to get him into hot water at some point.
On the other hand, Sinclair doesn't want to be placed in a position in which he has to stop Franklin from doing what he believes in; Sinclair would rather sidestep the issue than have his hand forced. This is consistent with his handling of the Senator's instructions in "Midnight on the Firing Line."
The parents' reaction when Delenn refused to help could be viewed as hypocritical; they were perfectly willing to ask Delenn to violate her beliefs so they wouldn't have to violate their own.
Kosh is aware that he was examined by Dr. Kyle (cf. "The Gathering".) When he's asked how he would feel if a doctor performed an operation on him, he says, "The avalanche has already begun. It is too late for the pebbles to vote."
The Shakespeare corporation and the pfingle eggs are references to David Gerrold's novels "Under the Eye of God" and "Covenant of Justice."
By the way, here's something interesting: an outline got turned in this week for an episode which I won't identify just now. Came in from one of our writers, based on an assigned premise. It's something you've never seen done in ANY SF-TV series, and I don't think has ever been done in TV overall. A very daring little story.
Word finally came back from our liaison with PTEN. "Number one, this is absolutely against the demographics on the show. Number two, no studio or network executive in his right *mind* would EVER approve this story in a million years. Number three...it's a hell of a story, I love it, let's do it."
This has been emblematic of our relationship with PTEN: they've left us alone, and are trusting us in our storytelling. We want to go right out to the very edge, and they're letting us, which is wonderful. They've been, and continue to be, terrific to work with.
If the end of this particular story doesn't absolutely floor you, nothing will.
When I developed the basic Believers story, and was looking for someone to assign it to, David was the first person we went to. He asked me at the time why him...he's more generally associated with humorous stuff. I had my reasons. See, lately, David adopted a young boy, about the same age as Shon. So about halfway into the outline, David called and said, "NOW I understand." I knew that having a child of his own now would mean that the story would be a lot more personal. Especially the end scene, which I knew would have to be done *very* carefully. I think David did a great job, and under his guidance it turned into a very moving episode. And with any luck, he'll write more down the road.
There's some small amount of blurring that goes on in this show; a freelancer turns in a script, and things get added. For instance, there was a need to really tighten up the story in "Believers," which could best be done by bringing in a small B story, which would allow us to streamline and intensify the main story. So I wrote the B story and slipped it in.
Today David Gerrold came by the set to watch some of the shooting on his episode, "Believers." Unlike many shows, which basically throw the writer off the set, our writers are welcome to hang around. It's not only okay, it's *expected* that the writer will be there at some point, to be a part of the process. David was quite ebullient about the whole thing; he thinks that this is the best script he's ever written, and it's being filmed exactly as he'd hoped, if not better. So there he was, getting autographs, muttering something about somebody named "Hugo...."
What was interesting was one comment he made, which echoed almost verbatim something D.C. Fontana said when she came by the stage: that the atmosphere on set, with the crew, the cast, the production people is exactly the same as it was on the first season of the original Star Trek.
I know from pfingle eggs...I let David have the reference because... well, I don't know anymore...I think water torture was involved.
Who wrote Kosh's line about the avalanche?
That was Gerrold, as I recall.
Similarity between "Believers" & a DS9 novel?
And yeah, TV generally doesn't do this kind of ending. Which is why we did it...and our liaison at Warner Bros. deserves a lot of credit for letting us do it.
It was important to tell David to pull no punches because in TV, most producers *want* you to do so, and he had to know going in that this was the way the story would go. David's a great writer, and David's a professional...meaning he understands where the general limits of TV are. If you're going to move the lines around, it behooves you to tell your writer that. Knowing the rules, he went out and did a bangup job on the episode.
I view Delenn's comment about "suffering the interference of others" in regards to matters of the soul in "Believers" to be a reference to the Soul Hunter.
What happened to Ivanova when she encountered the raiders? She got away by long-distance firing as she retreated as fast as she could, taking shots as she went. It wouldn't look real exciting in the long run.
How Ivanova got away from the Raiders was taking advantage of her lead to run away, occasionally firing backward to deter pursuit, until she got to the jumpgate. It wasn't really anything dramatically interesting, and at that point you would start distracting from the main plot...and that couldn't be allowed to happen. There's really no place in the rest of the act where you can cut in without destroying it. And in the tag there's no room for the pursuit, only the arrival.
You don't think that "Believers" was SF. Tough.
No, it didn't have warp gates, or tachyon emitters, or lots of technobabble...it was about people. And the dilemmas they face.
Part of what has screwed up so much of SF-TV is this sense that you must utterly divorce yourself from current issues, from current problems, from taking on issues of today and extrapolating them into the future, by way of aliens or SF constructs. And that is *precisely* why so much of contemporary SF-TV is barren and lifeless and irrelevant...and *precisely* why such series as the original Star Trek, and Outer Limits, and Twilight Zone are with us today.
Like Rod Serling and Gene Roddenberry and Joe Stefano and Reginald Rose and Arch Oboler and Norman Corwin and a bunch of other writers whose typewriters I'm not fit to touch, my goal in part is to simply tell good stories within an SF setting. And by SF I mean speculative fiction, which sometimes touches on hard-SF aspects, and sometimes doesn't. Speculative fiction means you look at how society changes, how cultures interact with one another, how belief systems come into conflict. And as someone else here noted recently, anthropology and sociology are also sciences; soft sciences, to be sure, but sciences nonetheless.
It's been pointed out that TV-SF is generally 20-30 years behind print SF. This whole conversation proves the point quite succinctly. In the 1960s or so, along came the New Wave of SF, which eschewed hardware for stories about the human condition set against an SF background. And the fanzines and prozines and techno-loving pundits of hard-SF declared it heresy, said it wasn't SF, this is crap. And eventually they were steamrolled, and print SF grew up a little. Now the argument has come to settle here. Well, fine. So be it.
There is a tendency among the more radical hard-SF proponents to stamp their feet and hold their breath until they turn blue, to threaten that unless the book changes or the field comes around or the series cottens to *their* specific, narrow version of what SF is -- and that definition changes from person to person -- they'll take their ball and their bat and go home. Fine and good. And the millions who come to take their place in the bleachers and on the field will get to have all the fun.
Some of our episodes will fit your definition of SF. Some will not. This worries me not at all.
The area that cannot be opened is the chest area, primarily; a nick or cut or scratch really doesn't count; it's puncturing to the body cavity wherein the soul is housed.
No, the parents were not charged with murder. When a species on the station acts against one of their own kind in a particular way, and no other species is affected, they are judged by the laws that apply to their own species and culture. In their culture, what they did is not a crime, so they received no punishment. Had they done this to a human, then yes, they would have been charged with murder.
Actually, I disagree when you say that the doctor was right. Says who? Not the parents. Not the episode. Nobody was really right, when you come down to it, except maybe Sinclair, who made the correct call. You say the boy was okay at the end...the parents didn't think so. Who's to say if there was or wasn't a soul inside?
Of course the surgical scars would've been a dead giveaway that surgery had been performed. Also, lying to them would have also been a violation of medical ethics. This was not a story about easy solutions.
There's a wonderful scene in "Fiddler on the Roof" where Tevya is caught in an argument between two Rabbis. The first one makes a point. "You're right!" Tevya says. The second Rabbi makes a contradictory point. "You're right!" Tevya says. A third Rabbi, looking on, says, "Wait a minute, they can't *both* be right."
"You know," Tevya says, "you're right too."
A lot of our episodes are constructed to work as mirrors; you see what you put into it. "Believers" has been interpreted as pro- religion, anti-religion, and religion-neutral..."Quality" has been interpreted, as you note, as pro-capital punishment, and anti-capital punishment. We do, as you say, much prefer to leave the decision on what things mean to the viewer to hash out.
The thing about "Believers" is that, really, nobody's right, and in their own way, from their point of view, everybody's right.
"The concept of loving parents being able to kill their child for their religions seems to be unrealistic."
Funny...I seem to recall this little story in the Old Testament about how a good and wise man was asked by god to sacrifice his own son, to himself kill his own child, and he was willing to do it, and was only stopped by god saying, in essence, "April fool."
On the "predictable" argument...I can only shrug. The kid has a 50/50 chance...he'll survive or die. And guessing the end isn't, for me, the key; this isn't a who-dunit; it's how our characters react on the way there, and what it *does* to them, I think.
Since I suggested the ending to David, right down to the candles, I suppose I'll take the rap...but the question you're raising isn't the issue. There are only two possible results: the kid lives, or the kid dies, there ain't much in-between. You ask, "Who on earth is going to side with people who kill their own child?" The audience isn't being asked to *side* with anyone, there IS no easy solution, and no one is 100% in the right.
There is a wonderful short story, which we adapted for Twilight Zone, called "The Cold Equations," where a small shuttle is going from point A to point B. There is enough fuel for the shuttle, and one pilot, and no more. The ship is bringing medicine to save 500 colonists. A young girl has stowed away on the ship to see her brother. She's discovered. If the pilot does nothing, the ship won't arrive, and he and the girl will die, and the colonists will die. If he sacrifices himself, she won't be able/won't know how to guide the ship to its destination. The only way out is to ask her to enter the airlock so he can space her and continue the mission. And that's what happens. You can't argue with math.
Sometimes, there are no-win scenarios. And what matters then is how your characters react, what they do and say, and how it affects them. That, really, was the thrust of the episode. And to go back to your question, "Who on earth is going to side...."
The operative word in your question is "Earth." No, no human is going to side with them (although I'd point out in the Bible that there is the story of Abraham, who was quite willing to murder his own son at god's request). They're not humans. They have a wholly different mindset, cultural background and belief system. People ask for ALIEN aliens, then judge them by human standards, and feel it's wrong if they don't behave like humans. These didn't. That's who and what they are. If humans side with them, or accept them, doesn't enter into it.
The choice *had* to be either/or. That was the point; to put the characters in a situation of conflict and see how they handle it. Sometimes in life there are ONLY two choices, neither of them good. Your message comes from a position of trying to avoid the hard choices. But the episode is ABOUT hard choices. It *has* to be either/or.
To support your thesis, you bring up the "Cold Equations" alternate ending of the pilot cutting off both his legs to make up the weight differential. Lemme explain something to you. I was there. When we turned in the script, by Alan Brennert, MGM went nuts. "You can't have a sympathetic young woman commit suicide! It'll kill the ratings!" So they (the studio exec) suggested various "fixes." One was that instead of stepping willingly out the airlock, the pilot shoots her and has to deal with the guilt. (This by them is a *better* idea?) The other was the notion of the guy cutting off his legs to make up the weight.
First and foremost, it was a dumb idea because he'd be in no shape to pilot the ship. Second it wouldn't be enough weight. And finally, the very *nature* of "The Cold Equations," what the very TITLE means, is that there are some occasions in which the choices are stark, and there is NO way around them. If the ship has X-weight, and the fuel is for Y weight, and Y is less than X, then you've got a problem that can only -- ONLY -- be resolved by someone walking out the airlock. (And yes, they tried dumping things, but the ship is lean, not much to get rid of.) That's why it's the COLD equations; not the LUKEWARM equations.
I fought like hell to retain the original ending, and won. (You probably read about this, btw, in my articles for TZ Magazine.) This is studio-think, let's find a nice, unthreatening, safe, middle-ground where we can resolve this without anybody being upset, threatened or offended by the story. I'm sorry, but life sometimes hands you hard choices, there ARE either/or scenarios, in which nobody really wins, and SF should be exploring those as well as the fuzzy feel-good stories. It's time SF grew up a little, damn it, and started confronting hard questions that can't always be resolved by reversing the polarity on the metaphase unit.
Afterthought: I just wandered into the kitchen, still ranting (as I am wont to do), explained it to Kathryn...who brought me up short (as *she* is wont to do) by pointing out the antecedent to BOTH stories. The ultimate "hard choice" example in SF-TV is of course "The City on the Edge of Forever," fromST. There are only two choices, both hard: either Edith Keeler dies, or the Nazis win WW II. Kirk *has* to let her die; there's no other choice.
There were no changes in dialogue made in "Believers" subsequent to the first airing.


text:
Nauka autentyczna (Authentikos logos) – gnostycki utwór z Nag Hammadi (NHC VI,3). Treść to opis dziejów duszy w świecie materialnym. W utworze są liczne aluzje do tradycji platońskiej i chrześcijańskiej. Wymowa pisma podobna do Egzegezy o duszy (NHC II,6).

Bibliografia
 Wincenty Myszor, Nauka autentyczna [w:] César Vidal Manzanares, Pisarze wczesnochrześcijańscy I-VII w. Mały słownik, wyd. Verbinum, Warszawa 2001.

Literatura gnostycka

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
At What Age?
Boarding Or Day?
Coeducational or Single Sex?
IB, A Level or BTEC?
Specialist Schools
6th Form Colleges
Girls' Schools
Boys' Schools
Schools in London
Expat Families
Prep School Families
These Sixth-Form colleges are specialist centres which offer A level courses and the IB, as well as the option of re-sitting GCSEs.
The sixth-form colleges tend not to have boarding facilities as such (although some do) but are able to provide accommodation somewhere near the college. Courses tend to be quite intense and there is less opportunity for extra-curricular and sporting activity than at a traditional senior boarding school. However, for students wanting a more relaxed and informal experience, then these sixth-form colleges can provide that.
Which Boarding School offers advice and consultancy on sixth-form college. If you feel that you'd like to find out more, please do speak to one of our consultants on +441702588225 who will be happy to advise you.
Cambridge Centre for Sixth-Form Studies (CCSS)
Cardiff Sixth Form College (CSFC)
Oxford Sixth Form College
Sixth-Form College FAQs
How to find the best sixth-form college?
There is a lot to think about when looking for the best sixth-form college, such as effective preparation for public examinations and university entry. We can advise you on finding the best sixth-form colleges.
Is boarding available at sixth-form college?
The sixth-form colleges tend not to have boarding facilities as such (although some do) but are able to provide accommodation somewhere near the college.
Can we learn more about sixth-form colleges online?
Which Boarding School runs a series of free webinars designed to introduce you to some of the best sixth-form colleges in the UK. Visit our webinars page to find out more.
+ 44 (0) 1702588225
william@which-boarding-school.com
nieves@which-boarding-school.com
© Copyright 2021 Which Boarding School | Privacy Policy | Contact Us | WordPress Website Design by mso
Which Boarding School Ltd, 3 Imperial Avenue, Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, SS0 8NE, United Kingdom


The fascinating images below, is section of Modern Family House Floor Plan Red Bridge publishing which is classified within Designs, Ideas Modern Family House Floor Plan, Modern Family House Floor Plan Design, Modern Family House Floor Plan Furniture and posted at January 3rd, 2018 09:15:56 AM by sanny.
This images of Modern Family House Floor Plan Ideas has dimension 1024 x 768 pixels, you can download and gain the Modern Family House Floor Plan Ideas images by right click on the right click to get the high definition version.
Here is imperative data on Color Modern Family House Floor Plan. We have the tops method for Color Modern Family House Floor Plan. Check it out for yourself! You can discover Modern Family House Floor Plan Ideas guide and view the latest Modern Family House Floor Plan Red Bridge in here.


Starting Monday, March 17, 2014, surveyors will be in the area to collect information in support of a Harris County Flood Control District maintenance project that will address slope erosion on the north side of Buffalo Bayou just west of the Dairy Ashford Street bridge. The surveying activity is expected to be complete by the end of the week, and project design will begin after that.
The Flood Control District will provide additional information about the erosion repair project in advance of construction.
This survey activity is NOT related to the Flood Control District's Terry Hershey Park Surveying Contract, which is an effort to gather vegetation and topography information within Flood Control District right-of-way along the south side of Buffalo Bayou between N. Eldridge Parkway and N. Wilcrest Drive.


Dining room designs: dining room decorating ideas dark, classic georgian style dining room design orchidlagooncom. Dining room set up: 60 interior design ideas and examples. Providing luxury classic style on spacious dining room.
25 ideas for classic dining room decorating with vintage, 15 amazing luxury dining room furniture sets ideas eva. Classic italian dining room decor dining room decorating. 30 modern ideas for dining room design in classic style.


Starting September 19, 2005, the Children Adoption Center of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine suspended the acceptance of new adoption dossiers from the US citizens. According to the Children Adoption Center, the decision to stop accepting certain dossiers was based mainly on the past non-compliance of some families with post-adoption reports, which are required by the Ukrainian law.
According to the Children Adoption Center, the new procedures do not affect dossiers that have already been accepted, unless the prospective adopting parents have failed to register and provide reports about the previously adopted Ukrainian children.
As the United States is the country whose citizens adopt the largest number of the Ukrainian children, the Government of Ukraine is deeply concerned with the fate of hundreds of the adopted children we have no information about.
Taking into consideration the above-mentioned the Embassy of Ukraine to the USA kindly requests your cooperation in two matters. First, we need cooperation in promoting the registration of Ukrainian children adopted by US citizens and second, in providing the Consulates of Ukraine with post-placement reports from American adoptive parents whom you may have contact with regards to this issue.
The Embassy of Ukraine is obliged to act in accordance with the Ukrainian law which states that the Embassy shall supervise the registration of the adopted children and maintain the database of the post-placement reports about them. Registering your child allows the adopted child to be added onto the list of Ukrainian citizens residing in the United States.
Please be advised that in accordance with the Ukrainian law, the adoptive parents signed an agreement with the Government of Ukraine to maintain the Ukrainian citizenship of the adopted child until the age of eighteen, to register the child with the appropriate diplomatic mission of Ukraine, as well as to submit to the diplomatic mission periodical reports about the child's well-being and to allow the representatives of the diplomatic mission to contact the child directly.
It is especially important for the Ukrainian Government to know where the adopted Ukrainian children have been placed and how they are progressing in the United States. Through regular reports, the Ukrainian Government is informed of the children's development with their adoptive parents.
The Embassy of Ukraine thanks all American families that provide us with information about the progress of their Ukrainian children. We really appreciate it.
The Embassy of Ukraine kindly asks those who forgot or refused to provide us with this information to do so as soon as possible. Please send the reports along with pictures of your children so that we may follow their development throughout the years.
Please understand that your neglect to inform the Ukrainian authorities about your adopted children blocks the process of the Ukrainian orphan children adoption by American families.
For your convenience, information on the consular registration of Ukrainian adopted children is available online at adoption-registration. A sample of the post placement report is available online at adoption-report. To facilitate communication, the reports can be forwarded via e-mail to: adoption(a)ukremb.com or can be sent by mail to the Consular Office of The Embassy of Ukraine at 3350 M Street NW, Washington, DC 20007.
If you have any contact with adoptive parents, organizations, agencies or persons who may benefit from this information, the Embassy of Ukraine kindly asks you to pass this information along so that everyone may become well informed.
If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact the Consular Office of the Embassy of Ukraine via fax at (202) 333-7510 or by email address at adoption(a)ukremb.com.
The Embassy of Ukraine appreciates any assistance in compiling this information because this in turn will help keep the adoption process open for the American families.


text:
Taste of Cinema - Movie Reviews and Classic Movie Lists > Lists > Film Lists > The 10 Weirdest Movies of The 2010s
The 10 Weirdest Movies of The 2010s
Posted on December 4, 2019 December 4, 2019 by Alex Suszko
The adjective "weird" can mean and be applied to many different things when it comes to movies. Whether it is the content that is weird or the execution, the following 10 movies of this past decade prove that cinema remains truly unique and has the potential to entertain us with its strangeness. There has always been a place reserved for odd movies and though it is usually the independent features that revel in weirdness, some mainstream content makes its way in there too.
10. Sorry to Bother You
Sorry to Bother You is a movie that trods along as if it's your above-average comedy with sharp social commentary but in its final moments takes a turn way into left field. The marketing team for this movie did a great job hiding the absurdist twist at the end, making the revelation all the more effective and surprising.
Coming out just last year, the film industry was seeing many movies aimed at reinforcing a political agenda, but Sorry to Bother You has the gall to be more ambitious and, though a little too heavy-handed for its own good, it largely achieves what it's reaching for to make for a truly unique movie experience like none you're likely to see get wide release.
9. Lost River
Coming off of acting in two Nicolas Winding Refn movies, it seems Ryan Gosling was inspired by the director to try his hand at directing. Very much borrowing from Refn's unique style, Gosling tries to make a lurid, nihilistic take of poverty in modern America. Everything that can go wrong with the main character, played by Christina Hendricks, does and it relishes in its unpleasantness.
A mixed to negative response from the critics kept this movie from surfacing to mainstream awareness and it's likely due to the movie's pervasive weirdness. The neon drenched color scheme compliments the movie's embrace of sex and violence and keeps the movie feeling more fantastical than realistic. As a result, the movie is off-putting and singular but worth a watch for people who like traces of David Lynch and Nicolas Winding Refn in their movies.
8. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
Director Yorgos Lanthimos has propelled himself into the mainstream with his most recent movie, The Favourite, earning accolades across the board but The Killing of a Sacred Deer flew relatively under the radar and it's not hard to see why. With a far more specified audience than a movie like The Favourite, The Killing of a Sacred Deer sees characters behave aberrantly, an over-bearing sense of the supernatural, and close-up shots of surgery with no intention on explaining why or how it all connects.
It's one of the director's most dense works but it's perhaps best looked at through religious allusions. Making references to the plagues of the Old Testament as well as other stories like Abraham and Isaac, The Killing of a Sacred Deer seems to be a modern interpretation of Biblical stories and one whose weirdness lingers in the audience's memory.
7. The Forbidden Room
Those familiar with Guy Maddin won't be surprised to find that one of his movies makes it on this list. A movie that many critics said was another brilliant outing while audiences seemed to find it more impenetrable, The Forbidden Room's appeal will be based on the viewer's willingness to search for a true meaning. While many will find such an effort not worth it, those who have engaged with Maddin's work in the past will likely find themselves enjoying this experience. The Forbidden Room serves best as a disconnected sequence of images featuring recurring subjects as opposed to a classical narrative.
It is near impossible to assemble any kind of coherent narrative with the material given and that innate weirdness is only complimented further by the aberrance of its subjects. Impossible to classify and certainly not for everyone, The Forbidden Room will likely prove to frustrating for viewers that haven't taken prior enjoyment in experimental film and Maddin's work in particular.
6. The Lure
The Lure is a truly bizarre bit of genre-blending. A musical-fantasy-horror-romance is the best way to describe this truly singular movie about mermaids working at a nightclub. Following two mermaids in particular, one who is looking to eat people and the other who is looking to have sex with them, the movie is about as wild as that premise would suggest.
Gleefully showing the audience exactly how someone copulates with a mermaid and making The Shape of Water look like a Disney movie in doing so, The Lure's allure comes from its utter strangeness. Truly nothing like this movie has been made and 120 years into film's existence, not every movie can easily say that. You may not "enjoy" the movie per se, but you can't say its weirdness doesn't have an intrinsic charm.
Weirdest Movies of The 2010s
The 20 Best Cult Movies of The 2010s
The 10 Most Underrated Sci-fi Films of The 21st Century


text:
Q: What should I do to define my Outlook JS add-in as not compatible with Outlook 2013? I'm trying to pass AppSource validation process for my Outlook add-in.
Here is  a quote from the validation team recommendation:
"If you do not support 2013 SP1 because you are using an API only available in 2016/Online, you must put these apis in the requirements tag in your manifest."
Well I've placed
      <Sets DefaultMinVersion="1.5">

to the manifest (https://www.ivasoft.com/ShowAliasOWA/showaliasowa.xml).
What else should I do to pass validation if I'm not interested in targeting Outlook 2013?
Thanks.

A: When you upload your manifest in the SellerDashboard you will see the platforms you are required to support.
If you have declared Mailbox 1.5 as the DefaultMinVersion in all relevant locations, then you should not be required to support Outlook 2013 on upload of your manifest.
For more information on host and platform availability please see here

A: You cannot directly select which platforms you would like to allow for your add-in.  Instead you select "requirements" and all platforms that support those requirements are allowed.
I wish you could instead select platforms, but unfortunately that is not the case.