text:
Despite its many virtues, this memoir is simply too idiosyncratically detailed to be of general interest.
FULFILLING A DREAM
THE ULTIMATE LAW DEGREE
by Bruce R. Hopkins ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 3, 2018
A veteran lawyer recounts his decision to return to school to earn a doctorate in law.
At 72, after about 45 years of practicing as a lawyer, Hopkins (Nonprofit Governance: Law, Practices, and Trends, 2009) made a decision that bewildered and frustrated his colleagues: He went back to school. He had already obtained the only two other academic degrees in law available: a JD and an LLM, the equivalent of a master's. In pursuit of his dream, he enrolled at the University of Kansas Law School, where he was teaching a course as an adjunct (it sometimes happened that a student or two was also a classmate). Hopkins' charming remembrance splits into two narrative threads: his career as a lawyer before his decision to return to school and his coursework in pursuit of the doctorate. His professional life is a study in the marriage of disciplined hard work and happenstance. He was tasked by his employer with keeping notes on the congressional hearings devoted to the Tax Reform Act of 1969, which not only led to his legal specialization, but also opportunities to teach, lecture, and publish. (Hopkins has written more than 30 books.) He provides an excruciatingly detailed account of the coursework he completed prior to his dissertation work as well as a minute account of the dissertation itself. The author graduated in 2016 and includes written sentiments from friends and colleague as well as poem (of sorts) reflecting on the experience in its completion. Hopkins is an experienced writer, and so it's no surprise that his prose is consistently clear, though it's also companionably informal and lighthearted. It's not clear to whom this recollection is addressed—while his unusual experience is likely to be instructive and inspiring to other lawyers, the microscopic account of his coursework won't win wide appeal. He quotes his course textbooks frequently and seems driven by a desire to achieve exhaustive comprehensiveness more than readability. Some will find his reasons for his peculiar decision wanting as well—he wanted a challenge—especially given its centrality to the book.
Pub Date: May 3, 2018
Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Co.
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
Share your opinion of this book
Did you like this book?
More by Bruce R. Hopkins
HOW TO BE A SUCCESSFUL PHILANTHROPIST
by Bruce R. Hopkins
A NONPROFIT LAWYER
BEWARE THE COMMERCIALITY DOCTRINE AND OTHER NONPROFIT LAW POETRY
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it's a brilliant satire.
by Robert Greene ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1998
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world's greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: "Conceal Your Intentions," "Always Say Less Than Necessary," "Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy," and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it's used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to "be conspicuous at all cost," then told to "behave like others." More seriously, Greene never really defines "power," and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn't. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION | PSYCHOLOGY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY
More by Robert Greene
by Robert Greene
Drake Producing 48 Laws of Power Show
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY
More by Elie Wiesel
FILLED WITH FIRE AND LIGHT
by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
THE TALE OF A NIGGUN
by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
By {{ user }} • Commented on {{ date_time }}


Kate is in uncharted territory and finds support from her best friend Meg a party-hearty singleton and the only woman Kate knows who has less experience with kids than she has.
When Kate asks Pete for more responsibility, he entrusts her to put Bert to bed and help him coach Bert's soccer team. Before soccer practice, Bert drinks Kate's coffee and becomes a wild man on the field before crashing. Meanwhile, Warren and Hillary spill salsa on Diane's immaculate white couch and try to hide it from her.
When Hillary is grounded after being caught lying in order to hang out with a boy, Diane and Pete decide they must snoop in her room and on her Facebook page to find out more about the young man, while Kate tries a different tactic – to be Hillary's friend. Meanwhile, Albert gets a little too invested in Jackie's latest career venture.
When Meg stays with Kate and Pete after a break-up, Kate is torn between her friendship and obligations as a wife and step-mom. Meg's criticism of Kate's life causes the long time friends to have a falling out and it's up to Pete to help them work it out. Meanwhile, Warren struggles with the pressures of figuring out his future but gets a glimpse of his true talent when he helps Bert with a Lego project.
Between everyone's crazy schedules and activities, Pete and Kate are having a tough time finding any alone time, so at Diane's 80s-themed school fundraiser event, they attempt a risqué romantic romp inside the janitor's closet. Meanwhile, back at home, the kids help Jackie with her online dating profile, but Bert is less than enthusiastic.
Halloween is Jackie and Bert's most favorite holiday, but when Jackie's homemade Iron Man costume doesn't turn out the way Bert had intended, Kate swoops in and hijacks the holiday. Meanwhile, Pete suspects a masked trick-or-treater as the same teenage misfit who egged the house and mooned him last year, so he holds the kid hostage trying to force a confession.
When Kate and Pete host a party, Jackie crashes and hooks up with Pete's co-worker Sad Steve, much to Pete's discomfort. However, when Sad Steve decides to pursue a relationship with Jackie, both Kate and Pete jump on the bandwagon to give young love a boost. Meanwhile, Hillary helps Warren and Bert put together a Gum Show live stream, and Diane faces off with Meg after she posts an unflattering picture of her on Instagram.
When the Harrison household is infected with lice, Diane tries to take charge leaving Kate feeling bulldozed. Jackie and Kate work together to try to prove a point to Diane, but their plan back fires and the lice problem worsens. Meanwhile, Pete plays mediator between Warren and Bert, who are fighting over custody of a teddy bear.
When Kate tries to play matchmaker with Diane and another parent on a field trip, she soon learns that Diane is more challenging to set up than she originally thought. Meanwhile, Jackie decides to nurse Pete back to health and Hillary helps Bert get on his teacher's good side.
Episode 10 : Twas the Night Before Christmas... Or Twas It?
Pete, Kate, Diane and Jackie wake up Christmas morning hung-over and the house in complete disaster. They try to piece together the events of last night's Christmas Eve festivities while also trying to save Christmas for the kids.
When Kate attempts to break Pete's birthday curse and help him have a fun birthday, the curse proves to be more powerful than she anticipates. Meanwhile, Diane and Jackie shop together for Pete's birthday gift and the kids are at home with lobsters that refuse to be a main course.
When Hillary and Warren misbehave on Kate's watch, Kate turns to Diane for help in disciplining them, and Pete and Jackie try to set a good example by taking Bert on a nice outing together, but it proves to be harder than they anticipated.
Kate decides she wants in on Jackie's latest business venture of catering and delivering healthy kid lunches, but when they disagree on quality versus quantity, things get very messy. Elsewhere, Pete takes Warren and Bert to karate lessons in hopes of teaching them discipline and integrity, however, the instructor Sensei Rick has a more combative approach.
When Bert successfully reads a hundred books, Pete and Kate have to throw him the birthday party of his dreams - complete with a fire eater on stilts, professional dancers and a special visitor. Kate uses the party planning as an excuse to get in with the soccer moms that shun her at all the games, and Diane refuses to admit fault while doing some creative driving with Pete. Meanwhile, Warren starts a bromance with the guy Hillary has her eye on.
When Kate finds Pete's old wedding videos with Diane and Jackie, she realizes she robbed herself of that special memory by eloping and is now determined to have a redo and plans her dream wedding. Meanwhile, Diane decides to take her relationship with Russ Bradley Morrison public and Jackie struggles to tell Bert she's dating Sad Steve.
Wedding planning continues as Kate will not be fazed by all the stress and chaos around her, which is only amplified by the arrival of her mother and Pete's parents. However, things come to a screeching halt when the family gets some bad news.
When Pete swaps out his chili for Kate's at the school frontier fundraiser, Diane confronts him and he concocts a story about how he and Kate are going to couples counseling. Meanwhile, Meg relaxes at the Harrison's house and becomes an object of fascination for Warren and Hillary.
After Kate saves Diane from choking, she takes over the PTA and finds it harder to navigate than she thought. When faced with blackmail, she turns to Diane to make sure "it's handled." Meanwhile, Pete and Jackie confront their former neighbors after they forbid their son to go to the school dance with Hillary, and Warren tries to get Vanessa Hudgens to be his date.
Concerned about Warren's social life, Kate encourages him to make new friends and get involved in clubs or sports, however, it backfires and now she might have made things worse for him. Elsewhere, Hillary struggles with her art assignment and looks to Jackie for some creative guidance, and Pete teaches Bert the value of money.
Kate is overjoyed when Diane and Jackie offer to let her have the kids on her first Mother's Day, however, when Kate discovers their hidden agenda, she is determined to get revenge. Meanwhile, Pete slowly buckles under the pressures at work.


text:
Home › Exhibitions
Go to Exhibition Menu Murillo: The Self-Portraits Introduction All Objects Virtual Tour Introductory Video Lecture Video Audio Tour Catalogue
Murillo: The Self-Portraits
November 1, 2017 to February 11, 2018
One of the most celebrated painters of the Spanish Golden Age, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo worked primarily in Seville, where he was born in December 1617, until his death in 1682. Well known for his religious paintings and his extraordinary depictions of street urchins, he was also an ingenious painter of portraits. This genre remains, however, the least studied aspect of his work. Inspired by the self-portraits in their holdings, New York's Frick Collection and London's National Gallery co-organized a 2017–18 show that marked the 400th anniversary of this great artist's birth. Murillo: The Self-Portraits opened at the Frick from November 1, 2017, through February 11, 2018, and moved on to the London institution for a showing from February 28 through May 21, 2018. The exhibition was jointly organized by the Frick's Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator Xavier F. Salomon and Letizia Treves, Curator of Later Italian, Spanish, and French 17th-Century Paintings, National Gallery.
In 1682, an inventory of the possessions of Gaspar Murillo, the painter's son, lists the following: "Item. Another canvas of the portrait of Don Bartholome Murillo with its legend below and its frame completely gilded at three hundred reales. Item. Another portrait canvas of said Don Bartholome Murillo made by his own hand of a bar and a third with its frame of gilded adornments and half a cane bid on at three-hundred and seventy and five reales." These two self-portraits are the only known images of the painter by his own hand. The first one, recently acquired by The Frick Collection, was painted about 1650–55, while the second, now in The National Gallery, London, is from about 1670. The two portraits have not been seen together since at least the early eighteenth century.
To provide context to these canvases, the exhibition featured a group of fifteen other works on loan from international private and public collections. These included paintings of other sitters by Murillo, as well as later reproductions of the two paintings that reflect their fame in Europe. A catalogue published by the Frick in association with Yale University Press investigates the history of the two paintings and their prestigious provenances in France and England.
Commented Xavier F. Salomon, "As an American collector, Henry Clay Frick had a particular taste for Spanish painting, which is reflected today in our galleries. In 2014, Mrs. Henry Clay Frick II gave the museum the first of these paintings acquired by Mr. Frick, Murillo's Self-Portrait. We have subsequently enjoyed uniting it with works he purchased in the early years of the twentieth century, masterpieces by El Greco, Velázquez and Goya. The painting was also sent to the conservation department of the Metropolitan Museum so that it could undergo conservation and its first major technical study. We look forward to sharing those findings, through an exhibition that will reintroduce our important acquisition with new audiences in both New York and London."
Update during the exhibition: "Lost" Murillo Portrait Joins Special Exhibition. More »
Principal funding for the New York exhibition is provided by an anonymous gift in memory of Melvin R. Seiden.
Additional support is generously provided by The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation, Marianna and Juan Sabater, the families of George and Michael Eberstadt in memory of Vera and Walter Eberstadt, Mr. and Mrs. Michael J. Horvitz, Aso O. Tavitian, Helen-Mae and Seymour R. Askin, and the Spain Tourism Board, Consulate General of Spain in New York. The accompanying catalogue is underwritten by Colnaghi.
Murillo, Self-Portrait, ca. 1650–55. Oil on canvas, 42 x 30 1/8 in. The Frick Collection, New York; Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Henry Clay Frick II, 2014; photo Michael Bodycomb
Lower-Level Galleries
Lecture Video
#MurilloSelfPortraits

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Meg Hartley
Bookbaby: UIA
Thriving Autist
Content and Copywriting
Writing Offerings
My Words, Their Website
Growth + Social Issues
Cannabis + the ECS
Say Hey.
How I Went from "Normal" to Homeless
Published on May 8, 2021 May 11, 2021 by megglesworth
…and the valuable lessons I learned from the experience.
Originally published in the Medium publication, The Ascent. If you're a member over there, I sure appreciate claps as that's how we're paid. (You can do 50!)
Photo by Ussama Azam on Unsplash
It was a long and tumultuous journey that led to me living in a semi-functional 25-year-old Camry for the end of 2017, and much of 2018.
It was also wildly unexpected.
I'd graduated college with a decent GPA, had a semi-impressive career in marketing, threw charity fundraisers, volunteered and held positions on non-profit boards, cared for my people, and made sure they knew it — I had trouble managing sometimes, but did alright and was giving life my all.
If something happens to you and you proverbially fall, even if it's not your fault, the government — whom you've given 30% of your life's income to — will not catch you.
And, up until my late-20's, I seemed pretty healthy. I knew I'd had a cacophony of seemingly random issues my whole life, but they didn't interfere with things too much and were basically hideable.
Then, in 2009, I attended a get-together that left many of us with H1N1, or the "bird flu." (I didn't have the wherewithal to get to the hospital, but several of their cases were confirmed.) After that harrowing experience, the aching body pain never went away; and while I'd always seemed to be more exhausted than those around me, it got much worse.
Unfortunately, I'd have been screwed even if I'd missed that pandemic, as there were already several other health issues going on.
In my 7-month "bed," feeling like hell. (Image via Instagram.)
Physiologically, I was a walking timebomb.
For one, I was born with a B12 deficiency, which was prolonged by a homozygous MTHFR mutation. This means that my nervous system was slowly demyelinating, losing its protective cover, and causing random issues throughout my body.
Some of these are kinda funny in retrospect, like my not being able to taste salt very well, which led to me using it excessively. (In my teens, movie theatre coworkers once pranked me, dumping a "ridiculous!" amount of salt on my popcorn while I was away — I didn't even notice. Mmmm.)
Others weren't funny at all, and still aren't.
These issues mostly had to do with mental health (and unhealthy coping mechanisms), but those issues had another massive factor — undiagnosed autism.
I wouldn't know it until 2020, but I'm a great example of what's presently called, "the female autism phenotype," which can present in any gender. Though there are many differences in this presentation, the key difference is having a better ability to adjust to social situations by doing something called masking, essentially faking normal; which helps cope in the short-term, but also creates a host of mental and neurological health issues.
I have another mutation that makes me high-risk to pandemic flus, so the physical trauma of H1N1 certainly played a role, but that aching pain I had, often diagnosed as fibromyalgia, is common in women with autism.
I finally got my fibro diagnosis right before homelessness, about a year and a half after the B12 deficiency was diagnosed — them telling me, "132 pg/mL is very low, you'd have been paralyzed within a few months and dead within a year."
Home sweet home. (Image via Instagram.)
By my B12 diagnosis, late 2015, I was already basically on bed rest, but stabbing myself every day with a form of B12 called hydroxocobalamin — after learning the hard way that the cheaper, more common, cyanocobalamine can lead to panic attacks, yikes — was leading to many of the random symptoms to drop away.
Things were starting to improve, but since I was missing key diagnoses, I didn't know what I needed to do to heal. I regularly overdid it, which would result in weeks of make-you-cry pain — but I had no idea that's what was happening because the symptom flares can come up to 5 days later. Plus, it's also really hard to tell when I'm pushing it, and the weather is a huge factor; which took over a year of seasons to sort out on my own.
It was maddening. (To be honest, still is. Fibro is no freakin' joke.)
I was in that bed for about 20 months.
I wish I could tell you that's how long it took me to get better, but that's how long it took me to lose the bed.
I did everything I could to earn, but I just couldn't keep it up. I'd get more productivity hours as time progressed and my intensive wellness regimen did its thing, but that first year I had a marketing client that could afford just 9 hours a week; and I was repeatedly overdoing it trying to do that and keep up with life, my never-ending UI case (that looked statistically bleak due to my being young-ish, 33 when I applied), doctors appointments, prescriptions, etc.
When you've got very limited storage, organization is key. (Image via Instagram.)
Shit, just going to the grocery store very often led to public meltdowns that meant recovery days of no productivity and horrendously intensified symptoms.
I had a handful of good health days that coincided with an event or visitor so got to go out into my old world a few blessed times (usually aided by self-medicating with wine) — but the vast majority of my days, I was all alone in my isolated apartment, all day, all night. (Homelessness aside, I've basically been in lockdown since 2016.)
I regularly went several months without seeing a friendly face, or even talking to someone on the phone.
The idea of 'peopling' was nearly always just too much. Plus, I didn't have very many friends in my newish city; most of the people who loved me were back home in Alaska, hundreds of miles away.
So, it was just me and me, alone in that apartment.
Me and me, trying to heal. Trying to get through physical therapy. Trying to remember to take too many pills that did too little. Trying to navigate systems that very literally make my head feel like it'll explode. Trying to stay on an intense allergen-free plant-based diet on a teensy budget.
Trying not to cry all day, every day.
And trying like hell to avoid homelessness.
On that last one, we didn't succeed.
The Bottom Falls Out
Three years later, seeing this still makes my body clench and my heart ache. (Image via Instagram.)
Though more (very part-time) clients teamed up with donations from friends, acquaintances, and total strangers, as well as my very patient landlord, to keep me homed for nearly two years — I lost that studio apartment in the summer of 2017.
I'd been told by several health professionals that moving from rainy Portland, Oregon to a drier and hotter climate would help my condition, so it seemed serendipitous when a friend I hadn't seen in well over a decade offered to let me stay with her in Los Angeles county.
This outsider feeling extended to my night in a homeless shelter, where I learned just how privileged my upbringing, my life, had been.
That climate advice was spot-on, and my symptoms decreased dramatically in the hot summer weather; I don't believe I've had to use my walker even once since the move, which I'd been largely dependent on. However, living in someone else's home had the opposite effect on my undiagnosed autistic brain, and I went into what I now know is autistic burnout; leaving me holed up in my dark, quiet, A/C-free room most of the time.
The housing situation ended a week or so after I climbed out of that then-mysterious mental hole, and a couple of days after I was directed to Skid Row, where I discovered the public housing waitlist was 11 years — and there was a lottery to even get on the list.
Once it really hit me that it'd finally happened, that I was really homeless, my mental health became dangerous to my safety. Having lost my mother to her own hand and fearing the same fate, I checked myself into a mental health ward for the second time since the health crisis started. (But that's another tale.)
And when my 72-hour hold was up, my 7-month misadventure in homelessness really began.
A Whole New World, Sort Of
From unable to leave home, to no home to go to. (Image via Instagram.)
In spirituality, we often say the phrase, "in the world, but not of it."
Homelessness is kinda like that.
The outside-looking-in sensations of living with undiagnosed autism were infinitely multiplied by being in the same spaces as others, while also not being like everyone else in it — having a secret likely get me scorned, shamed.
I used face cleansing clothes and dry shampoo to help keep me looking like I belonged in our society, but I've never felt more like an outsider. (And I've felt like an alien my whole life, so that's pretty bad.)
Though warmer, this outsider feeling extended to my night in a homeless shelter, where I learned just how privileged my upbringing, my life, was.
Every shelter I called was full, which is normal — if you haven't caught on by now, our safety nets are broke, really effing broke — so I was lucky to get a spot in one. It happened to be Thanksgiving, which felt like an extra blessing, as I'd been fearing the holiday all alone. I was overwhelmed with the sensory environment, being around people, and my usual symptoms; so I mostly just listened as they talked.
Doors of Hope Women's Shelter (Image via Instagram.)
Some shared their relief for a night off the streets, talked about how rough it can be. Many had been in-and-out of homelessness since childhood, so this was a pretty normal experience for them. I thought about my experiences of financial struggle growing up, which weren't even in the same league. Things were scary sometimes, and it did have a long-term effect on my mental health; but I always had a roof over my head, I always had nutritious food to eat.
It helped set a grateful tone for the experience, after all, at least I had a semi-functional 1993 Camry to sleep in — providing shelter, storage, some privacy. Many of these (kind, funny, truly alive) women didn't even have that. Plus, coming from a community where people were generally having an easier time financially; I had people helping me along, helping ensure I wasn't literally sleeping on the street.
But, the attitude of gratitude can only go so far — it was still the hardest seven months of my life.
My days were spent trying to improve things, often working until the array of bodily symptoms and mental fatigue would start to make me cry. I didn't have an unlimited internet plan on my phone, so most of my time at night was spent lying down in the back seat of my car using meditation and visualization to take myself to a more peaceful place.
Of course, many other nights it was just crying, feeling terrified, and wondering how I'd ever get out of that mess.
I always put the window shade "funky side in," in hopes of being more discreet. (Image via Instagram.)
I'd eventually pull myself out of homelessness when the symptom relief of warmer weather coincided with a referral for a job working for someone who was incredibly understanding about the accommodations I needed, which wound up leading to regular writing work.
And in the summer of 2019, nearly four years after I originally applied for disability payments; I was awarded about two of those years, anyways — allowing me to repay loans that helped me survive, get a working vehicle, and finally move to a place that's a bit more compatible with my extensive sensory needs.
I'm still disabled and life still has its challenges, but even 2020 had nothing on living in my semi-functional car whilst broke and horribly ill.
It's been almost three years since it ended, but I'm just starting to feel like I've moved on.
It was both traumatic and eye-opening.
It changed me.
It changed me in negative ways, like increased C-PTSD symptoms; but it also changed my view of the world, my level of consciousness in regard to what really happens in our society, and my perception of what I can handle, what I can overcome. (Plus a real random one, just 'cause life's lessons can be like that.)
5 Lessons from My Homelessness Experience
My masking behavior is clear to me in the caption, which stings. This was a torturously dark night: an actually very broken foot, and a broken car — I was wrong about the low bill too. (Image via Instagram.)
I'm a bit of a badass. When you have an invisible disability, people are constantly questioning the authenticity of your condition, as if they're thinking, "It can't really be that bad." (Without the #spoonie community all the gaslighting may have driven me off the edge.) It'd gotten to me, just as all the years of strife before had gotten to me. I felt meek.
Then, while homeless, I fell and shattered my foot, but walked on it for 10 days because it hurt less than the rest of my body — so I figured I was fine.
That's f**king fierce. (Fibro fighters and autistics are fierce in general, and society has no clue.) And I stayed pretty darn positive too, I remember a drug store employee commenting on how I was smiling despite needing crutches and thinking, "You have no idea what else I'm smiling through right now."
There are heroes and helpers everywhere. There were so many times I hit obstacles that seemed completely insurmountable, but people continuously helped me out.
My home/car died repeatedly and a few people fixed it for cheap, one even doing it for free; and when I lost the apartment, friends, acquaintances, strangers donated enough to get the $500 car itself, then helped keep me in gas and internet-giving coffee purchases, as well as connecting me with creative work and donating occasional hotel stays that helped revive my spirit and get a good night's sleep.
Despite being so far away from the people who care about me, despite it being a physically solo journey — I didn't go through it alone. As the woman who created the great Fred Rogers would say, when faced with scary things, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping."
But people who leave piss on public toilet seats are the scum of the earth. That's it, that's the lesson.
There are two Americas. And, even though it was still really effing hard, I'd been living in the comparably easy one. When you're living in the easy one, things can "seem fine" for folks, but this is a result of the other America being overlooked, ignored, and full-on lied about. If you're still in the easy one, please try to learn from advocates what it's really like for people in poverty, and please call others out when they say disparaging things about those who need help.
There aren't safety nets, not really. I thought there'd be some kind of program to help disabled homeless folks find stability, someone who could help me find an adjusted place in our society. But the homeless center heralded as best resource in LA county was more like a massive mostly-empty waiting room outside of mostly-empty offices that offered pretty normal apartment listings, and a communal shower. I couldn't even get mail there.
I appreciated the showers, don't get me wrong, and the humans there were wonderful; but the way "our federal safety nets" had been described to me all my life, I thought, you know, there was something to catch us when we fell. It's not true. Our programs are archaic, under-funded, and frankly seem to be on the verge of collapse.
If something happens to you and you proverbially fall, even if it's not your fault, odds are that the government — whom you've given 30% of your life's income to — will not be there to catch you. That is a toxic societal myth, and retelling it has very dire consequences for our most vulnerable people.
Sending you good vibes in dealing with whatever scary thing life's sent your way, may we all find and be the helpers in this world.
A happy day, homed at lasssssssst! Thank you for reading, hope your day's a goodie. (Image via Instagram.)
Previous Help Autistic People; by Tossing Out These 6 Toxic Norms
Next My 9-Year Authenticity Mission Led to an Autism Diagnosis
Say hey
#stoptheshock actually autistic advocacy allyship alternative health autism b12 deficiency be weird cannabinoids cannabis cannabis industry chronic illness community compassion connection creativity disability ecs empathy endocannabinoids endocannabinoid system fibromyalgia health homelessness lucid dreaming medical cannabis meditation mental health mindfulness neurodivergence people-pleasing personal development personal growth reflection relationships self-care self-love social conditioning socialization social justice societal bullshit society solitude spoonie


Montreal, Canada, Jan. 19, 2016—SimActive Inc., a world-leading developer of photogrammetry software, is pleased to announce the purchase of multiple Correlator3D™ licenses by SNCF. The software is used in conjunction with UAVs from Delair-Tech, SimActive's partner.
When South Africa's brutal and racially oppressive policies of apartheid came to a close in 1994, it was promised by Nelson Mandela's African National Congress party that as much as 30 percent of land seized from native farmers by white landowners would be returned to them within 10 years.It didn't come close.
This was not a typical day at the office for New Mexico State University biology doctoral student Matt Boggie. It was a bitterly cold and windy December morning at the Bernardo Waterfowl Management Area in central New Mexico. He sat quietly with binoculars in an irrigation canal, camouflaged behind vegetation near a mowed-down cornfield.
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – University of Arkansas engineering researchers – experts in the study of how soil reacts to stress caused by earthquakes or floods – are participating in a multi-institutional research mission to document the effects of recent, severe flooding in the Midwest.


text:
Сестре у акцији 2 () амерички је хумористички филм из 1993. године, у режији Била Дјука, по сценарију Џејмса Ора, Џима Круикшанка и Џуди Ен Мејсон. Наставак је филма Сестре у акцији из 1992. године. Прати Долорис ван Картије која долази у помоћ својим другарицама часним сестрама како би спасиле своју стару школу хора. Споредне улоге глуме: Кети Наџими, Џејмс Коберн и Меги Смит.

Остварио је слабији комерцијални успех у односу на свог претходника, те добио негативне рецензије критичара, али је остварио популарност међу обожаваоцима првог филма.

Радња
Долорис ван Картије долази као професорка у школу којој прети затварање. Она добија позив да у улози часне сестре предаје певање групи ученика и тиме помогне запуштеној католичкој школи чије је затварање наредио бескурпулозни представник локалне власти. Једној од најталентованијих девојака из групе, мајка забрањује да пева на државном такмичењу, а на путу до успеха испречио им се и ред стереотипних свештеника.

Улоге

|-
| Вупи Голдберг
| Делорис ван Картије
|-
| Кети Наџими
| Мери Патрик
|-
| Венди Макена
| Мери Роберт
|-
| Мери Викес
| Мери Лазарус
|-
| Лорин Хил
| Рита Луиз Вотсон
|-
| Меги Смит
| опатица
|-
| Бернард Хјуз
| отац Морис
|-
| Џејмс Коберн
| господин Крисп
|-
| Мајкл Џетер
| отац Игнасио
|-
| Шерил Ли Ралф
| Флоренс Вотсон
|-
| Роберт Пасторели
| Џои Бустаменте
|-
| Томас Готшалк
| отац Вулфганг
|-
| Бред Саливан
| отац Томас
|-
| Алана Убак
| Марија
|-
| Рајан Тоби
| Ахмал
|-
| Рон Џонсон
| Скеч
|-
| Џенифер Лав Хјуит
| Маргарет
|-
| Девин Камин
| Френки
|-
| Кристијан Фицхарис
| Тајлер Чејс
|-
| Танја Блунт
| Танја
|-
| Мехран Маркос Сеђи
| Маркос
|}

Референце

Спољашње везе

Филмови 1993.
Филмови на енглеском језику
Амерички филмови
Амерички хумористички филмови
Амерички криминалистички филмови
Амерички филмски мјузикли
Филмови студија Touchstone Pictures
Филмови за које је музику компоновао Мајлс Гудман

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Exchange hoster Intermedia has been acquired by private equity firm Oak Hill Partners for an undisclosed amount.
New York-based Intermedia is a major provider of Exchange hosting services. The company manages 320,000 Exchange seats and has 38,000 customers that are serviced by 6,800 partners. Though Intermedia is a Microsoft partner, its offerings also compete with Microsoft's forthcoming Office 365 product and Business Productivity Online Services (BPOS).
With Intermedia's founder and majority shareholder Michael Choupak stepping aside, former Savvis CEO Phil Koen has been named Intermedia's new chairman and chief executive. Koen is a seasoned CEO, having served as CEO of Savvis from 2006 to 2010, as well as president of Equinix, a provider of datacenters and Internet services.
"As a pioneer and now significant player in cloud-based IT services, Intermedia has tremendous potential for further growth by delivering more cost-effective solutions to companies whose on-premise IT is moving to the cloud," Koen said in a statement. "We intend to build Intermedia into a leading provider of a broad suite of cloud services to SMBs and the channels that serve them, with Microsoft Exchange e-mail as the core service."
Intermedia said it plans to expand its portfolio of cloud-based services via new products and acquisitions. The company has already begun that expansion through the offering of hosted PBX, security, archiving, backup and mobility services.
The company also said it will continue to invest in the 24x7 support and cloud migration services.


text:
Van Helsing Reboot enlists Jon Spaihts and Eric Heisserer to Write
The vampire hunting legend returns for a reboot that is due to be written by screenwriters Jon Spaihts and Eric Heisserer.
by Stuie Greenfield • Sat, 14 Nov 2015 02:57 pm EDT	 Thu, 09 Mar 2017 02:34 am EDT	 in Movies
In 2004 "Van Helsing", starring Hugh Jackman and Kate Beckinsale, was released in the midst of a cinematic vampire frenzy. As Universal continues to develop its universe of rebooted classic monsters, "Van Helsing" is set for a reboot and the studio has revealed that writers Jon Spaihts and Eric Heisserer are set to pen the screenplay together.
Spaihts is currently known for writing the screenplay for the "Alien" prequel "Prometheus", and has recently been taken on board to scribe the upcoming Marvel film "Dr Strange" starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Rachel McAdams. Spaihts is also on board to write the upcoming 2017 reboot of "The Mummy" as part of Universals reboot universe of classic monsters. Heisserer has writing credits that include the reboots of "A Nightmare on Elm Street" in 201o and "The Thing" reboot in 2011. Heisserer also penned films such as "Final Destination 5" and "Hours".
"Van Helsing" tells the story of the titular monster hunter (originally a vampire hunter) who is, in the 2004 film, tasked with stopping Count Dracula who is planning on using Dr Frankenstein's research and a werewolf for untoward purposes. Van Helsing and his sidekick Carl ends up teaming up with a Gypsy Princess called Anna Valerious. Anna is also determined to stop Dracula in order to break a curse that has plagued her family for years. As yet there are no details on plot for the reboot.
The reboot is set to form part of Universal's classic monsters reboot network that is being led by producers Alex Kurtzman and Chris Morgan. Kurtzman has a long history of production credits including TV series "Alias", "Fringe", "Scorpion", "Sleepy Hollow" and "Hawaii Five-O". Film credits include "The Amazing Spiderman 2", "Now You See Me" and "Star Trek". Morgan is known for his production work on "The Fast and Furious 6 and 7" as well as "47 Ronin".
In a similar world as the Marvel Cinematic Universe Universal plan to develop a world of characters that intertwine, but how this will be achieved is yet to be revealed. The first film in the current family of films, "The Mummy", has been rumoured to be set in the modern day yet there are no current details on how "Van Helsing" will fit into the structure of the films.
Tagged in: Eric Heisserer / Jon Spaihts / Universal / Van Helsing
Stuie Greenfield
All Stuie's Posts
I am a film fanatic and writer based in Hampshire in the UK. I currently write for a number of websites as well as working on screenplays. I adore Jurassic Park and Brief Encounter. This pretty much sums me up.


Do You Have Questions About Whether Or Not To Vaccinate?
1) Read this website. We put a huge amount of time and effort into creating this website and we actually created it specifically for you. Reading this website should give you a very clear overview of the many problems with vaccines and why we can have a healthy society without them.
2) Read Cynthia Cournoyer's book, What About Immunizations. I've read a number of books on the topic, and I believe that she has been able to condense the most important points for you into a very understandable handbook on why we don't need to vaccinate and what the very real dangers of vaccination are. I can't recommend this book highly enough to you.
We hope that you will come to the same conclusion we have: that not only are vaccines not safe, and at best, minimally effective, but that there is absolutely no way they should be mandated to the public by our government. And if you agree, please join our fight! Become a paying member, share this website with others and take action to stop mandatory vaccination. We must step up to the plate and be fearless in educating others why vaccine mandates must be stopped, or we will not have much of a society left in 10 to 20 years.


Has Tim Cook Killed Nike Fuelband's Android Future?
Why doesn't Nike want to bring the Fuelband to Android?
The Nike Fuelband was one of my favorite gadgets last year. It tracks all your movement to help you stay in shape. It syncs everything with your iPhone. Plus, it looks pretty freaking cool.
Nike Fuelband is part of the wave of futuristic wearable fitness devices. In a couple of years we'll all have something like it, but for now, the Nike Fuelband only syncs with your computer or iPhone. There's no Android app, and according to Nike, you shouldn't hold your breath waiting for one.
It seems odd that Nike would pass up the opporuntity to sell Fuelbands to the millions of people using Android phones. Even though you can still sync up your Fuelband on your PC, the appeal of the Fuelband is that it's a truly mobile gadget.
Well, maybe the answer to Nike shunning Android has something to do with a certain member on its board of directors.
Apple's CEO, Tim Cook, joined Nike's Board of Directors back in 2005 and is still a member. The relationship has helped Apple and Nike form a partnership and integrate Nike + iPod into numerous iPods and even the iPhone.
Did Tim Cook ask Nike to keep Fuelband an iOS exclusive for a while? Maybe Apple's working with Nike on their own iWatch that includes Nike+ integration? We're not sure. All we know is that Nike and Apple are very close, and we wouldn't be surprised if old Timmy was pulling some strings to keep the Fuelband away from Android.


text:
Q: Collaborative Filtering: Ways to determine implicit scores for products for each user? Having implemented an algorithm to recommend products with some success, I'm now looking at ways to calculate the initial input data for this algorithm.
My objective is to calculate a score for each product that a user has some sort of history with.
The data I am currently collecting:

*

*User order history

*Product pageview history for both anonymous and registered users

All of this data is timestamped.
What I'm looking for
There are a couple of things I'm looking for suggestions on, and ideally this question should be treated more for discussion rather than aiming for a single 'right' answer.

*

*Any additional data I can collect for a user that can directly imply an interest in a product

*Algorithms/equations for turning this data into scores for each product

What I'm NOT looking for
Just to avoid this question being derailed with the wrong kind of answers, here is what I'm doing once I have this data for each user:

*

*Generating a number of user clusters (21 at the moment) using the k-means clustering algorithm, using the pearsons coefficient for the distance score

*For each user (on demand) calculating their a graph of similar users by looking for their most and least similar users within their cluster, and repeating for an arbitrary depth.

*Calculating a score for each product based on the preferences of other users within the user's graph

*Sorting the scores to return a list of recommendations

Basically, I'm not looking for ideas on what to do once I have the input data (I may need further help with that later, but it's not the point of this question), just for ideas on how to generate this input data in the first place

A: Here's a haymaker of a response:

*

*time spent looking at a product

*semantic interpretation of comments left about the product

*make a discussion page about a product, brand, or product category and semantically interpret the comments

*if they Shared a product page (email, del.icio.us, etc.)

*browser (mobile might make them spend less time on the page vis-à-vis laptop while indicating great interest) and connection speed (affects amt. of time spent on the page)

*facebook profile similarity

*heatmap data (e.g. à la kissmetrics)

What kind of products are you selling? That might help us answer you better. (Since this is an old question, I am addressing both @Andrew Ingram and anyone else who has the same question and found this thread through search.)

A: *

*You can allow users to explicitly state their preferences, the way netflix allows users to assign stars.

*You can assign a positive numeric value for all the stuff they bought, since you say you do have their purchase history. Assign zero for stuff they didn't buy

*You could do some sort of weighted value for stuff they bought, adjusted for what's popular. (if nearly everybody bought a product, it doesn't tell you much about a person that they also bought it) See "term frequency–inverse document frequency"

*You could also assign some lesser numeric value for items that users looked at but did not buy.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Secret bridge unveiled ... and you can see why they kept it secret!
Today is a great day for followers of the wild and wacky world of the bridge design competition.
At last, the public can see Techniker and Spence Associates' design for the River Wear Crossing competition. Since they won in September 2005, their design has been kept strangely secret. Architect Stephen Spence has complained loudly about this supposed injustice, stating that "his plans had been checked by engineers and no problems had been found". The Happy Pontist commented on the kerfuffle in July.
The bridge, along with a watered-down version and more conventional option, is to go to public consultation in the next few weeks. However, images of the design have been revealed early in the Sunderland Echo and The Journal.
The iconic bridge design is simply amazing. Amazingly beautiful. And amazingly daft. You can instantly see how it would appeal to the marketing types at Sunderland Arc, the development body who promoted the original design competition. It's tall, it's curvy, it's spectacular: in particular, it would make an exciting logo for the city of Sunderland. Thrusting upwards. Dynamic. That sort of thing.
Matthew Wells, the structural designer, says that "the bridge was not a technically difficult or radically new structure". He certainly knows his stuff, as evidenced by his very readable book 30 Bridges. The local press claims it's a bit like the Erasmus Bridge in Holland, to back up the view that it's a proven design. But here's where the problems really begin. It's nothing like the Erasmus Bridge, or any other cable-stayed bridge I've ever seen. And it undoubtedly is both technically difficult and radically new.
For one thing, the twisty masts tilt towards the deck they are supposedly supporting. At Erasmus (and other expensive designs such as Calatrava's Alamillo Bridge and Sundial Bridge), they slope away from the deck, which helps to counterbalance the dead weight and traffic loads.
At Erasmus, there are cables which hold back the masts, restraining them against the enormous horizontal forces introduced by the main deck cables. In Sunderland, there are no such cables, and the tops of the masts aren't even tied together. The whole bridge is therefore held up by tall, pointly cantilevers. Which tilt towards the deck. Calling that amazing doesn't begin to capture the audacity of the concept! It's a bit like hanging the Brooklyn Bridge off the side of the Empire State Building.
The Sundial Bridge just about gets away with this sort of ambition by virtue of being a relatively lightly loaded footbridge. But the River Wear crossing will carry a multi-lane highway. To avoid vibration problems, or just the deck sagging into the river, those masts would have to be enormously strong, with huge quantities of steel and concrete pressed into service. As a bridge engineer, I personally find it very difficult to imagine.
Go back to the original competition and you'll find that the budget for the bridge was £43m, which worked out at about £4,000 per square metre of deck. In my view, there's absolutely no way a bridge of this scale and type could be built for that sum.
I look forward to reading other views. It's good that at last this design has been made public, opening an opportunity for debate, not just about the merits of this particular structure, but about the process by which it was developed (a design competition, judged in secret, and without an experienced large-span bridge engineer on the jury). I also wonder about the process going forward: judging from the Sunderland press, there are strong voices in favour of the design, not least from the leader of local government opposition, who we might assume to be relatively ignorant of structural engineering (or at least to have commented prior to actually seeing the design). It looks like local people will be asked to tell their elected leaders whether they prefer bread or circuses: low-cost versus spectacle.
No doubt the designers will continue to defend their proposal robustly. But amongst all the consideration of cost versus quality that will probably dominate discussions, I think it's important not to forget about risk. Whether it will stand up or not, for a given budget or otherwise, it's undoubtedly a very high-risk proposal. And Sunderland might be wise to look at recent examples from Glasgow and Stratford-upon-Avon for cases where high-risk competition-winning designs were dropped only after first wasting considerable sums of public money.
Posted by The Happy Pontist at 8:50 PM
Labels: bridge design competitions, cable-stayed, highway bridges, Sunderland
The Happy Pontist said...
And the initial vox pop is in:
"It's a beautiful design, much better than the one in Newcastle"
"It's good, it's unusual"
"It's about time we had something to compete with Newcastle. Newcastle has got all those fantastic bridges, and that (design) would be fantastic"
"That design looks like something really impressive"
All courtesy of the Sunderland Echo. It's hard to escape the thought that Sunderland are really shooting themselves in the foot with this public consultation, offering it up to dozens of people who can tell (rightly) when something looks nice, but have no idea what makes a bridge stand up.
Why are they so bothered about competing with Newcastle, I wonder?
If Wikipedia is to be believed, rivalry with Newcastle dates back to the 1640s and Charles I awarding coal-trading rights to Sunderland's rival.
But lots of places envy Gateshead's "blinking eye" - it was a very obvious theme in Glasgow's "glasgowbridge" competition, where they even chose the winner based on seeming homage to the Gateshead Millennium Bridge. I think Sunderland's envy is similar, and may even end up the same way - a structurally radical proposal that goes way over budget before being dropped ignominiously.
Two points:
The competition was not judged in secret. A record of events was produced and would be available from SCC if requested.
All of the competition bridges were reviewed by a technical panel prior to judging. The judging panel included two bridge building experts. Once the preferred design was chosen it was subject to an extensive peer review with a long span expert from Mott Macdonald. All of the above gave the 'thumbs up' for the design prior to SCC announcing the result of the competition in September 2005.
From the tone of your post I suspect you have some inside knowledge :-)
All competitions are essentially judged "in secret" to avoid outside influence on the jury panel. However, there are a number of disadvantages to this. One is the possibility of jury nobbling - there's certainly anecdotal evidence from elsewhere that a strong participant in the jury can drive their opinions through e.g. if they are the senior political representative. There's also the concern that because the designs are not subject to public scrutiny, inexperienced jury members may choose a design which has serious feasibility problems. This happened in Krakow and probably also in Glasgow.
It would be interesting to know who the "bridge building experts" were on the judging panel. The competition brief mentioned but didn't identify an ICE representative. I believe there have been concerns with other RIBA competitions that the ICE representative has not always been an appropriately knowledgeable person. The brief also said that the technical panel included the council's head of structures, who is unlikely to be an expert in this type of bridge.
It's interesting you state that SCC would release the record of the jury's deliberations: if so, this would be quite unusual, but I will certainly ask them for a copy. Do you know who is the best person to ask?
Calgary: Calatrava or competition? Controversy!
River Douglas shortlist available online
Ballsbridge-Dodder winning design announced
Iconic vs laconic - you decide!
River Wear bridge ready for public battle
Secret bridge unveiled ... and you can see why the...


text:
ActiveXperts.com » Network Monitor » Checks » IP » LDAP check
ActiveXperts LDAP Server monitoring
ActiveXperts solution to monitor LDAP servers
LDAP means: Lightweight Directory Access Protocol.
An LDAP check takes the following parameters:
Host - Hostname or IP address of the server/device to be monitored;
ActiveXperts Network Monitor LDAP check
Introduction to LDAP
A year or two ago, it seemed like everyone had heard about LDAP, and quite a few people were talking about it, but no one was really doing anything with it. That seems to finally be changing, which is especially good for administrators and developers. LDAP can play a vital role in networks of all sizes, but like most new technology, it suffers from the Catch-22 of no one using it because it's not supported and developers not supporting it because no one is using it. To understand why and how LDAP is going to be such an important tool in the life of a network administrator, it is necessary to understand what problems LDAP was developed to solve and how it will do so. This means it is also necessary to understand LDAP itself, both as a technology and as a tool. Because of the difficulty in truly separating the job of system administrator from the job of network administrator, and because there is often so much cross-over, especially in smaller environments, I will generally refer to people of either category as network administrators. I choose "network administrator" as the generic term because a quality system or network administrator is concerned with the entire network of devices or systems, not individual nodes. The term "network administrator" places more stress on viewing the network as a whole, making it a more appropriate term.
What is LDAP?
LDAP is the latest iteration in a rather lengthy development process beginning with the X.500 directory specification and its corresponding Directory Access Protocol (DAP) in the late 1980s and early 1990s. (For a more complete history of LDAP, and more information in general, see "Understanding and Deploying LDAP Directory Services", by T. Howes, M. Smith, and G. Good.) DAP was a consistently difficult protocol to work with and implement, so easier protocols were developed with most of its functionality but significantly less complexity. Eventually, these versions were passed on to the IETF and OSI-DS and got merged into the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, or LDAP, specification, first published as RFC 1487 in 1993. LDAP gained some widespread use in version 2, specified in RFC 1777.
LDAP is a protocol definition for accessing specialized databases called directories. It is similar to SQL in that it is a language for interacting with databases without specifying a particular database. In fact, the back-end for LDAP directories is nearly always a more general RDBMS system, such as LDBM or Oracle.
Using LDAP to interact with a database does place constraints on that database, because of the assumptions the protocol makes and the specialized needs of a directory versus a standard relational database. But these constraints are necessary to be able to gain all of the desired features of a directory.
What is a directory, and why does my network need one?
Use of the word "directory" in this context may confuse people into thinking that most networks currently don't make use of directories, or that LDAP will be the only directory on the network. In actuality, directories are already a mainstay of life, especially in the computer world. Most people are familiar with talking about a phonebook or a map of the mall as a directory, but for some reason insist upon using the term "database" in computing, even when directory would be more specific and correct. As an example, I call Unix's system of storing user information the "passwd database," but that database easily qualifies as a directory.
At its most basic definition, a directory is any database specialized more for reading than for writing: The phonebook only comes out once a year, the mall directory is only changed when stores change, and the passwd database is only updated when user information is changed -- but all of that information is read frequently. The definition really does not get more specific than that because there are so many different information stores which can qualify as directories, although generally speaking a directory is much more likely to be searched than browsed. The listing most often referred to as a directory in the technical industry, a file system directory, also fits this definition, because the directory is read whenever a listed file is accessed in any way, but is only written when files are created or destroyed. Also, the directory is far more likely to be read when searching for a specific file rather than just browsing the listing. Almost anyone involved in the development or maintenance of networked applications or services is already working with at least one directory: a system of maintaining user information. Nearly all services require some sort of authentication services, thus mandating that those same services maintain a user directory. Because of this, the most common form of online directory is for user information. Directories are useful for a larger variety of information than that, though. For instance, Unix systems maintain directories for services, groups, and many other data types, the Domain Name System (DNS) is a very specialized global directory for host-name-to-address correlation, and web directories used for navigating sets of web sites are springing up everywhere.
If I'm already using directories, why switch to LDAP?
We have already seen that almost any network uses a variety of directories, often for specific services. In database-speak, that means the directory data is not normalized, which means many pieces of data are stored in more than one place, and thus must be changed in more than one place when changes are necessary.
This is a problem for many reasons. The most obvious is that every time any information in any of these directories gets changed, all of the other directories must be hunted through to make that same change. This is not only difficult, it is often completely unmanageable -- witness the ease with which passwords for the same user in different services go out of sync.
Beyond that, every time two services implement their own versions of the same style of directory, there is significant redundant effort. Not only did the developers for each service have to develop their own directory, but now the managers of each service have to separately maintain the directories -- a single user of both services will almost certainly have a different user experience with each service, and it is nearly impossible to centrally manage these multiple directories.
Security is an even worse problem. Probably every developer and administrator is familiar with the headaches associated with user security. Are the passwords secure? Is the transport secure? Has the user really proved his/her identity? Did I accidentally leave a loophole to gain higher access? Will the user directory always be available? When multiple services implement separate directories for the same information, each of them must completely cover the security issues. Basic statistics virtually guarantee more security holes than a unified directory, and this also means that the services are likely to have differing and even conflicting security policies.
What you really want in a network is unification of directories, and this is exactly what LDAP was designed for. With this unification, you get data normalization, central management, consistent user experience, consistent management and security policies, fewer security holes, and less wasted development time.
Why should I trust LDAP to unify my directories?
LDAP was specifically designed to solve the problems caused by the proliferation of directories across a network, and there are seven aspects of its current implementation that give it that ability.
General-purpose design - Because LDAP was designed to be a general-purpose directory, it had to be extensible. It uses an object-oriented, inheritance-based schema definition, which provides for easy extension to any reasonable use. There is a base schema as part of the LDAP specification, and there are other de facto standards for various services. However, it is expected that most developers will extend the base schemas;
Protocol simplicity - One of the most important aspects of LDAP development, and that which caused it to be adopted in lieu of DAP, is that it is a simple protocol and is relatively simple to implement and work with. This is borne out by the fact that LDAP is supported by most major programming languages, including C, Java, and Perl, and either is supported or will be supported by most major operating systems, including Solaris, GNU/Linux, Microsoft Windows, and Mac OS;
Distributed architecture - Using data replication, it is possible to replicate all or part of an LDAP directory to physically separate locations, which allows for highly-available data and puts the data as close as necessary to the client. Using referrals, data mastery of portions of the directory can be distributed across different LDAP servers, thus allowing portions of an enterprise or project to have control over necessary data while maintaining a single authority over each piece of data;
Security - A large focus of LDAP development has been security, with version 3 of the LDAP protocol bringing significant improvements;
There are three basic aspects of securing the information in a directory: access, authentication, and authorization (AAA, or Triple-A). Access is the ability to connect to a service and can be restricted based on details like time of day or IP address, authentication is the ability to prove to the service that a client is a valid user, and authorization is the service providing or denying specific rights or capabilities to the client. Unfortunately, the syntax of ACLs is not yet part of the LDAP specification. It seems likely that Netscape's implementation of ACLs will be accepted as the standard, but that has not happened yet and different LDAP servers may implement ACLs in different ways. However, this should not affect development or functioning of the client. For secure access, LDAP supports Transport Layer Security (TLS), which can encrypt all communication between the client and server. For authentication, LDAP supports Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL), which allows the client and server to negotiate a (hopefully secure) authentication method. TLS and SASL provide encryption capabilities but not control over access and authentication. LDAP actually provides the ability to control all three aspects of AAA through Access Control Lists (ACLs). ACLs can be used to grant access based on many different factors. They can be used to force specific types of authentication, and once the client is fully authenticated as a valid user, ACLs are used to authorize the user;
Open standard - Because LDAP is an open standard maintained by the IETF, it can be used by any developers, companies, or administrators without fear of being tied to proprietary protocols or specific vendors, and allows the choice of implementation to be based on project details rather than interoperability concerns. This also means that LDAP can progress according to the needs of the people who use it, rather than a corporation concentrating on profits or marketshare;
Server feature and schema requests - The LDAP specification states that LDAP clients can request the entire feature list and data schema from any LDAP server, thus allowing the client to vary its functionality according to that of the server, which should provide greater interoperability across different implementations and different versions of LDAP;
Internationalization - LDAP uses UTF-8 for internal string representations. This allows LDAP to store and manipulate any language of the world.
This is not an exhaustive list of all of the features of LDAP, but it details some of the most important aspects of the protocol. In fact, one of the reasons that LDAP is being adopted now is only marginally related to LDAP itself: The computer industry, especially in the area of network management, is ready for enterprise-wide directories. This is evidenced by them cropping up everywhere, from servers such as Netscape's Directory Server and Microsoft's Active Directory to clients such as email programs and operating systems all the way to standards specifications such as the Directory Enabled Networks (DEN) initiative.
I'm sold. How can I get some?
Unfortunately, LDAP isn't quite the panacea we all dream of today. The main problem is that it isn't as supported as it could be. For instance, Sun's Solaris operating system provides support for LDAP as its naming service, but that support doesn't include any type of encryption, which is basically unacceptable. There are also still a surprising number of vendors and programs that don't provide support where they should, and many technology decision-makers either don't know what LDAP is or don't think it matters to them.
This points to another problem with the state of LDAP today: There is not much in the way of lay-person documentation or support. Yes, you can read the RFCs and source code, but high-level descriptions of what LDAP is and how it might be useful, now and in the future, are sadly lacking, especially in succinct formats (the best LDAP book available today is almost 800 pages long). Even for the applications that currently support LDAP, it is usually far more difficult to get them to work than it should be, which is causing a slow adoption of LDAP.
Then why would I even bother?
Although it is easy to take a gloomy view on the future of LDAP -- and certainly its present -- the fact is that more vendors, applications, languages, and operating systems are supporting LDAP, and more organizations are depending on it for management of key information. LDAP directories are great for organizations that do a lot of web development or custom application development. Although the industry support isn't the best right now, most vendors either currently partially or fully support LDAP or are talking about doing so. And frankly, LDAP really is a simple protocol and has APIs for any language. If you are developing web applications, or just need a good directory to store information in, chances are you should at least look at LDAP -- you may like what you find.
So now is the time to begin learning about LDAP and trying to understand what role it can play in what you do, whether you function as a developer, administrator, decision-maker, or all three. The longer it takes our industry to fully support LDAP as a standard for directories, the more time we all have to spend maintaining redundant and often inadequate information stores and methods of interacting with them.


text:
Last updated by Scott K. Andrews at May 23, 2014 .
The sentimental geek strikes back
by Scott K. Andrews | Jun 21, 2011 | Music, Review | 9 comments
Be-caped and beguiling, Ryan Adams stages a triumphant solo return at the Barbican. Being a Ryan Adams fan can be a bit of a rollercoaster. There's his habit of releasing everything he records, often for free, simply because he feels like it. For the record, I love it, but it drives some people nuts, and just confuses others. If mellow country classic Heartbreaker is your all-time favourite album, chances are you probably won't be spinning his death-metal sci-fi concept album Orion all that often. Then there's his personal life and his well documented spiral into drinks and drugs which pretty much everybody assumed would end with him choking on his own vomit in a hotel room, a la Gram Parsons. Erratic, angry, funny to himself but not others, stoned Ryan was a sad spectacle, even if the music kept flowing at a startling rate. Then there are the fans. Every fandom has a small core of nutters with a hugely inflated sense of entitlement, who make way more noise than they should and seek to spoil it for the quieter majority. The tiny coterie of fuckwits who sit at the heart of Ryan's fanbase like some malignant tumour composed entirely of self-regard and pressure-cooker spite are as bad as the worst Doctor Who fans, and trust me, that's some benchmark. Ryan struggles to deal with these prats, engaging with his fanbase online for periods until overwhelmed by the bile of a vocal few and retreating, shutting down accounts and websites, retreating into his shell to lick his wounds. Eventually he pops up somewhere else in some other guise, Quixotic,...
School's Out film news
by Scott K. Andrews | Jun 2, 2011 | Abaddon Books, Film, School's Out, The Afterblight Chronicles |
The news story below appeared in Screen International yesterday, so I can talk about it now. In brief: the film has got development funding, I'm on board as script consultant, and Oliver Milburn is writing and directing. I met with Oliver and Emma, the producer, a few weeks back. We got on famously and they have a good, strong take on the material. It's all very exciting, I must say 🙂 Oliver S. Milburn to adapt feature version of School's Out The feature adaptation of Scott Andrews' boarding school set novel has received development funding from Screen South. Oliver S. Milburn is to adapt post apocalyptic boarding school novel School's Out for the big screen. Scott Andrews, who wrote the novel on which it is based, will work as a script consultant alongside Milburn, who is also being lined up to direct the film. It will be the second feature to come out of UK production company Multistory Films. Milburn also wrote and directed the company's debut feature The Harsh Light Of Day which has just completed post. The project has secured development funding from regional screen agency Screen South. Producer Emma Biggins of Multistory Films, said Milburn had "outlined an exciting action packed screenplay with a strong cultural subtext for School's Out." Multistory Films is currently developing a slate of 9 films, including a co-production with Australia and a sci-fi short film, to be directed by Louisa...


text:
A blog by David V. Mitchell
Turning up a grim bit of medical history
Posted by DavidMitchell under History, The arts
Comments Off on Turning up a grim bit of medical history
This week's journey started out when Sausalito poet Paul LeClerc and I got to talking during a break in the jazz one Friday evening at the No Name Bar. As noted in my July 8 posting, he recommended I read Joseph Mitchell's 1938 book Joe Gould's Secret, so I did. Not surprisingly, the author's style turned out to be extremely engaging, for Mitchell was a longtime writer for The New Yorker. Much of the book had already appeared in that magazine. Whenever that had happened, Gould received some much-desired publicity.
— Poet Paul LeClerc (in white hat) at the No Name Bar
As I wrote last time, Gould was an unemployable eccentric who frequented the dive bars of New York City. Sometimes he called himself Professor Seagull. He claimed he'd learned the language of seagulls and had translated various poems into "seagull language." He survived on donations of money, food, and clothing.
To justify his having no job and no money, Gould told people he was busy writing "the longest book in the history of the world." He called it An Oral History of Our Time and was constantly recording in composition books conversations he was overhearing. The "secret" was that there was no such book, only a bunch of his notebooks, as Mitchell (below right) would discover. Gould was eventually hospitalized with a variety of physical and mental problems and died with people still looking for a copy of his Oral History.
— Los Angeles Times illustration
The story fascinated a college student named Jill Lepore (left), and one semester she joined the hunt for Gould's missing Oral History as part of a thesis. Her paper became the genesis of her 2015 book titled Joe Gould's Teeth. With its 77 pages of footnotes, it's probably better researched then any other book I've read. Appropriately, Lepore, now 52, has become a professor of American History at Harvard as well as a staff writer for The New Yorker.
Lepore depicts Gould in far less flattering terms than Mitchell did. "Joe Gould was a toothless mad man who slept in the street," Lepore writes, also noting that he sometimes "bunked in flophouses." She also describes Gould's obsession with sculptor Augusta Savage and his behavior toward her after she rejected his marriage proposal. Gould became so distraught he had to be hospitalized, and upon his release, he began stalking her.
This gets us to a stunning revelation that explains the title Joe Gould's Teeth. Gould over time was admitted to several psychiatric hospitals, and "it was likely at Central Islip [hospital in New York] that Gould (above) lost his teeth," Lepore concludes. "'The first thing they did with all patients was take out all their teeth,' wrote the psychiatrist Muriel Gardiner recalling her residency at a mental hospital in New Jersey at the time. This was on the theory, she explained, 'that mental illness of any sort was always the result of a physical infection.'"
Lepore subsequently notes: "In New Jersey, Gardiner found the care of patients in the state mental hospital appalling. What most distressed her was the removal of their teeth. 'I read their charts,' she later said, 'and some of them literally had had teeth, tonsils, appendix, uterus, every organ that you can live without removed for no apparent reason except they were schizophrenic…. None of them had ever got better.'"
That medical quackery explains the title Joe Gould's Teeth. Oddly enough, Lepore merely refers to it only twice briefly and well before the conclusion. It's almost as if that cruelty were incidental to her account and not the focus of the book's title. But since Lepore writes for The New Yorker, I won't second-guess her style.
« At last some welcome news from Washington — meanwhile nature provides a welcome diversion from the Trump calamity | Tomales Founders Day's short parade and big festival »
No Responses	to " Turning up a grim bit of medical history "
Tuesday, Aug 28th, 2018 at 11:25 pm
History and The arts
Becoming an internationally known artist
Forwarded humor
A homeless artist in residence, as it were
A fortnight of oddities
The metamorphosis of a homeless friend
Different folks together at Thanksgiving time
Time passing
Living on Standard Time
PG&E, LSD, and Vladimir Putin
Electrical power is on again in Point Reyes Station and I'm back online
The Light on the Coast
Tomales Regional History Center has just published The Light on the Coast: 65 Years of News Big and Small as Reported in The Point Reyes Light. The book, which I wrote with Jacoba Charles, is the post-World War II history of West Marin's lively little towns and their Pulitzer Prize-winning weekly newspaper. Click here to read about it.
David V. Mitchell
Welcome to the blog of David Mitchell, editor & publisher emeritus of The Point Reyes Light. In 1979, The Light won the Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service for an exposé largely written by him of the increasingly violent Synanon cult. Mitchell retired in November 2005 after 35 years of newspapering, 27 of those at The Light.
During his newspaper career, he also worked for the old San Francisco Examiner, Sonora's Daily Union Democrat in the Sierra Nevada, and Council Bluff's daily newspaper, The Nonpareil. In addition, he edited the weekly Sebastopol (California) Times. Mitchell holds a master's degree in Communications and a bachelor's degree in English from Stanford University. He was born on Nov. 23, 1943, and lives in Point Reyes Station on the rural coast north of San Francisco.
The Point Reyes Light
Photographer Marty Knapp
A gallery of Marty Knapp's beautiful black and white photography from West Marin.
Rick Lyttle
An artist and Inverness printmaker
Jacob Resneck's Dispatches from Elsewhere
Former Point Reyes Light reporter
Sips from the Firehose
Because surfing the Internet is like drinking from a firehose, David LaFontaine braves the torrent to tell you what trends and technologies to gulp down, swirl in your mouth, or spit out.
DigitalFamily.com
Created by former Point Reyes Light reporter Janine Warner, DigitalFamily.com features free tutorials, books, and training videos on how to create Web sites and blogs with Adobe Dreamweaver, Microsoft Expression Web, and WordPress.
Copyright© 2006 - 2020. David V. Mitchell. All rights reserved.Blog design by DigitalFamily.com
Sparsely Sage and Timely is powered by	WordPress 5.3.2 and delivered to you in 0.475 seconds using 53 queries.


One of the most famous sermon ever preached, the Sermon on the Mount, preached by the greatest preacher of all time, Jesus!
Yes, this is what this series of talks and studies is about. These teaching, commonly known as the Beatitudes, teach us how to live Heaven's life today.


People use different methods to relax after a long day at work and one of these ways is gambling or betting. In addition to that, there are also other individuals that enjoy going to the casino and playing some games. Many people enjoy visiting such places because they have the opportunity to make some money and at the same time, it will help them to stop focusing on things that may be disturbing them. In many of the regions in the world, finding a casino may not be very difficult, there are actually two options. Physical casinos and online casinos are the two options that are available for people to use. These online casinos are available today although they were not there in the past because of the lack of the Internet. Online casinos are possible because there are payment options given by different companies. The number of online casinos that are available today are so many meaning that, there is competition. The information in this article will help you understand more about these online casinos and why they are the better option for helping you to enjoy yourself through gambling or sports betting.
One of the major benefits of sports book and casino services is that they will allow you to participate in the games you want. For many people, making money is very important and that's why they take their time to invest a lot in going to the casino. If you are interested in betting, then, the online casino website will provide you with very many games and this is great. You can always decide to bet on the games that are most interesting to you. The safety levels of most of the online casinos are very high and this is a great thing. The first reason why they are very secure is because, there is no physical location and that's because it's an online platform, no one is able to disturb you physically. Another reason for the security is the security updating that is done on the websites to make them very secure against hackers. The security platforms are also great because they will allow you to protect your money in a big way.
Another reason why this service is very important is because you'll get to enjoy yourself and this has a benefit of helping you to reduce your stress levels. If you are able to do the gambling in the best way possible, diseases such as depression will never get you. The reasons explained above should be great motivations for you to participate in sports book and casino gaming.


text:
David Woods
21 June 2012 · 2 min read · News
See The Best: BIS scheme helps 3,000 ex-service staff into business roles
A Government-backed initiative providing ex-service personnel with the tools they need to get into business has helped nearly 3,000 people over two years, BIS has reported.
The Be the Boss scheme was set up with £5 million of funding from BIS and is run by The Royal British Legion. There are 1,420 people currently engaged in the scheme, with 2,905 people having entered the programme since it began.
So far 88 businesses ranging from fitness centres, locksmiths and plumbers have received funding and grants. The scheme provides armed forces service leavers with loans and grants to help with the costs of starting and growing a business once they have returned to civilian life. It is also able to give people support, advice and access to business mentors who can give them the expert advice they need.
Business and enterprise minister Mark Prisk said: "There is a great entrepreneurial spirit among our armed forces veterans and the Government is keen to help them develop and grow their business expertise. They have the perfect attributes with great desire and a can-do attitude that is exactly the kind of commitment needed when starting and growing your own business.
"I have been inspired by many of the success stories that the scheme has delivered over its first two years. I am delighted that The Royal British Legion has committed their long term investment in Be the Boss and will be taking it forward to new levels of success in the future."
All ex-service personnel are able to apply for mixed funding of a 25% grant and 75% loan of up to £7,500 for start-up businesses and £30,000 for existing businesses that want to grow.
Chris Simpkins, director general at The Royal British Legion, said: "The Be the Boss scheme has been a tremendous success in its first two years with a unique onus on equipping our nation's Armed Forces service leavers with the right tools required for business start-ups.
"The Legion is the only Armed Forces charity providing this particular funding, sound business advice, mentoring and future financial forecasts and we hope to see many more business successes in the coming years."
Minister for defence personnel, Welfare and Veterans Andrew Robathan said: "I am delighted to see that 3,000 former Service personnel have benefited from Be the Boss. Not only has it helped them make a successful transition into civilian life but they are making use of the wide range of skills they obtained during their career with the Armed Forces. I hope the success of the scheme inspires any other potential entrepreneurs amongst our former Service personnel to set up their own business."
Business and Government need to work together to help ex-service personnel into work
See the best: give ex-Service personnel the chance to add value to your organisation
HR magazine's See the Best Campaign: Who's helping ex-service people get a job in civvy street
Tesco launches scheme to take on ex-service personnel with leadership skills
other content
See the best: ex-forces staff defy popular belief and find civilian jobs within weeks
Service-leavers: business leaders and recruiters have to tap into this unique pool


A new mouse model that exhibits symptoms of diabetic retinopathy, a disease that often causes blindness, could lead to future translational research, say researchers.
Diabetic retinopathy affects adults who have had diabetes mellitus for 10 years or more. Estimates are that 600 million people will have some sort of the disease by 2040.
Until now, no good animal models existed that scientists could use to study the disease, its diagnosis, or potential treatments.
"Diabetic retinopathy is a common retinal complication of diabetes mellitus that can be categorized in different stages in humans," says Shyam Chaurasia, assistant professor of ophthalmology and vision sciences research at the University of Missouri.
As reported in Scientific Reports, researchers focused on a specific inflammasome, a protein responsible for the activation of inflammatory responses, called the NLRP3 inflammasome.
Long-term hyperglycemia results in the activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome causing vascular leakages in the retina and eventually leading to neovascularization—the formation of new blood vessels or networks in the retina.
Using advanced retinal imaging techniques, scientists tested the diabetic mice that processed NLRP3. Using a new technique called laser speckle flowgraphy, they were able to create a "heat map" of blood flow volume and found significantly decreased levels in the NLRP3 mice.
The mice also showed an increased prevalence of a buildup of macrophages in the retina that could be caused by immune responses involved in chronic inflammation that leads to diabetic retinopathy.
"Several new techniques and potential diagnostics are demonstrated in this study for the first time, including the laser speckle flowgraphy technique, which may prove useful in the diagnosis of human DR," Chaurasia says.


text:
Gleitsman Awards
Marta Russell ap888 at lafn.org
Mon Apr 10 16:00:50 PDT 2000
Previous message: Mowing Embassies (was sowing dragons)
Next message: Fw: Antiwar-Daily: Monday on Antiwar.com (Mick Hume, ex of LM and Srdja Trifkovic, the spokesperson for wild hair guy R. Karazdic)
Jack Kevorkian and death row lawyer Bryan Stevenson will both receive the Gleitsman Foundation Citizen Activist Award today. The dual award this year is indeed ironic; one awardee is to be heralded for taking the lives over 100 disabled persons, the other for saving the lives of inmates on death row.
By dignifying Kevorkian with this Citizen Activist Award, the Gleitsman Foundation aligns humanism with the bourgeois eugenicists, social Darwinists, and Malthusian population control zealots who target disabled lives as lives not worth living.
I've written a rather long commentary on Kevorkian which gives details of his acts and intents -- if anyone is interested email me off list.
Marta Russell
For Immediate Release Contacts: Stephen Drake April 10, 2000 Diane Coleman (708)209-1500
Disability Rights Activists Protest Kevorkian Award
The Gleitsman Foundation, usually known for honoring individuals for humanitarian work, has named Jack Kevorkian as recipient of a $50,000 "Citizen Activist Award". In a press release announcing the award, Alan L. Gleitsman asserted that "Dr. Kevorkian has been a selfless believer in death with dignity" and had "sacrificed his medical career" in pursuing this goal.
"That's a crock," said Tom Cagle, Board member of Not Dead Yet. "Kevorkian's career was on the skids long before he turned to assisting in suicides. He was in a state of 'forced retirement" for years and was even turned down for a paramedic job."
Kevorkian is not the only recipient of the award this year. Sharing the award is lawyer Bryan Stevenson, who has spent his professional career fighting for the rights of unjustly convicted death row prisoners. "The pairing of these two individuals is absurd," said Stephen Drake, Not Dead Yet's Research Analyst. "Kevorkian spent over 30 years advocating to be allowed to give death row prisoners a choice of dying through a 'dignified' administration of general anesthesia, provided they volunteered to remain alive and sedated for a few hours or days while medical professionals performed lethal surgical experimentation on them."
The fact that individuals such as Marian Wright Edelman, of the Children's Defense Fund, Morris Dees, Jr., of the Southern Poverty Law Center and Stanley Sheinbaum, Honorary Chair of Human Rights Watch, feminist Gloria Steinem, and actor Ted Danson could participate in selecting Kevorkian for an honor like this can only be interpreted as a shocking disregard for the views of the 10 national disability rights organizations that oppose legalized assisted suicide and the activities of Jack Kevorkian.
Disabled protesters carry placards with the names, faces and stories of people whose lives ended at Kevorkian's hands. Like the majority of Kevorkian's body count, the majority of the names and faces on protesters' signs are middle-aged women with disabilities and chronic conditions, women who experienced rejection by employers, friends, families and lovers after they acquired a disability.
"The surgeon general recently declared suicide to be a national health crisis," said Diane Coleman, Not Dead Yet's founder and President. "But apparently not if it involves an old, ill or disabled person who can't get the support they need. The Gleitsman Foundation and its judges, in honoring Jack Kevorkian, are calling a serial killer of disabled people a humanitarian. This could never happen with any other minority group, and we're outraged at the contempt for us expressed by this award."


Child and adult influenza vaccines are also available in the fall of each year. The Health Services section offers childhood immunizations weekly through scheduled clinics. Please call 970-874-2165 for an appointment.


text:
Key Differences Between Spanish in Latin America and in Spain
The type of Spanish spoken in Spain is referred to as "Castilian Spanish." It is a language that evolved over the years out of Vulgar Latin and gradually took hold over the parts of the globe that we know today as Spain and Portugal.
However, Spanish is also the official language in 21 countries across the globe, most of which fall into the geographical region widely known as Central America, comprising the southern portion of North America, Central America, and South America. In fact, Spanish is the most commonly spoken language among Latin Americans.
Why Are There Different Kinds of Spanish?
So why is Castilian Spanish considered different than North American Spanish?
Well, the simple answer is geographical distance. The language patterns that evolved in the former Spanish colonies of Latin America literally existed half a world away from Spain, and thus evolved their own unique regional vocabulary variations, accents and intonations.
This phenomenon of regional variations is common with languages across the globe. For example, Australian English evolved differently than the type of English spoken in England or in the United States, for that matter. And much like all English speakers can generally still understand each other, the same goes for Castilian and Latin American Spanish speakers.
Here are some of the key differences that separate traditional Castilian Spanish from the type of Spanish spoken in Latin America.
Four Key Differences Between Castilian and Latin American Spanish
1. Vosotros / Ustedes
When addressing a group of two or more people, Spaniards will say vosotros and Latin Americans will say ustedes. Both words essentially mean the same thing as "you" in the plural or formal sense in English.
2. Past Tense
When speaking in the past tense, Castilian Spaniards will tend to use the past perfect tense to distinguish recent events.
For example, Spaniards might say "Habíamos tenido que limpiar la casa antes de salir" ("I had cleaned the house before going out"), while Latin Americans will simply say "Limpié la casa antes de salir" ("I cleaned the house before going out").
3. Pronunciation
One of the most obvious ways to distinguish between Castilian and Latin American Spanish is to simply listen to how they are being spoken. Spaniards will frequently produce a sound that sounds like "th" to replace a "z" before any vowel or a "c" before "i" or "e".
In Latin American Spanish, both the letters "c" and "z" will always sound like something closer to an English "s" sound.
4. Variations in Vocabulary
Another obvious giveaway to tell apart Latin American Spanish from Castilian Spanish is the vocabulary itself.
For instance, anybody who says "zumo" to refer to "juice" is speaking Castilian Spanish, while "jugo" is the word for juice in Latin America.
AntPreviousMother's Day in the Spanish-Speaking World
NextGetting a Grip on Para and PorSiguiente


The Horned cowfish is not reef safe as it will eat invertebrates and may take bites out of corals. Care needs to be taken with tank mates as it will gore them with its horns. Nets shell fish and small fish in its diet. Does well in a FO or Fowlr tank but you need to be careful that its tank mates aren't that aggressive. Because of their beaks they shouldn't be kept in acrylic tanks, as they can take bites out of the acrylic and leave scratches.


text:
Pujara hits 16th Test Hundred; India 250/9 in Adelaide Test
Odisha News Insight Dec 6, 2018 0
ONI Bureau: While all other batsmen found it tough to adjust to the hostile Australian conditions in the first Test match at Adelaide, Cheteshwar Pujara stood firm and scored his 16th Test hundred to take the team to a respectable total at…
Virat Kohli hits Double Hundred in Hyderabad Test
Indian skipper Virat Kohli became the first cricketer in the history of Test Cricket to hit double hundred in four consecutive test series. He broke the record of Sir Don Bradman and Rahul Dravid, who had scored double tons in 3 consecutive…
Ajinkya Rahane leads Indian fightback after Piedt strikes
New Delhi, Dec 3: Ajinkya Rahane (89 not out) led a spirited fightback as India battled their way to 231/7 after off-spinner Dane Piedt struck crucial blows for South Africa on the opening day of their fourth and final cricket Test at the…
Kumar Sangakkara to retire from Test Cricket in August
Sri Lanka's batting great Kumar Sangakkara has ended speculation about his future by confirming on Saturday that he will retire during his team's home series against India in August. "This is my time to call it a day," the 37-year-old was…
Harbhajan surpasses Akram, climbs to 9th Spot in Elite List
India's veteran off-spinner Harbhajan Singh eclipsed Pakistan pace legend Wasim Akram to jump to the ninth position in the all-Time highest Test wicket-takers list on Sunday. He jumped to the ninth spot in the elite list when he dismissed…