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All-star Festival Trials Day at Cheltenham tomorrow
Paisley Park, Santini and Bristol de Mai are among a host of stars in action at Cheltenham tomorrow, Saturday, 25 January, as the Home of Jump Racing stages its final fixture before The Festival™ presented by Magners in March.
Festival Trials Day was an excellent pointer to The Festival in 2019 - Frodon, Paisley Park and Siruh Du Lac all followed up their Festival Trials Day triumphs with success at The Festival, taking the G1 Ryanair Chase, G1 Paddy Power Stayers' Hurdle and G3 Brown Advisory & Merriebelle Stable Plate Handicap Chase respectively.
Santini and Bristol De Mai will aim to lay down a marker for the G1 Magners Cheltenham Gold Cup in the centrepiece of tomorrow's seven-race card, the £100,000 G2 Paddy Power Cotswold Chase (2.25pm, 3m 1f 56y, six runners).
Santini (Nicky Henderson/Nico de Boinville), the 6/4 favourite with Paddy Power, was a battling second in last season's G1 RSA Insurance Novices' Chase and made a successful comeback in an intermediate chase at Sandown Park in November. Cyfor Malta in 1999 is the most recent favourite to win the Paddy Power Cotswold Chase.
Multiple G1 victor Bristol De Mai (Nigel Twiston-Davies/Daryl Jacob), who finished third in the 2019 Magners Cheltenham Gold Cup, lost nothing in defeat on his sole start this season when going down narrowly to Lostintranslation in the G1 Betfair Chase at Haydock Park in late November.
Colin Tizzard almost won the Paddy Power Cotswold Chase with a novice in 2017, when Thistlecrack was edged out by Many Clouds, and the trainer is aiming to go one better with Slate House (Robbie Power).
Second season novice Slate House has been in fine form, with his only defeat this term coming in the G3 BetVictor Gold Cup at The November Meeting, when he fell at the second last with the race seemingly at his mercy.
The eight-year-old, a three-time winner at Cheltenham, gained his first G1 victory last time out with a smooth success in the three-mile Kauto Star Novices' Chase at Kempton Park on Boxing Day.
Joe Tizzard, assistant to his father, said: "We were delighted with Slate House in the Kauto Star and he came out of it very well.
"We have decided to take our chance in the Cotswold because he has a good record at the track.
"This is his second season over fences and the Cotswold will be a good test on the back of an impressive performance at Kempton.
"He jumps and travels, and hopefully he has a good chance."
The six runners in the Paddy Power Cotswold Chase also include G3 Ladbrokes Trophy victor De Rasher Counter (Emma Lavelle/Adam Wedge) and Top Ville Ben (Phil Kirby/Tommy Dowson), an impressive winner of the G3 Rowland Meyrick Handicap Chase at Wetherby on his latest start.
Mister Whitaker (Mick Channon/Johnny Burke), who landed the Listed Close Brothers Novices' Handicap Chase at The Festival in 2018, completes the field.
Paddy Power Cotswold Chase - Paddy Power prices: 6/4 Santini; 9/4 Bristol de Mai; 6/1 Slate House; 15/2 De Rasher Counter, Top Ville Ben; 16/1 Mister Whitaker
All eyes will be on Paisley Park (Emma Lavelle/Aidan Coleman) in the £60,000 G2 galliardhomes.com Cleeve Hurdle (3.35pm, eight runners) over three miles.
Paisley Park was imperious in this contest 12 months ago, scoring by 12 lengths under a penalty, and crowned an unbeaten campaign soon afterwards in the G1 Paddy Power Stayers' Hurdle at The Festival. The eight-year-old extended his winning streak to six in the G2 Long Distance Hurdle at Newbury in November.
Tomorrow's task looks set to be on his stiffest to date, with If The Cap Fits (Harry Fry/Sean Bowen) and L'Ami Serge (Nicky Henderson/Daryl Jacob), respective winners of the G1 Paddy Power Stayers' Hurdle and G1 Betway Aintree Hurdle at Aintree's Randox Health Grand National last season, among the opposition.
The three other graded contests on Festival Trials Day include the £32,000 G2 Ballymore Novices' Hurdle (3.00pm, eight runners) over an extended two and a half miles.
House Island (Gavin Sheehan) has already acquitted himself well in G2 company this season, going down by three quarters of a length to Enrillo in the G2 Ballymore Winter Novices' Hurdle at Sandown Park on 6 December.
Trainer Paul Webber said: "House Island ran well at Sandown and we have purposely kept him fresh for this.
"We want to test him at Cheltenham to see if he handles the track and whether he is good enough to contest a race at The Festival.
"We don't have as many horses as we used to, so it is great to have a horse with a live chance on a Saturday.
"He is a nice horse and will make a chaser in the future, but I hope he can put in a good performance tomorrow."
King Roland (Harry Fry/Sean Bowen), who was unbeaten in bumpers last season, is likely to go off favourite after bolting up in a maiden hurdle at Exeter on 1 January.
Protektorat (Dan Skelton/Harry Skelton), successful over the course and distance on New Year's Day, and Irish raider Rocket Lad (Emmet Mullins IRE/Brian Hayes) also run.
The feature handicap on the card is the £70,000 G3 Paddy Power 45 Sleeps To Cheltenham Trophy Handicap Chase (1.50pm, 10 runners) over an extended two and a half miles.
G3 Caspian Caviar Gold Cup victor Warthog (David Pipe/David Noonan) and the consistent Highway One O One (Chris Gordon/Jamie Moore) are the 4/1 joint-favourites with Paddy Power.
Paddy Power 45 Sleeps To Cheltenham Trophy Handicap Chase - Paddy Power prices: 4/1 Highway One O One, Warthog; 9/2 Spiritofthegames; 5/1 Lalor; 15/2 My Way; 9/1 Cepage, Count Meribel; 14/1 Militarian, Garde La Victoire; 20/1 Cool Mix
Completing the action is the opening £32,000 G2 JCB Triumph Trial Juvenile Hurdle (12.40pm, 2m 179y, six runners), which sees the UK debut of French import Monte Cristo (Nicky Henderson/Daryl Jacob), the £27,500 Timeform Novices' Handicap Chase (1.15pm, 2m 4f 127y, 12 runners) and the concluding £27,500 Steel Place And Sections Handicap Hurdle (4.10pm, 2m 179y, 12 runners).
The going at Cheltenham is Soft, with a dry but cloudy forecast for Saturday.


T-shirts are means of expression for messages and images that vindicate our philosophy of life: Leave the mainstream, live here and now, value simplicity and spontaneity, and enjoy the road.
We are inspired by the books we read, the movies we watch, art,… but even more by what we see out on the street and the people we love.
You will wear top quality 100% organic cotton cultivated according to ecological standards. T-shirts with message and unique designs for restless minds. Limited editions printed using the ecological system of nontoxic water-based inks. We believe in conscious consumption; due to the quality of the materials, our clothes can be worn for longer.
Nos inspira los libros que leemos, las películas que vemos, el arte,… pero sobre todo lo que vemos fuera en la calle y la gente que queremos.
Somos Mónica Muñoz, marketing y comunicación y Mela Lozano, diseño y desarrollo de producto. Somos parte del movimiento Slow.


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15-Year-Old Pakistani Christian Abducted and Forced to Marry Muslim Kidnapper
Veronica Neffinger | iBelieve Contributor | Thursday, January 14, 2016
A 15-year-old Pakistani Christian girl has allegedly been kidnapped and forced to marry her abductor.
According to Christian Today, the young woman, Saima Bibi, was kidnapped by a group of Muslim men when she was alone in a village in Pakistan's Kasur district. She was then forced to convert to Islam and to marry one of her abductors, her family says.
Saima's family is taking the case to court since the legal age of marriage in Pakistan is 16.
"We have been told that she has married after converting to Islam with a Muslim man Tanvir, her kidnapper." Saima's brother, Riaz Masih said. "My sister... is 15 years old. We have her birth certificate, which will be produced before the court."
Although Saima and her alleged husband will appear in court, it is uncertain whether she will be given back to her family.
"[T]he perpetrators often take a plea of marriage and conversion to Islam so that they can save themselves from criminal charges of rape and kidnapping," said Christian lawyer Sardar Mushtaq Gill, head of the Legal Evangelical Association Development.
The Movement for Solidarity and Peace (MSP) also said that in such cases, the victim remains in the custody of her kidnapper and is often subject to "sexual violence, rape, forced prostitution, human trafficking and sale, or other domestic abuse."

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Slow Roast Tomatoes Recipe for Antipasto - Try This Recipe!
This oozy, slow roasted tomatoes recipe is perfect for an antipasto!
I can't believe I am writing this post about how to slow roast tomatoes because it's so easy.
But perhaps you've never thought about something so simple to include to your repertoire for a summer dinner party, BBQ, or just a snack with leftover cheese.
Antipasto is a traditional Italian first course. It means quite literally "before the meal" and includes cold cured meats, olives, mushrooms, artichoke hearts, hard and soft cheeses, and vegetables pickled in oil or vinegar. Its purpose is to whet the appetite and thirst of your guests in anticipation of the main meal, (might I suggest my traditional pasta bolognese recipe) whilst providing something to eat with an aperitif. Or for a busy Italian family, hungry as they come home from work and school, and eager to temporarily sate their appetite with some leftover cheeses and cold meats.
As with most Italian food, simplicity is the key to incredible flavour. Minimise your platter to about 3 – 5 high-quality ingredients and let them speak for themselves.
I love having an artisanal soft cheese like mozzarella with some homemade pickled/cured veg, one type of Italian cold meat (the best you can afford) and plump Italian olives. I can assure you that every mouthful will be totally different. A glass of chilled Moscato or full-bodied Chianti would be a match made in heaven. Imagine a mouthful of oozy slow roasted tomatoes with that – perfection!
This slow roast tomatoes recipe are one of my favourite accompaniments to antipasto. They cut through the creamy sweetness of provolone and mozzarella, and round off olives and cured meats. There is nothing better than the tangy, sweet ooze of a slowly roasted cherry tomato on a piece of soft, creamy mozzarella.
We had planned to have a delicious Saturday night treat in the form of a seafood linguine and knew just the impromptu thing to have 15 minutes before it was ready.
Here goes the easiest recipe you'll ever see on this blog.
Good Extra Virgin Olive Oil.
Put the tomatoes (on the vine if possible) in a small, shallow roasting tray with the olive oil, salt and pepper, herbs tucked underneath, and pop in the oven at 70 degrees (Gas mark 4) for an hour.
I have used Piccollini, but feel free to use any tomatoes you have at hand. If you have larger tomatoes, just slice them. I also had a big bottle of Greek olive oil (arguably the best) I brought back from Santorini last year left still. We're eking it out as much as we can. And used a sprig of rosemary, oregano, a bay leaf, and a few fresh sage leaves. Use any herbs you have to hand.
Serve warm and oozy on a wooden board or platter with your choice of cheese, cured meats, olives, and fresh basil. Feel free to dip some warm focaccia in the tomato juices left in the pan.
The next time you have your friends around, keep it relaxed, pop some tomatoes in the oven for an hour, rip up some mozzarella and cured parma ham, tumble some olives into a bowl – I promise your friends won't have tried this.


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Die Guerra Cristera war ein Bürgerkrieg, der von 1926 bis 1929 in Mexiko zwischen der Regierung und Bauernmilizen, die der katholischen Kirche nahestanden, ausgetragen wurde. Die Erhebung war einerseits gegen die Umsetzung der antiklerikalen Bestimmungen der mexikanischen Verfassung von 1917 gerichtet und hatte somit den Charakter eines Kulturkampfes, andererseits aber auch ein Aufbegehren gegen das Eingreifen des Zentralstaates in die Belange der Dorfgemeinschaften.

Hintergrund und Ablauf

Die Stabilisierung Mexikos nach einem Jahrzehnt der Bürgerkriege ermöglichte es Präsident Plutarco Elías Calles, sich verstärkt dem wirtschaftlichen Wiederaufbau Mexikos zu widmen. Nach erfolgter Sanierung des defizitären Staatshaushalts stand dabei vor allem die Einführung eines modernen Steuersystems und der Ausbau der Infrastruktur sowie des Bildungswesens im Vordergrund. Infolge der Umsetzung der antiklerikalen Bestimmungen der Verfassung von 1917 und der Gründung einer von Rom unabhängigen mexikanischen Staatskirche im Februar 1925, entstand jedoch ein neuer Konfliktherd, der sich 1926 zu einer umfassenden Aufstandsbewegung gegen das Calles-Regime ausweitete. Diese, die so genannte Cristiada, erfasste vor allem das zentrale und westliche Hochland Mexikos bzw. die Bundesstaaten Colima, Jalisco, Michoacán sowie die Bajío-Region der Bundesstaaten Guanajuato und Zacatecas und den Süden Coahuilas, wo der Katholizismus besonders stark in der meist bäuerlichen Bevölkerung verankert war. Hier war die katholische Kirche für die Bevölkerung ein unverzichtbarer Bestandteil des Alltagslebens, sie bot den Menschen spirituelle Zuflucht, moralische Anleitung und politische Ausrichtung. Die Menschen dieser Gebiete waren daher bereit, "ihre" Kirche gegen die "Angriffe" des "gottlosen" Staates und seiner Funktionäre zu schützen. Der lokale Klerus wiederum bestärkte sie nicht nur in diesen Bestrebungen, sondern gewährte zumeist auch tatkräftige Unterstützung aller Art und stellte mancherorts sogar die Anführer der so immer mehr um sich greifenden Revolte gegen den Zentralstaat.

Im Cristero-Aufstand wurde von beiden Seiten mit äußerster Brutalität vorgegangen, von der seitens der Regierungstruppen auch Frauen und Kinder nicht ausgenommen wurden. Folterungen und Vergewaltigungen, summarische Exekutionen von echten und vermeintlichen Cristeros und ihren Unterstützern und Sympathisanten, Verbrannte Erde-Taktiken und die Deportation der Bevölkerung einzelner Regionen waren vonseiten der Regierung häufig eingesetzte Repressalien. Die USA schickten Präsident Calles militärische Ausrüstung, Waffen und Militärberater zur Bekämpfung der Revolte. Die Cristeros zerstörten staatliche Schulen, ermordeten zahlreiche Lehrer und Regierungsbeamte und töteten bei Vergeltungsaktionen und Banditenüberfällen viele Zivilisten, die sich nicht bedingungslos ihren Ideen unterwarfen.

Innenpolitisch war Calles' Macht bis 1934 sehr groß, obwohl er nicht mehr Präsident war. Der Übergangspräsident Emilio Portes Gil leitete 1929 Verhandlungen mit der Kirche, mit dem US-amerikanischen Botschafter Dwight Morrow als Vermittler, ein. So kam es zu der als arreglos bezeichneten Vereinbarung eines Modus Vivendi, der eine Verbesserung der Lage für die Katholische Kirche vorsah. Im Wesentlichen verzichtete der Staat auf die Anwendung der Gesetze von 1917 und die Kirche sollte sich in der Einforderung ihrer Rechte zurückhalten. Es gab allerdings grobe Verletzungen dieser Vereinbarung. Etwa 5.000 Cristeros, die den Krieg entgegen der Weisung der Bischöfe fortsetzten, wurden trotz der laut Abkommen geltenden Amnestie ermordet. Erst mit der Präsidentschaft von General Lázaro Cárdenas del Río in den 1930er Jahren bahnte sich eine anhaltende Besserung im Verhältnis zwischen Kirche und Staat an. Innerhalb der mexikanischen Kirche kam es jedoch zu Spannungen zwischen den Vertretern der Hierarchie und ehemaligen Cristeros, die sich durch die Interventionen der Bischöfe und des Vatikans verraten fühlten. Ein Teil der Cristeros organisierte sich ab 1937 in der Unión Nacional Sinarquista.

Der Modus Vivendi hielt bis 1992 an. In diesem Jahr wurden die Beziehung zwischen Kirche und Staat durch eine umfassende Verfassungsreform neu geregelt. Daraufhin nahmen der Vatikan und Mexiko diplomatische Beziehungen auf.

Literatur

Belletristik
 Juan Rulfo: Der Llano in Flammen. Carl Hanser Verlag, München 1964; Neuausgabe: Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 1980, ISBN 978-3-518-01504-9. (Kurzgeschichten aus der Zeit und über den Cristero-Krieg)
 Graham Greene: The Lawless Roads (alternativ: Another Mexico; deutsch: Gesetzlose Straßen), 1939. (ein Reisebericht des Autors, kein Roman)
 Graham Greene: The Power and the Glory, 1940 (dt.: Die Kraft und die Herrlichkeit). (thematisiert den Kampf der Regierung gegen die Katholische Kirche)
 Luis Rivero del Val: Entre las Patas de los Caballos (dt.: Unter die Pferdehufe geraten), Jus Verlag, Mexiko, 1961; Neuausgabe: Porrua Verlag, Mexiko, 2005, ISBN 970-07-5800-1
 Alfons Kirchgässner: Kreuz über Mexiko – Erlebnisse und Taten des Miguel Torquemada, Verlag Herder, Freiburg i. Br., 1949

Wissenschaftliche Werke
in der Reihenfolge des Erscheinens
 Jean Meyer Barth: The Cristero Rebellion. The Mexican People between Church and State 1926–1929 (= Cambridge Latin American Studies). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1976, ISBN 978-0-521-10205-6.
 Lothar Groppe: Michael Pro SJ. Ein mexikanischer Schlingel wird Priester und Märtyrer. Freundeskreis Maria Goretti, München 1989.
 Moisés González Navarro: Cristeros y agraristas en Jalisco, fünf Bände. El Colegio de México, Mexiko-Stadt 2000–2003, ISBN 968-12-0973-7.
 Jean Meyer Barth: La Cristiada. The Mexican People's War for Religious Liberty. Square One Publishers, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-7570-0315-8.
 Norbert Köster:  "Viele mexikanische Bischöfe sind Revolutionäre". Der Vatikan, die Cristiada und der mexikanische Episkopat. In: Silke Hensel, Hubert Wolf (Hrsg.): Die katholische Kirche und Gewalt. Europa und Lateinamerika im 20. Jahrhundert. Böhlau, Köln 2013, ISBN 978-3-412-21079-3, S. 191–203.

Film
 For Greater Glory: The True Story of Cristiada (2012; Dt.: Gottes General – Schlacht um die Freiheit). Regie: Dean Wright.

Weblinks

 Cristiada in Mexiko (wiss. Kurzdarstellung, Univ. Münster)

Siehe auch
 Märtyrer der Revolution in Mexiko

Einzelnachweise

Mexikanische Militärgeschichte
Bürgerkrieg
Militärgeschichte Lateinamerikas
Geschichte Mexikos (20. Jahrhundert)
1920er
Konflikt (20. Jahrhundert)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Instructor Sadko Hadzihasanovic introduces himself and his work in this clip. Check out the full interview here!
The ARAS Musical Theatre Company is a yearlong program with the cast working on two full length musical theatre productions at a professional theatre venue. Singing, voice work, choreography, movement, improvisation and character development will be incorporated in this performance-based class designed in a professional, company setting format. One on one singing/music coaching as well as choral work will be part of the program. Costumes, set and props are part of each performance and students will be expected to attend extra blocking, dress and technical rehearsals. Students may choose to register for the full year and participate in both shows or registration will also be accepted for one production alone. Students must request an audition if new to the program.
We asked instructor Martha Johnson: Can anyone be a painter? Listen to her answer here!
Instructor Katherine Wilson talks about her music career and history at the School.
Instructor Allison Beula talks about the ARAS Musical Theatre Company, her artistic background, and more!
We sat down with instructor Martha Johnson to discuss what she thinks Avenue Road Arts School offers the community, how the arts should be funded, and more!
In this fun and engaging program, kids will dig into those wild, fantastical, true, fictional or lyrical pieces they have floating around in those creative minds. The class will delve into the art of writing and each week will focus on a particular style – poems, short stories, monologue, character and plot development. Students will write in each class guided by prompts and exercises and they will have the opportunity to read their work out loud. Hear what the students have to say here!
Check out the first day of winter 2017 in time lapse form!
We would love to see everyone again for this term- information here.
Have a look at the first few weeks of summer camp!
Our SENSATION Adult Art Show was a huge success! We were so pleased to present the night to you. Many thanks to Kristina, our associate director, for organizing the show. See you next year!
We are pleased to present a promotional video on behalf of the Arts Access Fund, highlighting the organizations the AAF is partnered with.
If you are interested in the visit, please visit their website.
To make a donation online, please visit this link.
ACCESS 2016, held by the Arts Access Fund, was a huge success!
Have a look here at some of the sights from the event. It was a blast!
Have a look at our two weeks of March Break camps!
Thanks to all of our campers for creating so many beautiful pieces! Have a look at some of our classes and our campers hard at work!
We would love to see everyone again for our spring term- information here.
A silent film including two of the talented actors from our ARAS Musical Theatre Company, instructed by Allison Beula.
Check out the venue for next month's ACCESS 2016 event, being held by our sister scholarship organization, the Arts Access Fund!
A short look at our first days of winter 2016 classes!
Dr. Christopher Feindel talks about his experience at the Avenue Road Arts School. His drawing course gives him the opportunity to use the other side of his brain. A nice retreat from his daytime career.
The Avenue Road Arts School series of short interviews with parents, Dr. Izzeldin discusses the importance of arts education to both his own children and in general.


so is it true? have we lost another one?
I thought Id rather be safe than sorry and find out the truth behind a rumor. or find out if a rumor holds truth.
if anyone and I mean anyone can help me find this out it would be appreciated. I havnt seen siloe in about two years. and this was one of the only ways to find out any kind of information!
or I will check back soon.
i think we spoke last week. i dont think its true.
nah. she was registered on a few hours ago.... i talk to her quite often. im sure she's alright.
whats with the death rumors!!!!
britney spears can go..but not siloe. i need to write her again..its been awhile.
hey..c'mon guys..quit it with the rumors...you know siloe's invincible!


text:
#Region "License"

' The MIT License (MIT)
'
' Copyright (c) 2017 Richard L King (TradeWright Software Systems)
'
' Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
' of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
' in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
' to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
' copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
' furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
'
' The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
' copies or substantial portions of the Software.
'
' THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
' IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
' FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
' AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
' LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
' OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
' SOFTWARE.

#End Region

Imports TWUtilities40

Public Class FutureHandler(Of V, U)

    Private WithEvents mFutureWaiter As New FutureWaiter

    Private mCompletionAction As Action(Of V, U)
    Private mCancellationAction As Action(Of V, U)
    Private mErrorAction As Action(Of Integer, String, String)

    Public Sub New(future As _IFuture,
                   Optional continuationData As U = Nothing,
                   Optional completionAction As Action(Of V, U) = Nothing,
                   Optional cancellationAction As Action(Of V, U) = Nothing,
                   Optional errorAction As Action(Of Integer, String, String) = Nothing)
        mCompletionAction = completionAction
        mCancellationAction = cancellationAction
        mErrorAction = errorAction
        mFutureWaiter.Add(future, continuationData)
    End Sub

    Private Sub mFutureWaiter_WaitCompleted(ByRef ev As FutureWaitCompletedEventData) Handles mFutureWaiter.WaitCompleted
        If ev.Future.IsPending Then Exit Sub

        If ev.Future.IsFaulted Then
            If mErrorAction IsNot Nothing Then mErrorAction(ev.Future.ErrorNumber, ev.Future.ErrorMessage, ev.Future.ErrorSource)
        ElseIf ev.Future.IsCancelled Then
            If mCancellationAction IsNot Nothing Then mCancellationAction(DirectCast(ev.Future.Value, V), DirectCast(ev.ContinuationData, U))
        ElseIf ev.Future.IsAvailable Then
            If mCompletionAction IsNot Nothing Then mCompletionAction(DirectCast(ev.Future.Value, V), DirectCast(ev.ContinuationData, U))
        End If
    End Sub

    Public Sub Cancel()
        mFutureWaiter.Cancel()
    End Sub

End Class

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Tag: discovery
9 reasons why Yuri Gagarin may be the most mantastic man ever
50 years ago, on April 12th, a human went into space for the first time. Let's say that again, for emphasis: a human went into space. In a rocket. To space. His name was Yuri Gagarin and he is an undeniable legend.
Sure, his fame might be overshadowed somewhat by those showoff Americans Buzz Adrin and Neil Armstrong (though we still love you guys, big time), and his tragic death in a plane crash at the age of 31 also limited his potential awesomeness, but there's no man alive who could deny that Yuri was an absolute boss.
A hero in Russia — more than a hero, in fact, more like a god — he's celebrated to this day, year after year, for his amazing feat of being the first man in space, and for showing those Yanks the Russkies had the power to send a ruddy bloody man into ruddy bloody space.
Continue reading at Asylum.co.uk
Author galaxy17Posted on April 13, 2011 Categories SpaceTags astronaut, discovery, experiment, first human in space, mission, Moon, Russia, Space, USSR, Yuri GagarinLeave a comment on 9 reasons why Yuri Gagarin may be the most mantastic man ever
Mystery Of The Dimming Star Coming To An End? Epsilon Aurigae where are you?
An artist's conception of Epsilon Aurigae and its dusty companion. Credit: NASA/JPL Caltech
Epsilon Aurigae is one of the few stars that you can see with your own eyes, even in the washed out, big-city sky. It's big and very bright — except when it isn't. Sometimes, it's just not there.
Epsilon Aurigae is what's known as an eclipsing star. Every 27 years or so, it dims dramatically. In fact, you would have a hard time finding Epsilon Aurigae right now, because the star began dimming last August — and it won't be fully visible again for more than a year. That's one of the longest eclipses known to man.
Astronomers have been puzzling over these drawn-out eclipses ever since they were first recorded early in the 19th century. Now, using data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, they've come up with a model that sheds new light on this 200-year-old mystery.
Don Hoard led the researchers at the California Institute of Technology, who looked at all the new data. He tells NPR's Guy Raz that Epsilon Aurigae is actually two stars spinning around each other.
"About two eclipses ago — so in the mid-1950s, early 1960s — astronomers started to develop a picture that there must be something in this system other than just two stars orbiting each other and eclipsing each other," Hoard says.
"The idea was formed that there's probably a disc formed of gas and dust that surrounds one of the stars, and the reason the eclipse lasts so long is because this disc is passing in front of the other star — the brighter star in the system — and it just takes a long time to go past."
Author galaxy17Posted on January 12, 2010 Categories SpaceTags California, Caltech, cooperative space exploration, dimming stars, discovery, Space, starLeave a comment on Mystery Of The Dimming Star Coming To An End? Epsilon Aurigae where are you?
Mysterious Distant Planet 'Disappearing Before Our Eyes'
Astronomers appear to have caught an exoplanet – a planet orbiting another star – in the middle of a cosmic vanishing act.
The planet, tagged CoRoT-7b, first hit the headlines last September when a team of astronomers confirmed the orb as the smallest exoplanet yet found. Its diameter is roughly 1.7 times that of Earth. Based on its size and mass, its density is similar to Earth's, indicating that it is a rocky Earth-like orb.
But it wasn't always this small. Scientists estimate that CoRoT-7b initially tipped the cosmic scales at 100 times more mass than Earth and orbited the star at a distance of about 2.3 million miles.
Author galaxy17Posted on January 10, 2010 Categories SpaceTags CoRoT-7b, discovery, exoplanet, exploration, Space, telescopeLeave a comment on Mysterious Distant Planet 'Disappearing Before Our Eyes'
Our Solar System May Have Millions of "Twins"
A Jupiter-like gas giant planet orbits a young star in an artist's conception. Credit: T. Pyle (SSC), NASA/JPL-Caltech
Of the billions of stars in our Milky Way galaxy, 15 percent may host "twins" of our solar system, a new study says.
While that might not sound like much, the find suggests that several hundred million star systems look a lot like the one we call home, the study authors say.
The research is based on surveys of stars with gas giant planets—similar to Jupiter and Saturn—that orbit far from their stars.
As in our solar system, vast distances stretch between these stars and their gas giants. This creates ample room for rocky planets to thrive in the stars' habitable zones, the regions where liquid water can exist.
And that boosts the likelihood that other Earths, and maybe even other forms of life, abound in the Milky Way.
"For the first ten years of planet hunting, we were feeling a bit worried—other systems looked so different from our own solar system," noted Debra Fischer, an astronomer at San Francisco State University who was not involved in the research.
"[These] results are reassuring us that there are solar systems akin to our own. This is real data that strengthens the hypothesis that there are many habitable worlds like our Earth."
Author galaxy17Posted on January 9, 2010 Categories SpaceTags cosmic objects, discovery, experiment, NASA, Space, universeLeave a comment on Our Solar System May Have Millions of "Twins"
First Earth-Like Planet Spotted Outside Solar System Likely a Volcanic Wasteland
How similar is exoplanet CoRoT-7b to Earth? The newly discovered extra-solar planet (depicted in the above artist's illustration) is the closest physical match yet, with a mass about five Earths and a radius of about 1.7 Earths. Also, the home star to CoRoT-7b, although 500 light years distant, is very similar to our Sun. Unfortunately, the similarities likely end there, as CoRoT-7b orbits its home star well inside the orbit of Mercury, making its year last only 20 hours, and making its peak temperature much hotter than humans might find comfortable. Credit: ESO/L. Calcada
Rocky planets — Earth, Mercury, Venus and Mars — make up half the planets in our solar system. Rocky planets are considered better environments to support life than planets that are mainly gaseous, like the other half of the planets in our system: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
The rocky planet CoRoT-7 b was discovered circling a star some 480 light years from Earth. It is, however, a forbidding place and unlikely to harbor life. That's because it is so close to its star that temperatures might be above 4,000 degrees F (2,200 C) on the surface lit by its star and as low as minus 350 F (minus 210 C) on its dark side.
Now scientists led by a University of Washington astronomer say that if CoRoT-7 b's orbit is not almost perfectly circular, then the planet might also be undergoing fierce volcanic eruptions. It could be even more volcanically active than Jupiter's moon Io, which has more than 400 volcanoes and is the most geologically active object in our solar system.
"If conditions are what we speculate, then CoRoT-7 b could have multiple volcanoes going off continuously and magma flowing all over the surface," says Rory Barnes, a UW postdoctoral researcher of astronomy and astrobiology. Any planet where the surface is being remade at such a rate is a place nearly impossible for life to get a foothold, he says.
Read the rest of this breaking news here…
Author galaxy17Posted on January 7, 2010 Categories SpaceTags cooperative space exploration, CoRoT-7b, discovery, light years, planet, solar system, Space, universeLeave a comment on First Earth-Like Planet Spotted Outside Solar System Likely a Volcanic Wasteland
NASA's Shuttle, Satellite, and Space Telescope fleet triumph in 2009
For NASA, 2009 proved to be a stellar year, one filled with five extremely successful Space Shuttle missions (one of which repaired the Hubble Space Telescope), the test flight of the Ares I-X rocket, the launch of the Kepler Space Telescope, the launch of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and companion spacecraft the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), and the launch of the WISE spacecraft earlier this month.
In all, the first half of 2009 proved an extremely challenging and rewarding time for NASA. Form January to June, NASA completed a complicated analysis of the Space Shuttle fleets Flow Control Valves, launched the Kepler Space Telescope to search for extra-solar Earth-like planets, conducted the STS-119 Shuttle mission, performed a dual-pad flow for STS-125 and STS-400 and the subsequent and highly successful STS-125 mission to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope, and launched LRO/LCROSS.
In a recent interview with NASASpaceFlight.com, Space Shuttle Program Launch Integration Manager Mike Moses talked extensively about the incredible year the Shuttle processing teams had and their ability to accomplish everything they did in 2009.
"It was all about the teams and their ability to create triple and quadruple redundancies in schedules," Moses said.
"On the surface, it didn't appear that we had all that challenging of a year. But if you take it month by month you can really see the issues the teams worked through and the amazing jobs those teams did to get us into a launch posture six times this year."
Read the rest of this article here…
Author galaxy17Posted on December 30, 2009 Categories Space, TechnologyTags cooperative space exploration, discovery, Mars, meteor, mission, Moon, NASA, NASA headquarters, planet, satellite, science, shuttle, shuttle launch, spacecraft, United States, USAF, videoLeave a comment on NASA's Shuttle, Satellite, and Space Telescope fleet triumph in 2009
MSNBC +++ Cosmic Log +++ The year in space
The highest highlight of 2009 was clearly the revival of the Hubble Space Telescope, a mission that blended moments of beauty and brute force 350 miles above the earth.
Or was it?
Maybe the top story was the reassessment of NASA's plans for human spaceflight. After all, tens of billions of dollars could be at stake. Or maybe it was the series of victories in NASA-backed competitions that had gone unwon for years.
Author galaxy17Posted on December 27, 2009 Categories SpaceTags cooperative space exploration, discovery, innovation, mission, NASA, NASA space, rocket, science, shuttle, shuttle launch, spacecraft, United StatesLeave a comment on MSNBC +++ Cosmic Log +++ The year in space
Trio of NASA missions in 2010 will probe answers to secrets of the Earth, sun
Taken by astronaut William Anders from the Apollo 8 spacecraft, this December 1968 photo of Earth rising over the lunar surface would become one of the most famous images of the 20th century. Credit: NASA
NASA heads into 2010 with the bittersweet assignment of retiring the space shuttle after nearly three decades. But that's not all the agency has planned: There are also launches of three new satellites aimed at better understanding the Earth's climate and oceans, and the sun.
Two of the probes will examine Earth — specifically the concentration of salt in the world's oceans and the presence of aerosol particles, such as soot, in the atmosphere. A third mission will study the sun and its effect on space weather including solar flares that can disrupt communication on Earth.
All three come at a critical time for NASA. Data from the two Earth probes will likely influence global-warming research, and the trio of launches could serve as bright spots in a year otherwise dominated by debate over the future of the agency's manned space program.
"They are extraordinary timely," said Michael Freilich, head of NASA's Earth-science division, of the two Earth probes. "It is a quest for understanding of the Earth system and [to improve] our ability to predict how our wonderful environment and our planet is going to change in the future."
Combined, the three missions will cost more than $1.5 billion.
Get the full details here…
Author galaxy17Posted on December 26, 2009 Categories Space, TechnologyTags astronaut, cooperative space exploration, cosmic objects, discovery, innovation, ISS, Mars, Moon, NASA, NASA headquarters, NASA space, planet, radiation, research, satellite, shuttle, shuttle launch, Space, spacecraft, Sun, United States, universe2 Comments on Trio of NASA missions in 2010 will probe answers to secrets of the Earth, sun
Happy Holidays from orbit17.com – All the best to you and yours :)
Geminid meteor pierces the night sky over California's Mojave Desert Credit: Wally Pacholka, TWAN
Like a silver spear cast from the heavens, the bright streak of a Geminid meteor pierces the night sky over California's Mojave Desert during the annual meteor shower's 2009 peak.
Geminids are slower than other shooting stars and are known to make beautiful long arcs across the sky. This could be because they're born of debris from a dormant comet and so are made mostly of hard, sun-baked rock that takes longer to burn up in Earth's atmosphere, experts suggest.
Geminid Meteor Shower: Rising Star
The Geminids have been historically overlooked, simply because of their timing so close to the busy holiday season and during frigid winter nights, astronomers say.
But that's beginning to change, thanks to the Geminids' rising intensity over the past few decades.
In fact, for many astronomers, the December meteors have now dethroned the more popular August Perseid meteor shower as the shooting star event of the year.
"It may come as a surprise to many, but the Geminids are currently richer and are brighter on average," said Anthony Cook, astronomy observer at Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, California.
Why the sudden illumination?
Earth is plowing deeper every year into an ancient stream of rocky debris left behind by a mysterious 3.1-mile-wide (5-kilometer-wide) object that orbits the inner solar system, he said.
When Earth's atmosphere crosses paths with that debris cloud, the rocks are superheated and burn out—and new Geminids are born.
Geminids' Mystery Parent
The Geminid meteors all appear to be chips off a mysterious rocky object called 3200 Phaethon.
Other meteor showers come from material shed by melting comets—which are massive chunks of dirty ice and rock—as they pass close to the sun. (See asteroid and comet pictures.)
But no one knows for sure whether the Geminids' parent object, first identified in 1983, is an asteroid or the core of an ancient comet that simply sputtered out.
Recent observations of Phaethon, though, suggest it's a nearly dormant comet, and the Geminids' parent is now officially classified as such by NASA.
The research revealed that Phaethon is the rocky skeleton of a comet that lost its ice after too many close encounters with the sun, according to NASA.
The shooting stars' rocky, hard exterior—as well as the fact that they, unprotected by ice, get baked by the sun—may help explain why Geminids are slower and last longer in the sky than other shooting stars, said Peter Brown, a meteor expert at the University of Western Ontario in Canada.
"They have the ability to penetrate deeper into Earth's atmosphere," Brown said, "and burn up at much lower altitudes than meteors associated with the Perseids and Leonids."
Author galaxy17Posted on December 25, 2009 Categories SpaceTags Aircraft, astronaut, cooperative space exploration, discovery, Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, NASA, NASA headquarters, news conference, Space, X-masLeave a comment on Happy Holidays from orbit17.com – All the best to you and yours :)


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Movies Like Mean Girls
1 Picture This
2 Jawbreaker
3 What a Girl Wants
4 Easy A
5 Uptown Girls
6 The Hot Chick
7 10 Things I Hate About You
8 My Sassy Girl
9 The Devil Wears Prada
10 16 Candles
11 The Perfect Score
You know you're a Mean Girls fan, when you've watched the move at least 100 times and have learned most of its iconic dialogues (if not all of them) by heart. But here's the thing – the movie isn't available on Netflix all the time and one movie is just not enough for you, so what can you do when you need a fix of Mean Girls? Simple – you watch movies just like Mean Girls. We bet you didn't even know that they existed, did you? But keep in mind – they aren't exactly like Mean Girls. Some take place in high school while some take place in adult life (with all the drama in high school).
The protagonist is this nerd girl but the most handsome guy in her school shows interest in her. Needless to say, the girl's excited because this is her way out of being her school's social pariah. BUT there's a big catch – her parents have grounded her, which means she can't make it to her date with the popular dude. So what does she do? The movie's a little predictable you may say, but it's funny and lovable, and that's all you should care for.
Reagan High School has a group of 3 mean girls (white, thin and pretty) who decide to prank their friend by kidnapping her. However, the prank goes horribly wrong and they end up killing their friend. One of the students from the school discovers their prank and what's worse, a detective is on to them. The plot may sound morbid, but it's actually quite funny. And if you're looking for movies like Mean Girls, make sure Jawbreaker is on your list.
Daphne has never known her father, and now she's travelling to England so that she can establish a normal relationship with him. What she isn't prepared for is the fact that her father is an important political figure, which forces her to publicly talk and behave in a manner that goes against her very nature. Does this repair their relationship, or damage it further?
Ah, if you've ever wanted to watch how real teens behave in the real world. Cue to Easy A. The pretty Olive (Emma Stone) is a strong willed girl who doesn't let a terrible school rumor ruin her life. Instead, she embraces it. However, things still don't go smoothly as she finds out to her dismay that there are people out there determined to get her. Oh, and did we mention that Olive has the coolest set of teenage parents ever? The movie's like a breath of fresh air and something you shouldn't miss.
Uptown Girls
Meet Molly Gunn, a typical rich spoilt brat who inherits all her father's money. Her life comes to a standstill when she is told her accountant ran away with her $100,000,000 inheritance. Desperate to pay off her mountain of bills, this childish woman agrees to become a babysitter. And her very first job is babysitting a young girl named Ray, who acts like an adult. This movie has drama, comedy and witty dialogues that will have you in splits. Who says for movies like Mean Girls have to happen in high school? Real life has its own set of drama, you people!
The Hot Chick
Meet Jessica Spenser, a typical Regina George who is always used to things going her way. Until one fine day when she accidentally switches bodies with Maxtone, a gas station robber in his 30s. Caught in her worst nightmare, Jessica must find a way to switch back to her real body, while dealing with the reality that she has been a horrible person her entire life. And for good measure, her body is now being occupied by Maxtone, who is facing his own set of problems.
Remember Shakespeare's comedy The Taming of the Shrew? 10 things I hate about you is a modern adaptation of that story, with its setting in an average American high school. Cameron is a new student who immediately falls in love with Bianca, the school hotty. To find a way around her overly possessive father's rules about dating, Cameron hires Bad boy Patrick to date Bianca's sister Kat, who's infamous for her bad attitude. So want to know what really happens later? Watch the movie!
This Korean movie can be watched in English subtitles, and it's a must watch if you're searching for movies like Mean Girls. Kyun-woo is your average Joe who is shamed into helping a bullied girl he comes across in the metro. With every passing day, the girl brings nothing but trouble for him, and yet, this does nothing for him but to develop a sense of responsibility in him for her. Will his efforts be worth it in the end?
Thinking how this qualifies as a movie like Mean Girls? Well, simple. Anne Hathaway's character is like Cady here, while her boss Meryl Streep is the high end fashion version of Regina George. She knowingly gives Anne's character impossibly tough tasks to accomplish, and much to her surprise, Anne always passes with flying colors. And much like Cady, Anne's character ends up winning in this game of cat and mouse against her boss!
15-year-old Samantha crushes on her school's heartthrob, and unknown to her, a nerd crushes on her. And everything takes a turn for the worst when her parents forget her 16th birthday, leaving her completely humiliated in front of her friends. So what happens on the night of her birthday? Watch this movie for a lot of teenage drama that is there in Mean Girls. And laugh a lot while doing so.
6 high school seniors are desperate to get good marks in school, because of which they break into their city's test centre to steal the test papers. They're almost caught, because of which they end up studying for the exam and scoring average scores. Towards the end of the movie, the 6 realize that marks aren't all that matter.
Granted, this movie is a little predictable at times and not exactly like the rest of the movies like Mean Girls mentioned in our list, but it's still a must see if you are looking for a good laughter and we promise you'll love it!
Hope to share things with the whole world~


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The Debate Over T-shirts
While the present doesn't develop his character, he brings a unique preventing and charisma. Unfortunately, we don't get a lot of inside scoop on Kibutsuji's character besides what he exhibits on the surface. If you're purchasing low-cost wholesale t-shirts, get them in bulk to seal a magnificent deal. With the premise of demon-slaying, there's plenty of room for different characters to get their very own spotlights. For instance, Zenitsu is initially portrayed as a coward; however, over time, he conquers his fears and learns to accept his position as a demon slayer. Known for its foul mouth and killing desire, one should marvel how a lot he can match the role as a demon slayer.
The game will characteristic a full story mode focusing on both arcs of the anime and the film. However, its longevity will doubtless be tied to the success of the Versus Mode coming in Demon Slayer: The Hinokami Chronicles. You can't beat free, and even if it isn't the coolest trying shirt or they don't know what it is, they may wear it as a result of it is a t-shirt and walk around the city, letting people who may have your service see the shirt. It helps that Kimetsu no Yaiba features a diverse forged of characters who are all distinctive on their very own. Kayne West Merch The creator made these characters with conflicting personalities carry more worth to their roles.
It's the main issue that could make the demons more forgettable in comparison with the human characters. One other thing that's essential to make your business stand out is Toronto business playing cards. These are usually the outlets that make things that are related to the church and other religious gadgets. Quite a several appealing characters, reminiscent of bar proprietor Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammell) and beginner vamp Jessica Hamby (Deborah Ann Woll), spend their time nearly fully aside from the rest of the Bon Temps crew. By Episode 3, different storylines involving Bill and Tara (Rutina Wesley) start to feel like repeats of things that occurred in previous seasons.
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Causes To Cease Thinking about Cow Print Hoodie


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According to information released by Statistics Estonia on March 29, the turnover of retail trade enterprises in February increased by 3% YoY at constant prices.
In February the turnover of retail trade enterprises totaled EUR 495.9 million.
The turnover of stores selling manufactured goods increased by 7% compared to February 2017. Turnover increased in five and decreased in two economic activities. Turnover increased the most in pharmacies and stores selling cosmetics, with sales increasing by 17%. Turnover increased also in stores selling via mail order or the internet (15% growth) and in other specialized stores, such as stores selling predominantly computers and their accessories, books, sports equipment, games, toys, etc. (10% growth), in non-specialized stores selling predominantly manufactured goods (e.g. department stores) (7% growth), and in stores selling household goods and appliances, hardware and building materials (6% growth). The turnover of stores selling second-hand goods and in non-store retail sale (stalls, markets, direct sale) and in stores selling textiles, clothing and footwear decreased compared to last February.
The turnover of grocery stores decreased by 3% compared to February 2017, with the drop in turnover being affected by the continuing price increase of food products.
The turnover of enterprises engaged in the retail sales of automotive fuel, which decreased in January, saw an upswing once again in February, increasing by 9% YoY. Turnover growth in these enterprises was partly affected by the deceleration in the price increase of automotive fuel.


Just about every business with a website understands why mobile experiences are important. After all, more than 50% of web traffic today flows through mobile devices (Statistica), which leads to a whole lot of dollars.
But, what exactly constitutes an effective mobile experience today?
Over the past seven years, the bar has been continually rising for mobile experiences. Once cutting-edge "mobile-friendly" websites are now obsolete, and mobile users are demanding better, more engaging experiences.
Let's briefly walk through the recent evolution of "mobile experience" before exploring where we're at today.
About eight years ago, the world started to wrap its head around the notion that we'd soon be more engrossed with our phones than with our computers. The original iPhone and subsequent models had bewitched us with their gorgeous touchscreens and mobile Internet voodoo magic.
Businesses that didn't want to miss out on mobile traffic had to scramble to create or redesign websites that were free of these limitations.
At first, that often meant building a one-size-fits-all mobile-friendly website. These were websites designed for the lowest common denominator – made to work on both desktop and mobile browsers, resulting in a user experience that often wasn't very good on either desktop or mobile (unless you liked having to pinch and zoom to be able to click a link, for example).
Later, mobile-friendly came to involve offering a separate mobile website alongside the desktop version of the website. These mobile websites were often barebones in nature, because many businesses couldn't justify building a second full-featured website with a separate code base to create and maintain.
Many early mobile-friendly websites were created and maintained separately from their desktop counterparts.
Fast forward to about 2014. Even laggard businesses had implemented some form of a mobile-friendly website.
Box checked, requirement met. Or not?
Alas – by this point in time, offering a mobile-friendly site still had you struggling to keep up with the Joneses. Many businesses had already moved on to something better: mobile responsive websites.
Mobile responsive sites use CSS media queries to dynamically present a different user experience depending on the device (desktop or mobile) and/or screen size.
On a mobile responsive website, images and text might dynamically resize when viewed on a smartphone. Traditional navigation menus could turn into "hamburger" menus, and content could magically snap to fill every bit of viewable space.
Today, mobile responsive websites are pervasive. WordPress, Squarespace, and other website platforms offer out-of-the-box mobile responsive themes and products. Businesses undergoing website redesigns often consider mobile responsiveness a critical requirement (rather than a competitive advantage or differentiator).
Mobile responsive websites are created and maintained on a single code base but can provide optimized experiences across many different devices and displays.
While mobile-responsive websites can certainly look great on both desktop and mobile, they aren't the endgame for mobile experience.
Consumers are now spending an average of more than four hours per day on smartphones (eMarketer). This is a massive opportunity for businesses that leverage the full capabilities of today's mobile devices.
To provide that deep mobile experience and to unlevel the playing field once again, many businesses today are creating native mobile apps, or apps coded for a specific mobile platform (iOS or Android, for example).
It's clear that mobile apps are key to delivering exceptional mobile experiences going forward. But why are apps such clear winners versus mobile websites?
One touch access from home screen – no need to open a mobile browser to initiate an experience.
What these advantages all boil down is the notion that native apps offer a decidedly stronger user experience, delivering more users, more user engagement, and more revenue.
Mobile applications aren't for every business, though. It generally costs more to create a native mobile app than it does to create a responsive website – and the upside is limited if your app doesn't really do much beyond what a website already can.
However, for businesses that do want to engage their mobile users more deeply and/or more frequently, there is no better way to do so than to offer native mobile apps.
If the brief history of mobile experience has taught us anything, it's that the bar will inevitably rise.
Today's very best mobile apps still need to be continually updated – not just for compatibility with new operating systems and APIs – but also to integrate emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning, blockchain, AR/VR, and other game-changing experiences.
Further, as the infrastructure supporting mobile experiences improves – 5G connections that are 100 times faster than 4G LTE, for example – you can be sure that seismic shifts in mobile experience will follow.


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Home News Life-saving services at risk as humanitarian funding dries up in Yemen
Life-saving services at risk as humanitarian funding dries up in Yemen
Om Asma and her baby survived thanks to a Caesarean section delivery at one of the few UNFPA-supported hospitals still open in Yemen. © UNFPA Yemen
SANA'A, Yemen/UNITED NATIONS, New York – Om Asma's most recent pregnancy could have killed her. She already had a baby at home, and her body felt depleted. "I became pregnant immediately after the birth of my last child. There was no spacing between the two births," she explained. "I had severe stress after the last pregnancy, and had problems with the uterus."
The health facility in her rural area in Al-Baidha was unable to manage her delivery. "When it was time to give birth, my husband and I went to the district clinic, but the clinic was not equipped to handle the birth and my situation started to worsen. The doctor there told me that I needed a Cesarean section with special care, and they do not have the facilities for my treatment."
She arrived at the Kuwait Hospital in Sana'a, the capital, after many hours of travel. There, she underwent a successful Caesarean section delivery. "They saved me and my child in this hospital," she said.
Other women may not be so fortunate.
Unless humanitarian funding is urgently released, health facilities will be forced to scale back, or even end, their services.
Om Asma's physician, Dr. Manal, explained that Kuwait Hospital's emergency obstetric unit was shuttered due to the country's conflict and collapsed economy, and was only reopened with funding from UNFPA. UNFPA provided every mother with a package of essential post-partum and newborn care supplies – but this has stopped.
"When we inquired why they stopped provision of the mothers' bag, they told us that this happened because of a funding shortfall this year from donors," Dr. Manal said.
Every two hours, a Yemeni woman dies from complications of pregnancy
and childbirth. © UNFPA Yemen
"At the moment, the only thing we can do for people is to provide basic medical service."
Life-saving services at risk
Donors committed $2.6 billion to United Nations and humanitarian partners during a February pledging event. Less than half has been received.
UNFPA's procurement of medicines has already stopped due to lack of funds. By the end of August, 100 of the 268 hospitals UNFPA currently supports were closed, and another 75 will be shuttered by the end of this month. The closures will directly affect some 650,000 women accessing reproductive health services, and more than 1 million would be at risk if all facilities close.
"Over 1 million Yemeni women need funds now, or they will lose access to life-saving reproductive health services, putting their lives and those of their babies at risk," said UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Natalia Kanem.
It is estimated that every two hours, a Yemeni woman dies from complications of pregnancy and childbirth, and another 20 suffer preventable injuries, infections or disabilities.
Om Areej escaped this fate when she reached the Kuwait Hospital last month. Like Om Asma, she underwent an emergency Caesarean section.
"Now my child and I are fine," she said. "They provided me with full service and free medical care such as the operation and medicines. I found real hope here. But I am surprised that some medicines are not free. When I asked the doctor, she told me they wished they could give everything for free, but they do not have enough funding right now."
Health staff remain determined to help the women and newborns in their charge, but the funding crisis leaves them concerned about the welfare of their colleagues as well as their patients.
Balqees Bukari supervises a safe space that provides training and
psychosocial services for women survivors of violence. © UNFPA Yemen
"We have problems with support and funding, especially in paying health salaries. The only source of support for emergency obstetric care is UNFPA. We are afraid that even our current support could be stopped," said Dr. Raja, an obstetrician at the hospital.
"The disaster is worsening day after day"
Services for survivors of violence have also been affected. Fourteen safe spaces and four specialized mental health facilities for women have closed.
"We have done our best to serve the people here, but the disaster is worsening day after day in an unbelievable way," said Balqees Bukari, the supervisor of a safe space in Al Hudaydah.
Her centre provides training opportunities for women and girls, and psychosocial services for survivors of violence. But she fears for the future. "Because of the current situation and the war that is now taking place in Hodeidah, we are no longer able to absorb more. Thousands of women and girls are in very bad situation now."
Of UNFPA's 2019 appeal for the humanitarian response in Yemen totals $110 million, but only $38 million has been received. UNFPA is calling on donors to provide urgent funding to continue and restore life-saving reproductive health care and programmes that prevent and respond to gender-based violence.
Meanwhile, Ms. Bukari says she and her colleagues are doing their best: "We will not stop supporting women and girls. They have no one standing beside them except us."
Population : 29.6 mil
Maternal Mortality Ratio
Contraceptives prevalence rate
Population aged 10-24
Boys 54%
Girls 40%
After days on the run, pregnant Syrian woman finds safe haven and safe delivery
Twenty-five years ago, leaders promised to advance women's health and rights. Have they delivered?
A graduate at 47, new midwife triumphs over life's trials
West Darfur Flash Report #3; 14-23 January 2020
Gender-based violence at the gathering sites continues to be an issue with alleged gang rape, physical assault, harassment, looting as well as humiliation.
View resource >
North-East Syria Flash Update #12, 05-18 January 2020
To date, 70,590 people, including 17,648 women of reproductive age, have been displaced from North-East Syria to Al-Hassakeh, Ar-Raqqa and Aleppo governorates.
UNFPA and Philips reach important milestone to benefit 570,000 mothers and newborns in Republic of the Congo
This local initiative is part of the wider global partnership between Philips and UNFPA, launched in 2019.


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In the first post, I mentioned that one of the motivators for moving back to Windows was that I really liked the hardware of the Lenovo Yoga 920.
I bought one of the "4k Ultra HD Touch Screen" models, not because I cared about the 4k but because it was overall better spec'd. I'm not even sure 4k is realistically perceptible, or useful, on a 14″ laptop.
In fact, on Windows 10, it does have a drawback: lots of apps I've installed by default show up really small and fuzzy. And some apps, while "right-sized", had fairly fuzzy text.
I got the same thing for other apps such as Gimp and VS Code.
Fortunately, the fix is straightforward, if annoying since it seems you have to do it on a per-app basis.
Use the win key to open up the Windows search bar.
Props to this post about fuzzy fonts for leading me to this solution, which fixed more than just fuzzy fonts for me.
Three years ago, I wrote about moving from Windows to Linux for personal computing and development. Part of my frustration with Windows was around package management — installing, keeping up to date, and removing software. And part of my motivation for experimenting with moving back to Windows is the existence of what appears to be a serviceable solution for package management on Windows: Chocolatey. More on that soon.
But first, let's talk the current state of installing and keeping software up to date on the main modern operating systems for consumer use.
Linux effectively makes package management a first-class citizen; Mac doesn't, but homebrew has become de facto package management for Mac, at least for a developer machine.
For the devices we use for most of our personal computing — the little super-computers in our pockets — we've come to expect that software is installed from one place, automatically updated, and simple to remove. Even in the wild and woolly world of Android, you get all your software from Google Play; it's rare to be downloading and installing .apk files from the Internet.
If you've done this long enough, it might even seem sane, reasonable, no big deal.
But I'll tell you this: after working on Linux and Mac for enough years, that process above drives me f**king crazy and I want to do it as little as humanly possible.
Let's say you want to install a recent version of PostgreSQL; or Python; or Redis; or Intellij IDEA; or Docker; or &tc… In Windows, you'd do the thing you do above.
But on Mac, you'd probably use homebrew. You'd install homebrew once; and then from a terminal you'd brew install redis. Or brew install docker. You get the picture. To update, you'd use brew to update: brew upgrade redis. Or brew upgrade docker. Or to update all just brew update; brew upgrade. Easy peasy. No "go out to the Internet and download/click things" nonsense.
On Linux, it's about the same. Depending on the variant, it might be apt install redis or yum install redis. To update: apt update redis or just apt update to update all.
Aside from the huge (to me) benefit of being able to easily update all software with a few commands, there's also the benefit of being able to see all the software you have installed on your system in a single place.
Regrettably, perhaps until you actually see that stuff in action, you might not realize just how incredible it is. My experience with several years on Ubuntu is that it is so brain-dead easy to keep software up to date that it's practically more difficult not to. If you believe that up-to-date software generally results in a more secure, reliable system, then Ubuntu makes the right thing to do the easy thing to do.
On Windows, there has existed for several years a similar method for installing, listing, and updating software: Chocolatey. If you checked it out a few years ago and thought, as I did, "it's just not there yet"… it's there now. Or, at least, it's come a loooong way.
As of this writing, there are over 5000 packages available via Chocolatey.
Once installing Chocolatey, from powershell or cmd, you can search for packages with choco search [string]; install with choco install [package]; uninstall with choco uninstall [package]; upgrade with choco upgrade [package]; upgrade all with choco upgrade all. And much much more.
All Chocolatey-installed software is registered as usual with Windows and so they show up in "Apps and Features" as well.
And, as demonstrated in Jessie's boxstarter file, you can also install Windows features such as Windows Subsystem for Linux . It's a darn comprehensive tool.
In short: I like Chocolatey and will use it whenever possible.
Note: This section has been edited, after figuring out the problem. I'm keeping these problems in here, though, in the very unlikely case anyone else stumbles across this behavior.
Turns out, the cause of both of these problems was IPv6 settings in my wireless router. There was nothing wrong with Chocolatey. I wrote about how I resolved Chocolatey / Powershell slowness via fixing my router's IPv6 settings.
Chocolatey seems to be the only game in town for sane package management on Windows. I'm grateful that it exists, I like it, and I'm happy to use it. If you're on Windows, I encourage you to give it a shot.


Lung cancer is the top cause of cancer deaths in both women and men. But this was not always true. Today, smoking causes almost 9 out of 10 lung cancer deaths, while radon gas, pollution, and other things play a bigger role. Newly developed drugs give new hope for those diagnosed now.
Cigarettes are packaged with cancer-causing chemicals. They also disarm the lungs' natural defense mechanisms. The airways are lined with small hairs called cilia. This allows the cancer-causing chemicals develop.
Lung cancer starts quietly. There are usually no signs or warning signs from the early stages.
A sort of scan known as spiral CT may pick up early lung cancers in some people, but it is not clear whether it finds them early enough to save lives.
The same is true for those who used to smoke a good deal and stop less than 15 years back.
If your doctor thinks you may have lung cancer — for example, as you've got a long-term cough or wheezing — you will find a chest X-ray or other imaging tests. You might also have to cough up phlegm for a sputum test. If both of these tests indicate that you might have cancer, you will likely need to obtain a biopsy.
Small-cell lung cancer is more competitive, meaning it can spread quickly to other areas of the body early in the disease. It's closely tied to cigarette use and is infrequent in nonsmokers. Non-small-cell lung cancer develops slowly and is more prevalent. It is responsible for nearly 85 percent of all lung cancers.
Staging describes how far a person's cancer has spread. Small-cell lung cancer is divided into two phases: "Restricted" means the cancer is confined to one lung and possibly neighboring lymph nodes. "Extensive" means the cancer has spread to another lung or beyond. Non-small-cell lung cancer is assigned a point of I through IV, based on how far it has spread.
When doctors find non-small-cell lung cancer before it spreads beyond a single lung, a surgery can occasionally help. The surgeon can remove the section of the lung which has the tumor, or if necessary, the whole lung. Some folks get chemotherapy or radiation subsequently to kill any remaining cancer cells. Surgery usually does not assist with small-cell lung cancer since it probably has already spread before identification.
When lung cancer spreads too far to be treated, treatments may still help people live longer and have a greater quality of life. Radiation and chemotherapy may shrink tumors and help control symptoms, such as bone pain or obstructed airways. Chemotherapy is usually the primary treatment for small-cell lung cancer.
Targeted therapy plus chemotherapy might help if other approaches do not work. 1 type prevents the development of new blood vessels that nourish cancer cells. Other people interrupt the signs that prompt lung cancer cells to multiply, as shown in the picture here.
It does not work for everybody, but if it does, the results appear strong. You'd also have chemotherapy.
Clinical trials help doctors explore promising new therapies for lung cancer. Consult your doctor if there is one that you could join, what to think about, and how to sign up.
If you smoke or used to, it is not too late to make healthy changes. Research indicates that people who stop smoking after learning that they have lung cancer do better than those who keep smoking. If you are struggling to quit smoking completely then why don't you try vaping instead. It's easier then going cold turkey and it puts you in the right direction for your health. You could check out a site like vaporizer wholesale Europe to give you an idea of what is on offer to help you.
While smoking is the top cause of lung cancer, it's not the only risk element. Breathing in secondhand smoke at home or at work also seems to increase your risk. Individuals that are married to someone who smokes are 20 percent to 30 percent more likely to get lung cancer than the spouses of nonsmokers.
Some tasks make lung cancer more likely. Individuals who work with uranium, arsenic and other substances should attempt to limit their vulnerability. It is rarely used today, but employees who were exposed years ago are still in danger.
This natural radioactive gas is found at higher than normal levels in certain areas of the U.S.. The gas can build up inside houses and increase the risk especially in people who smoke. It's the second leading cause of lung cancer in the U.S..
It causes far fewer instances than smoking, but air pollution is still something to prevent. Experts believe pollution from automobiles, factories, and power plants can affect the lungs like secondhand smoke does.
Lung cancer does occur to people without a well-known risk factor — such as people who have never smoked. Researchers don't understand why. It seems to occur to women over men. And one kind, adenocarcinoma, is much more prevalent in nonsmokers than smokers.
s several attempts to kick the habit, so keep trying. It's well worth it and will benefit your entire body.
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Home Critical Thinking Balderdash & Hoaxes The death of critical thinking or just bad journalism?
The death of critical thinking or just bad journalism?
© July 17, 2019 © July 17, 2019 Balderdash & Hoaxes / Critical Thinking / New Age Codswallop / Pseudoscience & Quackery
There was a recent article on Patheos.com with the scary headline, "Young People Are Choosing Horoscopes and Crystals Over Fundamentalist Religions." The last part of that might seem good news, but the first part is highly troubling. It suggests a continued descent into the New Dark Ages where science, logic, and reason are replaced by woo hoo.
Let's be clear from the start: astrology is bunk. Magic rocks are bunk. Guardian angels, reiki, homeopathy, psychic readings, tarot cards, energy healing, reflexology, phrenology, and iridology are all bunk. None are based on anything close to science, reality or fact. At the very least destructive they are mere entertainment, at their worst they are a cultish belief in magic and superstition. But the piece is more sensationalism than fact.
The author of the Patheos article – supposedly a skeptic who describes it as a trend towards a "less violent form of nonsense" – writes,
Believe it or not, I don't oppose this. We should be moving away from fundamentalist adherence to ancient dogmas, and more toward this type of relaxed take-what-works-and-drop-the-rest approach. And if you can make yourself feel better without hurting anyone, I say you should go for it.
No, no, no. The test for meaning, for benefit, relevance, utility or truthfulness is not whether it makes you feel better. That's simply being selfish. You can get the same from eating ice cream or splurging on something you want to own. The news is full of politicians – local to federal – doing something to benefit themselves, not the people they supposedly serve. Epicureanism notwithstanding, there ought to be a benefit to more than just yourself.
Not harming anyone is good, of course, but by itself not good enough to make it the sole basis of anyone's beliefs or practices. Where is the ethical or moral substrate? The greater good? Too easily not harming anyone can become simply avoidance and excuses for not actually doing something.
But who is to determine harm? if children see their parents believing in something, they are likely to follow suit. Nonsense is as harmful to their minds as a religious cult. Believing in magic stones can easily lead to question all forms of science, reason and medicine (hint: New Age anti-vaxxers…)
And for all their faults, fantasies and flaws, at least most religions have a moral and ethical basis – you don't get that in any form of woo hoo. It's trite to consider all aspects of religion as "nonsense" just because you dismiss the supernatural aspects of it.
Furthermore, belief – even in nonsense – spreads like a virus. Look at the anti-GMO and anti-gluten fads, the anti-vaccine wingnuts, the chemtrail and reptiloid conspiracies, and every diet fad. Behind all of these woo hoo beliefs are hordes of con artists, bullshitters and hoaxsters eager to get rich by prying money away from the gullible. Being scammed or conned by them is surely a form of harm.
Nor does it matter to the believers, as the original LA Times piece suggests, that this is actually woo:
Most millennials claim to not take any of it too seriously themselves. They dabble, they find what they like, they take what works for them and leave the rest.
Now, if you read these two pieces, you should have immediately grasped a core problem with both of them: bad journalism. Okay, the LA Times piece is from someone who may not be an actual reporter. She's in the "audience engagement team" – I don't know what that is, but it sounds artificial and gooey – but it doesn't excuse the editors from letting this piece of fluff get published with a "must read" label. The editorial controls are so shoddy you'd almost think this was a CBC piece.
The original piece is bad because it makes half-assed assumptions and jumps to unsupportable conclusions based on limited or faulty data (or maybe just the writer's preconceptions). The Patheos piece fails by repeating the content without doing any critical analysis or fact-checking, just regurgitating what the first piece said. This is the much-denigrated "iterative journalism" – a serious flaw in online reporting (read Ryan Holiday's Trust Me, I'm Lying for a good explanation of why this sort of reporting fails even basic tests for credibility).
The author of the LA Times piece admits to having done only a "dozen interviews for this story with people ranging in age from 18 to their early 40s." Hardly a reasonable sample to be able to make the claim that "most" millenials have any opinion about anything. And there's no indication in the story that a single one of these interviewees lived outside Los Angeles, much less beyond the borders of the USA. So a factual headline would be, "A Dozen Local People Embrace Woo Hoo. Maybe Instead of Religion."
And it's a dozen people who pursue the woo, none of whom challenge it or see through the obvious hucksterism of people selling magic rocks. It's more like an advertorial for woo than a piece of reporting.
The author also writes, "a common theme emerged: They were raised with one set of religious beliefs — Catholic, Jewish, Buddhist — but as they became adults, they felt that faith didn't completely represent who they were or what they believed." But nowhere does she note that these 12 people came from fundamentalist backgrounds they later eschewed. So where does the Patheos story get that in its headline? More jumping to conclusions.
Nor does it follow that someone who was raised with a religion might not also believe in woo without discarding those beliefs. Lots of Christians, Buddhists and Jews believe in astrology. Lots of religious people have superstitions like luck. But none of the interviewees even claimed to be Buddhist.
(Why were no Muslims interviewed? Why does she write of Catholics but not Christians? Bias? Or just part of the new and shoddy "normal" for American media?)
While moving away from fundamentalist religious beliefs is good, swapping them for pseudoscience, con games and quackery is not. But the LA Times piece has more flaws:
Spiritual practices appeal to the commitment-wary: You can get a little into crystals or astrology or tarot, or a lot into it. You can buy a few rose quartzes or light a few candles and if it's meaningful for you, keep it; if not, it's not like you went through a full religious conversion.
What a load of codswallop, and it isn't backed up by any evidence. First, a definition of spiritual practice from Wikipedia that is as good as any to work from:
A spiritual practice or spiritual discipline (often including spiritual exercises) is the regular or full-time performance of actions and activities undertaken for the purpose of inducing spiritual experiences and cultivating spiritual development. A common metaphor used in the spiritual traditions of the world's great religions is that of walking a path.
This is the very essence of commitment. Practice requires commitment. Dabbling in magic rocks or magic star patterns is NOT a "spiritual practice" any more than reading a Dilbert cartoon makes a person a comic artist. (There is no agreement about the differences between spiritual and religious terminology, but generally religious beliefs are theistic and spiritual are not).
Commitment-wary? Quite the opposite. The people she quotes or the evidence of widespread LA hucksterism catering to the gullibles suggests a very serious commitment indeed, if to nothing more than fleecing the eager-to-hand-over-their-cash-for-magic-beans crowd. The author also writes:
Before the internet, people who held beliefs outside the mainstream — religious, political or otherwise — lacked a public way to connect with one another. With social media, she said, divinatory practices like astrology, crystals and tarot have been able to take up space in a public conversation. It helps that they all look great on Instagram.
Clearly, the writer has never heard of bookstores, because there have been specialty bookstores catering to these beliefs dedicated to them since the late 19th century (in fact, I ran such a bookstore in the 1970s).
Uncountable numbers of organizations, associations and secret societies like the Rosicrucians and the Order of the New Dawn, have supported and helped nurture and expand these beliefs. The only difference between then and now is that the internet is a more fertile platform for the con artists and wingnuts. At least the Theosophists in the days of Madame Blavatsky and Annie Besant weren't just after your money. They actually had beliefs, wacky though they might be to us today. Even Aleister Crowley had beliefs, not just a bunch of woo to impress others with.
And let's also be clear: divination is bunk. Journalists should not be so pliable (or gullible) as to simply call these practices what the practitioners call them. They are alleged, or so-called divinatory practices. To be otherwise requires proof (and, funnily enough, there is NONE). The LA Times writer doesn't ask for any proof, nor offers any critical assessment of the claims the interviewees make. She just accepts and repeats. That's not journalism: it's just typing.
One of these practitioners gets quoted in a telling way that exposes how the gullibility factor works to keep the woo hoo alive:
"What I love about young people is that they are so open to it, they're willing to explore without judgment," she said. "They have just a different perspective on life and are really open to exploring and healing and growing."
"Without judgment" means without critical thinking, without asking for proof, without questioning wild and pseudoscientific claims. It's not simply a "different perspective" to swallow the codswallop unthinkingly and unquestioningly: it's ignorance and stupidity. Superstition is not something to celebrate: it's something to challenge and redress. But it is something to cash in on, apparently.
The writer claims without any evidence that "a growing number of young people … have turned away from traditional organized religion and are embracing more spiritual beliefs and practices like tarot, astrology, meditation, energy healing and crystals." What does a "growing number" mean? Three people today is a growing number from yesterday's two. Nor does she clarify what "turned away" means – given up, discarded, abandoned? Or just enhanced with additional woo?
And again the write claims "a lot of younger people feel alienated by mainstream religion…" without offering any source for such a claim. So we have an article full of assertions without any factual basis. They may all be right – but without citation to a source, they come across as merely the writer's own views. Good journalism offers credibility, not just opinion.
In another paragraph, she quotes an astrologer (whose credibility isn't even once questioned!) saying young people are "…exploring nontraditional religious beliefs…" without explaining what a "nontraditional religious belief is." Pastafarianism? Dudeism? Astrology isn't a religious belief; it's just a superstition. Then the astrologer says, in a vapid non-sequitur,
Socialism isn't new, and astrology definitely isn't new, and earthly spirituality or living in accordance with the earth's rituals isn't new, it's ancient. I think we're yearning for something that technology cannot give us, that capitalism cannot give us.
WTF has socialism or capitalism to do with magic and superstition? Why didn't the writer ask that simple question?
And what are "earth rituals" – aside from more made-up woo? Another item the writer overlooked and simply regurgitated as if it meant something.
No, astrology isn't new, but dollars to doughnuts this astrologer doesn't follow ancient Babylonian or Egyptian or Indian astrology of any of the ancient forms, none of which were remotely akin to the modern codswallop. And just because something is "ancient" doesn't mean it's credible, good or even sane. Ancient Aztecs cut the hearts out of their living victims to sacrifice to their gods. Ancient Greeks put unwanted babies out in the open to die. Ancient Chinese entombed concubines and servants with their dead rulers. Ancient does not equate with good or even enviable.
It's not like we need to turn to someone modern like Richard Dawkins or the late Christopher Hitchens to find suitable debunking and skepticism for woo. Twenty-five hundred years ago, the Buddha spoke to the Kalama people and told them to use their wits and wisdom to assess the claims of teachers and teachings, to weigh them, to examine and analyse them instead of simply accepting them at face value:
[D]on't go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, 'This contemplative is our teacher.' When you know for yourselves that, 'These qualities are unskillful; these qualities are blameworthy; these qualities are criticized by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to harm & to suffering' — then you should abandon them.
Which in another translation comes out as:
Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumor; nor upon what is in a scripture; nor upon surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another's seeming ability; nor upon the consideration, 'The monk is our teacher.' Kalamas, when you yourselves know: 'These things are good; these things are not blamable; these things are praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness,' enter on and abide in them.
In other words: think for yourself. Don't merely accept what you're told. The sutra continues with a warning about delusional beliefs:
"Now, what do you think, Kalamas? When delusion arises in a person, does it arise for welfare or for harm?"
"For harm, lord."
Belief in claptrap like astrology and magic rocks is, without any doubt, a delusion. So, at least according to Buddhist views, there IS harm in such beliefs even if only to the believer. Just how vapid this piffle is can be found in the final paragraphs of the LA Times piece:
As people gathered for the solstice session… She asked people to take a pen and a piece of flammable wish paper and write down negative things, things they were ready to let go of. Then everyone passed around a lighter and an enamel bowl. One by one, they ignited the bad things, watching them crisp into embers and float away.
Argh. Just holding a "solstice session" gives away the bunkum: there is no magic in calendrical or geophysical events. Neither the sun nor the earth gives a damn whether you dance naked, have tantric sex or meditate that day. No, your chakras don't get energized because they and the energy are both imaginary.
Does anyone really think that by burning a piece of paper with a "bad thing" written on it will make the negativity disappear? WIll make the world a better place? Will it change anything? Aside from lightening your wallets, that is. Chanting around a bowl of burning paper doesn't accomplish anything. You want to change the world, or even change your own life, you actually have to do something useful. Woo hoo isn't an excuse to avoid that.
But to get back to my original point: despite the sensationalism, neither article is good journalism. Regardless of whether some of the assertions are correct, they are not presented in a credible, objective manner. And that discredits the source media.
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Search for "identity development"
Krista M. Aronson
Professor of Psychology
acculturation, immigration, intercultural competence, multicultural children's literature, psychology, psychometric assessment, racial and ethnic identity development
Rebecca L. Fraser-Thill
Visiting Instructor in Psychology
childbirth experiences, development of meaning and purpose in life, developmental psychology, identity development, infant socioemotional development, memory development
Eden K. Osucha
African American literature and literary theory, African-American studies, American studies, and the humanities, commodity culture and consumerism, creative writing, critical race studies, critical race theory, cultural studies, film studies, histories and theories of privacy in law, histories and theories of privacy in literature and culture, histories of U.S. race and ethnicity, law, legal studies, LGBTQ politics, literary analysis, literature, literature and law, media studies, media studies, nationalism, Nineteenth-Century American Literature, photography, poetry, post-racialism, privacy, privacy law, queer studies, racial passing, representations of disability and illness, theories of the public sphere, Twentieth-Century American Literature, U.S. literature and culture 1865 to the present, visual culture, women and gender studies
Susan W. Langdon
body image, bullying, psychology, respect (definition and experiences), substance use (alcohol and psychostimulants)
Stephen M. Engel
Professor of Politics
American political development, archival research, citizenship theory, civil rights law, gender, institutional development, interview-based studies, judicial development, judicial politics, LGBT politics, political sociology, post-war civil rights mobilization, progressive era politics, qualitative methods, race, sexuality, social movements, U.S. constitutional law, U.S. politics
Nathan C. Faries
Assistant Professor of Asian Studies
Claudia Aburto Guzmán
Associate Professor of Spanish
border studies, cinematic analysis, creative writing, immigration and identity, immigration and identity, Latin American culture, Latin American literature, Latin American visual arts, Latin American women's history and cultural production, literary analysis, Mexico-U.S. border violence, photography, poetry, Southern cone women's history and cultural production, translation, trauma and post-dictatorship discourses
Luke Chicoine
Thomas J. Wenzel
Charles A Dana Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry
analytical chemistry, chemical analysis and measurements, chiral analysis, host-guest complexation, NMR spectroscopy


cs_vpn_customer_gateway – Manages site-to-site VPN customer gateway configurations on Apache CloudStack based clouds.
Create, update and remove VPN customer gateways.
Account the VPN customer gateway is related to.
List of guest CIDRs behind the gateway.
Domain the VPN customer gateway is related to.
Disabled per default by the API on creation if not set.
Lifetime in seconds of phase 2 VPN connection.
Defaulted to 3600 by the API on creation if not set.
ESP policy in the format e.g. aes256-sha1;modp1536.
Force encapsulation for NAT traversal.
Public IP address of the gateway.
Lifetime in seconds of phase 1 VPN connection.
Defaulted to 86400 by the API on creation if not set.
IKE policy in the format e.g. aes256-sha1;modp1536.
Cannot contain newline or double quotes.
Name of the project the VPN gateway is related to.
State of the VPN customer gateway.
List of CIDRs of this customer gateway.
Whether dead pear detection is enabled or not.
IKE policy of the VPN customer gateway.
Whether encapsulation for NAT traversal is enforced or not.
IP address of the VPN customer gateway.
UUID of the VPN customer gateway.
ESP policy of the VPN customer gateway.
Name of this customer gateway.
Name of project the VPN customer gateway is related to.


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Artist box contents for Yinka Shonibare, Space Walk, 2002. Printed proofs, color swatches, vintage record albums and mylars. Collection of The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia. Photo credit: Carlos Avendaño.
Behind-the-Scenes Lunch Series: Material Explorations
March 16, 2018–12:00 to 1:00 pm
1214 Arch Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107
6th floor studio
Free and open to the public, suggested donation of $5
Space is limited, RSVP required
Click here to register for this event.
For questions about this program, please contact The Fabric Workshop and Museum at reservations@fabricworkshopandmuseum.org or (215) 561-8888.
This program, led by FWM Master Printer Kate Abercrombie and Project Technician Joy Ude, will explore the fascinating history of Dutch wax fabrics often used in former Artist-in-Residence Yinka Shonibare's work, as well as the techniques used to create this fabric. Samples of cloth will be available for handling, and a block printing station with motifs from popular culture will enable participants to create a small print on dyed fabric. The program will include a mixtape soundtrack used in his 2002 installation, Space Walk, referencing Shonibare's musical inspirations specific to Philadelphia's music history.
About Kate Abercrombie
Kate Abercrombie is the Master Printer and Printing Production Manager at The Fabric Workshop and Museum. Abercrombie has an MFA from University of Texas at Austin and a BFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia. She has been included in exhibitions in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Vox Populi, Fleisher/Ollman, Little Berlin and Black Floor. Her work is in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
About Joy O. Ude
Joy O. Ude is a Project Technician at The Fabric Workshop and Museum. Ude has an MFA in Fiber Arts (2013) and BFA in Fashion Design (2005) from the University of North Texas. Ude is a mixed-media artist and designer who explores Black culture as a subset of American culture. As an American-born child of Nigerian immigrants, she also reflects on the concept of duality. Her work has been included in several regional and national shows including CraftTexas; Fantastic Fibers at the Yeiser Art Center, Paducah, KY; Fiberart International, Pittsburgh, PA; and Art Seen at the Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, NE. Ude participated in The Fabric Workshop and Museum's post-grad apprenticeship program in 2015.
Major support for Process and Practice: 40 Years of Experimentation is provided by the Coby Foundation, Ltd., with additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Joy of Giving Something, Inc., the Lenore G. Tawney Foundation, and the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation.
Major support of FWM is provided by the Marion Boulton "Kippy" Stroud Foundation. FWM receives state arts funding support through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. Additional support is provided by the Philadelphia Cultural Fund, Agnes Gund, and the Board of Directors and Members of The Fabric Workshop and Museum.


To make the dressing whisk together the root ginger, rice vinegar, orange juice, vegetable oil, sesame oil, soup mix, sugar and garlic until well blended. Cover and refrigerate until needed.
Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to the boil. Add the pasta and cook for 8 to 10 minutes or until al dente; drain, and rinse under cold water. Place pasta in a large bowl.
To make the salad toss the cucumber, pepper, onion, tomatoes, carrot, spinach, mandarin oranges, chicken and almonds with the pasta. Pour the dressing over the salad mixture, and toss again to coat evenly. Serve immediately.


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Armed police hunting wanted man swoop in Wrexham for second time in 24 hours
Officers are searching for Jason Curry, who may have information about a Liverpool murder
Sarah Hodgson
Merseyside Police want to talk to Jason Curry, 22, in connection with a murder in Liverpool (Image: Merseyside Police)
Armed police sealed off an area of Wrexham for the second time in 24 hours in a hunt for a wanted man.
Officers have been searching for Jason Curry, who may have information about a Liverpool murder.
On Sunday, police swooped on Benjamin Road in a bid to find the 22-year-old and, at about 1pm today, armed cops and dog units swarmed on Smithfield Road in the hope of tracking down Curry.
It comes after police received reports of a possible sighting of him.
However, Curry was not found in either search.
Police move to calm fears over Cheshire Oaks attempted abduction social media claims
Chief Inspector Paul Jones of North Wales Police said: "Officers were in the vicinity of Smithfield Road after police received reports of possible sightings of a man they are trying to locate, in connection with an incident in Merseyside."
Inquiries are ongoing to find Curry who could hold information about the shooting of a man in Toxteth on Friday, June 3.
Yusuf Sonko, 18, was shot on Tagus Street at around 8.30pm.
Mr Sonko was taken to the Royal Liverpool University Hospital where he died a short while later.
Thieves steal HGV and wedge it under bridge before fleeing on foot
Detective Chief Inspector Mark Tivendale, from Merseyside Police, said: "We believe that Jason, who also frequents Wrexham and Cumbria, may have important information which could help us with our investigation and I would urge him, or anyone who knows of his whereabouts, to contact us as soon as possible."
He added: "I would also appeal to anyone who may have information which could help us find those responsible to contact us, if they haven't done so already.
"Anyone with information can speak to us anonymously and in the strictest confidence if need be. Any information provided will be closely investigated by detectives. Your information could help us make significant progress in this investigation."
Anyone who has seen Mr Curry should contact Merseyside Police's gun crime hotline on 0800 230 0600 or leave information anonymously with Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
Information can also be given anonymously through their online service.