For many years of my life I thought it was up to me to get a house, a car, a job etc. I struggled to be able to give things away to others. I have struggled to understand that God wants to give things to me. I have struggled to understand that God wants to give. I thought He was some sort of stingy miser, a psychopath Who hated me.
If you are struggling in life one of the reasons you might be struggling is you might be struggling being generous.
Living to give may or may not involve money.
Positive emotion (acceptance, forgiveness, love etc) is far more valuable than money as money cannot buy it.
Truth is more valuable than money.
Life is more valuable then money.
All you are is more valuable than all you own.
How can you give something away when you do not have it?
The desire to give to others comes when we receive an understanding of what we have already been given. The understanding that we are not the source of our house, our car, our job etc and that we have received our house, our car, our job etc makes it possible to give.
In order to understand what has already been given to us we first need to receive an understanding of the nature of God.
We need to receive an understanding that God wants to and has already given to us more than anyone we have or will ever meet. He wants to provide for us more than we want to provide for our children or our friends. He wants to give to us more than we want to receive.
Once we trust God, we will be more able to cease to rely on what we "own". This will free us up from the fear of lack and we will naturally become generous.
Giving also involves giving to God. God in his heart wants you more than He wants Himself. God in His heart wants to give to you more than He wants to give to Himself.
When you know this, I believe you will find it a lot more easier to give to God and to others of you.
Deuteronomy 26:11 Then you and the Levites and the foreigners residing among you shall rejoice in all the good things the Lord your God has given to you and your household.
Proverbs 11:24 One person gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty.
Deuteronomy 15: 7-11 If anyone is poor among your fellow Israelites in any of the towns of the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward them. 8 Rather, be openhanded and freely lend them whatever they need. 9 Be careful not to harbor this wicked thought: "The seventh year, the year for canceling debts, is near," so that you do not show ill will toward the needy among your fellow Israelites and give them nothing. They may then appeal to the Lord against you, and you will be found guilty of sin. 10 Give generously to them and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to. 11 There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land.


text:
Oxnard Statement of Solidarity with the Workers of San Quintín
The Todo Poder al Pueblo Collective warmly pledges our full support for the demands of the struggling agricultural workers in the Valley of San Quintín, Baja California. As an all-volunteer, working class organization based in Oxnard, CA, a city which relies on the daily exploitation of thousands of workers who toil in the strawberry, onion, and citrus fields, we understand the need for unconditional solidarity with the workers and campesinos of San Quintín, who are organizing and mobilizing to defend their basic dignity and their social, human, and labor rights.
Likewise, we strongly denounce the repression that is being carried out by the government of Mexico and declare our opposition to its deceptive, hypocritical, and lying nature. The Mexican government long ago shut its ears to the demands of the people, and has proven time and again its shameless subservience to the international bankers, local criminal elites, and United States imperialists who have created the poverty-stricken turmoil that affects the lives of our communities on both sides of the border. By taking the side of the parasitic Agricultural industry and charro unions, the government of Enrique Peña Nieto and the discredited political parties have offered clear proof that justice and dignity can only be defended through our own organized efforts as conscious working people, united in the fight to overturn the institutions of capitalist exploitation and oppression that have brought the Mexican working class to ruin.
The roots of the present disaster clearly lie in the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), now in its 21st year, which was a part of a major offensive against working people throughout the world launched under the banner of "globalization." NAFTA unleashed the widespread takeover of the Mexican economy by large American agricultural and manufacturing corporations and in the process, pillars of the Mexican economy ranging from the subsistence farms of small villages to the proud national industries such as PEMEX were either destroyed or robbed from the people. The resulting instability has included major attacks on the rights of workers, the rise of vicious drug cartels, widespread femicides, the ever-increasing corruption of local authorities, and the development of a massive apparatus (DHS-ICE) for the repression, detention and deportation of unauthorized migrants in the United States (i.e. the militarized control of immigrant labor).
NAFTA displaced millions of Mexican workers across the continental "free trade zone" in one of the largest mass-migrations known in history, hitting indigenous and poor communities of Mexico the hardest. This 'economic miracle' of unrestrained free trade scattered communities from Southern Mexican regions such as Oaxaca and Guerrero to such distant places as San Quintín, Oxnard, Salinas, Fresno, Oregon, Washington, the American Midwest, Florida, and beyond. Despite our contribution to the profits of the super-rich, our communities are still subject to economic insecurity, state violence (including systemic neglect by educational bodies and healthcare institutions), and political non-representation.
While we may live in different regions, our exploiters are one and the same: the transnational corporations who go by such names as BerryMex, Driscolls, Sunkist, Nestlé, Costco, and Walmart, among others – monolithic private companies who wield the real power over our elected officials and so-called "representatives." In addition to mistreating our brothers and sisters in the fields, these same exploiters have rendered our air toxic here in Oxnard through the unrestrained use of various pesticides that form an invisible layer of poison that enshrouds our schools and neighborhoods. The solidarity of the growers in their various associations, and their tight relations with the state, shows the need for us, at the bottom, to strengthen our bonds of solidarity across communities, regions, and borders.
In these conditions, the fighting campesinos of San Quintín offer the brightest flashes of hope. By blocking the international highways that expedite the ruthless extraction of wealth from Mexican resources and labor, the proud workers of San Quintín are disrupting and obstructing the arterial veins of an unjust system (capitalism) that would rather see us enslaved than living in dignity and peace. By standing up and rejecting humiliation in the face of widespread sexual abuses, assaults on the rights of labor, and the trampling of human rights, the workers of San Quintín are opening horizons and lifting the morale of workers not only in Baja California, not only in North America, but across the globe.
We close this statement with some words from the Mission Statement of the Todo Poder al Pueblo Collective:
"History and experience have shown that unity and organization are capable of transforming a situation of passive acceptance into one where people are able to defend themselves from a position of strength and can take the initiative in the fight for a dignified future. An optimistic, assertive, and self-determined people are capable of overcoming the fear, hostility, and general corruption of those who take aim at us."
VICTORY TO THE AGRICULTURAL WORKERS OF SAN QUINTIN ~ LONG LIVE THE STRIKE!
LONG LIVE INTERNATIONAL LABOR SOLIDARITY AND WORKING-CLASS RESISTANCE!
THE WORKERS STRUGGLE HAS NO BORDERS!
Todo Poder al Pueblo Collective, Oxnard CA
This entry was posted in Análisis // Analysis, Luchas sociales y solidaridad // Social Struggles & Solidarity, Notas de prensa // Press releases. Bookmark the permalink.
Caravana 43 Oxnard: Parents of the 43 disappeared in Ayotzinapa to hold forum
Pronunciamiento de Solidaridad de Oxnard con los Obreros de San Quintín

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


A bossy little chap commands the horse to do tricks! Digitally enhanced iPad drawing with unique colouring, making a OOAK monoprint. Reproductions available in different formats in my shop.
Image size 8×10 inches approx. (20×25.5 cm).
We work very much the same….interesting.


text:
package com.linkedin.kafka.cruisecontrol.monitor.sampling;

import com.linkedin.cruisecontrol.metricdef.MetricDef;
import com.linkedin.kafka.cruisecontrol.exception.MetricSamplingException;
import java.util.Map;
import java.util.Set;
import org.apache.kafka.common.Cluster;
import org.apache.kafka.common.TopicPartition;

public class NoopSampler implements MetricSampler {

  @Override
  public Samples getSamples(Cluster cluster, Set<TopicPartition> assignedPartitions, long startTimeMs, long endTimeMs,
                            SamplingMode mode, MetricDef metricDef) throws MetricSamplingException {
    return null;
  }

  @Override
  public void configure(Map<String, ?> configs) {

  }

  @Override
  public void close() throws Exception {

  }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Q: Java weird static import package pack1;

public class A {

    public static int i = 10;
    public static void test()  {
        System.out.println("done");
    }
}

This is separate .class file:
package pack2;
import pack1.A.*;
public class Manager0  {

    public static void main(String args [] ) {

        System.out.println(A.i);
        A.test();
    }
}

When I run Manager0 class it shows error because I used import pack1.A.*; instead of  import pack1.A;, but why doesn't import pack1.A.*; work? I mean doesn't import pack1.A.*; mean import everything in class A?

A: You're looking for static imports. That should be:
import static pack1.A.*;

.. and you should really avoid it, specially using like that. If you want a specific member, import it specifically by using it's name.
It failed without static because you can't import members of a class non-statically. You can only use so called Import-on-demand, to import classes from a particular packages, or static import-on-demand to import static members of a class.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Objective: There is evidence that MTDH gene has a role in migraine pathophysiology. In our research, association of SNP in MTDH gene (rs1835740) with clinical parameters of migraine is considered.
Background: As a result of the first genome-wide association study (GWAS) of a common migraine, a SNP in the regulatory region of MTDH gene (rs1835740) was found. However, the confirmation of GWAS findings on independent samples failed. Also, there is no clear answer on the role of this substitution in the formation of the clinical picture of the various forms of migraine.
Patients and methods: The study included 143 patients with migraine. Comparison groups consisted of 9 patients with cluster headache and 20 patients with chronic tension headache. The control group included 362 unexaminated subjects. Genotypes were determined using real-time PCR with allelic discrimination test.
Results: Our study evaluated the role of rs1835740 substitution in the clinical picture of the various forms of migraine (episodic, chronic), as well as identified the specificity of this marker for migraine compared with other forms of headache (cluster headache, chronic tension headache). We have not found any effect of T allele (rs1835740) on the formation of the clinical picture of migraine with aura and migraine without aura. Also, we have shown that rs1835740 polymorphism has no effect on the chronification of migraine. Meanwhile, the carriage of T allele is specific for patients with migraine and cluster headache, but is not a characteristic feature of patients with chronic tension headache.
Conclusions: Our results suggest that the T allele of substitution rs1835740 in MTDH gene have not effect on the formation of the clinical picture of migraine with aura and migraine without aura, but specific for patients with migraine and cluster headache.
Genetic predisposition to migraine is well-known and proven by epidemiological genetic studies . The study of the genome in families of patients with hemiplegic migraine revealed five types of migraine with monogenic inheritance (familial hemiplegic migraine I, II, III, IV, V). However, these forms are extremely rare and are not involved in the development of common migraine with aura or without aura . The first genome-wide study (GWAS) of common migraine was published in 2010 . This study included nearly 6,000 patients with migraine with or without aura from various European countries (the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland) and more than 40,000 healthy individuals. Investigation revealed that the presence of minor T allele of rs1835740 substitution (NC_000008.11:g.97154685T>C) in 8q22.1 locus increases the risk of migraine, particularly migraine with aura. However, a case-control study conducted in Spanish population, including 1521 migraine patients and 1379 healthy subjects, did not reveal any significant differences in rs1835740 allele frequencies .
The SNP rs1835740 is located between MTDH (metadherin) and PGCP genes that are involved in glutamate metabolism. Quantitative analysis of transcription activity of the MTDH gene in lymphoblastoid cell lines demonstrated that the expression level had a significant correlation with this substitution, since the minor T variant was associated with the high transcriptional activity of the gene . Earlier studies showed that MTDH negatively regulates the expression level of SLC1A2 gene (also known as EEAT1) encoding the major glutamate transporter protein . Presence of T allele of rs1835740 results in the accumulation of extracellular glutamate activating NMDA receptors involved in central sensitization, thereby reducing the neuronal excitability threshold . In addition, this substitution is located not far from PGCP gene encoding glutamate carboxypeptidase, an activator of astrocytes activity, and, therefore, a reduction occurs in the development threshold of cortical spreading depression, the underlying pathophysiological correlate of migraine aura . The pathophysiological association of rs1835740 polymorphism with the development of migraine confirms the fact that a mutation in ЕЕАТ1 gene results in the development of familial hemiplegic migraine .
It can be assumed that rs1835740 polymorphism causes more severe migraine. The study by Esserlind et al  that included 691 patients with migraine with aura investigated the details of clinical manifestations of migraine depending on genotype (42% were T allele carriers). T-allele carriers had a tendency to a greater representation of symptoms during aura, as well as to a lesser severity of headaches and representation of related symptoms. In TT homozygotes, these clinical patterns were not more pronounced. The authors concluded that T-allele of rs1835740 substitution increased the risk of migraine development, but had no effect on the formation of symptoms of migraine with aura.
In the study by Christensen et al. , a phenotypic analysis of rs1835740 T-allele carriers in patients with migraine without aura was conducted. It included 339 patients, with 40% being carriers of T-allele. There were no significant differences in the representation of the migraine characteristics and symptoms, presence of comorbidities, representation of migraine attack triggers, effects of hormonal changes (pregnancy, COCs, postmenopause) on the frequency of migraine attacks as well as the effectiveness of triptans and preventive therapy.
These studies do not give a definite response about the role of rs1835740 polymorphism in the clinical picture of the various forms of migraine. The objective of our study was to determine the effect of a single nucleotide polymorphism rs1835740 in the clinical picture of the various forms of migraine (episodic, chronic), as well as identify the specificity of this marker for migraine compared with other forms of headache (cluster headache, chronic tension headache).
The study included 143 patients with migraine, with the average age of 41.6±12.5 years old (67.8% with episodic migraine, 32.2% with chronic migraine, 18.5% with migraine with aura, 31.9% abused painkillers). Comparison groups consisted of 9 patients with cluster headache and 20 patients with chronic tension headache. The control group included 362 unexaminated subjects. Patients from the main group, comparison group and controls were age-matched. Headache forms were diagnosed based on the criteria of the International Classification of Headaches III . Patients underwent a clinical neurological examination and blood sampling for genotyping. The study was approved by the local ethics committee and all subjects gave informed consent to participate in the study.
The DNA extraction was performed according to the protocol for a commercial set DNA MagnaTM DNA Prep 200 (Isogene Laboratory LLC, Moscow). The assessment of allelic states of SNP studied was performed using real-time PCR. The primers, fluorescent probes to rs1835740, and PCR conditions were selected by DNA Synthesis, LLC (Moscow, Russia): F: CTGACGAATATACTTATATTCCTTTTACAT, R: CTTGCATATTTGAGCAGACTTTG, rs1835740-C: FAM-CCAATCTGCGTATGTAGA-BHQ2, rs1835740-T: VIC-CAATCTGTGTATGTAG-BHQ2. For real-time PCR a commercial kit qPCR mix (EvrogenJSC, Moscow) was used. PCR was performed on CFX96 (BioRad, US) using an allelic discrimination test. PCR conditions: 95 °C — 3', 40 cycles of 95 °C — 30'', 57 °C — 60'', 72 °C — 30''.
Statistical processing was performed using parametric and nonparametric methods available in software package IBM SPSS Statistics 22. Compliance with Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium and association with the disease in general were calculated using Pearson's chi-squared test (chi-square).
The frequencies of genotypes and alleles of rs1835740 substitution in patients with migraine and in the control sample are presented in Table 1. The genotype frequencies do not comply with Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. Therefore, we used the multiplicative model (allele frequencies) to assess the association with the disease. No significant differences between patients with migraine and healthy subjects were obtained (χ2 = 0.24, p = 0.63). In general, the distribution of genotypes corresponds to that obtained by other authors [3,8].
Table 1: The frequencies of alleles and genotypes of the genes analyzed, compliance with Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (df=1).
When comparing the representation of genotypes of rs1835740 in patients with migraine, cluster headache and chronic tension headache (Table 2), it was revealed that the T-allele carriage is not typical for patients with chronic tension headache, and the representation of the TT genotype is highest among patients with cluster headache.
Table 2: rs1835740 genotypes in patients with migraine, cluster headache and chronic tension headache.
* - Migraine vs. cluster headache, p = 0.001.
** - Migraine vs chronic tension headache, p = 0.0001.
The analysis of rs1835740 genotypes among different forms of migraine (migraine with aura, migraine without aura and chronic migraine) found no differences (Table 3).
Investigation of characteristics and symptoms of migraine in carriers and non-carriers of the T allele of rs1835740 showed no statistically significant differences in their representation (Table 4).
Similar to previous studies performed by Christensen et al.  and Esserlind et al. , we have not found any significant effect of carrying the minor T allele of rs1835740 substitution on the formation of the clinical picture of migraine with aura and migraine without aura. We have also shown that rs1835740 polymorphism had no significant effect on the development of chronic migraine.
Our study suggests that carriage of T allele of rs1835740 is specific for patients with migraine and cluster headache, but is not a characteristic feature of patients with chronic tension headache. Perhaps, impairment of glutamate homeostasis is a common step in the pathogenesis of migraine and cluster headache, ensuring the formation of cortical neuronal hyperexcitability [11,12]. The effect of T allele on signaling pathways resulting in changes in the glutamate homeostasis and, consequently, cortical spreading depression (CSD) and aura is shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: The effect of T-allele of rs1835740 SNP near MTDH gene on glutamate "overdose" in the synaptic cleft and CSD development. An abnormal increase and a decrease in the number of molecules are highlighted. MTDH protein is white. A detailed description is provided in the text.
MTDH protein is an expression blocker of one of the main of glutamate transporters from the synaptic space into an astrocyte, SLC1A2. In an astrocyte, glutamate is converted into glutamine and is transported into a presynaptic neuron, where it is converted back into glutamate. T allele of rs1835740 substitution causes increased MTDH gene transcription, which results in decreased expression of SLC1A2. As a result, glutamate accumulates in the synaptic cleft and continuously activates NMDA receptors on postsynaptic neurons, resulting in the release of potassium from the intracellular space onto the cell surface and the entry of calcium into the cell. Extracellular potassium causes the membrane depolarization. Hyperdepolarization underlies the CSD development -spreading depolarization of brain cells. The aura preceding a migraine attack is the result of CSD. A depolarization effect is enhanced by activation of phospholipase A (PLA2G4A) through the calcium-dependent pathways in the postsynaptic neuron. Phospholipase synthesizes arachidonic acid that blocks potassium channels and the potassium remains on the membrane surface.
The presence of cortical spreading depression and its clinical correlate, aura, is usually discussed in the context of neuronal hyperexcitability in migraine. However, up to 23% of patients with cluster headache can have a typical migraine aura prior to a headache attack [13,14], whereas the deficit of central analgesia systems largely underlies the development of chronic tension headache. Consequently, the T allele of rs1835740 causing an increase in extracellular glutamate levels provides for a CSD initiation and an attack onset. This assumption is confirmed by the findings of a genomic study by Anttila et al., which showed a greater impact of rs1835740 polymorphism on the development of migraine with aura .
Thus, rs1835740 polymorphism is a clear risk factor for migraine; however, disease development and formation of clinical picture require the presence of additional extrinsic and intrinsic factors, including other genetic factors that need further study.
The authors thank the subjects for their participation in this research study. This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
Conception: Julia Azimova, Eugene Klimov, Andrey Rachin, GyusalTabeeva.
Clinical support: Julia Azimova, Alexey Sergeev, Kirill Skorobogatykh.
Molecular genetic analysis: Natalia Kondratieva, ZaremaKokaeva, TaisiaKochetkova, Eugene Klimov.
Statistical analysis: Julia Azimova, Eugene Klimov, Natalia Kondratieva.
Manuscript Preparation: Julia Azimova, Eugene Klimov.
Writing of the first draft: Julia Azimova, Eugene Klimov.
Russell MB, Olesen J (1995) Increased familial risk and evidence of genetic factor in migraine. BMJ 311(7004): 541-544.
Van Den Maagdenberg AM, Terwindt GM, Haan J, Frants RR, Ferrari MD (2010) Genetics of headaches. Handb Clin Neurol 97: 85-97.
Anttila V, Stefansson H, Kallela M, Todt U, Terwindt GM, et al. (2010) Genome-wide association study of migraine implicates a common susceptibility variant on 8q22.1. Nat Genet 42(10): 869-873.
Sintas C, Carreno O, Fernandez-Morales J, Cacheiro P, Sobrido MJ, et al. (2012) A replication study of a GWAS finding in migraine does not identify association in a Spanish case-control sample. Cephalalgia 32(14): 1076-1080.
Andreou AP, Goadsby PJ (2009) Therapeutic potential of novel glutamate receptor antagonists in migraine. Expert opinion on investigational drugs 18(6): 789-803.
Silva E, Quinones B, Freund N, Gonzalez LE, Hernandez L (2001) Extracellular glutamate, aspartate and arginine increase in the ventral posterolateral thalamic nucleus during nociceptive stimulation. Brain res 923(1-2): 45-49.
de Vries B, Frants RR, Ferrari MD, van den Maagdenberg AM (2009) Molecular genetics of migraine. Human genetics 126(1): 115-132.
Esserlind AL, Kirchmann M, Hauge AW, Le H, Olesen J (2012) A genotype-phenotype analysis of the 8q22.1 variant in migraine with aura. Eur J Neurol 19(4): 603-609.
Christensen AF, Le H, Kirchmann M, Olesen J (2012) Genotype-phenotype correlation in migraine without aura focusing on the rs1835740 variant on 8q22.1. J Headache Pain 13(1): 21-27.
Headache Classification Committee of the International Headache Society (IHS) (2013) The International Classification of Headache Disorders, 3rd edition (beta version). Cephalalgia 33(9): 629-808.
Aurora SK, Wilkinson F (2007) The brain is hyperexcitable in migraine. 27(12): 1442-1453.
Iacovelli E, Coppola G, Tinelli E, Pierelli F, Bianco F (2012) Neuroimaging in cluster headache and other trigeminal autonomic cephalalgias. J Headache Pain 13(1): 11-20.
Schurks M, Kurth T, de Jesus J, Jonjic M, Rosskopf D, et al. (2006) Cluster headache: clinical presentation, lifestyle features, and medical treatment. Headache 46(8): 1246-1254.
Rozen TD (2011) Cluster headache with aura. Curr Pain Headache Rep 15(2): 98-100.


text:
Intellectuals & Academics
Leo Tolstoy Biography
Leo Tolstoy was one of the most acclaimed Russian writers, who wrote the famous 'War and Peace' and 'Anna Karenina'. This biography gives detailed information about his childhood, life, works & timeline.
Famous: Quotes By Leo Tolstoy Novelists
Sun Sign: Virgo
Born in: Yasnaya Polyana
Spouse/Ex-: Sophia Tolstaya (m. 1862–1910)
father: Count Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy
mother: Countess Mariya Tolstaya (Volkonskaya)
children: Count Alexei Lvovich Tolstoy (1881-1886), Count Andrei Lvovich Tolstoy (1877-1916), Count Ilya Lvovich Tolstoy (1866-1933), Count Ivan Lvovich Tolstoy (1888-1895), Count Lev Lvovich Tolstoy (1869 - 1945), Count Michael Lvovich Tolstoy (1879-1944), Count Nikolai Lvovich Tolstoy (1874-1875), Count Peter Lvovich Tolstoy (1872-1873), Count Sergei Lvovich Tolstoy (1863 -1947), Countess Alexandra Lvovna Tolstaya (1884-1979), Countess Maria Lvovna Tolstaya (1871-1906), Countess Tatyana Lvovna Tolstaya (1864-1950), Countess Varvara Lvovna Tolstaya (1875-1875)
Died on: November 20, 1910
place of death: Astapovo, Russian Empire
Diseases & Disabilities: Depression
Personality: INFJ
education: Kazan Federal University
Boris Pasternak
Maxim Gorky
Alexander Herzen
A celebrated writer, a recognized moralist and a distinguished social reformer – Leo Tolstoy needs no introduction of sorts. He is regarded as the greatest Russian literary giant, who gave the world some of the most remarkable piece of writings. A master of realistic fiction, Tolstoy's novels are even today considered amongst the finest literary works. Through his works, Tolstoy not just became one of the greatest writers ever known, but a living symbol of someone in search of life's meaning. What is interesting to note is that Tolstoy's panache for writing enabled him to bring out masterpieces from everyday activities of people. He possessed a gift for describing his characters and their purpose with élan. Most of Tolstoy's stories are built around his fond and lasting memories of childhood. While Tolstoy had an emotionally toiling early life, much of his later life was built around moralistic and ascetic views. He experienced a spiritual awakening in the last three decades of his life, post which he became a moral thinker and social reformer. It was his doctrine of non-resistance to evil which inspired Mahatma Gandhi and influenced the latter into walking on the path of non-cooperation and non-violence. Not just Gandhi, Tolstoy had a great influence on Martin Luther King Jr as well. His works, 'War and Peace', 'Anna Karenina' and 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich', still rank among the world's top literary pieces.
http://thebluegrassspecial.com/archive/2010/november10/leo-tolstoy-one-hundred.php
https://www.history.com/news/5-things-you-may-not-know-about-leo-tolstoy
http://disinfo.com/2014/09/remembering-leo-tolstoy-birthday/
http://www.wisegeek.com/who-is-leo-tolstoy.htm#didyouknowout
https://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/2015/03/how-lev-tolstoy-became-leo-tolstoy/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Leo_Tolstoy_1897,_black_and_white,_37767u.jpg
http://historythings.com/the-life-of-leo-tolstoy/
Russian Men
Leo Tolstoy was born to Count Nikolay Tolstoy and Princess Volkonskaya in Yasnaya Polyana, in the Tula Province of Russia. Youngest son of the family, Tolstoy experienced a lot of personal grief and sorrow at an early age.
His mother passed away when he was just two. At the age of nine, he lost his father. All his siblings including him were under the care of an aunt, who too passed away, leaving the care of children to another aunt.
Young Tolstoy attained most of his primary education at home with the help of German and French tutors. In 1843, he enrolled at the University of Kazan for an Oriental language program. However, his poor academic performance forced him to transfer to an easier law program. The transfer did not help him much as he left the University of Kazan in 1847 without a degree.
After his failed attempt at attaining education, Tolstoy tried his hand at farming. Aiming to be the perfect farmer, this attempt too did not bring any favourable result. However, Tolstoy started writing a journal, a custom which became a lifelong habit.
Virgo Writers
Male Novelists
Russian Writers
Tryst with Writing
Tolstoy then joined the army as a junker, south of the Caucasus Mountains, at the suggestion of his brother Nikolay who was in the army too. It was during his years as a junker that Tolstoy unfolded a new dimension in his life as a writer.
His first written work was an autobiographical story in which he penned his fond childhood memories. Titled 'Childhood', he submitted the work to 'The Contemporary', which was the most popular journal of the time. The story was readily accepted and published. Little did Tolstoy know then that this was just a beginning of a prolific career!
After the success of 'Childhood', Tolstoy was inspired to start off with his next work, 'The Cossacks', which gave an insight into the day-to-day life at the Army outpost in the Caucasus. Meanwhile, Tolstoy was transferred to Sevastopol in Ukraine, where he fought the Crimean War.
While at war, Tolstoy kept his new-found fantasy alive and managed to pen another book, which was a sequel to his autobiographical 'Childhood'. The book was titled, 'Boyhood' and was published in 1854.
Tolstoy gave a vivid account of the war and its striking contradictions through his three part novel, 'Sevastopol Tales', which he released in the middle of the Crimean War. It was in this book that Tolstoy experimented with his writing technique. Tolstoy left the army in 1855.
Post war, Tolstoy returned to his homeland in Russia. Though he was much in demand at the St. Petersburg literary scene, he refused to join any particular intellectual school of thought.
Tolstoy moved to Paris in 1857. However, his revolutionary behaviour and gambling streak did not assist him much, as he lost all his money and was forced to return to Russia. Same year, he came up with his third book of the autobiographical trilogy, 'Youth'.
Tolstoy's trip to Paris shaped much of his political and literary transformation. While the political transformation was due to his witnessing a public execution in the aftermath of which he promised never to serve a government anywhere, his literary conversion was when he met Victor Hugo and read the latter's then newly finished work, 'Les Miserables'.
In 1862, Tolstoy completed his work 'The Cossacks', which he had started while he was at the army. Same time, he even produced the first of a 12 issue-instalment of the journal 'Yasnaya Polyana'.
Quotes: Family
Male Philosophers
Russian Novelists
Russian Philosophers
Russian Intellectuals & Academics
Rise to Stardom
Much of the early years of the 1860s were spent working on the masterpiece-to-be by Tolstoy. Much before the release of the novel, Tolstoy published a portion of the novel, under the title 'The Year 1805' in 1865. In 1868, he released three more chapters of the novel.
It was in 1869 that Tolstoy's novel 'War and Peace' was released, which catapulted him to great success. It was his big ticket to stardom and success. The book gave a historical account of the Napoleonic Wars, combined with its thoughtful development of realistic yet fictional characters. It also highlighted the fact that much of the quality and meaning of one's life is derived from his day-to-day activities.
The anticipation and expectations from the book were so high that following the release, the first edition of the book was sold out immediately. The book was widely recognized and received a grand reception. It was translated into many other languages post its publication.
Following the success of 'War and Peace', Tolstoy began to work on his next novel, titled 'Anna Karenina'. The book, much like other books of Tolstoy, had mix of both fictional and non-fictional elements. It was based on the then state of Russia's war with Turkey and included some fictionalized biographical events from Tolstoy's life.
The release of 'Anna Karenina' occurred in a frame of time, from 1873 to 1877, in the Russian Messenger. It was widely accepted and recognized both by the general public and critics. 'Anna Karenina' not only further established Tolstoy's reputation as a literary genius; it firmed his financial position as well.
Tolstoyâ
Despite the success of Anna Karenina, Tolstoy faced a spiritual crisis which made him depressed and gloomy to the extent of being suicidal. His outlook of life and what he thought morally upright to do was juxtaposed, which led him to be over-critical of himself.
It was during these trying times that Tolstoy rushed to Russian Orthodox Church to resolve his issues but was not satisfied from the same. Instead, he formed a negative view of the Christian churches which he found to be corrupt. To express his belief, he came up with a new publication, The Mediator.
From 1879 until 1880, Tolstoy released his next work, 'A Confessions'. The book was an autobiographical which explained Tolstoy's struggle with mid-life existential crisis of melancholia, philosophy and religion.
Following this, in 1880s and 1890s, Tolstoy came up with numerous works, including some fictional and some non-fictional. Some of these were 'The Census in Moscow', 'A Criticism of Dogmatic Theology', 'A Short Exposition of the Gospels', 'What I Believe' and 'What Then Must We Do?'.
Amongst his later works, 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich', written in 1886, was one of his most successful novellas. The story gives an account of its protagonist who realizes that he spends most of his life on trivial matters but the realization strikes him when he is struggling with his impending death.
Post the success of 'The Death of Ivan Ilych', Tolstoy came up with few more works some of which are 'The Power of Darkness', 'The Kreutzer Sonata', 'Father Sergius', 'Hadji Murad', 'The Young Czar', 'What Is Art?', 'The Forged Coupon', 'Diary of Alexander I', and 'The Law of Love and the Law of Violence'.
In the last phase of his life, Tolstoy established himself as a moral and religious leader. He had a large following of disciples who were devoted to him and his believes which they named as Tolstoyism.
Tolstoy, along with his daughter Aleksandra, spent much of his last days travelling. However, the pilgrimage trip was tiring for Tolstoy who could not continue further Astapovo, Russia.
Quotes: You, Never
In 1862, Tolstoy tied the nuptial knot with Sofya Andreyevna Bers, daughter of a court physician. She was 16 years his junior at the time of marriage.
The couple was blessed with thirteen children including, Count Sergei Lvovich Tolstoy, Countess Tatyana Lvovna Tolstaya, Count Ilya Lvovich Tolstoy, Count Lev Lvovich Tolstoy, Countess Maria Lvovna Tolstaya, Count Peter Lvovich Tolstoy, Count Nikolai Lvovich Tolstoy, Countess Varvara Lvovna Tolstaya, Count Andrei Lvovich Tolstoy, Count Michael Lvovich Tolstoy, Count Alexei Lvovich Tolstoy, Countess Alexandra Lvovna Tolstaya and Count Ivan Lvovich Tolstoy, out of which three died in infancy.
Though the couple experienced a happy and contented married life initially but towards the end, the blissfulness gave way to unhappiness as Tolstoy's beliefs became increasingly radical and in tangent with those of his wife.
Furthermore, Tolstoy rejected his inherited and earned wealth including the copyrights of his works due to his new beliefs. The decision was not accepted by his wife who strongly objected to the same and attained the copyrights and the royalties of Tolstoy's work from him.
Tolstoy breathed his last on November 20, 1910, at the home of the stationmaster of Astapovo, who rendered Tolstoy his house for rest. The prolific author died of pneumonia. He was buried at the family estate, Yasnaya Polyana, in Tula Province.
He is the author of books like 'War and Peace', 'Anna Karenina' and 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich', which even today are amongst the world's top literary works.
He wrote the famous quotation, which is also the first sentence of his novel 'Anna Karenina', "Happy families are all alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way".
His ideas of non-violent resistance to evil inspired India's pivotal 20th century political figure, Mahatma Gandhi so much so that Gandhi acclaimed him as the 'the greatest apostle of non-violence that the present age has produced'. Gandhi also named his second ashram in South Africa after him.
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The 125-year-old U.S. retailer, Sears Holdings has declared bankruptcy on Monday after years of struggling through financial operations and relying on CEO Eddie Lampert's own money. As a part of bankruptcy, the retailer will shutter its 142 stores by the end of the year while the liquidation sales is set begin shortly.
Lampert will step down from the post of CEO, but remain chairman, and Sears would be appointing Mohsin Meghji as chief restructuring officer. According to CNN news, Sears Holding, parent company of Sears and Kmart, is one among the prominent retailers in the United States to file bankruptcy in the era of e-commerce giant Amazon.
The company intends to stay in business, operate the profitable stores, and the websites of both Sears and Kmart, several news reported, citing a statement issued while filing in federal bankruptcy court in New York on Monday.
A decade ago, Lampert merged Kmart and Sears to create a stronger competitor, but over the years the company struggled to pay down the debt by shedding assets. Currently, Sears holds about 700 stores with 68,000 employees which have been down from 1000 stores and 89,000 workers reported in February. The stores have remained barren and not been stocked by the vendors while many of them have never been visited by younger generation of shoppers.
According to FactSet, Lampert has controlling ownership stake in the company and continues to invest in Sears Holdings even with the filing of bankruptcy. He holds 31% share (largest) in the company and owns about 19% of hedge fund ESL investments.
Sears Holdings, once a retail giant, fell out of customers' favor over the years as online stores and longtime rivals such as Home Depot and Walmart, beat the company in price and convenience. As reported in CNN Business, many problems of Sears were self-inflicted. Cutting costs, closing stores, reduced spending on advertisement, and failing to invest in the modernization of company's outlets caused the sales to decline and debt mounted, the news added. In a fight to stay alive, Sears sold most of its valuable assets including the large real estate footprint; it was losing about $125,000 a month, according to bankruptcy filing.


Dr Kristelle Hudry has a continuing position as Senior Lecturer in Developmental Psychology in the School of Psychology and Public Health at La Trobe University. Between 2016 and 2018, however, she is on secondment to the Victorian Autism Specific Early Learning and Care Center (ASELCC) - a specialist early intervention center for young children with autism, based at the La Trobe Community Children's Center - where she is Senior Research Fellow.
Following the completion of her PhD at the University of Queensland, Kristelle spent five years abroad in London, holding post-doctoral research positions at the UCL Institute of Child Health (2006-2008) and at the Institute of Education (2009-2010) within the newly-formed Center for Research in Autism and Education. In 2010, she returned to Australia to join the School of Psychology and Public Health at La Trobe University, and also became a member of the Olga Tennison Autism Research Center (OTARC). She maintains active collaboration with members of the UK-based Preschool Autism Communication Trial (PACT) consortium and the British Autism Study of Infant Siblings (BASIS) network, whilst forging new research partnerships with other Australian groups to investigate the early years of life for children with autism, developmental and/or language delays, including understanding response to intervention. Outside of her core research and teaching role, Kristelle also works actively to build capacity among professionals and researchers in the Asia Pacific region for best-practice diagnostic assessment, through intensive professional development workshops.


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Mainstage: Annie The Musical!jjacobyyeh2018-11-21T00:17:38+00:00
Dates: Oct 20, 2017 – Oct 29, 2017
Venue: Carlmont Performing Arts Center
Directed By: Sarah Ria Lodick
Musical Direction: Jared Cavazos
Choreography: Christina Alonso
Summary: Leapin' Lizards! The irrepressible comic strip heroine takes center stage in one of the world's best-loved musicals.
Community night (preview) performances October 19, 26; Opening night is October 20, 2017.
Based on the popular comic strip by Harold Gray, Annie has become a worldwide phenomenon and was the winner of seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical. The beloved book and score by Tony Award winners, Thomas Meehan, Charles Strouse and Martin Charnin, features some of the greatest musical theatre hits ever written, including "Tomorrow."
With equal measures of pluck and positivity, little orphan Annie charms everyone's hearts despite a next-to-nothing start in 1930s New York City. She is determined to find the parents who abandoned her years ago on the doorstep of a New York City Orphanage that is run by the cruel, embittered Miss Hannigan. With the help of the other girls in the Orphanage, Annie escapes to the wondrous world of NYC. In adventure after fun-filled adventure, Annie foils Miss Hannigan's evil machinations… and even befriends President Franklin Delano Roosevelt! She finds a new home and family in billionaire, Oliver Warbucks, his personal secretary, Grace Farrell, and a lovable mutt named Sandy.
Annie is the perfect family-friendly musical and an ideal show for a largely female cast.
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Left and Right: A Non-Euclidean Perspective
Posted on January 15, 1988 by quackenbush | Leave a comment
by Robert Anton Wilson
from Critique: A Journal of Conspiracies and Metaphysics #27, in 1988
reprinted in Email to the Universe
Our esteemed editor, Bob Banner, has invited me to contribute an article on whether my politics are "left" or "right," evidently because some flatlanders insist on classifying me as Leftist and others, equally Euclidean, argue that I am obviously some variety of Rightist.
Naturally, this debate intrigues me. The Poet prayed that some power would the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us; but every published writer has that dubious privilege. I have been called a "sexist" (by Arlene Meyers) and a "male feminist . . . a simpering pussy-whipped wimp" (by L.A. Rollins), "one of the major thinkers of the modern age" (by Barbara Marx Hubbard) and "stupid" (by Andrea Chaflin Antonoff), a "genius" (by SOUNDS, London) and "mentally deranged" (by Charles Platt), a "mystic" and "charlatan" (by the Bay Area Skeptics) and a "materialist" (by an anonymous gent in Seattle who also hit me with a pie); one of my books has even been called "the most scientific of all science-fiction novels" (by New Scientist physics editor John Gribbon) and "ranting and raving" (by Neal Wilgus). I am also frequently called a "Satanist" in some amusing, illiterate and usually anonymous crank letters from Protestant Fundamentalists.
I can only conclude that I am indeed like a visitor from non-Euclidean dimensions whose outlines are perplexing to the Euclidean inhabitants of various dogmatic Flatlands. Or else, Lichtenstein was right when he said a book "is a mirror. When a monkey looks in, no philosopher looks out." Of course, we are living in curved space (as noted by Einstein); that should warn us that Euclidean metaphors are always misleading. Science has also discovered that the Universe can count above two, which should make us leery of either/or choices. There are eight – count 'em, eight – theories or models in quantum mechanics, all of which use the same equations but have radically different philosophical meanings; physicists have accepted the multi-model approach (or "model agnosticism") for over 60 years now. In modern mathematics and logic, in addition to the two-valued (yes/no) logic of Aristotle and Boole, there are several three-valued logics (e.g. the yes, no and maybe Quantum Logic of von Neumann; the yes, no and po of psychologist Edward de Bono; etc.), at least one four-valued logic (the true, false, indeterminate and meaningless of Rapoport), and an infinite-valued logic (Korzybski). I myself have presented a multi-valued logic in my neuroscience seminars; the bare bones of this system will be found in my book, The New Inquisition. Two-valued Euclidean choices – left or right of an imaginary line – do not seem very "real" to me, in comparison to the versatility of modem science and mathematics.
Actually, it was once easy to classify me in simple Euclidean topology. To paraphrase a recent article by the brilliant Michael Hoy [Critique #19/ 20], I had a Correct Answer Machine installed in my brain when I was quite young. It was a right-wing Correct Answer Machine in general and Roman Catholic in particular. It was installed by nuns who were very good at creating such machines and implanting them in helpless children. By the time I got out of grammar school, in 1945,1 had the Correct Answer for everything, and it was the Correct Answer that you will nowadays still hear from, say, William Buckley, Jr.
When I moved on to Brooklyn Technical High School, I encountered many bright, likeable kids who were not Catholics and not at all right-wing in any respect. They naturally angered me at first. (That is the function of Correct Answer Machines: to make you have an adrenaline rush, instead of a new thought, when confronted with different opinions.) But these bright, non-Catholic kids – Protestants, Jews, agnostics, even atheists – fascinated me in some ways. The result was that I started reading all the authors the nuns had warned me against–especially Darwin, Tom Paine, Ingersoll, Mencken and Nietzsche.
I found myself floating in a void of incertitude, a sensation that was unfamiliar and therefore uncomfortable. I retreated back to robotism by electing to install a new Correct Answer Machine in my brain. This happened to be a Trotskyist Correct Answer Machine, provided by the International Socialist Youth Party. I picked this Machine, I think, because the alternative Correct Answer Machines then available were less "Papist" (authoritarian) and therefore less comfortable to my adolescent mind, still bent out of shape by the good nuns.
(Why was I immune to Stalinism – an equally Papist secular religion? I think the answer was my youth. The only Stalinists left in the U.S. by the late '40s were all middle-aged and "crystalized" as Gurdjieff would say. Those of us who were younger could clearly see that Stalinism was not much different from Hitlerism. The Trotskyist alternative allowed me to feel "radical" and modern, without becoming an idiot by denying the totalitarianism of the USSR, and it let me have a martyred redeemer again a I had in my Catholic childhood.)
After about a year, the Trotskyist Correct Answer Machine began to seem a nuisance. I started to suspect that the Trotskyists were some secular clone of the Vatican, whether they knew it or not, and that the dogma of Papal infallibility was no whit more absurd than the Trotskyist submission to the Central Committee. I decided that I had left one dogmatic Church and joined another. I even suspected that if Trotsky had managed to hold on to power, he might have been as dictatorial as Stalin.
Actually, what irritated me most about the Trots (and now seems most amusing) is that I already had some tendency toward individualism, or crankiness, or Heresy; I sometimes disputed the Party Line. This always resulted in my being denounced for "bourgeoisie tendencies." That was irritating then and amusing now because I was actually the only member of that Trot cell who did not come from a middle-class background. I came from a working class family and was the only genuine "proletarian" in the whole Marxist kaffeklatch.
At the age of 18, then, I returned to the void of incertitude. It began to seem almost comfortable there, and I began to rejoice in my agnosticism. It made me feel superior to the dogmatists of all types, and adolescents love to feel superior to everybody (especially their parents – or have you noticed that?). Around the same time as my Trotskyist period, I began to read the first Revisionist historians, whom I had been warned about by my high school social science teachers, in grave and awful tones, as if these men had killed a cat in the sacristy. My teachers were too Liberal to tell me I would go to Hell for reading such books (as the nuns had told me about Darwin, for instance), but they made it clear that the Revisionists were Evil, Awful, Unspeakable and probably some form of Pawns of the Devil.
I recognized the technique of thought control again, so I read all the Revisionists I could find. They convinced me that the New Deal Liberals had deliberately lied and manipulated the U.S. into World War II and were still lying about what they did after the war was over. (In fact, they are still lying about it today.)
The Revisionist who impressed me most was Harry Elmer Barnes, a classic Liberal who was a til of a Marxist (in methodology) – i.e., in his way of looking for economic factors behind political actions. I was amused and disgusted by the attempt of the New Deal gang to smear Professor Barnes as a right-wing reactionary. Barnes, in fact, was an advocate of progressive ideas in education, economics, politics, criminology, sociology and anthropology all his life but the New Deal Party Line had smeared him so thoroughly that some people have heard of him only as some cranky critic of Roosevelt and assume he was a Taft Republican or even a pro-Nazi. In fact Barnes supported most of the New Deal's domest policies, and dissented from Liberal Dogma only in opposing the spread of American adventurism and militarism all over the world.
Charles Beard, another great historian of classic Liberal principles, agreed that Roosevelt deliberately lied to us in World War II and was smeared in the same way as Professor Barnes. This did not encourage me to have Faith in any Party Line, even if it called itself the modern, liberal, enlightened Party Line.
(I have never been convinced by the Holocaust Revisionists, however, simply because I have met a great many Holocaust eyewitnesses, or alleged eyewitnesses, in the past 40 years. Most of these people I seemingly met by accident, in both Europe and America. A conspiracy that has that many liars planted in that many places–or has always paid such special attention to me that it placed these liars where I would meet them – is a conspiracy too omnipotent and omnipresent, and therefore too metaphysical, for me to take seriously. A conspiracy so Godlike in its powers could, in principle, deceive us about anything and everything, and I wonder why the Holocaust Revisionists still believe that World War II occurred, or that any of past history ever happened.)
I reached 20 and became an employee (i.e. a robot) in the McCarthy Era and the Eisenhower years; my agnosticism became more total and so did my suspicion that politics is a carnival or buncombe (as Mencken once said). It seemed obvious to me that, while Senator Joe was a liar of stellar magnitude, a lot of the Liberals were lying their heads off, too, in attempts to hide their previous fondness for Stalinism. That was something I, as a former Trotskyist, knew about by experience. In bon ton East Coast intellectual circles, before McCarthy, Stalinism was much more "permissible" than Trotskyism; it was almost chic. If I still regard the McCarthy witch-hunt of the 1950s as abominable, I also remember that some of the victims had engaged in similar witch-hunts against the Trotskyists in the early 1940s.
It is probably impossible for a social mammal to be totally "apolitical." Even if I was allergic to Correct Answer Machines, my mind kept searching for some general social ideas that I could take more or less seriously. For a while I dropped in and out of colleges and in and out of jobs and searched earnestly for some pragmatic mock-up of "truth" without a Correct Answer Machine attached. And yet both Left and Right continued to appear intellectually bankrupt to me.
Coming from a working class family, I could never have much sympathy for the kind of Conservatism you find in America in this century. (I do have a certain fondness for the classic Liberal Conservatives of the 18th Century, especially Edmund Burke and John Adams.) After I married and had children to support, the abominations of the Capitalist system and the wormlike ignominy of the employee role began to seem like prisons to me; I was a poor candidate for the Conservative cause. On the other hand, the FDR Liberals, I was convinced, had lied about World War II; they first smeared and then blacklisted the historians who told the truth; and they had jumped on the Cold War bandwagon with ghoulish glees.
I was anti-war by "temperament" (whatever that means – early imprints or conditioning? Genes? I don't know the exact cause of such a deep-seated and life-long bias). Marxist dogma seemed as stupid to me as Catholic dogma and as murderous as Hitlerism. I now thought of myself as an agnostic on principle. I was not going to join any more "churches" or submit to anybody's damned Party Line.
My agnosticism was also intensified by such influences as further reading of Nietzsche; existentialism; phenomenolgy; General Semantics; and operational logic. There have remained major influences on me and I want to say a few words about each.
Nietzsche's philosophy of the Superman did not turn me on in youth; coming from the proletarian, I could not see myself as one of his aristocratic Uebermenschen. On the other hand, his criticism of language, and of the metaphysical implications within languages, made a powerful impression on me; I still re-read one or two of his books every year, and get new semantic insights of them. He is, as he bragged, a hard nut to digest all at once.
Existentialism did not convert me back to Marxism (as it did to Sartre); it merely magnified my Nietzschean distrust of capitalized nouns and other abstractions, and strengthened my preferences for sensory-sensual ("existential") – modes of perception-conception. The phenomenologists—especially Husserl and the wild man of the bunch, Charles Fort – encouraged my tendency to suspect all general theories (religious, philosophical, even scientific) and to regard human sense experience as the primary datum.
My polemics against Materialist Fundamentalism in The New Inquisition and the Aristotelian mystique of "natural law" (shared by Thomists and some Libertarians) in my Natural Law; or, Don't Put a Rubber On Your Willy are both based on this existentialist-phenomenologist choice that I will "believe" in human experience, with all its muddle and uncertainty, more than I will ever "believe" in capitalized Abstractions and "general principles."
General Semantics, as formulated by Korzybski, increased this anti-metaphysical bias in me. Korzybski also stressed that the best sensory data (as revealed by instruments that refine the senses) indicates that we live in a non-Aristotelian, non-Euclidean and non-Newtonian continuum. I have practised for 30 years the exercises Korzybski recommends to break down Aristotelian-Euclidean-Newtonian ideas buried in our daily speech and retrain myself to perceive in ways compatible with what our instruments indicate about actuality.
Due to Korzybski's neurolinguistic training devices, it is now "natural" for me to think beyond either/or logic, to perceive the unity of observer/observed, to regard "objects" as human inventions abstracted from a holistic continuum. Many physicists think I have studied more physics than I actually have; I merely neurologically internalized the physics that I do know.
Operational logic (as formulated by the American physicist Percy Bridgman and recreated by the Danish physicist Neils Bohr as the Copenhagen Interpretation of science) was the approach to modern science that appealed to me in the context of the above working principles. The Bridgman-Bohr approach rejects as "meaningless" any statements that do not refer to concrete experiences of human beings. (Bridgman was influenced by Pragmatism, Bohr by Existentialism.) Operationalism also regards all proposed "laws" only as maps or models that are useful for a certain time. Thus, Operationalism is the one "philosophy of science" that warns us, like Nietzsche and Husserl, only to use models where they're useful and never to elevate them into Idols or dogmas.
Although I dislike labels, if I had to label my attitude I would accordingly settle for existentialist-phenomenologist-operationalist, as long as no one of those three terms is given more prominence than the other two.
In the late '50s, I began to read widely in economic "science" (or speculation) again, a subject that had bored the bejesus out of me since I overthrew the Marxist Machine in my brain ten years earlier. I became fascinated with a number of alternatives – or "excluded middles" – that transcend the hackneyed debate between monopoly Capitalism and totalitarian Socialism. My favorite among these alternatives was, and to some extent still is, the individualist-mutualist anarchism of Proudhon, Jossiah Warren, S.P. Andrews, Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker. I do not have a real Faith that this system would work out as well in practice as it sounds in theory, but as theory it still seems to me one of the best ideas I ever encountered.
This form of anarchism is called "individualist" because it regards the absolute liberty of the individual as a supreme goal to be attained; it is called "mutualist" because it believes such liberty can only be attained by a system of mutual consent, based on contracts that are to the advantage of all. In this Utopia, free competition and free cooperation are both encouraged; it is assumed persons and groups will decide to compete or to cooperate based on the concrete specifics of each case. (This appeals to my "existentialism" again, you see.)
Land monopolies are discouraged in individualist-mutualist anarchism by abolishing State laws granting ownership to those who neither occupy nor use the land; "ownership," it is predicted, will then only be contractually recognized where the "owner" actually occupies and used the land, but not where he charges "rent" to occupy or use it. The monopoly on currency, granted by the State, is also abolished, and any commune, group, syndicate, etc., can issue its own competing currency; it is claimed that this will drive interest down to approximately zero. With rent at zero and interest near zero, it is argued that the alleged goal of socialism (abolition of exploitation) will be achieved by free contract, without coercion or totalitarian Statism. That is, the individualist-mutualist model argues that the land and money monopolies are the "bugger factors" that prevent Free Enterprise from producing the marvelous results expected by Adam Smith. With land and money monopolies abolished, it is predicted that competition (where there is no existential motive for cooperation) and cooperation (where this is recognized as being to the advantage of all) will prevent other monopolies from arising.
Since monopolized police forces are notoriously graft-ridden and underlie the power of the state to bully and coerce, competing protection systems will be available in an individualist-mutualist system, You won't have to pay "taxes" to support a Protection Racket that is actually oppressing rather than protecting you. You will only pay dues, where you think it prudent, to protection agencies that actual perform a service you want and need. In general, every commune or syndicate will make its own rules of the game, but the mutualist-individualist tradition holds that, by experience, most communes will choose the systems that maximize liberty and minimize coercion.
Being wary of Correct Answer Machines, I also studied and have given much serious consideration to other "Utopian" socio-economic theories. I am still fond of the system of Henry George (in which no rent is allowed, but free enterprise is otherwise preserved); but I also like the ideas of Silvio Gesell (who would also abolish rent and all taxes but one–a demmurage tax on currency, which should theoretically abolish interest by a different gimmick than the competing currencies of the mutualists.)
I also see possible merit in the economics of C.H. Douglas, who invented the National Dividend–lately re-emergent, somewhat mutated, as Theobold's Guaranteed Annual Wage and/or Friedman's Negative Income Tax. And I am intrigued by the proposal of Pope Leo XIII that workers should own the majority of stock in their companies.
Most interesting of recent Utopias to me is that of Buckminster Fuller in which money is abolished, and computers manage the economy, programmed with a prime directive to advantage all withoutdisadvantaging any – the same goal sought by the mutualist system of basing society entirely on negotiated contract.
Since I don't have the Correct Answer, I don't know which of these systems would work best in practice. I would like to see them all tried in different places, just to see what would happen. (This multiple Utopia system was also suggested by Silvio Gesell, who was not convinced he had a Correct Answer Machine; that's another reason I like Gesell.) My own bias or hope or prejudice is that individualist-mutualist anarchism with some help from Bucky Fuller's computers would work best of all, but I still lack the Faith to proclaim that as dogma.
There is one principle (or prejudice) which makes anarchist and libertarian alternatives attractive to me where State Socialism is totally repugnant to my genes-or-imprints. I am committed to the maximization of the freedom of the individual and the minimization of coercion. I do not claim this goal is demanded by some ghostly or metaphysical "Natural Law," but merely that it is the goal that I, personally, have chosen – in the Existentialist sense of choice. (In more occult language, such a goal is my True Will.) Everything I write, in one way or another, is intended to undermine the metaphysical and linguistic systems which seem to justify some Authorities in limiting the freedom of the human mind or in initiating coercion against the non-coercive.
…and then came what Charles Slack calls "the madness of the sixties." I was an early, and enthusiastic, experimenter with LSD, peyote, magic mushrooms and any other compound that mutated consciousness. The result was that I became even more agnostic but less superior about it. What psychedelics taught me was that, just as theories and ideologies (maps and models) are human creations, not divine revelations, every perceptual grid or existential reality-tunnel is also a human creation–a work of art, consciously or unconsciously edited and organized by the individual brain.
I began serious study of other consciousness-altering systems, including techniques of yoga, Zen, Sufism and Cabala. I, alas, became a "mystic" of some sort, although still within the framework of existentialism-phenomenology-operationalism. But, then, Buddhism–the organized mystic movement I find least objectionable–is also existentialist, phenomenologist and operationalist….
Nietzsche's concept of the Superhuman has at last become meaningful for me, although not in the elitist form in which he left it. I now think evolution is continuing and even accelerating: the human brain is evolving to a state that seems Superhuman compared to our previous history of domesticated primatehood. My favorite science is neuroscience, and I am endlessly fascinated by every new tool or technique that breaks down robot circuits in our brains (Correct Answer Machines) and spurs creativity, higher intelligence, expanded consciousness, and, above all, broader compassion.
I see no reason to believe that only an elite is capable of this evolutionary leap forward, especially as the new tools and training techniques are becoming more simple. In neuroscience as in all technology, we seem to follow Bucky Fuller's rule that each breakthrough allows us to do more work with less effort and to create more wealth out of less raw matter.
Once I broke loose from the employee role and became self-supporting as a writer, the "horrors of capitalism" seemed less ghoulish to me, since I no longer had to face them every day. I became philosophical, like all persons free of acute suffering. I prefer to live in Europe rather than pay taxes to build more of Mr. Reagan's goddam nuclear missiles, but I enjoy visiting the U.S. regularly for intellectual stimulation….
I agree passionately with Maurice Nicoll (a physician who mastered both Jungian and Gurdjieffian systems) who wrote that the major purpose of "work on consciousness" is to "decrease the amount of violence in the world." The main difference between our world and Swift's is that while we have stopped killing each other over religious differences (outside the Near East and Northern Ireland), we have developed an insane passion for killing each other over ideological differences. I regard Organized Ideology with the same horror that Voltaire had for Organized Religion.
Concretely, I am indeed a Male Feminist, as L.A. Rollins claimed (although seeing myself often on TV, I deny that I simper; I don't even swish); like all libertarians, I oppose victimless crime laws, all drug control laws, and all forms of censorship (whether by outright reactionaries or Revolutionary Committees or Radical Feminists).
I passionately hate violence, but am not a Dogmatic Pacifist, since I don't have Joan Baez's Correct Answer Machine in my head. I know I would kill an armed aggressor, in a concrete crisis situation where that was the only defense of the specific lives of specific individuals I love, although I would never kill a person or employ even minor violence, or physical coercion, on behalf of capitalized Abstractions or Governments (who are all damned liars.) All these are matters of Existential Choice on my part, and not dogmas revealed to me by some god or some philosopher-priest of Natural Law.
I prefer the various Utopian systems I have mentioned to the Conservative position that humanity is incorrigible and I also think that if none of these Utopian scenarios are workable, some system will eventually arrive better than any we have ever known. I share the Jeffersonian ("Liberal"?) vision that the human mind can exceed all previous limits in a society where freedom of thought is the norm rather than a rare exception.
Does all of this make me a Leftist or a Rightist? I leave that for the Euclideans to decide. If I had to summarize my social credo in the briefist possible space, I would quote Alexander Pope's Essay On Man:
For forms of Government let fools contest;
Whate'er is best administered is best:
For modes of Faith let graceless zealots fight;
He can't be wrong whose life is in the right.
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Seasonal Archives | American Home Inspection Services, LLC.
Fertilizing strengthens the grass and helps it endure summer's heat and drought. A slow release fertilizer is best when applied in early Spring, and there are different fertilizers depending on whether the lawn is in the north or in the south. Keep feeding the lawn every 6-8 weeks until the fall. Some fertilizers come with additives to control pests and help the lawn retain water.
Though the grass may be growing quickly by summer, it still should not be mowed more than a third of the height of the grass blade for a healthy summer lawn. Tall blades are better able to send their roots deep into the soil to find water, and they also shade the soil beneath which keeps the ground cool and discourages weeds. Though some homeowners think it's a little unsightly, it's best to leave the grass clippings on your lawn after mowing. They provide valuable nutrients that contribute to a healthy summer lawn.
If grubs are a problem when it comes to the lawn, the earlier they are dealt with the better. One natural way is to add beneficial nematodes at about 50,000 per square foot of lawn. Milky spore powder also takes care of grubs, as does 5 percent rotenone solution, pyrethrin, and neem oil.
As for weeds, it's best to eradicate them while they're still young. Some weeds can be treated with an herbicide that doesn't hurt the grass, while others are so invasive that they need to be pulled up from the roots.
During the midsummer, it's a good idea to check how deeply the water penetrates the lawn after it's watered. The best time to water the lawn is early in the morning so the soil is able to absorb the water before it evaporates in the hot sun.
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It's a good idea to get into the habit of doing routine propane leak checks. About once a month, you should turn the propane on and pour soapy water over the connections. You'll notice bubbles if there is a hole in any of the lines. If no bubbles are present then there is no leak. If you notice bubbles you should replace the line or tighten the connections to the tank.
It is always a good idea to use a cover over the grill whenever it isn't being used. Exposure to the elements can cause rust and damage the grill. Rust can ruin a grill and cause it to become non-functional. Most grill manufacturers make specific covers for their grills. It is worth the investment to purchase one.
Keeping your grill clean is the best way to ensure it lasts for years. After each time you cook, it is important to use the wire brush to clean the gunk off the grates. Wiping down the exterior with soapy water is also a good idea to keep the grill properly maintained. Deep cleaning of the grill only needs to be done every couple of months as needed. Deep cleaning consists of actually removing the burner protectors and wiping debris from the burners. Finally, you'll want to get rid of all the gunk in the bottom of the grill. All of this can be done with soapy water and a sponge.
By using these tips to maintain your gas grill, you can ensure it lasts for years worth of cookouts. The key to a long-lasting gas grill is proper care and maintenance. By inspecting your grill for propane leaks, keeping it covered, and cleaning thoroughly, you can expect your grill to last for years.
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Many people believe spring cleaning is only about cleaning out closets, dusting off sports equipment, or digging a path through the garage. However, it's also a perfect time to check and see how your house has fared during the harsh winter. You may find damages that need repairing and the yard will need prepping for spring and summer plants. Here are 7 spring home maintenance tasks to help prepare your property for the warmer seasons.
Termites swarm out of their colonies beginning in March and lasting until May or June in order to find new territory for a colony. When you see a dark cloud of swarming insects, call a pest control company immediately.
If you feel comfortable, climb up a ladder to get a closer look at your roof. If you see anything that looks less than perfect, you may want to bring in a professional home inspector to inspector to evaluate the condition of the roof.
You'll be looking for curling shingles, missing shingles, the bottoms of metal pipes that are damaged, and generally anything that doesn't look right. Be sure to take photos in case you decide to file anything with your homeowner's insurance. If you need repairs or an entirely new roof, make sure the roofer you hire is licensed and insured.
While you are up there, notice the gutters. Are they all still attached to the roof? It's important to repair any areas that may have come loose, and give them a good cleaning. Otherwise, rain may find its way into your foundation causing mold and mildew, and it may also rot the wood of your eaves.
Pressure wash the siding on the house or hire a pressure washing service. This keeps mold and mildew from getting a foothold. Also check wooden stair rails on porches, the wood on the deck, and any wood on the property such as pergolas or wooden pathways through gardens.
Replace weak or loose parts. As part of spring home maintenance, have it treated by a professional. Wood around windows and doors should also be checked. Clean it, prime it, and paint it if it is looking ragged. Wood that isn't strong and primed is an open invitation to termites and bugs.
Asphalt and concrete suffer in winter, too. Cracks in driveways and sidewalks, paths through gardens, or the deck around a swimming pool can develop into major issues. Address them when they're just cracks instead of craters and you'll save a lot of money down the road.
Look at the foundation floor, walls, and concrete. If there are cracks, buckling, or anything that doesn't look right, call a professional immediately. If two quarters will fit into a crack, then your slab or foundation needs help.
When you press the button, the cool air comes on. That doesn't mean the system is working properly, though. Efficiency could rest on such a simple thing as a filter. Be sure to have a professional look the system over from the unit outdoors to the ducts indoors.
Trees hanging over the roof are trouble. Trim them back or remove them if they look like they could fall on your house. Check other vegetation. If it grows up against the house, it could loosen the mortar in bricks or damage your siding. Trim back everything and pull all vines off the side of the house.
American Home Inspection Services provides Southeastern Michigan with certified home inspection services. Contact us to book your appointment.
Winter is here, which means that if you have a fireplace, you're probably using it quite a bit. It's important that you follow all the necessary precautions to keep your fireplace safe when doing so. Your fireplace should be a source of comfort and warmth; you don't want things to get out of hand. It's a good idea to install a photoelectric smoke detector close to your fireplace to increase fireplace safety. You may also want to install an ionization model which is better at detecting large fires. It's also a smart move to put a CO detector near your fireplace, not just by the rooms you sleep in. Glass fireplace doors tend to have vents that can let carbon monoxide re-enter the room if there is negative pressure in your home.
If you are using your fireplace, it's important to know of any potential hazardous buildup inside. Look up into and around your fireplace, using a flashlight to light your way. You should call a chimney professional for help if you find cracks or gaps of any kind or a buildup of soot. If you see black stuff inside, that's called creosote and it's highly flammable. You won't want to try cleaning it out by yourself, however, so call in the pros.
It should be easy to open and close your damper. If there's resistance or a blockage, it's possible that some sort of animal or bird is nesting there. Be sure to bang on the damper before opening if you suspect this is the case, otherwise you could end up with an unwanted surprise guest in your living room. Have your chimney cleaned professionally if there are any signs that wildlife has taken up residence there.
If you need to go the route of hiring a pro to ensure your fireplace safety, look for someone with respectable credentials, such as certification from the Chimney Safety Institute of America. A certified chimney sweep should carry a top-of-the-line camera fitted with LED lighting that will allow him or her to get a good view of what's going on inside of your chimney, including places you wouldn't be able to view without this equipment.
Before you start up a major blaze, build a smaller fire with just a few logs made of seasoned hardwood. This will ensure that the first fire you build burns safely. Start by opening the damper and letting the flue warm up. You don't want to start a fire while there's still cold air in your chimney since the downdraft could draw smoke into your house. Before starting your fire, light a rolled-up newspaper in the fireplace's opening until the air starts to rise.
This step to keep your fireplace safe is of particular importance if you've got a flat-screen TV mounted above your fireplace. After your fire has begun to roar, put a candle on the mantel. If the candle starts to melt, then you'll want to find another place to put anything that could be damaged by heat, like your electronics. If the mantel or the walls grow too hot to touch or if smoke is present anywhere inside your house, including in your attic, then contact a chimney professional as soon as you can.
For more tips to keep your fireplace safe check out this article from HGTV.
American Home Inspection Services serves Oakland, Wayne, and Livingston counties in Southeast Michigan with home inspections and related services. Give us a call today at (248) 459-7007 or request your appointment online.


text:
Le  est le  à partir du , durant la  de la Chambre des représentants.

Il est dirigé par Fumio Kishida, président du Parti libéral-démocrate, successeur de Yoshihide Suga après sa démission annoncée un mois plus tôt. Il succède au premier gouvernement dirigé par Kishida qui a pris fin avec les élections législatives du . Lors de l'ouverture de la  le 10 novembre suivant, Fumio Kishida est réélu Premier ministre par 297 représentants sur 465 et 141 conseillers sur 245, et présente le jour même le gouvernement Kishida II.

Historique du mandat
Ce gouvernement est dirigé par le Premier ministre Fumio Kishida, déjà en place depuis le  et précédemment ministre des affaires étrangères. Il est constitué d'une coalition de centre droit entre le Parti libéral-démocrate (PLD) et le Kōmeitō. Ensemble, ils disposent de  sur 465 (297 en incluant deux non-inscrits qui ont voté pour Kishida), soit 63,9 % des sièges de la Chambre des représentants.

Il est formé à la suite des élections législatives qui avait été convoquées par Kishida dès son arrivée au pouvoir pour le .

Comme attendu, le scrutin est une victoire pour le Parti libéral-démocrate (PLD) du Premier ministre Fumio Kishida, malgré un recul de la formation, qui conserve néanmoins la majorité absolue, confortée par son allié, le Kōmeitō, qui progresse quant à lui légèrement. Certains échecs de personnalités du PLD, notamment du secrétaire général Akira Amari, poussent Kishida à réaliser certains ajustements au sein de la direction du mouvement comme dans son gouvernement : ainsi, il charge le  Toshimitsu Motegi de remplacer Amari et prend alors l'intérim du ministère des Affaires étrangères laissé vacant par Motegi.

Lors de l'ouverture de la  de la Chambre des représentants du Japon le , Fumio Kishida est réélu Premier ministre et présente son nouveau cabinet qui ne compte qu'un seul nouveau venu, Yoshimasa Hayashi, aux Affaires étrangères.

Le 10 août 2022, le cabinet a été remanié. 7 députés ayant des liens avec l'Église de l'Unification ont été démis de leurs fonctions à la suite de l'assassinat de l'ancien Premier ministre Shinzō Abe et de la surveillance croissante des médias sur les liens étroits des responsables du PLD avec l'Église. Le 20 août, il a été signalé que 23 responsables, dont 8 députés du nouveau cabinet remanié, avaient des liens existants avec l'Église de l'Unification.

Composition

Initiale (10 novembre 2021)
 Les nouveaux ministres sont indiqués en gras, ceux ayant changé d'attributions en italique.

Remaniement du
 Les nouveaux ministres sont indiqués en gras, ceux ayant changé d'attributions en italique.

Notes et références

Voir aussi

Articles connexes

 Politique au Japon

Kishida Fumio
Japon

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


When Katy and I first met we went through our favourite movies together, as new couples tend to do. There was plenty of crossover.
I had, even though I couldn't remember much about it.
I had not, so we put it on.
For those who haven't seen it, Baraka is a strange, beautiful story about, well, everything. It's like an enormously long BBC documentary, minus the cuddly narration – minus all narration, actually. Occasionally troubling, always interesting, it's well worth tracking down, especially if, like us, you enjoy travel.
It's almost 20 years old now, but the messages and the imagery remain powerful. When we watched it that night in Dubai, we took hurried notes about things we'd like to track down if and when we finally went travelling together. We've done a pretty good job at ticking off our list, but one thing had been eluding us. Specifically, the little guy that pops up just two minutes into the movie.
I say "had been eluding us" because – with plenty of help from the Travel Volunteer Team – we managed to track down the famous snow monkeys (Japanese macaques) in northern Nagano. Since Baraka came out in 1992, these guys have gone on to become pretty famous, regularly appearing in the likes of National Geographic and all kinds of advertising campaigns.
There are many reasons why they're so famous, but undoubtedly it's their look of relaxation as they hide from the elements in warm onsen water that make them such a draw. This isn't as Baraka somehow implies (at least to me) an aeon-old practise that's gone on since the dawn of time. Humans did not follow their ancestors into the famous volcanic water – in fact the opposite is true, and it only started happening in the 1960s. From the trees the monkeys watched people relaxing, liked the look of the hot water and decided to change their normal behaviour to have a dip.
Eventually, the humans decided that they didn't like sharing their onsen with other primates (we're not sure the snow monkeys would have been overjoyed about it either) so a separate macaque-only spa was built further into the valley. The sexes can mix in the animal world, but the naked law is as strict as ever.
After charging along 2km of forest path, beneath more of those stunning colours, we bypassed the human option and immediately sought out our furry friends. They weren't hard to find, in and around a little steaming bath in a dramatic valley with pine trees all around. We weren't disappointed – at least not with the monkeys. As always they were a little frightening, a little too human, and a lot of fun.
And, despite the warm autumn air, some of them were in the hot spring.
But this isn't a zoo. The macaques are free to leave at any time – and Katy and I are darting around the country accepting free food and free spas whenever we can. Is this much different?
Whatever your thoughts, now the monkeys hang around the onsen all year, waiting for a hand-out and fighting viciously when it comes. They're modifying their behaviour.
Once again, they're being shown what to do.
This is really cool! We just recently watched Baraka and thoroughly enjoyed it. I didn't realise that the monkeys were in Japan.
We'd love to observe these little fellas when we visit Japan in April…but you said that you managed to find them "with plenty of help from the Travel Volunteer Team" – should I take it that they wouldn't be very easy for us to find without similar special connections?
Baraka! – I had forgotten about that film. I saw that at Glastonbury many years ago and remember being amazed by the images and taiko drumming. I will have to watch that one again.
BY the way Missmass, the monkeys are in a place called Yudanaka which can be reached by bullet train from Tokyo to Nagano and local train to the town. There is a 10 minute walk or so in the forests to find the monkeys, but it is not too hard. You will probably miss the snow in April and so there won't be as many monkeys about, but you can still catch a couple.
Of course, we can help you find them and do the rest of your trip! How ever you get there though, have an awesome time in this amazing country!
you can also watch them live on cam here!
It was just a bit tricky for us to get to from our starting point in Gunma, using only public transport. I'm sure it's not that hard in practise – especially if you're coming from the Nagano side.
Awesome! Thanks everyone! We're still compiling our itinerary at the moment, but we'll definitely put this on our epic must-see list!


text:
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The Leeds Art Collections Fund or LACF has been supporting the visual arts in Leeds since 1912. Founded by Frank Rutter, who was Director of the Leeds City Art Gallery at the time, with the support of the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leeds, Michael Sadler, the LACF was established to encourage the visual arts in Leeds and, most importantly, to provide a source of funding that was independent of the municipality for the purchase of contemporary and historic works of art and design for the people of Leeds.
Today, most of the LACF's work is channeled through the Leeds City Art Galleries, and it operates as one of Britain's oldest supporting art gallery 'friends' organisations. Through subscriptions and fund-raising events the LACF has helped to enrich the visual life of Leeds by making purchases of art works for display in Leeds at the Leeds City Art Gallery, Temple Newsam House and Lotherton Hall. The works bought by the LACF for display in Leeds are too numerous to mention in full, but they include works by such well-known names as Thomas Chippendale, J.M.W. Turner, John Sell Cotman, John Atkinson Grimshaw, Stass Paraskos, Francis Bacon, Paula Rego, Bridget Riley, Henry Moore and Auguste Rodin.
The LACF has also supported various educational and publishing activities associated with the visual arts in Leeds, and continues to do so, not only at the Leeds City Art Galleries, but other visual art centres in Leeds, including the University of Leeds Art Gallery and East Street Arts (Vitrine project).