text:
Commentary: Clowney trade is crowning achievement in masterful offseason by Seahawks GM
By Aaron Levine
Clowney trade is crowning achievement in masterful offseason by Seahawks GM
This week, there were a couple stories involving Seahawks general manager John Schneider:
First, that John Schneider finally met John Schneider the actor from The Dukes of Hazzard. How that didn't move the needle more, I'll never know.
And second, only the biggest, most lopsided and incredible trade I can ever remember: The Seahawks acquisition of Jadeveon Clowney.
To recap, Clowney, one of the most dominant defensive linemen in the league who has made the Pro Bowl three straight years, is coming to Seattle on the most favorable terms. Did the Seahawks have to give up a first round pick? No. A second round pick? No. A Pro Bowl caliber player? No. An offensive lineman? No. A running back? No.
In return for Clowney, the Seahawks gave Houston a third-round pick, Barkevious Mingo and Jacob Martin. Mingo was arguably on the chopping block anyway, and the Hawks still have a third-round pick next year because they had two of them before the trade.
To make the trade even sweeter, Houston is reportedly paying $7 million of Clowney's $15.9 million salary this season. If you add that to the money the Seahawks save from Mingo and Martin, the Hawks are only paying about $4 million dollars more than they were before this deal.
And because players on a franchise tag are not allowed to negotiate a long-term contract until after the season is over, the Hawks are getting a motivated player in what is essentially a contract year. If it doesn't work out this season and Clowney goes elsewhere, they'll likely get a third-round compensatory pick in the 2021 Draft in return for his departure.
To be clear, this was a total steal. This was the trade you try to make in your Fantasy Football league that no one EVER accepts! This was a trade that you couldn't even pull off in the new Madden 20 video game, according to this sports gaming analyst, who tried making the same exact trade, and was rejected by the Texans organization.
This was also the crowning piece of one of the most masterful off-seasons I've ever witnessed by a general manager in Seattle.
The Seahawks had just four draft picks in March and somehow turned them into 11, including three picks in the first two rounds. Nine of those picks made the final roster with the other two still full of potential (Haynes and Christmas are on the PUP list). They re-signed Russell Wilson and Bobby Wagner to longterm extensions and brought back K.J. Wright. They signed Ziggy Ansah in free agency and now acquire Clowney.
What significant assets did they sacrifice in return? Frank Clark and a third-round pick. Oh, and they still have significant draft stock and salary cap space next season as well.
Listen, I don't know how the year will play out. But a week before the start of the regular season, Schneider's moves have once again made the Seahawks a legitimate contender. They've made them a force without sacrificing their future. And his patience and steady hand throughout this process has now helped them strike gold with Clowney.
Clowney to Seattle was an eye-opener. But the terms of the deal are the friendliest I've ever seen.
This John Schneider might not be one of the Dukes of Hazzard, but in the long run, he'll certainly be the Seahawks GM who mattered.
Washington Senator introduces bill to allow for local income tax if other taxes are cut
'What are we supposed to do': Woman watches thief steal her car


LONDON, (Reuters) – Thirty one athletes from six sports could be banned from this year's Rio Olympics after failing dope tests when 454 samples were reexamined from the 2008 Beijing Games, the International Olympic Committee said yesterday.
The IOC also said it would start re-testing Sochi 2014 winter Games samples after allegations of tarnished samples were made last week by Russia's former top anti-doping scientist. Some 250 samples from the London Games will also be reexamined. In an effort to crack down on cheats during the Olympics, the IOC said this was targeted re-testing on athletes likely to be at the Rio Games starting on Aug. 5, and those found to have tested positive would not compete.
An IOC official told Reuters no names would be made public at this stage until athletes had been informed and a second sample, or B-sample, tested as well.
The re-tests, a regular procedure by the IOC as it looks to use newer methods or look for new substances, were carried out in conjunction with the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and international federations.
The IOC said it had also called on WADA to launch a "fully fledged investigation" into allegations that testing during the Sochi 2014 winter Olympics by the on-site accredited laboratory had been subverted.
The former head of Russia's anti-doping agency Grigory Rodchenkov said last week that the Sochi lab had tampered with samples. Russia is at the heart of the biggest drugs scandal in years, with the country's track and field athletes currently suspended and the Rio Games hopes in doubt, and their drugs testing lab and anti-doping agency undergoing complete overhaul. "All these measures are a powerful strike against the cheats we do not allow to win. They show once again that dopers have no place to hide," said IOC President Thomas Bach.
Apart from tarnishing any competition, doping has also damaged the Olympics' reputation, with the IOC regularly stripping athletes of their medals, sometimes years after they competed, due to positive drugs tests.
"By stopping so many doped athletes from participating in Rio we are showing once more our determination to protect the integrity of the Olympic competitions, including the Rio anti-doping laboratory, so that the Olympic magic can unfold in Rio de Janeiro," Bach said.
The Rio Games run from Aug. 5-21.


text:
package org.apache.camel.dsl.jbang.core.generator;

public class PomDependency {
    private String groupId;
    private String artifactId;
    private String version;

    public PomDependency(String artifactId) {
        this.artifactId = artifactId;
        this.groupId = "org.apache.camel.quarkus";
    }

    public PomDependency(String groupId, String artifactId) {
        this.groupId = groupId;
        this.artifactId = artifactId;
    }

    public PomDependency(String groupId, String artifactId, String version) {
        this.groupId = groupId;
        this.artifactId = artifactId;
        this.version = version;
    }

    public static PomDependency of(String dependency) {
        String[] gav = dependency.split(":");
        if (gav.length == 3) {
            return new PomDependency(gav[0], gav[1], gav[2]);
        } else if (gav.length == 2) {
            return new PomDependency(gav[0], gav[1]);
        } else {
            return new PomDependency(dependency);
        }
    }

    public String getVersion() {
        return version;
    }

    public void setVersion(String version) {
        this.version = version;
    }

    public String getGroupId() {
        return groupId;
    }

    public void setGroupId(String groupId) {
        this.groupId = groupId;
    }

    public String getArtifactId() {
        return artifactId;
    }

    public void setArtifactId(String artifactId) {
        this.artifactId = artifactId;
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Årets sörmlänning, titel som tilldelas en sörmlänning varje år sedan 2007 (2006 års pris). Priset röstats fram av SR Sörmlands lyssnare. Priset för år 2006 delades ut av landshövding Bo Könberg.

Vinnare och nominerade
2007 - Vinnare: Tomas Svensson
Övriga nominerade: Peter Öberg, Jan Persson, Vivianne Jansson, Sebastian Larsson, Inger Klingensjö, Yvonne Ryding, Mats Bergmans.
2006 - Vinnare: Peter Fröjdfeldt
Övriga nominerade: Göran Persson, Catti Edfeldt, Fredrik Lindström, Per Westerberg, Mats Bergmans.

Noter

Södermanland

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Like the Bat Signal, this distant tower crane led me to 1840 North Farwell Avenue on Milwaukee's East Side.
If there are more than the five tower cranes I spotted in July around downtown Milwaukee (two at Marquette University, one at the Wisconsin Entertainment and Sports Center, one at 7Seventy7, and this one at 1840 North Farwell Avenue) blame it on my feet, not my heart. I walked until I could spot no more.
I saved the most mysterious for last. According to this article from Urban Milwaukee, this project is called "Farwell Tower." That's believable; it's on Farwell Avenue at Kane Place on the city's east side. The tower crane gives a solid clue as to the general contractor; Stevens Construction. As for the developer and architect (I always try to include those three entities, CG, developer, and design architect in each story) I'm relying on the aforementioned Urban Milwaukee article, and you should too. Check that link not just for the team involved, but also for the building specs. They've also got some great photos, taken far more recently than my July 1st visit.
Find another great photo gallery from Milwaukee Independent, taken July 6 during the first big concrete pour, here.
This entry was posted in 10-19 Stories, Milwaukee, New Construction and tagged 1840 North Farwell Avenue, Farwell Tower, Milwaukee, Milwaukee Independent, Stevens Construction, Urban Milwaukee by danieldschell. Bookmark the permalink.


The FBI had direct contact with Osama bin Laden in 1993 and learned that he was trying to finance terrorist attacks inside the U.S., according to the Washington Times.
The information about the al Qaeda leader quietly emerged from an employment dispute case involving an FBI agent in 2010 and escaped the attention of the media.
"It was the only source I know in the bureau where we had a source right in al Qaeda, directly involved," Edward J. Curran, a former top official in the FBI's Los Angeles office, told the court in a case by former agent Bassem Youssef.
Members of the Sept. 11 commission and experts in terrorism expressed surprise when told of the discovery.
"I think it raises a lot of questions about why that information didn't become public and why the 9/11 Commission or the congressional intelligence committees weren't told about it," said former Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Michigan, who chaired the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence from 2004 through 2007 when lawmakers handled the fallout from the 9/11 Commission's official report.
Posted: 2/26/14 at 11:25 AM under News Story.


Many of us could take a snapshot of that scene and produce nothing but confusion.
This is an excellent demonstration of the difference between confusion and complexity.
Good shot, excellent color balance.
Eric's comment is exactly what crossed my mind after seeing your photo. Beauty out of chaos masterfully done.
Great light, structure and colour.
+1 to the above comments. Well titled.
Chaos, but the unformly rectangular shapes unify it.
There is a new term, "simplexity." As per Wikipedia, "Simplexity is an emerging theory that proposes a possible complementary relationship between complexity and simplicity." Or "everything that seems simple is actually complex--and vice versa." There's method in that madness, as per Shakespeare.
Fascination stuff. Not sure I captured it fully, but that was the idea.
You are heading in my area of interest, I predict we will meet soon in simplicity.


At this presentation and workshop our speaker will focus on you building your personal brand & creating information products to use as lead generators, and build your reputation and visibility.
Our speaker is using a combination of proprietary models in business, neurolinguistics, executive leadership tools, tools how to build a positive relationship with customers in Japan and globally. In addition, also providing tools and a unique approach to how to build a personal brand in the marketplace. The overall mission is share and enriches unexpected support results and sustainable change in participants' life and organizations. Our speaker ensures targeted presentations and events that focus on creating behavioral shifts while having fun.
If you're developing your business, project or career and you want to be around for the long haul, a strong personal brand is an invaluable investment and a critical component to your learning and growth. If you feel connected to it, people will follow your brand from project to project. When launching new projects, your personal brand has the potential to guarantee you never have to start from scratch again.
You will learn how to get the clarity about your USP, how you can communicate your story and message to your target audience, how to break through the old beliefs of your value on the marketplace and create an identity consistent with the wealth you want to create! Find your gift, serve your target audience better than your competitors and leave a legacy.
Our aim is for you to have the experience of working and developing yourself around achieving more success by leveraging your personal brand.
Originally from Croatia, Edvard Vondra has been living in Japan for a total of five years. His Personal Branding Program, helps entrepreneurs and executives in Japan to establish and accelerate their service-based business and leadership skills. In his professional career, Edvard has helped over 2,000 professionals, executives, consultants, and entrepreneurs around the world in their businesses through workshops, seminars, and one-on-one sessions. He has founded three different businesses in Croatia and in Japan.
In Japan, he completed his MBA in Entrepreneurial Leadership at Globis University, the top business school in Japan. After Globis he joined Tech Startup in Tokyo and helped with branding and inbound marketing strategy to launch a new mobile application. Since September 2016, he is Advertising Sales Manager for Custom Media KK, a bilingual content creation agency and publisher of the ACCJ, BCCJ and CCCJ publications, as well as the advertising agency for Tokyo American Club. He launched Personal Branding Program in November 2017.
No Food or Drinks at the event.
!! If you have registered for this event and for unforeseen circumstances are unable to attend, then 72 hours prior notice is required else event charges will apply to cover booking costs.


text:
Wofford classes integrate disciplines 'Learning communities'
TONY TAYLOR
Wofford College is preparing to launch 30 new courses and programs this fall that will focus on integrative learning between academic disciplines.
Dan Maultsby, senior vice president and dean of the college, said the courses are designed to give students different perspectives on problem solving. "Students need to know science, business and ethics, and how to interpret them all," Maultsby said. "Students need to know how to think in those terms." Many of the new courses are dubbed "learning communities," a concept patterned after a biology course taught by biology professor Ellen Goldey and English professor John Lane. The course titled "The Nature and Culture of Water" was designed to satisfy the school's humanities requirement and half of the school's science requirement for non-science majors. "The main objective was that students integrate their knowledge across disciplines," Goldey said. The college is planning to offer four similar courses between humanities and science majors this fall. The courses will be taught jointly by a professor from each discipline. An additional 26 courses will be offered as special topics. A class pairing a humanities, Spanish language and sociology class is planned. The class will do field work with the Hispanic community. Maultsby said he is optimistic some of the courses will be offered again. "Hopefully we can develop it into a third component to our curriculum," he said. Faculty members are holding workshops this week to prepare for the curriculum revision. The workshops cover a variety of topics, including building learning communities, critical thinking and general education. Professors from colleges and universities across the country have served as instructors at the seminars.
Tony Taylor can be reached at 582-4511, Ext. 7219, or tony.taylor@shj.com.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Q: React Material-UI Card Image Component Having an issue displaying images. Looking at the documentation and I don't know what I am missing.
I can't get the image component to show.
This is all from WhatsNew.js, I am calling an IG logo
import { ReactComponent as Instagram2 } from '../images/instagram2.svg'

Below I am also calling for a media file that is in the same folder but I get a non working image.
<CardMedia
  image='../images/blog-post-01.png'
  style={{height: 140}} />
<CardContent>

Here is my live link and this is the repo GitHub

A: I think what you are doing now is right. Your image address/url is wrong. I tried this with a url of an image on the internet and it works.
<Card>
  <CardMedia
    image="https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1494548162494-384bba4ab999?ixlib=rb-1.2.1&w=1000&q=80"
    style={{ height: 140 }}
  />
</Card>

Try this in the URL. It might work.
image="/static/images/blog-post-01.png"

OR import the image
import blog from '../images/blog-post-01.png';

<CardMedia
        image={blog}
        style={{ height: 140 }}
      />

A: the image to show must be given as object like this :
<CardMedia
  image={Instagram2 }
  style={{height: 140}} />
<CardContent>

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


« DNS » (Domain Name System) is the phone book for the Internet. It converts human readable names like "neutrino.biz" to a phone number so computers can call each other. Well, actually Internet uses IP Addresses, not phone numbers.
7/1/18: transferred from sns1.nsgodo.com. and sns2.nsgodo.com. to ns3.uhost.co.kr. and ns4.uhost.co.kr.
7/12/17: transferred from sns1.nsgodo.com. and sns2.nsgodo.com. to sns1.nsgodo.com. and sns2.nsgodo.com.


This one went right to the top of my want list even before reading the review.
What are we, where did we come from, and where are we going?
For millennia, humans have been pondering these great questions and articulating responses in works of art, philosophical treatises and religious beliefs. We've fought wars over whose solution is most correct, persecuted promoters of heresy and celebrated sublime expressions of possible answers by painters, poets and preachers. No wonder; at stake is nothing less than the definition of the human condition.
In his new book, "The Social Conquest of Earth," renowned scientist Edward O. Wilson sets out to answer these questions once and for all. Scientific advances of the past two decades, he argues, make it possible to solve the first two, providing the basis for a rethinking of the third. The result is an ambitious and thoroughly engaging work that's certain to generate controversy within the walls of academia and without.
Wilson, 82, is a giant of science: the world's leading expert on ants, the first researcher to recognize the existence of pheromones, the father of sociobiology, the author and co-author of two Pulitzer Prize-winning books ("On Human Nature" and "The Ants") and a recipient of the Royal Swedish Academy's Crafoord Prize, given in fields not covered by the Nobel Prize.
A professor emeritus at Harvard, he has produced a body of work that has withstood scientific critics, including those who rejected his assertion that both animal and human social behavior is based on biological and evolutionary principles. (Activists dumped a pitcher of ice water on him during a 1978 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.) Others rejected his prediction in "The Diversity of Life" (1992) that more than a quarter of all species on Earth would vanish by mid-century, but subsequent research has supported the notion that we are in the midst of the Earth's sixth great extinction.
To build his latest argument, Wilson first sets about exploding an important theory of evolutionary biology that he once championed. The key to understanding the human condition is to understand how our species developed advanced social lives and the altruistic behaviors they require. If evolution is driven by the survival of the fittest — individual selection — how does one explain the self-sacrifice seen among the workers of an ant colony or a bee hive, or in the person who runs into a burning house to save a stranger? The current explanation — kin selection, or "inclusive fitness" — is that altruism evolved among closely related individuals as a way to ensure the survival of the shared portions of their genetic heritage.
But Wilson describes in considerable detail how the insect studies on which this theory was built have since been shown to be incorrect. (Many scientists in the field disagree, and dozens have denounced him in letters to the scholarly journals in which he first aired his critique.) Instead, Wilson argues that altruism is a result not of individual or kin selection, but of group selection.
Charles Darwin himself proposed that a tribe that had many members willing to contribute to or sacrifice themselves for the common good "would be victorious over most other tribes." Drawing on recent evidence from social psychology, archaeology and evolutionary biology, Wilson builds a compelling and multi-faceted case that Darwin was right. Species that have developed advanced social lives, or eusociality — certain bees, ants, termites and ourselves — have been staggeringly successful and extremely rare.
Evolutionary competition among ants is best understood not at the individual level but at the level of the colony, a superorganism acting as an extension of the queen's genome, waging a battle of fitness against other hives. For humans, Wilson argues, the situation is more complex. We've become genetically hard-wired to be tribal, to join groups "and, having joined, consider them superior to competing groups." Our groups — tribes, societies, nations — compete with one another for dominance, but as individuals, we also compete for survival and reproduction within groups via individual selection. Selfish individuals might beat altruistic ones, but groups of altruists beat groups of selfish people.The human condition, Wilson concludes, is largely a product of the tension between the two impulses.
Heady stuff, to be sure, and Wilson is just getting started. He builds a case for religion as a byproduct of human evolution, a mechanism for defining and uniting the tribe. As such, it has become "an unseen trap unavoidable during the biological history of our species," facilitating submission not to God but "to no more than a tribe united by a creation myth." Our species, Wilson says, deserves better, and he makes a case that morality and honor are also part of our peculiar evolutionary heritage and, thus, can stand on their own.
Provocative, eloquent and unflinchingly forthright, Wilson remains true to form, producing a book that's anything but dull and bound to receive plenty of attention from supporters and critics alike.
Well, I guess that's better than the reverse.
Thanks for the heads up. I've lost the habit of reading the book reviews in the major papers. Must get back into it forthwith.
It was the study of ants that led Wilson to his first powerfully controversial conclusion, that altruistic behavior has a genetic basis not only in those tiny mindless creatures but also arguably in more complex life forms, such as ourselves. That's why he was vilified (and doused) in the '70s. However, this view has gained a lot of acceptance since then, for example in Steven Pinker's "How the Mind Works." I'm now inclined to believe it's right.
All this in 300 well-written pages. But this is no crackpot theory-mongering; it's closely argued from phenomena we've all observed as well as from scientific research and experiments. I have indeed returned to the book, and it's why I have such high expectations of "The Social Conquest of Earth." I can also recommend "Consilience" personally, and I do.
the idea of group selection is so obvious given any understanding of history, its a wonder that anyone give it a second thought. Modern people are used to thinking of themselves as individuals, but for all of human history up until a couple of hundred years ago in the West, an individual could only survive as part of a larger group. As group dynamics in most all traditional societies control reproduction, whatever individual evolutionary drive people have is subsumed by the group or tribe. Someone who does not have status in the group does not get to reproduce.
Does the book mention Strong Reciprocity at all? Herb Gintis at the Santa Fe institute has developed a whole game theoretical model based around this concept and it does a very good job of explaining the social aspects of many things, notably religions.
Which book? If you're asking about "The Social Conquest of Earth," none of us has read it (it won't be published until Tuesday) and the review you've seen here is all we know about its contents. But on past performance, its argument will not be self-evident or banal. Gintis is an important writer but his field is economics, essentially a social science, with a strong background in mathematics; you mention a "game theoretical model" which I suppose is economic and statistical - I haven't read about it and hadn't heard of "strong reciprocity" before you mentioned it. Wilson's field is biology, a natural science, with natural selection as his central theme. They don't travel the same road.
If you're asking about "Consilience," Wilson acknowledges the help of several economists (and many others) who read portions of the manuscript but Gintis is not among them. Nor does his name appear in the index, nor does the term "strong reciprocity."
I read Wilson's book with great enjoyment and, I hope, edification. That may be only about the third time I've read a book on the basis of a CMG recommendation, so thank you, John F.
Now let me recommend another book, not a new one (2009), but very much in the same vein. It is The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution by Denis Dutton. I just finished it and it is a very fitting complement to Wilson.
Glad you enjoyed it! So did I. And thanks for the recommendation - sounds like a book I'd like to read.
I was put onto this by a former student who is now Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Hood College in Maryland.
Math can help you in almost any career. There's no reason to fear it.
Scientist Edward O. Wilson speaks at the World Science Festival - On The Shoulders Of Giants: A Special Address by E.O. Wilson.
E.O. Wilson is an eminent Harvard biologist and best-selling author. I salute him for his accomplishments. But he couldn't be more wrong in his recent piece in the Wall Street Journal (adapted from his new book Letters to a Young Scientist), in which he tells aspiring scientists that they don't need mathematics to thrive. He starts out by saying: "Many of the most successful scientists in the world today are mathematically no more than semiliterate … I speak as an authority on this subject because I myself am an extreme case." This would have been fine if he had followed with: "But you, young scientists, don't have to be like me, so let's see if I can help you overcome your fear of math." Alas, the octogenarian authority on social insects takes the opposite tack. Turns out he actually believes not only that the fear is justified, but that most scientists don't need math. "I got by, and so can you" is his attitude. Sadly, it's clear from the article that the reason Wilson makes these errors is that, based on his own limited experience, he does not understand what mathematics is and how it is used in science.
If mathematics were fine art, then Wilson's view of it would be that it's all about painting a fence in your backyard. Why learn how to do it yourself when you can hire someone to do it for you? But fine art isn't a painted fence, it's the paintings of the great masters. And likewise, mathematics is not about "number-crunching," as Wilson's article suggests. It's about concepts and ideas that empower us to describe reality and figure out how the world really works. Galileo famously said, "The laws of Nature are written in the language of mathematics." Mathematics represents objective knowledge, which allows us to break free of dogmas and prejudices. It is through math that we learned Earth isn't flat and that it revolves around the sun, that our universe is curved, expanding, full of dark energy, and quite possibly has more than three spatial dimensions. But since we can't really imagine curved spaces of dimension greater than two, how can we even begin a conversation about the universe without using the language of math?
Charles Darwin rightfully spoke of math endowing us "with something like a new sense." History teaches that mathematical ideas that looked abstract and esoteric yesterday led to spectacular scientific advances of today. Scientific progress would be diminished if young scientists were to heed Wilson's advice.
One thing should be clear: While our perception of the physical world can always be distorted, our perception of the mathematical truths can't be. They are objective, persistent, necessary truths. A mathematical formula means the same thing to anyone anywhere—no matter what gender, religion, or skin color; it will mean the same thing to anyone a thousand year from now. And that's why mathematics is going to play an increasingly important role in science and technology.
One of the key functions of mathematics is the ordering of information. With the advent of the 3-D printing and other new technology, the reality we are used to is undergoing a radical transformation: Everything will migrate from the layer of physical reality to the layer of information and data. We will soon be able to convert information into matter on demand by using 3-D printers just as easily as we now convert a PDF file into a book or an MP3 file into a piece of music. In this brave new world, math will be king: It will be used to organize and order information and facilitate the conversion of information into matter.
It might still be possible to be "bad in math" (though I believe that anyone can be good at math if it is explained in the right way) and be a good scientist—in some areas and probably not for too long. But this is a handicap and nothing to be proud of. Granted, some areas of science currently use less math than others. But then practitioners in those fields stand to benefit even more from learning mathematics.
It would be fine if Wilson restricted the article to his personal experience, a career path that is obsolete for a modern student of biology. We could then discuss the real question, which is how to improve our math education and to eradicate the fear of mathematics that he is talking about. Instead, trading on that fear, Wilson gives a misinformed advice to the next generation, and in particular to future scientists, to eschew mathematics. This is not just misguided and counterproductive; coming from a leading scientist like him, it is a disgrace. Don't follow this advice—it's a self-extinguishing strategy.
I think many of the objections of both Wilson and the JBucks piece could be corrected by simply redesigning math curriculum, the layout of high school and undergrad math points to classical mechanics, with more or less a direct line to differential equations while skimping on linear algebra, discrete mathematics and statistics - disciplines that are much more useful to both non-physicist scientists and the general population. There is also way too much emphasis on pencil and paper when writing code is how math gets applied in the real world.


Sophisticated elegance and neutral appeal are the hallmarks of the on-Trend lani headboard. Featuring a lovely upholstery cream fabric, The lani headboard is highlighted by its subtle curvature and antique brass studding. Available in twin, Full, Queen sizes. Some assembly required. Metal headboard frame, Box spring and mattress required.


What I thought about even is, does someone know, how this is with animals/pets?
Are animals/pets (is there may be a difference between wild animals and pets?) in the same way addicted to food like humans?
It's interesting that the animals have the same behavior than the human beings, I mean, they eat, they feel hungry, they become desperate for food and they get thin if they don't eat.
For me, they are addicted to food like us, but they don't have any mechanism to get rid of the addiction. Their instinct determine that they must eat and they just follow their instinct. They cannot choose between eating or not eating.
Other aspect that I would consider is that the energy field of the planet is influenced greatly by the most evolved (perhaps...) being in the planet, I mean, the human beings. As the great majority of humans are drive to eat and reject any idea of not eating, the energy field emanates this idea and the animals receives it and their instinct are reinforced and their prison to eating becomes even stronger.


Someone sent me a convo asking if a specific font was on sale on myfonts this morning and I couldn't help myself… more fonts downloaded and installed lol! There are some really pretty sale fonts on myfonts right now, some new free fonts.
If you're going to install dingbat fonts, check out my tutorial on using Nexus Font, as you may find it useful for viewing the character map, test type and see a preview of the glyphs.
I love Mr Moustache and Chestnut fonts, how do I download them?
Thank you so much for this post. I want to let you know that I posted a link to your blog in CBH Digital Scrapbooking Freebies (please, notice the new url for my blog), under the Page 2 post on Jul. 27, 2012. Thanks again.
Thank you very much for this post. I love dingbats and I appreciate you linking to your previous post about Nexus, I will need to download that.
oh my gosh.. I cant believe I missed this Post!!!
How Did I miss this post!?!?!


text:
The Foodie Federation's Dinosaur Farm
— by Luo Longxiang, translated by Andy Dudak —
A Lei was a young worker at the 045 Meat Union factory on Continent Three in starship Rhea. When the dinosaur uprising overwhelmed the factory, he used a hunting rifle to drop two great beasts that got in his way. He climbed over their corpses and fled deeper into the factory, toward the shuttle launch silos—but he was too late. The six shuttles were gone. Only their exhaust remained, suffusing the air.
A Lei shouted a torrent of abuse at his faithless coworkers. The racket of a collapsing assembly line drowned out his obscenities. A dinosaur more than five meters long jumped in front of him. He fired his rifle from the hip, but the creature nimbly evaded. The shot pierced a cooling pipe, and liquid nitrogen sprayed in torrents of white mist. The dinosaur's movements slowed. A Lei squeezed the trigger again, but nothing happened. He was out of ammo. He abandoned the weapon, turned, and fled.
He squeezed between two silos, the gap only a meter wide and about fifteen deep. This nook had survived countless launch-shock waves, never collapsing. It would temporarily shelter him from this dinosaur sneak attack. Now he needed a weapon, but all he found was canned dinosaur meat scattered about. He had no choice but to snatch a few cans. It was better than being empty-handed.
A pair of lantern-like eyes appeared at the gap entrance. The crimson eyes fixed on A Lei, making his scalp tingle, and heavy breathing filled his ears. The beast struck at a silo wall, long mouth clamping down, sharp teeth piercing, and a metal wall plate came off with the sound of a gunshot. A monstrous tooth landed near A Lei's foot. The canine, as long as his hand, stank of blood and made him retch.
The monster withdrew a few steps, swaying its large head. It peered into the gap at A Lei, seemingly loathe to abandon him. He saw it clearly now: a draconis sapiens over five meters long, from the largest-bodied dromaeosauridae branch, fast and deadly, cousin to the famous velociraptor, but with a much higher IQ. Some had brain volumes comparable to humans. They set traps and imitated other species to attract prey. Some witnesses claimed they emulated human tool use, and even parroted human speech. This was the most dangerous species of dinosaur. Almost every time livestock rebelled, dracopiens were involved. Their delicious flesh was widely known. At every supermarket counter in the Starship Alliance, dracopien was the most popular meat. Their weighty brains were used to make Dragon Brain Soup, a delicacy to rival Shark Fin or Swallow's Nest.
This dracopien wore a fine necklet. The inlaid nameplate identified its master, the researcher Ai Li-ke, and below that the creature's name, Steel Teeth.
It turned and moved off, seeming to give up. A Lei's sigh of relief was cut short when the monster picked up a hoisting jack and returned. It placed the jack in the gap and leisurely cranked, widening the entrance, metal squealing and giving way.
A Lei grew desperate and shouted, "Don't bother! I'm just skin and bones, not tasty at all!"
Steel Teeth's throat rumbled ominously. In crude tones it said, "I just ate a few. Humans really do taste awful. And I am full. That is not why I am doing this. It is exercise. Is that not a good enough reason?"
It wasn't surprising that this dracopien could talk. In addition to its developed brain and formidable intelligence, its larynx anatomy closely resembled a parrot's.
It showed no sign of stopping with the jack. A Lei's fight-or-flight impulse kicked in. He made his way into a deeper, narrower place. "So you're full," he said, squeezing in. "We might as well sit down and chat. Maybe even make friends?"
Steel Teeth's strength was extraordinary. After the jack had done its work, the monster bit its way forward, as if burning excess vigor, tearing away pipes and wires, clawing apart metal plating. A Lei crawled further in, frantic and ratlike, relying on memory to seek the butchering-mecha storage facility.
He crawled out of a ruptured industrial runoff pipe. Less than three meters away reclined a mecha suit, a butchering model about the size of a dracopien. The cockpit was open. The suit, which might have held its own against a T.Rex, had been abandoned. He had no time for this mystery. Rousing his courage, he took a deep breath and charged toward the armor. The foul stench of industrial runoff was like a chemical weapon, nearly overwhelming him. He covered his nose and reached for the mecha.
The runoff pipe was trampled flat with a thunderous crash. Steel Teeth's talons stabbed the floor right in front of A Lei. They could disembowel a T.Rex, and they'd come centimeters from tearing open his throat. Steel Teeth was like a cat toying with a mouse. Such a nimble killing machine couldn't miss like that. If it wanted A Lei dead, he'd already be slashed to ribbons.
A primal ferocity stirred in A Lei's heart. He dove into the cockpit. An impact rocked the canopy, Steel Teeth's claw a step late, screeching across the transparent shell. A Lei was soaked in cold sweat. He'd nearly been decapitated.
Now ensconced in the mecha, A Lei felt a dangerous pride. To suppress dinosaur uprisings, many mecha packed serious firepower, six-barrel Gatling machine cannons. He pulled a joystick. The mecha shivered, stood, extended manipulator arms toward the dracopien. Panels opened on the arms. A Lei cackled in his pride, eager to blow Steel Teeth to pieces.
But his smile froze.
His new arms were not sprouting cannons like he'd hoped. Instead, meter-long soup ladles emerged. He threw switches, retracting the ladles, extending giant tongs. A Lei stared, dumbfounded, switching tools in a frenzy. Forks, hooks, egg whisks, and other implements came up in succession, like a rotating lantern-carousel of paper horses. Against all reason, there was nothing like a useful weapon. Steel Teeth saw his frustration and collapsed with hissing laughter. "You foolish thing!" it said. "If this mecha had weapons, why would its former master have abandoned it?"
A Lei saw his chance and took it. He drove the mecha, trampling over the prone dinosaur and charged at a window. He smashed through, leaping out of the 045 Meat Union factory. Then he was falling, crashing through canopies of massive treelike ferns, more than twenty meters down, and into flea-bitten mud.
The Starship Alliance was nicknamed "The Foodie Federation" because its citizens had long ago grown dissatisfied with dull, flavorless foodstuffs synthesized in labs. Like their distant ancestors, they craved natural, pollution-free food, meat from species that grazed over vast territories, organically. The foodies were insatiable. They wanted exquisite variety, minced delicacies, food that took ten or even a hundred times more energy to raise and prepare than it provided. Such uneconomical practices were rare among nomadic space civilizations. To feed their strange addiction, the foodies constructed specialized agricultural starships. These immense man-made worlds provided grazing land, artificial sunlight, fertile soil, whole biospheres in the service of the foodies' appetite. All kinds of crops and livestock were raised, under natural Earthlike conditions. The yield was harvested or slaughtered after maturation, sent by freighter to every starship with megacities, to restaurants and supermarkets, meeting the demands of countless gluttons.
A few hundred years ago, the Starship Alliance returned to its origin world, Earth, seeking the fragments of its ancestral civilization. They took nearly everything of value from the ruins: cultural relics, dilapidated landmarks, specimens of flora and fauna, and fossils of extinct organisms. The dinosaur fossil payload came to megatons, and included many previously undiscovered species. Among the latter was the astonishing draconis sapiens.
Biologists conceived an idea: create a starship with a Cretaceous Earth habitat, resurrect paleo-organisms, including dinosaurs, so as to research the era. But the cost of the project would be massive. It wasn't easy to persuade stingy legislators to allocate funds, but after many rejections, they found someone who was interested.
"Just leave it to me," said the Venerable Madam Zheng Qingyin, president of the Alliance Foodstuffs Federation—in business circles known as Grandma Foodie—leaning on her dragon head cane in the Bio Research Institute's paleo-organism department.
An astonishing foodie carnival was staged at that year's congressional budget conference. AFF freighters crowded the Congressional Plaza. "Distinctive Prehistoric Delicacies" were handed out, free of charge. AFF-owned celebrities performed on stage. Billboards shouted slogans:
"Make any dinner table more sumptuous!"
"T.Rex leg burgers, steamed diplodocus, savory and spicy pterosaur wings!"
"Take your place at the Starship Alliance's luxurious banquet table!"
The Venerable Madam Zheng, white-haired, ruddy-complexioned, hale and hearty, walked with vigorous strides into the Capitol Building, deploying her dragon head cane to great dramatic effect. She carried a draft resolution in her other hand. She didn't use lengthy speeches to subjugate the legislators. Instead, she made sure they each had samples of dinosaur meat to try. When the few vegetarian legislators furrowed their brows and refused, she tantalized them with an equally delicious ancient pteridophyte banquet.
The Capitol Building had become a mansion of delicacies.
"I won't lecture you," the Venerable Madam said, "on the importance of a diverse diet to human well-being. There's no need, am I right?"
Her scientists were arrayed behind her, ready to hold forth on the topic for months, if called upon. She'd prepared truckloads of technical data on the proposed starship and its Cretaceous habitat. Its cost would dwarf that of traditional agricultural ships. It would allow biologists to research extinct life, but of course this was really about the foodies, and eating.
She got through the proposal effortlessly. When she emerged at the top of the Capitol steps, smiling and satisfied, a multitude of gluttons erupted with applause. Alliance TV broadcasted everything. The Venerable Madam had been wild in her youth. Now she felt that old wantonness return. Raising her dragon head cane, she cried, "Our slogan is . . . !"
The crowded square gave its booming reply: "Eat everything on two legs except people! Eat everything on four legs except stools!"
Building the new starship would take over a hundred years. Grandma Foodie Zheng Qingyin wouldn't live to see it completed, but her draft resolution would profoundly change the Starship Alliance dining table. After DNA fragments had been extracted, and paleo-organisms were coming back to life species by species, scientists noted that dracopiens were intelligent organisms. There was extensive debate: the resurrection of a dinosaur with human-equivalent IQ was no small matter. But in the end, the foodies' argument was simple and persuasive: Are dracopiens delicious? If so, resurrect!
The Cretaceous habitat was wildly unsuitable for humans. The world outside the factories was verdant, a wetland teeming with reptiles. People accidentally stepped on crocodiles and other beasts quite often. Dense fern canopies blotted out sky and sun. This primeval forest was bathed in a luxuriant mist, and the air, at over forty Celsius, was suffocating. It was like being in a giant food steamer. The pteridophyte fauna, lacking the structure and root systems of woody plants, needed the moist surroundings to survive. Some of the treelike ferns reached thirty meters tall. This world was so saturated that living people could molder.
A Lei made his mecha sit up. Luckily the interior was climate controlled, or he would already have been steam-cooked by the atmosphere. He hadn't driven a few steps before the mecha slipped into a bog, and he had to get upright again, this time with difficulty. This factory mecha was not suited to Cretaceous mud.
A Lei glanced back at the factory, which resembled a massive spider, several hundred meters wide, lying sprawled upon the earth. Normally it advanced like a bulldozer, gobbling up fern forest. Ground effect vehicles, like great dragonflies, would be dispatched from their tarmac on the roof, and in great swarms hunt dinosaurs. The conveyor belts would hurtle forward continuously, processing all kinds of dinosaur meat products. There were many of these roving factories in starship Rhea. The fern forests grew fast and weed-like in the warm, moist environment, and could be harvested regularly. The tender pteridophytes were rich in carbohydrates and protein. Most of a pteridophyte was edible, unlike flowering plants with their limited offerings of fruits, seeds, and certain leaves. The stunningly fast growth of Cretaceous flora was a clear demonstration to scientists of how the colossi, the dinosaurs, had been fed. Gourmands were pleasantly surprised at how fast the dinosaurs reproduced in this blistering climate—so much for the assumption of slow reptilian birthrates. Brood after enormous brood, breeding faster than rats: it turned out that Rhea was twice as productive as traditional agricultural starships. It seemed dinosaurs wouldn't have to be domesticated. Hunting was sufficient.
As A Lei carefully observed his surroundings, Steel Teeth rushed down the nearly-vertical factory wall and dashed across fern roots and muck, leaving no trace. A Lei was reminded of its awful cousin, the swift and violent velociraptor, and he failed to react. It felt like a hundred-ton truck hit him. His mecha was like a kite with its string cut, airborne, beyond control, then crashing through tree-fern saplings—and finally, mecha-face down in the mire.
Steel Teeth's talons pressed down on the machine. Its teeth scraped, seeking purchase, but it couldn't get the cockpit open. It gave up grudgingly. A Lei came to, feeling like all his bones had been shattered. Luckily, he'd landed in spongy marshland. If it had been solid stone, he might have been crushed inside the mecha.
Steel Teeth had been slower in the factory, where it was 20 or so degrees Celsius. Although dinosaurs were considered warm blooded, their capacity for body temperature regulation was inferior to that of mammals and birds. Out here in the damp heat, at over 40 degrees, it was ideal dinosaur weather. Below 10 degrees, most dinosaurs lost their mobility, or even died en masse.
A Lei sat the mecha up, and again Steel Teeth knocked it down. A Lei raised both hands and said, "Okay buddy. We're both intelligent creatures. How about we sit down for a nice chat?"
"Okay," Steel Teeth replied. It was at its wit's end, after all. The mecha was a conundrum. The last attack had consumed the dinosaur's strength, and it needed a rest, just like A Lei. It sat down much like a hen, stomach to the ground. The dinosaur kinship with birds was plain.
"You seem familiar with humans," A Lei said. "Surely you were raised and trained by someone . . . "
The creature said, "My foster father Ai Li-ke was a researcher of extinct life, living in solitude. He gave me human knowledge."
"And what happened to him?"
Steel Teeth laughed, displaying its keen incisors. "He was not very good. His meat was old. Too many bones. Hurt my teeth."
A Lei was shocked. "You ate him?"
"Humans have strange defects," Steel Teeth said. "You like domesticating house pets, believing you can imbue them with human feelings and reason. With dogs, horses, and other such social animals, long domestication can render them docile. But as for solitary animals . . . no matter how good you are to me, good enough to make me see you as kin, well, one mountain cannot brook two tigers. And we kill our own kind. The mother snake lays a brood and then just leaves. The eggs hatch and the young must fend for themselves. There is no familial emotion or attachment in the snake brain, no sense of friendship. How can you domesticate that? Change fundamental brain structure? No matter how good you are to creatures like us, we only see you as prey."
This great reptile's words resonated with A Lei. It seemed the dracopien, for all its mental development, was no more affectionate or friendly than a snake. A Lei said, "I've never met such a wise and farsighted dinosaur."
"Thank you," Steel Teeth said, lying prostrate on the ground. "You can call me Mister Wise and Farsighted Crouching Dragon."
Getting rid of this dracopien wasn't going to be easy. It became clear to A Lei as he watched the beast kill a T.Rex. Steel Teeth cleverly enraged its prey, luring the massive creature into soft mud, where it became stuck, and the hunter easily prevailed.
"I don't understand," A Lei said. "Your kind is quite rare, for a late Cretaceous apex predator. We've found so many T.Rex fossils, but few dracopien fossils. Actually, we found none until the SA returned to Earth."
Steel Teeth bit off a chunk of T.Rex flesh and devoured it. "We dracopiens do not lay many eggs. And we like to kill each other, so our numbers are naturally low. But, I have a dream. I see a great dinosaur civilization. I see dracopiens destroying humanity, and replacing it."
A dinosaur with a dream: this was a day of firsts for A Lei. He chose to dampen the creature's enthusiasm: "Establishing a civilization isn't easy. Mastering fire would be step one. We've never found a trace of fire production from the dinosaur age. Can you friction-drill?"
Steel Teeth lifted its head and gazed about. The dense fern forest hid much of the sky, while enveloping fog made a salted egg yoke of the westering sun. The dracopien leapt up, and came down on a tree fern, smashing it to the ground. It seized half the trunk in its mouth and flung it before A Lei. "Drill for fire?" it said, in a rage. "With this saturated fern material, in this saturated world, show me fire-drilling! Suirenshi, last of the Three August Ones, legendary inventor of fire, would be at his wit's end in this place!"
A Lei had stepped on Steel Teeth's tail with this problem of fire. Lack of fire production was dinosaur evolution's biggest flaw. Humans had come into the universe a mere three-million years ago, while draconis sapiens, from birth to asteroid strike, may have been around a good deal longer, yet never mastered flame. They never expanded their food options with cooking, or smelted metal, or created advanced tools. There had never been a dinosaur civilization.
A Lei's stomach growled as he sat in the cockpit and watched Steel Teeth gorge itself.
He drove the mecha, stepping away, but the beast leapt and knocked him down. After several thwarted attempts, A Lei knew he was trapped. He was meant to starve here. "You said your dream was to replace us," he said. "But do you understand human civilization?"
"I understand a bit," it said. "We have gathered much data on humans."
"And you comprehend it all?"
The beast cocked its head. "Most of it . . . no."
"Then you shouldn't have eaten your foster father. He would have been happy to help, I imagine."
"Just so. I immediately regretted it, after devouring him."
A Lei finally understood. A dracopien's appetite overrode its rational faculty. Having eaten its fill, reason returned. When its belly growled, it became an unthinking, ferocious beast. A Lei saw an opportunity. "You must be in dire need of someone who understands human civilization. If I may be so bold, I could fill that role. I could help you decipher what you mean to annihilate."
Steel Teeth returned to the factory and went inside. It soon returned, carrying a flamethrower. It was impossible to friction-drill in this moist world, but a flamethrower was another matter. A Lei watched the dracopien roast the T.Rex meat, puzzled. This sort of carnivore didn't normally like cooked meat.
Steel Teeth tossed a well-done T.Rex leg in front of the mecha. It opened its bloody, fearsome mouth and said, "You are welcome to join us."
"Us? There are others?" A Lei cautiously opened the canopy as the mecha forked a fragrant chunk of meat and brought it up.
Steel Teeth looked up and gave a long, ominous roar that made the ground tremble. Moments later, a group of dracopiens emerged into view. Steel Teeth extended its arms and said, "Welcome to the Steel Teeth tribe."
The dracopiens had always tried to imitate human civilization. Rhea employees talked about this often enough.
A Lei came to the so-called Steel Teeth tribe's home, a simple, crude structure hidden between a mountain range and a river. On the doorway was an upside-down sign: "Ai Li-ke, Research Facility." Steel Teeth had seized the place and turned it into a fortress. The surrounding area was piled with hewn-down tree ferns. It seemed the dracopiens had meant to build a stockade with them, but they'd found the material too flexible and abandoned the project. They'd hunted down large dinosaur skeletons instead, using a mixture of stone and bone to construct a gruesome and intimidating city wall.
A Lei knew that primitive human tribes had built enclosing walls to repel wild beast incursions. He didn't understand why apex predators like dracopiens needed such protection. Perhaps they were just imitating human behavior. Tree fern shanties stood here and there between the wall and the lab, a solemn little primeval town. The dracopiens had learned the human concept of shelter, but not human construction standards. The shacks were made of broad tree fern stalks and leaves. The roofs were slapdash, barely qualifying as shelter. Still, these dracopiens were far more advanced than other dinosaurs. Some gathered in front of huts to polish hunting implements. From a technological perspective, the tools were close to human Neolithic level, but they weren't made of stone. Discarded human machine parts served instead—machine arms from dismantled factories, iron pipes, and the like, all ground down to points and made into javelins, lances, and other primitive weapons.
There were many such primitive tribes in starship Rhea. Although Cretaceous era dracopiens had humanlike IQs, they'd never entered the tribal era on Earth. These tribes in Rhea had clearly resulted from human influence. All kinds of plundered posters covered the fort, many of them SA city scenes, or steampunk-style space factories, and wide shots of spacecraft swarms like stellar multitudes. But most were illustrations of delicacies from various SA regions. On each of these, a graffito had been scrawled, in characters like roaches crawling across the image: "Our goal is a sea of food!"
"I thought your goal was to destroy human civilization," A Lei said, "to remove and replace us."
"Just so, but our ultimate goal is to eat. Humanity has many tasty delicacies. My foster father used to share them with me, fine foods from other starships, even from alien civilizations. For the sake of gourmet dining, humans have spanned thousands of lightyears, and returned to Earth to excavate fossils. You made this Cretaceous environment, this high-quality grazing land . . . the audacity! Foodies are the most powerful force in the universe. If we conquer humanity, all that wonderful food will be ours!"
In the final analysis, these dracopiens were mouth-straight-to-heart foodies. Steel Teeth did nothing to conceal its yearning. A Lei hadn't expected these primitive dracopiens to be pursuing something higher than mere destruction.
Entering the stronghold, he saw most of the lab instruments had been demolished for weapon parts. Books lay scattered on the floor, most of them rotted by the climate. The few intact volumes were ancient human histories.
"They say humans progressed from primitive tribes to tribal coalitions," Steel Teeth explained. "On that foundation they established nations. Before we establish our own great tribal alliance, the latter part of human history is useless to us."
These fragmentary histories outlined tribal warfare in remote human ages. Steel Teeth said, "We have run into a bit of a problem."
"I threw away all the weapons materiel Foster Father left to me. At the time, I believed they could not compare with sharp teeth. But during our battles with the tribe on the other side of the river, their flame catapults were ferocious. We suffered grievous losses."
"That's why you attacked the factory?" A Lei said. "To find better weapons?"
Steel Teeth led A Lei outside, to a captured enemy catapult. Made of fern tree, and using oil rendered from dinosaur fat, it was a crude machine. Its only real virtue was the human-made flamethrower lashed to it, which lit the dino-oil payloads. A Lei, staring at Steel Teeth's deadly incisors, said, "You should learn to peacefully coexist. You're all dracopiens. Infighting is pointless."
"Enough of that useless rubbish!" Steel Teeth said. "In ancient times did you humans not make rivers of blood? Without big and powerful tribal alliances, would human civilization have been possible? Did not those powerful human war chiefs, like Odin or Emperor Yan, become deities worshipped by later generations? Does your Starship Alliance not have a battleship named the Emperor Yan?"
These dracopiens were naturally despotic. A Lei worried about debating and infuriating Steel Teeth. The prudent choice was to shut up.
Steel Teeth went vigorously about its leadership duties, handling tribal affairs big and small. It delegated a host of technological problems to A Lei. Luckily, these dracopien tech issues were of the simple Neolithic variety: find abandoned human metal fit for weaponry, develop new techniques for making sharper arrows, learn how to fling fire in this moist environment, and how to process tree fern material into something harder and wood-like.
When he knew he was unobserved, A Lei relaxed and breathed in the mecha. He wanted to contact headquarters, but didn't know how. Despairing, he glanced down, and saw a hand device on the floor of the cockpit. It must have been dropped by the previous pilot. A Lei smacked himself upside the head in a fierce self-rebuke. If he'd seen the device earlier and called for help, he might have avoided his current predicament.
He huddled in the cockpit with the device in his hands. His trembling finger entered the wrong number several times, but he finally connected to the 045 Meat Union factory assistant director's office. "Director!" he shouted. "It's A Lei! I'm trapped in Rhea!"
"A Lei?" The assistant director sounded frightened. "You're still alive?"
"If not, who are you talking to?"
"We all assumed you'd been eaten, so we didn't arrange a rescue team. But on the bright side, financial affairs offered their condolences. They paid for the funeral, and the accidental death insurance has paid out to your parents. Quite a sum!"
A Lei had to stop himself from smashing the hand device. "So my family's quite happy with everything then? You were worried about further losses if you dispatched rescue, is that it? Why eat more financial loss when you can just write me off? Well let me tell you . . . you've got bigger problems. These dracopiens aren't merely lashing out at the factory. They're conspiring to revolt. They mean to establish a huge tribal coalition. They want to overthrow human civilization and replace it. We need to sound the alarm. Better yet, we need to report this to SA government. We need the Marines if we're going to suppress these fucking lizards!"
"So you want to smash everyone's rice bowls," the assistant director said, growing incensed himself. "You know if Accidents and Safety inspects, all Union factories have to shut down and reorganize. What's everyone supposed to eat? The Northwest Wind? Now wait . . . if you're really saying the dracopiens are conspiring to overthrow humanity . . . Just hold on, I'll report it to the higher-ups and call you right back." The assistant director disconnected.
A few minutes later, the device buzzed in A Lei's hand, and he answered. An old, dignified voice came through, claiming to be the AFF executive director in charge of Rhea.
"Executive d-director." A Lei was low-level, a Union factory worker. He was talking to the man in charge of all food enterprises in Rhea.
"Young man," the old voice said, "tell me frankly . . . what's happening there?"
A Lei dared not hold anything back. He recounted the whole disaster, systematically and in full detail.
"That's quite a story," the old man said. "You're sure my friend Ai Li-ke was eaten?"
"Y-yes."
The old man sighed. "No wonder I haven't heard from him in so long. Ai Li-ke was an outstanding researcher for us. He played an important role in constructing the dinosaur pasturelands. And he was a skilled cook! Specialized in dinosaur eggs. Do you have anything of his? Keepsakes? If so, bring them back to me, and I'll reward you well."
A Lei sifted through the materials he'd collected. "There's only fragments of his notebooks left, and a few memory chips. Sir, you must think of a way to rescue me from Rhea. Otherwise I have no way of getting this stuff to you." He had to prioritize his own little life.
"You're sitting in a mecha now?"
"Of course. Otherwise I'd have been eaten."
"So it would seem the dracopiens also don't know what to do with you. You have two options . . . sound the alarm and report to the police, getting a rescue team dispatched. That's the safest way, but you'd be letting a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity slip through your fingers."
That cut through A Lei's fear. "And the other option?"
"Cut a bloody path out of there, escape on your own, and bring me Steel Teeth's head. You would have a hero's welcome, and a promotion. How does deputy captain of a hunting squad sound?"
A Lei did some quick mental calculations. "I'd be equal to an assistant factory director."
"Satisfactory?"
"Yes! Ten thousand times yes! If you'll keep your promise . . . " He could struggle half a lifetime and never climb that high. He grinned, seeing money, glittering futures, his current danger forgotten.
After the old man had disconnected, A Lei sat there fantasizing. A grim voice like a thunderclap brought him back to the Cretaceous: "Who were you talking to?"
A Lei panicked. He'd forgotten that dinosaur hearing was far keener than his. Steel Teeth had probably heard the entire dialogue.
After that fateful call, A Lei spent every day in fear. Steel Teeth seemed to know its severed head was the price for a deputy captain throne. A group of fearsome dracopiens always watched him, and he was never alone with their chieftain. Sometimes he had to fight the urge to sound the alarm, but the lure of promotion always won out. Steel Teeth had him designing various weapons for the coming tribal wars. A Lei knew nothing of weapon design, but he knew how to research Stone Age weaponry on the hand device. In the course of one hectic month, he designed many weapons for the tribe.
A Lei understood well enough that if Steel Teeth really wanted him dead, there were many ways. It couldn't bite through the mecha, but it could starve him. It could slow-cook a stegosaurus leg right in front of him, wait for him to go mad with hunger and leave the cockpit, then casually devour him. But as long as A Lei produced weapon designs, it seemed Steel Teeth would refrain from harming him.
He was confined to the castle, but he heard dracopiens speaking of their chieftain's conquests. Steel Teeth was vanquishing tribe after tribe, consolidating power. He also heard the 045 Meat Union factory was back in business. No one seemed to care about one low-level worker's whereabouts.
It was getting harder to find new data for weapons designs. The decisive moment was fast approaching.
He brought up Steel Teeth's domestication record for the hundredth time, a series of videos shot by Ai Li-ke.
Dracopien reproduction was much like certain turtles'. Parental involvement ended when an egg was laid. Little dracopiens hatched ready to hunt. Like many fish, amphibian, and reptile species in times of scarcity, siblings devoured each other. When Ai Li-ke discovered Steel Teeth's nest, the little dracopiens were at war. Finally, just one hatchling remained. Ai prepared cow milk and chicken eggs for it, but the fierce little creature only snarled at its new benefactor. Ai Li-ke found this charming, and named it Steel Teeth.
A montage followed, Ai patiently teaching Steel Teeth to read. Raising this emotionless, reptilian thing was far more difficult than raising a mammal. Mammals come with emotional attachment software preinstalled. Much of the time, Ai had no choice but to administer electric shock to make little Steel Teeth learn obedience. The other method was feeding. Young Steel Teeth learned to curry favor with Ai in order to enjoy the great variety of human food. A sumptuous banquet flowed from Ai's hand, and Steel Teeth grew very fast, ending up much larger than a wild dracopien.
Naturally, Steel Teeth's knowledge far exceeded its wild cousins'. This, combined with its superior size and vigor, allowed it to easily defeat other dracopiens in combat. By the time Ai Li-ke was seventy, Steel Teeth had become the alpha of a large dracopien pack. Tribalism was something new for the species, a new world in which Steel Teeth was the grim hegemon.
In Steel Teeth's eyes, A Lei's usefulness was drawing to a close. One day it brought some trusted followers into the fortress, where A Lei was hard at work measuring a section of excavated tree fern rhizome, which was meant to become a mortar cannon. A Lei puzzled over two problems: how to produce and use gunpowder in this moist world, and how to make tree fern material strong enough to endure the force of discharge.
Rhea was, in the end, merely the human approximation of a Cretaceous environment. It differed from the real thing. To prevent flowering angiosperms from squeezing out pteridophytes, humans strove to eliminate higher plants from the ecosystem, not to mention maple, birch, and metasequoia. Thus, hard building materials were difficult to come by.
Steel Teeth brought a taloned foot down, smashing the nascent mortar to pieces. "Stop tinkering with such nonsense. This is not Earth. We have bypassed the Iron Age."
A Lei went pale. He knew he couldn't make a mortar. He'd been going through the motions of research, to keep death at bay. Now Steel Teeth had seen through this. He feared the moment of truth had come.
Steel Teeth's followers dragged the mecha toward a large gathering of dracopiens. A Lei was deposited on a massive, crude contrivance of tree fern, a kind of war chariot. Looking down upon the wide expanse of dracopiens, A Lei reckoned the alliance was now ten tribes strong. A solemn Steel Teeth reviewed its army. There were many other war chariots, lashed to domesticated stegosaurs and ceratopsians. A vanguard of dracopien-driven T.Rexes, armored in bone and teeth, rushed toward the battlefront.
"I have unified all the tribes of the Yellow River's north shore," Steel Teeth said to A Lei. "Today we unite with the south shore tribes, at long last. Behold, this world's highest lord."
Steel Teeth's "Yellow River" was the great waterway of the region. A hundred kilometers of dracopien deforestation had led to erosion, turning the river into a yellow, turbid flow. "If the name Yellow River gets around," A Lei said, "many Earthlings might have objections. Can you change it?"
Steel Teeth snorted. "The chief of the south shore alliance is named Chiyou, God of War."
"Really?" A Lei said in amazement.
"That is really my nickname for it."
This joke fell flat, but Steel Teeth's knowledge did more to kill any possible levity. It knew the hazards of a cross-river military campaign. It had chosen to launch its offensive in the enveloping fog of early morning, to obscure numbers and movement. A Lei noticed strange little vehicles among Steel Teeth's forces, tree fern constructions with crude but clever gears driven by the wheels. No matter which way they turned, their indicator rods always pointed across the river.
Steel Teeth's dracopiens were armed with metal weapons burnished by stone and bone. Garlands of some pteridophyte, blooming with primitive flowers, were bound to their heads. The plant was a favorite edible among dinosaurs, resembling Chinese cabbage. To A Lei these advancing dracopiens were comical, a group of hooligans with cabbage hats, but the Steel Teeth tribe knew what it was doing. The headdresses would distinguish friend from foe. If a dracopien emerged from the fog of war without one, it was an enemy, and must be put to the hatchet.
The campaign opened with a salvo of burning missiles, dinosaur oil and pteridophyte kindling bundled around large rocks and flung from catapults into the mist. The clamor of impacts and howling enemies traveled across the water. Dracopiens ignited torches bound to the tails of their T.Rex and stegosaur mounts, and drove these beasts charging toward the opposite bank. Many enemies were caught unawares, panicking in the fog, and were hewn down. As others took up arms, Steel Teeth's main force reached the south shore. With sharp claws and cold steel, they conducted a ruthless slaughter.
"I am very grateful to you," Steel Teeth said to a dumbstruck A Lei. "All your hard work has paid off. Now, I should send you back to your place of origin."
"You mean the Starship Alliance?"
Steel Teeth knocked the mecha prone. Several dracopiens poured dinosaur oil from fern leaf receptacles onto the mecha, and one used a factory flamethrower to ignite it. The mecha burst into flames, and A Lei realized the war chariot was actually a massive catapult. Steel Teeth slashed the restraining rope with a claw swipe, and A Lei, with his several tons of mecha, was airborne and trailing fire. He had become ammunition.
Steel Teeth watched him fly toward the far shore. "Godspeed," it said, "on the reincarnation road!"
This was the largest dinosaur conflict A Lei had ever seen. As he came to, his broken body shot through with pain, cockpit life support showed he'd been unconscious for two days. He had a broken rib, two broken legs, and the ground shook as immense dinosaurs clashed all around him, and on top of him, trampling the mecha as they vied for position. The machine was pounded into the riverbank marsh. Starving and dehydrated, he was forced to drink the foul water and dinosaur blood leaking through a crack in the cockpit. Most of the time he didn't dare to move, waiting, still and quiet, for the war to end. On the third day of this vigil, there was finally silence above. The dracopiens were no longer fighting at close quarters. He touched a joystick, and the mecha sat up. Dinosaur corpses lay piled all around. He stared in amazement. The Yellow River had been dyed red.
"Life is strong in you."
It was Steel Teeth, behind him. He turned to find the great warlord lying prone, and gravely wounded, on a burned-to-carbon catapult.
"I'm not strong. This mecha is. After all, it's a high-tech SA product. With a hundred-and-fifty-million-year technological lead, how can you lose?" Every word he spoke was a stab from his broken rib. Steel Teeth only heard him thanks to the brainwave converter in the cockpit, synthesizing speech and amplifying it.
"I have not lost," Steel Teeth said, "but neither have I won. This enemy chief was raised by a human, like me. It was big like me, knowledgeable like me. I nicknamed it Chi You in my desire to defeat it. A pity I am not the Yellow Emperor.1 Chi You is dead, but I will soon follow it."
"Wait, you mean there are others like Ai Li-ke?"
Steel Teeth moved its massive head with great effort. "This was humanity's plan all along. Resurrect us, educate us, lure us toward humanlike development, toward tribes and alliances, toward building the foundation of a society through hand-to-hand combat. No intelligent species can resist trying to make a civilization, even if they know they are a moth darting toward a flame. How can we turn away from war? Every dracopien dreams of becoming an apex foodie. We dream like you dream. We want to make a world according to our desires. We long to satisfy our craving for endless, delicious variety."
"We humans don't just dream of food. We pursue higher things. Moreover, I plan to become a vegetarian." Watching tributaries of blood flow into the red river, A Lei thought he would never want meat again.
"Eating is always the first priority!" Steel Teeth growled. "All life must eat. Hunger is the eternal constant. No food means no life. No life means no dreams, no realization of dreams. Even a superintelligent species is, in the end, biological. Whether you eat animals or plants, you are eating living things. Humanity is just another living thing. Better to admit this. I see through your hypocritical compassion. It is pathetic."
A Lei walked the mecha over, meaning to stop Steel Teeth's bleeding. The beast lashed out, its great mouth ripping the already-cracked canopy to pieces. A Lei, now sitting unprotected in his much-abused machine, stared into a gaping mouthful of teeth, and said, "You don't want me to save you?"
"Why should I want that? And how can you save me? It is eat or be eaten, the primal law of the natural world. Plants devour inorganic matter and sunlight. Herbivores eat the plants, and carnivores eat the herbivores. Even high and mighty humans, apex predators that you are, must one day rot and become meal for plants. This is the way of things, the cycle. As intelligent life nurtured by the natural world, your duty is not to destroy this law of nature that brought you about, but rather to protect it. You humans created this world of Rhea. To we dracopiens, you are gods. Gods should preserve natural laws. Gods should maintain nature's balance, not destroy it."
A Lei was confused. "You revere humanity as gods, yet wish to replace us?"
Steel Teeth seemed to grin broadly. "We want to become gods ourselves, revered, with unlimited food! But this is impossible. Rhea is not old Earth. It is not free and unrestrained. There is no coal here, no oil, for industry. Even if humans allowed us to develop freely, we still could not establish a civilization comparable to yours. But we strive, nevertheless. We cannot even reach the Iron Age, but we strive, and lay down our lives without regret."
"I still don't understand. Why is humanity imparting knowledge to dracopiens?"
"For more delicious, higher-quality dining, and more developed brains. For your supermarkets and restaurants. For minced meat and Dragon Brain Soup! Foodies as discerning as humans are no longer satisfied with mere free-range meat. You crave carnivores that rush about and fight hand-to-hand. I thought you understood this."
A Lei contemplated Steel Teeth for a long time. "You're the most wise and farsighted foodie I've ever met."
Steel Teeth laughed, coughed up blood. Lying prone on the burned wreckage of the catapult, it said, "Please call me Mister Wise and Farsighted Crouching Dragon."
"I can't," A Lei said. "Zhuge Liang2 might rise from the grave and sue for copyright infringement."
Steel Teeth's laugh was like quaking thunder. "Do not be ashamed of being a foodie. You humans have advanced far enough to break from the natural world, and you thrive. If you followed this timid, benevolent morality you speak of, and ate only foods synthesized in your labs, hundreds of starship biospheres would not exist. The countless animals depending on your pastureland habitats would not exist. We Cretaceous organisms would still be mere fossils. Dracopiens think this way . . . if humans do not eat it, it cannot possibly survive. Dracopiens have never resented your cultivation and hunting of our kind. You humans think so highly of yourselves, but your time will come. Are you not destined to become a feast for microorganisms and plants?"
A squad of ground effect vehicles appeared in the distance. Steel Teeth gave a mighty roar, and slowly rose. Wounds pouring blood, it faced A Lei in the unprotected cockpit.
"I have devoured much prey in this lifetime, but I never tormented my victims. My kills were swift, and I am proud of this. Humans brought us into this world, and we delighted in combat, to realize an impossible dream. We are born and have only a few dozen years, but that is enough. And now I tell you one last thing . . . respect your food. I know you mean to take my head and become a captain. We abide by the laws of nature. Let us see who shall eat, and who shall be eaten. Come now. Fight!"
This would be a fair duel. A Lei, his canopy gone, was no longer impervious to sword and spear, while Steel Teeth, with its injuries, was neither stronger nor faster than the mecha. Roaring, the dracopien lunged. A Lei touched a joystick. The only thing in the mecha's arm that might grudgingly be called a weapon—an oversized meat skewer—popped up. Steel Teeth's deadly bite clamped shut centimeters from A Lei's face. The skewer stabbed, sinking deep into Steel Teeth's heart.
"Thank you," A Lei said, "for teaching me wisdom, Wise and Farsighted Speaker."
"Please call me Mister Wise and Farsighted Crouching Dragon." Steel Teeth's lantern-like eyes slowly closed, the barest trace of regret marring its satisfaction.
When danger and opportunity coexist, courage is the key to deciding one's fate. If A Lei had chosen to raise the alarm, he would have remained a common worker. He would have spent his life in the stink of the 045 Meat Union factory, perhaps retiring before he could attain the career summit of foreman.
When he brought Steel Teeth's head back to the company, the hero's greeting left him dumbfounded. There was adulation and praise for this young person, so composed, so calm as he faced the lights and cameras, calm as a mountain. Only A Lei knew this was a façade. It was fear that kept him unmoving. After the uprising, the AFF needed a model hero to redeem its image. Despite his lack of qualifications, A Lei was decorated and adorned at the public relations department, and made into an optimal spokesperson.
At 22, A Lei became the youngest-ever deputy captain of a hunting squad. This promotion broke several rules, and he knew his qualifications and abilities were being discussed, and found wanting. The higher-ups wanted an experienced hunter. They were waiting for him to wash out. The smallest error could get him demoted, so he was cautious, devoted, and energetic in his work. He couldn't let this opportunity slip through his fingers.
He was very young for such a position. Most of the other deputy captains were of his parents' generation, and he was higher up than most of his contemporaries. After five years at the job, he got married and enjoyed conjugal bliss. He was promoted, step by step, and ended up the AFF executive director in charge of starship Rhea. By the time his career ended, there were more than a thousand others in the AFF of his rank: pasture habitat executive directors, farming colony planet managers, or exploration team chiefs seeking new foods throughout the cosmos. But A Lei never left Rhea.
For most of his life, A Lei sat upright in a tall building, watching his expanse of Cretaceous land, watching dracopiens clash in war after tribal war. Both humans and dracopiens knew what it was all about. Hunting dracopiens was still dangerous work, and although hunting squads were brave, hazarding their lives to kill all types of dinosaurs and deliver them to dining tables, dracopiens were the exception. Better to watch their battlefields, and wait, and harvest warriors on the verge of death. That was how you got the delicacy Dragon Brain Soup.
Many higher-ups in the hunting squads had dinosaur skulls decorating their offices, and A Lei was no exception. His massive dracopien skull had an engraved plaque beneath it: "Mister Wise and Farsighted Steel Teeth, a truth-speaking friend who changed my life."
Whenever he encountered problems, and felt irresolute, A Lei would swivel his chair and look up at Steel Teeth's skull. He tried to imagine how Steel Teeth, the determined warlord, would handle the thorny issue. A Lei's subordinates feared and respected him. They called him "master who thinks deep, like a dinosaur."
One day, A Lei sat in his office contemplating a dracopien egg he'd collected after a tribal war. Thinking of Steel Teeth, he began planning his retirement. He would hatch this egg, build a secluded house here in Rhea, and teach the little dinosaur Steel Teeth's wisdom. He would raise it to be the next generation's dracopien leader. After much thought concerning its name, he settled on Steel Teeth the Second.
Perhaps, someday, Steel Teeth the Second would eat him, as the First had eaten Ai Li-ke. Or perhaps it wouldn't be interested in human meat, and A Lei would die a natural death in Rhea, in the little house, and become food for bacteria and plants. Neither ending was bad, as far as a pious foodie was concerned.
1 - The Yellow Emperor is one of the three legendary Chinese rulers and culture heroes. Often regarded as the originator of Chinese civilization, he is said to have defeated Chiyou, God of War and another of the legendary three.
2 - Zhuge Liang, or Kongming, was a Chinese military strategist and inventor during the Three Kingdoms period. His reputation only grew when he lived in seclusion, earning him the nickname "Crouching Dragon" or "Hidden Dragon."
Originally published in Chinese in Science Fiction World, 2015, issue 10.
Translated and published in partnership with Storycom.
chris wrote on September 8th, 2018 at 2:00 pm:
What FUN!!!!! I love me a good negotiating-with-dragons story, and Chinese ones are so very much wiser than your common-or-garden western ones.
Daniel wrote on September 13th, 2018 at 3:14 pm:
Loved it. It added to my understandibg of chinise wisdom. And the tone and use of language is so very refreshing. Not much passive voice used here. Thank You!
David G Cercone 2 wrote on September 29th, 2018 at 10:00 pm:
Oh but this is a pearl of a tale and Zhuge Liang is smiling at this and laughing with bemused delight up in the Heavens at his inclusion in it! Wonderful! Just wonderful all around!
ISSUE 144, September 2018
Luo Longxiang was born in 1981, deep in the mountains of Guangxi province on the China's southern border, where he studied Chemical Engineering at Guangxi University. After publishing his first sci-fi story in 2003, his fans began to refer to the mysterious author as "Master Luo," in reference to his hermit-like existence far away from the crowded cities of the coast and northern plains. Of the eleven stories he was written over the past decade, six have earned a Milky Way Award. His works are known for their massive scope, dealing almost exclusively with the question of humanity's eventual survival in space. Since 2007, he has been working to complete the Planetship Alliance series--an epic space opera recounting the tragic history of mankind's colonization of the universe.
Away from Home by Luo Longxiang, translated by Nick Stember - May 2016


As a quick followup to last week's article on FDIC solvency, I just wanted to point out that the FDIC has opted to accelerate bank premiums to help build up their cash on hand from the current $10B level.
Under the just-announced plan, the FDIC will require banks to prepay their 2010-2012 assessments when they pay their Q4 2009 premiums. There will also be a three basis point (0.03%) increase in premiums starting in 2011.
From what I've heard, the increased cushion will amount to roughly $10B per year of accelerated premiums, or $30B total. Of course, this also means that the FDIC won't be collecting any money from 2010-2012 unless they change the rules.
The unique thing about the FDIC and really the government as a whole for that matter is that as much as we can speculate about this or about that the FDIC has one unique advantage over any other type of non governmental entity in that if their projections are off then they have the luxury of simply tapping all of us for more money in the form of increased taxes or decreased purchasing power because of their inflation producing money printing obsession.
My $.02 : I think the whole thing will blow over within 1-2 years. They already propped up almost all the major banks with the bailout. Those banks won't fail. More smaller banks will fail but nothing too massive and the actual losses to the FDIC won't be that big. A $30B increase in the reserve should be enough to last them through.
Matt: They actually have a $500B line of credit with the Treasury, but have been reticent to tap it. Where that $500B would actually come from is another question entirely.
My thought is… they will just change the rules when 2010 – 2012 roll around and come up with the money some other way at that time. If we look to the past for guidance… that will most likely mean printing more money out of thin air or raising taxes on individuals and small businesses.


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Sports Capital Journalism Program By Malcolm Moran |@malcolm_moran "Excuse me." The voice behind me spoke softly. I was standing on the basketball floor at NRG Stadium, a few feet from the steps that led up to the newly-constructed victory stand for the Villanova Wildcats. From the moment Kris Jenkins launched the shot that won a …
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Set in a realistic looking environment, gameplay is fast and arcade.
This game is all about team oriented multiplayer fun. Similar to counterstrike.
distribution, and in some cases do not allow modification.


text:
Q: Compute the probability: $ P\left\{\gamma_4\leq \gamma_1<\gamma_f<\beta-\gamma_4\right\}. $ Let $\gamma_1,\gamma_4$ and $\gamma_f$ be three positive independent random variables with PDFs $f_{\gamma_1}(\gamma), f_{\gamma_4}(\gamma)$ and $f_{\gamma_f}(\gamma)$, respectively.
The CDFs are denoted by PDFs $F_{\gamma_1}(\gamma), F_{\gamma_4}(\gamma)$ and $F_{\gamma_f}(\gamma)$, respectively.
Let $\beta$ be positive number.
I was have the following problem :
$$
P\left\{(\gamma_4+\gamma_f\leq \beta) \cap (\gamma_1<\gamma_f) \cap(\gamma_4\leq \gamma_1)\right\}.
$$
Then I simplify to :
$$
P\left\{\gamma_4\leq \gamma_1<\gamma_f<\beta-\gamma_4\right\}.
$$
I would like using the PDFs and CDFs to compute the following probability:
$$
P\left\{\gamma_4\leq \gamma_1<\gamma_f<\beta-\gamma_4\right\}.
$$
Is it
$$
P\left\{\gamma_4\leq \gamma_1<\gamma_f<\beta-\gamma_4\right\}=
\left\{\int_{y_4=0}^{\beta/2}f_{\gamma_4}(y_4)
\left(\int_{y_f=0}^{y_4-\beta}f_{\gamma_f}(y_f)\left[\int_{y_f=0}^{y_f}f_{\gamma_1}(y_1)dy_1\right]dy_f\right)dy_4\right \}.
$$
Thanks.


text:
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LIVE REPORT New lab-made nanoparticles deliver cancer drugs into tumors, then report their effects in real time by lighting up in response to proteins produced by dying cells. More light (right, green) indicates a tumor is responding to chemotherapy.
New cancer-fighting nanoparticles deliver results — and status reports.
Tiny biochemical bundles carry chemotherapy drugs into tumors and light up when surrounding cancer cells start dying. Future iterations of these lab-made particles could allow doctors to monitor the effects of cancer treatment in real time, researchers report the week of March 28 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.