Wow, just wow! This is an image of the Crescent Moon about to occult the crescent Venus. Go straight to Astronomy Picture of the Day for full details, or visit Edar Ivan's astrophogoraphy site.
We're pretty animated here at Astroblog. First it was V838 Mon, then comet M4 Swan, then the Orionids and of course, Jupiter Mercury and the Moon. Now it's sunrise on the Moon. Before I give you the link, look at the images above. In these shots, taken 3.5 hours apart, you can see the crater shadows shrink and a crater wall light up as the Sun rises on the Moon. I was inspired to do the animation partly by the great animation fest just experienced, and partly because the Virtual Moon Atlas showed the terminator between craters Albategnius and Ptolemaeus.
As you can see from the screen shot the terminator appeared to light up the base of Ptolamaeus (and illuminate the central peak of Arzachel (not on this image, but in the animation) at 10:15 pm local time.. So I set up the scope at 7:30 pm local time and took images approximately every 15 minutes. I say approximately, as Smallest one woke up and wandered out. "Stars Daddy" uttered next to my elbow was the first intimation that he was not tucked up in bed, so I spent another half hour cuddling him to sleep. The Oldest One woke up, too excited by his school camp the next day. So I spent another half hour putting him to bed again as well.
Without anymore ado, here is the Animation.
One one channel, "The Space Race", at the same time "Most of our Universe is Missing". Which to watch? Or shhoul I just image the Moon?
The IMO Orionids preliminary data has come out, and they had a ZHR or 40+ for the 21st and 23rd, and 50+ for the 22nd. Predicted ZHR's wre in the region of 20. A fantastic animation of the Orionids as seen from Melbourne, Australia (despite the light pollution) has been producedby Bert Van Donkelaar. Animations of the period 21-22 October and 22-23 October can be seen at the linked Ice In Space forums. (Tip of the hat to Bellatrix).
Stunning comet M4 Swan images.
Comet M4 SWAN is still in outburst, athough fading. Over at astrostudio you can see this stunning image of the comet taken by Michael Jaeger. There is also an amazing animation from the 16th. Dave P has an account of his observation of the comet. Here are some sketches from Martin Mc Kenna. Carey Johnson has a rather interesting view of the comet.
The BAA has a podcast and animated spotters map of the comet.
Run, don't walk, to Stuart's Astronomy Blog to see this amazing movie Stuart has made from the Hubble images of the gas shell around V838 Monocerotis.
Yet another in my famous series of dark murky shots with tiny dots in them. Click on the image to enlarge it and you will see near the top left, the start of a -6 Iridium flare. In our last exciting installment of "dark murky shots with tiny dots in them" our hero had caught the tail end of a -6 flare by aiming the remote the wrong way. This time everything was set up prefectly, except I presssed the button a tad early, and the automatic "6 seconds and no longer" dark exposure cut off just before the flare was at its brightest.
I have to invest in a talking clock with second accuracy, I think.
Both Tom and the Bad Astronomer have blogged this, but I'm going to as well. Spirit has been parked on a ridge during winter, when the solar intensity has been too low to give it a lot of power. During this time it snapped the above 360 degree panorama (slowly, it took 119 Sols to complete). It's truely stunning. As well, Spirit has passed its 1000th Sol (Martian Day), not bad for something designed to last only 90 Sols.
As Martian Spring approaches, Spirit will be gearing up to do more science. Next week it will drive to some rocks that may be the result of a volcanic eruption.
For high resolution images and the original press release, see here. For a stunning 3D anaglyph picture, where the rocks jump out at you, see here (you neeed coulour 3D glasses though). A good New Scientist article is here.
Mercury and Jupiter (bright dots near the horizon) gleam in the twilight, while above the crescent Moon glows under Antares (click to enlarge).
Despite missing the Moon, Mercury Jupiter lineup, I got to see this wonderful display. I even made an animation of it (WARNING 3.6 Mb gif file).
I've finished my Mercury/Jupiter conjunction campaign now. I've got a bit over a weeks images to collate and overlay, maybe I'll make an animation of them too.
Comet M4 Swan in Outburst.
Comet M4 Swan is in outburst, and is currently magniude 4.5, visible to the unaided eye. See spaceweather.com for spotters maps and details. Unfortunately, it is visible only in the northern hemisphere. See here, here and here for recent images. This is also a great video here.
Over at the Planetary Society Weblog, Emily Lakdawalla reports that Messenger survived its encounter with Venus. Not that you would know this from the Messenger site, the news there hasn't been updated since September. Memo to Messenger outreach people, plucky little spacecraft on long voyage does dangerous manouver far from Earth, thats news folks.
Today the Solar obesrving satellites STEREO will be launched, and the gamma ray telescope GLAST launches in October 2007.
Tonight the clouds squatted on the horizon like malignant toads, preventing me seeing the lineup of the Moon, Mercury and Jupiter. So I'm posting an image from last night of an Iridium flare that almost got away (naturally tonight's was clouded out too). Click the image to enlarge it. The flare is the bright trail off to the left, the two bright stars are alpha and beta Crucis.
After the successful capture of the ISS passes, I resolved to capture an Iridium flare with my digital camera. Because the flares are so short in duration, you need careful timing to catch them when your exposure time is fixed at 6 seconds.
From Adelaide we have been treated to a series of bright Iridium flares happening almost due South, but only around 18 degrees above the horizon. On Saturday I missed the flare completely, on Sunday I was still setting up my camera when the flare appeared. So on Monday, I had got out early to set up and was waiting confidently as the flare began. I pushed the remote ... and nothing happened. Several increasingly panicked pushes later I noticed that the IR beam was facing AWAY from the camera. A quick reverse and I was able to capture the tail end of the flare (fading from -6). Better luck next time.
The Messenger probe, en route to Mercury, was supposed to flyby Venus today. However, there is absolutely no news of the encounter on the Messenger home page. Over at the Planetary society Weblog, it would appear not much will come from this encounter with Venus. As Venus is nearly at opposition, the probe will be out of contact with Earth as it zooms past, making it hard to do any science. So it is unlikely we will have any breathtaking images.
For those of you left brereft by this, the JPL Solar System Simulator has added Messenger to its list of spacecraft, so you can see Venus from the point of view of Messenger as it goes by.
Some interesting reports to keep the life on Mars controversy bubbling. Experiments with bacteria from extreme environments show that they can survive under the conditions of current Mars soil. As well, experiments have shown that the Viking Lander Mass Spectrometer, which was supposed to pick up evidence of organic matter on Mars, was too insensitive. It was unable to detect the organics in soil from Antarctic dry valleys, where there are indeed living, respiring bacteria. So there still remains the possibility that Martian bacteria are hiding in the soils there (I won't get excited until Martian bacteria are actually cultured, myself).
As well, check out this great virtual reality flyby of the Face on Mars, courtesy of the ESA (hat tip to the Bad Astronomer).
Does Blogger support IFRAME? I am completely dedicated to SkyMap Pro as my astronomy charting software, but it does cost the odd bob or two. Cartes du Ceil is a free program which work rather nicely (after you sort out what downloads where). However, if you have a JAVA enabled web browser, try out SkyView Cafe. It's a little slow over dialup lines, and not as full featured as a commercial application, but it is free, configurable and works quite nicely indeed. Drop into the SkyView Cafe homepage for more information.
The Blogger server went belly up last night, it's working now, but the RSS feed is munged. I've tried reloading it, but to no avail. Hopefully this will resolve itself soon, but at the moment there is no working RSS feed for this blog (grrr).
UPDATE: Unfair to blogger! Copying and pasting from MS word caused some of Words loopy HTML nonsense to be incorportaed, which mucked up the XML code. Hand cut out the characters and all was fine.
I see lots of interesting things about astronomy and Science that I would love to blog, but time just gets away. Here's a list of things that I found interesting in Astronomy news and Blogs.
The hottest story was the reports that there may be no ice in the deep craters on the Moon.
Lunar landers and space elevators.
Check out this Astronomy Picture of the Day of the Orionids.
Comet T1 levy is a recently discovered periodic comet (5.22 years) that may have some interesting meteor showers associated with it. There is a possibility that there will be an outburst (althought not strong) in the constellation Cephus on the last day of 2006 (31-12-06) and possibly one in 2009. More will be certain when the orbit is refined with further observations.
The Leonids this year may be interesting, one prediction is for possibly a ZHR of 100 or more around November 19, 4h45m. A more pessimistic prediction is for a ZHR of 35 around November 19, 4h55m UT.
Still with the moon almost new, it will be worth watching.
Saturn and Regulus (alpha Leonis) shine in the morning sky, as the ISS emerges from behind a palm tree (click to enlarge).
I had planned to get up on Sunday so I could do a 2 am to 4 am watch. In the end I dragged myself out of bed after 2.30 am, and by the time I got my gear assembled, I only started looking seriously between 3.00 am-4.00 am.
But what a session it was, I saw 21 Leonids in an hour. With a limiting magnitude of 5.5, and the radiant never getting more than 38 degrees above the horizon, that means the ZHR was substantially more than the 23 predicted. Indeed reports coming in from around the world suggest that the Orionids were in outburst, with at least a ZHR of 30.
But I saw some beauties, I saw two bright meteors shooy between the Hyades and Pleaides (of course my camera wasn't pointing that way). I saw a brilliant -6 fireball shoot straight down to the North), I saw some brilliant long trained meteors and as I ended the session, two Orioids shot out together. This was an excellent session. Unlike Saturday, when the trains were relative short and the meteors didn't go far from the radiant, these ones covered large chunks of the sky. I had the film camera covering the triangle between Orion, Sirius and Procyon, where most of the meteor action was on Saturday, but on SUnday the fireworks started outside that area (sigh). As well, I picked up 5 sporadics (one rather bright) and three satellites. A very busy and rather beautiful morning. Even wehn I was packing up the camra, a beautfiul meteor zoomed by, not a bad moring at all.
Over at the Ice-in Space Orionid forum it looks like other Asutralians have been having good sessions as well (scroll down to the bottom).
My Orionid session didn't start too well, the whole northern sky was covered in cloud when I got up. It cleared by 4 am, with Orion sparkiling in the predawn dark I was immediately rewarded by a long, bright Orionid. I got a view of the -5 Iridium flare as well. In the next 15 minutes I saw 5 Orionids , mostly bright but short, one very bright sporadic and a satellite. The following 15 minutes saw the sky beining to lighten, and I saw only two Orionids, one bright one dim. By 4:30 the sky was well and truly lightening, but I still saw one long Orionid accompanied by birds greeting the dawn. Then I watched the ISS skim under Saturn, and packed up.
Tommorow morning I plan to get started around 2, and maybe get the film camera out for a long exposure.
On the morning of November 9, New Zealand, Australia and East Asia will see Mercury pass in front of the Sun. I've created a webpage with details of when to look, and what to look with. Pop in, have a read, and get ready for the last transit of Mercury visible form Australia until 2032.
The north-eastern horizon looking north east at 4:46 am from Adelaide on Saturday 21 October (click to enlarge).
As I wrote before, there are several other things to entertain us as we watch for Orioinids in the early hours of the morning on Saturday and Sunday. In Adelaide, there is a -5 irridium flare in the north-west at 3:56 am on Saturday, then the ISS passes below Saturn at 4:46 am. Most of South Australia and the Southern Northern Territory sees this. In Alice Springs the ISS passes between Saturn and Regulus at 4:43 am. In Brisbane there is a -1 Iridium flare on Saturday at 3:33 am in the northwest, and the ISS passes above Saturn on Sunday about 4:03 am. Most of the rest of the East Coast and Darwin is dissapointing in terms of the ISS or Iridiums, but check Heavens Above closer to the date for updated information for your site.
As well, there is a coronal hole on the Sun pointing our way. A stream of charged particles is expected to hit sometime around the 21st, so when out looking for Orionids on Saturday and Sunday, keep an eye out to the south for possible aurora in you are in Tasmania or Southern Victoria.
Also, don't forget to check out the SOHO Lasco C3 camera on the 22nd for the lineup of Mars, Venus and the Moon.
The difference bitwene pyracie and academicks ys so smalle that eyther opcioun shalle haue for yow the same resultes. Yn both cases, ye werke yn cramped condiciouns, and vndir tyme constrayntes, and do face manye folke who wolde fayne nat haue yow ther, and yet ye haue felaweshipe, and a grete deale of strong drinke, and eek a specialisede vocabularie the whiche othir peple vndirstonden nat. Al thogh fewe academicks weare eye-patches.
As an academic, that tickles my fancy. I should start wearing eyepstchs to committe meetings.
The morning sky as seen in the Southern Hemisphere, facing northeast at 2.00 am.
The Orionids are a fairly reliable meteor shower that somewhat favours the Southern Hemisphere. This year the moon is new during the maximum, so we have a good chance to see some decent Orionids for the first time in ages.
The Orionids peak in the early UT morning of the 21st, for Australians, this means the peak is in the middle of the day on 21st, and the best time to observe is early morning on Sunday the 22nd. However as the Orionid peak is broad, watching on the early morning of Saturday 21 will work too.
The radiant, the point where meteors appear to originate from, is just below Betelgeuse, alpha Orionis, below the distinctive saucepan shape of Orions Belt.
Although Orion rises before midnight, you will need to wait until around 2 am before the radiant is high enough to see significant meteor action. The ZHR for this years Orionids is 23, but for most of the night you could expect to see around one meteor every 5 minutes. The Orionids aren't particularly bright (which is a pain in the inner suburbs), but every so often you should see a nice one.
When watching, rug up well (it will get cold), and get yourself a comfy chair or banana lounge and scan the sky around the radiant. Although the meteors seem to originate there, when traced back, you will usually pick them up some distance away, so sweep around the area to pick up meteors. Give yourself a little while for your eyes to accommodate, the first five minutes or so in the dark will be wasted as your eyes dark adapt.
While watching for Orionids, keep an eye out for Satellites, if you are watching in the Central states, from about Alice Springs down, on the 21st at around 4:44 am the ISS passes under Saturn. Should be nice.
Of the 210 exoplanets discovered so far, around 10% of them scream around their Suns in tight orbits, much closer than Mercury is to our Sun. This has earned them the nickname "hot Jupiters" (as they are almost all Jupiter sized or above)*.
Upsilon Andromedae b , is such a world. At 69% the mass of Jupiter, it s year is just under five days long. Although this world must be tidally locked to its Sun (hence always having the same side face the Sun), massive jet streams in its super-heated atmosphere would redistribute the heat, making the planet an even temperature.
However, the latest data from the Spitzer Infra-Red telescope suggest that this is not the case.
Spitzer looked for fluctuations in the infrared intensity of Upsilon Andromedae and found that it fluctuated with the orbital period of Upsilon Andromedae. If the night and day side of this planet were similar, then they would have seen no fluctuations, but as they did, this suggests that the night and day sides of the planet are very different temperatures (See this page for cool videos of the orbit). The day and night sides of the planet differ by about 1,400 degrees Celsius. This means that the hot atmosphere from the bright side must dramatically cool as it circulates. Quite how this happens is not clear.
Back in the 90's the idea that we could every detect planets around other world seemed incredible. Now we can measure the contents of their atmospheres and watch their night and day progress. That's amazing.
Comet M4 Swan is still giving the northern hemispherians some good views (scroll to the bottom of the Cometography page for some new images). The lead picture on Cometography even turned up on Astronomy Picture of the Day. Here's another nice image, one showing jets, and a cute animation.
Speaking of comets, drop into the Cometary Archive for Amateur Astronomers, a useful resource site for people interested in comet photometery.
Mars, Venus and Spica all near the Sun as seen by the SOHO Lasco C3 camera. Mars will be at its closest on the 23rd, but will probaly disappear behind the occulting disk before then. The line up of Moon, Mars and Venus on the 22nd probably won't work if Mars is behind the occulting disk. Might catch the edge of it in the C2 camera thhough.
Anyway, have a look at the recent videos low (198k) and high (1.2 Mb) resolution. The cosmic ray flashes make it a bit difficult to follow, but you can see stars down to magnitude 4.5 at least.
In the early morning on Tuesday 17th, Saturn, the Moon and the bright star Spica from an attractive triangle in the head of Leo the Lion in the north east. Best seen between 4 and 5 am.
Mercury Rises [the two bright "stars" at the bottom] as Jupiter sinks under the head of the Scorpion (click to enlarge).
Over the coming week Jupiter and Mercury come together, being at their closest on the Friday 20th. This should be a very attractive sight (it looks pretty good at the moment), with both Mercury and Jupiter being very distinctive. Then on the following Tuesday, (24th) the Moon, Mercury and Jupiter line up.
I am tryig to make an animation of this, the problems being that a) I have to try and go out and snap pcitures during dinner, not cool and b) I was trying yo use a fixed arcitectural feature as a reference, so I could get star movement as well as planet movement. However, even though I have a point to set my camera up, eeven minor devation from night to night make it impossible to align correctly (GRRRR).
Oh, well. I'll try centring it on alpha Librae or something. Still should look nice.
There is, I promise. There were two good Iridium flares this "evening", a -5 and a -2, both occuring withing 4 minutes of each other, and nearly side by side in location. Unfortunately, they occured 10 and 14 minutes after Sunset respectively, well before the end of civil twilight.
But I set the camera up anyway, and in between SkyMap and Heavens Above, I was able to see the flares burst from the blue. It was pretty amazing, the flare was of course much more fleeting than those I have seen when properly dark, but they were very clear.
Sadly, the brightness of the sky was a bit overwhelming for my poor camera, which recorded only clear skies.
My next task is to see a daytime flare.
Remember RedSpot Jr? The mini red spot (about the size of Earth) that formed from the merger of three smaller storms has not only survived its passing of the Great Red Spot, but is now as red as the GRS itself, and its winds have grown stronger. They now reach 400 miles per hour. This suggests the storm is growing stronger and Red Spot Jr. will be around for some time. The Hubble press release with more details is here.
At work of Friday I recieved a letter from Arthur C. Clarke. It was a mass mailout letter to be sure, getting me to do a survey for, and perhaps join, the Planetary Society. But even so, I was mildly chuffed that I had been chosen to be part of this mailout, but how was I chosen? Did they complie a list of all astrobloggers? Or people who contribute to Astronomy magazines? But Puxzzlement arose, I don't list my Uni address in any of my astronomy work, so how did they find me? Then my PhD student popped his head around the door "Hey, do you know anything about the Planetary Society?"
Yes, it looks like they got university staff lists from somewhere, and mailed it to everyone at every university. So much for being special.
Your copies of Sky&Space are here (a delay due to production problems). Go here and send me an email with an appropriate contact address* and your copy of Sky& Space will be on its way. John, I'll bring a copy up with me in September.
Some very nice posts, if you haven't seen them. Stuart on the critical density of the Universe (apparently the universe would float on water), some nice images of M15 from Tom, the return of Dirty Skies, and nice Lunar Image during the Pleides occultation from Top o' the Lawn, and lastly, a great article from the Bad Astronomer on the alignment of the dust disk around epsilon Eriadani (beloved of science fiction writers) and its planet.
No, not lastly, you also have Respectful Insolence on people who sue over alien abductions.
Saturn as you have never seen it.
This stunning image is from Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer. The bright patches are actually cloud clearings, glowing with heat from deep within Saturn. There are a number of interesting features, such as the dark "donuts", but the outstanding feature is the "String of Pearls". The regular line of alternating dark and light features. This line of clearings stretches over 60,000 kilometers, which is pretty amazing. Exactly how this regular feature is produced is not certain, but it is long lasting, having beeen around for several months. See the NASA site for more details and a higher resolution image, or this New Scientist news article.
Not boggled enough? Head over to the Bad Astronomer NOW for the Best.Saturn.Picture.EVAH!
This is a nice binocular comet at the moment ... for the northern hemisphere. So us Southerners can enjoy these images from R Vandenberg and M Mobberley.
These are some images I took back in August, and never got around to posting. This is my favorite goup of craters. One day I'm going to image them when the Sun is just right.
The craters are (in ascnding order) Theophylis (the equivalent of cafffine in tea is Theophyline BTW), Cyrillus and Catharina.
One of my better moon mosaics (alt least in terms of clarity and overlap), click on the image to enlarge it. The seeing was almost pefect when imaging this night.
While on the subject of the ISS, pop over to Ed Morana's ISS transit page to see a truly amazing ISS transit of the Moon. The main page has a variety of animations as well, like this MPG.
ISS, Mercury and Jupiter, double wow!
I was idly checking if there were any current ISS passes in my area, when I found that the ISS was about to pass between Jupiter and Mercury in two minutes time! So I grabbed my camera and tripod, rushed outside and feverishly set up the camera. Just as I was ready, the ISS appeared, and I got off these shots. The ISS was a lot brighter than it appears in the image, due to the method I used for overlaying the images. This animation is much better at conveying what it is like (warning 3 Mb). After taking my shots I watched the station pass delta and alpha Ophici and on through Cygnus. A truly amazing encounter on a moments notice.
Where's Mars and Venus Now?
Right now, Mars and Venus are too close to the Sun to observe. In this LASCO C3 image, with the Sun occulted out, Venus is the bright object on the right with the spike artefact running through it, and Mars is the brightish dot in almost the same position directly opposite. This animation (220k) gives you a good idea of how they are moving, and here is a larger animation (1.4 Mb).
Very interesting encounters happen in a couple of weeks time that can only bee seen via the SOHO C3 camera. On October 22, Mars, Venus, the Sun, the Moon and the bright Star Spica are all in a circle 5 degrees across (see image below). On the 23rd Mars is in conjunction, and on the 26th Mars and Venus are at their closest.
Alignment of Mars, Venus, Moon Spica and the Sun on the 22nd (generated in Skymap). I am not sure how the Moon will look in the C3 camera though. On the 19th, Mars Spica, Venus and the Moon all lie withing a circle 3.5 degrees in diameter.
The October issue of Southern Skywatch is now up. Sorry its late folks, but while on Secret Family Business I was 10 days without computer or internet connection, and then I had to catch up with lots of work stuff. Anyway, this month Mercury and Jupiter meet up, the Orionids may give us a nice meteor sjhower, and the Moon makes some intetesting patterns with Mercury and Saturn.
I.m off to pick up the Bettdeckererschnappender Wiesle and the boys from the airport now, catch you later.


20 unwritten reviews! I want to cry for you! But it sounds like you had a fantastic July – two trips AND birthday parties!
I'm right up there with you on the number of unwritten reviews, but not all are actual review copies that I received, so probably many of them will never get written! So sorry about the hacking.


For a full description of courses, including prerequisites, see the registrar's course catalog.
In-depth study of one topic in astronomy with emphasis on key discoveries. Topics may be cosmology, the solar system, and the life of stars.
Origin and nature of the solar system. Planets of the solar system and other star systems. Determination of time and celestial coordinates. Astronomical instruments and observational methods.
Physical processes that determine the structure and evolution of stars. Observations of stars and star clusters. Spectra of stars.
The Milky Way. Structure and content of galaxies. Active galaxies and quasars. The expanding universe. Modern cosmological models.
Design and execute an original experiment or computation. A written and oral report of the research is required.
Relationship between ancient skylore and timekeeping. Establishment of a calendar and celestial navigation. Development of the Greek horoscope as a time recorder and coordinate system.
Role of observation, theory, philosophy, and technology in the development of the modern conception of the universe. The Copernican Revolution. Birth and death of stars. Spaceship Earth. Cosmology and time.
Observations of the sky, laboratory experiments, and computer simulations exploring the development of the modern conception of the universe.


When people see dietitians who eat all foods, they get a bit confused. Why would nutrition experts choose to include oreos and pizza in their diet? Well, us non-diet RDs hear you and we totally get the confusion. Us non-diet RDs have plenty of very good reasons as to why we practice the way we do. And let me tell ya, at one point, we were all baffled by the idea of "food freedom" ourselves. We didn't start our journeys praising Intuitive Eating (IE).


The purpose of this study was to determine if, at the conclusion of a two week nutrition program, students involved in mutual goal setting would exhibit more positive nutrition behaviors than students not involved in mutual goal setting.
Pre-test 24-hour dietary recalls were collected on the experimental group (n = 18) and the control group (n = 19). The experimental group and the investigator then mutually set goals related to dietary practices. Both groups received nutrition education (4 classes). At the conclusion of the education and the mutual goal setting intervention, post-test 24-hour dietary recalls were collected. The data were analyzed using Fisher's Exact Test and descriptive statistics.
The intervention of mutual goal setting did not have a significant effect on the student's dietary intake. Both groups' intakes of dairy, fruits and vegetables, and grains were found to be inadequate at both measurements. Five students (28%) met their food goal for both weeks of the intervention.
Kiefer, Jacquelyn S., "The Effects of Mutual Goal Setting on Fourth-Graders' Adherence to the Food Guide Pyramid Recommendations" (2000). Masters Theses. 614.


You may have been wondering what is happening with the site of the famous "Big Tree" in the centre of the village. Unfortunately the replacement young elm tree planted struggled in what is now a heavily shaded location and eventually died after a number of attempts to revive it. A decision was therefore made to fell the tree and to explore various other more practical and lasting solutions for the site.
Several replacement trees have previously been planted in this location but none have lasted more than a few years. It has therefore been decided to replace the dead tree with a large engraved stone commemorating the original "Big Tree". The chosen stone will be a large local blue lias block standing approximately 1.8m out of the ground, having a Portland stone plaque with an elm tree relief carved into it by a local artist and facing out towards the road. The existing stone surround and seating area will be retained.
It is hoped that the new stone and associated artwork will provide a lasting monument to the "Big Tree" at this important focal point within the village. A local resident has kindly offered to pay all the costs involved, with work scheduled for completion towards the end of summer.
It is worth remembering that trees play an important part in giving the village its character - with a high number of mature trees having a Tree Preservation Order (TPO) registered with the Local Authority. We are currently reviewing the TPO situation to ensure we have an up-to-date record of trees that are protected and to establish if there are any other trees in the village that require similar protection.


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Cruise News: Royal Caribbean Spectrum of the Seas Groundbreaking Features
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Custom built for the Chinese market, Spectrum of the Seas will feature bold and unexpected experiences, including the iconic Sky Pad, a virtual reality, bungee trampoline experience located on the aft of the ship. Guests will strap in and don their VR headset to transport them to another time and planet. The out-of-this-world experience is for guests of all ages, and also can be enjoyed without headsets, for those who prefer to look out over the ocean as they leap toward the sky.
ULTRA-LUXURIOUS, PRIVATE SUITE ENCLAVE
The first Quantum Ultra ship will debut Royal Caribbean's first exclusive suites-only area, which will feature the exquisite Golden and Silver suite accommodations in a private enclave at the forward end of the ship on decks 13 through 16. Vacationers booked in these luxury suites will have special keycard access, a private elevator and a dedicated restaurant and lounge. In addition to a range of exclusive amenities, guests will have access to The Balcony – a private outdoor space for sunbathing and relaxing – that offers the best views on board; and The Boutique, a shopping area where travelers can book private shopping experiences.
For families that want to experience more quality time together, Spectrum of the Seas will introduce the two-level, 2,809-square-foot Ultimate Family Suite, accommodating up to 11 guests. The three-bedroom suite, which will include a master bedroom with a bathroom that extends over the side of the ship to provide unparalleled ocean views, along with two additional suites for grandparents and other family members. Kids have their own kid-friendly space on the upper level, complete with an in-suite slide that will transport them to the living area below. Everyone in the family can enjoy time together in the recreation room, featuring surround-sound equipment for a night of karaoke, movies or video games.
Royal Caribbean Spectrum of the Seas Stateroom
REVOLUTIONARY DINING
Spectrum of the Seas will feature an awe-inspiring three-level main dining room with 1,844 seats to serve a variety of Chinese and Western a la carte options rotating each day of the sailing. For guests looking for a more casual venue, the Windjammer Marketplace – 20 percent larger than those on Quantum Class ships – will offer a wide buffet selection of Chinese and Western dishes, including noodles, pizza, Japanese teppanyaki and mini hot pot.
Vacationers celebrating a special evening can enjoy a new specialty restaurant. Sichuan Red, located in the Royal Esplanade, will serve authentic cuisine from the Sichuan province of China. Royal Caribbean's popular signature restaurants, including Wonderland's Dadong – a new outpost of Chinese chef Dong Zhenxiang, renowned for his much-coveted roast duck dish; Jamie's Italian by British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver; Izumi Japanese cuisine; and Chops Grille will join the lineup as well. In addition, the new Leaf and Bean traditional tea room and café parlor will debut on the Royal Esplanade. The quaint spot will offer a range of authentic Chinese teas, classic coffee drinks as well as freshly baked Chinese and Western desserts and pastries.
ULTRA-TRANSFORMATIVE ENTERTAINMENT EXPERIENCES
New to Royal Caribbean and first on Spectrum of the Seas is Star Moment, a lively and energetic karaoke venue where family and friends can belt out and sing like stars. The cruise line also will enhance SeaPlex – the largest indoor sports and entertainment complex at sea where families can enjoy bumper cars, roller skating and basketball – with new augmented reality walls and floors, providing guests with thrilling, high-tech interactive experiences.
Additional innovations guests will find on board include the North Star, a glass capsule that takes guests more than 300 feet above the ocean for incomparable panoramic views; RipCord by iFly, a heart-pounding skydiving simulator experience; and the FlowRider surfing simulator. Travelers also will be dazzled with Spectrum's cutting-edge and transformative venues, such as Two70 with its expansive floor-to-ceiling windows offering breath-taking 270-degree views of the ocean.
The venue returns with its signature Vistarama technology, which transforms the panoramic windows into a projection surface more than 100 feet wide and over 20 feet tall showcasing spectacular digital shows. The innovative Vistarama is complemented by six agile Roboscreens, measuring over 7 feet tall and controlled by powerful, yet nimble robotic arms that create scenes as they soar and twist solo or as one. This unique state-of-the-art venue serves as a great room for relaxing by day and an immersive, multimedia entertainment spectacular by night.
COMPELLING AND IMMERSIVE ITINERARIES IN ASIA
Royal Caribbean will deliver a more diversified lineup of cruises in the Asia region for 2019, which include new longer sailings with exciting first-time destinations, weekend sailings for quick getaways, warm winter sailings to tropical destinations – to escape the cold weather, and special holiday and festival sailings to discover new cultures and traditions. Guests can choose from 27 unique itineraries, featuring 23 destinations across three countries, departing from ports such as Shanghai, Tianjin, Hong Kong and Shenzhen, China.
When Spectrum of the Seas debuts in April 2019, she will sail a 51-night Global Odyssey from Barcelona, Spain to Shanghai, taking vacationers to 13 countries. Guests with limited time also can choose to sail one or more of the five separate segments of the Global Odyssey. When Spectrum arrives at her new home in Shanghai in June 2019, she will introduce new itineraries with visits to new ports, such as Hakodate and Niigita, Japan; Ilocos, Philippines; and Vladivostok, Russia. In winter 2019, the ship will reposition to Hong Kong to offer special holiday cruises.
Meanwhile, the iconic and widely popular Quantum of the Seas will sail her farewell season from Shanghai before moving to Tianjin in summer 2019. Voyager of the Seas is set to return to Hong Kong and Shenzhen for the summer, and will sail a variety of itineraries calling on Vietnam, Japan and the Philippines.
These new Spectrum of the Seas itineraries and more are now open for sale.
Royal Caribbean Spectrum of the Seas
Royal Caribbean International is an award-winning global cruise brand with a 49-year legacy of innovation and introducing industry "firsts" never before seen at sea. The cruise line features an expansive and unmatched array of features and amenities only found on Royal Caribbean, including jaw-dropping entertainment and industry-acclaimed programming that appeals to families and adventurous vacationers alike. On board, guests are catered to with the cruise line's world-renowned friendly and engaging service by every staff and crew member. Royal Caribbean has been voted "Best Cruise Line Overall" for 15 consecutive years in the Travel Weekly Readers Choice Awards.
The cruise line sails 25 of the world's most innovative cruise ships to the most popular destinations in Bermuda and the Caribbean, Europe, Canada and New England, Alaska, South America, Asia, and Australia and New Zealand. Media can stay up-to-date by following @RoyalCaribPR on Twitter, and visiting RoyalCaribbeanPressCenter.com. For additional information or to make reservations, vacationers should call their travel agent; visit RoyalCaribbean.com; or call (800) ROYAL-CARIBBEAN.
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A Question of Priorities
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By Caroline Hendrie — October 31, 2006 11 min read
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Stains , France -
It's not hard to imagine what a newly assigned teacher from the French provinces might feel when first setting foot in Collège Maurice Thorez.
Located in the heart of a public-housing complex with a particularly forbidding reputation, the 720-student school is a far cry from the Louvre, the Champs Élysées, and the other glittering Parisian destinations most Americans associate with France.
Each September brings a flood of new faces to the four-building campus, and not just the usual influx of students. Freshly minted teachers arrive from all corners of the country to replace the large contingent that decamped the previous spring. Though the Eiffel Tower is just seven miles away, many new recruits face a culture shock when they land in the Cité du Clos Saint-Lazare, the housing complex whose faded facades loom beyond the schools' peeling iron fence.
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"At the end of a year, they take off," lamented Ali Ben Youssef, who at 33 is the school's senior math teacher. "And then, everything starts over at zero."
This year, though, staff members feel they might finally have the means to reduce their sky-high rate of teacher turnover, as well as the discipline problems, low student-achievement levels, and other challenges that help drive their colleagues away.
The campus has been designated as one of 249 middle schools nationwide granted special priority under an initiative announced after a wave of street violence a year ago that riveted international attention on poor neighborhoods such as Clos Saint-Lazare and the largely immigrant families that live in them.
Listen to an interview with Assistant Managing Editor Caroline Hendrie about her recent visit to France to report on the impact on the country's education system of the youth riots that swept the country last year. The suburban riots created front page news stories around the globe in 2005, and most recently in 2006 as violence has flared up once again. Hendrie talks about what has changed, and what has not, as a result of the widespread violence.
The venture refocuses the extra resources granted to needy schools under France's 25-year-old program of "priority education" on a subset of campuses—dubbed ambition réussite, or ambition success—deemed to face the gravest disadvantages. The project is part of a package of educational and social service projects targeting unemployment and other social ills afflicting the poor neighborhoods gripped by violence last fall.
Whether ambition réussite amounts to much, experts say, may well hinge on the efforts of the 1,000 teachers, including Mr. Youssef, who are point people for turning its vision of school improvement into reality on the ground. Known as enseignants référents, the teachers are pursuing a diverse portfolio of projects as part of a push to encourage local experimentation on how best to reach students in environments long marred by lagging achievement.
Many of the teachers are candid about the factors conspiring against them: the discouraging social disadvantages their students face, uncertainty about just where to focus their own energies, and skepticism among many of their colleagues about whether their positions should even exist.
Yet they also see their jobs as a chance not to be wasted. Freed up from some of their classroom teaching duties—a point of contention with leaders of their union—they are using those hours for tasks they and their colleagues never had time for before. Some are analyzing test-score data, for example, and then scheduling small-group remedial sessions accordingly. Others are meeting with parent groups, forging partnerships with community organizations, or providing support to newly arrived colleagues. And whatever the project, they are emphasizing teamwork.
"They have brought us flexibility," said Guy Séguin, the principal of Collège Elsa Triolet, another school labeled ambition réussite. "It's created a new dynamic."
Both Maurice Thorez and Elsa Triolet are located in the académie of Créteil, the second-largest school district in France, with 855,000 precollegiate students in an area of nearly 4 million inhabitants.
On the Outskirts
Many of the schools receiving extra resources are in the Paris suburbs, where large concentrations of poor and immigrant children live.
The district encompasses three county-sized départements, including Seine-Saint-Denis, which contains Stains, and Val-de-Marne, where Elsa Triolet is located in the town of Champigny-sur-Marne.
Seine-Saint-Denis, with some 1.4 million residents, is the poorest of the départements encircling Paris. It was there that street violence ignited after two teenagers from African-immigrant families were accidentally electrocuted on Oct. 27, 2005, while trying to hide from police in a power substation.
That incident touched off weeks of unrest that spread to poor neighborhoods around the country. The government estimates that 10,000 cars were burned, some 200 public buildings, including schools, were damaged, and 130 police officers were injured on duty.
Here in Stains, on the night and early morning of Nov. 3-4 alone, a fire was started in an elementary school, two buses were stoned, one bus was burned, and a group of some 40 young people faced off with police. Someone even tried to set the mayor's car on fire while he talked to young people inClos Saint-Lazare. The city was also the site of one of the only deaths to occur amid the rioting, when a local resident died after a scuffle on Nov. 7 of last year.
All that turmoil was felt at the school, which educates children from 68, mostly African, countries. "Lots of incivility, an attempted arson," and other problems occurred, Mr. Youssef recalled during a recent meeting with school staff members. Three teachers ended up leaving midyear after run-ins with aggressive students, and the faculty went on strike for several days last winterto demand more resources for the school.
"It was the worst year of the whole decade that I've been here," said Mr. Youssef, who, like others in this story, spoke in French.
In that atmosphere, the district of Créteil set about identifying schools to be placed in the top-priority category under ambition réussite. Teachers in some schools, like Maurice Thorez, agitated to be granted that status, while in others, they protested against it.
Such objections were concentrated in some parts of Seine-Saint-Denis, where the political left is strong and teachers' union leaders oppose the country's right-of-center administration. Participation in the initiative was not optional, though, and Seine-Saint-Denis wound up with 16 of the district's 21 top-priority clusters—each made up of an anchor middle school, known here as a collège, and its feeder preschool and elementary sites.
One hallmark of ambition réussite is that all 1,000 enseignants référents are to have substantial experience in disadvantaged schools. For Martin Dufour, a school inspector responsible for carrying out the initiative in the Créteil district, finding those teachers hasn't been easy.
Higher Ambitions
France's recent overhaul of its "priority education" program for schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods aims to refocus resources on the sites whose students face the most pressing needs. The initiative, dubbed ambition réussite, or ambition success, features a range of policy changes affecting schools and students.
■ Program includes 249 schools serving roughly 129,300 students in grades 6-9, or about 5 percent of French enrollment for those grades, along with 1,606 preschool and elementary sites serving 262,500 pupils, or 3.2 percent of the total.
■ Schools are organized into networks, each made up of one middle school and its feeder preschools and primary schools. Each network must sign a four- or five-year contract with its school district detailing its improvement plans.
■ Networks receive a nationwide total of 1,000 experienced teachers given reduced teaching loads and schoolwide missions to coordinate efforts to raise student achievement. They are supported by 3,000 additional teachers' aides.
■ Each middle school chooses a theme—such as foreign languages, sports, arts, environmental studies, or science and technology—through which it aims to distinguish itself.
■ Starting in grade school, students get individual proficiency reports based on skills and knowledge outlined in national academic standards. One goal is to prevent students from having to repeat grades.
■ After-school study sessions are offered four nights a week, supervised by teachers-in-training, outside contractors, or volunteer teachers. Middle school students also receive extra career education.
■ Students with strong scores on national proficiency tests at the end of middle school, the equivalent of U.S. 9th grade, receive waivers allowing them to enroll in high schools outside their attendance areas.
SOURCE: French Ministry of National Education
"I've solicited some excellent teachers who have told me, 'I can't because in my school nobody would ever talk to me again,' " he said during an interview in the district headquarters in the city of Créteil. Mr. Dufour thinks the national Education Ministry would have had more luck selling the initiative to teachers if it had stated from the start that enseignants référents would still have classroom teaching duties, to counter the perception that the government was trying to anoint some teachers as quasi-administrators.
"The unions spread the idea of the 'superprof,' the Zorro of pedagogy, the teacher who would give lessons to his colleagues and wouldn't have any students," Mr. Dufour said. "The idea that there would be missions that weren't uniquely administrative—such as the support of young teachers—was not well understood."
He also thinks the incentives offered—extra points toward transfers and promotions for teachers who serve five years—were not all that attractive. "When you're already in a difficult middle school, to take on five more years seems like the end of the world," he said.
Around the country, schools were still working in August to fill some 250 of the 1,000 posts, according to the nation's major union of secondary school teachers, the Syndicat National des Enseignements de Second Degré, or SNES. Though most of those posts had been filled as of last month, the union said novice teachers had been tapped for some spots.
In the Créteil district, all but two of the 84 enseignants référents had been chosen as of last month. On average, they have nine years of experience, said Bernard Saint-Girons, the district's schools chief. "It's not true that we've put in beginners."
Still, faculty members of four of the district's 21 ambition réussite middle schools were still refusing last month to go along with the initiative. All are in Seine-Saint-Denis.
Read related stories,
Teachers' Network Works to Prevent Deportations
In Wake of Riots, France Refashions Priority Zones
Laurence Derrey, a union leader at one of those schools, Collège Jean Vilar, located next door to Stains in La Courneuve, said a faculty vote last May found 76 percent against the initiative. Another vote taken last month, she said, found two-thirds were still opposed.
Like other union leaders, Ms. Derrey said the teachers should have classroom duties equal to those of their colleagues, and that the extra personnel should instead be used to lower class sizes for everyone. "We need 18 or 19 students per class instead of 25," she said.
"I have been in difficult areas for a long time, and I've never met a teacher who wasn't interested in changing their approach," she continued. "We all want to try new things, but we run into failure because of class sizes."
Ms. Derrey also argues that it's unfair that enseignants référents can meet with colleagues as part of their jobs, while regular teachers have to attend such meetings on their own time.
At Collège Elsa Triolet, Laurence Cerchiari said she has run into such concerns as a former elementary teacher now stationed at the middle school as enseignant référent.
One of the "wide gulfs" between the elementary and secondary levels, she said, is that primary school teachers "don't count their hours." At the middle school, she said, she's found it hard to motivate some teachers to stay for meetings outside the 18 hours per week they are expected to teach.
"There are those who've said to me, 'I've done my 18 hours,' " Ms. Cerchiari said. Still, she sees progress: "We are starting to understand that we cannot work all alone."
Like Collège Maurice Thorez, Elsa Triolet is located in the middle of a government-built housing complex that originally sheltered workers in factories that have since shut down. The complex, the Cité du Bois l'Abbé, is now populated mainly by poor immigrants from a wide range of African countries.
The 550-pupil campus is in better shape than that of Maurice Thorez, where the three-story classroom building is slated to be renovated in 2010, and an adjoining two-story administration building is due to be razed altogether. Elsa Triolet, by contrast, was recently renovated and expanded, and its brightly painted corridors gleam with natural light.
The principal, Mr. Séguin, says he feels safe in Cité du Bois l'Abbé, a mix of high-rise and lower-elevation apartment buildings with more than 8,600 residents. "The neighborhood feels almost like a village," he said.
Yet the cité is enclosed by a circular street that cuts it off from nearby neighborhoods of single-family homes, some of which have the feel of a typical American suburb. The street serves as a border that children of the cité rarely cross, Mr. Séguin said.
"They come from all over, and many don't speak French," he said. New students enter school all year long, he said, and some move often from the home of one relative to the next.
This year, educators at Elsa Triolet are trying a variety of projects aimed at showing students more of France beyond the cité, the principal said, to kindle their ambition to pursue further studies and "to open their minds."
"There's something at stake behind this," Mr. Séguin said, "and that's citizenship. Through education, you can touch everything else."
At Maurice Thorez, Mr. Youssef harbors similar goals. He feels lucky this year, he said, because other teachers at his school are largely supportive of ambition réussite.
Now he has time to pursue projects he couldn't in the past. Like many of his counterparts in the United States, he wants to make better use of new software tools to slice and dice test-score data. This year, he said, he has been scrutinizing results from the national test given to incoming middle schoolers and then dividing students into remedial groups based on those results.
"Last year, I would have been incapable of doing that," Mr. Youssef said.
That kind of nitty-gritty work is what it will take for the government's plans to pay off, said Mr. Saint-Girons, the district's schools chief. The experienced teachers need both to help introduce approaches tailored to their school populations and do a better job of helping younger teachers learn their craft under trying circumstances, he said.
As for those teachers who reject the government's approach, "they can change jobs," he said. "We're a free country. … If we want to save priority education, it's necessary to accept this new stage."
For Bernard Vincent, the newly appointed principal of Maurice Thorez, the first year of the initiative should be about trying new things, while not letting the "ambition" part of ambition réussite get out of hand.
"It's better to do less, but do it well, than to rush off in all directions and get nowhere," he said. "We'll try, we'll feel our way, and then among all the actions we have tried, maybe some will be continued and others will be abandoned or changed.
"If we had miraculous remedies," Mr. Vincent added, "we would have put them in place a long time ago."
Caroline Hendrie
Caroline Hendrie was an assistant managing editor for Education Week.
Urban Education Immigrants
A version of this article appeared in the November 01, 2006 edition of Education Week as A Questionof Priorities
School Climate & Safety In Wake of Riots, France Refashions Priority Zones
Caroline Hendrie, October 31, 2006
Equity & Diversity Opinion The Forgotten History of Immigration
William Celis, October 3, 2006
International Unrest in France Has Warning for Precollegiate System
Caroline Hendrie, May 23, 2006
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These Celebrities Offered Some Crazy Conspiracy Theories After Jeffrey Epstein Suicide
Jeffrey Epstein was in a world of trouble after he was charged with having countless nude photos of underage women and being charged with child sex trafficking.
Epstein was likely to spend the rest of his time on Earth behind bars because the evidence was clear-cut, found in his safe that would amount to significant time in prison for the 66-year-old.
And the billionaire was just found dead in his prison cell by an alleged suicide and these celebrities offered up some crazy conspiracy theories that included President Trump.
The presumption that Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide and the factors surrounding his death are skeptical at best. The media understandably has to be careful about what they can say in light of his cause of death. Otherwise they can face libel and slander lawsuits.
But it's really suspicious and it's fair to say that most people familiar with the case don't believe it to be suicide for a multitude of reasons.
Epstein allegedly had many parties with underage women with powerful people that could possibly go to extreme lengths to keep him silent.
He attempted to commit suicide a couple weeks ago and then was suspiciously taken off suicide watch.
The camera equipment mysteriously didn't work.
Prison guards oddly didn't make their regular checks.
Attorney General William Barr admitted he was appalled and would oust any co-conspirators if there was any foul play.
Of course, both "#ClintonBodyCount" and "#TrumpBodyCount" trended on Twitter once the news broke.
Liberals and Hollywood celebrities perpetuated that the suspicious circumstances of Epstein's suicide was Trump doing the most heinous crime imaginable.
Debra Messing, known for "Will & Grace," wrote, "He finally killed someone on 5th Avenue."
He finally killed someone on 5th Avenue.
— Debra Messing (@DebraMessing) August 10, 2019
Messing was referring to a comment then-Republican nominee Donald Trump said in jest that his supporters were so loyal he could shoot someone on "5th Avenue" and they would still support him.
Documentarian Michael Moore, known for "Fahrenheit 9/11" and "Bowling for Columbine" wrote, "I guess they think a country dumb enough to elect Trump is stupid enough to believe Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide. Or not. Love that they did it on the traditional Friday night/early Saturday morning "document dump" time when they know the fewest people will follow it."
I guess they think a country dumb enough to elect Trump is stupid enough to believe Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide. Or not. Love that they did it on the traditional Friday night/early Saturday morning "document dump" time when they know the fewest people will follow it. pic.twitter.com/GRpCOlh5B1
— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) August 10, 2019
Director Rob Reiner, known for "The Princess Bride" and "Stand By Me" wrote, "The can of Jeffrey Epstein's worms has been opened. And they will be crawling all over some very powerful people. Have a nice vacation Mr. President."
The can of Jeffrey Epstein's worms has been opened. And they will be crawling all over some very powerful people. Have a nice vacation Mr. President.
— Rob Reiner (@robreiner) August 10, 2019
Zach Braff is an actor/director known for "Scrubs" and "Garden State." He wrote, "Boss, should we make it look like a hanging or overdose?" with a gif of AG Barr drinking water and then shrugging like "either way."
"Boss, should we make it look like a hanging or overdose?" pic.twitter.com/0kOTNH7dRU
— Zach Braff (@zachbraff) August 10, 2019
Patricia Arquette, best known for "True Romance" and "Boyhood," and also a ravage Trump-hater accused Barr of being instrumental in a cover up.
She wrote, "Bill Barr's DOJ took him off suicide watch. The same Barr who works for Trump. The same Barr who had to recuse in Epstein case in Florida. Tge sane Barr who refuses to recuse himself in NY & who's father hired Epstein even though unqualified to teach KIDS."
Bill Barr's DOJ took him off suicide watch. The same Barr who works for Trump. The same Barr who had to recuse in Epstein case in Florida. Tge sane Barr who refuses to recuse himself in NY & who's father hired Epstein even though unqualified to teach KIDS.
— Patricia Arquette (@PattyArquette) August 10, 2019
Everybody loves to point fingers and presume the absolute worst things imaginable about the people they loathe, but this is taking it way too far.
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Dragon Quest Swords: Masked Queen & Tower of Mirrors
Dragon Quest Swords: Masked Queen & Tower of Mirrors Review
By Stuart Andrews May 13, 2008 12:00 am BST
1. Verdict
2. Key Specifications
3. Trusted Score
Review Price: £24.98
Blimey – what a mouthful. I guess we don't expect brevity in titles from the guys behind Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King, but this is getting a little bit ridiculous. Still, at least the name is descriptive: Square-Enix's new Wii game is a member of the Dragon Quest family, Swords are involved and there is – not wishing to give the game away – a masked queen in a Tower of Mirrors at some point in the game. The key word in all this is Swords. Anyone wanting an epic RPG on the lines of Dragon Quest VIII should look elsewhere. This game looks, sounds and even has some of the atmosphere of that fine PS2 adventure, but it plays very differently indeed.
In fact, I'd say the closest reference point is probably Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles. Like Capcom's survival horror gun game, it's an offshoot of the main series retooled and conceived specifically for the Wii. It has some of the features you'd expect from a regular Japanese RPG, like a plot, quests, monsters, treasure and a town in which you can buy new weapons and armour, but the real gameplay is more akin to an on-rails gun-game than a proper free-roaming RPG. At first, this may come as a shock. After a brief tutorial section that covers the basics of swordplay (more of this later) you're free to roam the town, using the D-pad at the top of the Wii remote to walk forwards and backwards or rotate your view left and right. You can use the onscreen pointer to select and talk to the members of the game's small cast, buy the few items of equipment you can afford and then get ready for your first exploration of the world outside the town gates.
The graphics are a reworking of the same lovely cel-shaded cartoon visuals we saw in Dragon Quest VIII – though a few new water and surface lighting effects make them arguably even more appealing – and the incidental music even quotes directly from that game. Even the dialogue – another cracking translation with warm English voices and some wonderful touches of self-aware humour – will be familiar to Dragon Quest VIII fans.
Once outside the gates, however, everything changes. One of the great pleasures of Dragon Quest VIII was having this huge cartoon fantasy kingdom to explore, knowing you could roam almost anywhere the eye could see, In Dragon Quest Swords (we'll leave the rest out from now on to save my fingers) the town effectively acts as a hub from which you can enter one of several mission areas. Within these areas, your movement is limited; you can walk forwards and backwards and look a little to either side, but basically you're glued to a path. And as in any old-school gun game, the purpose of that path is to put you in the way of monsters.
This is where the swordplay comes in. By holding the remote forwards and level and swinging it horizontally, vertically and diagonally, you can unleash a number of cutting and slashing attacks on the enemies in immediate range of your virtual blade. Stabbing the remote forwards will – if you're lucky – administer a piercing thrust attack. For groups of larger enemies, merely swinging wildly may suffice, but in many cases you'll need to focus your attacks beforehand by using the remote to aim the onscreen cursor and select the point you want to hit. You'll also need to defend yourself from enemy attacks, by pressing and holding the B trigger beneath the remote to wield your sturdy shield. Basically, you trundle your way along the path using the sword to whack anything in front of you and the shield to stop anything hitting you. You might say that it's a little more simple, accessible and direct than your usual action RPG. Or you might say it's simplistic and leave it at that.
Of course, it's not quite as basic as that. Some enemies fire missiles, and some of these missiles can be returned to sender by focussing on the point of impact and swiping with your blade at the right time. Some explosive enemies can be repelled with a well-timed thrust, blowing up instead in their evil comrade's midst. There are treasure chests to discover and little secret items that can be unearthed, and each mission area has a few branching pathways giving you a little bit of choice as to what route you take from start to finish.
Finally, each mission ends with a climactic boss battle. Here it's mostly a case of observing patterns and deploying sword and shield accordingly, but these are also the moments at which you'll unleash your finest moves – or master strokes. You start with one, and you'll unlock more by gaining levels or new weapons. Press the 2 button at the bottom of the Wii remote, repeat the gesture being shown on screen and you can administer a super-potent blow that will wipe a healthy chunk from the boss' health gauge. And, as a bonus, you may feel extra-heroic for a second or two as well. Do it standing up and let out a manly roar for the full effect.
Dragon Quest Swords hasn't forgotten entirely about good old fashioned RPG features like parties, spells or inventory management either. On missions after the first you'll be accompanied by another character whose main responsibility will be spell casting. You don't control them directly – though you can activate specific spells on demand, providing they have magic points available. Instead, you can allocate tactics to them from four simple options, ranging from 'just keep us healthy and away from death's door' to 'forget restraint: just blast that git to kingdom come.' You can also heal yourself (or them) using bought or found herbs and potions, and you may need additional materials to restore your shield when it's taken too much damage or bring an expired ally back to life.
Now, all this is fun. As in any regular light-gun game it's the different attacks and patterns of the enemies that keep things interesting, and some of the environments you'll find yourself fighting through are surprisingly evocative or atmospheric. The sword controls don't really convey much of the feel of a real blade and the thrust move is a nightmare to pull off quickly, but, generally speaking, slashing and swiping at your TV is more entertaining than it probably sounds. The monsters are in the slightly zany Dragon Quest mould, but you get some amusing oddball critters, and the characters and the tale have enough charm and intrigue to keep you ploughing through until the end.
But by now you're expecting a however – and here it is. On the one hand, Dragon Quest Swords isn't a particularly long game. There are only eight mission areas and most of them take fifteen to twenty-five minutes to work your way through. All the same, it will take you longer than five hours to complete just because the later missions get reasonably tricky – particularly the boss battles – and, should you die, you have to start them again from square one. If you're really stuck, you can grind your way through earlier missions again to improve your high score and earn more experience and gold, enabling you in turn to upgrade your weapons and armour. All the same, I'm not sure that I'd really call this added value.
On the other hand, you wouldn't really want much more of Dragon Quest Swords than you're getting. There's no getting past the fact that the action is very repetitive and that there isn't really that much depth to the gameplay. Sure, there are some cute mini-games in town to add variety. True, the game includes a primitive weapon crafting system. All that notwithstanding, I can't imagine anyone wanting to plough through the same levels again and again in search of score perfection, and once you've cracked the game once, I doubt you'll feel inclined to go back for more.
In other words, it's fun for the shortish time that it lasts, and you wouldn't want it to last any longer. Given the price tag that's not exactly much of a recommendation. Basically, it's not a keeper – it's a game that anyone who enjoyed Dragon Quest VIII or who just fancies swinging away with a virtual sword should definitely think about renting, but you'd be a bit silly to buy it. This is a shame, because every now and then you get a glimpse of what a proper action RPG with the first-person view, the swordplay, the playful atmosphere and these graphics might have been – and that would have been a Wii Dragon Quest to treasure. This is an entertaining little distraction, and that's all.
An interesting attempt to make Dragon Quest action-packed and accessible, but it's too limited, too short and too repetitive to give you anything more than the odd hour of casual fun.
Trusted Score
Genre Action/Adventure
Player(s) 1
By Stuart Andrews
Stuart Andrews contributed gaming reviews to Trusted Reviews between 2005 and 2019. …


Scoring a point more than last year in Riyadh, Magnus Carlsen retained his $60,000 world blitz title with 17/21, half a point more than Jan-Krzysztof Duda ($50,000). Like in the rapid, bronze went to Hikaru Nakamura ($40,000). Kateryna... Karpov on Magnus Carlsen and the 2018 World Chess Championship Chess players around the world are looking forward to November 2018 when the current World Chess Champion will look to defend his title against the challenger, Fabiano Caruana.
17/08/2017�� #agadmator Garry Kasparov vs Sergey Karjakin 2017 Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz: Day 4, Round 1 1. e4 e5 2. f4 exf4 3. Nc3 Qh4+ 4. Ke2 Qd8 5. d4 Nf6 6.
In the first round of the Grenke Chess Classic in Karlsruhe Magnus Carlsen missed a win and drew with Fabiano Caruana, his opponent in the upcoming world title match.


The volleyball game between Northview and Clay City's junior varsity and varsity teams is scheduled to be played at Clay City this evening. The game was incorrectly listed as a home game for the Knights in Monday's edition of The Brazil Times.
Whitney Halfhill (right) with her cousin, Hayden Smith, behind her Reserve Grand Poland Barrow at the Indiana State Fair, earlier this year.


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text:
Hi, I'm Cas,
I write women's fiction as Cass Lester
and children's books as Cas Lester
My new book THE ONE AFTER THE ONE is out now
Buy THE ONE AFTER THE ONE
The One After The One
The heartwarming Sequel to After the One
How do you know if they're The One (after The One)?
Charley's in a new relationship with perfect boyfriend, Ricky, slowly moving on from the death of her husband. But having only ever been in love once before, how can she know when it's the real deal?
Ricky is perfect, but she's not convinced he's perfect for her...
Taking the bull by the horns after separating from her cheating husband, Pam has signed up for online dating. And it's exhausting. She's determined to find new love, yet she can't help feeling that she's repeating old patterns.
Are Pam and Charley settling down, or just settling? They need to figure it out, fast. Otherwise, they might just lose The One - or even worse, lose themselves.
A beautifully uplifting story of second chances and taking risks for fans of Libby Page, Marian Keyes and Ruth Hogan
After The One
An uplifting novel of friendship, family and new love
What happens . . . after The One?
April 16th is always one of Charley's worst days of the year.
It's her husband's birthday, a painful reminder of his death four years ago.
So naturally, her car breaks down.
She nearly gets run over trying to catch the bus.
And then she's made redundant.
Her friends see the redundancy as a chance for her to start again and live the life she always wanted, but since being widowed Charley has clung to familiarity and avoided change like the plague. Then, out of the blue, her mother-in-law Pam pitches up in need of a place to stay after walking out on her 40-year marriage.
Together, Charley and Pam find themselves at a crossroad. It's not easy to move on after The One, but they can't stand still forever.
'A treat of a book about love and friendship' - Jacqueline Wilson
Read more about Charley and Pam in the sequel
Out now in paperback and ebook
Sarah Steele, bestselling author of THE MISSING PIECES OF NANCY MOON
I loved this sweetly engaging story of two women overcoming heartbreak at different stages of life – it envelopes the reader in a warm hug of friendship and hope.
JACQUELINE WILSON, BESTSELLING AUTHOR
A treat of a book about love and friendship - sip a Prosecco and enjoy!
Wendy Robey GooDReads
bookishjottings.wordpress.com
What a beautiful story. So emotional to follow Charley on her journey of trying to rebuild her life after the death of her husband.
A fabulous book that will strike a chord with readers everywhere. Honest, heart-warming, witty and wonderfully layered with pathos and emotion
I'm represented by
Gaia Banks
Sheil Land Associates
52 Doughty Street
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info@sheilland.co.uk
Copyright © 2022 caslesterwriter - All Rights Reserved.


text:
Il pipistrello dalla lingua lunga maggiore (Macroglossus sobrinus  ) è un pipistrello appartenente alla famiglia degli Pteropodidi, diffuso nell'Ecozona orientale.

Descrizione

Dimensioni
Pipistrello di piccole dimensioni con la lunghezza della testa e del corpo tra 70 e 89 mm, la lunghezza dell'avambraccio tra 38 e 52 mm, la lunghezza della coda fino a 6 mm, la lunghezza del piede tra 10 e 18 mm, la lunghezza delle orecchie tra 14 e 19 mm e un peso fino a 28 g.

Aspetto
La pelliccia è soffice, densa e lanosa. Il colore delle parti dorsali è marrone, la testa è simile o leggermente più scura, mentre le parti ventrali sono giallo-brunastre, con dei riflessi color crema sulla gola. Le membrane alari, le orecchie ed il muso sono marroni chiare. Il muso è lungo ed affusolato, gli occhi sono grandi. Tra le narici è presente un solco longitudinale che non si estende sul labbro superiore. La mandibola si protrae oltre gli incisivi, formando un mento prominente. La coda è identificabile solo al tatto, l'uropatagio è ridotto ad una sottile membrana lungo la parte interna degli arti inferiori e, insieme alla tibia, è ricoperto di densa peluria. Il palato presenta otto solchi continui, dei quali cinque situati tra le radici dentarie.

Biologia

Comportamento
Si rifugia singolarmente o in piccoli gruppi, tra le fronde di palme o sotto i tetti di abitazioni vicino alla foresta, occasionalmente all'interno di foglie di Banano arrotolate.

Alimentazione
Si nutre di polline e nettare di fiori della foresta tropicale. Nella Penisola Malese è stato osservato nutrirsi su fiori di tre specie di Banane selvatiche e di Dubanga grandiflora.
In Vietnam esemplari sono stati catturati mentre volavano intorno ad alberi di Macaranga in fiore.

Riproduzione
In Thailandia si riproduce durante tutto l'anno.

Distribuzione e habitat
Questa specie è diffusa in India, Bhutan, Cina, Indocina, Giava, Sumatra ed alcune isole vicine.

Vive in foreste sia di pianura che montane, frutteti, piantagioni di Banane e villaggi fino a 1800 metri di altitudine. È invece assente nelle mangrovie dove è sostituito dalla specie affine M.minimus.

Tassonomia
Sono state riconosciute due sottospecie:
M.s.sobrinus: India: Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Bengala Occidentale; Bhutan, Cina meridionale: Yunnan; Myanmar, Thailandia, isola di Koh Samui; Laos, Vietnam, probabilmente Cambogia, Penisola Malese, Sumatra, Krakatau, Giava, Bali e Nusa Penida;
M.s.fraternus (): Nias, Simeulue, Isole Mentawai: Siberut, Sipora e Pagai del nord.

Gli esemplari dell'isola di Nias e quelli di Bali e Nusa Penida potrebbero appartenere a due sottospecie distinte.

Stato di conservazione
La IUCN Red List, considerato il vasto areale, la popolazione numerosa, la presenza in diverse aree protette e l'adattamento a qualsiasi tipo di habitat degradato, classifica M.sobrinus come specie a rischio minimo (LC).

Note

Bibliografia

Altri progetti

Megachirotteri
Fauna asiatica
Taxa classificati da Knud Christian Andersen

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Posts Tagged 'Harry Reid'
Posted: September 22, 2010 in Politics
Tags: 1st Amendment, Big Labor, campaign finance bill, campaign finance reform, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, DISCLOSE Act, Eugene Delgaudio, free speech, Harry Reid, incumbent protection, labor unions, McCain-Feingold, November elections, Public Advocate, S.3295, S.3628
We knew it was inevitable, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has dusted off the DISCLOSE Act for a vote. But first, let me review for a moment….
Unless you're a new reader/visitor, you probably remember that I wrote about this Act back in June/July. (Here, here, here.) DISCLOSE is a terrible piece of legislation that would reverse, or neuter, January's SCOTUS ruling (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission) that took the teeth out of McCain-Feingold's "Finance Reform" Act. It includes ridiculous disclosure demands that would eat into the time & effectiveness of political ads. It would even, as the Public Advocate's Eugene Delgaudio stated,
…require any activist organization to disclose information about you if you made a contribution to them. Then of course they would share that information with those you stand against so that they could target YOU. Other measures in the Disclose Act include prohibitions on political spending by companies that have significant holdings overseas."
You might not even think it sounds all THAT bad, but it really is. Various left-wing groups, the labor unions, even the NRA, all have exemptions carved out for them. But, the rest of us and the smaller activist groups do not. Whatever groups you support for your most-favored issues — 2nd Amendment, 10th Amendment, pro-life/pro-family, anti-Big Labor, etc. –, they will all be affected. Bottom line: DISCLOSE puts undue restrictions on free speech during election time. (If you haven't read my earlier posts on the DISCLOSE Act, please follow the links above for more information.)
Here's a little more from Delgaudio:
Without this critical legislation, conservative organizations can publicize legislator's liberal votes and explain the legislation that was passed.
Do not be fooled! The far-reaching disclosure requirements of the Disclose Act are designed [to] help to hide liberal senators' and congressmen's voting records rather than to bring transparency to elections. Their fancy rhetoric about 'strengthening democracy' is designed to cover up the real reason that they pushed this bill: TO KEEP INCUMBENTS IN OFFICE."
Grassroots objections helped to keep the DISCLOSE Act from passing in the Senate last time. Now, Sen. Reid plans to sneak it in again — TOMORROW (9/23/2010)! Please make sure your Senators know that this bill must NOT pass, and you & your friends will hold them accountable if they vote for it (S.3628).
Go here for the contact info.
Update on the DISCLOSE Act
Tags: Big Labor, DISCLOSE Act, Harry Reid, incumbent protection, labor unions, National Right to Work, NRTW, S.3295
My original post on the DISCLOSE Act was focused more on the NRA exemption, but it affects a lot more than gun rights. It is really a free-speech issue, and the labor unions now have their own exemption. I received the following update today from Mark Mix of the National Right to Work (NRTW) Committee, so I'll let him get right to it:
Harry Reid launched a sneak attack late last night to ram through the speech-killing "Disclose Act." The key vote to end debate and vote on the "Disclose Act" will be late Monday or early Tuesday NEXT WEEK.
This is an emergency, so please call and/or email your U.S. Senators IMMEDIATELY and insist they vote for free speech and against the "Disclose Act" (S. 3295).
[Go here for phone# & email of your Senators.]
The fact is, Big Labor's cronies on Capitol Hill are just days away from ramming the "Disclose Act" down the throats of the American people.
In fact, this dangerous bill has already passed the House.
Though the so-called "Disclose Act" is being sold by Big Labor as a bill to provide greater transparency, its real intent is to harass and intimidate those who might criticize members of Congress into silence during the midterm elections and beyond.
Big Labor doesn't want us, or anyone for that matter, to be able to inform the American people which candidates stand with them — and which ones stand with the union elite.
But, of course, like all the other insider games here in Washington, there is a big loophole.
You see, Big Labor is exempted.
They'll still be free to spend their BILLION dollar forced-dues war chest in virtually any way they see fit in complete secrecy.
If passed, the so-called "Disclose Act" — more properly referred to as the "Incumbent Protection Act" — would:
Impose sweeping new regulations on organizations like the National Right to Work Committee, to keep them quiet and cripple their effectiveness during election years;
Force grassroots organizations to publicize and release the names of their top five contributors making them vulnerable to threats, intimidation or worse from political dissidents;
Require organizations to expose the location of their top donor's home and workplace in the disclaimer at the end of every television ad.
I hope you know I would shut the doors of the Committee in a heart beat rather than give the union bosses the name of even one of our members.
That's why it's vital you act IMMEDIATELY!
You and I have come too far and, I believe, are too close to victory to be shut down by one of Big Labor's dirty legislative tricks.
So please help me fight back today!
That's why I ask you to take a stand for freedom of speech, your rights and your National Right to Work Committee and to contact your U.S. Senators and insist they vote for free speech and against the so-called "Disclose Act" (S. 3295).
The so-called "Disclose Act" is too dangerous to ignore. Please act TODAY!"


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The work Westworld, Season two, The door represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Yuma County Library District. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Moving Image, Visual Materials.
Westworld (Television program), Season 2.