Well, I have some bad news for you: this is Brooklyn, Ohio. And the topic today was less about subway delays and more about the equally compelling question of how to spend all this federal money.
"To qualify for this grant funding, cities are required to hold a public session," boomed President Ron Van Kirk.
Not a soul stirred at his invitation.
No one has an idea for spending the money?! Repaint the fields at Marquardt Park! Put a streetcar on Biddulph Avenue! Get a better sound system for the council meetings!
Maybe fix up that tattered George Washington portrait?
This being the first meeting after Memorial Day, the council was obliged to mention the solemn occasion. The perfect spokesperson appeared in the form of Council Member Mary Balbier–the wife of a Vietnam veteran.
"I'm not very fond of the hat he wears–the baseball hat that has the 25th Division and some sort of lightning rod on it," she admitted with a wave of her hand.
President Van Kirk steered back to council business with an admission of his own. "I wanna let residents know that I will be absent for our next meeting," he said regretfully.
Casa Tequila AND Cracker Barrel? Maybe the U.S. and Mexico CAN work things out.
Racing through the final five minutes, the council approved a raft of legislation assembly line-style. This included one agreement for the city to order a whole bunch of salt.
Be careful, sir: now that La Casa Tequila is in town, the demand for salted margarita glasses has never been higher.


Spring has sprung here in the neighborhood and the May edition of your Neighborhood Council's General Meeting is only a few days away!
Please feel welcome to participate in our meeting on Wednesday Evening, May 1, 2013 at the Museum of Arts and Culture.
We meet at 6:30pm and we are out the doors by 8.
This month we have the same format as last.
We need about 35 minutes to take care of regular business and the remaining 55 minutes will be dedicated to the discussion on the proposed funding for the Youth Center's migration to the All Saint's Church.
All speakers are welcome, as time will permit.
Each speaker will be held to a strict time limit of two (2) minutes to express their feelings on the issue.
You must sign-in prior to the meeting being called to order to be allowed to speak.
We have allotted 40 minutes for sharing your opinions, so please collect your thoughts before you are called upon to speak.
This will allow us to hear as many opinions as time permits.


text:
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The Cultural Role of Rhetoric
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Language Is Sermonic
ONE of the most alarming results of the disparagement of memory is the tide of prejudice which is currently running against rhetoric. Everyone is aware the old-style orator is no more, and even those speeches which suggest traditional oratory arouse skepticism and suspicion. The discourse that is favored today is without feeling and resonance, so that it is no exaggeration to say that eloquence itself has fallen into disfavor. Moments of great crisis do indeed encourage people to listen for a while to a Churchill or a MacArthur, and this is proof of the indispensability of rhetoric when men feel that great things are at stake. But today when the danger is past, they lapse again into their dislike of the rhetorical mode, labeling all discourse which has discernible emotional appeal "propaganda."
hetoric is involved along with memory in this trend because rhetoric depends upon history. All questions that are susceptible to rhetorical treatment arise out of history, and it is to history that the rhetorician turns for his means of persuasion. Now simultaneous with the loss of historical consciousness there emerges a conviction that man should dispense with persuasive speech and limit himself to mere communication. Viewed in the long perspective this must be considered a phase of the perennial issue between rhetoric and dialectic. But great danger lies in the fact that the present attitude represents a victory for a false conception of the role of dialectic in cultural life. States and societies cannot be secure unless there is in their public expression a partnership of dialectic and rhetoric. Dialectic is abstract reasoning upon the basis of propositions; rhetoric is the relation of these terms to the existential world in which facts are regarded with sympathy and are treated with that kind of historical understanding and appreciation which lie outside the dialectic process.
The current favor which rational and soulless discourse enjoys over rhetoric is a mask for the triumph of dialectic. This triumph is directly owing to the great prestige of modern science. Dialectic must be recognized as a counterpart in expression in language of the activity of science. We can affirm this, despite certain differences between them, because they are both rational and they are both neutral. The first point we need not labor; the second is important for this discussion because it is the quality of neutrality in science which has caused many moderns to suppose that it should be the model for linguistic discourse.
We hear it regularly asserted that the investigations and conclusions of science are not made to serve ad hoc causes. It is usually granted that the scientist is indifferent to the potencies which he makes available. His work is finished when he can say, "Here are these potencies." He is a solver of intellectual problems, as is evidenced by his reliance upon number.
ow, in a fashion similar enough to make the resemblance consequential, the dialectician is neutral toward the bearing of his reasoning upon actuality. The dialectician says, "If you assume these propositions, you must face these implications," and so forth. His work is with logical inference, not historical discovery. If we define dialectic in its pure form, we are compelled to say that it is indifferent to truth, or at least that its truth is something contained in its own operation. Professor Mortimer Adler has pointed out that "truth when it is taken to mean an extrinsic relation of thinking to entities beyond the process of thought cannot be achieved by dialectical thinking."[1] What is said here assumes the possibility of a pure dialectician, and it may be doubted, because of the nature of things, that such a person could exist. But the question I am here pursuing is whether one can become too committed to the dialectic for his own good and the good of those whom he influences. I expect to show presently through a famous instance how this can happen.
My thesis is that a too exclusive reliance upon dialectic is a mistake of the most serious consequence because dialectic alone in the social realm is subversive. The widespread overturning of institutions in recent history and the frustration of man now feels over his inability to guide his destiny begin, at the most profound level, with the disastrous notion that dialectic, unaided by rhetoric, is sufficient for human counsels. We have heard it contended by many leaders of opinion that if man will only avoid emotional approaches and will utilize science in coping with his problems, he will be able to conduct his affairs with a success hitherto unknown. That is to say, if he will rely upon a dialectic which is a counterpart to that of science in arriving at his decisions, he will have the advantage of pure knowledge whereas in the past he has tried to get along with a mass of knowledge and feeling. The point of this chapter will be the contrary: to give up the role of rhetoric and to trust all to dialectic is a fast road to social subversion.
OR the introduction of this argument I am going back to the trial and condemnation of Socrates. Certain features of this extraordinary incident will help to illuminate the difficult problem of the relation of dialectic to rhetoric and of both of these to practical policy.
The reflective portion of mankind has wondered for centuries how so brilliant and civilized a people as the Greek could condemn to death this famous philosopher. It would be blasphemous for anyone to suggest that the Athenian assembly did not commit a dreadful injustice. But since the condemnation occurred, there must have been some cause; and I think the cause lies much deeper than the fact that a few men with whom Socrates associated turned out badly and deeper than the resentment of a few Athenians whose vanity he had wounded through his questioning. The people of Athens had a case against Socrates which can be understood and elucidated. Set against their own attitudes and behavior, the case may not look very good to us, and we can still say that they put to death the most virtuous man in the city. Yet they had a certain cause, possibly more felt than reasoned out, but enough to account practically for the final judgment.
Socrates has come down to us as one of the greatest ethical teachers of all times. But by the Athenians who indicted him he was charged with being a subverter and a corrupter. Before we set down these two ascriptions as wholly incompatible, let us remember that Socrates was also the greatest dialectician of his time. We who study him at this remote date are chiefly impressed with the ethical aspect of his teaching, but who listened to him in Athens may have been more impressed by his method, which was that of dialectic. By turning his great dialectical skill upon persons and institutions, Socrates could well have produced the feeling that he was an enemy of the culture which the Greeks had created. He was, in one sense of course, the highest expression of it, but the kind of skill he brought to a peak of development needs harmonizing with other things. When a dialectic operates independently of the concrete facts of the situation, it can be destructive. These facts are not determinative logically of the course which the dialectical inquiry must take, but they are the ground from which it must operate in actual discourse. A dialectic which becomes irresponsibly independent shatters the matrix which provides the base for its operation. In this fact must have lain the real source of the hostility toward Socrates. Nietzsche has perceived this brilliantly in a passage of The Birth of Tragedy: "From this point onward Socrates conceives it as his duty to correct existence; and with an air of irreverence and superiority, as the precursor of an altogether different culture, art, and morality, he enters single-handed into a world, to touch whose very hem would give us the greatest happiness."[2]
We must remember that Socrates begins the Apology by telling his auditors that they are not going to hear a clever speaker; that is to say, they are not going to hear an orator of the kind they are accustomed to; if Socrates is a good speaker, it is not in the style of his accusers. They have said nothing that is true; he proposes to speak only the truth. Further along, he professes to be "an utter foreigner to the manner of speech here." Obviously this is not the way in which a speaker consolidates himself with an audience; it betokens alienation rather than identification. Socrates has in effect said at the beginning, "Your way is not my way."
hereafter Socrates gives an account of the origin of his unpopularity. He had gone around to men who were reputed to be wise and had questioned them about matters of which they were supposed to have knowledge. He found it easy to prove that they were not wise but ignorant or that their knowledge was so confined that it could scarcely be termed wisdom. Among those who underwent his examination were public men, or political leaders, and poets. This story is too well known to readers of the Dialogues to need rehearsal in detail. Suffice it to say that Socrates gives a candid relation of how his dialectic had irritated important elements in the population. But it is to the role of dialectic in the defense itself that I wish to direct chief attention. For Socrates, when his life was at stake, could not or would not give up the instrumentality by which he had been offending.
Let us look at the literal charge which has come down to us. "Socrates is a transgressor and a busybody, investigating things beneath the earth and in the heavens, and making the worse appear the better reason and teaching these things to others." Added to this was the further charge that he did not recognize the gods which were acknowledged by the state but insisted on introducing an idea of new spiritual beings. No doubt there are several ways in which this latter charge could have been answered. But the way in which Socrates chose to meet it was exactly the way to exacerbate the feelings of those whom he had earlier offended. It is significant that one point he feels compelled to say to the assembly: "Please bear in mind not to make a disturbance if I conduct my argument in my accustomed manner." Here is the passage which follows that request:
SOCRATES: You say what is incredible, Melitus, and that, as appears to me, even to yourself. For this man, O Athenians! appears to me to be very insolent and intemperate, and to have preferred this indictment through downright insolence, intemperance, and wantonness. For he seems, as it were, to have composed an enigma for the purpose of making an experiment. Whether will Socrates the wise know that I am jesting, and contradict myself, or shall I deceive him and all who hear me. For, in my opinion, he clearly contradicts himself in the indictment, as if he should say, Socrates is guilty of wrong in not believing that there are gods, and in believing that there are gods. And this, surely, is the act of one who is trifling.
Consider with me now, Athenians, in what respect he appears to me to say so. And do you, Melitus, answer me, and do ye, as I besought you at the outset, remember not to make an uproar if I speak after my usual manner.
If there is any man, Melitus, who believes that there are human affairs, but does not believe that there are men? Let him answer, judges, and not make so much noise. Is there anyone who does not believe that there are horses, but that there are things pertaining to horses? Or who does not believe that there are pipers, but that there are things pertaining to pipes? There is not, O best of men! For since you are not willing to answer, I say it to you and to all here present. But answer to this at least: is there anyone who believes that there are things relating to demons, but does not believe that there are demons?
MELITUS: There is not.
SOCRATES: How obliging you are in having hardly answered, though compelled by these judges! You assert, then, that I do believe and teach things relating to demons, whether they be new or old; therefore, according to your admission, I do believe in things relating to demons, and this you have sworn in the bill of indictment. If, then, I believe in things relating to demons, there is surely an absolute necessity that I should believe that there are demons. Is it not so? It is. For I suppose you assent, since you do not answer. But with respect to demons, do we not allow that they are gods, or the children of gods? Do you admit this or not?
MELITUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Since, then, I allow that there are demons, as you admit, if demons are a kind of gods, this is the point in which I say you speak enigmatically and divert yourself in saying that I do not allow that there are demons? But if demons are the children of gods, spurious ones, either from nymphs or any others, of whom they are reported to be, what man can think that there are sons of gods, and yet that there are not gods? For it would be just as absurd if anyone would think that there are mules, the offspring of horses and asses, but should not think that there are horses and asses. However, Melitus, it cannot be otherwise than that you have preferred this indictment for the purpose of trying me, or because you were at loss what real crime to allege against me; for that you should persuade any man who has the smallest degree of sense that the same person can think there are things relating to demons and to gods, and yet that there are neither demons, not gods, nor heroes, is utterly impossible.[3]
This shows in a clear way the weapon that Socrates had wielded against so many of his contemporaries. It is, in fact, a fine example of the dialectical method: first the establishment of a class; then the drawing out of implications; and finally the exposure of the contradiction. As far as pure logic goes, it is undeniably convincing; yet after all, this is not the way in which one talks about one's belief in the gods. The very rationality of it suggests some lack of organic feeling. It has about it something of the look of a trap or a trick, and one can imagine hearers not very sympathetic to the accused saying to themselves: "There is Socrates up to his old tricks again. That is the way he got into trouble. He is showing that he will never be any different." We may imagine that the mean and sullen Melitus, his interlocutor at this point – nothing good is intended of him here – was pleased rather than otherwise that Socrates was conducting himself so true to form. It underscored the allegations that were implied in the indictment.
This is not the only kind of argument offered by Socrates in his defense, it is true. In fact this particular argument is followed by a noble one based upon analogy, in which he declared that just as he would not desert the station he was commanded to guard while he was a soldier, so he would not give up his duty of being a gadfly to the men of Athens, which role he felt had been assigned him by the gods. Yet there is in the Apology, as a whole, enough of the clever dialectician – of the man who is concerned merely with logical inferences – to bring to the minds of the audience the side of Socrates which had aroused enmity.
he issue comes to a focus on this: Socrates professed to be a teacher of virtue, but his method of teaching it did not commend itself to all people. Now we come to the possibility that they had some justice on their side, apart from the forms which the clash took in this particular trial. We have noted that Socrates had derided poets and politicians; and to these the rhetoricians must be added, for despite the equivocal attitude taken toward rhetoric in the Phaedrus, Socrates rarely lost an opportunity for a sally against speechmakers. The result of his procedure was to make the dialectician appear to stand alone as the professor of wisdom and to exclude certain forms of cognition and expression which have a part in holding a culture together. It is not surprising that to the practitioners of these arts, his dialectic looked overgrown, even menacing. In truth it does require an extreme stand to rule out poetry, politics, and rhetoric. The use of a body of poetry in expressing the values of a culture will not be questioned except by one who takes the radical view presented by Plato in Book III of the Republic. But Socrates says in an early part of the Apology that when he went to the poets, he was ashamed to find that there was hardly a man present "who could not speak better than they about the poems they themselves had composed." But speak how? Poets are often lamentably poor dialecticians if you drag them away from their poetry and contribute something to the mind of which dialectic is incapable: feeling and motion.
The art of politics, although it often repels us in its degraded forms, cannot be totally abandoned in favor of pure speculation. Politics is a practical art. As such, it is concerned with man as a spatiotemporal creature; hence some political activity must take the form of compromise and adjustment. There is a certain relativism in it as a process, which fact is entailed by the conditio humana. But dialectic itself can stray too far from the human condition, as Pericles no doubt could have told him. We need not question that Socrates was an incomparably better man than most of the politicians who ruled Athens. He makes the pint himself, however, that had he entered public life, he would have proceeded against much earlier. That may well have been true, yet one can hardly conclude from its likelihood that human society can do without political leadership. It may be granted too that the men of Athens needed to learn from his dialectic; still they could not have depended upon it exclusively. The trend of Socrates' remarks, here and elsewhere, is that dialectic is sufficient for all the needs of man.
The fact that Socrates had excited the rhetoricians against him is a point of special significance for our argument. We have noted that he liked to indulge in raillery against speechmakers. Now it is one thing to attack those who make verbal jugglery their stock-in-trade, but it is another to attack rhetoric as an art. This is the matter over which the Phaedrus arrives at its point of hesitation: Can rhetoric be saved by being divorced from those methods and techniques which are merely seductive? The answer which is given in the Phaedrus can be regarded as ambiguous. At the end of the dialogue the rhetorician seems to wind up, by the force of the argument, a dialectician. But no reader can be unaware that Plato has made extensive use of his great rhetorical skill to buttress his case, to help it over certain places, and to make it more persuasive. His instinct in practice told him that rhetoric must supply something dialectic lacks. This calls for looking further at the nature of rhetoric.
hetoric is designed to move men's feelings in the direction of a goal. As such, it is concerned not with abstract individuals, but with men in being. Moreover, these men in being it has to consider in relation to forces in being. Rhetoric begins with the assumption that man is born into history. If he is to be moved, the arguments addressed to him must have historicity as well as logicality. To explain: when Aristotle opens his discussion of rhetoric in the celebrated treatise of that name, he asserts that it is a counterpart of dialectic. The two are distinguished by the fact that dialectic always tries to discover the real syllogism in the argument whereas rhetoric tries to discover the real means of persuasion. From this emerges a difference of procedure, in which dialectic makes use of inductions and syllogisms, whereas rhetoric makes use of examples and enthymemes. In fact, Aristotle explicitly calls the use of example the "rhetorical induction," and he calls the enthymeme the "rhetorical syllogism." This bears out our idea that rhetoric must be concerned with real or historical situations, although dialectic can attain its goal in a self-existing realm of discourse. Now the example is something taken from life, and the force of the example comes from the fact that is or was. It is the thing already possessed in experience and so it is the property of everyone through the sharing of a common past. Through examples, the rhetorician appeals to matters that everybody has in a sense participated in. These are the possible already made the actual, and the audience is expected to be moved by their historicity.
The relation of rhetoric to "things-in-being" appears even more closely in the "rhetorical syllogism." The enthymeme, as students of logic learn, is a syllogism with one of the propositions missing. The reason the missing proposition is omitted is that it is presumed to exist already in the mind of the one to whom the argument is addressed. The rhetorician simply recognizes the wide acceptance of this proposition and assumes it as part of his argument. Propositions which can be assumed in this manner are settled beliefs, standing convictions, and attitudes of the people. They are the "topics" to which he goes for his sources of persuasion.
Through employment of the enthymeme, the rhetorician enters into a solidarity with the audience by tacitly agreeing with one of its perceptions of reality. This step of course enables him to pass on to his conclusion. If the rhetorician should say, "The magistrate is an elected official and must therefore heed the will of the people." That unsupplied, yet conceded proposition, gives him a means by which he can obtain force for his argument. Therefore, quite as in the case of the example, he is resorting to something already acknowledged as "actual."
ristotle continues his discussion of the two methods by pointing out that some persons cannot be reached by mere instruction. By the term "instruction" he signifies something of the order of logical demonstration. "Further, in dealing with certain persons, even if we possessed the most accurate scientific knowledge, we should not find it easy to persuade them by such knowledge. For scientific discourse is concerned with instruction, but in the case of such persons instruction is impossible; our proofs and arguments must rest on generally accepted principles, as we said in the Topics, when speaking of converse with the multitude."[4]
This also puts dialectic in a separate, though adjunct, realm. The mere demonstration of logical connections is not enough to persuade the commonalty, who instead have to be approached through certain "places" or common perceptions of reality. It is these, as we have now seen, which rhetoric assumes in its enthymemes, taking the ordinary man's understanding of things and working from that to something that needs to be made evident and compulsive. As for dialectic, if the motive for it is bad, it becomes sophistry; if it is good, it becomes a scientific demonstration, which may lie behind the rhetorical argument, but which is not equivalent to it.
In sum, dialectic is epistemological and logical; it is concerned with discriminating into categories and knowing definitions. While this has the indispensable function of promoting understanding in the realm of thought, by its very nature it does not tell man what he must do. It tells him how the terms and propositions which he uses are related. It permits him to use the name of a species as a term without ever attending to whether the species exists and therefore is a force in being. That would be sufficient if the whole destiny of man were to know. But we are reminded that the end of living is activity and not mere cognition. Dialectic, though being rational and intellectual, simply does not heed the imperatives of living, which help give direction to the thought of the man of wisdom. The individual who makes his approach to life through dialectic alone does violence to life through his abstractive process. At the same time he makes himself antisocial because his discriminations are apart from the organic feeling of the community for what goes on. By this analysis the dialectician is only half a wise man and hence something less than a philosopher king, inasmuch as he leaves out the urgent reality of the actual, with which all rulers and judges know they have to deal.
he conclusion of this is that a society cannot live without rhetoric. There are some things in which the group needs to believe which cannot be demonstrated to everyone rationally. Their acceptance is pressed upon us by a kind of moral imperative arising from the group as a whole. To put them to the test of dialectic alone is to destroy the basis of belief in them and to weaken the cohesiveness of society. Such beliefs always come to us couched in rhetorical terms, which tell us what attitudes to take. The crucial defect of dialectic alone is that it ends in what might be called social agnosticism. The dialectician knows, but he knows in a vacuum; or, he knows, but he is without knowledge of how to act. Unless he is sustained by faith at one end or the other – unless he embraced something before he began the dialectical process or unless he embraces it afterward – he remains an inassimilable social agnostic. Society does not know what to do with him because his very existence is a kind of satire or aspersion upon its necessity to act. Or, it does know what to do with him, in a very crude and unpleasant form: it will put him away. Those who have to cope with passing reality feel that neutrality is a kind of desertion. In addition, to understanding, they expect a rhetoric of action, and we must concede them some claim to this.
In thus trying to isolate the pure dialectician, we have momentarily lost sight of Socrates. We recall, of course, that he did not in all of his acts evince this determination to separate himself from the life of his culture. He served the state loyally as a soldier, and he refused opportunity to escape after the state had condemned him. His reasoning, in some of its lines, supports the kind of identification with history which I am describing as that of the whole man. There is one telltale fact near the very end of his career which gives interesting if indirect confirmation that Socrates had his own doubts about the omnicompetence of dialectic. When Phaedo and his friends visited Socrates in prison, they found him composing verses. A dream had told him to "make music and work at it." Previously he has supposed that philosophy was the highest kind of music, but now, near the time of his execution being visited by the dream again, he obeyed literally by composing a hymn to the god whose festival had just been celebrated and by turning some stories of Aesop into verse. Perhaps this was a way of acknowledging that a part of his nature – the poetical, rhetorical part – had been too neglected as a result of his devotion to dialectic and of making a kind of atonement at the end.
till, the indictment "too much of a dialectician" has not been quashed. The trial itself can be viewed as a supremely dramatic incident in a far longer and broader struggle between rationalism on the one hand and poetry and rhetoric (and belief) on the other. This conflict reappears in the later battle, between Hellenic philosophy with its strong rational bias and Christianity, which ended after centuries in sweeping victory for the latter. Christianity provided all that Greek dialectic had left out. It spoke to the feelings, and what seems of paramount significance, it had its inception in an historical fact. The Christian always had the story of Jesus with which to start his homilies. He could argue from a fact, or at least what was accepted as one, and this at once put him on grounds to persuade. We may recall here Aristotle's observation that in conversing with the multitude you do not aim at fresh scientific instruction; you rest your arguments upon generally accepted principles and beliefs, or broadly speaking, on things received. Practically, the victory of Christianity over Hellenic rationalism bears out the soundness of this insight. The Christians have worked through the poetry of their great allegory and through appeal to many facts as having happened, for example, the lives of the saints. Dialectic has been present, because it is never absent from rational discourse, but rhetoric and poetry were there to make up the winning combination.
ellenic rationalism waned before man's need for some kind of faith and before a pessimism about human nature which seems to develop as history lengthens. We have emphasized that dialectic leads toward an agnosticism of action. Even Socrates was constantly saying, "The one thing that I know is that I know nothing." The fiercely positive Hebrew and Christian faiths contain nothing of this. As for the darker side of man's nature, what can set this forth but powerful rhetoric? Dialectic may prove it in a conditional way, but it is up to the elaboration and iteration of rhetoric to make it real and overwhelming. Dialectic alone leads to an unwarranted confidence, and this evidently is the reason that Nietzsche refers to Socrates as an "optimist." If there is one thing which the great preachers of Christianity have inculcated, it is the proneness of man to fall.[5] Without extensive use of the art of rhetoric, they would have been unable to accomplish this. The triumph and continuance of Christianity and Christian culture attest the power of rhetoric in holding men together and maintaining institutions. It is generally admitted that there is a strong element of Platonism in Christianity. But if Plato provided reasoning, Paul and Augustine supplied the persuasion. What emerged from this could not be withstood even by the power of Rome.
ne cannot doubt that the decay of this great support of Western culture is closely connected with the decline of rhetoric. I spoke earlier of a growing resentment against the orator. This resentment arises from a feeling, perhaps not consciously articulated in many who possess it, that the orator is a teacher and a moral teacher at that. He cannot avoid being this if he uses words which will move men in a direction which he has chosen. But here is where the chief point of theoretical contention arises. There are persons today, some of them holding high positions in education, who believe (in theory, of course) that it is improper for any person to try to persuade another person. A name which has been invented for this act of persuading is "psychological coercion," which is obviously itself a highly loaded rhetorical phrase. From some such notion have come the extraordinary doctrines of modern semantics. According to the followers of this movement, the duty of anyone using language is to express the "facts" and avoid studiously the use of emotional coloring. The very use of facts in this kind of context reveals an astonishing naïveté about the nature of language. Yet there can be no doubt that this doctrine carries a great danger in that it represents a new attempt of dialectic to discredit and displace rhetoric. The writings of this group contain such a curious mélange of positivist dogma, modern prejudice, and liberal clichés that one runs a risk even in trying to digest it for believing that it is in essence a new threat to fractionate society by enthroning dialectic as the only legitimate language of discourse.
The advocates of the "semantic" approach try to ascertain definitely the relationship between words and the things they stand for with the object of making signification more "scientific." These semanticists believe generally that traditional speech is filled with terms which stand for nonexistent things, empty ideas, and primitive beliefs which get in the way of man's adaption to environment. For them the function of speech is communication, and communication should be about things that really are. (One cannot read their literature very long without sensing the strong political motivation that inspires their position. A considerable part of their writing is a more or less open polemic against those features of speech which they regard as reflecting or upholding our traditional form of society. At a level below this, but for the some reason, they are antimetaphysical.) Unless we can establish that the world we are talking about is the world that exists empirically, then, the semanticists feel, we had better not talk at all. They want a vocabulary that is purified of all terms that originate in the subjectivity of the user, or at least they want to identify all such terms and place them in a quarantine ward.
The attempt must be identified as a fresh eruption of pure dialectic because it is concerned primarily with defining. Just as Socrates trued to define "justice" or "love" by now widening, now narrowing the categories, so they try, in a supposedly scientific way, to make the term fit the thing. The two are not engaged in exactly the same quest, and I shall come to their difference later, but they are both relying exclusively upon accurate verbal identification of something that is by them considered objective. As Socrates searched for the pure idea, so hey search for the expression of the pure thing or fact. Moreover, they regard this as having the same power of salvation as the archetypal idea.
The quest of semantics cannot succeed, because the very theory of it is fallacious. The connection between a word and what it stands for cannot be determined in the way that they seem to believe. They operate on the assumption that there is some extralinguistic way of deciding what a word should mean, some point outside language from which one can judge the appropriateness of any choice of words for expression. The effort to get around language and to apply extralinguistic yardsticks is doomed to failure even in the cases of words symbolizing physical objects. A word stands for these things, but does not stand for them in the shape of the things. Language is a closed system, into which there is only one mode of entrance, and that is through meaning. And what a word means is going to be determined by the whole context of the vocabulary, with all the intermodification that this involves. A word does not get in through its fidelity to an object, but through its capacity to render what that object means to us.
ut they do not even discriminate rightly the kinds of things for which words must stand. They assume that all words must stand for phenomena or things which are observable and classifiable by science. Indeed, this is their first principle: if a thing cannot be proved to exist scientifically – if it cannot be classified with phenomena – we are not supposed to bring it into expression at all, except in those relaxed moments when we are telling fairy stories and the like. Obviously they are ignoring the immensely important role of the subjective in life. There are numberless ideas, images, feelings, and intuitions which cannot be described and classified in the way of scientific phenomena but which have great effect upon our decisions. A rhetoric can take these into account, modify, direct, and use them because rhetoric deals in depth and tendency. A dialectic in the form of semantics cannot do this because it is interested only in defining words on the assumption that definitions are determined by the physical order. Just as the physical scientist discovers a law or a regularity in nature, so they endeavor to locate the source of terms in physical reality, and indeed their prime concern is to decide whether a referent really "exists." On first thought this might seem to give them the kind of respect for the actual order that I have claimed for believers in history. But a distinction is necessary: history is not the simple data of the perceptive consciousness; it is the experience of man after this has been assimilated and worked upon by the spirit. The appeal to history is an appeal to events made meaningful, and the meaning of events cannot be conveyed through the simple empirical references that semantic analysis puts forward as an ideal. Hence it is that the semanticist too is a neutralist, who would say, "Here is the world expressed in language that had been freed from tendency and subjective coloration." What is to be done with this world is postponed until another meeting, as it were, or it is assigned to a different kind of activity. His great mistake is the failure to see that language is intended to be sermonic. Because of its nature and of its intimacy with our feelings, it is always preaching. This type of agnostic will not listen to the sermon because he is unwilling to credit the existence of values. Yet even after it has been decided that the referent does exist, there is nothing to do with the word except turn it over to others whose horizons are not bounded by logical positivism.
This brings us to the necessity of concluding that the upholders of mere dialectic, whether they appear in this modern form or in another, are among the most subversive enemies of society and culture. They are attacking an ultimate source of cohesion in the interest of a doctrine which can issue only in nullity. It is of no service to man to impugn his feeling about the world qua feeling. Feeling is the source of that healthful tension between man and what is – both objectively and subjectively. If man could be brought to believe that all feeling about the world is wrong, there would be nothing for him but collapse.
ocrates was saved from trivialization of their kind by his initial commitment to the Beautiful and the Good. He is also saved in our eyes by the marvelous rhetoric of Plato. These were not enough to save him personally in the great crisis of his life, but they give high seriousness to the quest which he represents. The modern exponents of dialectic have nothing like these to give respectability to their undertaking or persuasiveness to their cause. But both, in the long view, are the victims of supposing that definition and classification are sufficient as the ends of speech.
In a summing up we can see that dialectic, when not accompanied by a historical consciousness and responsibility, works to dissolve those opinions, based partly on feeling, which hold a society together. It tends, therefore, to be essentially revolutionary and without commitment to practical realities. It is even contumacious toward the "given," ignoring it or seeking to banish it in favor of a merely self-consistent exposition of ideas.
hetoric, on the other hand, tries to bring opinion into closer line with the truth which dialectic pursues. It is therefore cognizant of the facts of situations and it is at least understanding of popular attitudes.
There is a school of thinking, greatly influenced by the Socratic tradition, which holds that it is intellectually treasonable to take popular opinion into account. The side that one espouses in this issue will be determine by his attitude toward creation. When we look upon the "given" of the world, we find two things: the world itself and the opinions which mankind has about the world. Both of these must be seen as parts of the totality. The world is a primary creation, and the opinions of men are creations of the men who live in it. Next the question becomes: can we regard the world as infinitely correctable and men's opinions of it as of no account? Socrates could do this because he believed in a god or gods. The world is by him from the beginning condemned; it is a prison house, a dark cave; it is the realm of becoming which is destined to pass away. All things tend toward realizing themselves in a godlikeless, at which time the mortal and earthly will have been shuffled off. A complete reliance upon dialectic becomes possible only if one accepts something like this Socratic theodicy. But the important point is that it denies the axiological status of creation.
The modern counterpart thinks he can affirm that creation is infinitely correctable because he believes only in man and speaks only on his behalf. When we examine his position, however, we find that he believes only in the natural order. This he reveals by his insistence upon positivistic proof for everything. But from the positive order he cannot draw the right inferences about man. He can find no place for those creations like affections and opinions which are distinctly human and which are part of the settlement of any culture. For him an opinion, instead of being a stage of historical consciousness which may reflect a perfectly bona fide if narrow experience, is just an impediment in the way of the facts. His dialectic would move towards the facts and seek to destroy that which holds the facts in a cohesive picture. On his principle a cohesive or systemized outlook must involve distortion, and this explains why he automatically refers to rhetoric as "propaganda."
n brief the dialectician of our day has no adequate theory of man. Lacking such a theory, he of course cannot find a place for rhetoric, which is the most humanistic of all the disciplines. Rhetoric speaks to man in his whole being and out of his whole past and with reference to values which only a human being can intuit. The semanticists have in view only a denatured speech to suit a denatured man. Theirs is a major intellectual error, committed by supposing that they were going to help man by bringing language under the surveillance of science.
There is never any question that rhetoric ultimately will survive this scientistic attack. The pity is that the attacks should ever have been made at all since, proceeding from contempt for history and ignorance of the nature of man, they must produce confusion, skepticism, and inaction. In the restored man dialectic and rhetoric will go along hand in hand as the regime of the human faculties intended that they should do. That is why the recovery of value and of community in our time calls for a restatement of the broadly cultural role of rhetoric.
[1] Mortimer Adler, Dialectic (New York, 1927), 31.
[2] The Birth of Tragedy, trans. Clifton Fadiman, Volume V in The Philosophy of Nietzsche (Modern Library Edition; 5 vols.; New Yok, 1937), 253.
[3] Henry Cary (trans.), The Apology, Volume I in The Works of Plato (6 vols.; London, 1858).
[4] Rhetoric, trans. Lane Cooper (London, 1932), 1355a
[5] This is also the point of the great tragedies written before Euripides, who, significantly, was the only tragedian that Socrates admired.
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Driving under the Influence (DUI) is a serious criminal offense that may very well influence countless features of a person's everyday living. Occupations could be ruined, legal expenses may affect money and driving a vehicle liberties may be terminated. There are countless irrevocable negative effects to driving a car under the influence that may cause significant harm to a person's existence. If imprisoned for a Driving while intoxicated, legal representation is obligatory to attain a decreased sentence and keep clear of jail time. Judges are giving harsher sentences for the crime, as well as, more expensive fees.
Without a doubt, the legal drinking age in the USA is 21 years old. A great section of DWI's are received by women and men under the age of 21. Some DWI's were accompanied by car accidents and fatalities. States conscious of the facts are giving underage drinkers, who drive under the influence, felony charges and extended jail sentences.
Currently, in all 50 states, DWI is classified by law as possessing a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.08% or more costly. However, in some states intoxicated motorists may be charged with a lesser offense if the BAC is lower than 0.08%. Laws for DWI's vary from state to state. Therefore, individuals must learn the rules of almost every state before driving a vehicle.
Alcohol is a depressant that decreases the reaction or response time of the person. Brain impulses are suppressed when drinking. Some indicators do not appear to the brain while intoxicated. So, operators may not reply rapidly enough to prevent an obstacle in the road, a ceased vehicle or an animal. Persons that are drunk or inebriated may see fact differently than actuality. This makes it hard to manage the auto or truck and drive within the white and yellow lines on the highway. Intoxicated drivers in most cases trigger catastrophes and crashes when they cannot discern or keep the car in the path.
A large amount of impaired drivers have caused fatalities or severely injured themselves or another person. Drivers under the age of 24 are more likely to pass on in a car accident than from any other cause, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Forty percent of these fatalities are related to alcohol. Both people and passengers are likely to perish in an alcohol connected operating a vehicle incident.
A blood alcohol content of one tenth or 0.10 enhances the opportunity of a deadly accident by seven times. Likewise, the probability for death raises 25 times for a person whose blood alcohol level is increased to 0.15. Driving a vehicle with a legal blood alcohol level of 0.04 will increase the chances of being engaged in an auto accident by 1.4 times. If this figure doubles, the possibility of an automobile accident increases by 11 times. Added drinks could have lethal effects, if the driver proceeds to drive a vehicle. Those who come to a decision to commence may live with the repercussions of their activities, if they survive the car crash.
The majority of companies will offer insurance to high risk people. Drivers with current insurance should continue to make their monthly premium for the current insurance on the vehicle. The premium will not increase directly. The changes will take effect after the accident has been reported, the vehicle repaired and the premium expires.
Drivers under the age of 21 that are suspected of Drunk driving may be issued a violation in Georgia if the breathalyzer reads 0.02 or higher. Commercial drivers may also be issued a violation if their blood alcohol level is 0.04 or greater.


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All Hallow's School
'Mary Place' Middle School
Most recently Wilson Architects have undertaken a number of projects for All Hallow's School. Against the context of an existing Masterplan and a whole campus heritage conservation plan, Wilson Architects proposed several changes, based around strategic delivery of services to the students. Additionally, the Master-planned Year Seven building impacted on the views to the original Convent Building. Wilson Architects re-planned it's siting to locate it more centrally, setting up an overt dialogue with the heritage context. From Kemp Place a series of layered screens serves to modulate the scale of the building. The dominant element of the upper level sunshade screen uses a mix of colours fine-tuned to highlight the original buildings. Within the courtyard a wall with a large opening acts as a theatrical proscenium arch, transforming the back of the buildings to a framed backdrop.
The new Year Seven Building sits within a Heritage listed precinct on the eastern side of the All Hallows' School campus. The building comprises a basement car park with 4 floors containing 15 classrooms, enclosing one side of a courtyard formed next to the 1919 University Wing of the Main Building. Associated external works includes a new tennis/netball court and the complete redevelopment of Catherine Court as outdoor student activity space.
"The vision, and the practical realization of the vision in a collaborative and creative process, has been amazing to be part of. The School has been the major beneficiary and the projects have enhanced the rich fabric of the site and the legacy of some great buildings across the School's history."
— Lee-Anne Perry, Principal All Hallows School
4,143sqm
Hamilton Wilson, Phillip Lukin, Sarah Mahon


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What Companies will buy my house and are credible in Newport?
If you've been driving around in Newport, NC and Surrounding Areas, chances are you've seen some billboards advertising companies that buy houses.
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Are These "We Buy Houses in Newport, NC and Surrounding Areas Companies" Credible?
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Increasing the value of Newport, NC and Surrounding Areas neighborhoods. When we improve a house, we're helping to increase the value of the entire community. We often repair abandoned and neglected houses, turning them into beautiful homes for families. That activity strengthens Newport, NC and Surrounding Areas.
Pressuring you into a fast closing – If a house buyer tries to pressure you into selling your house and says that you have to make the decision today, be leery. Most reputable house buying services will make you and offer and that offer will be on the table for at least 2-7 days (minimum) for you to make a decision. The reason reputable house buying services like ours at Conner Properties do place deadlines on our offers is because the market changes and values can change week to week depending on other sales in the area, also… we buy multiple houses a month and when we make you an offer we're assuring you that the cash to purchase your house is ready and we'll reserve that cash for several days so if you do want to sell your house, we can close on your schedule. If you feel the offer isn't a fit for you, then we'll assign those funds to help another seller with their home sale.
True investors who run honest and ethical Newport, NC and Surrounding Areas house buying services, however, are building long-term businesses based on relationships and community development.
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What Do I Need To Do To Sell My House in Morehead City?


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Jerusalem Post Opinion Op-EdContributors
Jewish Ideas Daily: The whole damn deal
Strauss was the funniest man in Washington, and he knew it. He loved the press, which loved him back.
By SUZANNE GARMENT
Bob Strauss and George W. Bush 311
(photo credit: Reuters)
This article was first published by Jewish Ideas Daily and is reprinted with permission.
On April 2, 1979, US president Jimmy Carter recorded in his diary that he had asked Robert S. Strauss to be his Middle East peace negotiator. Strauss answered, "I've never even read the Bible. And I'm a Jew."
Observance-wise, Bob Strauss, who spent 50 years as a consummate practitioner of American politics, wasn't much of a Jew. Yet his outsized career paints a surprisingly familiar portrait of Jews in post-World War II America.
There is an excellent recent biography of Strauss titled The Whole Damn Deal – which is what Strauss always said when he was asked what he liked best about his career.
Strauss was inclined to like things. His father, Karl – Charlie, after he immigrated from Germany in 1906 – was a traveling salesman who reached West Texas, married, and went to work in his father-in-law's dry goods store.
Young Strauss was raised in a town with two Jewish families. He experienced his only moment of religious exclusion when the local minister told him why he couldn't be president of the Baptist Young People's Union.
The Strausses observed the High Holy Days, but that was about it. Un- Jewishly, they also celebrated Christmas. More un-Jewishly, Bob's mother told him "not to study too hard" or he'd "get an ulcer." (Strauss later established a scholarship for a promising high school student of "mediocre academic standing.")
At the University of Texas Strauss learned that only Jewish fraternities were open to him. So he pledged Sigma Alpha Mu, began dating his future wife – Helen Jacobs, daughter of a Dallas businessman – and, with his prodigious fundraising talents, became "the most popular Jewish boy on campus."
After spending World War II as an FBI agent, he started his own Dallas law firm. He was excluded from the WASP golf clubs but joined the Jewish country club and began fundraising for Jewish charities. He became president of Temple Emanu-El – though, unlike other presidents, he never sat on the bimah (reading platform) with the rabbi at Friday night services.
Indeed, Strauss joined everything he could – Citizens Council, Goodwill Industries, Community Chest. After he handled the finances for his classmate John Connally's successful Texas gubernatorial campaign in 1962, Connally put him on the State Banking Board. Strauss handed out bank charters. When accused of favoritism, he disarmed critics with what would become his trademark method: frank admission.
"If you ask me am I guilty," he said, "the answer is 'yes.' I did my damnedest to get any friend of mine a charter. Didn't have any problem doing that."
STRAUSS WAS close to president Lyndon Johnson – and every president thereafter for 30 years. After the Democrats' fratricidal conventions of 1968 and 1972, he became party chairman. He served successfully as Carter's Special Trade Representative, less successfully as Middle East envoy (he was eaten alive by the State Department and National Security Council, the only political players he couldn't charm).
After heading Carter's failed 1980 reelection campaign, Strauss befriended his last two – Republican – presidents and made his Washington law firm rich. He had done the same for himself years before. In 1991 he was named ambassador to Moscow, his last major post.
All this chronology raises the real question: What was it about Strauss? What made him a friend of whoever occupied the White House?
First, he was loyal. When he entered politics, large decisions were made by small groups of men for whom the premier virtue was loyalty. Strauss behaved accordingly. But loyalty came naturally to him: For decades he had the same wife, the same law firm, the same vacation home, the same poker game, the same racetrack.
Next, he never got too sophisticated to like the ordinary trappings of wealth and influence. He once advised another lawyer to build himself a swimming pool: "Helen and I built a pool. Every night I come home from work and look out at that swimming pool, which I've never been in, and I say, 'Strauss, you are one rich sumbitch.'" At the 1976 convention, his New York headquarters was the restaurant "21."
Also, Strauss was a negotiator who rarely let his personal views get in the way of an agreement. He sometimes told less than the truth, but by all accounts he was a consummately honest broker. When the Japanese firm Matsushita bought Lew Wasserman's MCA agency, both companies hired Strauss. People asked him which party he represented, and he'd say, "I represent the deal."
Here, too, he was a natural, loving the process of compromise. He was immensely proud of "my convention" of 1976, which gathered in Coretta King, George Wallace, Arthur Krim and Strauss's rabbi from Temple Emanu-El.
Finally, Strauss was careful. He handled pre-Watergate funds in pre- Watergate ways – but never strayed too far from prevailing standards. Federal officials investigated him in the matter of a certain suitcase full of corporate cash; but they declined to prosecute after Strauss's lawyer pointed out to them, "If Strauss, then everyone." Strauss did not end up like that other Washington superlawyer, Clark Clifford, who died having been indicted for his role in a banking scandal.
Well, not quite finally – because all of Strauss's prudence was wrapped in a layer of cheerful bluster. He was the funniest man in Washington, and he knew it. He loved the press, which loved him back. He seemed unable to speak a sentence without "goddamn," "son-of-a-bitch," or "whore."
When he took over the Democratic Party, he said his first instruction to the staff was to "stop screwing in the elevators." He sounded like a loudmouthed politician. Underneath, there was a pretty careful nice Jewish boy.
Strauss practiced at a time when politics and business were growing more entwined and both were becoming more inclusive. Sitting at a Xerox board meeting with fellow director Vernon Jordan, he said, "You know, Vernon, it's too bad our grandparents didn't live to see this. It was not intended that you and I would be sitting in this board room together."
The landscape was changing. Strauss, like many American Jews, had the qualities that enabled him to navigate it.
Tags jimmy carter


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Vancouver Chief Planner Fired
January 31, 2012 / andrew lainton
The Vision city council is terminating the contract of former mayor Sam Sullivan's most high-profile hire, planning director Brent Toderian.
According to sources, Mr. Toderian was told last week that his contract is being ended "without cause."
Council is supposed to vote formally on the decision at a private meeting on Tuesday, but the news leaked out of city hall late last week and has been making the rounds among developers and architects who do a lot of work in Vancouver.
MORE RELATED TO THIS STORY
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The termination comes after an almost six-year tenure by Mr. Toderian, where he provoked a steady stream of complaints from key local developers and architects.
Mr. Toderian had always said, in response, that "good planning is not a popularity contest."
Mr. Toderian was the youngest city planning director in Canada when Mr. Sullivan appointed him at the age of 36 to head up a planning department that is watched by urbanists around the world.
The move comes as something of a surprise because there was no recent project where he had noticeably butted heads with either council or a developer.
But for years, development-community members unhappy with him had been saying he didn't give clear messages about the planning department's direction, with the result that projects floundered and stalled as people tried to figure out what he and the department really wanted.
Others blamed his leadership for the steady rise of neighbourhood anti-development groups, while another group of critics was concerned about what they said was a lack of overall vision for the city.
But others in the city welcomed his style, saying Mr. Toderian treated developers equally, rather than favouring a few, that he demonstrated constantly that urban design was a priority, and that he delegated more authority to his staff instead of making all the decisions himself.
During his time, Mr. Toderian steered through the EcoDensity policy – Mr. Sullivan's idea about increasing density as a way of making the city more environmentally sustainable – laneway housing, and a plan to transform the single-family housing along Cambie Street and the Canada Line into a row of apartments and office towers.
Former Vancouver councillor Gordon Price, who was surprised to hear the news, said this is a key turning point for the Vision council because it's about to launch a push for affordable housing.
"That means significant change to the fabric of the city, which no one has been willing to take on before," he said. Whoever is the city planning director will be in charge of that.
Mr. Price said it will be important for Vision politicians to make it clear that Mr. Toderian's departure is not because of pressure from the development community.
"If Vision wants to start on the wrong foot on this, it could do it by getting it in the public mind that this is a developers' council."
Mr. Toderian, whose salary was $201,343 in 2010, will likely be eligible for at least a year's severance.
Mr. Toderian, originally from Ontario and later a planner in Calgary, followed in the footsteps of three strong planning directors: Ray Spaxman, Larry Beasley and Ann McAfee, who established Vancouver's reputation as an urban lab for successful experiments in downtown living and strong neighbourhoods.
But he faced a lot of new challenges in their wake. He replaced two people, Mr. Beasley and Ms. McAfee, who had been co-directors since 1994.
His effort to turn Mr. Sullivan's concept of EcoDensity into reality prompted a wave of neighbourhood resistance.
Then the Vision council was elected with a plan to create affordable rental units in the city by giving developers density and parking bonuses. That plan sparked even more opposition around the city.
At the same time, senior planners left the city in droves under the last two political administrations, either because they were ready to retire or because they weren't comfortable with new political regimes, leaving Mr. Toderian with a less-experienced department.
Vancouver has been a tough town for planning directors.
Gerald Sutton Brown, the city's first planning director, was fired in 1973 after 20 years when a new political party under Art Phillips swept into power.
Mr. Phillips's TEAM party hired Mr. Spaxman, who quit in 1988 when he got into conflict with then-mayor Gordon Campbell.
The next planning director, Tom Fletcher, quietly moved on after five years amid murmurs that the Delta resident wasn't a good fit for the rapidly growing city.
← Wales propose an 'Ecosystem approach' to assessing impact on natural resources #NPPF
Croydon Head of Planning and Environment goes over Difference in Expectations →
'The Spill' - London Needs Some Large #GardenCities to Meet its Booming Need - and Heres Where they Could Go


The reasons people turn to cupping for treatment and relief of ailments are as varied as people themselves. The ailments and maladies it treats are equally as varied. Typical reasons range from pain, inflammation, blood flow, relaxation and well-being, and as a type of deep-tissue massage. It removes toxins from the body and stimulates circulation, lymph, and Chi to the affected area and throughout the body. Recent celebrity and Olympian athlete application and intrigue in cupping has fashioned a new trend in holistic health care, but cupping is nothing new. In fact, cupping dates all the way back to ancient Egyptian, Chinese, and Middle Eastern cultures. Egyptians used cupping therapy in 1,550 B.C.
Just as with cupping, the reasons people turn to Gua Sha (or scraping) are as many and varied as people themselves, as are its benefits. Typical reasons for Gua Sha are very much the same as cupping.; however, if you are seeking deep muscle relaxation, deep tissue massage and deep pain and anxiety relief, then this is your answer! Much like cupping, Gua Sha promotes detoxification of the body and blood, while increases circulation, and improving the central nervous system and immunites. Again, as with recent trends and publicity from the stars and Olympians, Gua Sha has become a topic of great interest for many seeking holistic health care alternatives; however, as with cupping, Gua Sha is nothing new. It's humble beginnings date back some more than 2,000 years ago as the go-to method of treatment for so many Chinese mothers when anyone in the home fell ill or showed signs of impeding illness.
Side effects from cupping and scraping are temporary and mild. Side effects may be instant, or appear within a few hours of treatment and typically last 48 - 72 hours. Here are the most common effects: some mild swelling and/or redness or bruising in affected area; however, these marks do not cause pain, but may be tender. Your body may also feel more tired than normal. (For more informations, click on this link about the Detoxification Reaction).
Drink plenty of water, more than you normally do.
The following are links to research studies conducted on the effectiveness of cupping and scraping as effective holistic treatments for an assortment of physical, mental, and emotional ailments.


RGMVP has developed a community-driven, inclusive and scalable model for poverty reduction and women's empowerment, which has grown out of a strong network of Self-Help Groups and created a chain reaction across the most populous state in India.
We believe that that the creation of wellbeing alone is not sufficient, which is why we work to provide essential life skills and resources while simultaneously working to create agency among women in order to bring about a true transformation.
Self-Help Groups provide a unifying platform through which women can demonstrate strong bonds of mutual concern.
We work to strategically disrupt deep hierarchies, which we believe are the source of poverty, inequality and exclusion.
Beyond impacts on health, livelihoods and income, women experience increased levels of self-confidence and sustained agency.
We are an organisation committed to poverty reduction and women's empowerment whose work is achieved through the fundamental values of unity, self-reliance, inclusiveness, support and volunteerism.
"My greatest achievement has not just been in material terms, but the respect I now receive from the community."
"The Samooh (SHG) is our family, our life, our inheritance. We would never allow it to disintegrate. We are what we are today because of it. After us, our daughters will take over."
"We are no longer afraid of government machinery. We have realised what is rightfully ours can be demanded when we stand together and assert ourselves as a group."
Learn how women are taking the Self-Help Group message forward to innovate and inspire!


text:
+353 (0)1 213 5600 info@beaconclinic.ie
About the Beacon Clinic
Practices & Departments
Mr Mark Cahill
Suite 21 Beacon Consultants Clinic
Sandyford, Dublin 18
Consulting Rooms
Suite 23, Beacon Mall
Mr. Mark Cahill is a consultant eye surgeon with a special interest in retinal diseases in The Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital and Beacon Hospital. He is also the clinical lead for Global Vision, which provides photography and grading services for Diabetic Retina Screen, the national diabetic retinopathy screening programme run by the National Screening Service (NSS).
Mark qualified in University College Dublin. After completing higher surgical training in Dublin and Cork, he undertook a one year fellowship in diabetic retinopathy at the Beetham Eye Institute in the Joslin Diabetes Center, a Harvard University hospital in Boston, where he participated in research on novel treatments to prevent vision loss in patients with diabetic eye disease.
Mark gained further experience in assessing and treating a wide range of eye conditions including age-related macular degeneration, retinal vein occlusions and macular holes following a two year vitreo-retinal fellowship at the Duke University Eye Centre. He worked as a consultant eye surgeon in Duke University Eye Center, before returning to Ireland in 2004.
Mark specialises in the treatment of patients with retinal diseases, cataract, glaucoma and general ophthalmology.
Monday: 09:00 am – 05:00 pm
Tuesday: 09:00 am – 05:00 pm
Wednesday: 09:00 am – 05:00 pm
Thursday: 09:00 am – 05:00 pm
Friday: 09:00 am – 05:00 pm
The Beacon Consultants Clinic
The Beacon Consultant's Clinic is located in Sandyford, Dublin 18 alongside the Beacon Hospital on the Beacon Medical Campus.
The clinic has 32 medical suites with a very wide variety of medical and dental specialties covered by the consultants working there. The core consultants working in the hospital have their private medical suites in the Beacon Consultant's Clinic.
Consultant List
Address: Beacon Court, Sandyford, Dublin 18, Ireland
Reception Desk: +353 (0)1 213 5600
Email: info@beaconclinic.ie
Copyright © The Beacon Consultants Clinic


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using J2N.Threading;
using J2N.Threading.Atomic;
using Lucene.Net.Attributes;
using NUnit.Framework;
using System;
using System.Collections.Concurrent;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Globalization;
using System.IO;
using Assert = Lucene.Net.TestFramework.Assert;
using Console = Lucene.Net.Util.SystemConsole;

namespace Lucene.Net.Facet.Taxonomy.Directory
{
    using Cl2oTaxonomyWriterCache = Lucene.Net.Facet.Taxonomy.WriterCache.Cl2oTaxonomyWriterCache;
    using Directory = Lucene.Net.Store.Directory;
    using DirectoryReader = Lucene.Net.Index.DirectoryReader;
    using Document = Lucene.Net.Documents.Document;
    using IndexReader = Lucene.Net.Index.IndexReader;
    using IndexSearcher = Lucene.Net.Search.IndexSearcher;
    using IndexWriter = Lucene.Net.Index.IndexWriter;
    using IndexWriterConfig = Lucene.Net.Index.IndexWriterConfig;
    using IOUtils = Lucene.Net.Util.IOUtils;
    using ITaxonomyWriterCache = Lucene.Net.Facet.Taxonomy.WriterCache.ITaxonomyWriterCache;
    using LruTaxonomyWriterCache = Lucene.Net.Facet.Taxonomy.WriterCache.LruTaxonomyWriterCache;
    using MemoryOrdinalMap = Lucene.Net.Facet.Taxonomy.Directory.DirectoryTaxonomyWriter.MemoryOrdinalMap;
    using MockAnalyzer = Lucene.Net.Analysis.MockAnalyzer;
    using OpenMode = Lucene.Net.Index.OpenMode;
    using SegmentInfos = Lucene.Net.Index.SegmentInfos;
    using TestUtil = Lucene.Net.Util.TestUtil;

    public class TestDirectoryTaxonomyWriter : FacetTestCase
    {

        // A No-Op ITaxonomyWriterCache which always discards all given categories, and
        // always returns true in put(), to indicate some cache entries were cleared.
        private static readonly ITaxonomyWriterCache NO_OP_CACHE = new TaxonomyWriterCacheAnonymousClass();

        private sealed class TaxonomyWriterCacheAnonymousClass : ITaxonomyWriterCache
        {
            public void Dispose()
            {
            }
            public int Get(FacetLabel categoryPath)
            {
                return -1;
            }
            public bool Put(FacetLabel categoryPath, int ordinal)
            {
                return true;
            }
            public bool IsFull => true;

            public void Clear()
            {
            }

        }

        [Test]
        public virtual void TestCommit()
        {
            // Verifies that nothing is committed to the underlying Directory, if
            // commit() wasn't called.
            Directory dir = NewDirectory();
            var ltw = new DirectoryTaxonomyWriter(dir, OpenMode.CREATE_OR_APPEND, NO_OP_CACHE);
            Assert.IsFalse(DirectoryReader.IndexExists(dir));
            ltw.Commit(); // first commit, so that an index will be created
            ltw.AddCategory(new FacetLabel("a"));

            IndexReader r = DirectoryReader.Open(dir);
            Assert.AreEqual(1, r.NumDocs, "No categories should have been committed to the underlying directory");
            r.Dispose();
            ltw.Dispose();
            dir.Dispose();
        }

        [Test]
        public virtual void TestCommitUserData()
        {
            // Verifies taxonomy commit data
            Directory dir = NewDirectory();
            var taxoWriter = new DirectoryTaxonomyWriter(dir, OpenMode.CREATE_OR_APPEND, NO_OP_CACHE);
            taxoWriter.AddCategory(new FacetLabel("a"));
            taxoWriter.AddCategory(new FacetLabel("b"));
            IDictionary<string, string> userCommitData = new Dictionary<string, string>();
            userCommitData["testing"] = "1 2 3";
            taxoWriter.SetCommitData(userCommitData);
            taxoWriter.Dispose();
            var r = DirectoryReader.Open(dir);
            Assert.AreEqual(3, r.NumDocs, "2 categories plus root should have been committed to the underlying directory");
            var readUserCommitData = r.IndexCommit.UserData;
            Assert.IsTrue("1 2 3".Equals(readUserCommitData["testing"], StringComparison.Ordinal), "wrong value extracted from commit data");
            Assert.IsNotNull(DirectoryTaxonomyWriter.INDEX_EPOCH + " not found in commitData", readUserCommitData[DirectoryTaxonomyWriter.INDEX_EPOCH]);
            r.Dispose();

            // open DirTaxoWriter again and commit, INDEX_EPOCH should still exist
            // in the commit data, otherwise DirTaxoReader.refresh() might not detect
            // that the taxonomy index has been recreated.
            taxoWriter = new DirectoryTaxonomyWriter(dir, OpenMode.CREATE_OR_APPEND, NO_OP_CACHE);
            taxoWriter.AddCategory(new FacetLabel("c")); // add a category so that commit will happen
            taxoWriter.SetCommitData(new Dictionary<string, string>()
            {
                {"just", "data"}
            });
            taxoWriter.Commit();

            // verify taxoWriter.getCommitData()
            Assert.IsTrue(taxoWriter.CommitData.ContainsKey(DirectoryTaxonomyWriter.INDEX_EPOCH), DirectoryTaxonomyWriter.INDEX_EPOCH + " not found in taoxWriter.commitData");
            taxoWriter.Dispose();

            r = DirectoryReader.Open(dir);
            readUserCommitData = r.IndexCommit.UserData;
            Assert.IsTrue(readUserCommitData.ContainsKey(DirectoryTaxonomyWriter.INDEX_EPOCH), DirectoryTaxonomyWriter.INDEX_EPOCH + " not found in taoxWriter.commitData");
            r.Dispose();

            dir.Dispose();
        }

        [Test]
        public virtual void TestRollback()
        {
            // Verifies that if rollback is called, DTW is closed.
            Directory dir = NewDirectory();
            var dtw = new DirectoryTaxonomyWriter(dir);
            dtw.AddCategory(new FacetLabel("a"));
            dtw.Rollback();
            try
            {
                dtw.AddCategory(new FacetLabel("a"));
                fail("should not have succeeded to add a category following rollback.");
            }
            catch (Exception e) when (e.IsAlreadyClosedException())
            {
                // expected
            }

            dir.Dispose();
        }

        [Test]
        public virtual void TestRecreateRollback()
        {
            // Tests rollback with OpenMode.CREATE
            Directory dir = NewDirectory();
            new DirectoryTaxonomyWriter(dir).Dispose();
            Assert.AreEqual(1, getEpoch(dir));
            new DirectoryTaxonomyWriter(dir, OpenMode.CREATE).Rollback();
            Assert.AreEqual(1, getEpoch(dir));

            dir.Dispose();
        }

        [Test]
        public virtual void TestEnsureOpen()
        {
            // verifies that an exception is thrown if DTW was closed
            Directory dir = NewDirectory();
            DirectoryTaxonomyWriter dtw = new DirectoryTaxonomyWriter(dir);
            dtw.Dispose();
            try
            {
                dtw.AddCategory(new FacetLabel("a"));
                fail("should not have succeeded to add a category following close.");
            }
            catch (Exception e) when (e.IsAlreadyClosedException())
            {
                // expected
            }
            dir.Dispose();
        }

        private void TouchTaxo(DirectoryTaxonomyWriter taxoWriter, FacetLabel cp)
        {
            taxoWriter.AddCategory(cp);
            taxoWriter.SetCommitData(new Dictionary<string, string>()
            {
                {"just", "data"}
            });
            taxoWriter.Commit();
        }

        [Test]
        public virtual void TestRecreateAndRefresh()
        {
            // DirTaxoWriter lost the INDEX_EPOCH property if it was opened in
            // CREATE_OR_APPEND (or commit(userData) called twice), which could lead to
            // DirTaxoReader succeeding to refresh().
            Directory dir = NewDirectory();

            DirectoryTaxonomyWriter taxoWriter = new DirectoryTaxonomyWriter(dir, OpenMode.CREATE_OR_APPEND, NO_OP_CACHE);
            TouchTaxo(taxoWriter, new FacetLabel("a"));

            var taxoReader = new DirectoryTaxonomyReader(dir);

            TouchTaxo(taxoWriter, new FacetLabel("b"));

            var newtr = TaxonomyReader.OpenIfChanged(taxoReader);
            taxoReader.Dispose();
            taxoReader = newtr;
            Assert.AreEqual(1, Convert.ToInt32(taxoReader.CommitUserData[DirectoryTaxonomyWriter.INDEX_EPOCH], CultureInfo.InvariantCulture));

            // now recreate the taxonomy, and check that the epoch is preserved after opening DirTW again.
            taxoWriter.Dispose();
            taxoWriter = new DirectoryTaxonomyWriter(dir, OpenMode.CREATE, NO_OP_CACHE);
            TouchTaxo(taxoWriter, new FacetLabel("c"));
            taxoWriter.Dispose();

            taxoWriter = new DirectoryTaxonomyWriter(dir, OpenMode.CREATE_OR_APPEND, NO_OP_CACHE);
            TouchTaxo(taxoWriter, new FacetLabel("d"));
            taxoWriter.Dispose();

            newtr = TaxonomyReader.OpenIfChanged(taxoReader);
            taxoReader.Dispose();
            taxoReader = newtr;
            Assert.AreEqual(2, Convert.ToInt32(taxoReader.CommitUserData[DirectoryTaxonomyWriter.INDEX_EPOCH], CultureInfo.InvariantCulture));

            taxoReader.Dispose();
            dir.Dispose();
        }

        [Test]
        public virtual void TestBackwardsCompatibility()
        {
            // tests that if the taxonomy index doesn't have the INDEX_EPOCH
            // property (supports pre-3.6 indexes), all still works.
            Directory dir = NewDirectory();

            // create an empty index first, so that DirTaxoWriter initializes indexEpoch to 1.
            new IndexWriter(dir, new IndexWriterConfig(TEST_VERSION_CURRENT, null)).Dispose();

            var taxoWriter = new DirectoryTaxonomyWriter(dir, OpenMode.CREATE_OR_APPEND, NO_OP_CACHE);
            taxoWriter.Dispose();

            var taxoReader = new DirectoryTaxonomyReader(dir);
            Assert.AreEqual(1, Convert.ToInt32(taxoReader.CommitUserData[DirectoryTaxonomyWriter.INDEX_EPOCH], CultureInfo.InvariantCulture));
            Assert.IsNull(TaxonomyReader.OpenIfChanged(taxoReader));
            taxoReader.Dispose();

            dir.Dispose();
        }

        [Test]
        [Slow]
        [Timeout(1_200_000)] // 20 minutes
        public virtual void TestConcurrency()
        {
            int ncats = AtLeast(100000); // add many categories
            int range = ncats * 3; // affects the categories selection
            AtomicInt32 numCats = new AtomicInt32(ncats);
            Directory dir = NewDirectory();
            var values = new ConcurrentDictionary<string, string>();
            double d = Random.NextDouble();
            ITaxonomyWriterCache cache;
            if (d < 0.7)
            {
                // this is the fastest, yet most memory consuming
                cache = new Cl2oTaxonomyWriterCache(1024, 0.15f, 3);
            }
            // LUCENENET specific - this option takes too long to get under the 1 hour job limit in Azure DevOps
            //else if (TestNightly && d > 0.98)
            //{
            //    // this is the slowest, but tests the writer concurrency when no caching is done.
            //    // only pick it during NIGHTLY tests, and even then, with very low chances.
            //    cache = NO_OP_CACHE;
            //}
            else
            {
                // this is slower than CL2O, but less memory consuming, and exercises finding categories on disk too.
                cache = new LruTaxonomyWriterCache(ncats / 10);
            }
            if (Verbose)
            {
                Console.WriteLine("TEST: use cache=" + cache);
            }
            var tw = new DirectoryTaxonomyWriter(dir, OpenMode.CREATE, cache);
            ThreadJob[] addThreads = new ThreadJob[AtLeast(4)];
            for (int z = 0; z < addThreads.Length; z++)
            {
                addThreads[z] = new ThreadAnonymousClass(range, numCats, values, tw);
            }

            foreach (var t in addThreads)
            {
                t.Start();
            }
            foreach (var t in addThreads)
            {
                t.Join();
            }
            tw.Dispose();

            DirectoryTaxonomyReader dtr = new DirectoryTaxonomyReader(dir);
            // +1 for root category
            if (values.Count + 1 != dtr.Count)
            {
                foreach (string value in values.Keys)
                {
                    FacetLabel label = new FacetLabel(FacetsConfig.StringToPath(value));
                    if (dtr.GetOrdinal(label) == -1)
                    {
                        Console.WriteLine("FAIL: path=" + label + " not recognized");
                    }
                }
                fail("mismatch number of categories");
            }

            int[] parents = dtr.ParallelTaxonomyArrays.Parents;
            foreach (string cat in values.Keys)
            {
                FacetLabel cp = new FacetLabel(FacetsConfig.StringToPath(cat));
                Assert.IsTrue(dtr.GetOrdinal(cp) > 0, "category not found " + cp);
                int level = cp.Length;
                int parentOrd = 0; // for root, parent is always virtual ROOT (ord=0)
                FacetLabel path /*= new FacetLabel()*/;
                for (int i = 0; i < level; i++)
                {
                    path = cp.Subpath(i + 1);
                    int ord = dtr.GetOrdinal(path);
                    Assert.AreEqual(parentOrd, parents[ord], "invalid parent for cp=" + path);
                    parentOrd = ord; // next level should have this parent
                }
            }

            IOUtils.Dispose(dtr, dir);
        }

        private sealed class ThreadAnonymousClass : ThreadJob
        {
            private readonly int range;
            private readonly AtomicInt32 numCats;
            private readonly ConcurrentDictionary<string, string> values;
            private readonly DirectoryTaxonomyWriter tw;

            public ThreadAnonymousClass(int range, AtomicInt32 numCats, ConcurrentDictionary<string, string> values, DirectoryTaxonomyWriter tw)
            {
                this.range = range;
                this.numCats = numCats;
                this.values = values;
                this.tw = tw;
            }

            public override void Run()
            {
                Random random = Random;
                while (numCats.DecrementAndGet() > 0)
                {
                    try
                    {
                        int value = random.Next(range);
                        FacetLabel cp = new FacetLabel(
                            Convert.ToString(value / 1000, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture),
                            Convert.ToString(value / 10000, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture),
                            Convert.ToString(value / 100000, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture),
                            Convert.ToString(value, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture));
                        int ord = tw.AddCategory(cp);
                        Assert.IsTrue(tw.GetParent(ord) != -1, "invalid parent for ordinal " + ord + ", category " + cp);
                        string l1 = FacetsConfig.PathToString(cp.Components, 1);
                        string l2 = FacetsConfig.PathToString(cp.Components, 2);
                        string l3 = FacetsConfig.PathToString(cp.Components, 3);
                        string l4 = FacetsConfig.PathToString(cp.Components, 4);
                        values[l1] = l1;
                        values[l2] = l2;
                        values[l3] = l3;
                        values[l4] = l4;
                    }
                    catch (Exception e) when (e.IsIOException())
                    {
                        throw RuntimeException.Create(e);
                    }
                }
            }
        }

        private long getEpoch(Directory taxoDir)
        {
            SegmentInfos infos = new SegmentInfos();
            infos.Read(taxoDir);
            return Convert.ToInt64(infos.UserData[DirectoryTaxonomyWriter.INDEX_EPOCH], CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
        }

        [Test]
        public virtual void TestReplaceTaxonomy()
        {
            Directory input = NewDirectory();
            var taxoWriter = new DirectoryTaxonomyWriter(input);
            int ordA = taxoWriter.AddCategory(new FacetLabel("a"));
            taxoWriter.Dispose();

            Directory dir = NewDirectory();
            taxoWriter = new DirectoryTaxonomyWriter(dir);
            int ordB = taxoWriter.AddCategory(new FacetLabel("b"));
            taxoWriter.AddCategory(new FacetLabel("c"));
            taxoWriter.Commit();

            long origEpoch = getEpoch(dir);

            // replace the taxonomy with the input one
            taxoWriter.ReplaceTaxonomy(input);

            // LUCENE-4633: make sure that category "a" is not added again in any case
            taxoWriter.AddTaxonomy(input, new MemoryOrdinalMap());
            Assert.AreEqual(2, taxoWriter.Count, "no categories should have been added"); // root + 'a'
            Assert.AreEqual(ordA, taxoWriter.AddCategory(new FacetLabel("a")), "category 'a' received new ordinal?");

            // add the same category again -- it should not receive the same ordinal !
            int newOrdB = taxoWriter.AddCategory(new FacetLabel("b"));
            Assert.AreNotEqual(ordB, newOrdB, "new ordinal cannot be the original ordinal"); // LUCENENET specific: Changed to AreNotEqual instead of AreNotSame (boxing)
            Assert.AreEqual(2, newOrdB, "ordinal should have been 2 since only one category was added by replaceTaxonomy");

            taxoWriter.Dispose();

            long newEpoch = getEpoch(dir);
            Assert.IsTrue(origEpoch < newEpoch, "index epoch should have been updated after replaceTaxonomy");

            dir.Dispose();
            input.Dispose();
        }

        [Test]
        public virtual void TestReaderFreshness()
        {
            // ensures that the internal index reader is always kept fresh. Previously,
            // this simple scenario failed, if the cache just evicted the category that
            // is being added.
            Directory dir = NewDirectory();
            DirectoryTaxonomyWriter taxoWriter = new DirectoryTaxonomyWriter(dir, OpenMode.CREATE, NO_OP_CACHE);
            int o1 = taxoWriter.AddCategory(new FacetLabel("a"));
            int o2 = taxoWriter.AddCategory(new FacetLabel("a"));
            Assert.IsTrue(o1 == o2, "ordinal for same category that is added twice should be the same !");
            taxoWriter.Dispose();
            dir.Dispose();
        }

        [Test]
        public virtual void TestCommitNoEmptyCommits()
        {
            // LUCENE-4972: DTW used to create empty commits even if no changes were made
            Directory dir = NewDirectory();
            DirectoryTaxonomyWriter taxoWriter = new DirectoryTaxonomyWriter(dir);
            taxoWriter.AddCategory(new FacetLabel("a"));
            taxoWriter.Commit();

            long gen1 = SegmentInfos.GetLastCommitGeneration(dir);
            taxoWriter.Commit();
            long gen2 = SegmentInfos.GetLastCommitGeneration(dir);
            Assert.AreEqual(gen1, gen2, "empty commit should not have changed the index");

            taxoWriter.Dispose();
            dir.Dispose();
        }

        [Test]
        public virtual void TestCloseNoEmptyCommits()
        {
            // LUCENE-4972: DTW used to create empty commits even if no changes were made
            Directory dir = NewDirectory();
            DirectoryTaxonomyWriter taxoWriter = new DirectoryTaxonomyWriter(dir);
            taxoWriter.AddCategory(new FacetLabel("a"));
            taxoWriter.Commit();

            long gen1 = SegmentInfos.GetLastCommitGeneration(dir);
            taxoWriter.Dispose();
            long gen2 = SegmentInfos.GetLastCommitGeneration(dir);
            Assert.AreEqual(gen1, gen2, "empty commit should not have changed the index");

            taxoWriter.Dispose();
            dir.Dispose();
        }

        [Test]
        public virtual void TestPrepareCommitNoEmptyCommits()
        {
            // LUCENE-4972: DTW used to create empty commits even if no changes were made
            Directory dir = NewDirectory();
            DirectoryTaxonomyWriter taxoWriter = new DirectoryTaxonomyWriter(dir);
            taxoWriter.AddCategory(new FacetLabel("a"));
            taxoWriter.PrepareCommit();
            taxoWriter.Commit();

            long gen1 = SegmentInfos.GetLastCommitGeneration(dir);
            taxoWriter.PrepareCommit();
            taxoWriter.Commit();
            long gen2 = SegmentInfos.GetLastCommitGeneration(dir);
            Assert.AreEqual(gen1, gen2, "empty commit should not have changed the index");

            taxoWriter.Dispose();
            dir.Dispose();
        }

        [Test]
        public virtual void TestHugeLabel()
        {
            Directory indexDir = NewDirectory(), taxoDir = NewDirectory();
            IndexWriter indexWriter = new IndexWriter(indexDir, NewIndexWriterConfig(TEST_VERSION_CURRENT, new MockAnalyzer(Random)));
            DirectoryTaxonomyWriter taxoWriter = new DirectoryTaxonomyWriter(taxoDir, OpenMode.CREATE, new Cl2oTaxonomyWriterCache(2, 1f, 1));
            FacetsConfig config = new FacetsConfig();

            // Add one huge label:
            string bigs = null;
            int ordinal = -1;

            int len = FacetLabel.MAX_CATEGORY_PATH_LENGTH - 4; // for the dimension and separator
            bigs = TestUtil.RandomSimpleString(Random, len, len);
            FacetField ff = new FacetField("dim", bigs);
            FacetLabel cp = new FacetLabel("dim", bigs);
            ordinal = taxoWriter.AddCategory(cp);
            Document doc = new Document();
            doc.Add(ff);
            indexWriter.AddDocument(config.Build(taxoWriter, doc));

            // Add tiny ones to cause a re-hash
            for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++)
            {
                string s = TestUtil.RandomSimpleString(Random, 1, 10);
                taxoWriter.AddCategory(new FacetLabel("dim", s));
                doc = new Document();
                doc.Add(new FacetField("dim", s));
                indexWriter.AddDocument(config.Build(taxoWriter, doc));
            }

            // when too large components were allowed to be added, this resulted in a new added category
            Assert.AreEqual(ordinal, taxoWriter.AddCategory(cp));

            IOUtils.Dispose(indexWriter, taxoWriter);

            DirectoryReader indexReader = DirectoryReader.Open(indexDir);
            var taxoReader = new DirectoryTaxonomyReader(taxoDir);
            IndexSearcher searcher = new IndexSearcher(indexReader);
            DrillDownQuery ddq = new DrillDownQuery(new FacetsConfig());
            ddq.Add("dim", bigs);
            Assert.AreEqual(1, searcher.Search(ddq, 10).TotalHits);

            IOUtils.Dispose(indexReader, taxoReader, indexDir, taxoDir);
        }

        [Test]
        public virtual void TestReplaceTaxoWithLargeTaxonomy()
        {
            var srcTaxoDir = NewDirectory();
            var targetTaxoDir = NewDirectory();

            // build source, large, taxonomy
            DirectoryTaxonomyWriter taxoWriter = new DirectoryTaxonomyWriter(srcTaxoDir);
            int ord = taxoWriter.AddCategory(new FacetLabel("A", "1", "1", "1", "1", "1", "1"));
            taxoWriter.Dispose();

            taxoWriter = new DirectoryTaxonomyWriter(targetTaxoDir);
            int ordinal = taxoWriter.AddCategory(new FacetLabel("B", "1"));
            Assert.AreEqual(1, taxoWriter.GetParent(ordinal)); // call getParent to initialize taxoArrays
            taxoWriter.Commit();

            taxoWriter.ReplaceTaxonomy(srcTaxoDir);
            Assert.AreEqual(ord - 1, taxoWriter.GetParent(ord));
            taxoWriter.Dispose();

            srcTaxoDir.Dispose();
            targetTaxoDir.Dispose();
        }
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Plate tectonics affect the entire world and, just because you don't think you live on a fault line, don't expect to be safe from the ground-shaking motion of an earthquake.
Earthquakes shake everything if they're strong enough. They can bring down buildings, crack roads, start fires and floods, and so much more. As of yet, there is not a warning for earthquakes before they hit you. If you think ones happening, better be safe than sorry.
So what should you do if the ground starts rocking?
First off, unless you live in an old adobe house, don't go for the doorway (unless there isn't a door there, anyway). Modern homes are built differently. The best method is the one we grew up with: duck and cover. If you have a sturdy table, desk, or something similar, get underneath it, curl up, and put your hands over your neck and as much of your skull as possible. This prevent falling debris from striking the most delicate part of your body.
After the shaking has stopped, grab family, pets, and emergency supplies, and get out of the house. You don't know if the structure of your shelter was compromised, or if the quake caused a fracture in a gas-line. Hopefully, you already have a fire extinguisher on hand just in case of this situation. Go turn off the gas line if you are able.
Electricity may be down, so you'll definitely need a source of light. Candles may suffice for some, but an aftershock (which is inevitable after any large quake) may cause the candle to tip and start a fire. It is better to have a lamp or flashlight. Many companies make crank or solar-powered radios and flashlight combinations, that also charge cell phones, but if you don't have one of these, make sure you have extra batteries in your emergency kit.
A first aid kit is a necessity, as well. Things are bound to fall during a quake, and people are bound to be under them. Make sure everyone stays hydrated, but use water you know is purified in case the water pipe leaked as well. There are plenty of water purification supplies that will make any water drinkable.
You'll need food rations, as well. If power goes out, then you won't have a stove or refrigerator. You'll need food that doesn't perish.
Another good idea for your earthquake emergency kit is a whistle or flare of some sort, something to get the attention of rescue workers in case you get trapped in the debris.
No one is ever truly prepared for an earthquake, but it's better to have something now than regret not having it later.