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Apple Watch vs. Blender: Will It Blend? [Video]
Menchie Mendoza, Tech Times 28 April 2015, 09:04 am
Over the years, the people at Blendtec have blended a number of gadgets in a YouTube campaign series that aims to answer the question "Will it blend." So far, they have "successfully" blended smartphones, tablets, and even the guitar controller from Guitar Hero 3.
The company is also known to have a certain level of affinity with Apple products. They have tried "blending" products such as iPhones and iPads. Now that the Apple Watch has launched, it's not surprising that the wearable has become the the apple of Blendtec's eye.
Their latest video features the Apple Watch Sport. The experiment is conducted by Tom Dickson, the mastermind behind the YouTube series. He attempted to amuse his audience by talking to the Watch through Siri.
"Thankfully, the real Apple Watch is finally here, and boy is she a beauty," said Dickson.
Siri responded by saying, "Thank you Tom. That is nice of you to say."
Siri was also heard saying the words "inspiring" and "disturbing" as she commented on Dickson's claim that he has blended almost everything that Apple has made. Siri then tried to convince Dickson that the Apple Watch was made to be worn on the wrist - not something to be put inside a blender.
"But the Apple Watch is a work of art. It should be on your wrist, not in a Blendtec."
Prior to the "Blendtec" challenge on the Apple Watch, the wearable has been subjected to a number of other torture trials. These range from the "little scientific" tests to ones that are more controlled and seriously scientific in nature. In the case of Blendtec's experiment with the Apple Watch, there doesn't seem to be anything scientific or educational at play.
This time, the wearable went on a face-off with a blender and just like the iPhone 6 Plus, it turned into fine particles that looked like ash. There was even smoke seen on top, which came out when the blender cover was removed.
Dickson then placed the "Apple Watch" dust on the table, exclaiming, "Oh! Siri smoke! Don't breathe this."
Asking, "so what's up next?" Dickson hinted at using the same experiment on an Apple car:
"I hear Apple is building their own car. I can deal with that."
Tags: Apple Watch Siri iPhone iPad Blendtec Apple Watch Sport Will it Blend
Apple Watch Sport Torture Test: Did It Survive? [Video]
Stainless Steel Apple Watch Is Prone To Scratches But There's An Easy Fix
Look Ma, I'm a scientist: Make graphene using soap and kitchen blender


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Press Release: 10:02 CET • 14 Dec 2017
Vestas to merge sales business units for Central Europe and Northern Europe
As part of Vestas' ambition to grow faster than a changing and increasingly competitive market, Vestas' two separate sales business units (SBU) for Northern Europe and Central Europe will merge on 1 January 2018. By merging the two SBUs into one, to be called SBU North & Central Europe, Vestas will combine capabilities and expertise and position itself strongly to capture future growth opportunities in Europe's mature markets.
The merger follows Vestas' strategy to ensure an agile organisation that adapts to market and customer needs. The same rationale resulted in the establishment of SBU China and SBU Asia Pacific earlier this year. Among other things, reorganising the SBUs intends to create simpler and more agile SBUs with faster and clearer decision-making.
Nils de Baar, who has been leading SBU Central Europe since 2015, will take on the role as President of SBU Vestas North & Central Europe from its headquarters in Hamburg. The Malmö office will remain an important location in Vestas' sales efforts going forward.
"With mature markets moving to auctions and competitive tenders, it is imperative that our business model reflects and supports our customers' needs in being successful in the market. By merging the two SBUs, we combine experience and capabilities across markets with a simpler and more agile setup, which will ensure faster decision-making and help us sustain our leadership in mature markets," says Juan Araluce, Executive Vice President and Chief Sales Officer. "Since joining Vestas, Nils de Baar has increased sales and strengthened project execution across Central European markets. He is the right person to lead the merger and position Vestas strongly going forward."
"I am truly excited to be given this opportunity to lead SBU North & Central Europe. The new management team and I are fully committed to seize the future growth and development prospects," says Nils de Baar, "With this change, Vestas will have the right structure in place to better capture growth and stand stronger in a tougher market."
As part of the merger, the current President of Vestas Northern Europe, Klaus Steen Mortensen, who has been instrumental in Vestas Northern Europe's continuous high order intake in the region, will be leaving Vestas by mutual agreement.
On Klaus' departure, Juan Araluce, said: "I would like to thank Klaus for his leadership, dedication and hard work during his time with Vestas, which among other things includes the 1 GW order for Fosen Vind – one of Vestas' largest orders to date. I wish him all the best in his future endeavours."
Anders Riis, External Communications
Mail: ANPRR@vestas.com
About Nils de Baar
Since 1 September 2015, Nils de Baar has led Vestas' sales business unit for Central Europe from its headquarters in Hamburg.
Before joining Vestas, Nils worked for more than 19 years at Ericsson where he held various commercial leadership positions. His last position at Ericsson was Vice President and Head of Global Customer Accounts, based in Stockholm.
Born in 1962, Dutch National, Nils holds a Master's Degree in Business Economics from the Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands, as well as several leadership degrees from European and American Universities.
He has in-depth commercial understanding of the European & African markets and strong competencies within customer relations. With his strong commercial background and extensive international leadership experience, Nils will continue to develop and strengthen Vestas' competitive position North & Central Europe. He will assume his new role as President for the sales business unit Vestas North & Central Europe on 1 January 2018.
About Vestas
Vestas is the energy industry's global partner on sustainable energy solutions. We design, manufacture, install, and service wind turbines across the globe, and with more than 875 GW of wind turbines in 76 countries, we have installed more wind power than anyone else. Through our industry-leading smart data capabilities and unparalleled more than 73 GW of wind turbines under service, we use data to interpret, forecast, and exploit wind resources and deliver best-in-class wind power solutions. Together with our customers, Vestas' more than 22,700 employees are bringing the world sustainable energy solutions to power a bright future.
For updated Vestas photographs and videos, please visit our media images page on: https://www.vestas.com/en/media/images.
We invite you to learn more about Vestas by visiting our website at www.vestas.com and following us on our social media channels:
www.twitter.com/vestas
www.linkedin.com/company/vestas
www.facebook.com/vestas
www.instagram.com/vestas
www.youtube.com/vestas
171214_nr_uk_vestas.pdf

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Planning consent has already been granted for a new, high-specification, Grade-A office comprising 112,246 sq ft over five floors at Pinesgate West.
A new state-of-the-art office is anticipated to be in high demand as there is currently no availability of grade-A offices within Bath city centre. There has been no new The development will complement other new grade-A office builds that are in the pipeline at Bath Quays and Roseberry Place.
In addition, planning consent has been secured for a new, state-of-the-art education campus spanning 177,507 sq ft at Pinesgate East.
The campus will include college facilities and integral student accommodation for 358 units. Pinesgate East, which makes up half the site, has been pre-let to Kaplan Bath on a new 21-year lease to create Kaplan International College.
The site was previously acquired by Europa Capital and Ediston Real Estate for £19million in 2010.
Allsop represented the vendor, Europa Capital and Ediston Real Estate. Its head of national investments, Jeremy Hodgson, said: "The strong price achieved reflected Europa Capital and Ediston Real Estate's excellent asset management and vision in obtaining such a major and valuable planning consent for the site. The opportunity now reflects a secure medium-term income stream coupled with an exceptional planning consent and part pre-let.
For more information about commercial property and development sites in Bath and the surrounding area, please visit our workspace pages.


I am a Solicitor in the Financial Markets and Products Group at Fieldfisher.
I have diverse experience working for a number of financial institutions on European and multi-jurisdictional structured finance and capital markets deals, including asset-backed financing, risk retention compliant CLO's and securitisations.
Prior to joining Fieldfisher, I gained experience acting for lenders in real estate finance transactions and additionally in secondary market debt trading, where I assisted U.S. and European-based investment management firms in the acquisition and disposal of par and distressed debt, including a number of large cross-border loan portfolio acquisition projects.
In my spare time, I enjoy spending time with family and friends, being outdoors and working on art and design projects.


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Now reading: Symbol Revealed: The Mythology Behind the Skull
Symbol Revealed: The Mythology Behind the Skull
Halloween season is here, and while you might not usually describe your jewelry collection as "scary," the SKULL Pendant is a meaningful symbol to add to your Hidden Message Necklace. It's a subtle nod to the spooky, ghost-ridden holiday, but also an age-old symbol of power and royalty.
The tough and sometimes menacing symbol actually has positive connotations that extend beyond its modern rock-and-roll image. The skull symbol in jewelry has been around for more than 1000 years, worn by everyone from kings and queens of old to kids and ladies who lunch. Here's what you need to know about the skull symbol—including how to incorporate the SKULL Pendant into a custom necklace, designed by you and created by us.
The Skull Symbolized Power
The skull made its first real appearance as a fashion statement in the 15th century. Originally considered a symbol of power by philosophers like Plato and Tibetan monks, the skull became popular as an icon people wore as a "memento mori"—a reminder of their own mortality. (Directly translated, it means "remember, you must die.") Eerie as that may sound, back then, death didn't have the negative connotations it has today in western cultures. Instead, it represented the natural circle of life, including passage into the afterlife—under the protection of a range of mighty and all-powerful gods (depending on what you believed).
It Was Favored by Royalty
Queen Victoria started a trend of memorial jewelry in Elizabethan Europe, and the skull symbol featured prominently. Skull-adorned jewelry was worn to commemorate a loved one. Queen Victoria wore hers to honor her late husband, attaching locks of his hair to her jewel. At the time, it was a powerful way to hold loved ones near and dear.
It Was Embraced by High Fashion
In the 1960s, the symbol of the skull was embraced by the public—and was worn by rockers, A-listers, and more. More recently, Alexander McQueen made it a centerpiece of his fashion collections—and before you knew it, even children were sporting skull motifs on their clothes. Today we think of the skull icon as a little dangerous, a little tough, and stylishly edgy.
It Adds Stylish Edge to Your Custom Necklace
There are quite a few ways to include the SKULL symbol in your signature design as you create your own necklace. You could build a Pendant Necklace with the skull as the centerpiece between two letters—your initials—on a thin and delicate chain. You could also opt to wear it as a single charm, but up the ante with a chain made from white, rose, or yellow gold. It's a very giftable design, ideal for both men and women. Or you could pair your pendant necklace with a SKULL Slice Ring (or two!) for a slyly edgy stackable ring set.
What does the skull symbolize to you? Would you add it to your collection now that you know the meaning behind it?
5 Bridesmaid Gifts They'll Treasure For Years to Come
Jewelry Lover's Horoscope: Scorpio


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pictheproduction.com
Question: What Is A Theatre Balcony Called?
What is the difference between genre and style in Theatre?
What does style of play mean?
What is the Green Room in theater?
What are the 7 types of drama?
What is an end on stage?
What are the features of a Theatre?
What are the 10 features of drama?
What are the six elements of drama?
What are the two main genres of Theatre?
What are the 9 stage directions?
What are the different parts of a Theatre called?
What is the different between drama and Theatre?
What are the most expensive seats in a Theatre?
What are the 4 types of Theatre spaces?
What are the 4 types of stages?
What is the oldest type of stage?
What are the unique features of drama?
The genre of a performance refers to the type of story being told, and the style refers to how the work is presented on stage.
A genre or style can help to give performers a framework to shape the devised work..
A good working definition of, "Style", is how something is done. Theatrical styles are influenced by their time and place, artistic and other social structures, as well as the individual style of the particular artist or artists.
In show business, the green room is the space in a theatre or similar venue that functions as a waiting room and lounge for performers before, during and after a performance or show when they are not engaged on stage.
They are comedy, tragedy, tragicomedy, and melodrama. These contain different characteristics of drama, which include, plot, characters, music, dialogue, etc. Also, most plays contain elements of some or all of these different genres.
End-on staging is very similar to proscenium arch, but without the arch frame around the stage space. Many black box studios are set up with end-on staging, meaning that the stage space is on one side of the room and the audience sit on the opposite side.
To sum up, the following are the major elements of theater: Performers. Audience. Director. Theater Space. Design Aspects (scenery, costume, lighting, and sound) Text (which includes focus, purpose, point of view,
Features and Elements of DramaFEATURES ANDELEMENTS OF DRAMA.What is drama? … Features of dramaThe feature of is to be performed on stage or to be performed in front of an audience.It has to have: Actors Dialogue Actions.Elements of drama Collaboration/Convention Plot Audience Theme Stagecraft Character.More items…•
The six elements involve: Thought, Theme, Ideas; Action or Plot; Characters; Language; Music; and Spectacle (scenery, costumes and special effects).
The two main genres of drama are tragedy and .
Stage directions include center stage, stage right, stage left, upstage, and downstage. These guide the actors to one of the nine sections of the stage named after the center and four directions. Corners are referred to as up right, down right, up left, and down left.
Stage Right: The area of the stage to the performer's right, when facing downstage (i.e. towards the audience). Center Stage: The center of the playing (performance) area. Onstage: The portion of the playing area visible to the audience. Offstage: The area surrounding the playing space not visible to the audience.
In general terms Drama often refers to the written, intellectual and or emotional context of a situation, which is intended for an audience. Theater refers to the overall spectacle of the drama, that being how a drama is staged, showcased and performed.
The Orchestra is the most expensive overall section in the Broadway Theatre seating chart. Prices start at a premium in the front half of the Center Orchestra and inside aisle seats, and gradually fall towards the back and sides. The cheapest seats are in the back two rows and far corners.
Theatre performance spaces fall into four categories: proscenium theatres, thrust theatres, arena theatres, and found spaces. This section will introduce you to the common parts of each theatre and the relative benefits of each type.
What are the types of theatre stages and auditoria?Proscenium stages. Proscenium stages have an architectural frame, known as the proscenium arch, although not always arched in shape. … Thrust stages. … Theatres in-the-round. … Arena theatres. … Black-box or studio theatres. … Platform stages. … Hippodromes. … Open air theatres.More items…
Thrust configurationThe Thrust configuration is the oldest known fixed type of staging in the world, and it is thousands of years old!
A drama is a piece of writing, which is artistically presented with dialogues. A drama is attractive, impactful and real as it presents characters along with a natural and credible aspects. It is very similar to a short story as it also comprises characters, plot, setting as well as symbolism.
What Are Visual Spatial Learners Good At?
Are visual spatial learners gifted? These students
What Is Opposite Of Smile?
What is another word for ruined? What is another word
Quick Answer: Is There A Way To Get Therapy For Free?
How do you get therapy if your broke? Mental health
How Do You Know When To Stop Fighting For Your Marriage?
How do you know when your marriage is really over?
Can Meditation Heal Your Brain?
How long does meditation take to change your brain?
Question: What Are The Characteristics Of Shakespearean Tragedy?
What are the six elements of tragedy? Aristotle distinguished
Can You Stay Mad At Someone Forever?
Can you forgive someone and still be hurt?
Question: What Do Husbands Find Attractive In Their Wives?
How should a husband treat his wife? And you value
Quick Answer: What'S A Good Slogan For A Restaurant?
What is Adidas's slogan? Impossible Is Nothing.
Will Wrinkles Fall Out Of Curtains?
Can you iron curtains while hanging? Getting Started
What Are The Key Principles Of Piaget'S Theory Of Cognitive Development?
Why is Piaget's stages of cognitive development
Question: Is 32gb RAM Good For Minecraft?
How much RAM should I give to Minecraft? 4 GBMinecraft
What Is Peter Griffin'S Middle Name?
Who is Meg Griffin's real father? Peter GriffinMeg
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Hill Treekeepers believes that your trees are a valuable asset that will enhance your life as well as your property values. When your trees are healthy and have a pleasing shape, you can really feel it.
We will do our utmost to provide after-hours services in the event of a tree failure, storm damage, or cat rescue if you contact us with specific details about the problem.


When I say they are "promoting" the idea, I really mean that: and they're getting the attention of the media and the masses alike. Marie Exley, one of the groups most noted supporters, is using her logistics skills acquired while serving in the military to "advertise" their theory. They are using billboards, bus stop benches, caravans of RV's and are passing out pamphlets on street corners. They are doing this in several cities across the nation: from Bridgeport, Conn. to Little Rock, Ark. And they aren't stopping there, as they also have mission groups traveling through Latin America and Africa to spread the news outside the U.S.
When the subject (of Bible Prophecy) does finally get onto the average person's "radar," it is often when the secular media report about so-called prophets on the proverbial street corner proclaiming "the end is near," or when another best-selling author does essentially the same thing but is eventually left embarrassed when his or her "last day" is followed by another sunrise.
So now we have the same issue developing again. It is unfortunate when people erroneously tie events to the end times, particularly when a date for the Rapture is set. They only bring embarrassment to the field of eschatology (the study of end times) and, more importantly, undermine God's Word that indeed some day the Rapture will happen. In other words, it feeds the scoffers all the more.
• "So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him." (Matthew 24:44).
• "Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming." (Matthew 25:13).
One of the verses I like best can be found in Luke 21:36, where we are told by Jesus to "be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man".
So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be alert and self-controlled. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet. For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him. Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.
Amen, thank you for the commentary about what is happening :) Blessings friend.
I appreciate your candor while some are prone to sensationalize these things.
Great article, Jeff. It seems we were both prompted yesterday to expose the latest from this cult. Great website and blog!
The problem with date setting is confusing God's program for Israel with God's program with the Church. After the mystery of the Rapture was revealed (1 Corinthians 15:50-54)..the foucs changed for the Church changed from "watch" to immenant expectation of Jesus to come and appear in the clouds of the air to catch away His bride. The kingdom program for Israel given by Jesus to His spostles along with O.T. prophecies of the Messiah's second advent was in place when the ascended and glorified Jesus revealed to Paul the mystery of the Rapture of the Church. It would not be until after 1827 that J.N. Darby began to make the distinction between the Second Coming and the Rature. Dispensationalist still confuse the Olivet Discourse...Old Testament, Second Coming...with Pauline, New Testament, Mystery of the Rapture. As a result an unintentional mixing of Prophecy with Mystery lead to looking for signs and setting times. Harold Camping is not a dispensationalist...but neither does he make a distinction between God's program for Israel with God's program for the Church. The result is setting dates for the Rapture and the end of the Church age.
WE R GONA LIVE A ETERNAL LIFE .


Magic: The Gathering is moving into the future, and the future includes making the game a friendlier place for new faces. Part of the reason players love Magic is thanks to its complexity - the game frequently creates gameplay situations that are complicated, unique, and require a lot of puzzle-solving to navigate correctly. While that's certainly a feature and not a bug, it is also one of the most intimidating aspects of the game. With Magic: The Gathering Arena making waves in the digital card game space and the paper version of the game showing no signs of slowing down, Wizards of the Coast, the company behind Magic, now realizes there's a need for more introductory-level products.
"Core Set 2019 afforded us the opportunity to look at the onboarding process for a new player as they try out various products. Previously Welcome Decks were built using cards from a variety of recent sets, which made the continuity of experience from Welcome Deck to Planeswalker Deck a little less ideal. We couldn't do that that with other sets, because they have to appeal to many different types of Magic players, where the Core Sets can focus in on the newer players while still offering interesting content for experienced players."
Sarkhan, Dragonsoul is exactly the kind of flashy card that red mages love. He can clean up smaller creatures on board as soon as he is cast, he can burn opponent's faces when need be, and his ultimate summons a horde of dragons down upon his enemies. In short, Sarkhan, Dragonsoul is awesome, and the exact kind of card that newer players love to cast.
Sarkhan's Whelp, besides being a cute, Magic: The Gathering-style homage to How to Train Your Dragon, is a reward for keeping Sarkhan, Dragonsoul in play. It also helps players learn about how to create card synergy in their decks, something that intro decks have previously struggled to capture as efficiently and satisfyingly as this card.
"Sarkhan himself, though...is also worth mentioning as a character who has a lot of potential we possibly haven't seen fully explored yet. It would be great to explore dimensionalizing him and his wants in the future."
Is that a hint or just wishful thinking? Time will tell, although Sarkhan, Dragonsoul certainly looks pretty important at first glance.
Fans looking to pick up Sarkhan, Dragonsoul early will also have the chance to do so if they attend Magic's Grand Prix Vegas, which happens this weekend on June 15-17. If fans aren't in attendance there, the 2019 Core Set Planeswalker Decks will be available at local gaming stores' Core Set 2019 Open Houses, which run on June 30-July 1.


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Temenis laothoe är en fjärilsart som beskrevs av Pieter Cramer 1779. Temenis laothoe ingår i släktet Temenis och familjen praktfjärilar. Inga underarter finns listade i Catalogue of Life.

Bildgalleri

Källor

Externa länkar

Praktfjärilar
laothoe

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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Ken Sevcik on Performance Evaluation
Ken Sevcik is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. He received his B.S. in 1966 from Stanford University and his PhD in 1971 from the University of Chicago. Sevcik joined the faculty at the University of Toronto in 1971, and was Chair of the Department from 1990 to 1992. He also served as Director of the Computer Systems Research Institute (CSRI). His research interests are in the use of analytic models for performance analysis of resource allocation, scheduling and file structures in computer systems, computer networks, and distributed data management systems.
UBIQUITY: Our colleague Peter Denning has called your work in the performance evaluation field "an exemplar of experimental computer science." Tell us about it.
SEVCIK: Well, the origins of performance evaluation for computer systems comes from queueing theory, which was established before computer systems were widely used. In the late '60s, we were able to take some of the early single server queueing models and use those to represent the original uni-programmed computer systems where just one user would use the computer at a time, and that was a pretty good model. Then time sharing systems came along, and that required us to move to another type of queueing model called the machine repairman model. It turned out that in two places — both at MIT and at RAND Corporation — early time sharing systems were successfully modeled by machine repairman models.
UBIQUITY: Can you give the gist of the repairman model?
SEVCIK: The machine repairman model was developed in industrial engineering. The idea was that you have a set of, let's say ten machines and one repairman. What you want to know is, if the machines occasionally break down, what's the average number of machines that are going to be in service at any time, given that the repairman keeps fixing broken machines? So at any time, most of the machines may be operating, but one or two or three may be broken down. That situation relates to a time sharing system in the sense that the customers of the time sharing system correspond to the machines, and the processor is trying to serve their requests one at a time. You can assess how many customers are queued up for service, since the analog is how many machines are broken down and awaiting repair. So a model that was developed in industrial engineering for a completely different purpose was used quite successfully to represent the early time sharing systems.
UBIQUITY: And how did your own model look differently at the problem?
SEVCIK: The next step was that computer systems, about 1970, stopped having a single resource of contention. That is, you couldn't treat them as a uni-programmed system where there was only one user at a time. Instead, you had a processor and you had some disk drives or a drum or a printer. Different customers would queue at different resources. So we needed to move from a single resource model to a multiple resource model. That was the step to "queueing network models," which took place right at the end of the '60s and in the early '70s. Jeff Buzen in his Ph.D. work at Harvard was the first to come up with an efficient algorithm to solve queueing network models so that they could be practically used in the performance evaluation of computer systems.
UBIQUITY: So is this a solved problem now?
SEVCIK: Well, I'd say it was a huge step forward when he came up with that. What Peter was referring to in that quote, I believe, was that parts of queueing theory have been exploited in very practical applications. There was a well-developed theory for multiple resource queueing models, but the critical step was to find algorithms for solving these models efficiently so that they could be put into use in business and industrial contexts, such as banks and insurance companies. The models allowed us to represent various alternative systems quite faithfully by representing each processor and disk as one resource in this multiple resource model.
UBIQUITY: Is there any ambiguity about "systems"?
SEVCIK: There's lots of ambiguity there. The key bifurcation is that queueing theory and queueing networks were applied both to computer networks (starting with the Arpanet and the work of Len Kleinrock and people at UCLA in the early days) and also to computer systems. Exactly the same techniques and tools were applied in the two domains and were very helpful in both. I, myself, worked on the computer systems side, where I was looking primarily at mainframe computer systems, largely within a single organization. Other people looked at wide-area networks. We were using the same tools but the problems were slightly different. In mainframe computer systems, one challenge you face is representing complex I/O subsystems. On the network side, there are issues like routing algorithms and layered communication protocols, which were examined quite thoroughly.
UBIQUITY: In the 1970s, computer scientists contributed a new way to understand the queueing network models, which they called "Operational Analysis." You had a role in that movement, and you used the Operational Analysis approach in your textbook on performance analysis. What is Operational Analysis and what was your contribution?
SEVCIK: Traditional queueing theory arises from the theory of stochastic processes, in which models are based on several mathematical assumptions that are difficult to relate to real computer systems. Operational Analysis, which was developed by Jeff Buzen and Peter Denning and their associates, is an alternative mathematical framework, in which the assumptions are understandable and testable with respect to real computer systems observed over a finite measurement interval. Essentially identical formulas are produced and applied in each approach. Operational Analysis is equally as rigorous and mathematically sound as the approach based on stochastic processes, but it is vastly easier to explain and justify to capacity planners and systems analysts who work with computer systems. Also, Maria Klawe and I were able to identify a number of realistic situations in systems where the stochastic assumptions were blatantly violated, while the Operational Analysis assumptions were satisfied. This helped explain why queueing network models had been successfully used to predict computer system performance even in situations where it was obvious that the stochastic assumptions did not hold.
UBIQUITY: Has this specialty, then, settled down to the extent that there's no particular controversy raging now?
SEVCIK: Yes, I think so. There was a golden age of this style of performance evaluation, and that occurred in the 1980s. At that time, mainframe computer systems cost millions of dollars, so making a purchasing decision often meant betting the ranch. It was critical to know whether the decision was a good one or not. Also, there were a limited number of vendors, IBM, Amdahl and Unisys and a few others, so the enumeration of all the different configuration options at any point in time was fairly short. For that reason, we could take our models and more or less exhaustively represent all the possible choices one might make, and thereby give the purchasers a pretty good indication of what kind of performance they would get for their investment. So the high prices and the limited options made queueing network models and the software packages for solving them quite useful for answering questions about the system performance that could be expected in return for a multimillion-dollar investment.
UBIQUITY: How did you start?
SEVCIK: In the late 1970's, our group at the University of Toronto (which included Ed Lazowska, John Zahorjan, Satish Tripathi, Allan Levy, Scott Graham, and others) had already developed software packages that solved several variants of queueing network models efficiently. We then amalgamated and unified the techniques in a single package called MAP (Modeling and Analysis Package) with the sponsorship of Amdahl Corporation. Amdahl then distributed MAP commercially for a few years in competition with the clear market share leader BEST/1 from BGS Corporation, the company founded by Jeff Buzen and two partners. Amdahl benefited from the use of queueing network models because the models could quantify the price/performance advantage that Amdahl systems held at that time over their competitors.
UBIQUITY: How did you get involved in supercomputing?
SEVCIK: Well, in the mid '80s, I spent a sabbatical year working at NASA Ames Research Center and teaching a course at Stanford. I was hired for the NASA position by Peter Denning, who was at the time Director of RIACS, a research center at NASA Ames. My main job there was building a performance model for the Numerical Aerodynamic Simulator system that they were developing to perform computational fluid dynamics calculations to assess spacecraft designs. The NAS system was intended to become the first computer system to achieve a sustainable gigaflop in performance. It consisted of a complex of three Cray parallel computers plus many supporting computer systems to transfer, store and display the data. The task of building a queueing network model of the whole NAS system in order to predict how well it would work got me involved in parallel computing and supercomputing. I then kept working in that area for about five or six years more.
UBIQUITY: What impressed you most?
SEVCIK: While working in parallel computing, I always found that a good way to improve performance was to just wait a little while. The basic underlying technology was improving quickly and the prices were dropping. So you could work two years to put together a parallel system built on specific processors, and find that you hadn't really gained very much over the uniprocessor performance two years later. So the trend that paid off was the trend to distributed systems and clusters of work stations, where high performance is attained by assembling lots of cheap off-the-shelf components.
UBIQUITY: There were skeptics in those days who liked to make fun of parallel processing by comparing it to the idea of harnessing the power of 1,000 chickens to pull a large boulder. Have you ever heard that one?
SEVCIK: Not that specific one. I've probably heard some similar ones. Well, the 1,000 chickens probably won the fight in the end, in that the supercomputers that exist today are so specialized and so directed at a single application that they really aren't used in commercial practice. In the ordinary world, networks of workstations are effectively used all over the place now.
UBIQUITY: Are they at some point going to make completely obsolete the old single machines, like Cray?
SEVCIK: I think there will always be a place for special-purpose machines. IBM has followed up its Deep Blue project, which was the hardware-based chess-playing machine that was the first machine world champion in chess, with a line of machines of different kinds that are based on high degrees of parallelism. They potentially have some specialized hardware but they are aimed at one specific application, and sometimes at a single program. And I think that's where the most powerful computers in the world are today. They aren't really general-purpose any more.
UBIQUITY: What was your undergraduate work? Was it in computer science?
SEVCIK: They didn't have computer science when I was an undergraduate at Stanford. So I took my degree in mathematics and I took as many computer science courses as I could, and then went to graduate school in the field of Information Science, as it was called at University of Chicago.
UBIQUITY: Have you seen the field change much over the years?
SEVCIK: Absolutely. I guess the biggest change is the breadth. When I first went to graduate school in the late '60s, I could read all the journals in computer science — the Journal of the ACM, Communications of the ACM, and a handful of others — and keep up with all of them month-to-month and know what was going on and know all the major names in the field. Now, 30 years later, that's impossible. It's hard to believe there are so many sub-fields and so many different journals. It's a struggle to keep up even in my own areas of specialty.
UBIQUITY: So how do you actually do that?
SEVCIK: With the help of my graduate students. I make sure to point them in the right directions, and see if they can sift out what the important things are, and when they find something interesting, that gives me additional motivation to read it beyond what I would have had otherwise.
UBIQUITY: And what about with other fields? Information overload being what it is today, is it still possible to do much authentic interdisciplinary collaboration?
SEVCIK: It's difficult. I've always had some interest in the area of medical applications, both just applications of record-keeping in hospitals and also some of the data mining that arises in the bioinformatics area. But it's very hard to find people who are trained well in both of the two disciplines. So our department is now trying to hire somebody in bioinformatics, and we look at some computer scientists, who've had some exposure to bioinformatics in the biology realm; we also look at some that come from the bioinformatics area, but haven't had the thorough training in computer science. But it's usually picking among people like that, because there's just too much to know for somebody to have a thorough training in both fields.
UBIQUITY: At the University of Toronto, how do you recruit students for graduate computer science work?
SEVCIK: It's a very competitive enterprise to try to get the top students, so when the applications come in we try to sift out the ones that we really want to try to appeal to in competing against the top universities throughout North American and the world. We then have telephone interviews with them and once we're confident that we really want to have them as our students, we invite them to Toronto for a weekend to show them around, see the school, and meet the other students who might be their future co-graduate students. That effort seems to be paying off.
UBIQUITY: How big is the department?
SEVCIK: We have approximately 250 graduate students in all, and that counts both people in the Masters program and the Ph.D. program.
UBIQUITY: That's pretty big, isn't it?
SEVCIK: It's quite big. About seven years ago, the Ontario government decided that we didn't have enough computer scientists and computer engineers. So they offered all the CS and ECE departments in Ontario a double-or-nothing proposition where if we doubled the output of undergraduate students they would effectively double our budget and double our space and double our faculty, and so forth. It was one of those offers that we couldn't refuse, because they wanted higher productivity from the university, and if we had said no then I think we'd have seen no resources for a long time. So we accepted the challenge and over the six years or so we've gone from 33 full-time equivalent faculty members to something in the vicinity of 60, essentially a doubling. And, likewise, our undergraduate enrolments have gone up and our graduate enrolments in proportion.
UBIQUITY: Among the various specialties, which ones seem to predominate?
SEVCIK: At Toronto, it's probably the general area that used to be called artificial intelligence, and that now includes machine learning, knowledge representation, natural language understanding, neural networks and several other sub-areas. We have a large number of really outstanding faculty members there. Also, our theory area has always been very strong.
UBIQUITY: What kinds of debate are going on now within the department about what ought to be done?
SEVCIK: Well, it's always a competition whenever the opportunity to hire comes along. All the different groups propose the best candidates they can, and the recruiting committee often has very hard choices in putting priorities on different areas. Recently, the university has asked us to do planning in a much more systematic way than we used to. Now we have to commit, in advance, not only to how many faculty we want to hire in the next five years, but we must also identify what their particular areas of specialty are to be. And to some extent, the university will hold us to those commitments. In the past, if somebody really sterling came along in some specialty area that you hadn't anticipated, we were able to negotiate so that we could take advantage of such opportunities. That will still be possible, but the planning is stricter than it used to be.
UBIQUITY: What prompted the expansion and the new approach?
SEVCIK: This all happened just before the dot-com collapse, and Nortel Networks, a huge industrial force in Ontario back at that time, was the primary company that wanted it; Nortel claimed they could hire all the graduates from all the departments in Ontario for the unlimited future. And then, of course, with the dot-com collapse and the downfall of Nortel Networks, the demand for our computer science and computer engineering graduates was much more in question. It turns out that our graduates are all still getting jobs, but the doubling that the province felt was necessary probably had pretty bad timing in the sense that it came just before the technology collapse in a lot of areas.
UBIQUITY: But even with that collapse having been noted, do you feel that computer science has effectively become the new queen of the sciences?
SEVCIK: Well, there are certainly lots of measures on how we might say that. We have, by far, the largest number of graduate students in our entire Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and I believe that means in any department in the University of Toronto. As you know, in many schools the computing discipline has become a School of Computer Science or a Faculty on its own, rather than a Department. That possibility has come under discussion at our University, but we've never pushed very far with it.
UBIQUITY: Do you have much to do with undergraduates?
SEVCIK: Half my courses are graduate courses, half are undergraduate.
UBIQUITY: Talk about the undergraduate students.
SEVCIK: OK.
UBIQUITY: We'll note that you began your answer with a laugh.
SEVCIK: Yeah, I guess I don't know what to say. It's changed a lot, and I'm trying to think about what trends have occurred over the years. I've seen some changes in the balance between intellectual curiosity and focus on getting rich (or at least getting a job). Especially during the times when people were starting companies or receiving generous stock options, and Silicon Valley was producing billionaires by the day, a lot of students were motivated quite a lot by the money, and that's one of the reasons that they were getting into computer science — foreseeing the prospect of a very profitable future for a good portion of them. But the dot-com collapse weeded out those people who had get-rich-quick in their minds, and now we see an undergraduate population that is more interested in the learning as opposed to the profit potential.
UBIQUITY: How would you advise a brand new undergraduate who showed up at Toronto and hadn't declared a major?
SEVCIK: Would I advise them to go in to computer science? I certainly wouldn't discourage them. I was lucky enough to get in to computer science at a very opportune time, when the field was small and when I could go whatever direction I wanted. That's no longer true, but there are still ample opportunities. However, I would encourage them as well to have a strong second major, or at least a strong minor in some other field, so that they're putting together their knowledge of computing with an application area as well.
UBIQUITY: Such as?
SEVCIK: Well, business is one obvious one, biology and chemistry are other obvious ones if you want to go the medical applications route. And, as you mentioned, we have an overwhelming amount of data coming at us from every direction these days. So an area that will be growing for many years is a combination of computer science and statistics, with the ability to go into the general area of data mining to try to find what the meaning is in these huge masses of data.
UBIQUITY: What has most surprised you about your experience with computers and computer science?
SEVCIK: That will take some thought. I guess the thing that's most surprised me is that Moore's Law has continued to hold for so many years. Even when I started in this field, I always thought that there were physical constraints on the minimal size and the maximal speed of the components we can build. But the physicists and the engineers that design computers have done an incredible job at always decreasing the price and increasing the performance each year. And from a performance evaluation point of view, and from a parallel computing point of view, that presents a great challenge to keep up with the curve.
UBIQUITY: What do you see then as you look out into the future of computer science?
SEVCIK: I think it's inevitable that either more and more knowledge from other fields will be brought into computer science, or else computer science will more or less move into the other fields. There has to be unification of the computing aspect with the other science aspects. And rather than having experts in one or the other and having them talk to each other, it would be ideal if the type of education were more integrated in all these fields.
UBIQUITY: But isn't that in contention with your other point — that there's just too much to cover even in your own subspecialty?
SEVCIK: Yes, it is. I admit it. And I'm not sure what the solution is.
UBIQUITY: I can't resist asking you a mood question. It sounds silly, but what's the mood of computer science people now? Are they highly optimistic? Do they feel loved and well-funded?
SEVCIK: They're highly optimistic and are all very dedicated to what they do. They all have new ideas in their fields that they're eager to pursue. Computer science was unique when I started out in it because, when I joined our department, the age demographics were that almost everybody was a young assistant professor. And over the years, a lot of those same people are still around our department, but of course we've been joined by an overwhelming number of new people at all ranks and levels. So it's no longer as young a field as it was. We actually have a lot of retirements coming up in the next five years in our department. Yet the enthusiasm has been maintained.
UBIQUITY: You mentioned Nortel before, and its interaction with the university; what is the current level of interaction between academia and industry?
SEVCIK: We've had some very good interactions with a number of companies over the years. Probably number one is Nortel. Over the years, they supported research at University of Toronto in computer science and electrical engineering to an extensive degree and we had a lot of contacts with them. Another one is IBM, which has one of its primary development labs situated in Toronto, where much of the development of the DB2 database product is done. I personally have been involved with them, and it's a great opportunity to have our students go work there for the summer, get involved in the kinds of advanced development and research issues that face people who are trying to maintain a leading database product. And the third company that's been very good is Bell Canada, which has sponsored lots of research and lots of infrastructure in our department lately. I think a lot of the faculty members feel that the opportunity to take their theoretical developments and put them into practice in an industrial context lends a lot of credibility to their work and adds to their motivation.
UBIQUITY: Well what should be done? What do you see as the next big vision?
SEVCIK: I think I have to come back to the overwhelming amount of data that we're seeing now. I used to spend a lot of time going through my files and seeing which ones I could delete to save space. But these days a lot of very enlightened people never throw away anything. They keep every bit of information that reaches them, and they just use search tools to find the right stuff at the right time. And that availability of the huge amounts of information and the challenge of making use of it in the best way is ultimately the biggest challenge that I see ahead, and it will keep a lot of people busy for a very long time.


text:
The Behemoth To Debut Castle Crashers, Alien Hominid On XBLA
While independent console developer The Behemoth (Alien Hominid) briefly showed off a prototype version of its new game on a GameCube during the 2005 International...
Jason Dobson
While independent console developer The Behemoth (Alien Hominid) briefly showed off a prototype version of its new game on a GameCube during the 2005 International Comic-Con in San Diego, the company has now formally announced Castle Crashers for Xbox 360 Live Arcade at this year's event. The game is a medieval-themed multiplayer 2D side-scrolling action title in a vein similar to classics such as Double Dragon, and the first level of the game, complete with an 'All You Can Quaff' mini-game, is being showcased at The Behemoth's Comic-Con booth. The company confirmed that Castle Crashers will be an Xbox Live Arcade title for the Xbox 360 in early 2007. Further showcasing The Behemoth's obvious appreciation for the Xbox Live Arcade development platform, the company also revealed, in an interview with Game Informer, that it will be making a version of its IGF-winning Alien Hominid available for Xbox 360 Live Arcade download this holiday season. While the game was ported to the original Xbox in 2005, that version was only released in the European market. The Behemoth has also launched an official website for Castle Crashers, complete with a collection of screens, an announcement trailer, and news that you will be able to "play with up to three friends and discover mind-boggling magic and mystery in the amazing world we have created just for you."


Outstanding quality is an attribute that Marion Andeweg's lives and breathes in her role as Group Financial Controller.
Marion, a Chartered Accountant (CA) with a Bachelor of Business Studies (BBus) joined Gallagher in 2000. She enjoys the variety of working at Gallagher, and says 'the ever changing demands on my role and frequently having to adapt and respond to changes is invigorating'. Since joining Gallagher Marion has been involved in several global system implementations as well as various business acquisitions and mergers.
Finally, building enduring relationships is something that Gallagher is renowned for and Marion enjoys working closely with a fabulous international team and appreciates working in an organisation where treating others with trust and respect is considered core to its success.


A very beautiful vintage rug, with a fine detail and pattern in the weave, this is a lovely example of The sahara style.
Woven and sourced from the Taznakht area on the edge of the Sahara in Morocco, where carpet weaving is a time honoured art, often bright and rich in color, filled with mystical Berber symbology, the women of this area weave rugs called Kaharita, meaning Map in Arabic, The Kaharita can come in various styles, from a tight knotted pile to a flat Kilim style, offering abstract interpretations of the desert environment where they are woven.
From the Sahara with love.


text:
The San Francisco Solution
by William J. Levada August 1997
In a pair of side-by-side op-ed pieces last April, the San Francisco Chronicle presented a double critique of the "compromise" worked out to allow the Archdiocese to comply with a new city ordinance that requires any business or agency doing business with the city to offer to domestic partners the same benefits it offers to spouses.
In one column a local Catholic chastised me for compromising Catholic moral principles by "blurring the definition of spousal benefits, [recognizing] a morally deviant relationship, and legitimizing domestic partnership by silently funding it." In the other, a local gay man lamented that our agreement allows "opponents of domestic partnerships to avoid recognizing such unions altogether, leaving same-sex couples back where they started"in a society that does not give their relationship the same standing that married heterosexuals have."
These vastly different perspectives illustrate the importance of context when looking at an issue, and the difficulty of providing an adequate explanation"or a justification, or even a moral evaluation"in today's sound-bite spaces. In San Francisco, another context is relevant too. It is estimated that about 15 percent of the population is homosexual. When rallied to a cause, they represent far more than 15 percent of the vote and the political clout in this city. It is a given in San Francisco, I am told, that politicians concerned about their future weigh very carefully the impact of their speech and actions on the gay and lesbian voters.
In a city-wide referendum in 1990, San Francisco voters narrowly adopted a new law giving legal recognition to domestic partnerships. This law was opposed by Archbishop John Quinn and a part of the city's divided ecumenical community. While registered domestic partners under the law can be either heterosexual or homosexual, the great majority are in fact gay or lesbian. What a domestic partner may not be under the law is a relative or just a friend.
Near the end of 1996, the eleven-member San Francisco Board of Supervisors adopted a new ordinance requiring businesses or agencies contracting with the city to extend the same benefits they provide to spouses to domestic partners, the category of persons defined by the referendum of 1990. The new legislation was passed unanimously with virtually no reported public hearings or debate, and was widely advertised as "pioneering" legislation that will end discrimination against homosexuals because it guarantees to domestic partnerships the same benefits typically made available to the spouses of married persons. The city had already put in place this same policy for its employees. A few major companies such as Levi Strauss, IBM, Apple, and Disney had done so voluntarily. City officials now thought the time had arrived to increase the slow pace of such voluntary compliance with a new step in the broader campaign for the recognition of same-sex marriages, to make San Francisco a "model" city that would show the rest of the nation the way in this experiment in social engineering.
In the absence of a suitable public process at which I might register my difficulties and opposition before this law was adopted, I sought an exemption for our Catholic agencies. I pointed out that the ordinance as written created a problem of conscience for agencies of the Catholic Church (and perhaps others), because it required that we change our Church's internal benefits policies to recognize domestic partnership as equivalent to marriage.
This requirement, I argued, amounted to government coercion of a church to compromise its own beliefs about the sacredness of marriage, and seemed to violate the First Amendment protection guaranteed to religion by our Constitution. I further noted that a substantial amount of the contract funds in question involved city "pass throughs" of federal and state funds, which carried no such restriction.
The Archdiocese's position was subjected to a barrage of criticism. We were told that if we were going to accept city monies for the work of Catholic Charities, we should "play by the city's rules." We were lectured that our charitable agencies were prevented by the "wall of separation between church and state" from appealing to religious principles when public monies were involved. We were given moral instruction about the "discrimination" involved in preventing homosexuals from accessing benefits equivalent to those enjoyed by married couples.
There were no visible alliances to whom we might appeal. Nonprofit agencies often provide benefits only to their employees; in these cases the new law does not apply. This is the case, for example, with the Salvation Army, which would share our religious opposition to this ordinance and administers many excellent programs with city contracts, but is already in compliance because it gives no "spousal benefits." Businesses typically looked at the impact on their "bottom line," or, if they were worldwide operations like United Airlines, at the complications this law might entail for their network of union contracts, other state and foreign governmental regulations, etc.
In a thorough public statement I set forth clearly the moral principles in question from our Catholic perspective, and presented what I think is a reasonable case why the Catholic Church should not be required to comply with this ordinance. I further outlined the reasons I would be prepared to challenge the law in court should the city not provide us with an exemption, or a means of compliance that does not violate our moral principles.
In making my case, I particularly called attention to the inadequacy of the city's argument about discrimination against homosexuals.
I am in favor of increasing benefits, especially health coverage, for anyone. As the Catholic bishops of the U.S. stated in 1993, "Every person has a right to adequate health care." I would welcome the opportunity to work with city officials to find ways to overcome what I believe is a national shame, the fact that so many Americans have no health coverage at all. I can be counted on to raise my voice in support of universal health coverage nationally and locally. I feel sure I could make common cause with city officials in working toward this truly urgent need.
But I reject the notion that it discriminates against homosexual, or unmarried heterosexual, domestic partners if they do not receive the same benefits society has provided to married employees to help maintain their families. If it is a question of benefits, why should not blood relatives, or an elderly person or a child who lives in the same household, enjoy these same benefits? Under the city's new ordinance, however, blood relatives are excluded from the benefits that the city's new ordinance extends to domestic partners.
Historically social legislation providing spousal benefits for married persons has recognized the role that women traditionally exercised as wives and mothers, and the important function they contribute to the future of society by their unpaid work in the home raising their families. Even with today's changes in the workplace, to seek to equate domestic partnership with the institution of marriage and family runs contrary to Catholic teaching, indeed to the beliefs of most religious and cultural traditions, and as recent polls have shown, to the basic convictions of the great majority of Americans.
These excerpts from my statement, which was well covered in local media and sent to all the Catholic households of the Archdiocese, give some indication of how I saw this situation as an important teaching moment for our church to address a new and serious social debate in our society. Shortly afterward, Mayor Willie Brown asked me to meet with him and four Supervisors to explore a mutually acceptable solution to the problem. As a result of our agreement, the city has codified regulations to recognize that a business or agency which "allows each employee to designate a legally domiciled member of the employee's household as being eligible for spousal equivalent benefits" would be in compliance with the law.
I believe that it became clear to city officials that their argument about discrimination against domestic partners who do not receive "spousal equivalent" benefits does not stand up under public scrutiny when challenged. I further believe that by refocusing the targeted population for expanded benefits away from domestic partners, the rationale for using "discrimination in benefits" as a step toward the recognition of same-sex marriages has been largely removed. Even though some large companies and local governments may choose to provide such domestic partner benefits, I think it unlikely that this new San Francisco ordinance will become the "model" for the rest of the country that its proponents originally touted it to be. As the Chronicle commentator remarked, our solution changes the focus from domestic partners and thus removes the primary purpose of the original legislation for many of those who promoted it.
Our solution is not without its critics, and I would not want to discount their objections. But to those like my local Catholic critic who say that we implicitly give recognition to domestic partnerships by not excluding them from benefits, I must demur. Under our plan, an employee may indeed elect to designate another member of the household to receive benefits. We would know no more or no less about the employee's relationship with that person than we typically know about a designated life insurance beneficiary. What we have done is to prohibit local government from forcing our Catholic agencies to create internal policies that recognize domestic partnerships as a category equivalent to marriage. I agree with moral theologians like William May who see no compromise of Catholic moral principle in this practice.
Some have suggested that Catholic agencies should not be involved in any use of public monies, since it will inevitably involve them in the compromise of principles, if not sooner then later. I recognize that vigilance is required, since loss of funding could be the basis to justify even formal cooperation in evil. But I do not grant that such is the case here.
Others have lamented that I did not challenge this ordinance in court. Surely the city did not want a court challenge. But then neither did I relish the prospect of a lengthy, expensive legal challenge with an uncertain outcome, while making adversaries of city officials with whom we should be working on questions that will help address many pressing social needs.
In defending my action in this matter, it may sound as though I am proposing this course for others to emulate. Far from it. We chose a course in which acceptable and practical options had been reduced to the minimum. This solution will no doubt be costly and difficult to implement, although with more large companies like Bank of America adopting our solution, costs may come down. I am satisfied that in San Francisco we have achieved a notable success by shifting the debate so that what was intended by proponents of the legislation as a requirement that all employers accept an equality of status between domestic partnership and marriage has now become a situation where employers can expand health care benefits, while not being forced to recognize that marriage and domestic partnership are equivalent. But it would be my hope that our experience here would provide good reasons why any proposal elsewhere for similar legislation on domestic partners should be defeated.
William J. Levada is Archbishop of San Francisco.
Articles by William J. Levada


Application Lipoic acid (LA), also known as alpha lipoic acid (ALA) and thioctic acid is an organosulfur compound which is widely used as a dietary supplement in some countries marketed as an antioxidant and is available as a pharmaceutical drug in other countries.
Alpha-Lipoic Acid bulk material available today is (R/S) or (+/-) Alpha Lipoic Acid (ALA), meaning it contains a 50/50 mixture of (R-Lipoic) and unnatural (S-Lipoic) Lipoic Acid. The S-Lipoic Acid form, which is not found anywhere in nature, is a byproduct of chemical synthesis. Research indicates that not only does the human body have difficulty absorbing this unnatural version, it may inhibit the most essential properties of the R-Lipoic Acid form!
The "R" form (R Lipoic) is considered the "eutomer" (the biologically superior form) of Alpha Lipoic Acid, since it is identical to that produced by the body. Research indicates R-Lipoic Acid is responsible for most of the beneficial effects attributed to ALA.
While R Lipoic Acid is the obvious choice over Alpha Lipoic Acid, pure R-Lipoic Acid in its "free-acid" form has two major drawbacks: stability and bioavailability. Without special processing, R-Lipoic Acid is highly unstable and difficult to absorb. In fact, pharmacokinetic data reveal that while Alpha Lipoic Acid has a very low absorption rate, unstabilized R-Lipoic Acid is absorbed even worse!
As one of the largest fine chemical developers globally, Watson solved the stability issue by bringing in two other derivatives R(+)-Alpha Lipoic Acid Sodium CAS 176110-81-9 and R-alpha-Lipoic acid tromethamine salt CAS 14358-90-8, being one of the world's largest purveyor of commercially produced stabilized R-Lipoic Acid materials..


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Many web site designers don't design their sites for the search engines. This is a huge mistake because they miss out on attracting lots of free traffic. Your beautifully designed web site may have cost you thousands of dollars but it still needs to attract visitors to be profitable.
1. Research highly targeted keywords - do this even before you begin designing otherwise you may have to go back and clean up some of your web site design. Use the keyword research tool, Wordtracker (wordtracker.com) to research the most popular keywords that pertain to the subject matter of your web site. Wordtracker will show how many people have searched for that particular keyword over several search engines within the last 60 days.
2. Create a list of approximately 100 keywords or keyword phrases that you can include within your web pages. After having completed the above research, you should have found the keywords that were searched on most frequently, but only produce a small number of competing web sites.
3. Write a paragraph of 250 - 500 words of text for the top of each web page. Weave your keywords within this text being careful not have them so close together that your copy reads strange for your visitors. Aim to please the search engines as well as your web site visitors.
4. Optimize meta tags - the most significant meta tags are the title and description meta tags. The keyword meta tag has lost its effectiveness due to people spamming it, however include it anyway as some search engines still use it. Include your keywords within each of these meta tags. The title meta tag should be a short sentence about the purpose of your site. In your description meta tag, write a sentence on the greatest benefit of your site. Your keyword meta tag should include the most frequently used keywords contained within your web page.
5. Include Heading Tags - these can range form H1-H6 most designers will only use H1-H3. These tags separate each section of your web page with subheadings. The H1 tag contains the largest font and is the most significant. Within the descriptive text of these header tags you should include the keyword phrases placed in the same order as your keyword phrases that are within your keyword meta tags.
a) visitors can read the description if they can't see the image. b) search engines only spider text (not images), therefore this could help your site's rankings.
7. Reduce image size - too many images or very large images on your web page will slow down the loading time of your web site. Make sure your images have a resolution of 72ppi. Slice large images into smaller pieces with your graphics editor.
8. Find incoming links (backward links) - web sites that link to yours raise your link popularity. Search for web sites that are compatible with yours and have a PR 4 or more to do a link exchange. Write optimized articles and include them on your web site. This means your site has a greater chance of being indexed quickly as well as getting a boost in its rankings.
Create absolute links (ie http://www.domainname.com) from all your internal pages to your home page. This will increase the number of links pointing to your home page.
9. Use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to implement a clean design throughout your web site. This will reduce the time to implement a consistent text (or layout) style for your web site. It will also enable you to easily update your whole site should you wish to make any future changes.
11. Insert the DOC TYPE tag at the top of every web page. A DOCTYPE ( "document type declaration") informs the validator which version of HTML you're using for your web pages. DOCTYPEs are a key component of compliant web pages: your markup and CSS won't validate without them. i.e.
DOCTYPES are also essential to the proper rendering and functioning of web documents in compliant browsers like Mozilla, IE5/Mac, and IE6/Win.
12. Write clean html code - web site editors often write extra code. This can increase the loading time of your web pages. Check your html code by running it through a html validator (http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator).
Once you have implemented all the strategies above, submit your site to the search engines and get ready for lots of targeted traffic.
You now have built a profitable search engine friendly web site.


text:
As the Blackheart Burlesque Hits London. TBF Meet's Suicide Girls Founder Missy Suicide
You'd have to be living on the Moon or North Korea, not to have heard of the Suicide Girls, the alternative modelling agency that's famous for featuring tattooed and...
by	SteveKleenex	January 5, 2015
You'd have to be living on the Moon or North Korea, not to have heard of the Suicide Girls, the alternative modelling agency that's famous for featuring tattooed and pierced hotties in pinup style photos has become one of the biggest names on the alternative scene.
What isn't so well known though is the amount of side projects that the Suicide Girls brand are involved in. Everything from books to movies, comic books and of course Burlesque.
The Suicide Girls Blackheart Burlesque first toured over 10 years ago and was a roaring success. After a decade of being left on the shelf, the Blackheart Burlesque is back and coming to London on Saturday 10th January.
We caught up with the founder of the Suicide Girls and brains behind the show Missy Suicide to find out why you need to see the show….
The Black Flag: The Suicide Girls Blackheart Burlesque first toured back in the early 2000's. Why did you choose now to take the show back on the road?
Missy Suicide: Putting on this kind of show is a lot of work and it's pretty intensive. And so we kind of wanted to focus on other things, so we put out a book and then it was like shall we put the show back out and then it was like well….. Let's make a movie, let's do this and let's do that. And it just kept getting put on hold and put on hold and put on hold. But it was something that we really love doing.
And then we released our book 'Hard Girls, Soft Light' and that was two years ago. We sent two girls up and down the West coast doing a book signing at comic book shops. It was just two girls and they signed books at a comic book shop in Santa Cruz which is a tiny town in California, There was like 500 to 700 people standing outside waiting to get two girls autographs and we were like well it's time to get the band back together, people really want a live show and we can put on something way better than just having two girls at a comic shop and so we decided that the time was right to put it back on.
TBF: So what can we expect from the show?
Missy: There's a ton of pop culture references, its sexy, it's fun, it's impossible to leave without a smile…
TBF: The show features choreography from Manwe Sauls-Addison, who has worked with world famous performers such as Beyonce, Jennifer Lopez and Lady Gaga. How did he get involved with the show?
Missy: Well we had worked with him on a Television pilot that didn't end up going anywhere, but he and I had got on really well and so I called him up and we started thinking about some ideas for the show. I was like 'I've got some ideas but this isn't like your typical Burlesque show' and he was like 'ok alright' and then I was like 'I don't think you understand me' and he was 'alright lay it on me' and so I said 'let's see if we can work out this one number and if this works then this should be good. So I want Planet of the Apes theme, girls in bikinis and monkey masks, set to Disclosure's 'When Fire Starts to Burn,'. So he spent like a week reviewing and going over everything for the auditions and he showed me what he had, just him doing it and I was blown away by his choreography. We've been sharing the burden ever since and coming up with crazy idea's. I love him so much, he's the best collaborator to work with!
TBF: The show features Star Wars and Clockwork Orange inspired routines that sound amazing…
Missy: Yeah there's a lot of pop culture themes like movies, comic books and video games and cartoons. All the kind of stuff that people who'd grown up in the last twenty years would really appreciate and be into.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/vO1Hd_0JECA[/youtube]
TBF: So how does it feel to be returning back to the UK?
Missy: It feels great, I'm really excited, especially that it's Madam JoJo's (this was before the iconic venue recently lost its license). It's sort of a dream come true. We're really just over the moon. I can't wait. It's a great way to start off the year.
TBF: Which girls will be performing at the show?
Missy: I'm really not sure which girls will be performing. We hold auditions every time that we do a show and have different performers come in and join the troupe. Right now our troop is like 25 girls that are all part of our gang I guess. So that we can have different girls perform at different times and place. It's a long and intense tour and if girls schedules mean that they can only be there for a portion of it or get injured or something, so we have to take those things into account.
TBF: So it can essentially be a different show every night?
Missy: No it's the same show every night but different girls do different portions of the tour. So I'm not sure who's going to be at the London show. We probably won't know more until a few weeks before the show. But we are going to have some of our UK favourites as special guests. Arabella is going to do a number as well as Katherine. You guys are actually allowed to do Fire and we're not allowed to do fire on our tour.
So we have Arabella who has been a Suicide girl for a number of years and now and she's going to do a number for us and Katherine who has done a lot of fire stuff and actually hosted a portion of the US tour.
TBF: The show really does look like it's going to be amazing. Do you think that Burlesque is a natural progression for the Suicide Girls as an Alternative Modelling Agency?
Missy: Yes. The same way that we updated pinup photos on the SG website, we kind of wanted to update Burlesque and put a modern twist on it. So it seems like the natural progression of that, which kind of brings the whole sort of sexy spirit of the photos to life.
TBF: Burlesque actually dates back to ancient Greece and yet still remains popular today as a performance art. Why do you think that is?
Missy: I think that it's theatrical, it's an entertaining experience, it's funny, its sexy and all about the tease that appeals to people. Burlesque is a pretty good show. And it appeals to people because they want a funny sexy show.
TBF: Where are you off to after the England shows?
Missy: I think we're doing Canada after that and Asia. We're hoping to make it to South America at some point. Our booking agent is sorting it all out.
TBF: Are you going to continue with the Burlesque shows or are you going to put it away for a few years and then come back to it again?
Missy: No I think that we're really excited and It feel like the first time we had a lot of kinks to work out and now the shows just becoming better and better and better. It's becoming its own sort of machine and it would be impossible to top at this point. We're just having so much fun with it in that exciting man way and finding that other half of that theatrical, creative mind has really been a godsend and also we're worked out a lot of the kinks of being out on the road and all the little things like being on buses and things that you just don't think about. It's all just been in overdrive working out all these things that going about your day you just don't think about. I feel like we're really starting to get everything down and I'm really excited about what the future holds.
TBF: Are you going to be coming out yourself?
Missy: I believe that I will be yeah
TBF: I imagine you all being on tour together is quite fun…
Missy: It's so much fun. We had like a private tour of the Sidney Zoo and we just had the best time, just hanging out, exploring new area's and seeing the world
TBF: Missy thanks so much for talking to the Black Flag. I look forward to see the show
The Suicide Girls Blackheart Burlesque @ the Electric Ballroom Camden on Saturday 10th Jan 8pm
Check out http://blackheartburlesque.com/ for Tickets
Blackheart BurlesqueKatherine SuicideManwe Sauls-AddisonMiss SuicideSuicide Girls
Alt ModelsBurlesqueFeaturedPinnedSuicide Girls
REVIEW: Sex, Drugs and HIV – Various Artists
by	SteveKleenex	- Dec 8, 2014
The Black Flag Talks to Tony Mayo
by	SteveKleenex	- Jan 7, 2015
SteveKleenex
EDITOR IN CHIEF!!!
Featured Suicide Girl: Annalee Suicide
We've teamed up with Suicidegirls.com to give our readers a featured Suicide Girl. Our featured girl today is Annalee Suicide....
Alt Models
Featured Suicide Girl: Mouse Suicide
We've teamed up with Suicidegirls.com to give our readers a featured Suicide Girl. Our featured girl today is Mouse...
Featured Suicide Girl: Lua & Saria Suicide
We've teamed up with Suicidegirls.com to give our readers a featured Suicide Girl. We have double trouble today in...
Featured Suicide Girl: Lavonne Suicide
We've teamed up with Suicidegirls.com to give our readers a featured Suicide Girl. Our featured girl today is Lavonne...


Parsnips are packed with fibre, potassium and vitamin C and the spices in this dish will do nothing but good for your immune system which will probably need a helping hand at this time of the year. This makes a large batch of soup, which can easily be frozen. You can also halve the recipe if needs be.
Place the oil in a large pot with the chopped onion and celery and gently cook the vegetables on a low heat until soft. Whilst you're doing this, peel and chop the parsnips in to small (ish) pieces. Add chopped garlic to the onion and celery then cook out for a minute or two before adding the parsnips. Slowly cook the parsnips for about 10-15 minutes. The long, slow cooking at this stage will help enhance the flavour of the soup but you need to check on the parsnips and stir them from time to time to make sure they don't catch and burn on the bottom of the pan.
Add the dried spices, stir then fill the pot with enough water to cover the vegetables. Peel the potatoes, roughly chop and then add them to the pot. Add salt, pepper and the vegetable stock cubes, bring to a boil then lower the heat and simmer for about 40 minutes.
Blitz the soup using a stick blender until smooth. Add some boiling water if the soup is too thick then check the seasoning, adding more salt and pepper if necessary.
Serve topped with some double cream, cayenne pepper, chopped coriander and nigella seeds (optional).


text:
Q: Referencing javascript embedded resource but intellisense doesn't show anything I'm stuck... I'm trying to reference a javascript file that has been embedded inside a third party assembly, but it doesn't seem to work:
What I've done:

*

*I have a folder RefAssemblies where this library DLL with embedded javascript file is located

*I added a project reference and pointed to this library assembly

*I added a line in my javascript file where I want the reference to work ie.
/// <reference name="ScriptName.js" assembly="AssemblyName" />

I tried naming my assembly with name only, and also with full assembly name including name, version, culture and public key token. No difference.

*Added my library assembly to my project's web.config inside system.web\assemblies (AFAIK that's the part where you have to add your assembly and make it well-known in your application) so I should be able to access it without referencing assembly at all just resource name. No difference.

And yes I was pressing the Ctrl+Shift+J after any change I've done so Visual studio refreshed Javascript intellisense cache. I even unloaded and reloaded my web project after I changed web project's web.config. Just so that Visual Studio would read the file and reload everything anew.
But still unlucky... And I'm not getting any Javascript Intellisense errors in the General output window either...
I must be missing something...

Additional note:
  It may be helpful to know that I'm running ReSharper 6.1.1000.82 within Visual Studio 10.0.40219.1

Other things I've done afterwards

*

*Uninstalled ReSharper from my machine

*Reset Visual Studio by running it from command prompt using
devenv /ResetSettings

No luck either.
Do you have any other suggestions I might do?

A: I'm also having odd problems with embedded resources. I have managed to get it working though by using the fully qualified resource name. You can find that out by using ilspy to open the assembly and then select the Resources folder, then the full name of all the resources will be displayed.
As i said i have gotten this to work in one solution, but in others it doesnt work and i have no idea why.. the non working solution has a diffrent structure where the diffrent assemblies are in diffrent folders, but i have nto been able to isolate that as the cause..
-edit-
After much trial and error it seems like the key thing to making embedded javascript references work is to set the output folder for the project containing the reference to bin and not bin\debug.
from what i can gather, there are no other settings or assembly references that affect the embedded resources, only the output folder of the project that has the reference. i'm guessing that the javascript language service is unable to find the assemblies with embedded resources unless they are in the private path or the gac, but i have yet do understand exactly where this binpath is set.
i've tried setting it on the project itself and on what i think is the actual language service exe, but to no avail.
i made a connect issue here:
https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/770185/js-references-to-embedded-files-require-the-referencing-project-to-have-outputpath-bin

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Built St. Louis - An interesting look at the past and present of many St. Louis neighborhoods.
Ecology of Absence - Originally focused on the prevalent urban decay in St. Louis buildings, now focusing on related political issues as well.
Fort Gondo - Cool little art gallery on Cherokee Street.
Free Candy with Amanda & Julia - St. Louis' free, live, untelevised talk show.
Keaggy.com - An endlessly interesting website by the Post-Dispatch's Features Photo Editor.
Laumeier Sculpture Park - Love it.
Left Bank Books - One of St. Louis' cool independent bookstores. The Left Bank often has instore readings and signings, and has a fairly busy events schedule.
Missouri Menus - A list of 1,163-plus local restaurants' menus.
Record Exchange - The big-big specialty used record and CD store in town, run out of an old library building. It's easy to get lost, but the place is packed with used stereo equipment, albums, 45s, VHS tapes, DVDs, you name it.
Red Latina - Another local Spanish-language newspaper.
Safe City Map - Do you find that one neighborhood in the city, like, totally sketchy and scary, making you want to like, totally return to the quiet, inviting womb that is the county? See if you're right! This displays maps of whatever different crimes of your choosing happened where in the City of St. Louis within the last 6 months or so.
St. Louis Coptalk - Local policemen sound off on local crime and law issues.
St. Louis Gas Prices - Thank me.
The St. Louis Journalism Review - A look at local newsmedia.
Sauce Magazine - Wanna find a restaurant to go to? Been hearing about a restaurant but want to see what people think about it before going? The restaurant search and user comment systems on here are two of the best things to happen to the St. Louis dining scene.
Urban St. Louis - Focuses on local development and redevelopment efforts. It has a particularly active forum!
Venice Cafe - Just too got-dang cool a place not to link to.
Webster University Film Series - If you're not on their mailing list, you probably already missed something you would've wanted to see.
Zombie Squad - I don't even know.
Art Patrol - Handy listings of upcoming art events in town, and reviews of said events after they've happened.
Built Environment in Layman's Terms - Toby Weiss' often fascinating photographic studies of architecture that's about to come down, or sometimes, that just got built.
Contemporary-Pulitzer Blog - A blog for our two neighboring Midtown contemporary art museums.
Thomas Crone - Man about town, two-time author, and writer for just about every publication in town. I grew up reading his articles in the RFT and elsewhere.
Ecology of Absence - My friends Michael and Claire's site-companion blog on local architecture and politics.
From the Mayor's Desk - Mayor Francis Slay blogs, puts up polls, and hosts podcasts.
Illusion Junkie - A video blog focusing on art, health, and culture in St. Louis.
In and Around - Christine and an unnamed Dad devote posts to their visits to a number of different neighborhoods of St. Louis and surrounding areas.
Irrational Ecstasy - Casey takes you urban-exploring through some of St. Louis abandoned buildings.
Live Music in St. Louis, MO - A frequently-updated listing of upcoming concerts in the area.
Lo-Fi St. Louis - Video blog about the local music scene.
The Mayor of Affton - Affton technically has no office of mayor. This guy has taken it upon himself to fill that void.
Officially Over - Nate, a fellow school-going 20-something St. Louisan.
Pub Def - Thoughtful, insightful coverage of local political and social issues from Antonio French.
Random Redhead - Tales of growing up in South City in the '70s and '80s.
STLBloggers - As I gather, there are a few St. Louis blogs on here.
STLEvolution - Urbanism bloggetry by Matt Fernandez.
STLMedia - Mike Anderson talks about local media.
STLStreets - Observations by Steven Fitzpatrick Smith, owner of the Royale.
Subterranean Books - Three guesses which bookstore it's based out of!
Urban Review - St. Louis - Onetime upstart aldermanic candidate Steve Patterson weighs in on local urban planning (or lack thereof).
Urban Road Kill - A slice of urban St. Louisan life from former RFT writer C.D. Stelzer. Also check out his account of a trip to Ireland at Slouching Towards Bantry.
Rob Thurman - As always, equal parts funny and insightful, the best combination.
Washington University IEEE Dance Floor Project - Le fabuleux destin of a very colorful animated dance floor.
Chocolate Genius - Black Music is an amazing album.
The Frozen Foods Section - Local musical collective that puts out wonderfully oddball hip-hop.
Global Electronic Music Marketplace - If you're looking for a rare or out of print album, this lists the albums in possession of thousands of music stores worldwide, and should probably find it.
Grandpa's Ghost - Space music from Pocahontas, IL.
Grand Ulena - Loud, noisy, good. Play St. Louis again!
The Green Lion - A lot of downloadable music by Rami from the band nui.
KDHX - By far, one of the best things about music in St. Louis. And you can stream it online! Among my favorite shows: Gabriel, Suffragette City, Radio Rio, Bob's Scratchy Records, Dangerous Curves, and The Science.
The Moldy Peaches - Further proof that the four-track tape recorder is the greatest invention ever.
MusicStack Music Marketplace - Like the GEMM above, a database of online record store holdings. Try this, try GEMM.
Polymorphous Space - The personal website of Tetsuo Kogawa, a communications studies professor in Japan - his New York Paranoia section has streams of New Jersey hip-hop radio from 1983!
Quone - The cassette record label of some friends of mine. I definitely want every cassette they're putting out.
Radios.com.br - I love this site; you can navigate an online archive of live webcasts from TV and radio stations from all over the world, given you have a scant knowledge of Portuguese, or really, any Romance language. Look at that.
Jill Scott - Fantastically good neo-soul artist.
Solex - Record store owner from the Netherlands takes samples from TV, concerts, albums that will never sell, and everyday life, and creates catchy, oddball audio pastiches.
Sonic Youth - So good.
The Trip Daddys - Some of the finest garage rock/rockabilly music St. Louis has to offer. Not a typo.
WEW 770 AM - According to their website, it's the second-oldest radio station in the country. Possibly best known for their Radio Cucui Spanish-language programming, WEW has talk shows and music shows tailored to all sorts of nationalities, featuring Bosnian music, Polkas, Italian music, American big band, and German talk.
WFMU - Possibly the weirdest and most wonderful radio station in the U.S. Streamable, podcast-subscribable, and their blog consistently contains interesting factoids.
CineFile - Possibly the best video store I've ever been to in my life. Well, this or Mondo Kim's.
5 Minutes To Live - They sell DVDs of rare and out-of-print video and film. Not necessarily for the squeamish. Don't take my link as a glowing endorsement of the contents of all of the movies on here. I must say though, there's some really cool, interesting rare stuff on here (along with some really creepy stuff). Oh, and they have a really interesting article about Orson Welles.
Hanzi Smatter - Why people who don't know Chinese shouldn't get tattoos of Chinese characters.
JustinSpace - Wonderful. Of particular interest are the Obscene Interiors and eBay Conceptual Art Gallery sections.
Slow Wave - Web comic of various submissions of bizarre dreams. Good reading. Link cribbed from beck.com.
GeorgeSpace - George Steinhardt's website. Already with 700% fewer errors than MySpace.
Peter Goffstein - Longtime friend of mine. See his paintings!
The Juice - Ken Kitchin is a stand-up gentleman. He's been one of my closest friends since we were but 7-year-olds, and since then, we played in a band together in high school, went on photo safaris, and found all sorts of other assorted adventures. These days, he's playing with these cats in Boston, and racking up all sorts of local press.
The Blahmin Post - The blog of my loooongtime friend and bandmate John Forrester, who's now writing for the Boston Globe!
MADSociety - Eric and Duretti are former floormates of mine.
Matia Simovich on Subkultures - The blog of my friend Matia, who moved out to San Francisco.