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Justia Patents US Patent Application for AN APPARATUS AND A METHOD FOR GENERATING DATA REPRESENTATIVE OF A PIXEL BEAM Patent Application (Application #20190162978)
AN APPARATUS AND A METHOD FOR GENERATING DATA REPRESENTATIVE OF A PIXEL BEAM
Jun 30, 2017 - THOMSON LICENSING
There are several types of plenoptic devices having their proprietary file format. At present there is no standard supporting the acquisition and transmission of multidimensional information for an exhaustive over-view of the different parameters upon which a light-field depends. As such acquired light-field data for different cameras have a diversity of formats. The notion of pixel beam, which represents a volume occupied by a set of rays of light in an object space of an optical system of a camera is thus introduced. The method according to the invention enables to provide data representative of a collection of pixel beams describing a first optical system that is agnostic since these data are obtained by imaging the collection of pixel beams through a second optical system. Such data representative of a collection of pixel beams enable the generation of parametrized output images from which post-processing.
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The present invention relates to generation of data representing a light field.
The acquisition of four-dimensional or 4D light-field data, which can be viewed as a sampling of a 4D light field, i.e. the recording of light rays, is explained in the article "Understanding camera trade-offs through a Bayesian analysis of light field projections" by Anat Levin and al., published in the conference proceedings of ECCV 2008 is an hectic research subject.
Compared to classical two-dimensional or 2D images obtained from a camera, 4D light-field data enable a user to have access to more post-processing features that enhance the rendering of images and the interactivity with the user. For example, with 4D light-field data, it is possible to perform refocusing of images with freely selected distances of focalization meaning that the position of a focal plane can be specified/selected a posteriori, as well as changing slightly the point of view in the scene of an image. In order to acquire 4D light-field data, several techniques can be used. For example, a plenoptic camera is able to acquire 4D light-field data. A plenoptic camera comprises a main lens, a microlens array comprising a plurality of micro-lenses arranged in a two-dimensional array and an image sensor. Another way to acquire 4D light-field data is to use a camera array which comprises a lens array and an image sensor.
In the example of the plenoptic camera, the main lens receives light from an object in an object field of the main lens and passes the light through an image field of the main lens.
At last, another way of acquiring a 4D light field is to use a conventional camera that is configured to capture a sequence of 2D images of a same scene at different focal planes. For example, the technique described in the document "Light ray field capture using focal plane sweeping and its optical reconstruction using 3D displays" by J.-H. Park et al., published in OPTICS EXPRESS, Vol. 22, No. 21, in October 2014, may be used to achieve the acquisition of 4D light field data by means of a conventional camera.
There are several ways to represent 4D light-field data. Indeed, in the Chapter 3.3 of the Ph. D dissertation thesis entitled "Digital Light Field Photography" by Ren Ng, published in July 2006, three different ways to represent 4D light-field data are described. Firstly, 4D light-field data can be represented, when recorded by a plenoptic camera by a collection of micro-lens images. 4D light-field data in this representation are named raw images or raw 4D light-field data. Secondly, 4D light-field data can be represented, either when recorded by a plenoptic camera or by a camera array, by a set of sub-aperture images. A sub-aperture image corresponds to a captured image of a scene from a point of view, the point of view being slightly different between two sub-aperture images. These sub-aperture images give information about the parallax and depth of the imaged scene. Thirdly, 4D light-field data can be represented by a set of epipolar images see for example the article entitled: "Generating EPI Representation of a 4D Light Fields with a Single Lens Focused Plenoptic Camera", by S. Wanner and al., published in the conference proceedings of ISVC 2011.
Light-field acquisition devices are extremely heterogeneous. Light-field cameras are of different types for example plenoptic or camera arrays. Within each type there are many differences such as different optical arrangements, or micro-lenses of different focal lengths. Each camera has its own proprietary file format. At present here is no standard supporting the acquisition and transmission of multi-dimensional information for an exhaustive over-view of the different parameters upon which a light-field depends. As such acquired light-field data for different cameras have a diversity of formats.
The present invention has been devised with the foregoing in mind.
SUMMARY OF INVENTION
According to a first aspect of the invention there is provided a computer implemented method for generating data representative of a volume occupied by a set of rays of light passing through a pupil of an optical system, said volume occupied by said set of rays of light being called a pixel beam, comprising:
acquiring data representative of said pixel beam in an object space of a first optical system, said pixel beam being occupied by a set of rays of light passing through a pupil of said first optical system and an image conjugate, in said object space of the first optical system, of at least one pixel of a sensor associated to said first optical system;
generating data representative of said pixel beam by computing an image conjugate of said pixel beam through a second optical system. Such a method enables to provide data representative of a collection of pixel beams describing a first optical system that is agnostic, i.e. which is independent of the camera embedding the optical system, since these data are obtained by imaging the collection of pixel beams through a second optical system. Such data representative of a collection of pixel beams enable the generation of parametrized output images from which post-processing can be performed such as creating focal stacks, refocusing, perspective changes, mixing of light-field contents acquired from different acquisition systems, etc.
One of the goals of computing an image of a collection of pixel beams describing a first optical system through a second optical system is to provide a representation of the object space of several optical systems embedded in various cameras in a dual and compact space which corresponds to a focal volume of the optical system. Such a focal volume can be easily projected on an image plane for example during a refocusing operation.
An advantage of imaging a collection of pixel beams describing a first optical system through a second optical system is that the imaged pixel beams are located in a single focal volume and that collections of pixel beams representing various types of optical acquisition devices can be positioned in a same focal volume using the same optical system which make processing of the data representative of the different collections of pixel beams easier.
According to another embodiment of the invention, the method further comprises:
computing an intersection, in the object space of the first optical system, of said pixel beam with a plane located at a distance z from a centre of the pupil,
computing an image conjugate of said intersection through said second optical system to provide data representative of the pixel beam.
Such a method enables to perform synthetic aperture refocusing. Synthetic aperture imaging consists in rearranging images acquired by an optical system embedded in a camera in order to simulate another camera for refocusing purposes. The pixel beams representing light-field data acquired by a first camera are thus rearranged so that objects belonging to a given plane are in focus. The plane is defined by its affine equation in a reference coordinate system.
According to another embodiment of the invention, the first optical system is an actual camera and the second optical system is a virtual camera.
In such an embodiment of the invention, the knowledge of the properties of the entrance pupils of the first optical system is required and of the properties of the exit pupils of the second optical system in order to compute the conjugate of the pixel beam in the image space of the second optical system.
As long as the second optical system, i.e. the virtual camera, images precisely its focus plane, the precise knowledge of the properties of its exit pupils is not required since the image of the pixel beam through the second optical system is located on the virtual sensor.
According to another embodiment of the invention, the method the first optical system is a virtual camera and the second optical system is an actual camera.
In such an embodiment of the invention, the knowledge of the properties of the entrance pupils of the first optical system is required and of the properties of the exit pupils of the second optical system, i.e. the actual camera, in order to compute the conjugate of the pixel beam in the image space of the second optical system.
As long as the first optical system, i.e. the virtual camera, images precisely its focus plane, the precise knowledge of the properties of its exit pupils is not required since the pixel beam are the object conjugates of the pixels of a virtual sensor associated with the first acquisition system.
Another object of the invention concerns a device for rendering an image from light field data using obtained in accordance with the method according to different embodiments of the invention.
Another object of the invention concerns a device for generating data representative of a volume occupied by a set of rays of light passing through a pupil of an optical system, said volume occupied by said set of rays of light being called a pixel beam, the device comprising a light field data generation module configured to:
acquire data representative of said pixel beam in an object space of a first optical system, said pixel beam being occupied by a set of rays of light passing through a pupil of said first optical system and an image conjugate, in said object space of the first optical system, of at least one pixel of a sensor associated to said first optical system;
generate data representative of said pixel beam by computing an image conjugate of said pixel beam through a second optical system.
Another object of the invention concerns a light field imaging device comprising:
an array of micro lenses arranged in a regular lattice structure;
a photosensor configured to capture light projected on the photosensor from the array of micro lenses, the photosensor comprising sets of pixels, each set of pixels being optically associated with a respective micro lens of the array of micro lenses; and
a device for generating metadata in accordance with claim 8.
Another object of the invention concerns a data package for data representative of a volume in an object space of a first optical system occupied by a set of rays of light passing through a pupil of said first optical system and a conjugate, in said object space of the first optical system, of at least one pixel of a sensor associated to said first optical system, said volume occupied by said set of rays of light being called a pixel beam said data representative of a pixel beam being an image conjugate of said pixel beam through a second optical system.
Some processes implemented by elements of the invention may be computer implemented. Accordingly, such elements may take the form of an entirely hardware embodiment, an entirely software embodiment (including firmware, resident software, micro-code, etc.) or an embodiment combining software and hardware aspects that may all generally be referred to herein as a "circuit", "module" or "system'. Furthermore, such elements may take the form of a computer program product embodied in any tangible medium of expression having computer usable program code embodied in the medium.
Since elements of the present invention can be implemented in software, the present invention can be embodied as computer readable code for provision to a programmable apparatus on any suitable carrier medium. A tangible carrier medium may comprise a storage medium such as a floppy disk, a CD-ROM, a hard disk drive, a magnetic tape device or a solid state memory device and the like. A transient carrier medium may include a signal such as an electrical signal, an electronic signal, an optical signal, an acoustic signal, a magnetic signal or an electromagnetic signal, e.g. a microwave or RF signal.
Embodiments of the invention will now be described, by way of example only, and with reference to the following drawings in which:
FIG. 1 shows a volume occupied by a set of rays of light passing through a pupil of an optical system 11 of a camera,
FIG. 2 shows a hyperboloid of one sheet representing a pixel beam according to an embodiment of the invention,
FIG. 3 shows a hyperboloid of one sheet and its asymptotic cones,
FIG. 4 shows a pixel beam represented by two coaxial, partially overlapping cones according to an embodiment of the invention,
FIG. 5 is a schematic block diagram illustrating an example of an apparatus for generating data representative of pixel beams according to an embodiment of the invention,
FIG. 6 is a flow chart for explaining a process for encoding an image captured by the optical acquisition system according to an embodiment of the disclosure,
As will be appreciated by one skilled in the art, aspects of the present principles can be embodied as a system, method or computer readable medium. Accordingly, aspects of the present principles can take the form of an entirely hardware embodiment, an entirely software embodiment, (including firmware, resident software, micro-code, and so forth) or an embodiment combining software and hardware aspects that can all generally be referred to herein as a "circuit", "module", or "system". Furthermore, aspects of the present principles can take the form of a computer readable storage medium. Any combination of one or more computer readable storage medium (a) may be utilized.
For any optical acquisition system, may it be plenoptic or not, in addition to raw images or epipolar images representing 4D light-field data captured by the optical acquisition system, it is interesting to obtain information related to a correspondence between pixels of a sensor of said optical acquisition system and an object space of said optical acquisition system. Knowing which portion of the object space of an optical acquisition system a pixel belonging to the sensor of said optical acquisition system is sensing enables the improvement of signal processing operations such as de-multiplexing, de-mosaicking, refocusing, etc., and the mixing of images captured by different optical systems with different characteristics. Furthermore, information related to the correspondence between the pixels of the sensor of the optical acquisition system and the object space of said optical acquisition system are independent of the optical acquisition system.
The present disclosure introduces the notion of pixel beam 10, shown on FIG. 1, which represents a volume occupied by a set of rays of light passing through a pupil of an optical system 11 of a camera (not shown on FIG. 1) and a conjugate of a pixel of a sensor of the camera in an object space of the optical system in a direction normal to a surface of the pupil
The set of rays of light is sensed by a pixel 12 of a sensor 13 of the camera through a pupil 14 of said optical system 11. The optical system 11 may be a combination of lenses fit for photo or video cameras. A pupil of an optical system is defined as the image of an aperture stop as seen through said optical system, i.e. the lenses of the optical acquisition system, which precedes said aperture stop. An aperture stop is an opening which limits the amount of light which passes through the optical system of the optical acquisition system. For example, an adjustable blade diaphragm located inside a camera lens is the aperture stop for the lens. The amount of light admitted through the diaphragm is controlled by the diameter of the diaphragm opening which may adapted depending of the amount of light a user of the camera wishes to admit. For example, making the aperture smaller reduces the amount of light admitted through the diaphragm, and, simultaneously, increases the depth of focus. The apparent size of a stop may be larger or smaller than its physical size because of the refractive action of a portion of the lens. Formally, a pupil is the image of the aperture stop through all lenses of the optical acquisition system located between the physical stop and the observation space.
A pixel beam 10 is defined as a pencil of rays of light that reach a given pixel 12 when propagating through the optical system 11 via an entrance pupil 14. As light travels on straight lines in free space, the shape of such a pixel beam 10 can be defined by two sections, one being the conjugate 15 of the pixel 12, and the other being the entrance pupil 14. The pixel 12 is defined by its non-null surface and its sensitivity map.
In a first embodiment of the invention, a pixel beam 30 may be represented by an hyperboloid of one sheet, as shown on FIG. 2, supported by two elements: the pupil 24 and the conjugate 25 of the pixel 12 in the object space.
A hyperboloid of one sheet is a ruled surface that can support the notion of pencil of rays of light and is compatible with the notion of "étendue" of physical light beams, notion linked to the preservation of energy across sections of the physical light beams.
As represented on FIG. 3, a hyperboloid of one sheet 30 is mostly identical to its asymptotic cones 31, 32, except in the fundamental region of its smallest section, called the waist 35, which corresponds to the conjugate 15 in the object space. For plenoptic systems, such as light-field cameras, this is the region where space sampling by multiple path rays is performed. Sampling space with unique cones degenerating to a point in this region is not adequate, as pixel 12 sensitivity is significant on some tens of square microns on its surface and cannot be represented by a mathematical point with infinitely small surface as would be a cone tip.
In an embodiment of the invention, each pixel beam 10, 20, 30, is defined by four independent parameters: zP, θx, θy, a defining the position and size of the pixel conjugate 15, 35, in front of the pupil 14, 24 and by six pupilar parameters xO, yO, zO, θx0, θy0, r which define the position, orientation and radius of the pupil 14, 24. These six pupilar parameters are common to the collection of pixel beams, when represented by a hyperboloid of one sheet, sharing a same pupil 14, 24. Indeed, a pixel beam represents the volume occupied by a set of rays of light in the object space of the optical system 11 sensed by the pixel 12 through the pupil 14, i.e. to a given couple pixel 12/pupil 14, 24 corresponds a unique pixel beam 10, 20, 30, but a plurality of distinct pixel beams can be supported by a same pupil 14, 24.
An origin O of a coordinate system (x, y, z) in which the parameters of the hyperboloid of one sheet representing the pixel beam 10, 20, 30 are defined corresponds to the centre of the pupil 14 as shown on FIG. 1, where the z axis defines a direction normal to the surface of the pupil 14, 24.
The parameters θx, θy, define chief ray directions relative to the entrance of the pupil 14 centre. They depend on the pixel 12 position on the sensor 13 and on the optical elements of the optical system 11. More precisely, the parameters θx, θy represent shear angles defining a direction of the conjugate 15 of the pixel 12 from the centre of the pupil 14.
The parameter zP represents a distance of the waist 35 of the pixel beam 10, 20, 30, or the conjugate 15 of the pixel 12, along the z axis.
The parameter a represents the radius of the waist 35 of the pixel beam 10, 20, 30.
For optical systems 11 where optical distortions and field curvatures may be modelled, the parameters zP and a can depend on the parameters θx and θy via parametric functions.
The four independent parameters are related to the pixel 12 and its conjugate 15.
The six complementary pupilar parameters defining a pixel beam 10, 20, 30 are:
r which represents the pupil 14, 24 radius,
xO, yO, zO which represent the coordinates of the pupil 14, 24 centre in the (x, y, z) coordinate system, and
θx0, θy0 which represent the orientation of the pupil 14, 24 in the reference (x, y, z) coordinate system.
These six pupilar parameters are related to the pupil 14, 24. Another parameter c is defined. Such a parameter c is dependent on the parameters zP and a related to the pixel 12 and its conjugate 15 and on the parameters r related to the pupil 14, 24. The parameter c defines the angular aperture α of the pixel beam 10, 20, 30 and is given by the formula:
tan  ( α ) = a c .
Thus the expression of the parameter c is given by the following equation:
c 2 = a 2  z P 2 r 2 - a 2 ( 1 )
The coordinates (x, y, z), in the object space, of points belonging to the surface delimiting the pixel beam 10, 20, 30 are function of the above defined sets of parameters related to the pupil 14, and to the conjugate 15 of the pixel. Thus, equation (2) enabling the generation of the hyperboloid of one sheet representing the pixel beam 10, 20, 30 is:
( x - z · tan  ( θ x ) ) 2 a 2 + ( y - z · tan  ( θ y ) ) 2 a 2 - ( z - z P ) 2 c 2 = 1 ( 2 )
A parametric equation (3) of the same hyperboloid representing the pixel beam 10, 20, 30 is:
{ x = a  1 + ( z - z P ) 2 c 2 · cos  ( v ) + z · tan  ( θ x ) y = a  1 + ( z - z P ) 2 c 2 · sin  ( v ) + z · tan  ( θ y ) ( 3 )
wherein ν is an angle in the (x, y) plane enabling the generation of the pixel beam 10, 20, 30 from a generating hyperbola, ν varies in [0, 2π] interval, and z∈[0, ∞] is the coordinate along the z axis which defines a direction normal to the surface of the pupil 14, 24. Equations (2) and (3) are written on the assumption that the section of the pixel 12 and its conjugate 15 are circular and that the section of the pupil 14, 24 is circular as well.
Information related to a correspondence between pixels of a sensor of said optical acquisition system and an object space of said optical acquisition system may take the form of either a set of parameters comprising the four independent parameters: zP, θx, θy, a defining the position and size of the pixel conjugate 15, 35, in front of the pupil 14, 24 and the six pupilar parameters xO, yO, zO, θx0, θy0, r which define the position, orientation and radius of the pupil 14, 24 when the pixel beam is to be represented by its parametric equation.
Thus, this set of parameters is provided in addition to raw images or epipolar images representing 4D light-field data captured by the optical acquisition system in order to be used while processing the 4D light-field data.
In a second embodiment of the invention, a pixel beam 40 may be represented by two coaxial, partially overlapping cones a front cone 41F and a rear cone 41R as shown on FIG. 4, supported by two elements: the pupil 44 and the conjugate 45 of the pixel 42 in the object space, i.e. the surface in the object space that is imaged on the pixel.
The front cone 41F is the image of a convex frustum defined by the pixel 42 and the pupil 44. The apex of the convex frustum lies beyond the sensor of the optical acquisition system. By construction, the front cone 41F is converging in the object space of the optical acquisition system and the apex of the front cone 41F lies between the conjugate of the pixel 45, or the waist of the pixel beam 40, and the pupil dd. The front cone 41F derives from the solid angle subtended by the pupil 44 at the pixel 42.
The rear cone 41R is the image of a cone defined by the pixel 42 and the pupil 44, the apex of which lies between the pupil 44 and the sensor of the optical acquisition system. By construction, the apex of the rear cone 41R is located beyond the waist 45 of the pupil 40. The rear cone 41R does not necessarily converge in the object space of the optical acquisition system, in some cases, it may degenerate into a cylinder or a diverging cone. In the latter case, the apex of the diverging cone lies in the image space of the optical acquisition system, i.e. before the entrance of the pupil 44.
The front cone 41F and the rear cone 41R share the same revolution axis, which is a line joining the centre of the pupil 44 and the centre of the waist 45.
Cones are ruled surfaces that can support the notion of pencil of rays of light and when combining two cones is compatible with the notion of "étendue" of physical light beams, notion linked to the preservation of energy across sections of the physical light beams. Intersections of cones with planes are conic curves, as for hyperboloids, which can be characterized by a plurality of coefficients. Considering its apex, a cone may be represented by three angular parameters: a polar angle measured from the revolution axis of the cone, up to the apex angle and the direction of the revolution axis given by two angles.
Let xyz be the coordinate system of the optical acquisition system, z denoting the optical axis of the optical acquisition system with z>0 in the object space of the optical acquisition system and the centre of the pupil 44 being the origin of said coordinate system.
The optics of the optical acquisition system images the object space of the optical acquisition system from the range z∈[2f; +∞] into the image space of the optical acquisition system z∈[−2f; −f], where f is the focal length of the optics of the optical acquisition system. The location of the pupil 44 and the waist 45 of the pixel beam 40 are known in the coordinate system xyz of the optical acquisition system from the calibration of the optical acquisition system. The pupil 44 and the waist 45 are assumed to be parallel and are both normal to the z axis.
Let us call z′ the chief ray of the pixel beam 40. The chief ray is the line joining the centre of the pupil 44 and the centre of the waist 45 of the pixel beam 40. The chief ray is also the revolution axis and the axis of symmetry of the pixel beam 40. Thus, in the coordinate system xyz′, the pixel beam 40 is a solid of revolution.
Both the apices of the front cone 41F and the rear cone 41R are located on the chief ray z′ of the pixel beam 40. Under the thin lens approximation, the coordinates of these two apices are computed in the coordinate system xyz of the optical acquisition system as follow, under the assumption that the sensor of the optical acquisition system is not located the rear focal plane:
{ z w - z front W = z front - z P P z rear - z w W = z rear - z P P ( 4 )
i.e.:
{ z front = P · z W + W · z P P + W z rear = P · z W - W · z P P - W ( 5 )
where P, zP, W and zw respectively denote the diameter of the pupil 44 with P>0, its z-coordinate, the diameter of the pixel's conjugate 45 with 0<W<+∞, and its z-coordinate 0<zw<+∞.
The z-coordinate zrear of the apex of the rear cone 41R may be positive, when the rear cone 41R is a converging cone, negative, when the rear cone 41R is a diverging cone. It may also be infinite if the pupil 44 and the pixel's conjugate 45 of the pixel beam are of the same size.
If the sensor of the optical acquisition system is located on the rear focal plane, then W=+∞ and zw=+∞. As their ratio is a constant:
1 z front - z P = p P · f = 1 z P - z rear ( 6 )
where p and f respectively represent the diameter of the pixel 42 with p>0 and the focal length of the optics of the optical acquisition system with f>0 assuming the optics of the optical acquisition system is a converging lens.
The apex angles are given by:
{ tan   θ front = W / 2  z front - z w  tan   θ rear = W / 2  z rear - z w  ( 7 )
Considering the apex of each cones, which union represents a pixel beam 40, rays can be defined with two angular parameters: the polar angle measure from the revolution axis of the pixel beam, up to the apex angle, and an azimuth in [0,2π[.
Those information related to pixel beams are metadata associated to a given optical acquisition system. They may be provided as a data file stored for example on a CD-ROM or a flash drive supplied with the optical acquisition system. The data file containing the additional information related to pixel beams may also be downloaded from a server belonging to the manufacturer of the optical acquisition system. In an embodiment of the invention, these additional information related to pixel beams may also be embedded in a header of the images captured by the optical acquisition system.
The knowledge of these information related to pixel beams enables the processing of images captured by any optical acquisition system independently of the proprietary file format and of the features of the optical acquisition system used to capture the images to be processed.
The knowledge of information related to pixel beams enables the processing of images captured by any optical acquisition system independently of the proprietary file format and of the features of the optical acquisition system used to capture the images to be processed.
FIG. 5 is a schematic block diagram illustrating an example of an apparatus for generating data representative of pixel beams representing the object space of a first optical system by imaging said pixel beams through a second optical system according to an embodiment of the present disclosure.
The apparatus 500 comprises a processor 501, a storage unit 502, an input device 503, a display device 504, and an interface unit 505 which are connected by a bus 506. Of course, constituent elements of the computer apparatus 500 may be connected by a connection other than a bus connection.
The processor 501 controls operations of the apparatus 500. The storage unit 502 stores at least one program capable of generating data representative of pixel beams representing the object space of a first optical system when these pixel beams are imaged through a second optical system to be executed by the processor 501, and various data, including parameters related to a position of the pixel 12 on the sensor 13 or parameters related to the first optical system 11 of the optical acquisition system and a second optical system, parameters used by computations performed by the processor 501, intermediate data of computations performed by the processor 501, and so on. The processor 501 may be formed by any known and suitable hardware, or software, or a combination of hardware and software. For example, the processor 501 may be formed by dedicated hardware such as a processing circuit, or by a programmable processing unit such as a CPU (Central Processing Unit) that executes a program stored in a memory thereof.
The storage unit 502 may be formed by any suitable storage or means capable of storing the program, data, or the like in a computer-readable manner. Examples of the storage unit 502 include non-transitory computer-readable storage media such as semiconductor memory devices, and magnetic, optical, or magneto-optical recording media loaded into a read and write unit. The program causes the processor 501 to perform a process for computing data representative of the pixel beams of a collection of pixel beams representative of the object space of a first optical system from an image conjugate of said pixel beam through a second optical system beam according to an embodiment of the present disclosure as described hereinafter with reference to FIG. 6.
The input device 503 may be formed by a keyboard, a pointing device such as a mouse, or the like for use by the user to input commands, to make user's selections of parameters used for generating a parametric representation of a volume occupied by a set of rays of light in an object space of an optical system. The output device 604 may be formed by a display device to display, for example, a Graphical User Interface (GUI), images generated according to an embodiment of the present disclosure. The input device 503 and the output device 504 may be formed integrally by a touchscreen panel, for example.
The interface unit 505 provides an interface between the apparatus 500 and an external apparatus. The interface unit 505 may be communicable with the external apparatus via cable or wireless communication. In an embodiment, the external apparatus may be an optical acquisition system such as an actual camera.
FIG. 6 is a flow chart for explaining a process for encoding an image captured by the optical acquisition system according to an embodiment of the invention.
The processor 501 of the apparatus 500 executes the program capable of computing data representative of at least one pixel beam 70 of a collection of pixel beams representative of the object space of a first optical system (not shown on the figure) from an image conjugate 72 of said pixel beam 70 through a second optical system 71 as represented on FIG. 7. In the following example, the pixel beams 70, 72 are represented by a hyperboloid of one sheet 20.
Thus, the processor 501 computes an image conjugate 72 of the pixel beam 70 through the optical system 71, which is for example a thin lens, to provide data representative of the pixel beam 70 in the focal volume of the optical system 71.
The image conjugate 72 of the pixel beam 70 through the optical system 71 may be computed as explained hereafter.
As described in reference to FIGS. 1 to 3, a pixel beam linked to a pupil of an optical system is defined by six extrinsic parameters:
r: the entrance pupil radius of the first optical system,
xO, yO, zO: the coordinates of the entrance pupil centre of the first optical system in a reference coordinate system, and
θx0, θy0: an orientation of the entrance pupil of the first optical system in the reference coordinate system.
In the reference coordinate system, and keeping θx0=θy0=0 for simplicity, a parametric equation of the hyperboloid representing the pixel beam is given by:
( x - x O - ( z - z 0 ) · tan  ( θ x ) ) 2 a 2 + ( y - y O - ( z - z 0 ) · tan  ( θ y ) ) 2 a 2 - ( z - z O - z P - z O ) 2 c 2 = 1 ( 8 )
or equivalently:
{ x = x O + a  1 + ( z - z P ) 2 c 2 · cos  ( v ) + ( z - z 0 ) · tan  ( θ x ) y = y O + a  1 + ( z - z P ) 2 c 2 · sin  ( v ) + ( z - z 0 ) · tan  ( θ y ) ( 9 )
In an embodiment of the invention, a value representing a colour, such as a RGB value, acquired by a pixel of the sensor of the first optical acquisition system is associated to the corresponding pixel beam 70.
The parameters defining a plane surface representing the second optical system 71 are either defined when the second optical system 71 is a virtual optical system or retrieved when the second optical system is an actual optical system:
coordinates of the optical centre of the second optical system 71 are xC, yC, zC
coordinates of a unit vector normal to the surface of the optical system 71: θxC, θyC
a focal f of the optical system 71.
In order to simplify explanations, the optical centre of the second optical system 71 is taken in the same plane as the pupil centre of the first optical system: zC=zO and the optical system 71 is supposed to be parallel to the pupil, i.e. θxC=θyC=0.
The coordinates of a point M relative to the optical system 71 center C are denoted: x, y, z. The coordinates of the image M′ of point M through the optical system 71, are denoted: x′, y′, z′. Each of these coordinates are algebraic values.
The coordinates of point M′ are computed using the Newton's form of "the Lens Maker formula" which is:
(|z|−f)(|z′|−f)=f2 (10)
Since point M is located before the optical system 71, i.e. z<0 and point M′ is located after the optical system 71, i.e. z′>0, then:
(−z−f)(z′−f)=f2 (11)
which gives
z ′ = f - f 2 z + f = f · z z + f ( 12 )
When the optical system 71 is a thin lens, as the ray of light passing through its optical centre is not deviated magnification is given by:
m = x ′ x = y ′ y = z ′ z
{ z ′ = f · z f + z x ′ = x  z ′ z y ′ = y  z ′ z ( 13 ) and   conversely  : { z = f · z ′ f - z ′ x = x ′  z z ′ y = y ′  z z ′ ( 14 )
When M is a point belonging to the surface of a pixel beam 70 the coordinates of point M′ situated on the surface of the imaged pixel beam are:
{ z ′ = f · z f + z x ′ = x  z ′ z y ′ = y  z ′ z ( 15 )
As a paraxial lens transforms rays of light (straight lines) in object space into rays of light in image space, and as pixel beams 70 are represented by a ruled surface, the imaged pixel beams 72 are also represented by a ruled surface, as the image of an hyperboloid of one sheet in object space is an hyperboloid of one sheet in image space.
Let's determine the parameters of the hyperboloid representing the imaged pixel beam 72 from the parameters of the hyperboloid representing the pixel beam 70 and from the parameters of the optical system 71.
Considering the following equation:
representing the pixel beam 70 where θx=θy=0, x0=y0=z0=0 and 84=0 in order to reduce the analysis to a pixel beam on axis, and to the x, z plane.
The parameters to be determined are then z′W, a′ which are a function of zP, a, f, r, where z′W is the z coordinate of the waist of the imaged pixel beam 72 (W′ is not the conjugate point of P through the imaging process due to beam aperture—a≠0) and a′ is the radius of the waist of the imaged pixel beam 72.
With the assumption that θx=θy=0, x0=y0=z0=0 and ν=0 the equation 16 applied to point M simplifies to:
{ x = a  1 + ( z - z P ) 2 c 2 y = 0 ( 16 )
Using the paraxial lens transform of equation 14 for M we get:
x ′  z z ′ = a  1 + ( f · z ′ f - z ′ - z P ) 2 c 2 ( 17 ) ⇔ x ′ 2 a 2 = ( f - z ′ f ) 2  ( 1 + ( f · z ′ f - z ′ - z P ) 2 c 2 ) ( 18 ) ⇔ x ′ 2 a 2 = ( f - z ′ ) 2 f 2 + ( ( f + z P ) · z ′ - f · z P ) 2 f 2  c 2 ( 19 ) ⇔ f 2  c 2 a 2  x ′ 2 = c 2  ( f - z ′ ) 2 + ( ( f + z P ) · z ′ - f · z P ) 2 ( 20 )
which is the equation representing the imaged pixel beam 72 in the focal volume of the optical system 71.
Deriving e equation (20) enables the calculation of the minima and/or maxima of the hyperbolas representing the pixel beams by finding the zero crossing of the derivative.
Equation (20) when developed gives:
f 2  c 2 a 2  x ′ 2 = ( ( f + z P ) 2 + c 2 ) · z ′ 2 - 2  f  ( z P  ( f + z P ) + c 2 ) · z ′ + f 2  ( z P 2 + c 2 ) ( 21 )
The derivative of equation (21) is given by:
d dz ′  ( f 2  c 2 a 2  x ′ 2 ) = d dz ′  ( ( ( f + z P ) 2 + c 2 )  z ′ 2 - 2  f  ( z P  ( f + z P ) + c 2 ) · z ′ + f 2  ( z P 2 + c 2 ) ) ( 22 )  ⇔ d dz ′  ( f 2  c 2 a 2  x ′ 2 ) = 2  ( ( f + z P ) 2 + c 2 )  z ′ - 2  f  ( z P  ( f + z P ) + c 2 ) ( 23 )
Computing the zero crossing gives of the derivative (23):
d dz ′  ( f 2  c 2 a 2  x ′2 ) = 0 ⇔ z w ′ = f   ( z P  ( f + z P ) + c 2 ) ( f + z P ) 2 + c 2 ( 24 ) ⇔ z w ′ = f  ( 1 - f  ( f + z P ) ( f + z P ) 2 + c 2 ) ( 25 )
c 2 = a 2  z P 2 r 2 - a 2
each term of
z w ′ = f ( 1 - f  ( f + z P ) ( f + z P ) 2 + a 2  z P 2 r 2 - a 2 )
can be divided by zP2. Thus, if zP»f and (f+zP)≅zP an approximation can be derived:
= f  ( 1 - f z P  ( 1 - a 2 r 2 ) ) ( 26 )
Since a′ is the radius of the wait of the imaged pixel beam 72, it is also the minimum value of the positive hyperbola for the imaged pixel beam 72 i.e. it corresponds to the value of x′ as defined by equation 20 for z′=z′W:
a′=x′(z′W) (27)
This gives:
f 2  c 2 a 2  a ′ 2 = c 2  ( f - z w ′ ) 2 + ( ( f + z P ) · z w ′ - f · z P ) 2 ( 28 ) ⇔ a ′ = a f  ( f - z w ′ ) 2 + ( ( f + z P ) · z w ′ - f · z P ) 2 c 2 ( 29 ) ⇔ a ′ = a f  ( f - z w ′ ) 2 + r 2 - a 2 a 2  ( f + z P z P · z w ′ - f ) 2 ( 30 )
Let's consider a point x, y and its conjugate x′, y′ through the optical system 71. For a ray of light passing by point x, y and the optical system 71 centre, the laws of optics give:
x z = x ′ z ′ . ( 31 )
If the ray of light is a ray of incidence θx when hitting the optical system 71 at height x0 then:
tan   θ x = x - x 0 z = x z - x 0 z ( 32 )
and similarly:
tan   θ x ′ = x ′ z ′ - x 0 z ′ ( 33 )
tan   θ x ′ = tan   θ x + x 0 z - x 0 z ′ = tan   θ x + x 0  ( 1 z - 1 z ′ )  ( 34 )
As known from the lens maker formula:
1 z ′ = 1 z + 1 f
we obtain:
tan   θ x ′ = tan   θ x - x 0 f ( 35 )
tan   θ y ′ = tan   θ y - y 0 f ( 36 )
Consequently, the equation representing the imaged pixel beam 72 is:
{ x = x o + a ′  1 + ( z - z w ′ ) 2 c 2 · cos  ( v ) + ( z - z 0 ) · tan  ( θ x ′ ) y = y o + a ′  1 + ( z - z w ′ ) 2 c 2 · sin  ( v ) + ( z - z 0 ) · tan  ( θ y ′ ) ( 37 )
with parameters: z′w, θ′x, θ′y, a′ a obtained from the parameters zP, θx, θy, a of the pixel beam 70 by:
{ z w ′ = f  ( 1 - f  ( f + z P ) ( f + z P ) 2 + c 2 ) a ′ = a f  ( f - z w ′ ) 2 + ( ( f + z P ) · z w ′ - f · z P ) 2 c 2 tan   θ x ′ = tan   θ x - x 0 f tan   θ y ′ = tan   θ y - y 0 f ( 38 )
In a step 6010, the processor 501 of the apparatus 500 computes an intersection, in the object space of the first optical system, of a pixel beam 70 of a collection of pixel beams and a given plane, defined by its affine equation in a reference coordinate system.
Then in a step 6020, the processor 501 computes the image conjugate of this intersection through the optical system 71.
In a step 6030, the processor 501 computes the imaged pixel beam 72 from the image conjugate of the intersection computed during step 6020.
In a step 6040, the processor 501 of the apparatus 500 then computes an intersection of the imaged pixel beam 72 with the sensor of the optical system 71.
Then, in a step 6050, the processor 501 computes the integration of the light irradiance over the said intersection.
Such a method for generating data representative of pixel beams offers a precise knowledge and parametrization of a collection of pixel beams in a given focal volume. The parameters representative of the imaged pixel beams associated with RGB values associated to the pixels corresponding to said pixel beams form a parametric sampling of the focal volume of the second optical system 72 useful for image processing operations since the parametric sampling of the focal volume is homogeneous.
In an embodiment of the invention, the first optical system, which object space has been sampled by the collection of pixel beams 70 is the optical system of an actual camera whereas the second optical system 71 is the optical system of a virtual camera.
In another embodiment of the invention, the first optical system, which object space has been sampled by the collection of pixel beams 70 is the optical system of a virtual camera whereas the second optical system 71 is the optical system of an actual camera.
Although the present invention has been described hereinabove with reference to specific embodiments, the present invention is not limited to the specific embodiments, and modifications will be apparent to a skilled person in the art which lie within the scope of the present invention.
Many further modifications and variations will suggest themselves to those versed in the art upon making reference to the foregoing illustrative embodiments, which are given by way of example only and which are not intended to limit the scope of the invention, that being determined solely by the appended claims. In particular the different features from different embodiments may be interchanged, where appropriate.
1. A computer implemented method comprising
generating data representative of a volume occupied by a set of rays of light passing through a pupil of an optical system, said volume occupied by said set of rays of light being called a pixel beam;
acquiring data representative of said pixel beam in an object space of a first optical system, said pixel beam being occupied by a set of rays of light passing through a pupil of said first optical system and an image conjugate, in said object space of the first optical system, of at least one pixel of a sensor associated to said first optical system; and
generating data representative of said pixel beam by computing an image conjugate of said pixel beam through a second optical system.
2. The method according to claim 1 further comprising:
obtaining an intersection, in the object space of the first optical system, of said pixel beam with a plane,
obtaining an image conjugate of said intersection through said second optical system to provide data representative of the pixel beam.
3. The method according to claim 1, wherein the first optical system is an actual camera and the second optical system is a virtual camera.
4. The method according to claim 1, wherein the first optical system is a virtual camera and the second optical system is an actual camera.
7. A device comprising a light filed data generation module configured to
generate data representative of a volume occupied by a set of rays of light passing through a pupil of an optical system, said volume occupied by said set of rays of light being called a pixel beam;
acquire data representative of said pixel beam in an object space of a first optical system, said pixel beam being occupied by a set of rays of light passing through a pupil of said first optical system and an image conjugate, in said object space of the first optical system, of at least one pixel of a sensor associated to said first optical system; and
8. The device according to claim 7, wherein the light field data generation module is further configured to:
obtain an intersection, in the object space of the first optical system, of said pixel beam with a plane,
obtain an image conjugate of said intersection through said second optical system 15 to provide data representative of the pixel beam.
9. The device according to claim 7, wherein the first optical system is an actual camera and the second optical system is a virtual camera.
10. The device according to claim 7, wherein the first optical system is a virtual
camera and the second optical system is an actual camera.
11. The device according to claim 8, wherein the first optical system is an actual
camera and the second optical system is a virtual camera.
13. The device of claim 8, wherein said device is configured for rendering an image from said light field data.
14. The device of claim 7, further comprising:
a component for generating metadata.
16. A data package for data representative of a volume in an object space of a first optical system occupied by a set of rays of light passing through a pupil of said first optical system and a conjugate, in said object space of the first optical system, of at least one pixel of a sensor associated to said first optical system, said volume occupied by said set of rays of light being called a pixel beam said data representative of a pixel beam being an image conjugate of said pixel beam through a second optical system.
17. A computer program product for a programmable apparatus, the computer program product comprising
18. The computer program product according to claim 17 further comprising:
19. The computer program product according to claim 17, wherein the first optical system is an actual camera and the second optical system is a virtual camera.
20. The computer program product according to claim 17, wherein the first optical system is a virtual camera and the second optical system is an actual camera.
Applicant: THOMSON LICENSING (Issy-les-Moulineaux)
Inventors: Laurent BLONDE (CESSON-SEVIGNE), Arno SCHUBERT (CESSON-SEVIGNE), Guillaume BOISSON (CESSON-SEVIGNE), Didier DOYEN (CESSON-SEVIGNE), Paul KERBIRIOU (CESSON-SEVIGNE), Olivier BURELLER (CESSON-SEVIGNE), Valter DRAZIC (CESSON-SEVIGNE)
International Classification: G02B 27/22 (20060101); H04N 13/243 (20060101); G06T 15/50 (20060101);


Premier Land and Growth has database listings for shophouses of many sorts and sizes inside their business constructing database. Within the late eighties, attention was turned to the shophouses at Tanjong Pagar. Because the identify suggests, a shophouse is basically a shop with a residence above it. The peak of these shophouses was originally restricted by the technology and building assets out there. The shophouses in Boat Quay are towered over by a few of Singapore's tallest skyscrapers, which makes for an fascinating contrast.
Unusually, the facade is all the time recessed at ground stage, leaving a space here that, combined with adjoining spaces in a row of shophouses, would kind a sheltered walkway on the entrance (the five-foot approach", so named due to its minimal width) – therefore the shortage of pavements on Singapore's older streets. Many of the shophouses at Little India, alongside Serangoon Street, were constructed between 1840s and Nineteen Sixties.
Depicted here is a row of mid-twentieth century, three storey shophouses in Chinatown, Singapore of traditional Sino-Portuguese , Artwork Deco and International kinds. Trendy shophouses use related supplies but additionally embody bolstered concrete beams. Jalan right down to 157 Neil Road and be blown away by the Baba Home – Singapore's most famous Peranakan dwelling.
Many old shophouses, nevertheless, did not escape the destiny of demolition. Shophouses are discovered in lots of components of Singapore, especially at the 4 designated Historic Districts in Singapore – Boat Quay, Chinatown, Kampong Glam and Little India. Modern variations by means of the Nineteen Fifties up until the Eighties were devoid of ornamental decorations and tended to be designed with imposing geometrical and utilitarian varieties impressed by International and Brutalism types.
An adaptive form of Artwork Deco, termed Tropical Deco can also be present in shophouses along Membership Avenue and Cavan Highway. Back then, the standard frontage of a shophouse spanned between 16 to 18 toes (about 6m) large and eighty feet (25m) deep. Singapore's shophouses have develop into an integral icon of the country, and are ceaselessly the sites of upscale restaurants.


text:
November 29, 2018 by Connor Wood
Why Postmodernism and Science Can't Stand Each Other November 29, 2018 Connor Wood
I'm freshly back from Denver, where the annual conference of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) took place this year. The AAR is the world's largest academic body focused on the study of religion. It includes everything under its big tent – experts in ancient Daoist texts, Biblical historians, Sanskrit scholars, sociologists of religion, transhumanists, and even – yes – cognitive scientists of religion. Attending the AAR is a little bit like finding yourself in one of those edge-of-the-galaxy bazaars Star Wars characters are always getting lost in: it's massively diverse, baffling, crowded, and filled with incompatible languages. Of course, one of the biggest language barriers in academia is between the humanities and the sciences – and the AAR is no exception.
As I've recently written here, the secular, academic study of religion is mostly dominated by humanities scholars – that is, experts in texts, foreign and classical languages, areas studies, and social theory. Only a small minority of religious studies scholars use scientific or quantitative methods, and their choice to do so is often controversial. Generally, religious studies sees itself as a discipline whose objective to skillfully and sensitively interpret religious phenomena. This is what the sociologist Max Weber called verstehen, or "understanding." To pursue verstehen is to try to get inside a religious tradition or practice, to understand it from the practitioner's point of view, without necessarily coming to believe its actual religious claims. Verstehen is usually associated with the soft social sciences, but it also captures much of the humanities' aims. Humanists try to sensitively understand their subject material – to focus deeply on the rich context of a particular period in history, or a unique region of the world.
By contrast, scientists generally try to explain things (in German, erklären). They aim to come up with general laws that give rise to particular phenomena. As such, particular cases or examples are only interesting if they help shed light on the impersonal and universal laws behind them. So a scientist who studies religion isn't very likely to focus on the rhetorical techniques of Classical Sanskrit for the sheer fun of it. Instead, she'll dive into such a subfield only if it can help illuminate, say, how religious ideas spread in general – that is, if it can generate new general principles that she can apply to other periods of history. Scientific ideas are supposed to be transposable, not limited to particular cases. That's what makes them scientific.
So there's a real cultural gap between the humanities and the sciences. To humanities scholars, scientists who study religion often seem equal parts arrogant and naïve – blusteringly confident that their generalizing methods will apply to any given individual religious datum, yet shockingly ignorant of actual religious texts or traditions. To scientists, humanities scholars who refuse to accept scientific methods can seem old-fashioned, backwards, or stubborn.
But there's another kink to the story. The humanities are also heavily influenced by postmodern, postcolonial, and critical theories. These theories are diverse and difficult (impossibly, actually) to define clearly without writing a dissertation (and they're not all the same thing). But they share in common several core assumptions that bear on the relationship between the sciences and the humanities:
Knowledge and truth are largely socially constructed, not objectively discovered.
What we believe to be "true" is in large part a function of social power: who wields it, who's oppressed by it, how it influences which messages we hear.
Power is generally oppressive and self-interested (and implicitly zero-sum).
Thus, most claims about supposedly objective truth are actually power plays, or strategies for legitimizing particular social arrangements.
To translate, postmodern theories claim that knowledge isn't really objective. Rather, it's produced by social discourses, which are inherently normative, or value-laden. As such, there's no such thing as a neutral statement of pure fact. Even the most seemingly humdrum truth claims are actually tools that help to advance some particular social agenda or other. For example, if I claim that ritual helps to create common bonds between participants, a critic influenced by postmodern theories might accuse me of using essentialized generalizations to uphold a status quo that in fact uses social rituals (such as national holidays and televised football games) to legitimize oppression (such as structural injustice in American society). They might suggest that my views about the usefulness of ritual are actually a function of my position within the omnipresent power structures of late-capitalist society. By trying to get students and readers to think that ritual is objectively a socially useful thing, I'm actually shoring up the consensus for the social system I benefit from.
This is only a very, very rough description of postmodern epistemology. In reality, postmodernism is very complex, with lots of different, often conflicting streams included within it. For instance, some forms of postmodern thought claim to owe a debt to Marx and his followers, while most others are actually anti-Marxian. But all strains of postmodern thought insist that knowledge is really a function of social identity and location; that it's impossible to separate a speaker's point of view from her beliefs; and that power relations are at the heart of any discourse.
All of these axioms are, of course, seriously at odds with the values of science. Scientists believe that they're pursuing objective, verifiable truth; that personal identity and perspective should be irrelevant in deciding what's real; and that social biases can and should be decisively filtered out of scientific inquiry. The "postmodern" worldview and the scientific worldview are, in many ways, saying completely incompatible things about how knowledge works.
It's not surprising, then, that many of the most vocal and outspoken critics of postmodernism have been scientists. The physicist Alan Sokal became famous in the 1990s for publishing a hoax paper in a postmodern cultural studies journal in which he claimed to argue that modern science is actually a prop for an "ideology of domination." Despite the fact that the arguments in his paper didn't really support his conclusions, the paper was published in the journal Social Text – and Sokal promptly went public with the hoax, citing the journal's willingness to publish a nonsense paper as evidence that ideology was more important to its editors than evidence or sound reasoning.*
More recently, the psychologist, linguist, and rationalist Steven Pinker has been outspoken in his criticism of postmodern theory, savagely intoning that
The humanities have yet to recover from the disaster of postmodernism, with its defiant obscurantism, self-refuting relativism, and suffocating political correctness. Many of its luminaries – Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Lacan, Derrida, the Critical Theorists – are morose cultural pessimists who declare that modernity is odious, all statements are paradoxical, works of art are tools of oppression, liberal democracy is the same as fascism, and Western civilization is circling the drain.
Leaving aside inaccuracies in Pinker's diatribe (Nietzsche died half a century before postmodernism came into its own as an intellectual movement), it's clear that people who value the Enlightenment, scientific reasoning, and objectivity are often left cold by postmodern theories. And the reverse is often true, too – postmodern theorists aren't too keen on thinkers like Steven Pinker, who believe that Science™ really can explain and conquer everything, that there's a universal, objective point of view, and that – conveniently – they (the scientists) happen to occupy it.
So there's a lot more to the divide between the humanities and the sciences than just erklären versus verstehen (or nomothetic versus idiographic analysis, if you want to get technical). There's a real conflict in how scholars in these different camps understand knowledge itself. Scientists believe we can get outside of cultural and social context, to discover how the world is in itself. Most humanities scholars are skeptical about this. They think that social context follows us wherever we go, that we can never get outside of social discourse, and that pretensions of objectivity are often cover-ups for particular social agendas.
As usual, both sides have some good points. Scientists often are pretty naïve about the ways that social context and cultural bias inflect their own reasoning, and the prestige of science really has been used as a tool for legitimizing oppressive institutions time and time again (remember drapetomania, the mental health "diagnosis" that applied to American slaves who wanted to run away?). But hardcore postmodernists or social constructionists also have a tough time explaining why science works so much of the time – why we can identify the mass of an electron, or how it is that we can use Newtonian physics to successfully land a rocket on the moon. At its extremes, postmodernism can also be self-refuting, as Pinker accuses. If every truth claim is just a function of power arrangements and social discourse rather than objective fact, then so are the claims of postmodernism itself. And if those claims are merely relative, then they can't apply universally – and we're left with a paradox. Are truth claims always socially relative, or aren't they? It's a kind of version of the liar paradox: if the sentence "this sentence is a lie" is true, then it's false, which means it's true…and so on ad infinitum.
None of the panels I attended at the American Academy of Religion conference this year addressed these questions directly. But as a researcher who straddles the worlds of the humanities and the sciences, it's impossible not to feel the tension when the paper I'm presenting is a reductive, explanatory model of religious cognition, while the papers being presented elsewhere in the conference at the same time are diving deeply into the social and cultural contexts of particular traditions. It's not necessarily a bad tension, though. Tension is often the necessary precondition for creativity. And a humble but self-confident science that takes the critiques of postmodernism seriously, but firmly refuses to turn aside from the quest to learn real things about the objective world, would be a creative thing indeed.
* See also the recent "Sokal Squared" hoax, in which a trio of writers managed to get more than a half-dozen nonsense papers published in postmodern or critical-theory journals by flattering the editors' ideological biases. I might write more about this sometime.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Every individual will be provided with an enrolment slip, after we have registered for the aadhaar card. However, there is a great deal of chance of losing this enrolment number. If we lose this slip, it will be quite difficult to find the current status of the aadhaar card. In order to rectify this issue, government has launched a search service, through which an individual can find his or her enrolment number and subsequently download their aadhaar card, which will be available online, shortly after registering.
Aadhaar card, is becoming one of the most important government identification proof and the government is keen in attaching this aadhaar number with our bank accounts, gas connection and electricity. With this methodology, we can get personal details about each and every individual, with the help of the aadhaar number. If we lose the enrolment number, we can get the aadhar card number or enrolment number through online. In this article, we will discuss in detail about the steps involved in finding the enrolment number with Name and Mobile Number. It is to be noted that the enrolment number will be shared with you in the registered mobile number.
Step 3: In this page, you will find an option 'Retrieve Your Enrolment ID or Aadhaar'. We have highlighted the option for you.
Step 4: When you open this page, you will be asked for a set of information like, 'Name, Email, Mobile and Security code'. And you can also choose between Aadhaar Number and enrolment number.
Step 5: After entering the details, you will be able to generate the OTP and you will receive this OTP number in your registered mobile number.
Step 6: Once you receive the OTP, you can validate the OTP and your enrolment number or Aadhaar number, which you have chosen will be generated.
You may not worry if you have lost your enrolment slip or aadhaar number, government has ensured that individual can retrieve the aadhaar card, with the help of their Name, Date of Birth or Registered mobile number.


The Coeur d'Alene Casino Circling Raven Golf Club will host a golf tournament on Oct. 1, to raise funds in support of the Che'nshish Scholarship through the NIC Foundation.
Members of the American Indian Student Alliance (AISA) saw a need for additional scholarships for American Indian students at North Idaho College, so they rose to the challenge. The students spent the 2009-10 school year hosting various fundraisers, ranging from fry bread sales to an American Indian art silent auction, raising a total of $2,000 to fund scholarships for American Indian students.
The students' current focus is to raise funds that will be matched through the American Indian Education Foundation (AIEF) challenge grant program. Through this new opportunity, AIEF will match funds raised by NIC in support of American Indian student scholarships between August of 2010 and February of 2011. Funds used in the match must be from donors who have not given funds to NIC in support of native students before.
In order to help match the AIEF challenge grant, the Coeur d'Alene Casino Circling Raven Golf Club will host a golf tournament on Oct. 1, to raise funds in support of the Che'nshish Scholarship through the NIC Foundation. Ryan Carden, one of the tournament organizers and AISA member, suggested naming the scholarship and golf tournament Che'nshish, or "Given," which is a Coeur d'Alene tribal expression to assist, provide for, and give to others.
The four-person scramble will have a shotgun start at 1 p.m. The entry fee of $100 includes golfing, golf cart, driving range, silent auction, and dinner. For event entry information, contact the Circling Raven Pro Shop at (800) 523-2464 ext. 7259. Non-golfers are invited to attend the dinner at 6 p.m. and no host bar at 5:30. To purchase a $20 dinner ticket, contact Evanlene Melting Tallow at (208) 769-3365. Tickets must be purchased in advance.
A silent auction will be held from 1 to 7 p.m. in the Stensgar Pavilion and will include items such as artwork by renowned American Indian artists (George Flett, DG House, Andrew Morrison, etc.), getaway packages to Northern Quest Casino and Kootenai River Inn & Spa, event tickets for the Jacklin Arts and Cultural Center and much more.
Community support and participation is deeply appreciated. Proceeds benefit the Che'nshish Scholarship and will be used to match the AIEF Grant. To make a donation to the Che'nshish Scholarship, contact the NIC Foundation at (208) 769-5978.


text:
Q: How to overwrite environment variables in Vue-cli3? Let us assume we have a Vue.js project build with Vue-cli3 , package.json:
{
 "scripts": {
    "serve": "vue-cli-service serve",
    "build": "vue-cli-service build",
  ...
}
Also, we have a plan to push our project to a public repository on GitHub, so we need different environment variables for public repo and for the local development.
Vue-cli 3 gives us modes: https://cli.vuejs.org/guide/mode-and-env.html#modes
I have such a files:

*

*.env

*.env.development

*.env.production

*.env.local

*.env.development.local

*.env.production.local

Content of .env:
NODE_ENV=production
VUE_APP_PATH=http://website.com/
VUE_APP_API_ROUTE=api/v1/
Content of .env.development:
NODE_ENV=development
VUE_APP_PATH=http://dev-website.com/
Content of .env.development.local:
NODE_ENV=development
VUE_APP_PATH=http://localhost:8080/
When I do npm run serve I expect process.env.VUE_APP_PATH will be equals http://localhost:8080/ but unfortunately it stills = http://dev-website.com/.
So, the problem is variables from local env files (i.e. .env.development.local) are not overwrite existed from another env file (i.e. .env.development).
How can I use this vue-cli approach to overwrite neccessary variables? The documentation tells about priority: An env file for a specific mode (e.g. .env.production) will take higher priority than a generic one (e.g. .env). but with .local files it doesn`t work.

A: You can pass in the --mode option within the npm script. So, in your instance you might want the serve script to look like:
vue-cli-service serve --mode development.local
If you wanted to test out serving your non-local development configuration you could copy the serve script and rename it serve:local and then edit the original serve script to look like this:
vue-cli-service serve --mode development
Which is really the actual default mode for serve out-of-the-box with CLI 3.  We've just explicitly set the mode.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Het Estádio Louis Ensch is een multifunctioneel stadion in Coronel Fabriciano, een stad in Brazilië. De bijnaam van het stadion is 'Luisão'.

Het stadion wordt vooral gebruikt voor voetbalwedstrijden, de voetbalclub Social FC maakt gebruik van dit stadion. In het stadion is plaats voor 6.000 toeschouwers. Het stadion werd geopend in 1950.

Louis Ensch
Sport in Minas Gerais
Bouwwerk in Minas Gerais

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
President Barack Obama addressing a gay rights group in 2011.
Obama's gay marriage support riles religious conservatives, but political effects not yet clear
By Dan Gilgoff, CNN.com Religion Editor
(CNN) – U.S. President Barack Obama's endorsement of gay marriage on Wednesday outraged conservative Christian leaders, who vowed to use it as an organizing tool in the 2012 elections, but the move is also activating the liberal base, raising big questions about who gains and loses politically.
"It cuts both ways - it activates both Democratic and Republican base voters," said John Green, an expert on religion and politics at the University of Akron. "The most likely effect is that it makes an already close election even closer."
In an interview with ABC News, Obama said, "At a certain point I've just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married."
The announcement puts Obama at odds with presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who opposes same-sex marriage and who voiced that opposition in an interview on Wednesday.
CNN's Belief Blog: The faith angles behind the biggest stories
"Considering that 10 of the 16 battleground states have marriage amendments that could be overturned by the president's new policy position on marriage, today's announcement almost ensures that marriage will again be a major issue in the presidential election," said Tony Perkins, president of the the conservative Family Research Council.
"The president has provided a clear contrast between him and his challenger, Mitt Romney," Perkins continued. "Romney, who has signed a pledge to support a marriage protection amendment to the U.S. Constitution, may have been handed the key to social conservative support by President Obama."
Obama stressed in the interview that his support was personal and that he would leave the issue of marriage to the states. But many conservatives chafed at the idea that the president's personal views would not affect public policy.
Follow the CNN Belief Blog on Twitter
Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, released a statement saying the president's comments were "deeply saddening." Dolan's statement continued, "I pray for the President every day, and will continue to pray that he and his Administration act justly to uphold and protect marriage as the union of one man and one woman."
Bishop Harry Jackson, the senior pastor of Hope Christian Church outside of Washington, DC, said that "I think the president has been in this place for awhile and that he chose this time because he thought that it might shift the balance of power." Jackson has long campaigned against same-sex marriage.
Ralph Reed, a top organizer among religious conservatives, said Obama's announcement was a "gift to the Romney campaign."
Romney, a Mormon who has evolved to a more conservative position on hot button social issues, has struggled with his party's largely evangelical conservative base in the primaries. But Reed said Obama's gay marriage support would help Romney in many battleground states.
"The Obama campaign doesn't have to worry about New York and California," Reed said. "They have to worry about Ohio, Florida and Virginia and I don't' see evidence that it's a winning issue in those states."
Green said that public opinion about gay marriage has been shifting dramatically in recent years, with some polls showing more support than opposition. Green said that in many battlegrounds, including Ohio, it's impossible to nail down current public opinion on same-sex marriage. A Gallup Poll conducted this month found that 50% of American adults support legal recognition of same-sex marriage, while 48% oppose it.
Reed noted that same-sex marriage bans have passed in virtually every state they have appeared on the ballot, including in North Carolina on Tuesday. That's a typically red state that Obama won in 2008 and that is the site of the Democrat's 2012 convention.
Many liberal groups were ecstatic over Obama's support for gay marriage. "Congratulations, Mr. President, for making history today by becoming the first sitting president to explicitly support marriage for same-sex couples," said Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
In his interview with ABC, Obama talked about squaring his decision with his personal religious faith.
"We are both practicing Christians and obviously this position may be considered to put us at odds with the views of others," Obama said, referencing his wife, Michelle.
"But, you know, when we think about our faith, the thing at root that we think about is, not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it's also the Golden Rule," he said. "Treat others the way you would want to be treated."
One key Obama constituency that may be angered by his Wednesday announcement is African-Americans, who tend to be more religious than whites. Though they hew heavily Democratic, African-Americans are generally conservative on social issues like gay marriage.
- CNN's Eric Marrapodi, Shannon Travis, and Mary Snow contributed to this report.
Dan Gilgoff - CNN Belief Blog Co-Editor
Filed under: 2012 Election • Barack Obama • Gay marriage
Next entry »Belief Blog's Morning Speed Read for Thursday, May 10
« Previous entryPortugal cancels holidays after Vatican talks
Have anyone seen this?
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/05/09/youtuber-alleges-nasa-cover-up-spaceship-spotted-near-sun/?intcmp=features
The LDS Church and the Vatican have been working to cover up alien life discoveries for decades because they know that if people find out the whole planet will go into panic mode so they have been colluding with the government to lock this information up in vaults underneath the Vatican!! People you need to WAKE UP because there's a lot happening that you don't know about because they don't want you to know.
Honey Badger Dont Care
saganhill
You are a grade "A" USDA choice 1di0t.
CosmicC
Tired of hearing crazy voices? Stop listening to Fox News.
@saganhill: Those were not my words.
Then put them in quotes. "David Barton tells the truth" We all know that is false about David Barton.
Then people know you are quoting rather than thinking they are your words.
19 Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prost itute in Egypt. 20 There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses. 21 So you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when in Egypt your bosom was caressed and your young breasts fondled.
SouthernCelt
Is it just that you don't believe in the existence of Hell, or you think changing the text won't send you there?
AthensGuy
dang, reading the bi ble is making me h o t... be back in 10, folks, cant type now
SOAPY32
NO TALIBAN muslims are unfarily maligned in regards to issues regarrding homosexuals most muslims understand the threat posed by homosexual members of the united states military inside their home country numerous cases reported by united nations medical teams of hiv or teretiary pnuemonia WORST LINGERING DEATH being introduced into local water supplies by homosexual soldiers FOR THE SOLE REASON OF MAKING WOMAN AND CHILDREN AND MEN SICK AND WEAKLY FOR EASY PREY for these soldiers to unleash toxic hateful urges upon muslims fight back with what they can WHO WOULD BLAME THEM WHEN LIVING IN FEAR OF WRATH OF GOD HOLY SPIRIT DARKNESS TOXIC HATE FILLED SOLDIERS ATTACK THEIR CHILDREN??? it hurts my heart when i see usa muslims targetted unfairly they have much more understanding of nature of god holy spirit than all usa christian darkness heart of poison living in dark ages lied to by CATHOLOIC NEST OF VIPERS SODOMITE ANTICHRIST POPE
chipndale
You have a poisoned mind Mr. Phelps.
Islam has a much dimmer view of the subject. That's why any Gay's in Muslim countries are still in the closet. They'd lose their heads if they came out. Christianity preaches Love and Forgiveness, not Hate. That comes from the other guy, who you either work for or don't believe in either. Back to School, troll.
TDALLAS
Your comment is awesome !
Your thoughts encompass the essence of ignorance, stupidity, self righteousness, and hatred.
Also before your next comment, please learn to punctuate.
Fifty years ago, it would have been equally unthinkable to ordain a woman as a priest or pastor in any mainstream religious tradition. Some of them have evolved; some continue to fight the tide. In the end, this is what determines the survival of a religion (or anything else for that matter): its ability to adapt, to evolve, to respond to a changing environment. Anything that chooses to resist change to the death will eventually do just that.
It is still unthinkable to ordain a woman as a Priest. Pope John Paul II was quite clear on the subject. As for survival, we've been around for 2000+ years and still believe in the same things. Society should conform to the Church, the Church does not conform to Society and never has.
@SouthernCelt – the church's desire to conform society to it is fine in a catholic country. This is a secular country and you cannot force your beliefs on others. Feel free to hold them yourself. This is not a theocracy (at least not yet).
Civil rights should not be a state by state decision. Otherwise, I'd imagine african americans still drinking in seperate fountains in the states of the south.
Let me guess, @Thomas is a Moderator and no one can reply to him. So much for Freedom of Speech.
Oh I've got a million of them, or at least as many as there are passages in the bible.
"All right," the Lord said. "You may bake your bread with cow dung instead of human dung."
–Ezekiel 4:12-15
Why is it when Obama changes his mind he's 'evolving', but when Romney does it's a 'flip-flop'? Just curious
When did President Obama change his mind?
Go back in time 8 years and check the precedent the conservatives set with John Kerry.
Because Mittens does so on a weekly (if not daily) basis
The above comment is a clone. You might notice the glitch in repeated words.
Boyplease!!!
Obama.... time for u to go!!
Reasons I own guns:
– fend off home intruders
– shoot Chinese paratroopers
– overthrow Christian Jihadist evangelical Govt
What they should do is simply downgrade all marriages in this country to civil unions. That way everyone can call themselves married, they all have the same rights and people can go back to sniping at each other instead of trying to change laws.
If churches want to sound off on politics, they need to pay taxes!
French Mermaid Nether Region
And when churches pay taxes, they get a political voice. It's a shame that you are probably of legal voting age. People like you are why our POTUS is a giant pussy.
They already have a political voice without paying taxes! Time to pay up.
No Taliban
The extremist faction of Christianity behaves as if they were Taliban. Exactly the same. Is this what we want in our country?
Because we bomb government buildings, assasinate leaders and attack foriegn militaries occupying our land. Good observation.
Steve, if American religious nutjobs aren't "bomb[ing] government buildings, assasinat[ing] leaders and attack[ing] foriegn militaries" it is only because they don't control the government – but not for lack of trying! Refer to Pat Robertson's famous fatwa on a foreign leader, August 23, 2005. Many similar statements on public record if you have the time.
SilverHair
Typical WASP reaction.
Soapy32.
Thank you Rev Phelps. The bitterness in your vile heart is obvious. Like a cancer, unless treated the anger and vile mentality will eat you from the inside out. May you find peace one day and release this costic frame of mind. As usual, it probably stems from some childhood oppression. You remind me so much of my straight ultra religious ex con father who spent 13 years in a state pen after being found guilty of molesting two children, ages 5 and 7. After being released from prison, he had to advise me on how being gay was such a sin. You like him represent a double standard I do not wish to follow. As a father of a daughter happily married and secure, I am sure glad I did not take the path you or my father suggest. Farewell.
Mr. Obama needs to go.
Why, because he does the right thing?
@saganhill: So he thinks.
Wow, what stunning rationale; I may have been persuaded.. -.-
The reason reason if you must know.... is because he's black.
Note: The above comment is a clone. You might notice the glitch in repeated words.
Whats his skin color have to do with anything?
@momoya: You may have been stunned.
@saganhill: Not my words.
Teabag Shredder
Your right, GO! Obama, GO man GO. Keep going strong for the rights of people while evangelicals destroy the word of God.
@Teabag Shredder: And make people pay for his idealism and socialist policies?
If you represent the average American voter, then he is doomed to defeat !
However, I don't think the average American voter is bigoted, racist, or ignorant which are clearly your most outstanding credentials and traits.
@atomico as opposed to the republicans lack of reality, delusional beliefs in myths, no plan for the future other than rhetorical religious dogma, misogyny, total lack of understanding any Scientific Theory, and I could write a whole 2-3 pages of this. What more do you want.
STOP... LISTEN... UNDERSTAND... marriage is NOT under attack. The ability to go into a CIVIL UNION that is similar to marriage is. NOOONE is trying to redefine the definition of marriage. The government only see's marriages as civil unions anyway as it should.
IF, and that's a big IF, LBG movement was trying to redefine marriage as defined by christianity, I would be on the supporters side but it's not. It's simple demanded equal rights as far as governmental recognition goes and all the benefits that come with it. It will NOT be referred to as married. It will NOT be considered a marriage but a CIVIL UNION.
Now... with that understanding... if you are still against it, please reply to me and explain why.
matkins4268
MAN -– WOMAN ....... CREATE LIFE WOMAN .... WOMAN DEPEND ON LIFE
marriage is between MAN and WOMAN
What does that have to do with loving someone? Marriage is a religiously founded term. We're talking allowing them to have civil unions. Try again.
Hmm, I know I replied to this. I see that someone replied to my post, but my post is gone. I didn't use any foul language, didn't attack anyone, didn't include anything that would be viewed as "bad", yet my post is gone while some racist is free to spew hatred.
mikstov33
turdknockers all...
Whitney called from the dead, she wants her pipe back, lol
Riled religious conservatives? I'd think they would also want to find out if Mitt Romney's wife has sisters and if any of those sisters live in any of his houses.
Rather than making an intelligent contribution to the dialogue here, your inference of incest, bigamy or, whatever your warped mind is trying to say is totally offensive and uncalled for.
Even though I am not a supporter of Gov. Romney, his faith and his family are off limits and not even remotely related to the conversation here.
You should be ashamed ! ! !
« Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Next »


text:
Dodgers-M's connection not going away
The Detroit Tigers and Texas Rangers have made their first marks early in the 2013-2014 offseason after Ian Kinsler and Prince Fielder switched area codes in a blockbuster trade last week. The Tigers have received high praise for clearing money off of their books for future considerations, while the Rangers have received praise of their own for adding a premier slugger and finding space for top prospect Jurickson Profar heading into the 2014 season. Perhaps the most surprising part of this deal is that the Tigers were about to move the seven years and $162 million still owed to Fielder, although the Rangers did receive $30 million in the deal.
While Fielder's deal wasn't crippling to the franchise, it's easy to see how it could become a large problem a few years down the road. The Los Angeles Dodgers find themselves looking to move an albatross contract of their own and are willing to deal one of Carl Crawford, Matt Kemp, and Andre Ethier this winter. The Seattle Mariners have been connected to the Dodgers outfield surplus for a while now and have already expressed interest in Kemp. While all three outfielders are sexy in name, it's not 2011 anymore and they all carry some pretty heavy baggage heading into 2014.
Crawford, 32, came to LA in last summer's blockbuster deal with the Boston Red Sox after struggling mightily in 2011 and undergoing Tommy John surgery in August 2012. Crawford managed to make the Dodgers 2013 opening day roster, but only appeared in 116 games do to a hamstring injury. The left fielder may be a couple steps removed from his all-star form, he did take a step forward in 2013 posting a .283/.329/.407 line while producing 1.7 bWAR and 2.9 fWAR. Steamer thinks he's good for 2.2 fWAR in 2014, despite a projection of 122 games. Although Crawford has been a plus defender and a capable leadoff hitter in the past, he's a tough pill to swallow with salaries between $20 and $21 million owed in the next four seasons.
Kemp, the youngest of the trio at 29, has spent his entire career to date with the Dodgers and isn't a fan of the trade talk surrounding him. The centerfielder hasn't been healthy for an entire season since 2011 when he came second in the NL MVP voting and established himself as a premier hitter while 8.4 fWAR and 8.6 bWAR. The Dodgers rewarded their star with an eight-year extension worth $160 million after the '11 season, which will pay $21.5 million annually from 2014-19. Things quickly went downhill however, as Kemp found himself making numerous trips to the disabled list between 2012 and 2013. Most recently, Kemp underwent arthroscopic ankle surgery to repair a fractured bone in October and is expected to be "competitive" for the start of the 2014 season. For his 2013 campaign, Kemp put together a .270/.328/.395 line across 290 PA, but saw his ISO fall to .125 and his OPS+ to 105. Kemp has always been prone to the strikeout and has never been a very good fielder so he's a huge risk as well coming off of consecutive injury riddled seasons.
Ethier has been a model of good health in comparison to his counterparts as he's played in at least 135 games each year since his sophomore season in 2007, but he did see his 2013 season end with an ankle injury. The 31 year-old sports a career line of .288/.362/.470 in eight major league seasons, and posted career highs for home runs and RBI with 31 and 106 in 2009. Like Kemp, Ethier has always struck out a lot, a career 17 percent rate, but it's not unreasonable to suggest he's capable of hitting 20 home runs on a regular basis for the next couple seasons while he's on the right side of 30. Despite the injuries, Ethier has averaged about 3 WAR in each of the last three seasons. His mobility was greatly affected throughout this past postseason as he struggled with the ankle injury, but he should be back to full health before the start of the 2014 season. Ethier is due $69 million from 2014-17, and has a vesting option for '18 worth $17.5 million with a $2.5 million buy-out attached.
It's well known that the Mariners are in the market for an outfielder, and possibly two since they should be uncomfortable with Abraham Almonte seeing significant playing time in 2014. The potential for the two clubs to match up exists, but to be honest, it'd take a lot to make dealing for one of the three outfielders remotely considerable. Sure they all have all-star backgrounds, but the risk level associated with each is huge. Kemp in particular, may not be ready for the start of the season, and an annual payment north of $20 million makes any player risky, save for Mike Trout.
Sure it's possible for Kemp to repeat his 8 WAR performance, but the likelihood is debatable. It's important to note that the 2011 Dodger team didn't offer Kemp much protection or feature any other elite production, so it's possible he could do it on his own with the Mariners if he was healthy for the full season. Even though Safeco Field has gotten less pitcher friendly the last few years, it'll never be a hitter's paradise and Kemp will likely need one of those to be in the equation if he plans on finding his 2011 form next year.
Crawford should really be a hard 'no' for the Mariners. He's struggled mightily since leaving Tampa Bay and although a change of scenery out of the spotlight could be a good thing for him, the $20 million annual salary is better spent on Jacoby Ellsbury. If the Dodgers want to give him away and pay a chunk of his salary, maybe the M's should gamble, but realistically, his value is so low he will most likely not be leaving Chavez Ravine.
If there's a player worth pursuing out of the three, it'd probably be Ethier. Although he may be unspectacular at the plate, he's been consistent, he can get on base, and he's had an OPS+ of 121 or higher six years straight. He's a very capable defender and would definitely represent an upgrade over whatever you want to call the outfield gongshow Raul Ibanez and Jason Bay provided. His salary is a bit high for a player who has yet to put up a four WAR season, but he'd probably get a similar deal in free agency so the Dodgers will likely want at least a Brandon Maurer type of prospect.
The Mariners' interest will likely be determined by how much cash the Dodgers are willing to include to make a deal happen. If the Dodgers are looking at a pure salary dump, then taking Ethier or Kemp off of their hands for minor league fodder is worth considering, but if they're after any kind of value in return, they'll have to include some salary relief. Payroll has proved to be of minimal concern to the club and they don't consider the luxury cap threshold limiting, so they probably aren't concerned with the financial cost of having a $20 million player sitting on the bench for the bulk of 2014.
Actually, keeping all three outfielders may be the best thing for the Dodgers unless they can find a trade that makes too much sense to turn down. Allowing the three to share the outfield with Yasiel Puig would ease the workload throughout the season and represent a potential insurance policy if an outfielder is lost for a large period of time in 2014; a definite possibility. It's doubtful Crawford, Kemp, or Either would be happy with semi reduced roles, but considering the injury risks involved, they could probably be reasoned with. Either way, don't expect this market to heat up too much until free agents like Jacoby Ellsbury or Shin-Soo Choo sign new deals and teams in need have fewer places to turn.
Previous Post: M's eye bats (surprise!)
Next Post: McCann a great match for Yankees
M's eye bats (surprise!)
By now I imagine everyone has seen the tweets and reports that the Seattle Mariners are interested in free agents...


text:
Procedure for passing laws in the United States Procedure for passing laws in the United States
Procedure for passing laws in the United States
Out-Law Guide | 14 Feb 2007 | 3:05 pm | 3 min. read
The main US legislative body is the Congress, which consists of a Senate and a House of Representatives. The Senate is composed of 100 Members, and each State is represented by two senators. The...
The main US legislative body is the Congress, which consists of a Senate and a House of Representatives. The Senate is composed of 100 Members, and each State is represented by two senators. The House of representatives is composed of 435 Members, who are elected every two years. Each State is represented in the House according to its population.
Legislative proposals can take the form of bills, joint resolutions, concurrent resolutions and simple resolutions.
Bills are the most common form of legislative proposals and can originate in either the House of Representatives or the Senate. All bills for raising revenue should originate in the House of Representatives, however the Senate can propose or concur with amendments. In order to become law, bills must be agreed in an identical form by both bodies and receive presidential approval. Most legislative proposals of any form are introduced to the House of Representatives.
Joint resolutions are very similar to bills and can also originate in either the House of Representatives or in the Senate. However, joint resolutions that propose amendments to the constitution are not presented to the President for approval. Instead, they must be approved by two-thirds of both bodies and submitted to the states for ratification.
They are not presented to the President for approval but become law on approval by both bodies. Concurrent resolutions usually regulate administrative issues regarding the operations of both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Simple resolutions
They regulate issues related to the operation of either the House of Representatives or Senate. They are not presented to the President for approval.
Introduction and referral to committee
Bills can be introduced by any Member in the House of Representatives, and they may have an unlimited number of co-sponsors. The proposed bill is assigned its legislative number and then it is referred to the committee which has jurisdiction over the particular area of law. Then it is printed in its introduced form.
This process is initiated by a public hearing, where the committee members hear various views on the proposed legislation. A transcript of the testimonies is taken during the hearings, and it is made available for inspection in the committee office.
After the hearing, the bill is considered in detailed in a session which is known as the "mark-up" session. At this stage, the members of the committee can propose amendments and vote for or against them.
Finally the committee determines by vote what further action should be taken on the proposed legislative measure. It can be reported (with or without amendments) or tabled, which means that no further action will occur. In the case of extensive amendments the committee usually reports a new bill, which incorporates the all the approved changes ("clean bill"). The Committee Report is the document that explains the purpose and the scope of the bill, and the reasons for its approval.
House Floor consideration
Most legislative measures proceed to this stage after they have been reported by a committee. Sometimes it is possible that they can be brought to the Floor directly. The procedure in the full House is regulated by "rules". Rules are simple resolutions that determine the debate time and whether amendments will be offered.
After the debate, the House votes for or against the bill, or decides to "recommit" it to a committee for consideration.
Senate stage
After the bill has been approved by the House, it must be submitted to the Senate for consideration. The bill cannot be presented to the President for approval unless both bodies have agreed on the same final draft. If the Senate makes changes to the draft, it must return to the House for further consideration and amendments. This procedure can be extremely lengthy. For this reason, usually the two bodies appoint a conference committee with both House and Senate members. The conference committee is responsible for negotiating and resolving the differences. Finally, when both bodies reach an agreement, the final version of the bill returns to the House and the Senate for vote on final passage.
Presidential action
The bill that has been voted by both the House and the Senate is presented to the President for approval. If the President signs the bill, it becomes law. The President has the right to refuse to sign. In this case, the President must return a bill with objections to Congress within 10 days (excluding Sundays) after the bill was presented for approval. If the President fails to return the bill, it becomes law as if it had been signed.
The Congress has the right to prevent a bill's return by adjournment. In this case the bill cannot become law, even if the President has not sent objections to the Congress. This procedure is known as "pocket veto". The extent of pocket veto authority is disputable and it has not yet been determined by US courts.
See: Further information on US legislative procedure (on infoUSA website)
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