Half moons is a prompt that I either totally smash it, or completely miss the mark. Last year and 2014 were both years where I hit it out of the park, 2015 was pretty damn awful. This year I'm not so sure. I was inspired by a design I saw through google images, but it wasn't watermarked so I don' know who to credit. The one I saw was also matte, and maybe that is why it looks so much better than mine? I dunno. I don't hate this, but I'm not loving it either. Maybe it's because it's spring time here and I want to wear bright colours and pastels, not dark vampy colours like this mani.
What I do love is the sparkly bling feature nail. I used some new crystals I got from MilvArt, there are regular silver ones and aurora borealis ones which are multicoloured pastel shades.
The other thing I love about this mani is the half moon shade, which is a new colour from Picture Polish called Macaron. It's impossible for me to capture it accurately in my indoor photos, so I have some swatch photos below.
My half moon nails from 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016!
Macaron is a smooth jelly shade with tonnes of scattered holo particles. It leans to coral side of the red spectrum and is a fabulous addition to my collection.


Democratic Freshmen and the new Democratic majority in the House are working hard in the first 100 days of the 116th Congress to deliver on their promise to clean up Washington and crack down on the culture of special interest-driven corruption that flourished under the GOP.
H.R. 1 – the For The People Act – carries through on Democrats' commitment to fix Washington's broken system by cracking down on corruption, curbing the influence of big money from special interests, and making it easier for Americans to have their voices heard at the voting booth.
Rep. Jason Crow is keeping a campaign promise to end the influence of special interests in politics. Crow represents Colorado's 6th Congressional District.
He's among the sponsors of a sweeping reform bill called the "We The People Act." It creates automatic voter registration and ends gerrymandering.
The bill also eliminates dark money in politics by requiring super PACs to disclose their donors. Crow was one of the first candidates in the 2018 election to refuse corporate PAC money.
"People, overwhelming, across the country are standing up saying 'We don't feel the government works for us.' Trust with their elected officials is at an all-time low right now, and it's at an all-time low for good reason because of the money in system. I'm going to push hard, we're going to take a stand, we're on right side of history here," Crow said.
Congresswoman Katie Hill, D-Agua Dulce, has voiced her support for House Resolution 1 (H.R. 1), a bill aimed at reforming campaign finance law, cracking down on lobbying and expanding voting rights, according to officials.
… H.R. 1 would also require super PACs and nonprofit organizations that spend money in elections to release the names of donors who contributed over $10,000, under the DISCLOSE (short for "Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections") Act of the bill.
Today, Iowa's Democratic Congressional delegation, spearheaded by U.S. Representative Abby Finkenauer (IA-01), successfully amended the For The People Act (H.R. 1) to include a provision to preserve Iowa's current system of nonpartisan redistricting.
The For The People Act, which is expected to pass the House tomorrow, included language requiring states to establish independent commissions to draw Congressional districts to prevent gerrymandering. The U.S. House of Representatives today unanimously voted to approve the amendment to exempt Iowa from this requirement and allow the state to continue to use its current system. If Iowa were to change its nonpartisan system, it would be subject to H.R. 1's redistricting reforms.
Iowa Congresswoman Cindy Axne is among those praising the passage of House Resolution 1 by the U.S. House Friday.
By a 234-to-193 vote, the Democrat-controlled House passed the For the People Act, a historic reform package that focuses on voting rights, campaign finance, and government ethics. Axne tells KMA News she feels the legislation will "help end the culture of corruption" in Washington.
In late November, I joined a group of future House colleagues to outline the For The People Act, or H.R. 1, a bill that sets a clear tone for the new Congress. The legislation is the first priority of our history-making freshman class, a group that was elected by focusing on changing the way Washington works.
My first two months in Congress have proved to me that our system is not working the way it was intended. We've been through the longest shutdown in American history, witnessed an unconstitutional national emergency declaration that defies the will of Congress and the American people, and seen regular partisan political fights.
…The For The People Act recognizes that we can't realize action on urgent priorities if we don't shore up our democracy. Right now, the outsized influence of big money, corporations, and special interests takes power away from everyday Americans. In addition, members of Congress too often act in their own self-interests and seek to use their position as a stepping stone to lucrative careers after politics. To top it off, voting rights are being eroded and too many Americans are encountering barriers to participate in the democratic process.
H.R. 1 is designed to take common sense steps to address these challenges. If we cast aside the influence of big money, ensure that members of Congress are working for you and not themselves, and protect the right to participate in elections, our democracy will be better for it and our system will serve you better.
New Congressman Andy Kim co-sponsored his first bill Tuesday when he signed on as an early supporter of H.R. 1, his party's sweeping reform package that seeks several changes to election, ethics and campaign finance laws.
…Among its provisions, the bill would make it easier for citizens to register and vote, tighten election security, mandate disclosure of large contributors by nonprofits who participate in political activities and require presidents to disclose their tax returns.
A significant chunk of the election reform bill passed Friday by the U.S. House of Representatives sprang from the desk of a freshman Virginia lawmaker, Rep. Abigail Spanberger.
HR 1—the Democratic majority's For the People Act—aims to tighten election security, guarantee fair elections, curb big money's role in politics, and enhance ethics standards in government.
The first of its provisions originated with a bill and an amendment that Spanberger, D–7th, introduced Feb. 28 to bolster the integrity of U.S. elections and mitigate foreign threats to the nation's election infrastructure. Her bill is the Strengthening Elections through Intelligence Act. House leaders incorporated the Henrico County Democrat's amendment into HR 1.


Looking for a school Argumentative Dissertation?at this moment, this morning, thursday, or simply the following? Ever since Just before, our favorite Argumentative Paper pros now have worked trainees globally through providing quite possibly the most total, lowest-priced Argumentative Report specialist internet. If you may continued to wait a long time for prepare tips on your own personal Argumentative Composition, or have additional Argumentative Article investigation as opposed to you might take care of, our Argumentative Article qualified personnel can certainly help to instantaneously! As time goes by, this office staff of well over 180 commercial, agreed upon Argumentative Article detectives have generated an endless number of undergraduate-, master-, and furthermore doctoral-level Argumentative Articles on the subject of all of information. More 30,400 of our own top-quality Argumentative Articles are for sale basic research all the things $26.Ninety nine every individual. Same-day delivery service by using mail may be Freely available. You may be able to utilise this useful lavish Argumentative Dissertation Google to view around 20,1,000 much more Argumentative Essays within all of the things. Or alternatively, do you really opt for that our Argumentative Article authorities come up with an unusual, one-of-a-kind Argumentative Dissertation JUST for you really?
On thursday he consumed through strawberries.
Our ability extends to most of Argumentative Article content, inexperienced writers, poets, fiction, will play, audio books, memories, or verses. Each of our hired staff members more than 100 Argumentative Article industry professionals provides early higher education mentors (doctoral-level) and then existing magazine/newspaper columnists (master- also undergraduate-level). We produce Argumentative Papers needed for look for?Each day, 7 days a week?at instructive stories at each quantity educational background. Our Argumentative Dissertation studies might be highly-educated analysts using remarkable analysis or writing skills with great example of fixing Argumentative Dissertation review parts. Equipped by working with adequate studies gear not to mention article sources, we will compose Argumentative Articles which happens to be perfect along with up-to-date. In addition to normal collections, our very own skilled professional Argumentative Report studies have usage of member-only studies your local library using the net that includes immeasurable stories, publications, magazines, magazines and newspapers, in addition to substantial specifics on every possible Argumentative Paper issue together with physical location. And, please remember, capable to background work Just about any Argumentative Essay theme, from the mileage, for virtually every labor and birth court?likely! FINAL Remark: Unlike all the other "Argumentative Dissertation services" that will attempt to bring the holder's dough and also perform, we are look into holding the Come back market through sure a experience with we are engaging, and then the Argumentative Essay or dissertation information that you get can be among the biggest general. You simply cannot depend on any internet page in order to supply also a tiny one's good quality, customer care, Argumentative Paper understanding, have confidence in, discover, or rock-solid claims.
A great night possess! sign in or subscribe and article using a hubpages account.


It is sad to be reminded that some parents struggle to secure proper financial support for their children, from their ex-partner.
Latest Divorce Statistics - is it time for reform?
The ONS have published their latest statistics into divorce rates in the UK, which have increased by 5.8% from 2015.
Series two of Doctor Foster has had viewers gripped as the feud between Gemma and Simon escalated.
This week is National Work Life Week, which provides an opportunity for both employers and employees to address the work-life balance.
Collaborative law is a way of resolve disputes between separating couples, away from the court room setting.
Lady Hale has today made history in becoming the first ever female President of the Supreme Court.


Publication: Cape Girardeau, Missouri, Ramfire Press, 1963.
"Margaret Ann Noblett, whom we believe to have been the oldest daughter of the family, was born November 19, 1816, and died August 22, 1881. She married John Bowman, who was born April 1812, and died January 4, 1897. The date and place of their marriage are not known, but they were probably married before they came to this county. Both spent the remainder of their lives and died in this county east of Lanes Prairie."
Note: 2 males under 5, 2 males 30 - 39, and 2 females 20 - 29.
Note: I have still not located Thomas in the 1840 US Census.
I have still not located Thomas in the 1840 US Census.
There was a Thomas Noblet in Franklin County, TN in 1840. He is listed as between 20 and 30 years old with a female between 20 and 30 years old and two female children under 5. This doesn't match our Thomas' details.
2 males under 5, 2 males 30 - 39, and 2 females 20 - 29.
It is speculated that Thomas went to CA during the gold rush with his brothers Berry and Frank, and did not return.
This page has been viewed 117 times.


In the Flower Adornment Sutra every Dharma door is explained in ten ways. Each of the ten ways further divides into ten aspects—making a hundred parts. Each of the hundred parts again divides into ten, making a thousand kinds. Dividing each of those kinds into ten gives ten thousand. In other words, the meanings and principles in the Flower Adornment Sutra are multi-layered and inexhaustible, inexhaustible and multi-layered. These principles can be spoken to the ends of future kalpas and still not be finished, so the title of this chapter reads The Ten Inexhaustible Treasuries. "Treasuries" refers to the unending Dharmas contained herein. This is Chapter 22 of the Flower Adornment Sutra.
At that time, Forest of Merit and Virtue Bodhisattva further told all the Bodhisattvas, "Disciples of the Buddha, Bodhisattva Mahasattvas have ten kinds of treasuries which all the Buddhas of the past have spoken about, all the Buddhas of the future will speak about, and all the Buddhas of the present are speaking about.
At the time of speaking the Ten Inexhaustible Treasuries Chapter--At that time, Forest of Merit and Virtue Bodhisattva further told all the Bodhisattvas; "Disciples of the Buddha, Bodhisattva Mahasattvas have ten kinds of treasuries. A great Bodhisattva among Bodhisattvas has ten kinds of Dharma treasuries which he should cultivate. They are those which all the Buddhas of the past have spoken about, all the Buddhas of the future will speak about, and all the Buddhas of the present are speaking about. All the Buddhas of the past have already expounded them; all the Buddhas of the future will expound them; and all the Buddhas of the present are expounding them right now. Right now they are speaking about the Ten Treasuries Dharma door and teaching and transforming living beings.
"What are the ten? They are the Treasury of Belief, the Treasury of Precepts, the Treasury of Shame, the Treasury of Remorse, the Treasury of Learning, the Treasury of Giving, the Treasury of Wisdom, the Treasury of Mindfulness, the Treasury of Upholding, and the Treasury of Eloquence. Those are the ten.
What are the ten Dharma Treasuries? They are as follows: the Treasury of Belief, the Treasury of Precepts, the Treasury of Shame, the Treasury of Remorse, the Treasury of Learning, the Treasury of Giving, the Treasury of Wisdom, the Treasury of Mindfulness, the Treasury of Upholding, and the Treasury of Eloquence. At present, I'll just name the ten Dharma Treasuries and then afterwards I'll speak about them in detail. Those are the ten Dharma Treasury Dharma doors . From out of these ten Dharma Treasuries come all the Buddhas of the past, future, and present. These Ten Dharma Treasuries are their mother.
"Disciples of the Buddha, what is the Bodhisattva Mahasattvas' Treasury of Belief?
"Each of you Disciples of the Buddha ought to pay attention because now I am going to explain them for you in detail." Forest of Merit and Virtue Bodhisattva, concerned that the Bodhisattvas wouldn't pay attention, compassionately calls out again to all the disciples of the Buddha. He says, "Disciples of the Buddha." He isn't afraid of the trouble of repeating himself. He is concerned that there are Bodhisattvas there who have entered samadhi, or have fallen asleep, or who are almost asleep, but not quite, so they aren't able to hear the Dharma he is speaking, so he again says, "Disciples of the Buddha, you ought to strike up your spirits and not be so lazy! I'm going to talk about this Dharma door of the Ten Inexhaustible Treasuries." What is the Bodhisattva Mahasattvas' Treasury of Belief? I'm going to tell you now.
"These Bodhisattvas believe that all Dharmas are empty. They believe that all Dharmas are without an appearance. They believe that all Dharmas are wishless. They believe that all Dharmas are without creation. They believe that all Dharmas are without distinctions. They believe that all Dharmas are without reliance. They believe that all Dharmas are not able to be measured. They believe that all Dharmas are Unsurpassed. They believe that all Dharmas are difficult to transcend. They believe that all Dharmas are without production.
"These great Bodhisattvas among Bodhisattvas believe that all Dharmas are empty. All dharmas are void; they are still and extinct. As it is said, "Sweep away all dharmas and separate from all marks." They believe that all dharmas are without a mark. They truly believe that all dharmas are empty, and since dharmas are empty, they have no mark and they are still and extinct. The still extinction of all dharmas can't be spoken about. Penetrating the basic substance of dharmas, the way of words and speech is cut off and the place where the mind moves is extinguished. They believe that all Dharmas are without an appearance. They believe that all Dharmas are wishless, without motives.
When you cultivate the Dharma, don't be greedy. Don't say, "I want to obtain such and such a benefit. I want to be such and such a way." That's false thinking. The Dharma is empty, markless, and wishless. There is no mark and there is no wish. They believe that all Dharmas are without creation. There is no maker and there is nothing made. They believe that all Dharmas are without distinctions. They are unable to say, "My dharma is high and yours is low. My dharma is good, and your dharma is bad." They don't harbor any discrimination. They believe that all Dharmas are without reliance. All dharmas have nothing that they rely on to be created.
They believe that all Dharmas are not able to be measured. They are incalculable. All dharmas are empty, markless, wishless, are without creation, without distinctions, and they don't rely on anything. You also cannot measure them. You can't even count them, there are so many. One way of explaining that they are uncountable is to say there are so many of them. Another way of explaining it is to say there isn't even one. There isn't anything at all. If there is nothing then how can you count something? If you have one, two, three, four, or maybe one foot, two feet, three feet, five feet, you could measure them and calculate them. But if basically there isn't anything, then what can you count? To do so would be adding a head on top of your head.
They believe that all Dharmas are Unsurpassed. You should believe that although all dharmas are immeasurable and empty, still there is nothing superior to these dharmas. All dharmas are extremely supreme, profound, and mysterious. They believe that all Dharmas are difficult to transcend. You can't go beyond all dharmas. They believe that all Dharmas are without production. Ultimately, dharmas are not produced.
"If Bodhisattvas can accord with all dharmas in this way, then after they give rise to pure belief, when they hear that all Buddhadharmas are inconceivable, their minds are not afraid. When they hear that all Buddhas are inconceivable, their minds are not afraid. When they hear that the realm of living beings is inconceivable, their minds are not afraid. When they hear that the Dharma Realm is inconceivable, their minds are not afraid. When they hear that the realm of empty space is inconceivable, their minds are not afraid. When they hear that the realm of nirvana is inconceivable, their minds are not afraid.
"If Bodhisattvas can accord with all dharmas in this way, if Bodhisattvas contemplate that all dharmas are void, without marks or wishes; that all dharmas are not created; that all dharmas are without distinctions; that all dharmas are without reliance; that all dharmas are immeasurable; that all dharmas are unsurpassed; that all dharmas can't be transcended; and that all dharmas are not produced, then after they give rise to pure belief, they will be without any attachments to marks. When they hear that all Buddhadharmas are inconceivable, their minds are not afraid. They hear that all dharmas cannot be considered by the mind and cannot be spoken of by words. Some people who hear this might become very frightened and say, "Oh, you can't think about it and you can't speak about it, what kind of dharma is this?! Oh, I'm not going to study this!" Their minds will become afraid. They'll retreat. They won't study the Buddhadharma. They won't dare even listen to it.
When they hear that all Buddhas are inconceivable, their minds are not afraid. When Bodhisattvas hear that all Buddhas are unthinkable and unspeakable, that they are ineffably wonderful, their minds will be undaunted. The Bodhisattvas have samadhi power. Although they know that all Buddhas and all dharmas are inconceivable and ineffable, their minds remain in a state of unmoving suchness, comprehending and always lucid.
When they hear that the realm of living beings is inconceivable, their minds are not afraid. When they hear that all the realms of living beings are also inconceivable and ineffable, their minds won't retreat. They are not intimidated.
When they hear that the Dharma Realm is inconceivable, their minds are not afraid. When they hear that the realm of empty space is inconceivable, their minds are not afraid. When they hear that the realm of nirvana is inconceivable, their minds are not afraid. When people hear that all afflictions can disappear, and all habits can be cut off they say, " How can I do without afflictions when I take afflictions as my meal?" If you tell most ordinary people not to have any afflictions, they'd say, "That's impossible!" For instance, there is a laywoman who was always sick, and she came here to ask me what to do. She wanted to know how she could get her sickness cured. I told her that if she didn't have any afflictions and didn't get angry, her sickness would be cured.
One who doesn't light incense when everything is going all right.
But embraces the Buddha's feet when something goes wrong.
When you are sick you ask me to save you and when you don't have any sickness, you don't think about it." If you don't have any afflictions then you won't get sick.
Nirvana is just the absence of afflictions. It's tranquil, perfect, still, ultimate and devoid of afflictions. Some people hear others tell them to not have afflictions and it scares them. They say, "I can't separate from my afflictions. I thrive on my afflictions. When I get mad I don't have to eat but I get full." Then go ahead, eat temper everyday, eat afflictions!
"When they hear that the past is inconceivable, their minds are not afraid. When they hear that the future is inconceivable, their minds are not afraid. When they hear that the present is inconceivable, their minds are not afraid. When they hear that entering every kalpa is inconceivable, their minds are not afraid.
"When they hear that the past is inconceivable, that all the time periods of the past are inconceivable, their minds are not afraid. When they hear that the future is inconceivable, their minds are not afraid. When they hear that the present is inconceivable, their minds are not afraid. Their minds don't retreat. When they hear that entering every kalpa is inconceivable, their minds are not afraid. When they hear about entering all kalpas, cultivating throughout all great kalpas no matter how long they are, staying in those kalpas and taking across all living beings everywhere, they are not daunted. They enter all kalpas to teach and transform living beings. They do not become frightened or lose heart. That is inconceivable also.
"Why not? These Bodhisattvas, residing in the places of Buddhas, have thoroughly solid faith. They know that the Buddhas' wisdom is boundless and inexhaustible. In each and every one of the limitless worlds of the ten directions, there are limitless Buddhas who have already attained, are now attaining, or will attain anuttarasamyaksambodhi. They have already come into the world, are now coming into the world, or will come into the world. They have already entered Nirvana, are now entering Nirvana, or will enter Nirvana. The wisdom of these Buddhas does not increase, does not decrease; is not produced, is not destroyed; does not progress, does not retreat; is not near, is not far; is without knowing and without rejecting.
These Bodhisattvas enter into the Buddhas' wisdom and accomplish boundless, inexhaustible belief. After they attain this belief, their minds do not retreat. Their minds do not become scattered or confused. They are indestructible and undefiled. They always have a foundation. They accord with sages, and dwell in the household of the Thus Come Ones.
When Bodhisattvas hear of these inconceivable states, they are not afraid. Instead, it causes their resolve for Bodhi to increase and grow, their bravery and fearlessness to grow, and also causes them to become even more vigorous. Why is it that the Bodhisattvas do not become afraid?
"Why not? These Bodhisattvas who cultivate the Ten Inexhaustible Treasuries and who are residing in the places of Buddhas, have thoroughly solid faith. From beginningless kalpas past and up until the time of Shakyamuni Buddha's ocean-like Avatamsaka Assembly, these Bodhisattvas have maintained strong, secure, and adamantine faith in the Bodhi-Way. They know that the Buddhas' wisdom is boundless and inexhaustible. They have profound faith in the Buddhadharma; they know and understand that the Buddha's wisdom has no boundary, no limit, and that it does not come to an end. The Buddhas' wisdom is such that you could never finish describing it, even if you talked to the ends of the bounds of future time.
In each and every one of the limitless worlds of the ten directions, not only in the Saha world, but all the way up through the limitless worlds in the ten directions, there are limitless Buddhas. Each world has a Buddha who comes to be born there, and because worlds are limitless, Buddhas are also limitless. One doesn't know how many there are; their number is uncountable. You can also say that for however many living beings there are in all the worlds in the ten directions, there are that many Buddhas, because each living being is a future Buddha.
The Buddhas of the past are Buddhas who have already accomplished Buddhahood, the Buddhas of the present are Buddhas who are presently accomplishing Buddhahood, and the Buddhas of the future are all living beings who will in the future become Buddhas. These are Buddhas who have already attained, are now attaining, or will attain anuttarasamyaksambodhi, the Unsurpassed, Proper, Equal and Right Enlightenment .
They have already come into the world, are now coming into the world, or will come into the world. They have already entered Nirvana, the Buddhas of the past have already entered Nirvana. They are now entering Nirvana. The Buddhas of the present are now entering Nirvana. Or they will enter Nirvana.
Consuming a forest of merit and virtue.
Thus I now reap a bitter retribution.
The fire of my hatred was so great it burned through the Heaven of the Thirty-Three. Fire burns up the First Dhyana, water submerges the Second Dhyana, and wind tears down the Third Dhyana. If there was merit and virtue at all in my cultivation, I burned it all up. For this reason, I now endure the retribution of suffering, so I only eat once a day and cause all of you young people with wealth and good position to join me in enduring this suffering. That I should undergo it is appropriate. That you should do it is unjustified, and you have chosen to do it voluntarily.
In my case, my huge temper burned up an entire forest of merit and virtue. So you shouldn't imitate your teacher's temper. If you say, "Oh, my teacher's temper is really great and I want to study this with him." If you do this, in the future you will fall into the hells. You shouldn't study this. Even if you want to study this, I won't transmit it to you, because I already know that this is wrong. I already know that the fire of my ignorance is taller than the heavens, and so, in this wealthy country with so much abundance and blessings, I have to undergo this kind of suffering. Only eating once a day is very difficult. If you don't believe it, you can look around everywhere in the world. You won't find groups of people as large as ours cultivating this practice. Maybe there will be a few people, but not a lot.
You should all realize that not only is affliction harmful to other people, it is also harmful to oneself. Newton's second law of motion says: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Your anger creates a negative reaction. Even if you haven't actually lost your temper, if you are displeased with another person, your bad vibrations—your "telegram"—has already gone out to the other person. They receive these waves and they have a reaction to your anger before you even display it overtly. They have already gotten upset. What proof is there to this principle? Just look at people, whether they have conditions with one another or not.
No matter how good you are to some people, it doesn't seem to make a difference. You just don't have affinities with them. It's just like me—no matter how good I am to people, they still scold me. This includes my intelligent disciples. I don't have any stupid disciples. None of them are as stupid as their teacher. If you don't have affinities with people, then you are always unhappy with them. Although you don't speak of it, the response to your vibrations will be negative. In other words they will not feel affinities toward you. So as you study the Buddhadharma, you shouldn't study my anger. If you enter Nirvana, there are none of these problems. You simply cross over to quiescence. But because you haven't crossed over yet, you have all these troubles.
The wisdom of these Buddhas does not increase, does not decrease; is not produced, is not destroyed; does not increase, does not decrease; is not produced, is not destroyed; does not progress, does not retreat. The Bodhisattvas cultivate constantly and unchangingly. You may not be aware of their progress, but there is also no retreating. "The ordinary mind is the Way." When the Bodhisattvas cultivate, they embrace the three concepts of firmness, sincerity, and constancy. They have firm faith, are extremely sincere, and are constantly steady in their practice. They do not retreat.
The Buddhas' wisdom is also not near and is not far. Bodhisattvas feel they are cultivating without cultivating and certifying without certifying. They cultivate as if nothing were going on. When they cultivate the Six Perfections and the Ten Thousand Practices, they are just fulfilling their responsibility and practicing what they ought to cultivate. They don't feel they are close or far away from the Buddhadharma. They are constantly immersed in cultivating the Buddhadharma. Although they understand all dharmas and illumine all dharmas, they don't have the attachment of knowledge and do not renounce them. They are without knowing and without rejecting.
They can renounce everything, but they don't feel that they've given up anything. How can they be this way? These Bodhisattvas enter into the Buddhas' wisdom and accomplish boundless, inexhaustible belief. Their faith has no end and no limits. After they attain this belief, this kind of boundless, inexhaustible faith, this strong and stable faith, their minds do not retreat. They have reached irreversibility, constantly holding to the Middle Way. Embracing this unshakable faith, their minds do not become scattered or confused. They are indestructible. No deviant knowledge, views, or speech of outside ways can break up their faith. And they are undefiled—the minds of the Bodhisattvas have no defiling attachment . To be without defilement is to be pure.
They always have a foundation in wisdom . They accord with sages and dwell in the household of the Thus Come Ones. They reside in the Buddhas' home, constantly dwelling within the Buddhadharma, being permeated by it, and practicing it.
"They protect the seed nature of all Buddhas. They increase the faith and understanding of all Bodhisattvas. They comply with all Thus Come Ones' good roots, and they give rise to the expedients of all Buddhas.
This is called the Bodhisattva Mahasattvas' Treasury of Belief.
The home of the Buddha is the Way Place, the Bodhimanda. The Bodhimanda is just the straight mind of people. The straight mind is the home of the Thus Come One; the straight mind is Gold Mountain Monastery; the straight mind is the Bodhimanda. When Bodhisattvas dwell in the home of all Thus Come Ones, they must have some kind of work to do. What work? They protect the seed nature of all Buddhas. They keep the Buddhas' lineage from being cut off, so that everyone can become accomplished in the Buddha-Way more quickly. They increase the faith and understanding of all Bodhisattvas. Day by day the Bodhisattvas increase their faith and increase the power of their understanding. They comply with all Thus Come Ones' good roots. We must cultivate all the good roots the Buddhas cultivate. And they give rise to the expedients of all Buddhas. Since you accord with the good roots of all Buddhas, very naturally you can become a Buddha. After you become a Buddha, very naturally you can give rise to the expedient means of all Buddhas.
This is called the Bodhisattva Mahasattvas' Treasury of Belief. All we have talked about is the Treasury of Belief that the Bodhisattva Mahasattva should cultivate.
"When Bodhisattvas dwell in this Treasury of Belief, they can hear and uphold all the Buddhadharma, speak it for living beings, and enable them to become enlightened.
"When Bodhisattvas dwell in this Treasury of Belief—Bodhisattvas always cultivate the Treasury of Belief. Why is that?
The mother of merit and virtue.
It nourishes all good dharmas.
If you have faith, you can cultivate the Buddhadharma. So it says, they can hear and uphold all the Buddhadharma. It is important to have faith when you listen to the Buddhadharma. If you don't have faith, it's impossible to listen to the Sutra lecture. To have belief fulfills the requirement of faith, listening fulfills the requirement of hearing, and upholding fulfills the requirement of receiving and maintaining. You take what you hear and put it into actual practice. Once you've heard it, you must speak it for living beings, and enable them to become enlightened. You must vastly proclaim it for all living beings. It's not enough to just listen yourself. You want to cause all living beings to hear the Dharma and become enlightened.


This Visualising Pi S And Pi Mathbbrp has 2048 x 2048 pixel resolution with jpeg format. 3d Vector Field Generator, 2d Vector Grapher, Vector Field Grapher Wolfram Alpha, Geogebra Vector Field, 3d Vector Field Grapher Wolfram Alpha, Gradient Vector Field, Desmos Vector Field, Gradient Vector Field Calculator, Vector Field Grapher Wolfram Alpha, 3d Vector Field Grapher Wolfram Alpha, Desmos Vector Field was related topic with this Visualising Pi S And Pi Mathbbrp. You can download the Visualising Pi S And Pi Mathbbrp picture by right click your mouse and save from your browser.


I've been asked – having never hidden my views on Donald Trump or the issues as I see them facing the USA and the U.K. – whether or not there is any American who I admire.
There has even been suggestions – well direct accusations really – that because of my opinions I'm anti-American which says more about others than about me – but that's another story.
Having given it some thought and taking into account the current state of play politically in the USA, UK and Europe there is one American who I think history has totally underestimated in terms of his contribution to the world.
Towards the end of 1944 a meeting chaired jointly by Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt took place.
The meeting was the one to decide who would be the overall Commander in Chief of the Allied forces for D Day on 6th June 1944 and the person chosen was as we all – or at least should know – was one – General Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Whilst the winning of the military conflict was clearly the main agenda item of the meeting the two leaders also discussed what would happen after victory had been achieved.
Winning a war as history through the ages has proved is difficult enough but "winning the peace" has always been shown to be even more difficult as we are currently seeing only to clearly in the Middle East and especially Iraq.
There was really only three candidates for the role of supreme commander, Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery, General Eisenhower and the man who is the subject of this – General George C. Marshall.
Who you may well ask is George C. Marshall and you would not be alone.
And why is he an American I most admire?
Well General C. Marshall – or to give him his full name General George Catlett Marshall Jr – was the man chosen by President Roosevelt and then his successor President Harry S. Truman to oversee and organise the reconstruction of Europe after the war.
What Roosevelt and Chrchill recognised above all else was that there could not and should not be a repeat of the gross mistakes that were made in imposing the terms of the Versailles Treaty at the end of WW1 which led directly to WW2.
I won't even try to imagine the disappointment that General Marshall must have felt when he was informed by his President that Eisenhower had been given the role of Allied Commander.
However taking a step back and looking at the life he had led we can perhaps have an insight not only into his personality but also his dedication and patriotism to the USA and the cause of democratic freedom.
George Marshall entered this world on the 31st December 1880 and after graduating from the Virginia Military Institute served in the rarely remembered or talked about Philippine – American War and when the USA entered WW1 in 1916 he was one of the key planners of the USA campaigns.
After World War One George Marshall served in various capacities which centred around planning, reorganising and modernising the US Army which was seen as a massive benefit when the USA entered the Second World War.
This is of course all background to what was to come when on his appointment in 1939 as Chief of Staff he oversaw not only the largest military expansion of the USA but also was the coordinator of allied operations in Europe and the Pacific.
Now for anyone -except an exceptional person – who had achieved so much at the age of 65 it would have been enough but in the true fashion of someone who believed in not only service but also humanity General George C. Marshall agreed to continue and between 1945 and 1949 he coordinated the economic and political reconstruction of post-war Europe.
On retiring George C Marshall settled in what was a trademark quality he demonstrated throughout his life to a quiet life away from the limelight and refused to write his memoirs or to accept the many requests for him to cooperate with writing a biography.
It is even reported that George C. Marshall was somewhat embarrassed that his name was applied to the fantastic reconstruction programme known as the Marshall Plan and to the compliments paid to him.
Winston Churchill went as far as saying that General George C. Marshal was the man who was the "Organiser of Victory".
For such a great and yet modest man who believed the reward for doing his duty was in itself recognition enough I can only imagine what he felt when justifiably being awarded in 1953 the Nobel Peace Prize.
So there you have it that in my opinion General George Catlett Marshal Jnr if not the certainly is one of the Americans I most admire.
And even though he is apparently forgotten he is also one of the greatest Americans who ever lived and whose influence has directly shaped the world we live in today.


Representative of the Republic of Croatia at Le Conseil permanent de la Francophonie 2012. - 2015.
Study visit to Belgium and Netherlands: Permanent Representative USA to NATO - headquarter NATO, Brussels and Brunssum, 2009.
Study visit to Japan: Japan – diplomatic and economic history, relations EU – Japan, Tokyo, Kyoto, 2009.


text:
NGC 2734 (другие обозначения — NPM1G +17.0238, PGC 25413) — эллиптическая галактика (E) в созвездии Рака. Открыта Альбертом Мартом в 1864 году.

Этот объект входит в число перечисленных в оригинальной редакции «Нового общего каталога».

Примечания

2734
Рак (созвездие)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


The National Institutes of Health has partnered with Amazon Web Services to help agency-backed researchers incorporate cloud-based technologies into biomedical research efforts.
AWS said Tuesday it will host various NIH data sets, such as those covered by privacy and security policies, as part of the Science and Technology Research Infrastructure for Discovery, Experimentation, and Sustainability initiative.
Teresa Carlson, vice president of Amazon Web Services' worldwide public sector business and a four-time Wash100 awardee, said the company intends to provide access to data that can help STRIDES researchers to further study and identify potential treatments for multiple diseases.
The company expects to include agency data in the Public Dataset Program, which offers cloud-optimized information on genomics, health and life sciences.
AWS added it will equip NIH researchers with computing, analytics and database tools to analyze genomic sequences, link molecular measurements to heart conditions and find cures to nearly fatal conditions, among other things.


Corporate leaders seeking growth, learning, and innovation may find the answer in a surprising place: the open-source software community. Unknowingly, perhaps, the folks who brought you Linux are virtuoso practitioners of new work principles that produce energized teams and lower costs. Nor are they alone.
But Linux is software, and software is kind of weird. Toyota, however, is a company like any other—any other consistently ranked among the world's top-performing organizations, that is. The auto-maker has long been a leader in quality and lean production, and the success of the hybrid Prius has established its reputation as an innovator. We have found that Toyota's managerial methods resemble, in a number of their fundamentals, the workings of the Linux community; the Toyota Production System (TPS) owes some of its vaunted responsiveness to open-source traits. In fact, Toyota itself is evolving into a hybrid between a conventional hierarchy and a Linux-like self-organizing network.
Toyota is remarkably similar to Linux in the way it blends key characteristics of both markets and hierarchies. Like markets, the Toyota and Linux communities can be self-organizing, but unlike markets, they don't use cash or contracts at critical junctures. Like hierarchies, Toyota and Linux enjoy low transaction costs, but unlike hierarchies, their members may belong to many different organizations (or to none at all) and are not corseted by specific, predefined roles and responsibilities. And like hierarchies, members share a common purpose, but that purpose emanates from self-motivation rather than from the external incentives or sanctions that hierarchies generally impose. In these respects, Toyota and Linux represent the best of both worlds. An analysis of their common characteristics suggests how high-performance organizations remain productive and inventive even under grueling conditions. We believe those lessons can significantly improve the way work in most organizations gets done.
Near midnight, Andrea Barisani, system administrator in the physics department of the University of Trieste, discovered that an attacker had struck his institution's Gentoo Linux server. He traced the breach to a vulnerable spot in the Linux kernel and another in rsync, a file transfer mechanism that automatically replicates data among computers. This was a serious attack: Any penetration of rsync could compromise files in thousands of servers worldwide.
Barisani woke some colleagues, who put him in touch with Mike Warfield, a senior researcher at Internet Security Systems in Atlanta, and with Andrew "Tridge" Tridgell, a well-known Linux programmer in Australia on whose doctoral thesis rsync was based. They directed Barisani's message (made anonymous for security reasons) to another Australian, Martin Pool, who worked for Hewlett-Packard in Canberra and had been a leader in rsync's development. Although Pool was no longer responsible for rsync (nobody was), he immediately hit the phones and e-mail, first quizzing Warfield and Dave Dykstra (another early contributor to rsync's development, who was based in California) about vulnerabilities and then helping Barisani trace the failure line by line.
By morning Trieste time, Pool and Barisani had found the precise location of the breach. Pool contacted the current rsync development group, while Barisani connected with the loose affiliation of amateurs and professionals that package Gentoo Linux, and he posted an early warning advisory to the Gentoo site. Pool and Paul "Rusty" Russell (a fellow Canberran who works for IBM) then labored through the Australian night to write a patch, and within five hours Gentoo user-developers started testing the first version. Meanwhile, Tridge crafted a description of the vulnerability and its fix, being sure (at Pool's urging) to credit Barisani and Warfield for their behind-the-scenes efforts. On Thursday afternoon Canberra time, the announcement and the patch were posted to the rsync Web site and thus distributed to Linux users worldwide.
A few days after the emergency, having caught up on his sleep, Barisani volunteered to collaborate with Warfield in setting up a system of deliberately vulnerable servers to lure the system cracker into revealing himself.
No one authorized or directed this effort. No one—amateur or professional—was paid for participating or would have been sanctioned for not doing so. No one's job hinged on stopping the attack. No one clammed up for fear of legal liability. Indeed, the larger user community was kept informed of all developments. Yet despite the need for the highest security, a group of some 20 people, scarcely any of whom had ever met, employed by a dozen different companies, living in as many time zones and straying far from their job descriptions, accomplished in about 29 hours what might have taken colleagues in adjacent cubicles weeks or months.
It's tempting to dismiss this as an example of hacker weirdness—admirable, yes, but nothing to do with real business. Consider, however, another story.
At 4:18 am, a fire broke out in the Kariya Number 1 plant of Aisin Seiki, a major Japanese automotive parts supplier. Within minutes, the building and virtually all the specialized machinery inside were destroyed. Kariya Number 1 produces 99% of the brake fluid–proportioning valves, or P-valves, for Toyota's Japanese operations—parts required by every vehicle Toyota builds. And Toyota, true to its just-in-time principles, had less than a day's inventory. The Japanese Toyota Production System faced the possibility of a total shutdown lasting months.
Within hours, Aisin engineers met with their counterparts at Toyota and Toyota's other tier one suppliers. The group agreed to improvise as much production as possible. As news spread through the supplier network, some tier twos volunteered to play leadership roles. Aisin sent blueprints for the valves to any supplier that requested them and distributed whatever undamaged tools, raw materials, and work in process could be salvaged. Aisin and Toyota engineers helped jury-rig production lines in 62 locations—unused machine shops, Toyota's own prototyping shop, even a sewing machine facility owned by Brother. Denso, Toyota's largest supplier, volunteered to manage the messy logistics of shipping valves to Aisin for inspection and then on to Toyota's stalled assembly lines.
Everyone was surprised when a small tier two supplier of welding electrodes, Kyoritsu Sangyo, was first to deliver production-quality valves to Toyota—1,000 of them, just 85 hours after the fire. Others followed rapidly, and Toyota started reopening assembly lines on Wednesday. Roughly two weeks after the halt, the entire supply chain was back to full production. Six months later, Aisin distributed an emergency response guide containing lessons drawn from the experience and recommending procedures for responding to such situations in the future.
No one individual or organization planned this effort: rather, people and companies stepped in where they could. Competitors collaborated. No one at the time was paid for contributing. Months later, Aisin compensated the other companies for the direct costs of the valves they had delivered. Toyota gave each tier one supplier an honorarium based on current sales to the automaker, encouraging—but not requiring—them to do likewise for their own tier twos.
Few communities appear more different than the anarchistic, caffeinated, hirsute world of hackers and the disciplined, tea-sipping, clean-cut world of Japanese auto engineering. But the parallels between these stories are striking. In both of them, individuals found one another and stepped into roles without a plan or an established command-and-control structure. An extended human network organized itself in hours and "swarmed" against a threat. People, teams, and companies worked together without legal contracts or negotiated payment. And despite the lack of any authoritarian stick or financial carrot, those people worked like hell to solve the problem.
Few communities appear more different than the anarchistic, caffeinated, hirsute world of hackers and the disciplined, tea-sipping, clean-cut world of Japanese auto engineering.
Now, obviously, these were emergency responses. But a look at the day-to-day operations of the Linux community and the Toyota Production System reveals that those responses were merely intensifications of the way people were already working.
The rules of markets are about cash and contracts. The rules of hierarchies are about authority and accountability. But at the core of the Linux and Toyota communities are rules about three entirely different things: how individuals and small groups work together; how, and how widely, they communicate; and how leaders guide them toward a common goal.
The Linux and Toyota communities are both composed of engineers, so members have the same skills as their colleagues and speak the same language. But these groups are far more disciplined and rigorous in their approach to work than are other engineering communities. Both emphasize granularity: They pay attention to small details, eliminate problems at the source, and trim anything resembling excess, whether it be work, code, or material. Linux members, for example, share an obsession with writing minimal code, compiling each day's output before proceeding to the next and extirpating programming flaws as they go along. For their part, TPS engineers are relentless in applying short cycles of trial and error, focusing on just one thing at a time, and getting inside and observing actual processes. Both groups carry those principles to apparent extremes. Linux programmers whittle away at code in pursuit not of computational efficiency but of elegance. Toyota engineers reject stampings for the Lexus hood—while flawless and entirely within spec—because the sheen, to their eyes, lacks luster.
In both the Linux and Toyota communities, information about problems and solutions is shared widely, frequently, and in small increments. Most Linux hacker communication is not between individuals but by postings to open, searchable Listservs. Anyone can review the version history of the code and the Listserv debates—not executive summaries or abstracts but the raw activity itself. And every code contribution is stress tested by scores of people. As a famous open-source mixed metaphor puts it: "With a thousand eyes, all bugs are shallow." The median upload to the Linux kernel is a mere dozen lines of code. The working alpha version is recompiled every 24 hours, so hackers reconcile their efforts almost continuously. If someone worked in isolation for six months on even the most brilliant contribution, it would probably be rejected for lack of compatibility with the others' efforts.
The Toyota philosophy of continuous improvement likewise comprises a thousand small collaborations. Toyota engineers are famously drilled to "ask why five times" to follow a chain of causes and effects back to a problem's root. This is not a vapid cliché about thinking deeply. Quite the contrary, in fact. The precept's merit is precisely in its superficiality. Saying that B causes A is simplistic—all the complexities of multiple interactions boiled down to a single cause and effect. But the chain of thought required to discover that C causes B, and D causes C, quickly takes you into a new domain, probably someone else's. So rather than concoct complex solutions within their own domains, engineers must seek simple ones beyond them. "Doing your why-whys," as the practice is known, is not about depth at all—it's about breadth.
And as with Linux, Toyota's communication protocols enforce this discipline. Each meeting addresses just one topic and drives toward a specific outcome, even if that means the same people meet more than once in a day. Lessons are written in a standard format on a single sheet of A3 paper. And everyone learns how to craft these reports, down to the fold in the document that shows the main points and conceals the details.
At every level, Linux and TPS leaders play three critical roles. They instruct community members—often by example—in the disciplines we've just described. They articulate clear and simple goals for each project based on their strategic vision. And they connect people, by merit of being very well connected themselves. The top Linux programmers process upwards of 300 or 400 e-mails daily. Fujio Cho, the president of Toyota, manages by similarly numerous daily interactions that transcend the normal chain of command.
In the Linux and Toyota communities, leading is not treated as a discipline distinct from doing. Rather, the authority of leaders derives from their proficiency as practitioners.
Occasionally, leaders do have to perform traditional leadership acts, such as arbitrating conflicts. That, however, is the exception and is viewed as a bit of a system failure. The default assumption is that, as far as possible, managers don't manage in a traditional sense: The human network manages itself. In Linux, development priorities are decided not by a CEO but by thousands of hackers voting with their feet by choosing what to work on. That kind of radical self-management does not happen at Toyota, except in emergencies. But even in daily operations, a single production worker who sees a quality problem can stop the line, and project teams have wide latitude to tap resources, make purchase decisions, and pursue priorities they set for themselves.
Keep it simple and open: "small pieces loosely joined," in Cluetrain Manifesto coauthor David Weinberger's felicitous phrase. Tools should work together through common standards and be as compatible as possible with those of the rest of the world. Think options not integration, adaptability not static efficiency.
Unless there is a really good reason not to, let everybody see everybody's real work. Let people learn to filter and sort for themselves. Don't abstract, summarize, or channel. Fodder is good. Put it within everyone's reach.
When people trust one another, they are more likely to collaborate freely and productively. When people trust their organizations, they are more likely to give of themselves now in anticipation of future reward. And when organizations trust each other, they are more likely to share intellectual property without choking on legalisms.
Reengineering was about thinking linearly: managing the end-to-end process instead of discrete functions. That approach fosters focused efficiency but inhibits variety and adaptability. Modularity is the reverse: sacrificing static efficiency for the recombinant value of options. Think modular teams as well as processes. The finer, the better.
Celebrate the sacrifices that teams make for the broader enterprise, including customers and suppliers. Dismantle individualized performance metrics and rewards that pit people against one another. Cheap transactions among the many fuel more innovation than expensive incentives aimed at the few. Reward the group, and the group will reward you.
Taken together, these three principles seed a continuously adapting system. Over and over, ideas are formulated in tight, testable packets; they are communicated with minimal attenuation through established, direct, person-to-person connections; and where links are absent, widely connected leader-practitioners create them as needed. This is discipline, but not the discipline of conformity produced by controls and incentives. Rather, it resembles the discipline of science. Like scientific communities, these systems rely on common procedures, common rules for communication and testing, and common goals clearly understood. Individual behavior is rigorously cautious, but collective achievement is marked by continuous, radical innovation.
At the heart of Linux and the Toyota Production System, then, is a set of work, communication, and leadership practices that contributes to a new form of collaboration. This collaboration also relies on two infrastructure components: a shared pool of knowledge and universally available tools for moving knowledge around.
The General Public License under which Linux is published requires that all distributors make their source code freely available so that others can freely emend it. This viral principle prevents code from being stowed away in proprietary products. That transparency, in turn, breaks down the distinction between producer and user. A sophisticated "customer" like Andrea Barisani is really a user-developer, who fixes flaws and adds features for his own benefit, then shares those improvements with everyone else. Such a role is impossible when proprietary code is licensed from a commercial vendor. Similarly, Toyota's supply chain is predicated on the principle that while product knowledge (such as a blueprint) is someone's intellectual property, process knowledge is shared. That breaks down some distinctions among companies. Toyota's suppliers regularly share extensive process improvement lessons both vertically and laterally, even with their competitors. In Japan, suppliers are generally exclusive to a single OEM, so the collective benefit of that shared information stays within the Toyota supply chain. But even in the United States, where Toyota is just one of several customers for most of its tier ones, the carmaker does the same thing through its Bluegrass Automotive Manufacturers Association, which disseminates best practices to all members.
Although information is the lifeblood of the Linux and TPS communities, their circulation systems are surprisingly rudimentary. Linux developers produce state-of-the-art software using communication technology no more sophisticated than e-mail and Listservs—but those mundane tools are used by everyone. Indeed, so great is the value placed on universality that plain-text, rather than formatted, e-mails are the norm, ensuring that messages will appear exactly the same to all recipients. Toyota, whose products are state-of-the-art as well, also prefers simple and pervasive internal technology. An empty kanban bin signals the need for parts replenishment; a length of duct tape on the assembly-line floor allots the completion times of tasks on a moving vehicle. Quality control problems on the assembly line are announced via pagers and TV monitors. And everyone gets the alert. Even Ray Tanguay, head of Toyota Canada, is paged whenever a flaw is found in the latest Lexus consignment on the dock in Long Beach, California, or in a service bay anywhere in North America.
A rigorous work discipline, common intellectual property, and constant sharing combine to distribute knowledge widely and relatively evenly across human networks. That knowledge includes not just the formal, syntactic information found in databases but also the semantically rich, ambiguous knowledge about content and process that is the currency of creative collaboration. What do we mean by the sheen of a body stamping having insufficient luster? What, precisely, must we discuss with the steel company to correct such an ill-defined problem? This kind of no-easy-answer question is continually discussed and resolved in a thousand small-team collaborations. The resulting nuanced thinking and richer common vocabulary on such matters are fed back into the knowledge pool, where they are available for further refinement by the whole community.
Modularity is a design principle by which a complex process or product is divided into simple parts connected by standard rules. In modular arrangements of teams, each team focuses on small, simple tasks that together make up a larger whole. Modularity allows an organization to run multiple, parallel experiments, making many small bets instead of a few large ones. The Toyota suppliers organized themselves this way to make P-valves, operating partly by direction but chiefly by volunteering to do what each knew best. The Gentoo group, Tridge's security experts, and Pool's circle of rsync alumni were preexisting and overlapping modules that mixed and matched roles as the emergency required.
When we mapped the patterns of day-to-day collaboration across the entire Linux kernel development effort, we found that such modular arrangements are pervasive and, to a degree, nest within one another. This creates a kind of dynamic organization chart—a chart that nobody wrote but one that enables the community to expand and adapt without collapsing into chaos.
Monetary carrots and accountability sticks motivate people to perform narrow, specified tasks. Admiration and applause are far more effective stimulants of above-and-beyond behavior.
Psychologists also emphasize the motivational importance of autonomy. Linux programmers decide for themselves how and where to contribute, and they enjoy the satisfaction of producing something whose quality is defined not by a marketing department nor by accountants but by their own exacting standards. Coauthor Bob Wolf and MIT's Karim Lakhani surveyed more than 800 user-developers, and over half said that their open-source work is the most valuable and creative endeavor in their professional lives.
The Toyota Production System doesn't offer such extreme autonomy, of course, and employees don't work for free. But compared with their counterparts in the rest of the auto industry, TPS workers enjoy fewer controls, greater encouragement of individual initiative, fewer metrics attached to individual performance, and louder peer applause. Professional and corporate pride, not Toyota's honorarium, was the payoff for the team at Kyoritsu Sangyo when it delivered the first batch of P-valves. That same pride is felt by a junior assembly-line worker when he is trusted by his peers to experiment with process improvements and to stop the line if something goes wrong.
When information flows freely, reputation, more than reciprocity, becomes the basis for trust. Operating under constant scrutiny—which is challenging but not hostile—workers know their reputations are at risk, and that serves as a guarantor of good behavior, the equivalent of contracts in a market or audits in a hierarchy. Hence the obsession in the Linux community with acknowledging code contributions and including personal e-mail addresses in the comment fields of Listservs. Hence the generous public credit bestowed on Barisani and Warfield. Hence the collective celebration of Kyoritsu Sangyo's heroic efforts.
With their reputations at stake, people are less likely to act opportunistically. With the same information available to everyone, there is less chance that one party will exploit another's ignorance. And with a common vocabulary and way of working, fewer misunderstandings occur. Those factors drive up trust, the fundamental social capital of these communities.
Trust would matter less if there were no cost to exiting these networks or if transactions were of radically different sizes (since that would tempt people or companies to break the rules when a big opportunity arose). But in both the Linux and Toyota communities, entry to the inner circle is a hard-earned privilege, and both operate on many small exchanges.
And, of course, where trust is the currency, reputation is a source of power. In a sparse network, such as most markets and hierarchies, power derives from controlling or brokering the flow of information and often, therefore, from restricting it. In a dense network, however, information simply flows around the would-be choke point. Under those circumstances, there is more power in being an information source than an information sink. Consequently, individuals are motivated to maximize both the visibility of their work and their connections to those who are themselves broadly connected. That, in turn, feeds the information density of the network.
So far we have been discussing the content of work. But the TPS and Linux models change the economics of work as well, by driving down transaction costs. Low transaction costs make it profitable for organizations to perform more and smaller transactions—both internal and external—and so increase the pace and flexibility typical of high-performance organizations.
he Pareto Principle famously dictates that companies derive 80% of their value from just 20% of their products, customers, or ideas. Because of high transaction costs, the long tail of that curve—that 80% of uncertain value generators—cannot be explored. So in the name of company focus, the tail gets lopped off, segmented away, or reengineered out of existence. Potentially profitable innovations die with it.
Organizations that reduce transaction costs can embrace the rejected 80%. They can respond to weak market signals, tap small segments, and experiment with unlikely combinations of technologies. They can place a hundred small bets instead of a few big ones.
For example, Detroit considered hybrid vehicles to be an uninteresting intermediate product: U.S. auto executives preferred so-far-unfulfilled research on fuel cell technology. Meanwhile, Toyota was building the Prius. The hybrid is now in its second generation, and Toyota expects to sell 300,000 worldwide this year. Toyota's low transaction costs and penchant for small-scale collaborations helped it keep open 80 discrete options for the hybrid engine until just six months before delivering a final design. Conventional automakers would have needed to freeze those design variables at least two years earlier.
It is in the interstices of the human network—rather than in the minds of a few wunderkinder—that most real innovations are born. And so it is transaction costs that constrain innovation by constraining opportunities to share different and conflicting ideas, skills, and prejudices.
"Detroit people are far more talented than people at Toyota," remarks Toyota president Fujio Cho, with excessive modesty. "But we take averagely talented people and make them work as spectacular teams." The network, in other words, is the innovator.
The classical sources of transaction costs are mutual vulnerability in the face of uncertainty, conflicting interests, and unequal access to information. We spend cash on negotiation, supervision, and restitution to reduce those imperfections. Both markets and hierarchies incur transaction costs (though hierarchies exist to economize on them, as Ronald Coase and Oliver Williamson have argued). Using a methodology developed by J.J. Wallis and Douglass North, we estimate that in the year 2000, cash transaction costs alone accounted for over half the nongovernmental U.S. GDP! We spend more money negotiating and enforcing transactions than we do fulfilling them.
In the Linux and Toyota communities, agreements are enforced not by the sanction of a legal contract, nor by the authority of a boss, but by mutual trust—lowering transaction costs dramatically. This is not new: Teams of people everywhere in the conventional workplace operate on the basis of trust.
What is new is how widely trust can extend, even to people who don't know each other—or even among those who have competing interests. Aisin trusted its rival suppliers with the P-valve blueprints. The rsync hackers swapped sensitive information with people they had never met. Toyota's component suppliers share process knowledge daily, trusting that Toyota will not use it to beat down prices. Linux hackers trust one another to make uncoordinated and simultaneous emendations in the code base.
Moreover, holding property in common—as certain kinds of intellectual property are held within these communities—lowers the monetary stakes among the joint owners. Transaction costs fall because there is simply less to negotiate over. In the Linux community, transaction costs approach zero. Hewlett-Packard paid Martin Pool to be a Linux engineer, but it does not follow that HP needed to be paid on the margin for Pool's nocturnal labors on rsync. In the Toyota community, transaction costs, while not zero, have been radically reduced. When the Aisin Seiki plant was destroyed, Toyota and its suppliers didn't sue one another or cobble together emergency supply contracts. They simply got on with the job, trusting that fair restitution would eventually be made. Jeffrey Dyer, a professor of strategy at Brigham Young University, estimates that transaction costs between Toyota and its tier one suppliers are just one-eighth those at General Motors, a disparity he attributes to different levels of trust.
Bring together all these elements and you have a virtuous circle. A dense, self-organizing network creates the conditions for large-scale trust. Large-scale trust drives down transaction costs. Low transaction costs, in turn, enable lots of small transactions, which create a cumulatively deepening, self-organized network.
Once the system achieves critical mass, it feeds on itself. The larger the system, the more broadly shared the knowledge, language, and work style. The greater individuals' reputational capital, the louder the applause and the stronger the motivation. The success of Linux is evidence of the power of that virtuous circle. Toyota's success is evidence that it is also powerful in conventional, profit-maximizing companies.
The Linux community and Toyota Production System are strikingly different. The fact that they achieve so much in such similar ways points to some principles others can follow.
The discipline of science is surprisingly adaptable to the organization of corporate—and even intercorporate—work.
Under some circumstances, trust is a viable substitute for market contracts and hierarchical authority, not just in small teams but also in very large communities.
Across supply chains, organizations that are able to substitute trust for contracts gain more from the collaboration than they lose in bargaining power.
Low transaction costs buy more innovation than do high monetary incentives.
These principles serve businesses' need for growth and innovation in ways that traditional organizational models do not. And perhaps the effectiveness of these collaborations suggests the ultimate emergence of something altogether new. Not markets. Not hierarchies. But a powerful combination of both—and a signature of the networked society.
Bob Wolf (wolf.bob@bcg.com) is a manager, in the Boston office of the Boston Consulting Group. Evans is a coauthor of Blown to Bits: How the New Economics of Information Transforms Strategy (Harvard Business School Press, 1999).


text:
Dean, College of Education and Human Sciences – Oklahoma State University
Sep 15, 2020 | All Jobs
The Board of Regents for Oklahoma State University invites nominations and applications for the inaugural Dean of the College of Education and Human Sciences. The Dean reports to the Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs. Oklahoma State University is a R1 Doctoral university with an enrollment of approximately 24,000 on the Stillwater and Tulsa campuses.
The College of Education and Human Sciences is a dynamic academic organization that includes seven academic schools/departments, 18 research centers/initiatives and service learning clinics/labs, and a Family and Consumer Sciences/Cooperative Extension unit. The College offers undergraduate majors in 13 fields of study, 15 master's and 11 doctoral degrees, 1 educational specialist degree, as well as 1 undergraduate and 18 graduate certificates. Fall 2019 enrollment included 2,994 undergraduate and 933 graduate students. In 2019-2020, the College granted a combined 795 undergraduate and 271 graduate degrees, including certificates. The College has a total budget of approximately $40 million and over 415 FTE faculty and staff, including 135 tenure-track faculty and 60 nontenure-track faculty. The College includes programs housed on the Stillwater campus and the OSU-Tulsa campus. Further information about the programs and uniqueness of the College of Education and Human Sciences can be found at https://education.okstate.edu/
QUALIFICATIONS: Candidates should understand the breadth of disciplines found in the College of Education and Human Sciences. Candidates also should have demonstrated intellectual leadership that inspires others and an innovative vision for how to achieve the mission of the College by leveraging the strengths and resources of its diversity and breadth. In addition, candidates will have a broad knowledge of higher education; strategic management skills; a demonstrated commitment to diversity; an understanding of scholarship and the value of interdisciplinary collaboration; a demonstrated support for and involvement in public policy related to education, health, and other human services and academic accreditation processes; and a strong commitment to the role of the College at a modern land-grant university, including collaboration with the Cooperative Extension Service administered through the Division of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources. Qualifications include an earned doctorate or an appropriate terminal degree in one of the disciplines in the College, with an outstanding record of scholarly achievement in teaching, research and service that qualifies the candidate for membership in the Graduate Faculty and tenure at the rank of professor, as well as at least three years of administrative experience in higher education. The College has a strong commitment to diverse people's well-being and development across the lifespan. We especially welcome applications from leaders who understand and model the importance of inclusive excellence in higher education.
Additional qualifications include relevant administrative experience at a comprehensive research university, or the equivalent, with proven ability to work and communicate effectively with the public and those served by the College. Candidates should provide evidence of their ability to lead major fundraising campaigns and attract external funding. In addition to proven administrative skills, candidates should possess a demonstrated record of promoting ethical behavior and social responsibility, and a demonstrated capacity to work effectively with diverse faculty, staff, students, and leaders in business, industry, and other educational agencies and institutions, as well as a demonstrated commitment to shared governance, transparency and academic freedom.
SALARY: Commensurate with qualifications.
BEGINNING DATE: As soon as possible following acceptance of position.
APPLICATION: While applications and nominations will be accepted until a successful candidate has been appointed, interested parties are encouraged to submit their materials by Monday, November 2, 2020, to receive optimal consideration. Nominations and application materials, which should include a letter indicating the applicant's interest, experience and qualifications for the position, and curriculum vitae, must be submitted electronically to:
Martin M. Baker
Managing Partner Buffkin/Baker
martin@buffkinbaker.com | 336-721-9100
Oklahoma State University, as an equal opportunity employer, complies with all applicable federal and state laws regarding non-discrimination and affirmative action. Oklahoma State University is committed to a policy of equal opportunity for all individuals and does not discriminate based on race, religion, age, sex, color, national origin, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, disability, or veteran status with regard to employment, educational programs and activities, and/or admissions. For more information, visit https://eeo.okstate.edu

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
PCMag India Software Reviews Operating Systems and Platforms - Reviews and Price Comparisons from PC Magazine Windows XP - Products
Windows XP Source Code Leaks Online
This is the first time the data has been made public, according to The Verge, which says it verified that torrents published on file-sharing sites this week are legit.
By Sherin Shibu
Sept. 26, 2020, 12:05 a.m.
Bill Gates talks Windows XP in February 2001 (JEFF CHRISTENSEN/AFP via Getty Images)
Source code for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 has leaked publicly for the first time.
The files have reportedly been making the rounds in some circles for years, and certain governments and organizations have controlled access to OS source code via Microsoft's Government Security Program (GSP). But this is the first time the data has been made public, according to The Verge, which says it verified that torrents for the operating systems published on file-sharing sites this week are legit.
As The Hacker News reports, the 43GB file dumped on 4chan includes source code for other older Microsoft OSes, too, including:
Windows CE 3
Windows Embedded 7
Windows Embedded CE
Windows NT 3.5
MS-DOS 3.30
MS-DOS 6.0
"I created this torrent for the community, as I believe information should be free and available to everyone, and hoarding information for oneself and keeping it secret is an evil act in my opinion," the leaker said, according to Hacker News.
Formal Windows XP support ended in 2014, though Microsoft was forced to release a patch in 2017 in the the wake of the WannaCry cyber attack. At this point, less than 1 percent of worldwide desktop PCs are running XP, according to Net Applications.
Microsoft's Surface Go 2, Surface Book 3 Will Help You Work From Home
Microsoft's Dual-Screen Windows 10X Devices Take a Backseat Amid COVID-19 Uncertainty
How to Copy and Paste Multiple Items in One Shot in Windows 10
Windows 7 PCs Can't Shut Down or Restart
More in Windows 10
Windows 10 Reviews
How to Delay Windows 10 Updates
How to Set Up Windows 10 With a Local Account
How to Recover Deleted Files in Windows 10
7 Unique Ways to Enhance Windows 10 With Microsoft PowerToys
How to Check Your Laptop Battery Health in Windows 10
More From Sherin Shibu
What's New on Disney+ in February 2021
What to Stream This Weekend
Black Women Tech Founders Deserve Your Investment
What's New on Showtime in January 2021
What's New on Disney+ in January 2021


text:
Christian Brother calls for women's ordination in RCC
America Magazine, The National Catholic Weekly reviews DeThomasis' new book and interviews him.
Brother Louis DeThomasis, FSC, a Christian Brother for 40 years and the president of St. Mary's University in Minnesota for 20, has written a new book in which he calls for, among other things, the ordination of women as part of an overall metanoia (change in consciousness) that must, he argues, be brought about in the church. "Is the institutional church dying?" he asks. "Yes, fortunately."
"It is fortunate because this death can be the occasions for a metanoia in the church," he writes in Flying in the Face of Tradition: Listening to the Lived Experience of the Faithful (Acta). "Sexual abuse, corruption, authoritarianism, lack of transparency, and cover-ups have all been collapsing into and on top of the institutional church….The 'tipping point' has been reached, and the moral authority, honor and respect that the institutional church once elicited from most peoples and secular institutions around the globe no longer exists."
Brother DeThomasis, now 70, views this as a positive spiritual development. "However, if there is metanoia and transformation within, then there will and can be a 'resurrection' for the institutional church." His brief book (102 pages) touches upon what he calls the "subversion" of Vatican II, the proper use of tradition and what is bound to be the most controversial topic: the ordination of women. "After listening to the arguments put forth by the institutional church that Jesus would demand anything other than the full complete and total equality of all persons in his church and finding those arguments completely unpersuasive and often silly," he writes, "we the faithful believe that the ordination of women not only should take place, but must take place soon."
What is perhaps most surprising about this book is not simply that Brother DeThomasis is challenging church teaching on certain matters (e.g., the ordination of women) or even strongly criticizing the hierarchy in general, but that he writes from within the heart of the institutional church, as a member a large religious order, after many years in a leadership role (he served as president of St. Mary's from 1984 to 2005) and still in active ministry: he runs the Christian Brother Investment Services, and lives in Rome.
h/t to Fran Rossi Szpylczyn
Excommunication in 3…2…1…
Apps 55753818692 1675970731 F785b701a6d1b8c33f0408
"…still in active ministry: he runs the Christian Brother Investment Services, and lives in Rome."
I doubt that he will be for very much longer. More's the pity!
-Cullin R. Schooley


text:
Public Offer Agreement
Contract of sale of Kievdelivery.com - Flowers and Gifts Delivery in Ukraine.
1.1. Kievdelivery.com, hereinafter the "Seller", publishes the public offer of sale of goods in accordance with the samples shown on the official website of the Seller https://kievdelivery.com
1.2. According to Articles 633 and 641 of Civil Law of Ukraine, this document is a public offer, and in case of acceptance of stated below conditions an individual, sole proprietorship or entity performing the acceptance of this offer shall pay Seller for the Goods in accordance with the terms of this Contract. Payment of the goods by the Customer is considered acceptance of the offer, which is tantamount to the conclusion of the Contract under the terms set out in the offer.
1.3. Based on the above, carefully read the text of the public offer, and if you do not agree with any article of the offer you are offered to withdraw from the purchase of the Goods or the Use of Services provided by the Seller.
1.4. In this offer, unless the context otherwise requires, the following terms have the following meanings:
"Offer" - a public offering of the Seller, addressed to any individual (citizen) or entity to sign with him a contract of sale (hereinafter - the "Contract") on the existing terms and conditions contained in the Contract, including all of its applications.
"Customer" - a citizen who intends to order or purchase or is ordering, buying or using goods exclusively for personal, family, household and other purposes not related to business activities.
"Third Person" - any competent individual, legal entity, individual entrepreneur under current Ukrainian law for which the buyer had ordered or authorized buyer pick up the product or service ordered on the website of the seller.
"Acceptance" - complete and unconditional acceptance of the Contract by the Customer through payment for the goods provided by the Seller and its delivery.
"Goods" - the list of product names presented on the official website.
"Order" - individual items of the assortment list of the Goods specified by the Customer when filling the application form on the website or through the Operator.
"Delivery" - courier services for delivery of the Order.
2. Subject of contract
2.1. The Seller sells Goods in accordance with the current price list published on the website of the Seller https://kievdelivery.com, and the Customer makes payment and receives the Goods or orders the delivery of Goods to the Third Person in accordance with the terms of this Contract.
2.2. This Contracts and its annexes are official documents of the Seller and an integral part of the offer.
3. Placement of Order
3.1. Ordering the Goods is performed by the Customer through the website https://kievdelivery.com
3.2. When registering on the website of the Seller the Customer agrees to provide the following login information:
a) personal information (full name) enabling the identification of the customer, as well as payment coming from this person as payment for the goods and delivery.
b) accurate shipping address/location of the recipient of the order and his/her correct phone number
c) the date and desired time of delivery;
g) recipient's full name (if applicable) and telephone number.
e) if necessary - the text of greeting card
All information coming to kievdelivery.com is kept secret, is not for sale, and can't be traded for any information with other companies, organizations or individuals. Kievdelivery.com uses that information to contact only those customers from whom it was received.
Having approved the Order, the Customer provides the Operator with the necessary information in accordance with the procedure described in paragraph 3.2. of this Contract.
3.3. The Seller is not responsible for the content or accuracy of the information provided by the Customer when ordering.
3.4. The Customer is responsible for the accuracy of the information provided when ordering.
3.5. Customer pays for the Order independently placed on the website constitutes Customer's acceptance of terms and conditions hereof. Day of Order payment is the date of the Contract of sale between the Seller and the Customer is concluded.
3.6. All the information materials presented on the website are for reference only and cannot fully convey accurate information about specific properties and characteristics of the Goods. In the event of the Customer having questions concerning the properties and characteristics of the Goods the Customer shall seek the advice of the Operator before ordering.
3.7. The given examples of works on the site are the possible options for making floral arrangements. Each and every floral arrangement made by the Company's florists are individual and may differ slightly in packaging or form.
3.8. Changes (additions) to the order shall be submitted by the Customer no later than 24 hours before the delivery date. Any changes shall be confirmed by the Seller by e-mail. Changes or additions not confirmed by the Seller will not be produced. Requests for changes (additions) received less than 24 hours before the delivery date will not be considered.
4. The period for performance of the Order
4.1 Delivery in Kiev is carried out at least 3 hours after placing the order, in the regions – at least 12 hours after registration and payment. No time of delivery is guaranteed. The period for performance of the Order, in exceptional cases, may be agreed with the Customer individually depending on the characteristics and quantity of the Goods ordered.
4.2. Due to seasonal changes in the market, ordering and/or delivery of certain types of flowers may be limited or impossible. Also, some specific flowers may not be available on some days and in some regions. In this regard, it may be sometimes not possible to deliver a bouquet that perfectly matches the one shown on the website. In this case, Kievdelivery will deliver the bouquet that matches the one shown on the site as closely as possible.
The cost of actually delivered arrangement will be equal to or more expensive than ordering. The Seller will make every effort to bring the delivered arrangement as closely as possible to the ordered one in size, shape, and overall color scheme.Additional gifts may vary in appearance, size and producing firms depending on the region of delivery. In any case, the Seller will ensure that the cost and quality of delivered gifts will be equal to or greater than ordered. The Seller shall notify the Customer of changes in the completeness of the Order through the Operator.
4.3. The order is considered delivered at the time of its receipt by the Customer or Third Person. By signing the sheet of the courier the Customer (recipient) confirms the execution of the Order.
4.4. In case of incorrect contact information provided by the Customer, the Seller is not responsible for improper execution of the Order.
4.5. In case of improper execution of delivery of the Order by the Seller re-delivery of the Order is free of charge.
4.6. In the event that the recipient does not answer by contact phone, we inform the Customer that there is no way to carry out delivery by that date. If at the time of delivery the recipient is not in place, despite the agreement of delivery or if the Customer wanted to make a surprise delivery, the Operator has the right to give instructions to leave the Order at neighbors or relatives, or leave a note asking the recipient to agree on a re-delivery time. In this case, the claim on terms of delivery and quality of the Order is not accepted.
5. Order settlement
5.1. Payment of executed Order is affected by the Customer's payment via website https://kievdelivery.com. Confirmation to the Customer of the executed Order is the message from contact at kievdelivery.com email address that the delivery is made.
5.2. Prices for all Goods listed on the website https://kievdelivery.com may be changed unilaterally by the Seller without notice to the Customer. In case of change of the price of the Goods ordered, the Operator shall promptly inform the Buyer of such change. The customer has the right to confirm or cancel the order. If there is no connection with the Customer the Order is canceled within 7 days from the date of placement.
6. Goods delivery
6.1. The obligation of the Seller to deliver the Goods on the condition of its delivery is considered complete with the Customer's or Third Person's signing the form of delivery.
6.2. The ownership of the Goods and the risks of accidental damage and/or loss of the Goods passes to the Customer on the date and time of the actual transfer of Goods and signing the form of delivery by the Customer or Third Person when delivered to the Customer or to the Third Person.
6.3. Delivery cost and conditions are listed on the website of Kievdelivery.
6.4. Delivery is carried out only by prior agreement with the recipient by telephone to prevent absences of the recipient in place at the time of arrival of the courier. Delivery "Surprise" is carried out only on the condition that the Customer is sure that the recipient is in place at the time of delivery at the time agreed in the order. Customer assumes the risk of the recipient not being in place at the appointed time. No refunds or returns or exchanges of any item will be made in case of a recipient's absence.
6.5. Due to the increased volume of orders during the holidays the Seller cannot guarantee on-time delivery. Delivery will be carried out after phone coordination of time and place of delivery with the recipient. This applies to the following holidays: Christmas, New Year, Valentine's Day, March 8, Easter.
7. Return/ cancellation of the Order.
7.1 According to the list of non-food goods of appropriate quality not subject to return or exchange for similar goods of other sizes, shapes, dimensions, style, color or configuration the plants are non-refundable.
7.2. The Customer is not entitled to withdraw from the paid and received Goods of good quality individually having certain properties.
7.3. In the case of delivery of the Order of inadequate quality by the Seller, the Customer agrees to refuse the Goods upon delivery and report it to the Seller by calling +380677088480 or via e-mail: contact at kievdelivery.com.
7.4. The request to return the Goods of inadequate quality must be provided by the Customer or Third Person to the Seller in writing electronically to the e-mail address contact at kievdelivery.com. The request can be compiled in a free form with the obligatory indication of Customer's contact information, matching with the one specified in the order, the names of the returned Goods and the reason for the return. The customer has the right to specify all arisen questions to the Seller by phone: +380677088480.
7.5. If a refund is involved, it will be made on customer's bank account specified in the application, within 10 (ten) working days from the receipt of a "Statement of return of funds" by the Company.
8. Copyrights
8.1. All textual information and graphics contained on the website https://kievdelivery.com are the property of the Seller and/or its suppliers and manufacturers.
8.2. Should you have any concerns or questions about copyrights – please do not hesitate to contact us.
9. Rights, Obligations, and Responsibilities
9.1. The Seller is not responsible for the misuse of the Goods ordered on the website. Claims for the quality of flowers and plants are accepted during the process of delivery.
9.2. The Seller has the right to transfer its rights and obligations under the execution of the Order to third parties.
9.3. The Seller has the right to exercise the recording of telephone conversations with the Customer. The Seller agrees to: prevent unauthorized access to information and/or transfer it to persons who have no direct relation to the execution of Orders; timely detect and suppress such facts. Telephone conversations are recorded in order to monitor the quality of Order execution.
9.4 The Customer is entitled to send all claims for improper order execution to the email address listed on the website https://kievdelivery.com, in the Contact Us section. All information received is processed as quickly as possible.
10.1. Upon the occurrence of force majeure, which party under this Contract is unable to foresee or prevent by reasonable measures, the period of performance of the obligations under this Contract shall be extended in proportion to the time during which such circumstances continue to persist, without compensation of any losses. The events of extraordinary character, in particular: flood, fire, earthquake, explosion, storm, subsidence, and other natural phenomena, epidemics and war or hostilities, terrorist attacks, power surges, and other circumstances that led to the failure of any technical means of the parties.
10.2. The party experiencing the situation that makes it impossible to perform its obligations due to force majeure shall notify in writing the other side on the onset, the alleged duration and termination of these circumstances immediately (but not later than five (5) business days).
10.3. In the event of a dispute about the time of onset, duration, and termination of the force majeure the decision of the competent authority at the location of the respective Party will be an appropriate and sufficient proof of onset, duration, and termination of such circumstances.
10.4. The Party's failure to notify or untimely notice of the start of force majeure deprives it of the right to continue to refer to it as the basis for exemption from responsibility for failure to perform its obligations hereunder.
11. Confidentiality and Data Protection
11.1. Providing data when registering on the Site the Customer agrees to receive advertising and informational mailing.
11.2. If the Customer is not willing that the data was used in accordance with Section 8.1 hereof, they shall apply to the Seller via the feedback form on the site with the appropriate application.
11.3. Seller uses the information:
- for the distribution of advertising and informational materials;
- to meet its obligations to the Customer;
- for assessment and analysis of the Site performance.
11.4. The Seller agrees not to disclose the information received from the Customer.
11.5 Disclosure of information in accordance with the valid and applicable legal requirements is not considered a violation.
11.6. The Seller has the right to use "Cookies" technology (technology that allows a web server to send service information to user's computer and save it in the browser).
11.7. The Seller receives the ID information about the site guest's device connected to the local network and/or Internet (IP-address). This information is used for statistical purposes only and is not used to identify the guest.
11.8. The Seller is not responsible for information provided by the Customer on the Website in a public forum.


text:
Lady Gaga Oreos Have Hit The Shelves
Oreo has released a fitting neon green and pink version of their famous cookie in partnership with Lady Gaga celebrating her newest album Chromatica.
The limited edition Chromatica Oreos hit shelves on Jan. 28th and the Grammy/Oscar winner hinted on social media that some of the packages were autographed by her.
The Oreo Twitter account released a series of six cryptic clues leading to hiding spots of where they could be found.
New clues were released hourly, each one inspired by Gaga's sixth studio album, Chromatica.
Fans had 24 hours to crack the cookie code, tweeting the correct answer while tagging #ChromaticaCookieHunt, #sweepstakes and @Oreo.
Oreo will randomly select 50 lucky winners to get the hot pink signed packs, and their names will be announced on Twitter.
Meanwhile, the Lady Gaga Oreos are available for about $3.67 per pack, for a limited time only. The first-ever celebrity Oreo is embossed with one of three designs inspired by her album.
From now until April 30, 2021, Oreo and Gaga are promoting "Sing it with Oreo" to encourage fans to send uplifting "Oreograms" to loved ones for a chance to win an assortment of Lady Gaga swag and experiences.
The grand prize is a flyaway concert and meet-and-greet experience, pending COVID-19 restrictions, with Lady Gaga herself.
By Timothy Michael February 11, 2021
Tags: Oreo in FOOD, LGBTQ+, MUSIC, NATIONAL
LGBTQ+, LOCAL, LONG BEACH, NEWS, POLITICS
Gerrie Schipske Enters Long Beach Mayoral Race
January 6, 2022 Timothy Michael
Gerrie Schipske announced on Thursday, December 30th that she would run for Mayor of Long Beach this year. The second-term...