text:
Ah, to linger in Venice!
By William J. Dean
NEW YORK and Venice. Both island cities. New Yorkers and Venetians. Both talented, parochial, pushy, and boastful. Venice, writes Mary McCarthy in ``Venice Observed,'' was obliged by its physical situation to be inventive and improvise. ``Cleverness and adaptivity were imposed by the original situation, and the get-up-and-go of the early Venetian businessmen was typical of a self-made society.'' She could be describing New York.
Boston is a Puritan city. (While at college, I was made to feel dissolute by New England classmates because of my New Yorker's weakness for restaurants and the theater.) Florence can be puritanical on occasion. Venice and New York, never.
Moscow and Venice. Present-day Moscow and Venice at the height of its power (1000-1508) share a passion for secrecy. The arsenal in Venice once employed 16,000 men to construct and maintain the Venetian galleys, central to the military and commercial success of the state. The secrets of the arsenal were as closely guarded as the secrets of the Kremlin are today. (There may be advantages to losing major power status. Now vaporetto No. 5 carries commuters and tourists en route to San Marco through the heart of this once- secretive shipyard.)
Restrictions on the movement of foreigners is another similarity. The German merchants in Venice, for example, lived in the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, or German factory, on the Grand Canal near the Rialto Bridge. (It is the present main post office.) This building contained offices, warehouses, and apartments provided by the republic. The merchants' servants all were appointed by the state. Security, not hospitality, were uppermost in the minds of the authorities making these arrangements.
Dolce far niente. ``Sweet it is to do nothing.'' Some observers consider this to be the ultimate statement on Italian life. In Venice I did nothing, except put in 12 hours a day in an orgy of sightseeing. There are 90 miles of walkways in this splendid urban environment where, in Le Corbusier's words, ``the pedestrian is master.'' I covered many of these miles as well as additional miles on the numerous waterways of Venice.
Being in Venice is like being on board a ship, but without any of the discomforts. There are no throbbing engines, no swaying in a rough sea, no sense of confinement.
In ``Remembrance of Things Past,'' Proust writes of awakening in Venice for the first time: ``When at ten o`clock in the morning my shutters were thrown open, I saw ablaze in the sunlight ... the Golden Angel on the Campanile of San Marco.''
My awakenings were more aural than visual, hearing these sounds of Venice: water lapping against the canal embankment; bells summoning the faithful to church; birds chattering gaily in a garden, the caged canaries, so popular with Venetians, contributing to the merriment.
From my window I saw, not Proust's Golden Angel, but wash drying in the warm rays of the sun, hanging out on poles from open windows as the wash has been drying in Venice since earliest times. Cats slinking about, as they do in each district of Venice. Gondolas passing. Motorized launches conveying daily essentials, the skipper in the stern steering from a deck chair, as pleased with himself as Niarchos on his yacht.
My favorite view of Venice, day or night, is from the Punta della Dogana, where the Grand Canal opens into the lagoon. From here, looking toward the Piazzetta, you see the domes of San Marco, the Campanile, and the Doge's Palace, resembling more a confection, with its fanciful design, than the nerve center of a once powerful state.
Directly across the water is the breathtaking view (no other expression will do, for your breath is literally taken away) of the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, with its magnificent Palladian church.
By day, the sun, palaces, and churches are reflected in the waters of the lagoon. By night, the lights of Venice dance upon the water. Day or night, cruise ships and smaller craft ply the waters. The total effect is an unrivaled spectacle.
The satisfaction of making a unique discovery does not come easily in a city as well explored as Venice. Thus after following a tortuous route through dark passages and narrow alleyways, I arrive in the Corte Prima del Milion, where Marco Polo lived. (His book is known to Italians as ``Il Milione,'' on account of the million marvels it contains.) While I stand there trying to connect the drab courtyard with the fabled court of Kublai Khan, other travelers arrive under the same ancient archway Marco Polo must have passed, with its carvings of mythological Asian beasts. They come, as I had, with guidebook and mouth agape. I presume the Great Explorer gazes with mockery in his eyes at these spiritual descendants who travel the world in a comfort he never knew.
I fared better at Othello's house, No. 2615, near the Campo dei Carmini. No other tourists were present. From here, with torches lighting the way, Othello may have gone by gondola to the house of Desdemona to relate to her his life's adventures. My story being done, She gave me for my pains a world of sighs. She swore, in faith, 'twas strange, 'twas
passing strange; 'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful.
Eventually one must return to terra firma. I leave Venice early in the morning. A white luxury liner glides down the Giudecca Canal with the assistance of tugs. Vaporetti and launches weave in and out of the stately procession against a backdrop of church domes and bell towers. As the train crosses the causeway linking the lagoon to the mainland, I take a last look at the city.
This is my third visit to Venice. I have seen the city in the fever heat of August and the drizzle and fog of November. I have seen the Piazza San Marco overflowing with tourists and I have seen it utterly deserted, under many inches of water. I have walked the city's walkways, climbed the bell towers, traveled along the waterways. Venice is now a part of me.
'Venice can be saved.' As tides rise, City of Canals seeks solution.
As climate change brings more flooding, can Venice stay afloat?
In Venice, environmentalists tally rare win over tourism
https://www.csmonitor.com/1987/1104/uvenic.html


text:
The Calligrapher's Daughter by Eugenia Kim
Henry Holt, 2009 (2009)
Hardcover, CD, e-Book
Eugenia Kim's The Calligrapher's Daughter tells the story (from 1915 to 1945) of a spirited, intelligent and sensitive young aristocrat in Korea, who is torn between the pressure to conform to her very conservative father's views of what's suitable for her, and her own ambitions for education and a career.
As a child, our heroine wonders why her father Han (a talented calligrapher) has never named her. The family (who are Methodist) live in a time when the Japanese occupy their country and take repressive measures to control the population. His wealth and reputation allow Han to bribe officials to protect his household from the worst of the excesses, even though he is himself involved in resistance to the invaders.
A missionary's misunderstanding of what's said to her results in the girl being called Najin. Aged nine, she helps her mother secretly sew forbidden flags for a major national demonstration in Seoul. It doesn't end well. Najin helps look after her small brother Ilsun, and is saddened by her favorite teacher's suicide (after a rape). In 1924, when she is fourteen, Han arranges Najin's marriage.
However, Najin's mother wants more for her daughter, and defies her husband. A relative, widow of the murdered prime minister, is still close to what remains of the court, and Najin is summoned by her aunt Imo to serve in the palace. She's taught court etiquette and becomes the favored companion of young princess Deokhye. When the emperor dies, the remaining members of the royal family are taken to Tokyo and Najin returns home to her loving mother and disapproving father.
Through the missionaries, Najin is able to pay for college and earns a degree in childhood education and nursing. Another marriage is proposed (through an old friend), to Calvin Cho, 'the second son of a famous minister.' When they meet, 'the thoughtfulness from our conversation lingered like the languid scent of honeysuckle.' They wed, planning to travel to the United States and for Najin to attend medical school. But her exit visa is refused by the Japanese.
After a miserable time with her new in-laws in a one-room hovel, she returns home yet again. With world war imminent, Calvin's letters to Najin cause suspicion and result in her family's ejection from their home. They move to Seoul, to a refuge offered by aunt Imo. And it's there, after many trials and tribulations that a chance meeting between Najin and an American soldier becomes the key to her reunion with Calvin in 1945.
What's to be learned from it all? Najin muses on the ways all the people close to her 'held on to hope' and realizes 'it wasn't the answers I was seeking all those years that mattered as much as the act of seeking itself.' The Calligrapher's Daughter is a thoroughly engrossing historical, set in a country and era familiar to few Westerners and starring an indomitable, intelligent young Korean woman, who is yet a product of her culture and times. I highly recommend this novel.

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text:
Petit Palais Musee des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris
Avenue Winston Churchill - 75008
Mathilde Beaujard
Gustave Dore'
Rodolphe Bresdin
Charles Meryon
Francois Chifflart
Felix Buhot
Eugene Viala
Marcel Roux
Valerie Sueur-Hermel
Yuriko Iwakiri
Gaelle Rio
Petit Palais Musee des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, Paris
The terrifying world of visionary, 'gothic-fantasy' prints. More than 170 works from Goya to Redon, including prints by Delacroix and Gustave Dore' introduces the visitor to 19th century engravings and lithographs. On display 250 works of Kuniyoshi to explain the function of the imagery and its importance in Japanese culture.
Visionary Prints
curators: Valérie Sueur-Hermel, Chief Curator of the Department of prints and photography at the French National Library (Bibliothèque nationale de France), academic curator of the exhibition; Gaëlle Rio, Curator at the Petit Palais.
The Petit Palais is host to the French National library (Bibliothèque nationale de France) to celebrate, for the first time and on a grand scale, the terrifying world of visionary, 'gothic-fantasy' prints. More than 170 works from Goya to Redon, including prints by Delacroix and Gustave Doré will introduce the visitor to this important aspect of 19th century engravings and lithographs. It is the world of the macabre, of gothic bestiaries, haunted landscapes, images from dreams and nightmares – the triumph of darkness!
This immersion in fantasy art is organised in chronological order.
The exhibition is introduced by a contemporary video by Agnès Guillaume – a ballet that conjures up the black birds of sleepless nights – and it begins by focusing on key figures who influenced the history of engraving and who were studied and reinterpreted by 19th century engravers. The visitor will be greeted by Albrecht Dürer's Melancholia, Jacques Callot's Temptation of Saint Anthony, Rembrandt's Dr Faustus, a plate of Piranesi's Prisons, and an engraving after Füssli's Nightmare.
The exhibition will then seek to demonstrate how this 'gothic' inspiration evolved at the hands of three successive generations of artists. In the first period, Eugène Delacroix is placed at the centre of the Romantic generation of 1830. Their engravings were veritable black and white manifestoes of Romanticism and much influenced by Goya. Goya's motifs spread through the artists' studios and were a spur to their imagination. The figure of the devil was everywhere in popular prints.
The second section examines the neo-Romantics around Gustave Doré; he was the most emblematic artist of that movement, as is evidenced by his illustrations for Dante's Inferno in 1861. At the end of the trail, there are plates by Odilon Redon – notably his Dans le rêve, which laid the path to Symbolism.
In this exhibition, visitors will discover works by the great masters of engraving – Delacroix, Grandville, Gustave Doré, Rodolphe Bresdin, Charles Meryon, Odilon Redon and Félicien Rops – but also less well-known artists like Alphonse Legros, François Chifflart, Félix Buhot, Eugène Viala or Marcel Roux. What their artistic production at the time had in common was the way they all focused on a kind of 'black Romanticism' that fed on the very matter of the engravers ink.
Exhibition organised by the Petit Palais and the National library of France (Bibiothèque nationale de France)
Kuniyoshi, demon of prints
curated by Yuriko Iwakiri and Gaelle Rio
Visitors to the Petit Palais are invited to discover, for the first time in France, the work of the extraordinary artist, Kuniyoshi (1797-1861). Thanks to generous loans from Japan, supplemented by loans from French institutions, the 250 works on display will give a full picture of Kuniyoshi's dramatic genius and the expressive beauty of his work. The exhibition will explain the function of the imagery and its importance in Japanese culture. Kuniyoshi's work has had an enormous influence on manga art and tattooing.
Kuniyoshi was an almost exact contemporary of Eugène Delacroix but, in the West, he never achieved the fame of Hokusai or Utamaro. Perhaps because of its nonconformist quality, his work was not taken up in Europe during the late 19th-century vogue for decorative Japanese art, although it was much admired by Monet and Rodin. His prints are characterised by originality in their inspiration and composition, violence in the monster and warrior prints, and humour in the Chinese shadows series, the caricatures and his representations of the life of cats.
The thematic trail will emphasise Kuniyoshi's tremendous stylistic variety and his seemingly boundless imagination.
An introductory space will be devoted to a presentation of the artist and his reception in France in the 19th century. The next five sections are designed as variations on his engraved work and will show the teeming exuberance of his inspiration. Visitors will first discover a section devoted to warriors and dragons, a stylistic genre in which Kuniyoshi excelled. In the next room: famous Kabuki actors whose highly expressive portraits tend towards caricature. After that, we linger over pleasures and distractions in Edo, in the guise of a large variety of surprising prints, the 'bijin-ga', for example, traditional female beauties, and some even stranger engravings, the 'kodomo-e' – these are pictures of children and they reveal the artist's very personal take on scenes of daily life. The next room contains a selection of landscape prints in which the slightly photographic point of view gives them a great sense of modernity. The exhibition ends with an important body of satirical and humorous work that attests to the artist's incomparable talent for caricature. These images of day-to-day life, populated by anthropomorphic cats, birds and toads, have influenced a whole generation of manga artists.
Didier Blin's bold, contemporary scenography will set up a dialogue with the very personal and original world of Kuniyoshi and will give pride of place to his formal invention, which is characterised as much by an exploration of the limits of different formats as by his compositional effects. The catalogue accompanying the exhibition will be the first publication in French devoted to Kuniyoshi.
The exhibition is organised by the Petit Palais and Nikkei
Mathilde Beaujard Tel: 01 53434014 mathilde.beaujard@paris.fr
Communications manager Anne Le Floch Tel: 01 53434021 anne.lefloch@paris.fr
Avenue Winston Churchill Paris
From Tuesday to Sunday :10:00 am - 6:00 pm
Closed on Monday and some public holidays
Late opening Friday until 9:00 pm.
Free up to and including age 17.
Admission charges
Full price: 10 euros
Reduced price: 7 euros


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Q: Sql server insert into giving error I formed a INSERT INTO but it is giving error. I am not being able to capture the error. So please tell me how could I rectify it. Below is my query
INSERT INTO UserRights (UserID,Forms_Name,Controls_Name,IsEnabled)
Select 'allison', Select Forms_Name, Controls_Name, IsEnabled
from UserRights Where UserID='testrole'

A: You have two SELECTs, use one only for both the literal string & the fields;
INSERT INTO UserRights ...
select 'allison',Forms_Name,Controls_Name,IsEnabled
from UserRights
Where UserID='testrole'

A: INSERT INTO UserRights (UserID,Forms_Name,Controls_Name,IsEnabled)
Select 'allison', Forms_Name,Controls_Name,IsEnabled
from UserRights
Where UserID='testrole'

A: Drop the second select keyword:
INSERT INTO UserRights (UserID,Forms_Name,Controls_Name,IsEnabled)
Select 'allison',Forms_Name,Controls_Name,IsEnabled
from UserRights
Where UserID='testrole'

A: What do you want to achieve with the second SELECT? That can't work, and isn't needed. Try it like this:
INSERT INTO UserRights (UserID,Forms_Name,Controls_Name,IsEnabled)
    Select 'allison', Forms_Name, Controls_Name, IsEnabled
        from UserRights Where UserID='testrole'

A: You have error right here:
Select 'allison',Select Forms_Name

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


A docent is a volunteer in a museum that educates the public on the exhibits. A great deal of training is required and you do have to live in an area large enough to host a museum.
Watch this video from the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. Follow two experienced volunteers and hear about what it takes to become a docent.
The museum where you are accepted as a volunteer will provide materials and training.
Are you just getting started or are you an expert? Get involved with others who share your interest and/or passion for being a docent.
Join the National Docent Symposium Council!
Go to this Docent Board, click "Follow Board" and then help us make this the best board on Pinterest!
Follow Hobsess (Rev Crouse)'s board Docent (BEAUTY) on Pinterest.


text:
Q: Scala: Difference between file.class and file$.class from scalac When I use scalac to compile file.scala, I end up with 2 outputs, file.class and file$.class.  What is the difference between these files and which is the appropriate one to then run?  I get distinctly different error messages between executing "scala file" vs "scala file$".

A: Scala objects get compiled to classes ending in "$" because you're allowed to have an "ordinary" class with the same name. But the object's methods are also exposed as static methods on the "ordinary" class, so that they can be called under the names you would expect. This is an artifact of trying to represent the scala semantics in a way that make sense to Java / the JVM, and I would encourage you to regard it as an implementation detail rather than something important.
(@MattPutnam's answer is correct that anonymous classes, including closures, are compiled to class files with $es in their name, but that's not what's causing your file$.class in this particular instance)
Use scala file. If you're interested in the implementation details you might also want to try java -cp /path/to/scala-library.jar file.

A: file$.class is some inner anonymous class.  In Java they're very explicit, but they can be easy to miss in Scala.  If you use any method that takes a function, there's an implicit anonymous class there.  Post the code and I'll point it out.


text:
Tag Archives: #gdsteam
Delivering digital transformation: the mixed successes of the Government Digital Service
Posted on August 21, 2017 by stevenmcginty
Image by gdsteam via Creative Commons
It's been a period of change for the Government Digital Service (GDS) since losing influential Executive Director Mike Bracken in 2015. Since then, the service has experienced a string of high profile departures, leading many commentators to suggest that the much-lauded GDS could soon be coming to an end.
However, in the November 2015 Spending Review, then Chancellor George Osborne announced that the GDS would receive an extra £450 million over four years – a significant increase on their previous budget of £58 million per year.
Chancellor Osborne highlighted that these additional funds would help fuel a "digital revolution" in central government, and in particular create one of the most digitally advanced tax administrations in the world.
But has new funding – and possibly the public show of support – led to a digital revolution?
In the beginning….
In 2011, the GDS was formed to implement the 'digital by default' strategy – a key proposal of UK Digital Champion (and founder of lastminute.com) Martha Lane Fox's report into the delivery of online public services.
The GDS's first major project, GOV.UK, has in many ways proved to be a success. Launched in 2012, the publishing platform brought together over 300 government agencies and arm's length bodies' websites within 15 months. Replacing DirectGov and Business Link alone has saved more than £60m a year. Early testing showed GOV.UK was simpler for users, with 61% completing tasks on the new Business Link section; compared to 46% on the old website.
GOV.UK has also been viewed as an example of best practice, with GDS team members supporting countries such as New Zealand with their own digital government efforts.
However, it's not been entirely without its controversies. In October 2016, the Welsh language commissioner accused the UK government of weakening Welsh language services, explaining that provision on the site had "deteriorated astonishingly" since the introduction of GOV.UK. A recent GDS blog article has also identified challenges in making content accessible for users. For example, 73% of the content on GOV.UK is looked at by fewer than 10 people per month.
Government as a platform
A major theme of the GDS's work has been the introduction of a platform approach to digital government – principles proposed by technology guru Tim O'Reilly. In 2015, Mike Bracken set out a new vision for digital government, highlighting the need to create:
"A common core infrastructure of shared digital systems, technology and processes on which it's easy to build brilliant, user-centric government services."
GOV.UK is one such service.
But the concept has gone on to inspire new services such as GOV.UK Verify – a platform which enables citizens to prove who they are when using government services. This common service was a world first and is being used by organisations such as HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) and the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA).
Additionally, GOV.UK Notify – a service which sends text messages, emails or letters – was introduced in January 2016. It helped support the Valuation Office Agency (VOA) transition some of their services to online only, as it provided them with the ability to send thousands of notifications at the one time.
On 30 March 2017, the National Audit Office (NAO) published a report into the government's track record on digital transformation.
The report concluded that the GDS had an early impact across government, successfully reshaping the government's approach to technology and transformation. However, Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, also observed that:
"Digital transformation has a mixed track record across government. It has not yet provided a level of change that will allow government to further reduce costs while still meeting people's needs. To achieve value for money and support transformation across government, GDS needs to be clear about its role and strike a balance between robust assurance and a more consultative approach."
In particular, the NAO highlights concerns over the GOV.UK Verify programme. The service has proven difficult to adopt for some departments, which has led to the GDS allowing the use of alternate identity services. According to the NAO, this significantly undermines the business case for GOV.UK Verify, and provides a poorer experience for users on government websites.
The Institute for Government
Influential think tank, the Institute for Government (IfG), has recently published two reports on the progress of digital transformation.
In October 2016, the report 'Making a success of digital government' estimated that the UK Government could save up to £2 billion by 2020 – through efficiency savings – by creating better digital services. Major digital transformation successes were also highlighted, including the online registration to vote by 1.3 million people by May 2016, and the introduction of a new digital road tax system (removing the need for paper disks).
In terms of the GDS, the IfG expressed similar views to the NAO:
"We found that GDS has played an important role in bringing new digital capability into government. But, in the absence of a new digital strategy, its role is unclear. GDS needs to re-equip itself to support a government that now has rapidly developing digital capability, and high ambitions for change."
In February 2017, the government published a new digital transformation strategy, including attempting to clarify the 'evolving' role of the GDS.
However, this hasn't stopped the IfG making several new recommendations for the GDS in their latest digital government report. These include:
clarifying the GDS standards and distinguishing between standards and guidance;
re-examining the role of the Government Gateway – an identity assurance platform – and of GOV.UK Verify;
taking a more active role in the digital services market, such as designing the Digital Marketplace for different users; and
creating a store for Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to encourage their use throughout the public sector.
The GDS has played a vital role in creating a new vision for digital government. However, evidence has suggested that over recent years the pace of change has slowed, with key initiatives such as GOV.UK Verify facing a variety of challenges.
In the coming years, it's likely that the Brexit negotiations will be top priority for politicians and many government departments. It will be important that the GDS works with these departments and looks to prioritise services that are vital for managing the Brexit process.
Follow us on Twitter to see what developments in public and social policy are interesting our research team. If you found this article interesting, you may also like to read our other digital articles
Posted in Digital, Government and politics	| Tagged #digitalgov, #gdsteam, benefits, Brexit, challenges of digital transformation, common platforms, digital, digital change, digital government, digital progress, digital transformation, digital transformation in central government, egov, egovernment, failures, GDS, government as a platform, Government Digital Service, identity assurance, impact of GDS, improving digital services, improving government services, improving public services, Institute for Government, Making a success of digital government, National Audit Office, public sector innovation, public sector technology, successes, technology in government, the role of GDS, transforming government, UK Government | Leave a comment
The Government Digital Service: successes, turmoil, and the focus for the future
Posted on September 17, 2015 by stevenmcginty
Image by Paul Downey via Creative Commons
In April 2011, the Government Digital Service (GDS) was launched to lead the digital transformation of government. The focus was on making public services digital by default (a policy which envisions most public services being delivered online), and simpler, clearer and faster to use.
Their first major project was the development of GOV.UK. It was to act as the primary source for UK government data and would replace a number of existing websites, including DirectGov. Overall, GOV.UK has been viewed as a GDS success story.
In the latest GDS progress report, it was highlighted that:
Over 300 agency and arm's length bodies' (ALB) websites had been transitioned over to GOV.UK by the end of 2014;
The GOV.UK website averaged 12 million weekly unique visitors in the first quarter of 2015 (25th most used website in the UK);
The GOV.UK website saw 13.6 million unique visitors and 21.2 million visits in the last week of January 2015 (this was the likely the result of the 31st January Self-Assessment tax return deadline).
However, GOV.UK has not been without its critics. In February, the Register revealed documents that said that the GDS knew that GOV.UK was:
"destroying useful online services and replacing them with trendy webpages bereft of useful information"
One noted failure was the transition of the Home Office visa and immigration site to GOV.UK. According to their own analysis, the GDS did not have a good enough understanding of the users' needs.
GDS in turmoil?
At the beginning of August 2015, Executive Director of the GDS Mike Bracken announced he was leaving. In an interview, Mike Bracken explained that he was leaving due to the "stresses and strains" of the role. The current GDS Chief Operating Officer Stephen Foreshew-Cain will move up and replace him.
There have also been a number of other senior GDS leaders departing. These include:
Deputy Director Tom Loosemore
Director of Strategy Russell Davies
Director of Design Ben Terrett
Head of User Research Leisa Reichelt
Transformation Programme Director of the Government Digital Service Michael Beaven.
These changes have led to speculation about the future of the GDS. Last financial year, the service had a budget of £58 million and approximately 700 members of staff. Computerworld have suggested that the GDS could undergo substantial cuts as part of the HM Treasury's spending review. If so, the impact could fundamentally change the GDS' role.
In August, Matt Hancock MP, Minister for the Cabinet Office, reiterated his support for the GDS. He said:
"the work that GDS is doing, and the vision of Government as a Platform, is changing the core infrastructure of shared digital systems, technology and processes."
The Minister then went on to emphasise that the GDS has extremely talented people and has a lot more to contribute in the future.
In addition, Eddie Copeland, Head of Technology Policy at the Policy Exchange has outlined 5 points of focus for the 'next phase' of the GDS. These include:
Be guardian of the rules – the government should lead the way in defining the standards of how front-end government IT should work, although should not be concerned about who provides it, whether that's public or private sector.
Focus on the user / citizen experience – the government should focus on providing a positive customer experience and creating online transactions that are needed.
Lead on open standards for data – the use of open standards would reduce the technical barriers to sharing information between different systems.
Be an informed customer – failed IT projects were often the fault of the government, therefore the government needs to become a smarter, more demanding customer.
Scale best practice – all departments should learn from the successes of the GDS, and try to implement innovative solutions where possible.
It's likely that the GDS will play an important role in the continued digital transformation of government services. However, some – including Eddie Copeland – believe that the GDS will become a smaller organisation. As a result, there may be opportunities for the private sector to get involved in supporting the digital transformation, particularly if they can provide a solid business case.
Read our other recent articles on digital government:
e-Estonia: leading the way on digital government
Socitm deliberates: what's the future for local government digital services?
Digital transformation: rethinking the plumbing of government
What's preventing health and social care from going digital?
What's happening to make big data use a reality in health and social care?
Posted in Digital, Government and politics, Transport, Infrastructure and communications	| Tagged #digitalgov, #gdsteam, #technology, digital, digital government, digital services, digital transformation, e-government, Eddie Copeland, efficiency, egov, GDS, GOV.UK, government, Government Digital Service, matthew hancock, Mike Bracken, open data, policy exchange, Private Sector, public sector, public sector technology, reform, spending review, Stephen Foreshew-Cain, UK Government | 4 Comments


text:
My name is Narayanan Muralikrishnan.
INTERVIEWED BY Vignesh Prakash x 5
"I was married recently and I had just moved here without my wife. She couldn't get a visa and being apart thousands of miles wasn't worth all that much to me."
What did you do on your first day?
I remember coming in from Madras for the first time to San Diego, California. It was a fairly cold time. I landed late at night and missed all the flights to Los Angeles. I tagged along with the few friends who traveled with me and we walked down the long hallways of the domestic terminals. It was empty. We missed all the flights and took a rental car and drove for the night. Definitely not the most welcoming experience to a brand-new country, but it was a real fun experience
What brought you to the United States?
I traveled across the world for many experiences and projects and it was music that brought me to the US. My thirst for knowledge and new ideas pushed me to be where I am now. I had just finished my masters degree at the University of Madras. In my graduating year I was working on a project sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution related to the study of music. It was a wonderful opportunity given by them which made me come here. Later, I went on to study piano performance and "Western Music Theory" at the Trinity College of Music, in London. I was introduced to the late Dr. Robert E. Brown who is known to be the one who coined the term "world music". I remember his motivation and inspirational experiences made me go on to study Ethnomusicology and obtain my second master's degree in Ethnomusicology from San Diego State University focusing on music of Java and Bali.
Who met you when you arrived?
The San Diego State Music Department people, who were part of the Smithsonian project, welcomed me when I arrived at San Diego, but a few others tagged along from Los Angeles who had helped me drive through LA to San Diego late that night.
What were your first impressions of the country?
It was different. I just wanted to go back home once I got here. I was married recently and I had just moved here without my wife. She couldn't get a visa and being apart thousands of miles wasn't worth all that much to me. I tried not to look into America in a deeper sense throughout that period.
How hard was it to adjust to life in the U.S compared to the time you've been staying in India?
The schooling system in India was a lot more conservative than here. For example, there was no such thing as "quarter notes" or "half notes". Those words were so alien to me when I first started here. The early times were focused more on the history of "western music" and we had a Russian teacher who's accent was something that I never could understand. This made it harder as I then used to record each of his class, take it home and work through each lesson on my own. Then came the idea of a "quiz". I remember the first time I stumbled upon one. It was a vaguely fun experience. Through all this, life went on and it was an experience that helped me grow. The cultural experience made me realize the wide variety of people around me, but made me sure to never leave my roots behind.
How difficult or easy was it to establish a music school here? The exposure it needed during those times…
It was definitely the music in me that got me connected to the Indian communities across San Diego. It attracted a lot more people who wanted to listen to my music. I was well aware of the challenges involved in teaching Carnatic music to students being raised in North America. In order to excite them, I explored new avenues and perspectives towards a new genre of Carnatic music played on the electronic keyboard. This idea of genre was purely based on changing the trend of music but not the style and traditional values that stick with it.
Reflections...anything you'd like to share? Advice?
One thing America has given to any immigrant who has arrived in this country is a prosperous life with an abundance of opportunities in hand. I think one of the most important things to acknowledge is the idea of contributing what we can share with this country, without forgetting where we came from. As you get a-cultured to a new culture, always hold onto your roots and culture and cherish and be proud of the same.


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text:
\section{The general problem}

The problem in question is to determine the conjugacy classes in the
symplectic groups $\spl{2m}{F}$ over a field $F$. The general method
proposed in the present section is used in Section $2$ to give a
detailed (and elementary) account of the conjugacy classes of semisimple
elements in the case where $\charc F \neq 2$.  (A \emph{semisimple}
element is one whose minimal polynomial is separable.  These include all
elements of finite order when $\charc F = 0$.)

Denote by $\mathcal{F}$ the set of all non-degenerate alternating
bilinear forms
\begin{displaymath}
  f\colon F^{2m} \times F^{2m} \rightarrow F
\end{displaymath}
and by $\mathcal{G}$ the general linear group $\gl{2m}{F}$ of all
nonsingular linear mappings
\begin{displaymath}
  T\colon F^{2m} \rightarrow F^{2m}.
\end{displaymath}
The natural permutation action of $\mathcal{G}$ on $\mathcal{F}$ is
defined by
\begin{displaymath}
  (fT)(u, v) = f(uT, vT) \text{ for all } u, v \in F^{2m}.
\end{displaymath}

The subgroup of $\mathcal{G}$ formed by those elements that fix a given
$f$ is the symplectic group $\spl{}{f}$. Since $\mathcal{G}$ acts
transitively on $\mathcal{F}$, these symplectic groups form a complete
set of conjugate subgroups of $\mathcal{G}$ (thereby justifying the
generic notation $\spl{2m}{F}$).

In order to put forms and linear mappings on the same footing, we
introduce the set of pairs
\begin{displaymath}
  \mathcal{P} = \{(f, T) \mid f \in \mathcal{F}, T \in
  \spl{}{f}\}
\end{displaymath} and define the action of $\mathcal{G}$ on $\mathcal{P}$ by
\begin{displaymath}
  (f, T)S = (fS, S^{-1}TS).
\end{displaymath}

The crucial observation is this:
\begin{obs}
  For fixed $f_0 \in \mathcal{F}$, the elements $T_1, T_2, \ldots \in
  \mathcal{G}$ are a set of representatives for the conjugacy classes of
  $\spl{}{f_0}$ if and only if $(f_0, T_1), (f_0, T_2), \ldots \in
  \mathcal{P}$ are a set of representatives for the orbits under the
  action of $\mathcal{G}$ on $\mathcal{P}$.
\end{obs}

In short, the original conjugacy class problem can be reformulated as
one about orbits on $\mathcal{P}$. It is from this new viewpoint that
the problem will be treated from here. We now describe an alternative
way of constructing a set of orbit representatives.

\paragraph{Step 1:} We first choose representative elements $R_1, R_2,
\ldots$ from the conjugacy classes $\K_1, \K_2, \ldots$ of
$\mathcal{G}$, determining at the same time their centralisers $b_1,
b_2, \ldots$ in $\mathcal{G}$. This is a matter of standard linear
algebra.

\paragraph{Step 2:} We next determine, for each such representative
$R_k$, the set
\begin{displaymath}
  \mathcal{F}_k = \{f \in \mathcal{F} \mid fR_k = f\} = \{f \in
  \mathcal{F} \mid (f, R_k) \in \mathcal{P}\}.
\end{displaymath}
It may happen that $\mathcal{F}_k$ is empty, which simply means that no
symplectic group contains elements of $\mathcal{G}$ conjugate to
$R_k$. Assume now that $\mathcal{F}_k$ is nonempty.
\paragraph{Step 3:}
The centraliser $b_k$ acts naturally as a permutation group on
$\mathcal{F}_k$. The final step is to determine a set of representatives
$f_{k 1}, f_{k 2}, \ldots$ for the orbits of $b_k$ in this action.

The pairs
\begin{displaymath}
  (f_{1 1}, R_1), (f_{1 2}, R_1), \ldots, (f_{2 1}, R_2), (f_{2 2}, R_2), \ldots
\end{displaymath}
so constructed form an alternative set of representatives for the orbits
under the action of $\mathcal{G}$ on $\mathcal{P}$, and thus give a new
way of determining the conjugacy classes in the symplectic group.

\section{Semisimple elements}

In order to avoid exceptional cases, we assume throughout that
\begin{equation}
  \charc F \neq 2.
\end{equation}
No further restriction is imposed for the present.

\medskip

The first task (Step 2 of \S 1) is as follows: given a nonsingular,
even-dimensional linear transformation over the field $F$, it is
required to determine the nonsingular alternating bilinear forms that it
leaves invariant.

In matrix terms, we are given $X \in \gl{2m}{F}$ and are required to
determine those $A \in \gl{2m}{F}$ such that
\begin{equation}\label{2}
  A = -A', \quad A = XAX',
\end{equation}
where $'$ denotes transpose. Notice that these conditions are equivalent
to

(i) the form $f_A$ given by $f_A(u, v) = uAv'$ lies in $\mathcal{F}$,
and

(ii) $X$ leaves $f_A$ invariant, so that $(f_A, X) \in \mathcal{P}$.

\medskip

The second task (Step 3 of \S 1) arises when the set of $A$ in \eqref{2}
is nonempty. The centraliser of $X$ in $\gl{2m}{F}$ acts on this set by
congruence:
\begin{equation}\label{3}
  A \mapsto YAY' \text{ for } Y \text{ such that } Y^{-1}XY = X,
\end{equation}
and it is required to determine a set of representatives
\begin{equation}\label{4}
  A_1, A_2, \ldots
\end{equation}
for the orbits. It is tacitly assumed from now on that $A$ and $X$ are
nonsingular matrices satisfying \eqref{2}.

\begin{lemma}\label{lem:1}
  $X$ is similar to $X^{-1}$.
\end{lemma}

\begin{proof}
  By \eqref{2}, $A^{-1}X^{-1}A = X'$, so that $X^{-1}$ is similar to
  $X'$ and hence to $X$.
\end{proof}

\begin{notation}
  If $f(t)$ is a monic polynomial with $f(0) \neq 0$ then $f^-(t)$
  denotes the monic polynomial whose roots are the reciprocals of those
  of $f(t)$.  Let $c_Y(t)$ denote the characteristic polynomial of a
  square matrix $Y$.
\end{notation}

\begin{defn}
  An \emph{elementary divisor} of a square matrix $Y$ is a divisor of
  the minimal polynomial of $Y$ of the form $f(t) = g(t)^\lambda$, where
  $g(t)$ is monic and irreducible, which is related to the rational
  canonical form of $Y$.

\end{defn}

Later we shall assume that $Y$ is semisimple.
In this case, irreducible factors of the minimal polynomial of $Y$ occur
with multiplicity 1.

\begin{cor}
  If $f(t)$ is an elementary divisor of $X$, then $f^-(t)$ is an
  elementary divisor of the same multiplicity.
\end{cor}

Suppose that $X$ has block diagonal form, and $A$ has corresponding
block matrix form:
\begin{equation}\label{5}
  X = \left( \begin{array}{ccc}
      X_1 & 0 & \cdots \\
      0 & X_2 & \\
      \vdots & & \ddots \end{array} \right),
  \quad
  A = \left( \begin{array}{ccc}
      A_{11} & A_{12} & \cdots \\
      A_{21} & A_{22} & \\
      \vdots & & \ddots \end{array} \right).
\end{equation}

Then, by \eqref{2},
\begin{equation}\label{6}
  X_i A_{ij} X_j' = A_{ij} = -A'_{ji}  \text{ for all } i, j.
\end{equation}

Hence $A_{ij} X_j' = X_i^{-1}A_{ij}$ and so, more generally,
\begin{equation}\label{7}
  A_{ij}f(X_j)' = f(X_i^{-1})A_{ij}
\end{equation}
for any polynomial $f(t)$.
\begin{notation}
Let $c_Y(t)$ denote the characteristic polynomial of the square matrix $Y$.
\end{notation}

\begin{lemma}\label{lem:2}
  If
  \begin{equation}\label{8}
    (c_{X_i^{-1}}(t), c_{X_j}(t)) = 1,
  \end{equation}
  then $A_{ij} = 0$.
\end{lemma}

\begin{proof}
  Taking $f(t) = c_{X_i^{-1}}(t)$ in \eqref{7}, we get $A_{ij}
  c_{X_i^{-1}}(X_j)' = 0$. However, in view of \eqref{8},
  $c_{X_i^{-1}}(X_j)$ is nonsingular, whence $A_{ij} = 0$.
\end{proof}

Elementary divisors $f_1(t)$, $f_2(t)$ of $X$ are powers of irreducible
monic polynomials $g_1(t)$, $g_2(t)$. We say that $f_1(t)$ and $f_2(t)$
are \emph{related} if $g_2(t) = g_1(t)$ or $g_1^-(t)$.

By the theory of elementary divisors, we may choose the blocks $X_i$ in
\eqref{5} in such a way that elementary divisors $f_1(t)$, $f_2(t)$ of
$X$ are elementary divisors of the same $X_i$ if, and only if, they are
related. With such a choice of the $X_i$, Lemma~\ref{lem:2} shows that
$A$ has corresponding block diagonal form
\begin{displaymath}
  \left( \begin{array}{ccc}
      A_{11} & 0 & \cdots \\
      0 & A_{22} & \\
      \vdots & & \ddots \end{array} \right).
\end{displaymath}
In this way the original problem for $X$ is reduced to the same problem
for the individual blocks $X_i$. We may therefore assume:

\begin{assump}\label{assump}
  There exists a monic irreducible polynomial $g(t) \neq t$ such that
  every elementary divisor of $X$ is a power of $g(t)$ or $g^-(t)$.
\end{assump}

\paragraph{Case 1:} $\mathbf{g(t) \neq g^-(t)}$.
We may assume in \eqref{5} that
\begin{displaymath}
  X = \left( \begin{array}{cc} X_1 & 0 \\ 0 & X_2 \end{array}
  \right),
\end{displaymath}
where $c_{X_1}(t)$, $c_{X_2}(t)$ are powers of $g(t)$, $g^-(t)$
respectively. By Lemma~\ref{lem:1}, $X_2$ is similar to $X_1^{-1}$. We
may therefore assume further that
\begin{equation}\label{9}
  X = \left( \begin{array}{cc}
      X_1 & 0 \\
      0 & (X_1^{-1})' \end{array} \right), \quad
  A = \left( \begin{array}{cc}
      A_{11} & A_{12} \\
      -A_{12}' & A_{22} \end{array} \right).
\end{equation}

By Lemma~\ref{lem:2}, $A_{11} = A_{22} = 0$. Also, by \eqref{6},
$X_1A_{12}X_1^{-1} = A_{12}$, i.e. $X_1$ commutes with $A_{12}$.

Now let
\begin{equation}\label{10}
  Y = \left( \begin{array}{cc}
      A_{12} & 0 \\
      0 & I_m \end{array} \right), \quad
  J = \left( \begin{array}{cc}
      0 & I_m \\
      -I_m & 0 \end{array} \right),
\end{equation}
where $I_m$ is the $m \times m$ unit matrix, and $m = \mathrm{deg} \,
c_{X_1}(t)$. Then
\begin{displaymath}
  Y^{-1}XY = X, \quad YJY' = A,
\end{displaymath}
showing that, with $X$ as in \eqref{9}, there is just one orbit under
the action \eqref{3}, represented by the matrix $J$ in
\eqref{10}. Expressed differently, the conjugacy class of $X$ in
$\gl{2m}{F}$ intersects each symplectic subgroup in a single conjugacy
class of the latter.

\bigskip

\paragraph{Case 2:} $\mathbf{g(t) = g^-(t)}$.

In general, the elementary divisors of $X$ may be arbitrary powers of
$g(t)$ with arbitrary multiplicities. We now impose the condition that
$X$ be semisimple:

\begin{assump}
  $X\in\gl{2m}{F}$ has the single irreducible elementary divisor
  $g(t)\ne t$ with multiplicity $n$.
\end{assump}

We may therefore assume that
\begin{equation}\label{11}
  X = \mathrm{diag}(\underset{n}{\underbrace{R, \ldots, R}}),
\end{equation}
where
\begin{equation}\label{12}
  c_R(t) = g(t).
\end{equation}

Since $c_R(t)$ is irreducible, the matrices
\begin{displaymath}
  f(R) \quad (f(t) \in F[t])
\end{displaymath}
form a field
\begin{displaymath}
  K \cong F[t]/g(t)F[t]
\end{displaymath}
and every matrix that commutes with $R$ is in $K$. It follows that the
centralizer of $X$ in $\gl{2m}{F}$ consists of the nonsingular $n \times
n$ block matrices
\begin{equation}\label{13}
  B = (f_{ij}(R))_{i,j = 1, \ldots, n},
\end{equation}
for polynomials $f_{ij}(t) \in F(t)$.  These matrices form a group that
we may identify with $\gl{n}{K}$.

If $\mathrm{deg} \, g(t) = 1$, then $g(t) = t \pm 1$ (since $g(t) =
g^-(t)$), the matrix $R$ is a $1 \times 1$ matrix $(\pm 1)$ and $X = \pm
I_{2m}$. The centralizer of $X$ is $\gl{2m}{F}$ and the nonsingular $2m
\times 2m$ skew-symmetric matrices form a single orbit under its
action. We assume from now on that $\mathrm{deg} \, g(t) \geq 2$.

Let
\begin{equation}\label{14}
  A = (A_{ij})_{i,j = 1, \ldots, n}
\end{equation}
be the block form of $A$ corresponding to \eqref{11}. The equation $A =
XAX'$ in \eqref{2} is then equivalent to the set of equations
\begin{equation}\label{15}
  RA_{ij}R' = A_{ij}.
\end{equation}
Now, since $g(t) = g^-(t)$, $R$ is similar to $R^{-1}$ and so
\begin{equation}\label{16}
  R' = T^{-1}R^{-1}T
\end{equation}
for some $T \in \gl{2m/n}{F}$. Thus, we may rewrite \eqref{15} as
\begin{displaymath}
  R(A_{ij}T^{-1}) = (A_{ij}T^{-1})R,
\end{displaymath}
whence $A$ has the form
\begin{equation}\label{17}
  A = (f_{ij}(R)T).
\end{equation}
We write this equation as
\begin{equation}\label{18}
  A = B{\mathcal T}\quad
  \text{where $B=(f_{ij}(R))$ and }{\mathcal T}
  =\mathrm{diag}(\underset{n}{\underbrace{T, \ldots, T}}).
\end{equation}

Now, the mapping $K \rightarrow K$ defined by
\begin{displaymath}
  \phi(R) \mapsto \phi(R^{-1}) \quad (\phi(t) \in F[t])
\end{displaymath}
is a field automorphism of $K$ of order $2$, since $R\ne R^{-1}$. For a
matrix
\begin{displaymath}
  Y = (\phi_{ij}(R)) \in \gl{n}{K},
\end{displaymath}
we define
\begin{displaymath}
  Y^{\ast} = (\phi_{ij}(R^{-1}))^{\mathrm{tr}},
\end{displaymath}
where $\mathrm{tr}$ denotes transpose qua $n \times n$ matrix over $K$
and \emph{not} qua $2m \times 2m$ matrix over~$F$,
i.e. $Y^*=(\phi_{ji}(R^{-1}))$.  Accordingly, $Y$ is called
\emph{Hermitian} if $Y^\ast = Y$ and $Y_1, Y_2$ are said to be
\emph{$\ast$-congruent} if $Y_2 = C Y_1 C^\ast$ for some $C \in
\gl{n}{K}$.

The following two results are proved by routine calculations:
\begin{lemma}
  \begin{enumerate}

  \item[(i)] If $A=B{\mathcal T}$ as in~\eqref{18} and $Y \in
    \gl{n}{K}$, then $YAY'= YBY^\ast{\mathcal T}$.

  \item[(ii)] If $A=B{\mathcal T}$ as in~\eqref{18} and $T$ is
    skew-symmetric, then $A$ is skew-symmetric if, and only if, $B$ is
    Hermitian.
  \end{enumerate}
\end{lemma}

\begin{proof}
  \noindent {\emph{(i)}} We may write $Y$ as a block matrix
  $(\phi_{ij}(R))$ for some $\phi_{ij}(t) \in F[t]$. Then
  \begin{displaymath}
    \begin{array}{rl}
      YAY' & =  (\phi_{ij}(R))(f_{ij}(R)T)(\phi_{ij}(R))' \\& =
      (\sum_{\lambda, \mu} \phi_{i \lambda}(R) f_{\lambda \mu}(R)T \phi_{j
        \mu}(R')) \\ & =
      (\sum_{\lambda,\mu} \phi_{i \lambda}(R) f_{\lambda \mu}(R) \phi_{j
        \mu}(R^{-1})T), \\
      & = YBY^*{\mathcal T}\end{array}
  \end{displaymath} by \eqref{16}.

  \noindent {\emph{(ii)}} By \eqref{18}, $A'={\mathcal T}'B'$, and since
  $T$ is skew-symmetric we have
  \begin{displaymath}
    \begin{array}{rll}
      -A' & = (-T'f_{ji}(R'))
      = (Tf_{ji}(R)') \quad \quad & \text{ (as $T' = -T$)}\\
      & = (f_{ji}(R^{-1})T) \quad \quad & \text{ (by \eqref{16}).}
    \end{array}
  \end{displaymath}

  So $A = -A'$ if, and only if, $f_{ij}(R)T = f_{ji}(R^{-1})T$ for all
  $i, j$. Since $T$ is invertible, this holds if, and only if,
  \begin{displaymath}
    B = (f_{ij}(R))  = (f_{ji}(R^{-1}))= B^\ast.
  \end{displaymath}
\end{proof}

Thus, \emph{provided that $T$ can be chosen skew-symmetric}, our
conjugacy class problem in the present case reduces to a classification
problem for Hermitian forms over the extension $K$ of $F$. Since $T$ can
obviously be replaced in \eqref{17} by $h(R)T$, where $h(R)$ is any
nonzero (and hence nonsingular) element of $K$, the following result
shows that such a choice of $T$ is always possible.

\begin{lemma}\label{lem:3}
  If $g(t) \neq t \pm 1$, then there exists a nonzero element $h(R)$ of
  $K$ such that $h(R)T$ is skew-symmetric.
\end{lemma}

\begin{proof}
  \eqref{16} can be written $RTR' = T$. Transposing, we get $RT'R' =
  T'$, whence
  \begin{equation}\label{19}
    R' = (T')^{-1}R^{-1}(T').
  \end{equation}
  Comparing with \eqref{16}, we deduce that $T'T^{-1}$ commutes with
  $R$, whence
  \begin{displaymath}
    T' = f(R)T
  \end{displaymath}
  for some $f(R) \in K$.

  Now, if both $RT$ are $T$ were symmetric, we would have
  \begin{displaymath}
    RT = (RT)' = T'R' = TR' = R^{-1}T
  \end{displaymath}
  by \eqref{16}.  But this implies that $R = R^{-1}$ and so $R^2 = I$,
  contrary to the assumption that $g(t) \neq t \pm 1$.

  It follows that at least one of $T$ and $RT$ --- let us say $T$ itself
  --- is \emph{not} symmetric. But then
  \begin{displaymath}
    T - T' = (1-f(R))T
  \end{displaymath}
  is nonzero and skew-symmetric, as required.
\end{proof}

\section{Summary}

We wish to determine a complete, irredundant set of conjugacy class
representatives for the semisimple elements of the symplectic groups
$\spl{2m}{F}$, where $F$ is an arbitrary field of characteristic not
$2$. To do so, it suffices to consider the elements whose characteristic
polynomial is divisible only by powers of $g(t)$ and $g^-(t)$, for some
irreducible $g(t) \in F[t]$.  We first choose a set $R_1, R_2, \ldots,
R_k$ of representatives of conjugacy classes of such elements in
$\gl{2m}{F}$, and discard any such $R_i$ that do not preserve a
symplectic form.

In Case 1 of Section~2, $g(t) \neq g^-(t)$. Then the
$\gl{2m}{F}$-conjugacy class of $R_i$ meets $\spl{2m}{F}$ in a unique
conjugacy class.

In Case 2, $g(t) = g^-(t)$. The only $R_i$ for which $g(t)$ has degree
$1$ are $\pm I_{2m}$.  Let $R_i = X$ be as in \eqref{11}, where $R$ has
characteristic polynomial $g(t)$ of degree greater than $1$, and let $K$
denote the field isomorphic to the set of all polynomials in $R$.  Then
each congruence class of Hermitian forms on $K^{2m/n}$ corresponds to an
$\spl{2m}{F}$-conjugacy class of matrices that are similar to $R_i$. In
particular, if $F$ is finite then there is only one such class, and so
once again the $\gl{2m}{F}$-conjugacy class of $R_i$ meets $\spl{2m}{F}$
in a unique conjugacy class.

\end{document}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


text:
Yvonne Craig Embraces Her Batgirl Legacy In A Recovered Interview (EXCLUSIVE)
By Ed Gross
Less than a year before her passing in 2015, actress Yvonne Craig was chatting with me about the enduring nature of the 1960s Batman series that starred Adam West in the title role, Burt Ward as his sidekick, Robin; and Yvonne herself in the dual role of Barbara Gordon and Batgirl. The complete series had been issued on Blu-ray at the time, which explained the excitement of the moment, but not the fact that people still loved that show nearly 50 years after its debut.
"Part of it is that it is that it's a sign of our times," she said. "Everyone would like to go back to the time of 'Flower Power.' You know, rather than blowing people up in all these different places like they are in the world, people are looking for an escape. And this is not only an escape, but it's stilly and fun and filled with pretty colors. That certainly helped to interest the kids, because they did like the bright colors and all of that camera work, and there was something in it for their parents. The adults weren't just sitting there saying, 'Oh my God, another Sesame Street!"
(Photo Credit: MGM)
Yvonne was born on May 16, 1937 in Taylorsville, Illinois, though she was raised in Columbus, Ohio. The family moved to Dallas, Texas in 1951. Not long after, her interest in ballet paid off when she was discovered by Russian-born ballerina and instructor Alexandra Danilova, and joined the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. She remained there until 1957 (believing it actually helped her in the Batgirl action sequences years later) when she moved to Los Angeles with the desire to continue dancing, but finding herself cast, instead, in films and on television.
And she was everywhere at the time. Co-starring with Elvis Presley in films like It Happened at the World's Fair and Kissin' Cousins, the James Coburn spy film In Like Flint, and the sci-fi cult film Mars Needs Women. And then there were the TV guest appearances, ranging from Bob Denver's The Many Lives of Dobbie Gillis, to Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Big Valley, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., McHale's Navy, The Ghost & Mrs. Muir, and the list goes on. But by 1967, she was looking for a regular series, and eventually found it in Batman.
Becoming Batgirl
"I had been doing a lot of guest appearances," she related, "and people do not attach a name to face when you see guest stars. So I said to my agent that we really needed to get a series where they see the same person with the same name every week and, hopefully, connect with. I had done a couple of pilots that didn't go, but then they called me and said they were thinking of adding a girl to Batman. I had never seen the show, even though everyone was crazy about it. Even when I was shooting Batman, I had a black and white TV. I'm a book reader and not much of a TV watcher, so I just didn't pay attention. The producer, William Dozier, said, 'I'm sure you've seen our show,' and I said, 'Actually, I haven't, but if I get the part I'll spend the summer watching re-runs so I know how I'll fit into the scheme of things.'"
Dozier must have been impressed, because she was offered the job, although she was first required to shoot a presentation for the ABC network executives. "They decided they wanted to go with someone who would appeal to the over-40s males — hence the spray-on costume — and prepubescent females," Yvonne laughs. "In those days, they didn't do all these demographic studies, they just knew that they were missing part of the audience. So we did this seven-minute presentation and it was a quick thing. Barbara Gordon is a librarian, she sees the Moth Men at the table in the library, hears something's going on, takes off her skirt and turns it into a cape, and she takes off her hat and turns it into a cowl, and that was that. Then we didn't hear right away if they wanted to do it or not."
Her agent eventually called saying that they wanted her to fly to Chicago for the NAPTE convention, which would allow independent television stations to decide whether or not they would pick up the show with her added to it. Although reluctant to do so without a firm commitment, she nonetheless agreed to go. On the way to the venue, she was told that she had the job, although during ceremonies to introduce stars of upcoming TV shows, there was almost a mix-up.
"I almost embarrassed myself," she smiled, "because I had been told to wait for my cue and then walk out on stage. When they said That Girl, I thought they had said Batgirl and someone grabbed me just before I walked out of the wings, while Marlo Thomas walked out for her show. It would have been horrible… although she's a nice lady, so it probably wouldn't have been that bad."
So Yvonne found herself cast as Barbara Gordon, who was the daughter of Commissioner Gordon, and Batgirl, who mysteriously arrives on the scene (riding her oh-so-cool Batcycle) to fight alongside Batman and Robin. The series itself ran from 1966-68, and she was a part of it for the final year — and had a great time.
"It was a wonderful job that gave me a place to go," Yvonne enthused. "And it paid me admirably. It did for me what I wanted it to do, which I realized when a little girl walked up to me one day in the supermarket and said, 'I know who you really are. You're really Barbara Gordon!' Just wonderful! I just really couldn't believe that every morning I got to get up and go to work with people I would have never worked with otherwise. I don't do musicals, but Ethel Merman was on our show. And even though he said he wasn't retired, Milton Berle did not have a show going on at the time and he was just a ton of fun. He just loved to gossip — not bad gossip, he just loved show business gossip, because it felt like he was keeping up."
Batmania
She also enjoyed the show's elaborate fight scenes, which were a true highlight of each episode with kicks and punches being followed by bold captions like "Bam!" or "Zap!" Adding to the fun is the fact that at the time, she was a motorcycle rider, so was able to ride Batgirl's bike without any problem or the need of a stunt person, though the producers were reluctant to allow her to really participate in the fight scenes at first.
Explained Yvonne, "I said to them, 'Stop and think about this logically. It's all choreography. It's all done on a count, and if anybody is off the count, you hold up your hand and say stop. So I'm not going to get hit, because they don't punch girls; they're not trying to hit you in the face. I'm doing all the work and spinning away from them so they can't catch me.' I told them I understood they didn't want to take a chance with Adam or Burt, because you really don't want them to have broken noses and black eyes, but it was easy for me. So what happened was they had this stunt girl and she was set for a while. She would look at me and say, 'You walk differently than anyone I've ever seen,' which I thought was because I'd been a dancer.' In any case, she went off to double for Julie Andrews in a movie, but by that point they felt comfortable with me doing my own stunts."
Although Yvonne had described the costume earlier as being "sprayed on", she didn't really have any problems with it, particularly because it was far more comfortable than it looked. "Being a ballet dancer," she said, "you're in leotards all the time, so it was just like another costume — a well-made costume. Pat Barto had designed this costume, but she didn't cut the top on the bias, and I'm bosomy. Someone said to her, 'One of the reasons — maybe two of the reasons — we hired Yvonne are being smushed by this costume.' So what Pat did was cut it on the bias and it became very comfortable. It was a stretch fabric, and as the series wore on, you didn't want to sit down in it, because superheroines do not have baggy knees, and you knew if you sat down in it for too long, the knees were going to get baggy and you'd have to go for alterations to have them fixed. It also had a zipper all the way up the back, so it was an easy in and out; it wasn't tight. I wasn't uncomfortable at all."
From the vantage point of 2018, it's a little difficult to realize just how big the series was at its height. One of the expressions regarding pop culture in the 1960s is that it was the time of the "Three Bs" — Beatles, Bond, and Batman. For their part, Adam and Burt had been a part of the show before, during and after the phenomenon, whereas Yvonne came in after it had already crested, so the end wasn't that big a shock to her.
"It was very matter of fact," she pointed out. "I had been on it for one season and it was terrific, and I liked doing the work, but the truth was we did not know that 45 or 50 years later people would still be talking about it. It was a wonderful job, but nobody looked ahead and said, 'Oh, this is going to be iconic.' I would think that the ending was a problem for Burt, beause he had not been an actor prior to that, but then you get in this hit series and you're dumped out of it. Where do you go? Adam had a rough time, I think, because of his speech cadence. It's so unique that they hired him because of that. You know, the whole, 'Hello, Citizens' kind of thing. But when he started reading for other things, they thought he was playing Batman, but that's who he is and how he talks. So it hung him up for a while, because they couldn't erase the sound of Batman, which was his own cadence. That finally wore off and he was hired exactly because of it. But, again, for me, I enjoyed every minute of it, and when it was over I thought it was over for good."
Onward to The Final Frontier
Once Batman had finished its run, Yvonne found herself doing guest starring appearances again on different TV shows, with occasional roles in films. One of the shows she appeared on was the original Star Trek —in the third season episode "Whom Gods Destroy" — as a green-skinned Orion slave girl named Marta. The character she loved, working with series star William Shatner? Not so much.
"He was an a– through the whole thing, though he didn't start that way," she detailed. "He invited me to his dressing room to have lunch — I think on the first day — and I thought, 'OK, he wants to go over lines, because he doesn't really know me.' But it was the strangest lunch I ever had. We didn't talk. We actually ate lunch, though he did tell me he raised Doberman Pinchers and that he had a red one. Okaaaaaay. Then, when we got down to shooting, he would say, 'Remember…', and he's giving me all this background about my character and telling me where he wants me to stand so that his best side is showing. I mean, it was just horrible and nobody liked him. He just had no social skills whatsoever, and so long as I was painted green, he was trying to grab me behind the sets."
She believed that his actions were about both ego and a desire to connect with her on a romantic level. "But it's just all about him," sighed Yvonne. "We had a scene where I was supposed to stab him and we had a rubber knife, but he insisted that he likes the way the wooden knife looks, so we had to use the rubber knife in one of the shots and not the others. Now we're looking at a 12-inch screen at the time, so who nows if it's wooden or rubber? Plus, rubber is safe and wooden is not. Needless to say, he cuts his hand on the knife and then he went beserko. Everybody had to rush to him, they're yelling, 'Get him a brandy' or something. I said, 'I hope you're going to pour it on the wound that's bleeding, otherwise forget about it.' But, please. What a candy a–!"
More fun, she says, were her interactions with Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock), and particularly his "droll" sense of humor. "The first time I went into makeup, it was 5:30 in the morning and you're just out of it," she recalled. "I had my eyes closed and they were putting on my makeup. When I got home I realized, 'My God, they shaved my eyebrows.' They just left little tufts so it looked like something landed on my face. The next day I go in and I say, 'They shaved my eyebrows; they could have just as easily covered them with mortician's wax.' I'm just furious and I'm saying, 'If my eyebrows don't grow back, I swear to God I will sue them!' So then Leonard said, 'Yvonne, I couldn't help but overhear what you were saying. I just wanted to say when I started the show' — because they did shave his eyebrows — 'I went to a dermatologist,' and he assured me that anyone who can grow a beard can grow their eyebrows back.' And with that he turned and left. So I'm standing there saying, 'Grow a beard?' He was so funny. Just a great sense of humor."
Also wonderfully humorous was a party she had gone to for Star Trek's 25th anniversary, where she saw someone on the dance floor who looked exactly like her "Whom Gods Destroy" character of Marta. Said Yvonne, "I told them I really wanted to go down there and meet her but they said I shouldn't, because I would get mobbed. But I went anyway and met her, only to discover that 'she' was a he. He was a hairdresser and he'd done a beautiful job. The wig was just there, and he had made the costume. He was just gorgeous and graceful."
Yvonne worked for a number of more years, but when the parts dried up, she made the shift into real estate, becoming a successful broker. She also provided her voice to the character "Grandma" for the animated series Olivia, and wrote a personal memoir, From Ballet to the Batcave and Beyond. Sadly, she passed away on Aug. 17, 2015 from metastatic breast cancer that had spread to her liver.
In our brief conversation, one thing that she made clear is that — seemingly sprayed-on costume and grabby starship captain notwithstanding — she was particularly proud of her contributions to the legacies of both Batman and Star Trek, though she also viewed it pretty pragmatically.
"I remember being ushered down from wherever I was to sign autographs at one of these conventions," Yvonne recalled. "A girl was there who was kind of squirrelry. I said, 'There are so many strange people here,' and she said, 'We're all strange, because we're all misfits and the only time we feel really connected is when we're at these conventions, because there are so many of us that are misfits.' I thought that was very observant of her, and there is truth to it, because some of them are absolutely off-the-wall and brilliant. They're Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory.
"My ex-roommate came to town," she added, "and asked me, 'Why are these people even interested in you after all these years?' I said, 'Through no fault of my own.' There are cult followings not only with Batman and Star Trek, but with really bad sci-fi. I did a movie called Mars Needs Women, and that's on the list of one of the worst things anyone has ever seen. And then, you know, Elvis had a huge following despite those movies. So it has nothing to do with choices I made. They just said, 'Would you like to work?' and I said, 'Yes.'"
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text:
Research Groups in The School of Allied Health
POPULATION HEALTH:
The vision of the Long Term Conditions (LTC) research group is to create and translate evidence based knowledge to optimise the management of long term conditions. We aim to build on the individual and collaborative successes of this research group through a number of initiatives focusing on the following areas:
Continuing to build and enhance national and international partnerships
Build capacity across early and mid-career researchers
Increase impact through engagement in local, national and international knowledge exchange and dissemination activities.
Focus – Our research focus is on physical and mental health conditions across the lifespan that are chronic in nature/affect people in the long term. We take a biopsychosocial approach to rehabilitation of people with these conditions.
Reach - Our research includes cross cutting themes relating to physical and mental health including (but not limited to) – depression, anxiety, mood, exercise and physical activity, health behaviour change, technology for measurement and to promote health, co-morbidities, multi-morbidity, sleep, interventions to promote movement and well-being including walking and dance.
Methodologies include – systematic review, meta-regression, randomised trials, intervention studies, correlational analysis, validation and measurement and a range of qualitative methodologies including narrative analysis, phenomenology, ethnography and grounded theory.
This research group is working towards better addressing the burden of musculoskeletal disorders (MSD's) on individuals, health services and society. MSD is an umbrella terms for a broad range of conditions including low back pain and arthritis. Research activity within the group coalesces around MSD's and a shared commitment to understanding the complex interplay of biological and psychosocial factors in MSD's. Key thematic areas of research we are engaged in include: evaluating and optimizing therapy interventions, exploring psychosocial aspects of MSDs (for example sleep), injury surveillance and ultrasound imaging.
Our research group has members from across the University of Limerick campus and international collaborators spanning multiple disciplines including physiotherapy, ergonomics, economics, occupational therapy, dance, sports science, statistics, medicine and surgery. We have worked in partnership with national and international organizations of, and for, people with MSD's. The research group has experience of a broad range of methods and qualitative and quantitative approaches to research including particular expertise in: systematic reviews and evaluating interventions.
Ongoing research includes:
Analysis of the therapeutic alliance between clinicians and clients with MSD's
Examining exercise adherence in physiotherapy
Stakeholder analysis of vocational rehabilitation for people with MSD's
Education interventions for injury prevention in athletes
The group has had significant reach in the dissemination of their research to healthcare, health policy and the general public. Research outputs from the group have had a direct impact on public health through reduced hospital waiting lists, surgeries and medications and overall better outcomes for patients.
Acquired Neurological Conditions Integrated Research
We are a multidisciplinary team of researchers with a focus on engaging with stakeholders to co-design and conduct research that enables people with acquired neurological conditions to live well in their communities. Researchers from Occupational therapy,Physiotherapy and Speech and Language Therapy research conditions such as Parkinsons Disease, Paediatric Neurological Conditions, Motor Neuron Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Stroke and Traumatic Brain Injury.
We aim to conduct integrated research across sectors and professions that underpins the evidence base for related health policy and directly impacts on service provision for people with a range of neurological conditions.
Our research will inform Health Policy at National and International Level that calls for Integrated Services and Patient centered care. In the Irish context the National Neuro-Rehab strategy and the Primary Care Strategy will be our initial focus as will transitions from tertiary to primary care and community integration. In the international context the WHO Rehabilitation 2020 initiative along with international best practice for management of neurological conditions and Community based rehabilitation will guide our strategic goals. We will continue to harness the relationships with our current international collaborators, while also expanding the breadth and strength of our international relationships.
In line with the call for interdisciplinary research that has stakeholder involvement and translation to practice at its core from the outset our vision will be to; build partnerships with clinicians, patients, service providers and policy makers; enable those with all levels of research expertise to participate in neurological rehabilitation research ; showcase research in the School of Allied Health at UL using a range of media.
Speech, Language and Communication Needs
Approximately 7-10% of children and young people (C&YP) have speech, language and communication needs (SLCN). These difficulties can have a significant impact on a child's social, emotional, academic and vocational outcomes. A small but growing evidence-base points to the value of appropriate supports and interventions. Particular gaps relate to the impact of interventions for language and communication on primary and secondary outcomes such as participation; and how to engage effective inter-professional work to support children with SLCN. The SLCN @UL research group is a multi-disciplinary group of researchers and practitioners who aim to achieve better outcomes for CY&P with these needs. Our group includes speech and language therapists, educators and educational psychologists with different levels of research expertise from postgraduate student to professorial level. We are interested in speech and language therapy and school-based collaboration to support children and young people with SLCN and working in collaboration with educators and parents. The researchers in the SLCN group have clinical and practice experience in their fields. Group members have conducted research on assessment, profiling, and intervention development for SLCN and worked with multiple stakeholders to develop guidance for best practice in service delivery for children with SLCN.
Our aims include:
Exploring service delivery models and optimal ways to develop language and communication skills to support participation in school
Investigating peer-mediated interventions to support social communication
Developing effective approaches to assessment and intervention for speech, language and communication difficulties
Supporting co-practice between SLTs and teachers including those in training
Working at a national and international level to influence policy and practice in relation to children and young people with speech, language and communication needs.
Our work includes:
We are part of a national DLD implementation group, which is engaging policy-makers and key stakeholders in implementing the findings from our involvement in the IASLT DLD position statement and include a founder member of the Autism SIG in UL. In partnership with the NCSE (National Council for Special Education) and formerly NBSS (National Behaviour Support Service), we have implemented and evaluated speech and language therapy supports and programmes and worked to build capacity to support SLCN in schools. We are currently leading a large NCSE funded tender project developing collaborative inter-professional services in secondary and primary schools To further effective co-practice, we are conducting research on inter-professional education involving students of education and the health professions. We are members of the HIST_HRI research cluster at UL, within which our research on implementation of SLT service delivery models in schools is a demonstrator project.
Through an EU funded COST action (IS1406) we worked to develop understanding of the link between theory and practice relating to intervention for those with language disorders across Europe, and we are continuing this work through the ECHO network.We are also commencing a study on the use of a communication observation tool in Irish classrooms and we have a PhD candidate exploring the development of effective peer-mediated interventions for children with autism
HEALTH SERVICES RESEARCH:
Social Science Informed Analysis of Allied Health Practice
Our research uses social science theories and methodologies to address contemporary healthcare practice, questions, debates and dilemmas. As healthcare does not occur in a vacuum but is influenced by structural, historical and contextual factors we explore the social, cultural and scientific contexts within which the allied health professions developed and which continue to exert an influence on practice. Social science informed research interrogates the assumptions, practices and power of health professions and is key to developing questioning practitioners who can bring critical perspectives to their practice.
Thematic areas of focus within the group include: the foundational relationships between allied health professionals and their enduring legacy, history of the use of occupation as therapy from the mid-19th Century onwards, service users experiences of occupational therapy and the role of gender in occupational and vocational experiences.
Research conducted within the group is informed by a range of traditions and is exclusively qualitative. Group members have specific expertise in oral history methods, historical documentary analysis, ethnography, phenomenology and qualitative synthesis.
Ongoing projects include:
Continuities and discontinuities: soldiers' and therapists' experiences of World War 1 occupational therapy and physiotherapy.
An exploration of women academics' retirement experiences.
Women's perspectives of occupational engagement in a secure forensic mental health unit in Ireland.
Looking back, thinking forward: the history of occupational therapy in Ireland.
History of the Three Counties Asylum [UK}, 1860-1999.
Our research group includes members from the University of Limerick and national and international collaborators spanning disciplines including history, anthropology and psychiatry. Group outputs in 2017 include one book, one book chapter and six papers (three in press).
Health Services Delivery and Education
Our research group has 2 primary interests; innovative health education (IHE) and collaborative health research (CHR).
The focus of the IHE researchers is on inter professional education, practice education and continuing professional development. The particular issues and challenges we aim to address include:
Clinical Performance assessment
Models of student placement
Simulated practice learning
Critical thinking in clinical practice
Healthcare team challenge
Novel educators
The focus of the CHR researchers is primarily concerned with research conducted with and about healthcare partners. Healthcare partners include service users and service providers. The particular issues and challenges we aim to address include:
Gathering collective patient evidence for patient-informed healthcare
Inclusive research approaches including patient-oriented research, participatory research and public-patient involvement
Issues which impact on service delivery
Investigating interventions and related processes from multiple perspectives
Treatment benefit and burden: promotions minimally disruptive and maximally beneficial healthcare
Human rights in healthcare
Examining application of theoretical models such as evidence-based practice and patient centred care
Knowledge synthesis and translation
Practice evidence


Research: The first component of the initiative is in-depth research that addresses myriad questions about youth-oriented online hate speech, including: What is hate speech? How does it function online? How does it differ from cyberbullying or trolling? How does it impact youth and their communities? How can it be effectively mitigated and prevented?
Curriculum development: Building off that all-important final question, the second component is a collaborative effort to develop curricula and learning modules that will empower youth to react effectively to online hate while fostering more resilient and tolerant communities.
Stakeholder engagement: The third component involves the creation of a thematic advocacy network of experts, educators, practitioners, and ambassadors that will work together to counter and prevent hate speech.
The Berkman Klein Center welcomes collaborators from academia, government, industry, and beyond, including the general public.


text:
Research Themes Research Centres Subject Areas Collaboration Research degrees at NTU Research environment and governance Research Excellence Framework News and events Search our research Our Research from A - Z
Research at NTU
Groups and centres
Hospitality and European Film
Unit(s) of assessment: Communication, Cultural and Media Studies, Library and Information Management
School: School of Arts and Humanities
Events around the world ranging from climate change through war to ethnic cleansing have forced large numbers of people to leave home in search of a safer, better life. Europe has sometimes been welcoming but sometimes inhospitable. Even as it has removed some of its own internal borders, it has increasingly obstructed refugee flows. Patronising, objectifying, demonising and dehumanising representations of migrants and refugees have proliferated. We are urgently in need of images which remind us what a true hospitality might mean.
Addressing the Challenge
The project explored how film can be used to teach about hospitality in a European context. It developed a syllabus based on a rich and diverse range of European films, probing their capacity to challenge negative representations of migrants and refugees, to show migrants and refugees as subjects not objects, and to map contemporary practices of surveillance and bordering. The project began from the assumption that cinema has a particular capacity to track the relationship between bodies and spaces, to trace movements and obstacles to them, and to probe questions of visibility and invisibility, silencing and voice. As part of the project, a documentary film, The Sounds of Hospitality, about migrant musicians was made by Michel Gasco and Parisa Delshad. It can seen here.
The project is led by Professor Ana Manzanas from the University of Salamanca in Spain and brings together an international team of researchers from the universities of Graz (Austria), Maynooth (Ireland), Uppsala (Sweden), Valladolid (Spain) and the UNED (the Spanish equivalent of the OU). Professor Martin O'Shaughnessy leads Nottingham Trent's involvement.
The project produced a syllabus with 22 film analyses which can be accessed here. The syllabus will be made available in Spanish translation as a book. The project gave rise to outreach events or pedagogic presentations in Nottingham, Uppsala, Graz, Madrid and on-line. The Nottingham event brought together refugee support groups, teachers and the public and involved a public screening of Sharon Walia's The Movement. The project own documentary was screened in 2020 as part of Nottingham Refugee Week.
Martin O'Shaughnessy
Also in Groups and centres


A couple years ago, we received a Mr. Incredible costume along with some other hand-me-downs. Liliana tried it on once, but she was too big for it. Emmett wore it a few times, but outgrew it quickly as well. Then it sat in our dress up bin, largely untouched, for the bulk of the time we've had it... until recently. Edison pulled it out a few months ago and put it on. He became a big fan of the costume, although at that point he had never seen the movie. He would pair the costume with his green monster slippers and we'd call him the Increda-monster. He'd pair it with tap shoes and we'd call him the Increda-tapper. Today he was wearing the costume and didn't want to take it off when it was time to go to his Dr appointment. He simply added some red rain boots, informed me he was "all red," and got in the car. In the elevator at the doctor's office, a woman asked, "Are you Mr. Incredible?"
"No," Edison replied, "This is an Incredible costume." As if he thought she really believed him to be Mr. Incredible, and he needed to set the record straight so she wouldn't run off and tell people she had just met the real Mr. Incredible. She chuckled and I said, "Yes, it IS an incredible costume!"
Last week while I was helping the boys fold their laundry, Emmett sat down in a huff and started whining about how much he hated folding clothes. I told him he may as well get over it, since he'll have clothes that need folding throughout his life. After a few moments of grumpy contemplation, Emmett exclaimed, "I'm going to build a robot that folds clothes for me so I never have to fold laundry again!"
To which I responded, "If you come up with a robot that folds clothes, many people would buy it from you and you'd become a very rich person."
Emmett looked at me like I was slow in the head and grouchily said, "I'm not going to sell it! I'm going to use it to fold my laundry."
"I meant you could make more than one," I replied.
"Ok. I'll make two. One for me and one for Liliana," he said - still grumpy.
I hope he does figure out how to make one someday - not because I care about him making tons of money, but because I'd love one of those machines!


Summer may be one of the more enjoyable times of the year; however, it can be a really harsh time on your feet if you don't take proper care of them. Without proper foot care, you can find short walks to be difficult and painful. With all the sun and outside time your feet are going to get this summer, make sure you take good care of them.
The number one thing that you can do to protect your feet in the summertime is to put sunscreen on them. Be sure to put sunscreen on the tops of your feet, near your ankles, and be sure to apply it around your toenails as well.
Wearing sunscreen will prevent you from getting a painful sunburn on your feet when you spend a day outside. Sunscreen will also protect your cuticles and ensure that they don't dry out. When your cuticles dry out, the growth of your toe nails will be impacted.
Be sure to put sunscreen on before you go outside and reapply it every couple of hours throughout the day, especially if you are going barefoot or if your feet are exposed to the sun based on the shoes that you are wearing.
Lots of people take the opportunity in the summertime to show off their killer nail polish painting abilities and pedicures. However, when you put nail polish on your toe nails, you are preventing your toes from being able to properly breathe, grow at a healthy rate and get rid of chemical residue.
Take a break from nail polish this summer, even if it is only for one week each month. Taking a break from nail polish will help keep your nails healthy and it will help prevent discoloration on your nails.
If you feel like your feet are swelling up a little too much this summer, it is most likely because of all the salts in your diet. Salt is the most common reason food-related reasons that people's feet swell up. Keep your feet at the right size by reducing salt and processed foods in your diet. Also, be sure to get lots of water to stay hydrated. You'll want to be drinking a lot of water anyway because of the heat.
Heat and sun, as well as exposure to things such as sand and dirt, can really dry out your feet during the summertime. In order to protect your feet, you need to moisturize them. Right when you get out of the shower or path, you should apply moisturizer or oils to your feet. You should also apply moisturizer and oils to your feet before you go to bed; this will help keep your feet soft.
When you apply moisturizer, focus on your heels. The skin around your heels tends to be thicker than the rest of your foot and tends to get dry at a faster rate than the rest of the skin on your feet.


Climate change is upon us and the risks to our way of life are real. If we want our mokopuna to inherit a great city, we must cut our emissions. We have to make a significant difference within 10 years. If we cannot keep the world within 2 degrees of warming, the consequences would be dire.
We want to understand the appetite Wellingtonians have for Wellington City Council to move strongly towards becoming a zero carbon capital. We need to know if you see it as our role to do this, how fast we should do it, and if the blueprint we've laid out is aligned with your vision of the future?
You can share your thoughts about Te Atakura – First to Zero until 5pm Wednesday 10 May.


Keysight Technologies Inc. announced it will unveil the most comprehensive 5G New Radio (NR) signal creation and analysis software tools, designed to accelerate 5G product design development and validation, at Mobile World Congress 2018 in Barcelona.
Determine the utilization and condition of legacy and new test assets across the entire organization.
Media Event: Keysight will be also be holding a media-only event on Tuesday, February 27 at 4 PM at the Keysight stand.


John serves as the Clerk/Treasurer. He oversees elections, tax collections, the Utility District management, and many other Town functions.
Tammy serves as the Deputy Clerk/Treasurer on elections, tax collections, and other tasks. She also supports the work of the Building Inspector and works on many special projects.
Mark manages the plowing of roads, maintains the Town right-of-ways and Town owned equipment. Several other part-time staff members help Mark with plowing.


Since the launch of one white shirt in Paris during the summer of 2014 APPLETREES has grown organically and are now selling to exclusive retailers in over 10 countries and owns and operates 2 stores with base at Artillerigatan 29 in Stockholm, Sweden.
APPLETREES is committed to create long lasting, high quality unisex products that are designed to function well in daily life. To ensure this, APPLETREES products are tested, washed and worn for up to 18 months before going to market. Using some of the worlds finest raw materials the products stands the test, the shirts have been washed up to 400 times which corresponds to up to 10 years normal wear. We produce our shirts in Northern Italy, our silk in Lake Como (Italy), Our Cashmere in Scotland and our socks in England. All our cotton shirts, pants, shorts and boxers are made out of Egyptian Giza 87 cotton, veiled in to yarns in Northern Italy. We believe in timeless designs, if a product is NOT good enough in ten years, IT is good enough today.
As a responsible company APPLETREES has created a recycle program that engages us and out customers to make sure that minimal amount of clothes is being thrown out in the landfill. If and when a customer feel a need for a change or upgrade to a new APPLETREES garment, customers are encouraged to return their worn APPLETREES product and receive a 30% discount on a new garment. APPLETREES will then re-stock the worn garment in the recycle section in the store at 50% of original retail price, giving the products an Extra Life for a second generation.


Delivering instant, long-lasting hydration, the Aqua Réotier Ultra Thirst-Quenching Cream from L'Occitane recharges skin with water to leave it feeling replenished and revitalized.
Fortified with Hyaluronic Acid and Calcium-rich Réotier Spring Water (derived from the mountains of Provence), the lightweight, velvety cream locks in moisture, whilst plumping and smoothing parched skin for a younger-looking appearance. Absorbs quickly to promote a radiant, refreshed complexion with a luminous glow.
Apply morning and evening in a light, tapping motion on the entire face, avoiding the eye area.
Aqua/Water, Octyldodecanol, Glycerin, Propanediol, Coco-caprylate/Caprate, Corn Starch Modified, Hydroxyethyl Acrylate/Sodium Acryloyldimethyl Taurate Copolymer, Helianthus Annuus (Sunflower) Seed Oil, Sodium Hyaluronate, Arachidyl Alcohol, Behenyl Alcohol, Xylitylglucoside, Anhydroxylitol, Arachidyl Glucoside, Ethylhexylglycerin, Xylitol, Disodium EDTA, Xanthan Gum, Sorbitan Isostearate, Polysorbate 60, Sodium Hydroxide, Citric Acid, Tocopherol, Phenoxyethanol, Sodium Benzoate, Parfum/Fragrance, Linalool, Hexyl Cinnamal, Citronellol, Geraniol, Citral, CI 42090/Blue 1.