text:
Let the Little Children Come
Church recovers its ministry to children, then encourages other churches
To accommodate the growth of renewal at Hope Reformed Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, the church staff had to be evicted.
"We just didn't have room for offices anymore—we needed that space for ministry," says elder Bruce Reenders.
Pastor Tim Taylor and church staffers had to work out of their homes for more than a year until a nearby house was purchased and remodeled for office space.
That was a small bump in the road on the church's six-year journey from a stagnant membership with few children to a buzzing center of activity filled with kids of all ages.
And now Taylor is sharing what Hope Reformed has learned with other churches. Through a pilot program begun earlier this year, he is co-leading a transformational learning community of churches in the Classis of Canadian Prairies.
Welcoming children
When Taylor arrived at Hope Reformed seven years ago, there were 75 to 100 people in worship.
"And when we came here with our three kids, we basically doubled the size of the children's ministry," he says.
Reenders, who was born and raised as part of the church, admits it had been stagnant. And when a call was extended to Taylor, the elder told the congregation they were in for a big change. "When we hired Tim, I remember spending a half-hour with him on the phone and thinking, 'That's a guy I could take a bullet for,'" he says.
A church consultant helped the congregation look back into their history. Nearly 80 years ago, Hope was planted by the downtown Grand Haven First Reformed Church as a way to reach the growing number of children living farther out in the township.
"That's what we had lost and what we really wanted to be," Reenders says. So the congregation started working toward recovering that part of its history and reestablishing a vibrant ministry for children. That journey included plenty of trial and error, Taylor says.
The church began screening Disney films on Sunday afternoons as a reason for kids and families to gather. Hope also searched for a curriculum that would be relevant to children in the community. As leaders clarified their direction, they landed on an education program that seemed to click with its use of audio-video technology.
"We found that as we changed [curriculum], we had to train teachers to learn what we were asking them to educate kids with," Taylor says. "We went from four volunteers in children's ministry for 30 children to 70 persons serving 70 children."
A weeklong vacation Bible school this summer was Hope's best attended yet, maxing out at 188 children on a peak day. The church also hosted a soccer camp for 45 kids with volunteer leaders from Taylor University in Indiana.
Worship and facilities
Worship style and method also changed, starting with small things. After Taylor's first few years, Sunday attendance was trending up and leaders looked to retain their momentum.
Without certainty about where the money would come from, Hope hired a worship leader and used live music with multiple instruments. They replaced fixed pews with moveable chairs, increasing seating capacity.
Those steps of faith proved spot-on. In January Hope added a second Sunday morning service and is now hosting 400 worshipers.
With a renewed emphasis on children's ministry, the church was welcoming new families. The focus was on not simply maintaining the status quo, but on reaching people in the community. Space became a concern.
Instead of adding to the church footprint and incurring higher construction costs that would divert more resources from ministry, Hope decided to build inside its four walls, reconfiguring a gymnasium to better serve both children and adults.
"Some people didn't feel it was necessary and that [the building] was good the way it was," Reenders says. "But I felt we were being called of God, and the other elders and I stuck with it. We saw what was taking place in people's lives and knew it was something that we couldn't bring about on our own."
Architects inserted an "interstitial" floor in the two-story gymnasium building, turning one floor into two. "The upper level was still tall enough for basketball, and we gained an entire lower level for children's ministry," says architect Steve Fridsma. Hope dedicated the new space in October 2013.
Sharing what they learned
Taylor shared the developments at Hope in a conversation with Tim Vink, the RCA's coordinator of church multiplication. Vink wanted to hear more. Their discussion led to the creation of a new learning community.
"There are a lot of churches in our denomination between 75 and 125 [in attendance] which are struggling with how to grow," Taylor says.
The learning community, designed to help with those challenges, includes the six churches from the Classis of Canadian Prairies, the RCA's smallest classis. (A classis is a group of churches, usually organized by proximity. Canadian Prairies congregations are located in Alberta and Manitoba.)
Taylor and Vink co-lead the new learning community. Each church was invited to send four participants—their pastor, an elder, and two apprentices (people at least 10 years younger than the pastor and elder, or of a different race).
The group is meeting once a month for a year—all online. Through 12 webinars, participants are focusing on various aspects of gospel-saturated living. Each person has prep work and follow-up work related to the webinars, as well as access to a website with related tools and resources.
"What [Taylor and Vink] are sharing with us is right on with what we need here in Winnipeg," says Fred Algera, an elder at Place of Grace Church (RCA).
"It's a biblical as well as practical approach on how to reach out to people, befriend them, and create positive relationships."
For the last several years Place of Grace has been reaching out to people with addiction problems through a Tuesday evening program called Finding Freedom. It's led by their contract pastor, Tim Fletcher, who is also an addictions counselor. There are now up to 70 adults involved, with a third of them relating to the church on Sundays as well.
"We are reaching out with open arms to people who are broken," says Algera. "These [webinar] sessions give concrete suggestions on how to love and receive them."
Taylor thinks the pilot program will be useful on a wider basis. Future learning communities may focus on the same topics or explore new ones.
Hope Reformed is continuing with several ministries it had before Taylor came—a mentoring program with students at a local elementary school and a mid-week community meal program. But most of the church landscape has a different look.
"We've helped grow some other churches in the community because some people left us who didn't like the changes," Taylor says. "But we also knew we had to do something different—I don't think we even knew how much change needed to take place."
According to Taylor, census and other figures show that 16,000 people within a five-mile radius of the church are unchurched or don't know that God loves them.
"As we've partnered with other churches and ministries and focused on the kingdom, we find that Hope continues to grow," he says.
Interested in joining a learning community to learn with other churches? Email transformation@rca.org.
Pray for collaboration and learning for participants in this learning community.
RCA Today
Bringing the Community Back to Church
"I Was in Prison and You Visited Me"
Adventures in Mission
A Church for the City
Getting to Know the Neighborhood
subscriptions@rca.org
Change subscription or address
updates@rca.org
rcatoday@rca.org
View the complete issue
Download the RCA Today app for your tablet or smartphone!
Browse the complete magazine in your browser with this interactive edition.


text:
import { memo, useState } from 'react'
import PropTypes from 'prop-types'

import {
  Trash as DeleteIcon,
  Settings as ConfigureIcon,
  AddCircledOutline,
} from 'iconoir-react'
import { Stack, TextField } from '@mui/material'

import { useGeneralApi } from 'client/features/General'
import {
  useGetProvisionQuery,
  useAddHostToProvisionMutation,
  useConfigureHostMutation,
  useRemoveResourceMutation,
  useGetProvisionResourceQuery,
} from 'client/features/OneApi/provision'

import { HostsTable } from 'client/components/Tables'
import { HostCard } from 'client/components/Cards'
import { SubmitButton } from 'client/components/FormControl'
import { Translate } from 'client/components/HOC'
import { T } from 'client/constants'

const Hosts = memo(({ id, setTab, logTabId }) => {
  const [amount, setAmount] = useState(() => 1)
  const { enqueueInfo } = useGeneralApi()

  const [addHost, { isLoading: loadingAddHost }] =
    useAddHostToProvisionMutation()
  const [configureHost, { isLoading: loadingConfigure }] =
    useConfigureHostMutation()
  const [removeResource, { isLoading: loadingRemove }] =
    useRemoveResourceMutation()
  const { data = {} } = useGetProvisionQuery(id)

  const provisionHosts =
    data?.TEMPLATE?.BODY?.provision?.infrastructure?.hosts?.map(
      (host) => +host.id
    ) ?? []

  return (
    <>
      <Stack direction="row" mb="0.5em">
        <TextField
          type="number"
          inputProps={{ 'data-cy': 'amount' }}
          onChange={(event) => {
            const newAmount = event.target.value
            ;+newAmount > 0 && setAmount(newAmount)
          }}
          value={amount}
        />
        <Stack alignSelf="center">
          <SubmitButton
            data-cy="add-host"
            color="secondary"
            sx={{ ml: 1, display: 'flex', alignItems: 'flex-start' }}
            endicon={<AddCircledOutline />}
            label={<Translate word={T.AddHost} />}
            isSubmitting={loadingAddHost}
            onClick={async () => {
              addHost({ id, amount })
              enqueueInfo(`Adding ${amount} Host${amount > 1 ? 's' : ''}`)
            }}
          />
        </Stack>
      </Stack>
      <HostsTable
        disableGlobalSort
        disableRowSelect
        displaySelectedRows
        pageSize={5}
        useQuery={() =>
          useGetProvisionResourceQuery(
            { resource: 'host' },
            {
              selectFromResult: ({ data: result = [], ...rest }) => ({
                data: result?.filter((host) =>
                  provisionHosts.includes(+host.ID)
                ),
                ...rest,
              }),
            }
          )
        }
        RowComponent={({ original: host, handleClick: _, ...props }) => (
          <HostCard
            host={host}
            rootProps={props}
            actions={
              <>
                <SubmitButton
                  data-cy={`provision-host-configure-${host.ID}`}
                  icon={<ConfigureIcon />}
                  isSubmitting={loadingConfigure}
                  onClick={async () => {
                    configureHost({ provision: id, id: host.ID })
                    enqueueInfo(`Configuring host - ID: ${host.ID}`)
                    setTab(logTabId)
                  }}
                />
                <SubmitButton
                  data-cy={`provision-host-delete-${host.ID}`}
                  icon={<DeleteIcon />}
                  isSubmitting={loadingRemove}
                  onClick={async () => {
                    removeResource({
                      provision: id,
                      id: host.ID,
                      resource: 'host',
                    })
                    enqueueInfo(`Deleting Host - ID:${host.ID}`)
                  }}
                />
              </>
            }
          />
        )}
      />
    </>
  )
})

Hosts.propTypes = {
  id: PropTypes.string.isRequired,
  setTab: PropTypes.func,
  logTabId: PropTypes.number,
}
Hosts.displayName = 'Hosts'

export default Hosts

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Climate Change Protections Needed To Prevent Extinction of Southern Rockhopper Penguins in Australia and New Zealand
SAN FRANCISCO— The U.S. Interior Department announced today that the New Zealand-Australia populations of the southern rockhopper penguin, among the world's smallest penguins, will be listed as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. The listing will raise awareness of the rockhoppers' plight, increase research and conservation funds, and offer added oversight of U.S.-government-sanctioned activities that could hurt the birds. It follows a legal settlement with the Center for Biological Diversity and Turtle Island Restoration Network (TIRN) over delays in protecting the penguin. Download the Federal Register Notice.
"These hardy penguins survive on remote, stormy, sub-Antarctic islands in the Southern Ocean, practically at the edge of the world, and yet they may not survive climate change," said Catherine Kilduff, an attorney at the Center, which first petitioned to protect the rockhoppers and 11 other penguin species in 2006. "Endangered Species Act protections can begin to address this threat."
"These penguins have adapted to an inhospitable environment over hundreds of years, but the combination of ocean warming and commercial fishing may prove to be too much," said Todd Steiner, biologist and executive director of TIRN. "Through this listing, the government is acknowledging that our oceans are sick and taking a first step to protect penguins and their watery world."
By mid-century, if greenhouse gas emissions remain on their current trajectory, climate change will commit one-third of the world's animal and plant species to extinction. The threatened southern rockhopper penguin joins six other recently protected penguins: the African penguin, the Humboldt penguin of Chile and Peru and four other New Zealand penguins (the yellow-eyed, white-flippered, Fiordland crested and erect-crested).
Rockhopper penguins, named for the way they hop from boulder to boulder, are widespread — breeding on islands off South America, Africa, Australia and New Zealand — but the penguins listed today have declined by more than 90 percent since the early 1940s. Changes to the marine environment, such as increases in sea-surface temperatures and reduced prey availability, are the primary threat to these colonies.
The threatened penguins breed on Macquarie, Campbell, Auckland and Antipodes islands, which are ecologically and geographically unique as well as historically high-quality habitat. The Campbell Island southern rockhopper population was once one of the largest in the world, but has experienced the most severe declines.
The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 320,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.
Turtle Island Restoration Network (TIRN) is an environmental organization working to protect and restore endangered marine species and the marine environment on which we all depend. Headquartered in California, with offices in Texas and Costa Rica, TIRN is dedicated to swift and decisive action to protect and restore marine species and their habitats and to inspire people in communities all over the world to join us as active and vocal marine species advocates. For more information, visit www.SeaTurtles.org and www.TIRN.net

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


When someone says they are doing a detox, what does that mean? Does that mean they are doing a colon cleanse, removing heavy metals, supporting liver function or working at even a deeper, cellular level? It truly depends on what agents you are using when you plan to do a detox. But also, our bodies need to detox well continuously for us to stay healthy.
But first, what is detoxification? Detoxification is what the body's chemistry does to rid itself of unwanted chemicals, whether the chemicals are left over from metabolism, or enter the body from breathing, ingestion, or applied topically (such as lotions/makeup/perfume).
The process of detoxification mostly involves creating a new molecule rather than breaking it down into something smaller. For example, if the body wants to get rid of a molecule, such as estrogen, it is usually combined with another molecule, making it bigger but subsequently less toxic.
Once packaged, the unwanted molecule is discharged from the body directly from the liver into bile, where it travels to the intestine and out, or, the liver puts the package into the bloodstream, where it travels into the urine via the kidneys. Some toxins, such as heavy metals, find their way out through hair and nails. A minor exit for toxins is through perspiration. For the most part, toxins are bundled for excretion from the body by a process that results in a bigger package.
Reduce things in your life that may be toxic. In terms of reducing, this ranges from what you put in and on you body. Over the years of supporting patients live a cleaner life, I have found 3 main areas that should be altered to decrease toxic exposure are: personal products, plastics and water. Many women, in particular, are not aware of the amount of chemicals that personal hygiene and makeup products contain. Did you know you can apply over 300 chemicals on your body before even leaving the house? Be mindful of where your makeup comes from. Check the ingredients in your lotions, deodorant, hair products and perfumes - Yes, perfume! Just because it smells nice doesn't mean it is healthy for your body. The chemical substance known as phthalates - used to lengthen the life of the fragrance - create havoc on our endocrine system (hormones). Skip the chemical-laden perfumes, lotions and home fragrances: opt for using essential oils or nothing at all. You may find your headaches start decreasing and even cognitive function starts to improve.
Restore liver, kidney, digestive and cellular functionSupport the key areas of the body that remove toxic substances, which includes your liver, blood, lymphatic system, gallbladder, pancreas, kidneys, and intestines. How do each of these areas help with detoxification? Read more here.
Reach for healthy alternativesReach for whole foods! GREEN foods (not artificially colored food) which have nutrients to support your biochemical pathways, so you can better eliminate toxic substances.
If the body is healthy and working well, toxins are easily eliminated. It was thought that a detox program, such as a fast or a cleanse, was the best way to support detoxification of the body. However, in medical terms, there's no such thing as 'detoxing'. The rightful approach to detoxification is to nourish the body thoroughly, fueling the body's natural detoxification mechanism with the nutrients needed to achieve optimal detoxification activity.
Overall, think plain and simple in every area of your life to support your whole body in its mission to detoxify your system and support your good health. The more ingredients on a label that you cannot pronounce - be that a personal care product or food - may be an indication it will put more stress on your detoxification system. Drink plenty of filtered water and eat wholesome foods to get all your vital nutrients. These modifications alone will help your body detox well continuously - not just on a one off attempt!


text:
New ACLU-VA Report: Virginia's Local, Elected Prosecutors Have 'Unparalleled Power' that Goes Largely Unchecked
Local, elected prosecutors in Virginia hold tremendous influence over the criminal justice system but face few challenges to their authority, according to a new report from the ACLU of Virginia.
The report, titled "Unparalleled Power," found that Commonwealth's attorneys (CAs) in Virginia ran for office uncontested in 72 percent of elections from 2005-15. Of Virginia's 120 localities in which CAs are elected every four years, 40 percent did not have a single contested race during the same 10-year period.
"Only CAs have the authority to decide how many charges a person will face at trial and whether those charges will carry mandatory minimum sentences," the report states. Because the vast majority of criminal cases are resolved by plea bargains, a prosecutor is more likely to decide a criminal defendant's fate than a judge or jury."
Once elected, local prosecutors often stay in office for decades, wielding broad discretion in how cases are handled while also lobbying aggressively against reforms to the criminal justice system that polls show the public supports. Several local CAs have held the same office for more than 40 years, with one in six having been in office for more than 20 years.
Further, CA elections are held along with those for other local offices in off-off-year elections, meaning there are no federal or state-wide races on the ballot. An analysis of off-off-year CA elections compared to those held in other years shows voter participation can more than double when there are other, more prominent races helping to drive turnout.
The report seeks to educate the public about the many criminal justice initiatives over which CAs hold sway, encourage more candidates to seek office and help potential voters understand what questions to ask those candidates to inform decisions at the polls.
"The interactions between CAs and the voters who put them in office may decide whether Virginia enacts meaningful criminal justice reforms," the report concludes. "By engaging with CAs, cultivating reform-minded candidates, and showing up at the polls, voters can reclaim the power and change a broken criminal justice system."
pdfUnparalleled Power (June 2016).pdf
ACLU-VA and Partners to Gov. Northam: Automatic restoration of...
Commonwealth of Virginia v. Harwinder Sangha (Amicus)
Guarantee the Right to Vote
Legalize Marijuana with a Focus on Equity and Racial Justice
There is still work to be done, and the ACLU of Virginia is ready.
Every Virginia voice should be heard, and that may mean delayed...
ACLU-VA Urges Election Officials to Take Necessary Steps to Ensure...


LONDON, July 31—A pair of golden eagles has successfully nested and hatched offspring in England for the first time in more than a century, the Royal Society for the protection of Birds announced today.
"Conservationists everywhere will be delighted with the news," Peter Conder, director of the society said, adding that the exact location of the eyrie, in the Lake District in Northwestern England, was being kept secret because the birds 'might never return if disturbed.
A spokesman said the ?? had been limier surveillance for months.


text:
You are here: Home → Arts Across the Curriculum → Pressroom → News → Best-selling author and neuroscientist David Eagleman to visit Hunter College
Best-selling author and neuroscientist David Eagleman to visit Hunter College
Hunter College awarded $100,000 planning grant from Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for arts initiative
President Jennifer J. Raab highlights successes of Arts Across the Curriculum
Filmmaker Stephen Maing to visit Hunter, screen documentary on Chinese journalists
Astrovisualization expert Carter Emmart to visit Hunter
Arts Across the Curriculum initiative to hold summit
AAC gains attention on campus
The Arts Across the Curriculum initiative is pleased to announce that renowned neuroscientist and author David Eagleman will visit Hunter College during the Spring 2012 semester.
During a presentation slated for May 1 in the Lang Recital Hall, Eagleman will discuss with students, faculty, and staff his theories about human memory, time, and other themes from his best-selling books Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives and Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain.
Born in 1971 in New Mexico and now a neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Eagleman has been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times and on The Colbert Report and NPR, among other media outlets. Both a noted scientist and an acclaimed author, Eagleman is known for his philosophical writings and teachings on the subject of human perception and the limitless nature of the universe. A self-described "Possibilian," he is also the unwitting leader of a kind of movement for the spiritually curious.
"Our ignorance of the cosmos is too vast to commit to atheism, and yet we know too much to commit to a particular religion," Eagleman told The New York Times. "But with Possibilianism I'm hoping to define a new position -- one that emphasizes the exploration of new, unconsidered possibilities. Possibilianism is comfortable holding multiple ideas in mind; it is not interested in committing to any particular story."
Hunter College Theatre Professor Mark Bly has used Eagleman's Sum in his playwriting class, and he said the work speaks profoundly to the spirit of Arts Across the Curriculum.
"It is a work that proposes the ultimate philosophical, religious, creative, and scientific question: 'What if?'" said Bly, who is a member of the Arts Across the Curriculum Faculty Committee. "David invited me into his legendary Lab at Baylor ... I have seen him lecture, and his is a nimble, quick, far-reaching mind that his books Sum and Incognito reflect."


Everybody waits patiently for corey to go on. It was his first solo of his senior year. "I was anxious for him, hoping he would do well," sophomore Ryne Mills said .
Mr. Damron talks to Corey about his Solo. The talked about how he did. " I thought it was big step because he's always been a little nervous of solos at competitions" Damron said.
Spaulding waits for Mr.Damron to start playing the piano. He sang "Remember when it rained' by Josh Groban. " I was wondering who was going to cry first," senior Tyler Wallman said.
Spaulding belts out the highest note in the piece. It made everyone tear up. " It brought tears to my eyes at the middle" sophomore Brian Fleener said.
Corey stands while the crowd applaudes. " I thought I had a very confident and strong performance" Spaulding said.


Silence your enemies this Halloween with these Batman Begins Batarang accessories. The batarangs are colored gold and made of a tough poly/foam. The batarangs are also molded after the traditional bat shape seen in the movies. These Batman batarang's are exactly what you need to vanquish your foes this Halloween.


Are there any fees to participate as an athlete?
Where can I find athlete medical release forms?
What sports does Special Olympics Wisconsin offer?
How do I become an Agency Manager?
What other programs can I participate in within Special Olympics Wisconsin?
Which regional area of Special Olympics Wisconsin do I belong to?
Where can I find athletic registration forms for tournament competitions?
Where can I donate to help support Special Olympics Wisconsin?
Obtain and complete the required paperwork (available here).
Return your form(s) to the Special Olympics Wisconsin State Office. All athletes must have the required paperwork on file before they begin practicing. Medical deadline dates are strictly enforced for upcoming competitions. Please work closely with your coach, Agency Manager and/or the Athlete Medical Records Manager at the State Office to make sure medical deadlines are met.
Please visit our Become an Athlete webpage.
Special Olympics Wisconsin provides year-round sports training and athletic competition in 18 Olympic-type sports within five sports seasons for individuals with intellectual disabilities 8 years of age or older.
Our volunteer base includes students, senior citizens, business groups, professional individuals, civic organizations, families, amateur and professional athletes, and coaches to name a few. In other words, ANYONE CAN GET INVOLVED! There is no experience required; however, you must be at least 15 years of age, unless accompanied by an adult. To begin the volunteer registration process and to view upcoming events in your area please visit our volunteer webpage.
Please visit our coaching and sport certification webpage.
To start an agency in your area please visit our How to start an Agency webpage or to become an Agency Manager of an established agency in your area please contact Mark Wolfgram, Director of Field Services.
Other programs and initiatives of Special Olympics Wisconsin include: Athlete Leadership Program (ALPs), Unified Champion Schools, SO College, Healthy Athletes, Spread the Word to End the Word, the Law Enforcement Torch Run (LETR), and the Final Leg just to name a few!
Please visit our Regions webpage to see what region you belong to based on the county your currently live in.
Please visit our Events Calendar to view all of the upcoming Special Olympics Wisconsin events.
Please visit our current Competition Guide webpage for forms and resources for tournaments.
You can donate money directly online by going to our Donate webpage or visit our Ways to Give webpage for others way to donate to Special Olympics Wisconsin.


When it comes to indulging there are some foods in life you should stay away from or only eat once in awhile. But there are awesome some tasty foods that you are allowed to indulge in. So go and check out these 30 Awesome Things It's OK Have Lots Of and make sure you indulge in the things that do your body good :).


text:
Affective equality: love matters
Sara Cantillon, Kathleen Lynch
The nurturing that produces love, care, and solidarity constitutes a discrete social system of affective relations. Affective relations are not social derivatives, subordinate to economic, political, or cultural relations in matters of social justice. Rather, they are productive, materialist human relations that constitute people mentally, emotionally, physically, and socially. As love laboring is highly gendered, and is a form of work that is both inalienable and noncommodifiable, affective relations are therefore sites of political import for social justice. We argue that it is impossible to have gender justice without relational justice in loving and caring. Moreover, if love is to thrive as a valued social practice, public policies need to be directed by norms of love, care, and solidarity rather than norms of capital accumulation. To promote equality in the affective domains of loving and caring, we argue for a four-dimensional rather than a three-dimensional model of social justice as proposed by Nancy Fraser (2008). Such a model would align relational justice, especially in love laboring, with the equalization of resources, respect, and representation.
https://doi.org/10.1111/hypa.12305
affective equality, social justice, Fraser, model of political equality
10.1111/hypa.12305
Cantillon, S. & Lynch, K. (2017) Affective equality: love matters
This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Cantillon, S. and Lynch, K. (2017), Affective Equality: Love Matters. Hypatia, 32: 169–186 which has been published in final form at https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/hypa.12305. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.
Fingerprint Dive into the research topics of 'Affective equality: love matters'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.
love Social Sciences
Affective Arts & Humanities
equality Social Sciences
Social Justice Arts & Humanities
Solidarity Arts & Humanities
Sara Cantillon
sca11@gcu.ac.uk
Cantillon, S., & Lynch, K. (2017). Affective equality: love matters. Hypatia, 32(1), 169–186. https://doi.org/10.1111/hypa.12305
Cantillon, Sara ; Lynch, Kathleen. / Affective equality: love matters. In: Hypatia. 2017 ; Vol. 32, No. 1. pp. 169–186.
@article{d129beafd7cf492d84d565aed51443bd,
title = "Affective equality: love matters",
abstract = "The nurturing that produces love, care, and solidarity constitutes a discrete social system of affective relations. Affective relations are not social derivatives, subordinate to economic, political, or cultural relations in matters of social justice. Rather, they are productive, materialist human relations that constitute people mentally, emotionally, physically, and socially. As love laboring is highly gendered, and is a form of work that is both inalienable and noncommodifiable, affective relations are therefore sites of political import for social justice. We argue that it is impossible to have gender justice without relational justice in loving and caring. Moreover, if love is to thrive as a valued social practice, public policies need to be directed by norms of love, care, and solidarity rather than norms of capital accumulation. To promote equality in the affective domains of loving and caring, we argue for a four-dimensional rather than a three-dimensional model of social justice as proposed by Nancy Fraser (2008). Such a model would align relational justice, especially in love laboring, with the equalization of resources, respect, and representation.",
keywords = "affective equality, social justice, Fraser, model of political equality",
author = "Sara Cantillon and Kathleen Lynch",
note = "AAM provided 7-3-17; 24m embargo Acceptance date from journal webpage Epub and final pub dates - evidence in screenshots attached (not available via DOI link). ET 2/7/20",
doi = "10.1111/hypa.12305",
journal = "Hypatia",
Cantillon, S & Lynch, K 2017, 'Affective equality: love matters', Hypatia, vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 169–186. https://doi.org/10.1111/hypa.12305
Affective equality: love matters. / Cantillon, Sara; Lynch, Kathleen.
In: Hypatia, Vol. 32, No. 1, 02.2017, p. 169–186.
T1 - Affective equality: love matters
AU - Cantillon, Sara
AU - Lynch, Kathleen
N1 - AAM provided 7-3-17; 24m embargo Acceptance date from journal webpage Epub and final pub dates - evidence in screenshots attached (not available via DOI link). ET 2/7/20
N2 - The nurturing that produces love, care, and solidarity constitutes a discrete social system of affective relations. Affective relations are not social derivatives, subordinate to economic, political, or cultural relations in matters of social justice. Rather, they are productive, materialist human relations that constitute people mentally, emotionally, physically, and socially. As love laboring is highly gendered, and is a form of work that is both inalienable and noncommodifiable, affective relations are therefore sites of political import for social justice. We argue that it is impossible to have gender justice without relational justice in loving and caring. Moreover, if love is to thrive as a valued social practice, public policies need to be directed by norms of love, care, and solidarity rather than norms of capital accumulation. To promote equality in the affective domains of loving and caring, we argue for a four-dimensional rather than a three-dimensional model of social justice as proposed by Nancy Fraser (2008). Such a model would align relational justice, especially in love laboring, with the equalization of resources, respect, and representation.
AB - The nurturing that produces love, care, and solidarity constitutes a discrete social system of affective relations. Affective relations are not social derivatives, subordinate to economic, political, or cultural relations in matters of social justice. Rather, they are productive, materialist human relations that constitute people mentally, emotionally, physically, and socially. As love laboring is highly gendered, and is a form of work that is both inalienable and noncommodifiable, affective relations are therefore sites of political import for social justice. We argue that it is impossible to have gender justice without relational justice in loving and caring. Moreover, if love is to thrive as a valued social practice, public policies need to be directed by norms of love, care, and solidarity rather than norms of capital accumulation. To promote equality in the affective domains of loving and caring, we argue for a four-dimensional rather than a three-dimensional model of social justice as proposed by Nancy Fraser (2008). Such a model would align relational justice, especially in love laboring, with the equalization of resources, respect, and representation.
KW - affective equality, social justice, Fraser, model of political equality
U2 - 10.1111/hypa.12305
DO - 10.1111/hypa.12305
JO - Hypatia
JF - Hypatia
Cantillon S, Lynch K. Affective equality: love matters. Hypatia. 2017 Feb;32(1):169–186. https://doi.org/10.1111/hypa.12305


BankFive MHC, and its subsidiary, BankFive Corporation. (the "Petitioners"), Fall River, Massachusetts have petitioned the Board of Bank Incorporation (the "Board") to each become a bank holding company through a multi-step transaction in which New Bedford Community Bancorp, ("Bancorp"), New Bedford, Massachusetts and its subsidiary banking institution, Luzo Community Bank, New Bedford, Massachusetts will be acquired under the provisions of General Laws chapter 167A, sections 2 and 4. As part of the transaction, Petitioners have also made application to the Board to establish a bank that will exist for a limited time period which will be used to help effect the transaction. Further, additional related applications have been made to the Division of Banks including seeking authority to merge Luzo Community Bank with and into Fall River Five Cents Savings Bank d/b/a BankFive, ("BankFive"), Petitioners' banking subsidiary.
As directed by the Board, notice of the application was published and posted and a public hearing was scheduled, thereby affording opportunity for interested parties to submit comments. A public hearing relative to this application was held by the Board on May 16, 2007 and the period for filing comments expired on May 18, 2007. The Board reviewed the application, comments received at the public hearing, and all related documents in accordance with the statutory criteria of whether competition among banking institutions will be unreasonably affected and whether public convenience and advantage would be promoted by approval of the proposed transaction. The record of performance under the Commonwealth's Community Reinvestment Act ("CRA") by the banks involved in the transaction was also a factor considered by the Board.
One provision of law requires the Board to have received notice from the Massachusetts Housing Partnership Fund (the "MHPF") that satisfactory MHPF arrangements for the proposed transaction have been made by Petitioners pursuant to section 4 of chapter 167A of the General Laws and guidelines adopted by the MHPF. The Board has received notice from the MHPF, in a letter dated May 23, 2007 that arrangements satisfactory to it have been made for the transaction.
BankFive, Petitioners' sole banking subsidiary, was chartered as a mutual savings bank in 1855. It reorganized into a mutual holding company form of organization in 2005. At December 31, 2006, BankFive had total consolidated assets of approximately $607 million. BankFive operates from ten banking offices located in the cities and towns of Fall River, Dartmouth, New Bedford, Somerset and Swansea. BankFive's deposits are insured to allowable limits by the FDIC and deposits in excess of those limits are insured by the Depositors Insurance Fund.
Bancorp's sole banking subsidiary, Luzo Community Bank ("Luzo"), is a trust company which was chartered in 1918. Bancorp acquired a majority stake in it in 1985. Bancorp owns 97% of the issued and outstanding shares of the capital stock of Luzo, and several individual shareholders who are not affiliated with Bancorp own the remaining 3%. As of December 31, 2006, Luzo had total consolidated assets of approximately $66 million. Luzo has two banking offices, both located in New Bedford. Luzo's deposits are insured to allowable limits by the FDIC.
The Petitioners have addressed the issue of whether competition among banks will be unreasonably affected by the proposed transaction. Part of that analysis is detailed according to various tests used by federal agencies. That analysis demonstrates that consummation of the transaction will not result in undue concentration of banking resources in the Commonwealth. The Board's review, however, is not limited to such federal standards. It is the position of the Board to consider a transaction in light of its impact on the citizens, communities and banking structure in the Commonwealth on a community by community basis. Additionally, Petitioner presented information indicating that the proposed transaction will not have a significant adverse effect on competition among banking institutions in any relevant market. In fact, the City of New Bedford is the only municipality in which both BankFive and Luzo have banking operations. Petitioner states that the proposed transaction will also put the banks in a position to compete more effectively against the larger, national and regional financial institutions that now dominate the region. Upon review and given the relatively small market share of the involved entities, the Board concludes that the transaction will not unreasonably interfere with competition. Rather the area served by Luzo will continue to have access to a variety of competitive deposit and credit services, offered by a number of banks and financial institutions.
The Board has also considered whether public convenience and advantage will be promoted by this transaction. The Petitioners have pointed out both in testimony and in the application that the small size of Luzo has adversely affected its ability to compete. For example, in testimony it was noted that Luzo has often found that, due to its legal lending limit, it must arrange loan participations to serve customers from the fishing industry or lose them to larger institutions. The small size of Luzo has also been adversely impacted by cost inefficiencies. The transaction will provide benefits to each of the banks involved in the transaction. Luzo's customers will benefit by having a wider variety of products and services available to them. Customers of each bank will have more branch offices available to them. The combined bank will have an increased lending capacity allowing for loans such as the aforementioned loans to the fishing industry without the need of participation. Cost efficiencies of the larger entity will result from the transaction. The Board has also noted that no branches of either bank are to be closed and that there are no plans to eliminate any jobs at Luzo. The Board's analysis of the public convenience and advantage as well as net new benefits, in addition to other factors considered by the Board, weigh in favor of the transaction.
The record of performance under CRA by the subsidiary banks in a bank holding company transaction is also a consideration by the Board. For financial institutions not directly under the jurisdiction of the Commonwealth, the Board initially looks to the publicly available descriptive rating and evaluation by a federal or another state's banking regulatory agency. Such review for state-chartered banks such as BankFive and Luzo includes examination by personnel of the Division as well as analysis of comments received from a bank's community and a bank's response to those concerns fairly raised. The Board has noted that BankFive has an "Outstanding" rating in its most recent examination of performance, conducted by the FDIC under CRA. Luzo has a "Satisfactory" rating from the Division of Banks in its most recent examination of performance under CRA. Based on the information presented and available to the Board, the Board's view of this factor is consistent with approval. All additional requirements for the formation of the interim trust company have also been met.
As part of its inquiry, the Board reviews the financial structure, tax consequences, and the operational aspects of the transaction. The Board has reviewed the consolidated financial statements of the entities and the details of the proposed transaction, and is satisfied with the capital ratios and projections. Information regarding the tax consequences of the proposed transaction was provided and considered by the Board. Based on the information provided in the filing, the Board concludes that these issues have been adequately addressed. All additional requirements for formation of the interim trust company have also been met.
Based on the record on this matter including the testimony received at the public hearing and subsequent filing on changes in the structure of the transaction considered in light of all relevant statutory and administrative requirements, the Board finds that competition among banking institutions will not be unreasonably affected, that public convenience and advantage will be promoted by consummation of the proposed transaction and that records of performance under CRA by the banks involved in this transaction are consistent with its approval. Therefore, in accordance with these findings and pursuant to the statutory authority cited herein, the Board hereby approves the application and authorizes BankFive, MHC and BankFive Corporation to each become a bank holding company and to acquire up to 100% of the stock New Bedford Community Bancorp. In addition, The Board also grants approval for the formation of a new bank in the form of a trust company for the purpose of effecting this transaction.


text:
The Kurds of County Leitrim: Refugees Call an Irish Town Home
Type: International Reporting
CARRICK-ON-SHANNON, Ireland — A bold black-and-red sign announces Jamshid Ghafur's business — "Kurdish Barber" — up a narrow flight of stairs just off the main street of Carrick-on-Shannon in western Ireland.
Here, patrons have their hair trimmed under the watchful eyes of the famed Irish fighter Conor McGregor, whose poster hangs high on a wall. On the opposite wall hangs a Kurdish flag, the décor a simultaneous nod to Mr. Ghafur's homeland and the town where he lives.
"I am happy with this small business," he said as he gestured around the shop with pride. "I feel like home here."
Mr. Ghafur, 37, is part of a thriving group of Kurds who adopted this small town as their own after a United Nations-supervised refugee resettlement program brought them here more than a decade ago….
Read more on NYTimes.com.
Published by meganspecia
View all posts by meganspecia
Previous Project Rwandans Carry On, Side by Side, Two Decades After Genocide
Next Project First, a Symbol of Occupy Wall Street. Then He Waded Into Syria.


text:
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using CommandLine;
using LearnTsinghua.Extensions;
using LearnTsinghua.Models;
using LearnTsinghua.Services;

namespace LearnTsinghua.Terminal
{

    public class CommonOptions
    {
        [Option("detail", HelpText = "Detailed informations.")]
        public bool Detail { get; set; }
    }

    [Verb("config", HelpText = "Get/set/list configurations.")]
    public class ConfigOptions
    {
        [Option('l', "list", HelpText = "List all the configurations.")]
        public bool List { get; set; }

        [Value(0, MetaName = "NAME", HelpText = "The name of the configuration.")]
        public string Name { get; set; }

        [Value(1, MetaName = "VALUE", HelpText = "If exists, will be the new value of the configuration.")]
        public string Value { get; set; }
    }

    [Verb("update", HelpText = "Update data.")]
    public class UpdateOptions
    {
        // not implemented yet
        [Option('v', "verbose", HelpText = "Verbosely print out the update informations.")]
        public bool Verbose { get; set; }

        [Option('a', "all", HelpText = "Update all informations of all attended courses." +
            "If not set, update all informations of attending courses.")]
        public bool All { get; set; }
    }

    [Verb("profile", HelpText = "Get user profile.")]
    public class ProfileOptions
    {
    }

    [Verb("semester", HelpText = "Get current semester.")]
    public class SemesterOptions
    {
    }

    [Verb("course", HelpText = "List of all courses.")]
    public class CourseOptions: CommonOptions
    {
        [Option('a', "all", HelpText = "")]
        public bool All { get; set; }
    }

    [Verb("annc", HelpText = "Get all Announcements.")]
    public class AnnouncementOptions
    {
        [Value(0, Required = true, MetaName = "course", HelpText = "Get Announcements of specific course.")]
        public string Course { get; set; }

        [Value(1, MetaName = "index", HelpText = "Get a specific announcement.")]
        public int? Index { get; set; }
    }

    [Verb("file", HelpText = "Get all files.")]
    public class FileOptions: CommonOptions
    {
        [Value(0, Required = true, MetaName = "course", HelpText = "Get files of specific course.")]
        public string Course { get; set; }

        [Value(1, MetaName = "index", HelpText = "Get a specific file.")]
        public int? Index { get; set; }
    }

    [Verb("hw", HelpText = "Get all homeworks.")]
    public class AssignmentOptions: CommonOptions
    {
        [Value(0, Required = true, MetaName = "course", HelpText = "Get homeworks of specific course.")]
        public string Course { get; set; }

        [Value(1, MetaName = "index", HelpText = "Get a specific homework.")]
        public int? Index { get; set; }
    }

    [Verb("reset", HelpText = "Reset the database.")]
    public class ResetOptions: CommonOptions
    {
    }

    public class App
    {
        /// <summary>Read password from console</summary>
        /// http://stackoverflow.com/questions/29201697/hide-replace-when-typing-a-password-c
        public static string ReadPassword(string prompt)
        {
            string password = "";
            Console.Write(prompt); // write prompt
            ConsoleKeyInfo info = Console.ReadKey(true);
            while (info.Key != ConsoleKey.Enter)
            {
                if (info.Key != ConsoleKey.Backspace)
                {
                    password += info.KeyChar;
                }
                else if (info.Key == ConsoleKey.Backspace)
                {
                    if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(password))
                    {
                        // remove one character from the list of password characters
                        password = password.Substring(0, password.Length - 1);
                    }
                }
                info = Console.ReadKey(true);
            }
            // add a new line
            Console.WriteLine();
            return password;
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Learn-Console's Entry Point.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="args">Command line arguments splitted by the system.</param>
        public static int Main(string[] args)
        {
            try
            {
                return Parser.Default.ParseArguments<
                    UpdateOptions, ProfileOptions, SemesterOptions, CourseOptions,
                    AnnouncementOptions, FileOptions, AssignmentOptions,
                    ConfigOptions, ResetOptions>(args).MapResult(
                    (UpdateOptions opts) => UpdateHandler(opts),
                    (ProfileOptions opts) => ProfileHandler(opts),
                    (SemesterOptions opts) => SemesterHandler(opts),
                    (CourseOptions opts) => CourseHandler(opts),
                    (AnnouncementOptions opts) => AnnouncementHandler(opts),
                    (FileOptions opts) => FileHandler(opts),
                    (AssignmentOptions opts) => AssignmentHandler(opts),
                    (ConfigOptions opts) => ConfigHandler(opts),
                    (ResetOptions opts) => ResetHandler(opts),
                    errs => 1);
            }
            catch (Exception e)
            {
                Console.WriteLine("Exception caught:");
                Console.WriteLine(e);
                return 1;
            }
        }

        public static int UpdateHandler(UpdateOptions opts)
        {
            var userId = AppConfig.Get().UserId;
            API.UserId = userId;
            API.Password = ReadPassword(string.Format("Password for {0}: ", userId));

            if (opts.All)
            {
                Semester.Update().Wait();
                Me.Update().Wait();
                Me.UpdateAttended().Wait();
                Me.UpdateMaterials().Wait();
            }
            else
            {
                Me.UpdateMaterials(Semester.Get().Id).Wait();
            }

            return 0;
        }

        public static int ProfileHandler(ProfileOptions opts)
        {
            var profile = Me.Get();
            Console.WriteLine(profile);
            return 0;
        }

        public static int SemesterHandler(SemesterOptions opts)
        {
            var semester = Semester.Get();
            Console.WriteLine("{0} 第{1}周", Semester.IdToString(semester.Id), semester.WeekNow());
            return 0;
        }

        public static int CourseHandler(CourseOptions opts)
        {
            var attended = Me.Get().Attended(opts.All ? null : Semester.Get().Id);
            foreach (var pair in attended)
            {
                Console.ForegroundColor = ConsoleColor.DarkGray;
                Console.WriteLine("{0} ({1}门课)", Semester.IdToString(pair.Key), pair.Value.Count);

                foreach (var course in pair.Value)
                {
                    Console.ResetColor();
                    Console.Write(course.Name);
                    if (course.Schedules.Count > 0)
                    {
                        var location = course.Schedules[0].Location;
                        if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(location))
                        {
                            Console.ForegroundColor = ConsoleColor.DarkRed;
                            Console.Write(" {0}", location);
                        }

                        Console.ForegroundColor = ConsoleColor.DarkYellow;
                        foreach (var schedule in course.Schedules)
                            Console.Write(" {0}-{1} ({2})", schedule.Day, schedule.Slot, schedule.Weeks);
                    }
                    Console.WriteLine();
                }
                Console.WriteLine();
            }
            Console.ResetColor();
            return 0;
        }

        public static int AnnouncementHandler(AnnouncementOptions opts)
        {
            var course = Course.FuzzyGet(opts.Course);
            if (course == null)
                return 1;

            Console.ForegroundColor = ConsoleColor.DarkGray;
            Console.WriteLine("{0} ({1})", course.Name, Semester.IdToString(course.SemesterId));

            var anncs = course.Announcements();

            if (opts.Index != null)
            {
                if (opts.Index <= 0 || opts.Index > anncs.Count)
                    return 1;
                var annc = anncs[(int)opts.Index - 1];

                Console.ForegroundColor = annc.Priority >= 1 ? ConsoleColor.DarkRed : ConsoleColor.DarkYellow;
                Console.WriteLine(annc.Title);
                Console.ForegroundColor = ConsoleColor.DarkGray;
                Console.WriteLine("{0} {1}", annc.Owner?.Name, annc.CreatedAt);

                Console.ResetColor();
                Utils.WriteWithHighlights(annc.BodyText().Oneliner());
                Console.WriteLine();
            }
            else
            {
                var index = 0;
                foreach (var annc in anncs)
                {
                    Console.ForegroundColor = ConsoleColor.DarkGray;
                    Console.Write("{0,6}", annc.CreatedAt.DaysSince());

                    Console.ForegroundColor = ConsoleColor.DarkGray;
                    Console.Write(" {0,3}", ++index);

                    Console.ForegroundColor = annc.Priority >= 1 ? ConsoleColor.DarkRed : ConsoleColor.DarkYellow;
                    Console.WriteLine(" {0}", annc.Title);
                }
                Console.ResetColor();
            }
            return 0;
        }

        public static int FileHandler(FileOptions opts)
        {
            var course = Course.FuzzyGet(opts.Course);
            if (course == null)
                return 1;

            Console.ForegroundColor = ConsoleColor.DarkGray;
            Console.WriteLine("{0} ({1})", course.Name, Semester.IdToString(course.SemesterId));

            var files = course.Files();

            if (opts.Index != null)
            {
                if (opts.Index <= 0 || opts.Index > files.Count)
                    return 1;
                var file = files[(int)opts.Index - 1];

                // TODO: Download file.
            }
            else
            {
                var index = 0;
                foreach (var file in files)
                {
                    Console.ForegroundColor = ConsoleColor.DarkGray;
                    Console.Write("{0,6}", file.CreatedAt.DaysSince());

                    Console.Write(" ");
                    Utils.WriteFileSize(file.Size);

                    Console.ForegroundColor = ConsoleColor.DarkGray;
                    Console.Write(" {0,3}", ++index);

                    Console.ForegroundColor = ConsoleColor.DarkYellow;
                    Console.Write(" {0}", file.Title);

                    Console.ForegroundColor = ConsoleColor.DarkGray;
                    Console.WriteLine(" {0}", file.Description.Oneliner());
                }
                Console.ResetColor();
            }
            return 0;
        }

        public static int AssignmentHandler(AssignmentOptions opts)
        {
            var course = Course.FuzzyGet(opts.Course);
            if (course == null)
                return 1;

            Console.ForegroundColor = ConsoleColor.DarkGray;
            Console.WriteLine("{0} ({1})", course.Name, Semester.IdToString(course.SemesterId));

            var assignments = course.Assignments();

            if (opts.Index != null)
            {
                if (opts.Index <= 0 || opts.Index > assignments.Count)
                    return 1;
                var assignment = assignments[(int)opts.Index - 1];
            }
            else
            {
                var index = 0;
                foreach (var assignment in assignments)
                {
                    Console.ForegroundColor = ConsoleColor.DarkGray;
                    Console.Write("{0,5}天", (assignment.DueAt - DateTime.Now).Days);

                    Console.ForegroundColor = ConsoleColor.DarkGray;
                    Console.Write(" {0,3}", ++index);

                    Console.ForegroundColor = assignment.Submission != null ?
                        ConsoleColor.DarkGray :
                        (DateTime.Now > assignment.DueAt ?
                            ConsoleColor.DarkRed :
                            ConsoleColor.DarkYellow);
                    Console.WriteLine(" {0}", assignment.Title);
                }
                Console.ResetColor();
            }
            return 0;
        }

        public static int ConfigHandler(ConfigOptions opts)
        {
            var config = AppConfig.Get();
            if (opts.List)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(config);
            }
            else
            {
                config.Set(opts.Name, opts.Value);
            }
            return 0;
        }

        public static int ResetHandler(ResetOptions opts)
        {
            Database.Reset();
            return 0;
        }
    }
}


text:
Charles Dickens, Claire Harman, Courvoisier, Jack Sheppard, Murder by the Book
Nix My Dolly
People who are arrested for serious crimes today look for any mitigating factors to deflect blame from themselves. Murder by the Book proves that this tactic is nothing new. In 1840 the elderly Lord William Russell was found murdered in his bed when his servant came to wake him up one morning. His throat had been cut but all of the blood had soaked down into the mattress. The police quickly arrived and detected valuables missing but no signs of any intruders. There had been an attempt made to look as if one of the doors had been forced open, but it was determined this had been done from the inside. With no intruders to blame, interest turned to the servants in the house. There were not that many: a female cook and housemaid as well as a male valet were the only staff who "lived in." When some skirting boards in the valet's room were noticed to be askew, some of the missing valuables were discovered hidden there and the valet was quickly arrested.
The valet, François Courvoisier, was originally from Switzerland and had been employed by Lord Russell for only a month. On the day of the murder, Lord Russell had been angry with his valet for forgetting to send a coach to pick him up at his club. This and the missing valuables were seen as enough of a motive to keep him locked up for trial.
At the same time as this scandal was rocking the city, a book and play about another famous criminal were dominating the social life of Victorian London. Jack Sheppard was a young thief who became famous when he repeatedly escaped from various jails before eventually being hanged for his crimes. In early 1839 the author William Harrison Ainsworth, who was one of the most popular authors of the day, published his "romance" called Jack Sheppard. It was so popular that it was printed in numerous editions and variations, while plays loosely based on the book were popping up all across London, to the delight of theatregoers. Some other writers, including Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray, became disturbed by the glamorization of the criminal and his illegal lifestyle.
Once Courvoisier was convicted of the murder and sentenced to hang in only a few weeks, he offered several different versions of what happened the night of the crime. In one of his later confessions, he said that he had become consumed with the idea of turning to a life of crime after reading the book Jack Sheppard and seeing the play several times. He wasn't the only one to blame the book for his crimes, as petty crimes and thefts increased after the publication of the story of the daring criminal.
The book was very enjoyable and took an in-depth look at the crime, the accused, and the literary firestorm that raged around the author and the subject matter. Many interesting figures of the day are also drawn into the fray, including Dickens, Thackeray, and even Edgar Allan Poe. The disgust at the behavior of the crowd during the public execution was also something that disturbed many of the authors of the day (although they, too, turned up to witness the spectacle). The possible motive for the crime and the possibility that Courvoisier didn't act alone are also discussed in fascinating detail. A very interesting Victorian true crime mystery!


Until now, ZUST Pakistani student Javed Mudassar of Chemical Engineering and Technology has published 5 papers indexed in Science Citation Index (SCI). As the first author, he has wrote Complete Encapsulation of Zeolite Supported Co Based Core with Silicalite-1 shell to Achieve High Gasoline Selectivity in Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis and From hydrophilic to Hydrophobic: A Promising Approach to Tackle High CO2 Selectivity of Fe-based Fischer-Tropsch Microcapsule Catalysts. These two papers were published in Fuel and Catalysis Today, whose impact factors are 4.908 and 4.667 respectively.
According to his supervisor Xing Chuang, Javed, as a Chinese Government Scholarship winner, has been deeply involved in laboratory construction, and his diligence, assiduity and good research capability has made him an academic talent in ZUST. He is now actively writing articles and striving for the publishing of more high-quality SCI papers.


text:
// Fill out your copyright notice in the Description page of Project Settings.

#pragma once

#include "GameFramework/GameMode.h"
#include "Actors/TGPlayerPointer.h"
#include "TiledGameGameMode.generated.h"

/**
 *
 */
UCLASS()
class TILEDGAME_API ATiledGameGameMode : public AGameMode
{
	GENERATED_BODY()

public:
		ATiledGameGameMode();

};


text:
16 years after school maintenance worker disappeared, a skeleton has been found underneath sports ground
Before going missing, the worker had reported problems about the sports ground's renovation
On Wednesday, a skeleton was found under the track of a sports ground of a middle school in Hunan province. The identity of the remains has not yet been confirmed, but they are suspected to be those of a former employee at the school who mysteriously went missing 16 years ago.
Deng Shiping was last seen in 2003. At the time, he was a maintenance worker at the Xinhuang No. 1 Middle School in Huaihai city and was overseeing the renovation of the school's sports ground.
According to Deng's brother, Deng was unhappy with the quality of work done by contractors and refused to sign the relevant documents, instead reporting the problems to the government. Not long after that, he went missing.
Local police said that they dug up the remains from underneath the athletic track after they received a lead on a possible murder case from 16 years ago while investigating another case.
Deng's son told reporters that this lead came from a name named Du Shaoping, who had been arrested as part of a local gang crackdown. In 2003, Du was in charge of the sports field renovation project. Following his arrest, he told police where to find the body.
The school's former principal along with 10 other staff members have been detained by police while the case is under investigation. Classes are still going on as normal.
Man pooped, peed in his building's water tank for one year to take revenge on neighbors


text:
UMass Computational Phonology
Computational models and methods in phonology
At UMass
Northeast Computational Phonology Circle
Society for Computation in Linguistics
Current grant: Inside phonological learning
Past NSF grant: Computing constraint-based derivations
Materials for grant group
Past NSF Grant: Investigations in Optimality Theory
The Society for Computation in Linguistics has been launched with a call for papers at its inaugural meeting in January 2018. The deadline is August 1. Join the mailing list to stay informed on this and future events.
This entry was posted in Uncategorized on June 16, 2017 by Joe Pater.
Did Frank Rosenblatt invent deep learning in 1962?
Deep learning (Le Cun et al. 2015: Nature) involves training neural networks with hidden layers, sometimes many levels deep. Frank Rosenblatt (1928-1971) is widely acknowledged as a pioneer in the training of neural networks, especially for his development of the perceptron update rule, a provably convergent procedure for training single layer feedforward networks. He is less widely acknowledged for his pioneering work with other network architectures, including multi-layer perceptrons, and models with connections "backwards" through the layers, as in recurrent neural nets. A colleague of Rosenblatt's who prefers to remain anonymous points out that his "C-system" may even be a precursor to deep learning with convolutional networks (see esp. Rosenblatt 1967). Research on a range of perceptron architectures was presented in his 1962 book Principles of Neurodynamics, which was widely read by his contemporaries, and also by the next generation of neural network pioneers, who published the groundbreaking research of the 1980s. A useful concise overview of the work that Rosenblatt and his research group did can be found in Nagy (1991) (see also Tappert 2017). Useful accounts of the broader historical context can be found in Nilsson (2010) and Olazaran (1993, 1996).
In interviews, Yann Le Cun has noted the influence of Rosenblatt's work, so I was surprised to find no citation of Rosenblatt (1962) in the Nature deep learning paper – it cites only Rosenblatt 1957, which has only single-layer nets. I was even more surprised to find perceptrons classified as single-layer architectures in Goodfellow et al.'s (2016) deep learning text (pp. 14-15, 27). Rosenblatt clearly regarded the single-layer model as just one kind of perceptron. The lack of citation for his work with multi-layer perceptrons seems to be quite widespread. Marcus' (2012) New Yorker piece on deep learning classifies perceptrons as single-layer only, as does Wang and Raj's (2017) history of deep learning. My reading of the current machine learning literature, and discussion with researchers in that area, suggests that the term "perceptron" is often taken to mean a single layer feedforward net.
I can think of three reasons that Rosenblatt's work is sometimes not cited, and even miscited. The first is that Minsky and Papert's (1969/1988) book is an analysis of single-layer perceptrons, and adopts the convention of referring to them as simply as perceptrons. The second is that the perceptron update rule is widely used under that name, and it applies only to single layer networks. The last is that Rosenblatt and his contemporaries were not very successful in their attempts at training multi-layer perceptrons. See Olazaran (1993, 1996) for in-depth discussion of the complicated and usually oversimplified history around the loss of interest in perceptrons in the later 1960s, and the subsequent development of backpropagation for the training of multilayer nets and resurgence of interest in the 1980s.
As for my question about whether Rosenblatt invented deep learning, that would depend on how one defines deep learning, and what one means by invention in this context. Tappert (2017), a student of Rosenblatt's, makes a compelling case for naming him the father of deep learning based on an examination of the types of perceptron he was exploring, and comparison with modern practice. In the end, I'm less concerned with what we should call Rosenblatt with respect to deep learning, and more concerned with his work on multi-layer perceptrons and other architectures being cited appropriately and accurately. As an outsider to this field, I may well be making mistakes myself, and I would welcome any corrections.
Update August 25 2017: See Schmidhuber (2015) for an exhaustive technical history of Deep Learning. This is very useful, but it doesn't look to me like he is appropriately citing Rosenblatt: see secs. 5.1 through 5.3. (as well as the refs. above, see Rosenblatt 1964 on the on the cat vision experiments).
Non-web available reference (ask me for a copy)
Olazaran, Mikel. 1993. A Sociological History of the Neural Network Controversy. Advances in Computers Vol. 37. Academic Press, Boston.
Tappert, Charles. 2017. Who is the father of deep learning? Slides from a presentation May 5th 2017 at PACE University, downloaded June 15th from the conference site. (Update July 2021: this has now been published in a conference proceedings paper, and is cited in a much-improved wikipedia entry for Rosenblatt).
Rosenblatt, with the image sensor of the Mark I Perceptron (Source: Arvin Calspan Advanced Technology Center; Hecht-Nielsen, R. Neurocomputing (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1990).)
The Mark 1 Perceptron (Source: Arvin Calspan Advanced Technology Center; Hecht-Nielsen, R. Neurocomputing (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1990).)
This entry was posted in Learning on June 15, 2017 by Joe Pater.
Remembering Frank Rosenblatt July 8, 2021
Handouts on ties in HS September 16, 2019
Society for Computation in Linguistics June 16, 2017
Did Frank Rosenblatt invent deep learning in 1962? June 15, 2017
10th Northeast Computational Phonology Meeting September 20, 2016
Terry Koken on Did Frank Rosenblatt invent deep learning in 1962?
Joe Pater on Did Frank Rosenblatt invent deep learning in 1962?
JB on Did Frank Rosenblatt invent deep learning in 1962?


text:
United States Project
When local papers close, costs rise for local governments
By Dermot Murphy
Via Pixabay
During the past 15 years, local newspaper circulation numbers dropped by roughly 30 percent, while the number of statehouse reporters covering local government issues dropped by 35 percent. Academic studies suggest that a lack of local media coverage is associated with less informed voters, lower voter turnouts, and less engaged local politicians. My colleagues and I, as finance professors, wondered whether a decline in local journalism would also lead to higher borrowing costs for local governments.
Local governments frequently borrow money to finance public works projects such as schools, hospitals, and roadways. Lenders demand higher interest rates if they think they are lending to a riskier borrower—that is, a borrower who is more likely to default on a loan. We suspected that if local media is not present to keep their government in check, then there would be a greater likelihood of mismanaged public funds and other government inefficiencies. As a result, governments lacking local media coverage would be perceived as riskier borrowers and forced to pay correspondingly higher interest rates on the funds they borrow for public works projects. The costs stemming from higher interest rates would ultimately be borne by local taxpayers.
ICYMI: How one AP veteran exposes corruption in Illinois
We conducted a systematic study of newspaper closures and government borrowing costs in the United States, for the period ranging from 1996 to 2015. We identified newspaper closures using hand-collected newspaper data from the Editor and Publisher yearbooks. Newspaper closures were especially prevalent during that time period because of the rising popularity of online news outlets (which do not focus as strongly on local government issues) and online classified ad sites such as Craigslist (which, as part of the larger effect of the internet on local newspapers, significantly eroded newspaper advertising revenues). We then collected government borrowing cost data from the Mergent Municipal Securities Database and cross-referenced this information with the newspaper closure data.
We found that local government borrowing costs significantly increased for counties that have experienced a newspaper closure compared to geographically adjacent counties with similar demographic and economic characteristics without newspaper closures. Our evidence indicates that a lack of local newspaper coverage has serious financial consequences for local governments, and that alternative news sources are not necessarily filling the gaps.
The day I run into a Huffington Post reporter at a Baltimore Zoning Board hearing is the day that I will be confident that we've actually reached some sort of equilibrium.
One challenge in this study was establishing a cause-and-effect relationship between newspaper closures and local government borrowing costs. (For example, depressed local economic conditions could drive both the closures and higher borrowing costs.) To establish a clear, causal relationship between newspaper closures and borrowing costs, we examined the gradual entry of Craigslist into different counties over time. (Craigslist founder Craig Newmark is a member of CJR's Board of Overseers.) Recent studies show that Craigslist had a strongly negative effect on newspaper revenues. We found that the introduction of Craigslist to a local area significantly increases the likelihood of a newspaper closure, which then has a strong subsequent effect on local government borrowing costs. We also examined government borrowing costs in a county that experienced a newspaper closure and a neighboring county with similar demographic and economic characteristics that still had its own newspaper operation. In this case, we found that borrowing costs only increase in the county that experienced the closure, but not for the neighboring county that did not experience a closure. Both approaches establish that there is a causal connection between newspaper closures and government borrowing costs.
Sign up for weekly emails from the United States Project
We also found that, following a newspaper closure, local government inefficiencies become more pronounced. County government employee wages (as a percentage of all wages in that county) increase, as does the number of government employees as a percentage of all county employees. (That is, more tax dollars flow to government positions after a newspaper ceases to monitor governmental activities.) Costly financial transactions by local governments, including negotiated municipal bond sales and advance refundings of callable municipal bonds, also appear more likely.
We do not necessarily expect local newspapers to return to those counties where they have shuttered. Alternative news media such as online news outlets are fundamentally changing the way that people consume news, and they are likely to remain the dominant source for news consumption. However, these online outlets do not necessarily provide a good substitute for high-quality, locally-sourced investigative journalism. David Simon, a former Baltimore Sun reporter and the creator of The Wire, remarked during a 2009 Senate hearing about the future of journalism, "The day I run into a Huffington Post reporter at a Baltimore Zoning Board hearing is the day that I will be confident that we've actually reached some sort of equilibrium." In the long-run, perhaps a balance will be struck in which these online-based organizations contract with local reporters and tailor their news to local areas. The evidence suggests that economic growth at the county level will be better off in that equilibrium.
ICYMI: Reframing economic injustice in America's poorest big city
Dermot Murphy is an assistant professor of finance at the University of Illinois at Chicago who specializes in public finance, fixed income, and high-frequency trading. His current research, coauthored with Pengjie Gao from the University of Notre Dame and Chang Lee from the University of Illinois at Chicago, examines the effect of local newspaper closures on public borrowing costs through the government inefficiency channel. His past research has examined how state government policies for assisting financial distressed municipalities affect public borrowing costs.


text:
Q: Invert OpacityMask Consider the following piece of Xaml
<Grid Background="Blue">
    <Border Width="100" Height="60" BorderBrush="Black" BorderThickness="2">
        <Border Background="Red">
            <Border.OpacityMask>
                <VisualBrush>
                    <VisualBrush.Visual>
                        <TextBlock Text="Text"
                                   Foreground="#FF000000"
                                   Background="#00000000"/>
                    </VisualBrush.Visual>
                </VisualBrush>
            </Border.OpacityMask>
        </Border>
    </Border>
</Grid>

It will look like this because of the OpacityMask whos only non-transparent part is the Foreground of the TextBlock.

Now if I switch the Colors for Foreground and Background in the TextBlock like this
<TextBlock Text="Text"
           Foreground="#00000000"
           Background="#FF000000"/>

I get this because the even though the Foreground is transparent the Background behind it is not, resulting in a useless OpacityMask :)

Is there anyway I can get this? Basically an inverted OpacityMask

Am I missing some other way to do this here?
Update
To clarify, even though my example is about a TextBlock, it could be anything. Ellipse/Image/Path etc. The feature I'm after is "Invert OpacityMask"

A: You can use my HollowTextBlock which is different answer to the same question:
<Grid Background="Blue">
    <Border Width="100" Height="60" BorderBrush="Black" BorderThickness="2">
        <Border Background="Red">
            <Border.OpacityMask>
                <VisualBrush Stretch="None">
                    <VisualBrush.Visual>
                        <local:HollowTextBlock Width="200" Height="50" Text="Text" Background="White" HorizontalAlignment="Center"/>
                    </VisualBrush.Visual>
                </VisualBrush>
            </Border.OpacityMask>
        </Border>
    </Border>
</Grid>

Update:
Here is a more fleshed out version of HollowTextBlock with proper measure capability, property value inheritance for the usual text properties, and a new VerticalTextAlignment property for centering the text vertically in it's allocated space:
public class HollowTextBlock : FrameworkElement
{
    public string Text
    {
        get { return (string)GetValue(TextProperty); }
        set { SetValue(TextProperty, value); }
    }

    public static readonly DependencyProperty TextProperty =
        DependencyProperty.Register("Text", typeof(string), typeof(HollowTextBlock), new FrameworkPropertyMetadata(string.Empty, FrameworkPropertyMetadataOptions.AffectsRender | FrameworkPropertyMetadataOptions.AffectsMeasure, new PropertyChangedCallback(HollowTextBlock.OnTextChanged), new CoerceValueCallback(HollowTextBlock.CoerceText)));

    public Brush Background
    {
        get { return (Brush)GetValue(BackgroundProperty); }
        set { SetValue(BackgroundProperty, value); }
    }

    public static readonly DependencyProperty BackgroundProperty =
        TextElement.BackgroundProperty.AddOwner(typeof(HollowTextBlock), new FrameworkPropertyMetadata(null, FrameworkPropertyMetadataOptions.AffectsRender));

    public double FontSize
    {
        get { return (double)GetValue(FontSizeProperty); }
        set { SetValue(FontSizeProperty, value); }
    }

    public static readonly DependencyProperty FontSizeProperty =
        TextElement.FontSizeProperty.AddOwner(typeof(HollowTextBlock));

    public FontFamily FontFamily
    {
        get { return (FontFamily)GetValue(FontFamilyProperty); }
        set { SetValue(FontFamilyProperty, value); }
    }

    public static readonly DependencyProperty FontFamilyProperty =
        TextElement.FontFamilyProperty.AddOwner(typeof(HollowTextBlock));

    public FontStyle FontStyle
    {
        get { return (FontStyle)GetValue(FontStyleProperty); }
        set { SetValue(FontStyleProperty, value); }
    }

    public static readonly DependencyProperty FontStyleProperty =
        TextElement.FontStyleProperty.AddOwner(typeof(HollowTextBlock));

    public FontWeight FontWeight
    {
        get { return (FontWeight)GetValue(FontWeightProperty); }
        set { SetValue(FontWeightProperty, value); }
    }

    public static readonly DependencyProperty FontWeightProperty =
        TextElement.FontWeightProperty.AddOwner(typeof(HollowTextBlock));

    public FontStretch FontStretch
    {
        get { return (FontStretch)GetValue(FontStretchProperty); }
        set { SetValue(FontStretchProperty, value); }
    }

    public static readonly DependencyProperty FontStretchProperty =
        TextElement.FontStretchProperty.AddOwner(typeof(HollowTextBlock));

    public TextAlignment TextAlignment
    {
        get { return (TextAlignment)GetValue(TextAlignmentProperty); }
        set { SetValue(TextAlignmentProperty, value); }
    }

    public static readonly DependencyProperty TextAlignmentProperty =
        Block.TextAlignmentProperty.AddOwner(typeof(HollowTextBlock));

    public VerticalAlignment VerticalTextAlignment
    {
        get { return (VerticalAlignment)GetValue(VerticalTextAlignmentProperty); }
        set { SetValue(VerticalTextAlignmentProperty, value); }
    }

    public static readonly DependencyProperty VerticalTextAlignmentProperty =
        DependencyProperty.Register("VerticalTextAlignment", typeof(VerticalAlignment), typeof(HollowTextBlock), new FrameworkPropertyMetadata(VerticalAlignment.Top, FrameworkPropertyMetadataOptions.AffectsRender));

    private static void OnTextChanged(DependencyObject d, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)
    {
        OnTextChanged(d, (string)e.NewValue);
    }

    private static void OnTextChanged(DependencyObject d, string newText)
    {
    }

    private static object CoerceText(DependencyObject d, object baseValue)
    {
        return baseValue;
    }

    protected override Size MeasureOverride(Size availableSize)
    {
        var face = new Typeface(FontFamily, FontStyle, FontWeight, FontStretch);
        var size = FontSize;
        var ft = new FormattedText(Text, Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture, FlowDirection.LeftToRight, face, size, Brushes.Black);
        return new Size(ft.Width, ft.Height);
    }

    protected override void OnRender(DrawingContext drawingContext)
    {
        base.OnRender(drawingContext);
        var extent = new RectangleGeometry(new Rect(0.0, 0.0, RenderSize.Width, RenderSize.Height));
        var face = new Typeface(FontFamily, FontStyle, FontWeight, FontStretch);
        var size = FontSize;
        var ft = new FormattedText(Text, Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture, FlowDirection.LeftToRight, face, size, Brushes.Black);
        var originX = GetHorizontalOrigin(ft.Width, RenderSize.Width);
        var originY = GetVerticalOrigin(ft.Height, RenderSize.Height);
        var hole = ft.BuildGeometry(new Point(originX, originY));
        var combined = new CombinedGeometry(GeometryCombineMode.Exclude, extent, hole);
        drawingContext.PushClip(combined);
        drawingContext.DrawRectangle(Background, null, new Rect(0.0, 0.0, RenderSize.Width, RenderSize.Height));
        drawingContext.Pop();
    }

    private double GetHorizontalOrigin(double textWidth, double renderWidth)
    {
        switch (TextAlignment)
        {
            case TextAlignment.Center:
                return (renderWidth - textWidth) / 2;
            case TextAlignment.Left:
                return 0;
            case TextAlignment.Right:
                return renderWidth - textWidth;
        }
        return 0;
    }

    private double GetVerticalOrigin(double textHeight, double renderHeight)
    {
        switch (VerticalTextAlignment)
        {
            case VerticalAlignment.Center:
                return (renderHeight - textHeight) / 2;
            case VerticalAlignment.Top:
                return 0;
            case VerticalAlignment.Bottom:
                return renderHeight - textHeight;
        }
        return 0;
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Q: paypal redirect on successful checkout I am trying to get my Paypal subscription to redirect to a custom page after a successful checkout.
Before submitting to Paypal I overload the submit handler, run my own function (to store details) and return a unique id. I want to attach that id to my return URL. (as a GET or POST var so to speak)
I have turned auto redirect "on" in my Paypal sandbox sellers preferences, but it only seems to re-direct to the URL that I HAVE to put in there.
using the <input type="hidden" name="return" value="someurl" /> does no seem to work.
I want it this way so that I can capture the user information when entered with a "non-paid" flag, then via the IPN I can update that record with a "PAID" flag, and I want to use the unique ID to tie it all together so to speak.

A: Your hidden field name needs to comply with the accepted variable name required by PayPal. Does ReturnUrl (not case-sensitive) not work?
<input type=hidden name="RETURNURL" value="https://www.YourReturnURL.com">

Note: I have only investigated and implemented express checkout so this may not apply to your implemenation: https://cms.paypal.com/en/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=developer/e_howto_api_ECGettingStarted


text:
Image by Randy Wick on Flickr under Creative Commons License.
Kazan Kids Entertainment Tour (Self Guided), Kazan
Kazan has a variety of attractions for children, including Millennium Park, a wax museum, circus and the Kazan Zoo and Botanical Garden. To have fun with the entire family be sure to check out the following tour of Kazan's most amazing sites for children.
Kazan Kids Entertainment Tour Map
Create Your Own Self-Guided Walks in Kazan
Guide Name: Kazan Kids Entertainment Tour
Guide Location: Russia » Kazan (See other walking tours in Kazan)
Author: karenl
Kazan State Circus
Cafe Skazka
CaroFilm Cinema
Tatar State Puppet Theater Ekiyat
Tugan Avylym
Kazan Zoo & Botanical Gardens
1) Kazan State Circus
The Kazan State Circus, publicly established in 1924, has a significant place in the city's history. Construction of the modern circus, by architect G. Pichuyev, began in 1965 and was completed in 1967. A popular attraction, shows are often sold out and many celebrities have taken part in its magnificent performances throughout the years.
Image by krugami on Flickr under Creative Commons License.
2) Cafe Skazka
Cafe Skazka is worth mentioning due to its 24 hour express window, a convenience which is rare in Kazan. Its interior is designed like an old ship, with a pirate motif and a large aquarium. Offering an assortment of treats, from balls filled with fruit and nuts, coffee drinks and a large assortment of ice cream, your children will be delighted by its menu. A game room is also located inside.
Image by david.nikonvscanon on Flickr under Creative Commons License.
3) CaroFilm Cinema
Located on the second floor of the Ring entertainment and shopping center, the CaroFilm Cinema is the perfect place to enjoy a good movie with your family or friends. It has six screens and seats arranged in a semicircle for maximum quality viewing no matter where you sit.
Image by Nick Grabowski on Flickr under Creative Commons License.
4) Millennium Park
Located in the center of town, along Lake Kazan, Millennium Park was founded in 2005 during the city's millennial celebration. In the center of the park you will find a beautiful fountain, and along its paths many trees, some of which were planted by celebrated local figures. At the entrance, welcoming guests, are bronze dragon statues called Zilants. Millenium Park is the perfect place to relax in the bustling city center.
Image by Untifler on Wikimedia under Creative Commons License.
5) Tatar State Puppet Theater Ekiyat (must see)
The Tatar State Puppet Theater Ekiyat, founded in 1935, is one of Kazan's oldest theaters. Originally called the First State International Puppet Theater, it is housed in the building of a former merchant assembly. From 1927 to 1930 the building was used as the Tatar Culture Center. Its repertoire includes plays in Russian and Tatar, featuring performances with historical and contemporary themes.
Image by normanack on Flickr under Creative Commons License.
6) Tugan Avylym
Translated from the Tatar language as "Native Village," Tugan Avylym is a large restaurant and entertainment complex opened on August 26, 2005, Kazan's millennial celebration. It features a restaurant, bistro and pancake bar offering a wide variety of traditional Tatar food, as well as a casino, bowling alley, billiards hall, dance floor and the Melnitsa boutique. Also available is the splendid Children's Café that your kids will surely love.
Image by Joost J. Bakker I Jmuiden on Flickr under Creative Commons License.
7) Kazan Zoo & Botanical Gardens
Kazan Zoo & Botanical Gardens, one of the oldest European institutions of its kind, is nearing its 200th anniversary. Its botanical collection consists of around 500 species, 20 of which are endangered, and its zoological collection includes 145 species, of which 27 of them are also threatened with extinction.
Image by Kamil Rafikov on Wikimedia under Creative Commons License.
Walking Tours in Kazan, Russia
Create Your Own Walk in Kazan
Creating your own self-guided walk in Kazan is easy and fun. Choose the city attractions that you want to see and a walk route map will be created just for you. You can even set your hotel as the start point of the walk.
Famous Architecture in Kazan
Kazan's architectural splendors make for an enchanting experience to visitors of this historic city. Its most significant landmarks are located in the center of the city, including the famous Qolsharif Mosque and Söyembikä Tower. Discover Kazan's most popular architectural attractions in the following tour.
Museums Tour in Kazan
Kazan has served as a cultural crossroads of many regions, providing it with amazing architecture and places of interest. It features several fascinating museums you will surely enjoy. Take the following tour to discover Kazan's charming history and cultural roots.
Kazan Introduction Walk
Kazan's diverse cultural heritage, heavily inspired by the creativity of such well-known figures as Gorky and Shalyapin, also has a significant influence on the surrounding regions. Take the following tour to explore the traditions of this highly developed cultural center of Russia.
Kazan Churches Tour
Kazan's religious traditions have evolved from primitive paganism to Christianity and Islam. Orthodox Christianity rapidly spread throughout the city in the middle of the 16th century and various nationalities, including Russians, Mordovins, Maris and and some Tatars, converted. Take this tour to discover Kazan's most amazing churches.
Kazan Mosques Tour
The beautiful city of Kazan sees a greater number of tourists each year. Famous for its amazing mosques with stunning minarets and Muslim architecture, the following tour will lead you to the city's most significant ones.