I really enjoyed this new YouTube clip from Jim Morningstar on the origins of Breathwork and Rebirthing.
Many clients have questions about this... enjoy!
There is a moment in a Breathwork session when I realise that the sacred and mundane has met within the one I am witnessing. It is a gentle moment when I feel my own soul soften with the mystery unfolding, followed by the rising of a movement within me to bow deeply to the other, "I recognise you". It doesn't always happen, yet often does.
I realise that the sacred and mundane are not dualisms. Yet the meeting point of each, the interstices where these move together, is recognised within me in a profound way. It is like the crossing over point of the infinity symbol. There, in that movement there is much and nothing. Words are not right in this space. The master is the breath. The body in front of me is the instrument. It is beautiful beyond words and very very normal. There is absolutely nothing to do.
This place is recognised by me also when I support women through labour and birth. Not always, but often. There is a time when the shamanic midwife in me bows to the woman labouring or birthing in front of me. There is nothing else to do. I am humble, I am not bigger than this process nor this birth nor this mother. I bow to her, and yet I am also bowing to the one who has arrived from within her.
I often wonder where these movements deep within originate from. It feels like a bowing to the unseen mystery, to the divine mother and to the emergence of life. Yet even more so it is likely a deep original recognition of the human relationship with the divine. The teacher is in the room. We are not bigger than. We take our place, and bow.
At these times I realise that the work we carry out as 'midwives to the awakening of the soul in the other' is just that – the midwife. We don't know what is unfolding, who don't know who is unfolding and we never know exactly when. We just witness and, at some point, we bow.
I continue to meditate with this (un)knowing in my practice, I stay with the mystery and I also feel held by it. I feel blessed that this is my work.
Clients sometimes thank me for supporting their birthing or their personal transformation in a way that imagines I have 'done something'. And it's just not true. My wish is that I do nothing; that I continue to do my own work so that I am ready; that I witness; and that I sit with a sense of integrity and honesty and unwavering trust so that I can be truly open to recognise that which makes me bow. This is my work.
The work of learning to midwife birth and breath is a lifelong apprenticeship to spirit. It is not taken lightly. It is overseen by human teachers and the masters who have come before. It is rewarding- beyond words.
In 2015 in Canberra we have a new Doula student group who are starting this journey and soon I will start this journey with those wishing to midwife breath. I know deeply however that the 'Training' is just the beginning. In 2015 I have organised a number of breath retreats to take the work further and have agreed to mentor those who wish to continue the apprenticeship with spirit. I wish to encourage and support those who are called to midwife the awakening of the soul, to do so.
Those called may also wish to join a 'village' to support them. Here in Canberra we have a Doula community largely organised by the students and graduates who hold and support each other. In Breathwork we have various lineages and the umbrella of the Australian Breathwork Association – those who hold each other.
I support you reach out, participate and ensure that your apprenticeship is held and nourished and normalised – ensure that it grows you.
"The shamanic midwife knows that at this time what is needed is the call for humbleness in order to put birth in its place again. We need a renewed honouring of those women in service to continuing the human race through their bodies. And we remember that this is not just the responsibility of women or parents.
It is the community who need to hold a bigger space for welcoming and integrating this new life in their world - and they are not doing their job.
At the time of birth birthing women are in deepest service - both to the child, as well as to you, the community. They are responsible for consciously bringing in new life who will contribute to you, their community. It is a service that they gift to the continuation of human kind.
I can think of no other role that is quite as important. It is bewildering that we we choose to negate this".
Join us, as we learn more about the shamanic midwife, midwifing breath, spirit and the birth/rebirth cycles.


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Manning lauds Belichick, Brady
Andy Hart
Patriots.com Writer
Future Hall of Fame quarterback Peyton Manning has done battle with future Hall of Fame coach Bill Belichick and his defenses many times over the years.
That player-vs.-coach rivalry will renew Sunday afternoon in Denver, as Manning's record-setting Broncos offense looks to roll into the Super Bowl by beating Belichick's gutsy, resilient defense.
While Manning would like nothing better to send Belichick packing rather than allow the coach to tie the record for most postseason wins, the quarterback clearly has endless respect for his sideline foe.
"I don't know if I have a word that really jumps out," Manning said when asked to described his coaching foe. "Coach Belichick is the best coach that I've ever competed against. I think it's safe to say he'll go down as the greatest NFL coach of all time. So, the teams that he has coached that I've competed against have always been well-coached, always been prepared, always played hard for 60 minutes. If I had to think of a couple of things that have stood out about the teams that he has coached – and you know I've played against him when he was a defensive coordinator with the [New York] Jets and then as the head coach at New England – those things jump out every single week. To me, that speaks to his coaching."
He also had high praise for another of his future Hall of Fame roommates in Canton – Tom Brady. The quarterbacks will be facing off for the 15th time on Sunday, and even though they aren't actually doing battle on the field together, it's the story of the game yet again. And Manning understands Brady's greatness.
"I think the one thing that jumps out about Tom is just his consistency," Manning said. "I feel like he's been a better player each year than he was the year before, and that, to me, speaks to his work ethic in the offseason, his refusal to be complacent or satisfied. He always feels like he can step his game up one level higher, which [in] some of the seasons he's had you say, 'How can you get better than that?' But I think he has done that. The conversations that I've had with him, I can tell that's something that's always a goal and a focus of his every offseason – targeting something that he wants to work on and improve. And he's done that, and that's a real credit to him. That's just one thing. There are many, many well-deserved accolades and adjectives to describe the way he's played quarterback and the way he's competed, but [consistency is] one that's really impressive to me."
And for the record, Manning also answered a question about the "Omaha" calls that he made endlessly in last Sunday's win over the Chargers that were picked up clearly by CBS' parabolic mics. While he talked about the "Omaha" calls that were all the rage on Twitter during the game and even intrigued the Omaha Steaks company, Manning obviously didn't really shed any light on what the call means to the Broncos.
"I'm not sure I know how to answer that, but I've had a lot people ask what 'Omaha' means," Manning said. "'Omaha' is a run play, but it could be a pass play or a play-action pass depending on a couple things – the wind, which way we're going, the quarter and the jerseys that we're wearing. It varies really play to play. There's your answer to that one."

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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We can give you the peace of mind that your residential roof is installed by a GAF Certified Roofing Contractor. Skyline is also certified by GAF's commercial products division in asphaltic and single membrane roof systems, which allows us to have our roofs inspected and certified for enhanced NDL warranties. Extensive training with Owens Corning™ has earned us the preferred contractor status and "Top of the House" certification in attic ventilation and insulation.
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Architecture: Collections
Architecture New and Key Titles
Our latest books, covering a wide range of key areas within Architecture for students, instructors, researchers, and professors.
Architectural Design, Drawing and Presentation
Structure, Materials and Detailing
Architectural Conservation and Building Conservation
Digital Architecture
History and Theory
Conservation of Building and Decorative Stone
By F G Dimes, J. Ashurst
One of the problems which beset the practical conservation of stone buildings is the fragmentation of the disciplines involved. This book, with both volumes now available as one invaluable paperback, brings these disciplines together by the involvement of contributors with different experiences and…
Hardback – 2016-04-11
Tourists in Historic Towns
Urban Conservation and Heritage Management, 1st Edition
By Aylin Orbasli
Tourists in Historic Towns examines the relationship of culture, heritage, conservation and tourism development in historic towns and urban centres, debating the impacts of tourism on historic towns and the role tourism plays in conservation and urban continuity. The main focus of the book is…
Practical Building Conservation: Earth, Brick and Terracotta
By Historic England
Earth, Brick and Terracotta deals with fired and unfired clay products. It considers their technological evolution, the processes causing deterioration and how these should be assessed and the methods used for their repair and maintenance.…
Practical Building Conservation, 10-volume set
Since the original series of Practical Building Conservation appeared in 1988, it has become a standard reference for those caring for historic buildings large and small: essential reading for architects, surveyors and building managers, as well as conservators. This new and much expanded set of 10…
Specifications for Building Conservation
Volume 1: External Structure, 1st Edition
Edited by Rory Cullen, Rick Meier
In Specifications for Building Conservation, the National Trust draws on a range of case studies and specifications to provide a much needed guide to specification writing for building conservation. Although traditional building accounts for approximately a quarter of all buildings in the UK, the…
Conservation of Historic Buildings
By Bernard Feilden
Since its publication in 1982 Sir Bernard Feilden's Conservation of Historic Buildings has become the standard text for architects and others involved in the conservation of historic structures. Leading practitioners around the world have praised the book as being the most significant single volume…
The History of Gauged Brickwork
By Gerard Lynch
This book takes a look at the history and use of cut, rubbed and gauged brickwork; the use of tools and equipment and the differences between historic and contemporary bricks with a view to inform conservation and restoration decisions.The book uses case studies from England, Ireland and the US to…
Paperback – 2015-06-25
Routledge Series in Conservation and Museology
Architectural Tiles
Conservation and Restoration, 2nd Edition
By Lesley Durbin
This new edition of Architectural Tiles: Conservation and Restoration continues to inform and educate on appropriate means towards the preservation of this valuable heritage. It not only contains new and up to date information on materials, practical methods, and historical research but also…
History, Repair and Conservation, 1st Edition
Edited by James W. P. Campbell, Michael Tutton
The staircase dates back to the very beginning of architectural history. Virtually every significant building from the ziggurats of ancient Mesopotamia to the present day, has not only contained one or more staircases, but has celebrated them. For such an apparently simple part of a building they…
The Conservation Movement: A History of Architectural Preservation
Antiquity to Modernity, 1st Edition
By Miles Glendinning
Winner of the 2016 Antoinette Forrester Downing Award presented by the Society of Architectural Historians. In many cities across the world, particularly in Europe, old buildings form a prominent part of the built environment, and we often take it for granted that their contribution is…
International Heritage and Historic Building Conservation
Saving the World's Past, 1st Edition
By Zeynep Aygen
The majority of books in English on historic building conservation and heritage preservation training are often restricted to Western architecture and its origins. Consequently, the history of building conservation, the study of contemporary paradigms and case studies in most universities and…
Routledge Studies in Heritage
Structural Design in Building Conservation
By Dimitris Theodossopoulos
No building is properly conserved if it is not structurally sound. Consequently architects, engineers and conservation officers need an adequate grounding in the technology, the materials and the historic origins of the building in order to complete a conservation project successfully. Structural…
Refurbishment and Upgrading of Buildings
By David Highfield, Christopher Gorse
A detailed guide to the technical aspects of refurbishing and upgrading buildings, this book provides solutions to a range of problems, challenges and issues and is essential reading for all students studying building refurbishment at all levels. Includes: existing floor and wall…
Spon Press
Contact our Editors:
Fran Ford - Publisher, Architecture
Wendy Fuller - Editor, Architecture, Architectural Conservation, Industrial Design, and Interiors
Louise Fox - Editor, Landscape and Built Environment Research


Copper is used in the bottom of pans because it heats quickly and evenly distributes the heat across its surface. Copper-bottom pans can become burned if they are allowed to sit too long on a burner, left on a burner while empty or catch on fire. Burnt copper loses its ability to heat evenly and may leave your food with a burnt taste. But instead of throwing the burnt pan out, try fixing it with simple cleaning methods.
Salvage a burnt copper-bottom pan with proper cleaning techniques.
Remove any burnt food from the inside bottom of the pan. Add two to three drops of liquid dish soap to the bottom of the pan. Fill the pan with hot water until the layer of food is covered. Mix in 2 tablespoons of baking soda. Allow the pan to soak for at least one hour.
Try scrubbing the burnt food from the pan with a non-abrasive scrubbing pad. Leave the pan to soak overnight if the food is still firmly stuck to the pan. Scrub the food from the pan and rinse in hot water. Dry the pan with a cloth.
Fill a microwave safe bowl with 1/4 to 1/2 cup vinegar. Heat the vinegar in a microwave for 30 seconds on medium-high heat. Mix 1/2 cup table salt and 1/2 cup white flour in a second bowl while the vinegar is warming up. Add the vinegar to the dry mix until a thick past forms. Spread the paste over the copper bottom of the pan. Rub the paste into the pan's bottom with a cloth. Let the paste sit on the pan until it dries. Wipe the excess paste off with a cloth and rinse the pan's bottom in hot water.
Cut a lemon in half with a knife. Dip the cut surface of one lemon half in the remaining table salt. Rub the salted lemon over any remaining burnt or tarnished spots on the pan's copper bottom until the stains disappear. Rinse the pan in hot water and dry with a cloth.
Can You Use a Dutch Oven on a Glass-Top Stove?


Mondrian's interest lay in the abstract quality of line but by 1914 he had all but eliminated the curved line from his work. By 1916 he had suppressed any sense of a subject. Still later he developed a new form of rigorous abstraction called Neo-Plasticism in which he limited himself to straight, horizontal and vertical lines and basic primary colours. Typically his compositions were not symmetrical but could scarcely be purer in their elements. He felt this art reflected a greater, universal truth beyond everyday appearance.
Composition with Red, Yellow and Blue represents a mature stage of Mondrian's abstraction. It seems to be a flat work, but there are differences in the texture of different elements. While the black stripes are the flattest of the paintings, in the areas with color are clear the brushstrokes, all in the same direction. The white spaces are, on the contrary, painted in layers, using brushstrokes that are put in different directions. And all of these produce a depth that, to the naked eye, cannot be appreciated.


[Images: Two shots of Copenacre Quarry, via Nick McCamley's Secret Underground Cities site].
Last night I came across a review of the album Copenacre, by C4I, in an old back issue of The Wire.
Apparently inspired by Nick McCamley's legendary book Secret Underground Cities, the musicians behind Copenacre tried "to evoke the dead air and constant low level hum of Copenacre Quarry's now abandoned navy testing and storage facility" in England.
In other words, it's the soundtrack for an underground city.
[Images: Two more shots of Copenacre Quarry, via Nick McCamley's Secret Underground Cities site].
Here are two examples: MP3 1. MP3 2.
Both of those excerpts, however, remind me of the early work of Lustmord, the nom de musique of LA-based sound designer Brian Williams. Lustmord's discography became somewhat notorious in the early 1990s for, among other things, having been partially recorded inside abandoned mines, in the crypts of churches, and inside caves and cellars. The resulting, planet-shaking resonance and sub-bass could often put listeners' headphones out of commission.
On an almost ridiculously great CD called The Place Where The Black Stars Hang, Williams achieves a similar effect – but he gets rid of the caves and architecture. Instead, we plunge headfirst into nearly an hour and twenty minutes of machinic astronomy; we rumble and drone inside with what sounds like a WWII airplane buzzing through deep space, recording the slow magnetic death of stars.
Gigantic radar systems bounce and reflect off nothing.
Needless to say, it's not for everyone.
(See also BLDGBLOG's look at Subterranean bunker-cities).
Hey geoff. I'm not quite sure how to get a hold of you other than through comments on your blog.
This article http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-2546574,00.html about robotic house-building machines, unrelated to this post, made me think of you.
How about ambient sounds from the Brussels sewers?
Hey anon – thanks for the link! You might like this older post, which is about that same project.
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See Vivian's Cafe Featured on TLC's Reality Show, "Leah Remini, It's All Relative"!
the "Healthy" options on Vivian's Cafe Menu!
Another Happy Fan of Vivian's Millennium Cafe!
Karen Dry says Vivian's is a great place for business meetings!
Vivian's Millennium Cafe Was Featured On The Best Deals TV Show!


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Tyler Oakley's Hair-volution: The Rise And Fall Of A Phenomenon
21 January 2016, 11:58 | Updated: 8 May 2017, 17:09
By Victoria Pavlova
It's been a wild ride.
1) It all started four years ago.
Tyler was a charming bedroom vlogger and The Hair - overshadowed by his hilarity and killer lip syncing skills - was yet to make a name for itself. I like to refer to these as the Hannah Montana years. An innocent time, before we discovered the true globetrotting potential of a phenomenon.
2) Growing pains.
Those early years were tough. According to an anonymous source, The Hair often struggled with self-confidence, choosing to isolate itself from the world through snapbacks and other early teens-themed accessories.
3) On the rise.
But you can't hold a good hairdo down. As months passed, The Hair discovered new means of expression and grew in both size and popularity. This was to be a long and fruitful collaboration. Or so we thought.
4) Cracks start to show.
Other artists were clamouring to collaborate with the unit, but it was clear which member they were really interested in. It became obvious The Hair was the driving force behind the Tyler Oakley brand. Tension was building. DIY bleaching kits were flying off the shelves. We were on the brink of mass hysteria.
5) Hair Mania.
Newly empowered by its success, the hair was ready to experiment with new styles.
Every experiment was welcomed by the fans. It was riding high on a peroxide-scented cloud and setting records no other artist had ever achieved.
The Hair's work was unprecedented. It displayed depth. It was simultaneously mature, innovative and neon.
The world was hooked. The Hair could do no wrong.
Until it did...
6) Peer pressure.
The creative process started falling to the wayside as The Hair's life became more extravagant and its persona ever more erratic. The Hair was seen with some suspicious collaborators and experimenting with outrageous substances. Wigs allegedly came into the mix. Gossip was rampant.
7) The bubble bursts.
Eventually it looked like the hair had had enough. Photos popped up online of it looking haggard, split ends visible even without a Nicon lens. Rumours began circulating of the hair being hospitalised for "exhaustion".
8) Intervention.
The transition was difficult. The Hair struggled to cope without its steady stream of peroxide, toner and Manic Panic. A lot of silver shampoo was allegedly consumed during this stage. But fans, confident that their fave would prevail, sent in get well cards and response videos. The community was once again finding unity.
9) Recovery.
Gradually, The Hair recovered. The old duo was back together, with The Hair and Tyler finally achieving some much needed balance. Together, they produced their most influential work to date. And while we don't know what the future may bring, we are confident that any hairsperiments from here on out will be a mature, collaborative effort.
QUIZ: Are You More Troye Sivan Or Tyler Oakley?
Should We Care About This YouTuber's Gay Porn Past?


Weighs in at 3.5 kilos. The batteries are an additional �270; the chargers add �40. The packs themselves are rugged and highly waterproof with taped seams, external straps for carrying skis and ice axes and lots of organiser pockets for things like goggles and snow safety kit.


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Words by: Luwi Nguluka Images by: Courtesy of Emanuel Chibesakunda May 19, 2020
Founded by Emanuel Chibesakunda, Plant A Million Zambia is an initiative that tackles poverty, deforestation and climate change by planting as many trees as possible. In fact, they aim to plant over two billion trees and have so far planted over half a million trees.
I gave up my Porsche to plant trees in the African savanna – this sounds like the title of a self-help book targeted at overworked city slickers who need to reassess their life values. Although I mentioned this book title to Emanuel Chibesakunda jokingly, in retrospect, he may be the perfect author.
Emanuel's life began in Zambia. Born to a German mother and a Zambian father, he moved to Germany when he was eight years old and spent the next two decades of his far from ordinary life there. While other children were going through the motions of suburban life, Emanuel was training to become a five-time track and field star and even made it to the 1998 Olympic Bobsled team, representing Germany. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? A Zambian at the Winter Olympics?
The story doesn't end with his ascent to sporting greatness. Emanuel then shifted goal posts and focused on academia, studying industrial engineering and then business administration at the Technical University of Munich and UC Berkeley respectively. Being an Olympic athlete who trained for ten to twelve hours a day, seven days a week, Emanuel knows all about hard work. He testifies that he learnt a lot from his graduate school classmates who camped out in the library, taking two-hour naps and using their textbooks as pillows. This new type of competition was the fire he needed to land a job at Booz Allen Hamilton where he was a senior project manager for five years. This billion-dollar multinational provides consulting services to clients such as BMW and Ford Motors. Needless to say, Emanuel was in the big leagues, celebrating birthdays with royalty and spending more money on one meal than what some make in a year.
How does someone like this end up planting trees in Zambia? Well soon the trappings of the "music video life" and the "golden cage" became evident. For many of us, it takes a traumatic life event to make us rethink our priorities and Emanuel is no different. In 2006 his father was attacked by a robber in his home. He survived the horrific attack, but this brought Emanuel back to Zambia. The more he visited, the more he reassessed his life. Ultimately, his role at Booz Allen was to optimise profits and reduce costs, in other words, to make the rich richer. Unsatisfied with this, he began to search for more meaningful work, consulting on energy and agriculture projects across Africa and eventually homing in on his beloved Zambia.
Zambia receives millions of dollars in aid annually. Where does it all go and why doesn't it make significant changes to people's lives? These questions nagged Emanuel and he sought answers. His answers came from a conservation farming project he worked on. He realised that by empowering female farmers with the skills to increase their yield twenty-fold, they were improving the lives of an entire community. Female farmers use their profits to invest in food, healthcare and education for their children. Empowering decision maker's in the home is the key.
We are still not talking about trees yet, are we? Emanuel then thought about the resources Zambia has in abundance and how they can be used to turn a profit. What does Zambia have in abundance? Trees! According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, 66.5 percent or 49,468,000 hectares of Zambia is forested. Forests are multifunctional resources: they can provide firewood, food, regulate the water and carbon cycles, provide oxygen and protect biodiversity. Emanuel realised Zambia has an immense opportunity to shift from a copper-dependent economy to a sustainably managed tree-based economy, and so the idea for Plant A Million Zambia was born.
Plant A Million Zambia is an initiative that tackles poverty, deforestation and climate change by planting as many trees as possible. In fact, they aim to plant over two billion trees. They are well on their way. With Emanuel at the helm, the initiative has planted over half a million trees in Zambia to date.
Plant A Million Zambia is an ambitious project. Not only do they aim to plant an astronomical number of trees and offset the effects of decades of deforestation in Zambia, they also intend to change our education system. They are collaborating with the Ministry of Education to create the world's first climate-change themed syllabus for grades one to twelve. Plant A Million Zambia understands that without sustainable management and conservation of natural resources such as forests and trees, there will be no money to be made.
The organisation is governed by three themes: education, economy and ecology. The goal is to ensure Zambians make money from trees. By planting trees communities profit from the sale of high-cash products such as mongongo oil, baobab powder, and avocados. Plant A Million Zambia also plans to use a mobile juice plant to travel the country extracting juice from the millions of fruits that are wasted each year. It is difficult to quantify economically the value trees provide but Emanuel and his team aim to try.
When asked about highlights thus far, Emanuel mentioned launching his project with the support of President Edgar Lungu in Chinsali in April 2019. "This initiative marks the beginning of growing money through trees and government stands ready to support it and ensure that it succeeds," the president said. Is there higher praise than the head of the nation believing in your ideas? Hardly.
Do all roads lead to development?
Dooderonomy


Home » Update – Photos of #Naitbabies #Charity Ball!!!!
A fabulous evening raising a magnificent £18,000!!!!!!!!!!!
#NAITbabies would like to say a HUGE THANK YOU to Dion McKeown, Simone Phillips, Natalie Leighton, Deina Johnson and Stacy Corke for their immense amount of hard work organising the fabulous Naitbabies #Charity #Ball this evening!!!!!!
Many thanks to all the wonderful people and firms that have donated such great prizes!!!


We have some very exciting news to share with you all! Since this exact time last year, our Doggie Day Care attendance has tripled! We are so thrilled that you are loving our DDC and we certainly love seeing all your sweet pups each day!
Last year, we took on some renovations that included adding an antimicrobial turf yard with a built-in irrigation system. The pups have definitely enjoyed the new turf, water, and baby pools we put out over the spring, summer and fall.
Chester won our wet dog contest!
Peter LOVES dipping his toes (or body) into the pool!
We are so excited that we are going to be able to triple the size of our hotel and will not need daily Doggie Day Care reservations going forward. Continued convenient drop offs without calling ahead is a major plus, right? More hotel suites also means help with accommodating our Hotel Reservations during the holiday seasons!
To sign your pup up for Doggie Day Care from January 22nd to February 9th, please call or visit the front desk and we are happy to help! Stay tuned to our Facebook Page and also follow our Instagram/Instastories to see the construction progression.
Last month, the lucky winner and aspiring veterinarian, Lola came and spent the day at our hospital. Lola's mom, Eliz, bid on the auction item as a present for Lola's 10th birthday. Boy was she surprised!
During her day with us, Lola got to shadow Dr. Richardson as well our team members here at Trinity Animal Hospital. She received a tour of our hospital, met our patients, followed along with Dr. Richardson to room appointments, observed a dental procedure and even got to help with a dog rehabilitation evaluation!


She hadn't meant to stay so long.
Every day this week it was the same: two poems a day and Justine asleep in half an hour. Amy obediently sat beside the sleeping woman for two and a half more hours…just in case. Alice was "in the library" having her lessons. Amy never saw the girl—until today.
Justine had only wanted one poem today. Amy read A Mother-To-Be in Waiting.
After the reading both women were affected. Amy was left wondering if this is what it is like to hold a child of one's own—is it holding moonlight in your arms? The ache in her womb and her empty arms throbbed. Justine turned her face away and grew silent.
The old woman turned doleful eyes back to Amy.
Amy didn't know what to say. The two women looked at each other in silence. Justine seemed so small. Amy could see the sorrow in the corners of the old woman's eyes—threatening to spill over. Without thinking she reached out and covered a withered hand with her own. Justine squeezed her fingers and the tears did spill then.
Just then, Alice peeked through one of the doorways hugging the circular room.
She skipped into the room.
Two sets of eyes followed her.
Oh, this child was beautiful and Amy was bewitched by those dimples.
The girl was thrilled. She disappeared into the galley. Amy watched the door swing behind her.
She followed Alice into the kitchen. She found her carefully ladling soup from a tureen into three bowls. She dimpled again at Amy's presence.
Amy opened the refrigerator door, found some ham and turkey in the bottom drawer and placed them on the tray sitting on the counter.
Together, they created a lovely little lunch, complete with iced tea topped with mint. Amy was impressed with Alice's skill in the kitchen. Certainly not hazardous duty, she smiled at the thought. Maureen Doallas's poetry made for a good aperitif.
When the two returned to Justine, however, they found her sleeping.
Amy followed Alice's bobbing form through yet another door, into a solarium of sorts. There was lush greenery in the center—miniature palms and Elephant's Ear, and tropical-looking plants that lent a feel of holiday to the room. She followed Alice through sliding glass doors and into beauty.
It was a mild day for early March—the blustery wind and snow flurries of the previous week blown on to far places. The sun lit the cloudless sky like stained glass and the promise of spring was in the air. The garden was rather bare, only the crocuses brave enough to show themselves this early in the season. But Amy was taken with the hedging—the neat rows of boxwood framed them competently, lending a feel of order that Amy sorely lacked these days.
Amy searched the child's face for any sadness at the mention of her mother. But Alice seemed quite content. She sat the tray down on a table that was strategically positioned in the shade of a small tree. The perfect hostess, she set the plates out with silverware and gestured for Amy to sit.
The child folder her hands in her lap and bowed her head.
Alice attacked her plate with gusto. Amy was surprised at how eager she was for a bite too—something in the crisp air piqued her hunger. The soup was delicious—the perfect blend of cream, tomato, and basil. And she wondered about this Oliver—this gourmet/gardener/banker/single father who cared for the mother of his disappeared wife. She surveyed Alice under her lashes.
Ten years old. Alice was only two when her mother left her. Amy studied the little girl in front of her.
Amy let Alice prattle, enjoying the easy sound of her talk. They split the extra bowl of soup—the one warmed for Justine. Afterwards, Justine was still sleeping so they cleaned up together.
All the way home, Amy smiled. As she checked her mailbox before heading back inside, a realization popped.
She hadn't heard a thing from the Watchers all week.


text:
Those We Leave Behind is the second and final studio album by post-hardcore band I Am Ghost, and was released on October 7, 2008. The sound of the album is considerably different: after the departure of the band's female vocalist/violinist Kerith Telestai, I Am Ghost recorded more melodic, yet lyrically darker songs, with a stronger indication towards punk.

Album information
I Am Ghost parted ways with their band members, Brian Telestai (bass, keys, vocals) and his wife Kerith Telestai (violin, vocals) parted ways with I Am Ghost after health problems arose for Kerith on their national tour with The Chariot. Kerith said goodbye during a show at warped tour, while Brian left after the West Coast Revival tour with Aiden. After the two members left, Ron Ficarro joined filling in for bass, and no replacement was made for Kerith Telestai.

Lead singer Steve Juliano discussed the new direction of the album:

Juliano wrote all of the lyrics on Those We Leave Behind. The album's music was primarily written by bassist Ron Ficarro with additional compositions from guitarist Tim Rosales III. On August 12, I Am Ghost uploaded "Bone Garden" onto their Myspace.

Track listing

Personnel

Band
 Steven Juliano
 Ron Ficarro
 Tim Rosales III
 Justin McCarthy

Additional musicians
 Jon LaLopa – additional guitar
 Sharon Wang – violins (tracks: 1, 2, 4, 6, 10, 13)
 Justin Chapman – cello (tracks: 1, 2, 4, 6, 10, 13)
 Alison Murphy – reading (track: 1)
 Cody Leavitt – additional vocals (tracks: 2, 8)
 Ron Ficarro – orchestra arrangement

Artwork and design
 Nick Pritchard – art director, designer
 Bryan Sheffield – photography

Production and technical
 Paul Leavitt – producer, recording, engineer, mixing
 Cory Gable – additional Pro Tools engineer
 Michael Fossenkemper – mastering

Chart positions

References

2008 albums
Epitaph Records albums
I Am Ghost albums

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Home » News » Auto » Bosch to Develop Key Components for Hydrogen Fuel Cells Designed to Power Cars
Bosch to Develop Key Components for Hydrogen Fuel Cells Designed to Power Cars
View of the entrance of German automotive parts manufacturer Robert Bosch Belgian plant in Tienen April 21, 2009. (Photo: Reuters)
Stuttgart-based Bosch and Powercell Sweden AB -- formerly a subsidiary of carmaker Volvo -- aim to bring the fuel cells to market "in 2022 at the latest".
The world's biggest auto parts maker Bosch said it would work with a Swedish firm to develop key components for hydrogen fuel cells designed to power cars, after backing off building electric batteries. Stuttgart-based Bosch and Powercell Sweden AB -- formerly a subsidiary of carmaker Volvo -- aim to bring the fuel cells to market "in 2022 at the latest". Hydrogen-powered electric vehicles could prove winners compared with their battery-driven cousins for some applications.
They offer a longer range and can be refuelled about as quickly as petrol- or diesel-powered vehicle. At the same time, hydrogen cars boast some of the advantages of battery-electric, including powerful acceleration, silent operation and no emissions at the point of use except water vapour.
But a number of technological hurdles remain to be cleared before mass deployment. Large amounts of electricity are required to produce hydrogen, and there is a very limited network of fuelling stations. Just sixty refuelling points are available across Germany.
Bosch did not reveal the financial terms of its deal with Powercell Sweden, but the two firms will work together to develop the so-called "stack" -- components at the heart of the cell where the chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen takes place to produce electricity.
The group last year decided not to compete with existing Asian industry leaders in producing electric batteries for cars, seeing the rivals' technological advantage as too great to catch up. By doing so, it turned away from supplying German carmakers like mammoth Volkswagen as they gear up to offer dozens of electric vehicles over the coming decade.
Manufacturers have taken the plunge on electric power faced with looming tougher emissions rules in the European Union, loaded with hefty financial penalties if they are breached. European carbon dioxide (CO2) reduction targets "can only be reached by electrifying more and more of the powertrain. The fuel cell can play a decisive role here," Bosch said.
At first, "the best opportunities for broad adoption of fuel-cell technology are in the commercial-vehicle market," the firm added, although it expects broader use in passenger cars should follow. By 2030, Bosch estimates that 20 percent of all electric vehicles worldwide will be powered by fuel cells.
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This 30 it's the big one! Ribbon will be a fun reminder for a friend turning 30! This black ribbon reads '30, it's the big one' on it and will be a great keepsake for the recipient to look back on for the following years.


text:
Q: How to encode factors as dummy variables when using stepPlr? When using the step.plr() function in the stepPlr package, if my predictors are factors, do I need to encode my predictors as dummy variables manually before passing it to the function? I do know that I can specify "level", but how  the "level" parameter works is confusing to me.
My understanding is that I need to tell step.plr() explicitly which factors should be encoded as dummy variables and thus leaving one factor out intentionally.
Let's consider a simple example. Suppose I have 1 categorical predicator with 4 levels and binary response. Normally, if I use glm() to fit a logistic regression model, glm() would automatically convert the categorical predicator into 3 dummy variables. Now in stepPlr(), do I specify the "level" parameter for that predictor with 4 levels or 3 levels? The "Help" section is vague, and says:

If the j-th column of x is discrete, level[[ j ]] is the set of levels for the categorical factor.

Does it mean I should tell step.plr() about all 4 levels, or I should make an intelligent decision myself and tell step.plr() to use only 3 levels?
==============UPDATE (16 Oct 2012)=============
The following example will demonstrate what is the problem with step.plr()'s automatic dummy variable encoding. It is a slight modification of the code in the function's help section.
     set.seed(100)
n <- 100
p <- 3
z <- matrix(sample(seq(3),n*p,replace=TRUE),nrow=n)
x <- data.frame(x1=factor(z[ ,1]),x2=factor(z[ ,2]),
                x3=factor(sample(seq(3), n, replace=TRUE, prob=c(0.2, 0.5, 0.3))),
                x4=factor(sample(seq(3), n, replace=TRUE, prob=c(0.1, 0.3, 0.6))))
y <- sample(c(0,1),n,replace=TRUE)
fit <- step.plr(x,y, cp="aic")
summary(fit)

And here's an excerpt of the result:
Call:
plr(x = ix0, y = y, weights = weights, offset.subset = offset.subset,
    offset.coefficients = offset.coefficients, lambda = lambda,
    cp = cp)

Coefficients:
      Estimate Std.Error z value Pr(>|z|)
Intercept  0.91386   5.04780   0.181    0.856
x4.1       1.33787   4.61089   0.290    0.772
x4.2      -1.70462   4.91240  -0.347    0.729
x4.3       0.36675   3.18857   0.115    0.908
x3.1:x4.1  7.04901  14.35112   0.491    0.623
x3.1:x4.2 -5.50973  15.53674  -0.355    0.723
x3.1:x4.3 -0.50012   7.95651  -0.063    0.950

You can see that all levels, that is, (1,2,3), are used to fit the model. But normally you only need two dummy variables to encode a predictor with 3 levels.
On the other hand, if you use glm():
glm(y~.^2, data=x, family=binomial)

you will get the correct dummy variable encoding.

A: See the first example given in help for step.plr
n <- 100
p <- 3
z <- matrix(sample(seq(3),n*p,replace=TRUE),nrow=n)
x <- data.frame(x1=factor(z[ ,1]),x2=factor(z[ ,2]),x3=factor(z[ ,3]))
y <- sample(c(0,1),n,replace=TRUE)
fit <- step.plr(x,y)
# 'level' is automatically generated. Check 'fit$level'.

Does that answer your question?

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text:
Johnathan N. - January 19, 2022
Singapore Restricts Crypto Ads — Central Bank Says Crypto Trading Not Suitable for the General Public
news Jessica L. - January 18, 2022 0
Singapore's central bank has issued guidelines to discourage cryptocurrency trading by the general public. The central bank emphasized that "the trading of cryptocurrencies is...
According to a survey, the United Kingdom ranks third globally for ETH ownership, with adoption increasing by 1% in December
news Clark Carson - January 17, 2022 0
According to a December poll by Finder.com, the United Kingdom ranked third in the world for Ether usage, while overall cryptocurrency adoption increased by...
A group of U.S.-based banks is launching their own stablecoin, USDF. The stablecoin will be issued by the USDF Consortium, which will allow its...
Strike Arrives in Argentina With USDT Support, No Bitcoin Integration Yet
news Ian Sanchez - January 13, 2022 0
Strike, a bitcoin-based wallet and exchange service, has landed in Argentina, bringing USDT integration to users in the country. Jack Mallers, CEO of Strike, explained that...
Crypto giants back Inflation-resistant savings technology
The consumer price index in the United States hit a 40-year high in December, capping a year of steep price hikes. Seashell, a fintech firm,...
Iran to Permit Use of Cryptocurrencies in International Settlements, Reports Reveal
news Maria O. - January 12, 2022 0
Authorities in Iran are preparing to allow the employment of cryptocurrencies for international settlements. According to local media, central bank and government officials have...
According to a JPMorgan survey, Wall Street is still undecided about Bitcoin reaching $100,000 this year
JPMorgan Chase advises investors to be cautious in the cryptocurrency market. According to a recent client survey, only 5% of clients predict Bitcoin will...
Arbitrum Network Stalled Due to Sequencer Downtime
news Robinson Lillian - January 11, 2022 0
er node, which experienced a hardware failure that led to the network stall. According to Arbitrum docs, the sequencer is a "specially designated full node,...
Joe Rogan Talks With Adam Curry About Bitcoin Versus Ethereum
Event Tracy M. - January 11, 2022 0
American comedian and podcaster Joe Rogan recently stated in his podcast that he has a lot of "hope" for cryptocurrencies, while also admitting that...


The Li Juetian rush, Shi Changxiao and Solitary Eagle Lei Wubei did not dare to neglect, the bodys quickly moved to change positions, and the time has already occupied the position, and the order is attacked. Although have not discussed any strategy before, but which one of the three people is not through the ward wars? Casual everyone's position, but it is best to match the two more to coordinate with each other across a great distance Li Juetian's best optimum position!
Li Juetian rushed out, and the personal appearance faded, but at the fastest speed, the rapid attack, Venerable Mei snorted and banged out.
Li Juetian body first shrinks, rushing to Venerable Mei, but slipping out from the side like a muddy, slanting out, from the position where stood behind, two fists suddenly killed, facing the Venerable Mei A fist, while the Solitary Eagle has already flew up, the flying eagle movement technique is unfolding at full speed, and the volley is thrown. Ghost Eagle Nine Claw, first type!
Lei Wubei's dark long blade re-emerged, drilled out from Shi Changxiao's ribs, straight thrust Venerable Mei chest, enveloped her upper body five feet, this is always a glory, a war of life, even also regret that my Treasur sword has to fight.
At the same time, Li Juetian is on the side of the retreating figure, just like the top of the gyro, the high-speed reversal, melts castrates for the coming, go back, and start the storm again from the side!
The four individual attacks are first and foremost, but the match is so seamless that it is the call to Venerable Mei, and everyone's make a move is strange.
On the surface, it seems that all four people are the most simplest of the fists and feet attacks, but Venerable Mei knows well, no matter which one is on, it will then turn into a cumbersome trick, being opposite party. Entangling yourself in a short time! the other three people really trump card, will also make a move when they are entangled!
At the same time, Venerable Mei teamed up with the four Supremes, and did not dare to care. A shout, body-spin, first avoided Shi Changxiao's double fist, black robe swayed, and the knife point that Lei Wubei stabbed was born. Was a slight line, turned and moved sideways, the punch that still did not recover, but still straight to Li Juetian, the left hand at the same time, a fierce blast of artillery shells Was "Throwed" Out to meet Solitary Eagle who was falling from the sky!
At the same time facing the four Supreme sieges, Venerable Mei did not panic, in the wink of an eye calmly resolved the four people's offense, but also did not show weakness in the counterattack!
Li Juetian root one bites, but accelerate again! He knows that among the four individuals, one must pay someone to fight with Venerable Mei. The other three talents may use this opportunity to complete the encirclement. Since the other three people do not have the courage, they will not contribute this force. Your own injury will not support it for a long time, then you have to do it yourself!
The hatred of Venerable Mei prompted Li Juetian to make this crazy decision! His fist on the joint explosive, faintly hidden in the First Layer, apparently this fist has been exhausted, to fight with Venerable Mei without a fake!
He calculated that Venerable Mei was forced to retreat three people, and the movement technique was superb, but it was inevitably to fall to the end of the strong, and had to fight hard with himself! If you change to your position in Venerable Mei, there is only one choice!
Venerable Mei's face was cold, and the time of the electric stone fire was fis recycling, and then it was played again. It was another Li Juetian on the welcomes. At the same time, the two legs continued to kick out 49 legs, and the whole body was pulled up. The sky cannons generally rushed to the top of the sky, the following three people are still distracted, the upper air has set off firecrackers generally continuous explosive, Venerable Mei and Solitary Eagle lightning-like fight 7-8 move.
Two black shadows flashed at the same time, Solitary Eagle once again turned to the sky, Venerable Mei slanted the beautiful track whereabouts, but in the falling instance, suddenly the reverse on the head, two hands at the same time extended the delicious The sleeves, abandoned Shi Changxiao and Lei Wubei, slammed into Li Juetian!
Looking at this situation, anyone can seeing that Venerable Mei has a momentum of nowhere to go, clearly to take Li Juetian severe wound, first solve this most hatefully and the most difficult guy!
Li Juetian screams, lightning-like high-spe backlash. Although he hopes to fight hard with Venerable Mei, it is extremely irrational at this time. At this time, the people of are opened by Venerable Mei, which is equal to independent combat, and they are still slightly unbalanced, the old strength will be exhausted, and the new force will not be born, even if they fight for life hard, Venerable Mei also After you kill yourself, boundless's optional dodge.
Not to mention that the Solitary Eagle was hit by upper air, and the threat has been temporarily eliminated in the sky.
Therefore, Li Juetian only retreats, blindly retreat!
Lei Baoyu and Bu Kuangfeng took a trip to the thigh at the same time.
Li Juetian retired, but the accidental Venerable Mei of accidental did not catch up at all. Even the chasing habit of the chase did not move. The body was like a line in the sky, straight and quickly flying to Shi Changxiao. The people have not yet arrived, the two legs that were originally in the midair tune suddenly kicked the Violent Wind Rainstorm.
Venerable Mei true's goal, not Li Juetian, but Life and Death Supreme Shi Changxiao! This person who threatened the most biggest on the ground, is also the only one of the three people on the ground who has not been hurt!
Obviously, Venerable Mei wants to give the only person without injur a two similar treatment!
Shi Changxiao's face was foggy, and a pair of scorpions seemed to be petrified. Even the black eyes seemed to be white, and they shouted.
He can't retire, because behind him is Lei Wubei! If he retires, this move will have Lei Wubei's disappointment. In the state that Lei Wubei has just been injured, this move can even hit him with a strikes without any hands-on strength!
The two feet of Venerable Mei, the air is also turbulent, not the ordinary two feet!
If Lei Wubei is hit out, the four-man battle will be broken, then only three of them will be lost.
So Shi Changxiao only chooses hard!
Venerable Mei's first foot kicked on Shi Changxiao's fist. Shi Changxiao was shocked, rushed to recycle, and unloaded, and wanted to make another punch. But still not recovered, Venerable Mei's second foot has already been on the fist is recycling.
Shi Changxiao was shocked, his left fist rushed to the ground, and his body would be shaken back to the neutral gear that had not been repulsed. quickly rushed to remedy, but the left hand was not in place, and Venerable Mei's third foot had already brought the power of thunder. Kneeling on his right hand fist!
This is three consecutive feet, there is almost no pause in the middle! It's like Venerable Mei has grown up with three feet and attacked at the same time. one foot is bigger than a strength of legs, Shi Changxiao body creakies, finally can not help but take a step back.
At this moment, his left hand and fist finally arrived, but the left leg that Venerable Mei had been waiting for was finally kicked out. Until now, Venerable Mei's body has not yet landed!
The left fist met Venerable Mei's left leg, making a big sound, and then replaying the scene of the right hand fist, and then three feet!
Venerable Mei's two legs are separated at this moment like a scissors, but each foot is as heavy as a mountain!
Shi Changxiao had a sweet heart. only felt that the five main internal organs (entrails) of the chest were shaken clearly. Finally, he slammed back, only to feel itchy in the nose, and a careful bloodshot sprayed. come out.
Finally still suffered an internal injury!
At the same time, Lei Wubei did not live up to the great golden opportunity that Shi Changxiao created with the injury, the bodys ghostly like a dodges, the long blade in the hands is like a broken bamboo, the "Brush" Pierced the black robe of Venerable Mei in.
In the future, could get a joyful mood with a hit, but suddenly found that after the long blade stabbed in, there was an empty feelings, intention a moves, and ran wildly!
Felt a stagnation, it seemed to be blocked, and then Seeing Venerable Mei's left hand stretched out from the black robe, and the control firmly held his knife point, and sent it forward!
Her hand grabbed the knife point of a sword that was almost Divine Weapon, and grasped the sharp denticle on the back, which seemed to be unobstructed!
At this time, Li Juetian and Solitary Eagle were on the top, and afterwards, they rushed up. Venerable Mei grabbed the knife point with his left hand, slamming Lei Wubei and twisting the twisting strength that wanted to cut his hand. bent an index finger, and against the direction of the force, he played three times under the sword. !
Then Venerable Mei has been hanging in the air and the black robe is raised backwards. It is like an oversized iron plate. It is flat and pushes to the Li Juetian. The two hands are changing in an instant. The ever-changing palm shade, with the wind and the whistling, 100 palms into a shining white triangle, swaying the mighty momentum. Hit Solitary Eagle again on upper air!
Lei Wubei's sword was played by Venerable Mei with his fingers three times, but felt that his heart was banging three loud noises, just like someone holding a big hammer and smashing three of them on his chest. The two eyes burst into a burst of flowers, and between them, the slanting exit, but involuntarily, was taken to the side by Venerable Mei's fresh breeze, just blocking the body that Shi Changxiao flew.
When the severe sounds, Lei Wubei's treasur sword has become a place of iron waste, in a clear sound, fell to the ground, Lei Wubei's hands, only a short hilt!
This divine Weapon, which is hard to find, is reimbursed for its power and is a waste iron! Lei Wubei was a big man, almost dumbfounded.
This handle blade, in the Snake Queen battle, has appeared a few slight fissures. Although Lei Wubei knows that doesn't care too much, feels that under his own Profound Arts blessing, it is four people besieges. As long as has survived this battle, can calmly repair the treasure.
Thought that had a bit in the hands of Venerable Mei, and played three times, and it was broken.


text:
Category: Podcasts
What's New Season 2 Wrap-up
With the end of the academic year at Northeastern University, the library wraps up our What's New podcast, an interview series with researchers who help us understand, in plainspoken ways, some of the latest discoveries and ideas about our world. This year's slate of podcasts, like last year's, was extraordinarily diverse, ranging from the threat of autonomous killer robots to the wonders of tactile writing systems like Braille, and from the impact of streaming music on the recording industry to the disruption and meaning of Brexit. I've enjoyed producing and being the interviewer on these podcasts, and since I like to do my homework in addition to conversing with the guests live, I've learned an enormous amount from What's New.
I hope you have too if you're a subscriber to the podcast or just the occasional listener, and would love your feedback about what we can do better, and topics you would like to hear us cover in the future. One surprising and rewarding thing we've noticed about the podcast is how new subscribers are going back and listening to the show from Episode 1. Podcasts do seem to encourage binging, and the fact that we keep our podcasts to roughly 30 minutes means that you can easily go through both Seasons 1 and 2 during a relatively short timespan while commuting, walking your dog, or relaxing this summer.
The overall audience for What's New has also gone up considerably over the last year. In the last 12 months we've had about 150,000 streams, and each episode now receives 5-10,000 listeners. These are not chart-topping numbers, but for a fairly serious educational podcast (with, I hope, intermittent humor) it's good to find a decent-sized niche that continues to grow.
If you haven't had a chance to listen yet, you can subscribe to What's New on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Overcast, or wherever you get your podcasts, or simply stream episodes from the What's New website. Word of mouth has been the primary way new listeners have heard about the podcast, so if you like what we're doing, please tell others or leave a review on iTunes, as that remains the starting point for most podcast listeners.
And as a jumping off point for new listeners or those who may have missed a few shows during the school year, here's a summary of this year's episodes:
Episode 17: Remaking the News – how consolidation in the news industry and the rise of the internet has changed professional journalism, with Dan Kennedy
Episode 18: Making Artificial Intelligence Fairer – exploring the biases endemic to AI, which come from its creators, with Tina Eliassi-Rad
Episode 19: The Shifting Landscape of Music – how the music industry moved from vinyl records to cassettes, CDs, downloads, and now streaming, and what this evolution has meant for musicians, with David Herlihy
Episode 20: A New Way to Scan the Human Body – pioneering the use of nanosensors within the body and its potential applications, with Heather Clark
Episode 21: Election Day Special: Michael Dukakis – on 2018's Election Day, the three-term governor and presidential candidate spoke candidly about the state of politics
Episode 22: Bridging the Academic-Public Divide Through Podcasts – a recording of yours truly giving a keynote at the Sound Education conference at Harvard, which brought together hundreds of educational and academic podcasters and podcast listeners
Episode 23: The Regeneration of Body Parts – new research and techniques for stimulating the growth of limbs, eyes, and organs, with Anastasiya Yandulskaya, Brian Ruliffson, and Alex Lovely
Episode 24: The Urban Commons – how 311 systems, which allow citizens to provide feedback to municipalities, have changed our knowledge of cities and they ways residents and governments interact, with Dan O'Brien
Episode 25: Touch This Page – the history and future of tactile writing systems, and what they tell us about the act of reading, with Sari Altschuler
Episode 26: Seeking Justice for Hidden Deaths – between 1930 and 1970 there were thousands of racially motivated homicides in the U.S., and one project is attempting to document them all, with Margaret Burnham
Episode 27: Tracing the Spread of Fake News – looking carefully at the impact of untrustworthy online sources in the election of 2016, with David Lazer
Episode 28: How College Students Get the News – the surprising results of a large study of the news consumption habits of college students, with Alison Head and John Wihbey
Episode 29: The Web at 30 – celebrating the 30th anniversary of the founding of the World Wide Web with a discussion of how it has reshaped our world for better and worse, with Kyle Courtney
Episode 30: Controlling Killer Robots – how major advances in robotics and artificial intelligence have led to the dawn of deadly, independent machines, and how an international coalition is trying to prevent them from taking over warfare, with Denise Garcia
Episode 31: European Disunion – how Europe has regularly escaped the fate of dissolution, and what Brexit means in this longer history, with Mai'a Cross
Academia Podcasts
Bridging the Academic-Public Divide Through Podcasts
1 Comment on Bridging the Academic-Public Divide Through Podcasts
[The text of my keynote at the Sound Education conference at Harvard on November 2, 2018. This was the first annual conference on educational and academic podcasts, and gathered hundreds of producers of audio and podcast listeners to discuss how podcasting can effectively and engagingly reach diverse audiences interested in a wide range of scholarly fields.]
It's great to be back here in Andover Hall. I received a master's degree in theological studies from Harvard Divinity School, and being in this chapel reminds me of what I was thinking about during my two years studying the history of religion. It is, perhaps surprisingly, germane to what I want to talk about today.
Studying religion means studying the biggest questions, the unanswerable questions. The study of religion is, necessarily, humbling. If it occasionally approaches higher truths, it also reminds us that human knowledge is woefully incomplete and fallible.
But this fallibility and the way we stumble toward the truth is not communicated regularly or well by academia to the outside world. Our formal communications take other forms that are more, shall we say, braggadocious. The academic monograph and article are necessarily shaped to show off expertise. These written forms have scholarly accoutrements, like the jewelry of footnotes, that make them dressed to impress. Mostly, of course, they are dressed to impress one's peers.
On the other side of the academic house, press releases and magazine-like pieces from the university communications office are aimed at impressing the broader world, and to garner coverage beyond the walls of the academy. But these are also forms of writing that stay in a narrow lane, crowded as they are with spunky, crafted quotations from a world in which everything is a game-changing breakthrough.
But we're here for podcasts. Let's not dwell on these forms of academic expression other than to recognize them for what they are: genres. The press release and the academic article and the monograph may all be about scholarly research, but they are distinct genres, and throughout my brief remarks this morning, I want to encourage you to think about podcasts in terms of genres as well. I want you to think about the genre for your podcast.
Genres are enormously helpful structures. They are commonly agreed upon forms of communication that provide identifying signals to the audience about what they are reading, viewing, or in the case of podcasts, listening to. Genres give the audience, often unconsciously and rapidly, a general category for a creative work, which in turn colors its reception.
Genres prep the podcast listener's ears and mind through repetition, recognition,and expectation. Conforming to a genre telegraphs structural information to the audience and makes audio more palatable and relatable.
Podcast elements like intro and outro music, for instance, are genre-building. They orient the listener, who after all might be tuning in for the first time, and communicate what kind of audio stream this is.
This conference is about podcasts, but there can be and indeed are many genres of podcasts. Podcasts no longer occupy the vast spectrum from two white guys talking about technology to three white guys talking about technology. What this conference represents is a wonderful flourishing of podcast genres.
Now we need to think more about the kinds of genres that academic work works well in, and that can take maximal advantage of the medium and have the maximal impact.
So let's talk about how to situate educational and academic podcasts within the galaxy of possible genres.
We can take some helpful clues about this situation from other new media formats that have flourished on the web over the past quarter-century. For instance, since the advent of the web, and its ability to serve a wide array of text, in different lengths, sizes, and contexts, we have seen the birth of new genres that challenge traditional writing and break out of the constraints of print publication.
Take the blog. Originally a "web log" of interesting links, it evolved two decades ago in places like LiveJournal into personal musings and then in other platforms like MoveableType and ultimately WordPress into a fairly flexible, but always recognizable, reverse chronological, largely textual genre, one that accommodates posts of different lengths and purposes.
Because it lived on the web, and given its origins, the blog was colonized by a less formal, more freeform style that beneficially allowed academics who started blogs to loosen up a bit. I moment ago I used the word braggadocious. I would feel, shall we say, uncomfortable using that word in an academic article in my native field of history, but I've owned the domain dancohen.org for 20 years now and if I want to drop a braggadocious or two in a blog post there so be it.
More seriously, although the genre of the blog didn't line up well with the strict structures needed for the peer-reviewed article, it did line up well with other aspects of academia. For instance, while the article and the book provide a final, formal genre for the results of research, they do not accommodate well, or often at all, the detailed, day-to-day research process that led up to the book or article. Indeed, most academic writing involves obscuring our processes and complexities and doubts behind the scenes, the starts and stops that happen throughout academic work, before the article or book is complete. (Note that this obscuring has led to such bad things as the replication crisis.)
The blog excels, in extraordinarily helpful ways, in portraying this process, and so we now have the distinct genre of the process blog. For example, one of the blogs I subscribe to is by a particle physicist who is providing daily updates on the fusion reactor his team is building. That is just plain cool, but will never appear in his submissions to physics journals. I have colleagues in history who blog about the ups and downs of archival research, the rare finds and the drudgery, the thousands of hours of research and writing. Those sentiments, revealed in a blog, and can enrich and humanize academic work.
Also, like a good movie, a successful article or book leaves on the cutting room floor dozens of other great scenes, half-baked but still pretty tasty thoughts, and possible connections that must wait until another time, or be forgotten forever. A blog can document the incredible swirl of evidence and thinking and knowledge that emerges out of an academic project. Blogging can be a powerful way to provide "notes from the field" and ongoing glosses in research areas that perhaps only a handful of others worldwide know much about, but that may fascinate the wider world if framed well.
Podcasts provide a fantastic opportunity, in many ways much better than the blog, to communicate the complex processes involved in acquiring new knowledge and passing it on to students and the public, and to show the bumps along the road, and the methods and heartache and excitement along the way.
For instance, last week on our What's New podcast, we had a brilliant young biochemist, Heather Clark, on to talk about the nanosensors her lab is creating to determine the level of certain chemicals in the body. They custom design extraordinarily tiny molecules that light up when they find lithium or sodium in the bloodstream, and an electronic tattoo on the skin can then register and transmit that information.
This is truly the stuff of science fiction, but the best part of the podcast was Heather's response to my question about how such nanotechnology is actually created. We hear this word "nanotechnology" all the time in the news, but do you have any idea what it actually looks like in practice? I didn't. So I asked Heather to describe what goes on in her lab during a normal day. And she digressed into a remarkable discussion of how making nanosensors actually looks a lot like making salad dressing—literally mixing various oils and ingredients together to make the right blend. And she's laughing as she's describing this process because on the one hand it's kitchen counter work, but on the other hand it's a profound synthesis of physics, biology, chemistry, and engineering.
As Heather revealed these scientific principles and bench-science techniques, I couldn't help but think of how magical, alchemical, her work is. Indeed, podcasts can frame academic expertise in a way that can thrill an audience because of this magical element. Teller, the shorter, quieter magician in Penn & Teller, has made the point that a big part of what makes magic what it is is that magicians will spend an unbelievable amount of time practicing a very specific skill or pursuing a trick, far more time than the audience considers humanly possible.
By this definition there is a lot of magic in the academy. Our colleagues spend years or even decades deciphering papyri, learning long-lost languages, trying to solve fantastically complex mathematical theorems, or tracking down the smallest bits of evidence or assembling the largest imaginable data sets. Audio, done well, can display this incredible obsession to audiences, and as Teller notes, revealing how a magic trick is done—by grit and practice and sheer will—often enhances appreciation for magic rather than dissipating it.
Finally, and most importantly, podcasts have an unparalleled ability to convey the reality of academic work, and inculcate appreciation of it—better than the blog because of the nature of audio and especially the unique character of the human voice. From the time we are babies, we respond differently to voices than to other sounds in our world. As the most social of animals, we are incredibly adept at picking up subtle cues from the human voice—excitement, nervousness, ambivalence, assurance.
The human voice can thus communicate one's humanity to the listener in a way that most academic writing has enormous trouble with—and as I noted earlier, was never really structured to do.
But it has to be the right type of voice, a topic of many of the sessions at this conference today. If you are an academic, are you projecting a know-it-all voice, the voice of the article and the academic monograph, or the more cautious, thoughtful voice that is really in your head as you pursue your research? Are you merely recounting the end results of a process, or pulling the curtain back and showing the human—and often engrossing—processes behind the discoveries?
Academic podcasts are often criticized as raw and unedited, but they can take advantage of this lack of polish in comparison to a monograph or an article. In podcasts, we can hear a potent and unique combination of the expertise of academics with the informality of extemporaneous speech.
Done well, educational podcasts as a whole, the range of podcasts represented here today, can foster audiences who may not always agree with us or our research or conclusions, but who can grasp much more deeply the very human pursuits of the academy and see how those pursuits relate to their own lives. Critically, this has never been more important, as there is a growing skepticism about the value of the academy. All universities are struggling with how to communicate their worth to the public.
In his recent book How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds, literary scholar Alan Jacobs calls on us to foster what he calls "like-hearted, rather than like-minded" audiences. We are never to get everyone to agree with us about everything, but that shouldn't be our ultimate goal. We should instead seek to cultivate receptivity to academic subjects again, and that hard work isn't being adequately done through our formal writing or press releases. Podcasts give us the opportunity to show the humanity and relevance and relatability of academic practice, something that significant portions of the public have lost sight of.
Your podcast can be an important addition to this humanizing goal, one more step in expanding the audience of curious listeners, and the general population of the like-hearted.
What's New, Season Two
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Last week we launched the second season of the What's New podcast. My first guest was Dan Kennedy, who studies journalism and new media, and has a new book out on the changes happening right now to newspapers like the Washington Post. Dan's got some great commentary on the difficulties of newspapers since the web emerged in the 1990s, the role of journalistic objectivity in the face of "fake news" criticism, and why someone like Jeff Bezos might want to buy the Post. His special focus on the future of news and newspapers is especially relevant right now. Do give it a listen.
I'm also really excited about our fall lineup, which includes Tina Eliassi-Rad talking about bias in artificial intelligence algorithms, Margaret Burnham on the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice project, and David Herlihy on the changes to the music industry in an age of streaming. In addition, close to the November election, former Governor Michael Dukakis will join us on the program.
To receive all of these shows and more, you can subscribe to What's New on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Overcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks in advance for tuning in—hope you enjoy the new season.
Looking Back at Season 1 of the What's New Podcast, and Ahead to Season 2
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When I arrived at Northeastern University a year ago, I wanted to start a new podcast that highlighted new ideas and discoveries through interviews with a wide range of faculty and researchers. Snell Library has incredible facilities not only for quiet study but also for the production of media and digital scholarship, and so it was natural to use our professional recording studio and the expertise of our staff to create this podcast. The result was What's New, which wrapped up its first season a couple of months ago.
Longtime readers of this blog will know that I had a prior podcast, Digital Campus, which began in 2007, during the first wave of podcasting. Created with my friends at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, it was a roundtable discussion of how digital media and technology were affecting learning, teaching, and scholarship at colleges, universities, libraries, and museums. Digital Campus lasted through 2015, and built up a nice audience of fellow practitioners in digital humanities, academia, and cultural heritage institutions over those eight years.
With What's New I wanted to draw on a larger canvas than Digital Campus, and try to reach an even larger audience. This wasn't purely populist. In part the new podcast was my audio answer to the ongoing question about the social role and value of the academy; to me, that answer is not very complicated, and can be seen just by walking around a campus and talking to people. For the most part, despite all of the criticism and hand-wringing, universities still foster the people, environment, time, and resources to allow us to delve into topics far more deeply than anywhere else, and that process leads to profound, applicable, and enriching ideas in the broadest sense: not only scientific and technical breakthroughs but also a better understanding of ourselves as human beings.
Think about the difference between a blog post and a book: one can be tossed off in an afternoon at a coffee shop, while the other generally requires years of thought and careful writing. Not all books are perfect — far from it — but at least authors have to wrestle with their subject matter more rigorously than in any other context, look at what others have written in their area, and situate their writing within that network of thought and research.
Podcasts have generally been more off the cuff than rigorous. Sure, there are now many NPR, BBC, and other podcasts that are professional and well-produced, but a majority of podcasts are still unedited conversations. Sometimes that format can work well — I'm biased, but I think Digital Campus was fun to listen to, in part because we were friends and could joke with each other, or quickly grasp where one of us was going with a topic and then riff off of that.
Before launching, we had a lot of discussions about the structure and tone of What's New, and settled on a simple half-hour interview format that we thought would go deep enough into a topic but not exhaustively so, and that would not be casual conversation that dragged on for an hour or two. That gave us the opportunity to cover a number of challenging topics and do them justice, while not being exhaustive. We left it to the listener to learn more through links, by reading a related book, etc.
I'm thrilled with how the first season went, audience-wise. Last time I checked we had over 30,000 streams so far, and the weekly numbers continue to grow. I've really enjoyed reading articles and books on topics I know nothing about and then having 30 minutes to frame complicated subjects in plainspoken ways, and to ask some probing questions of the guests on the show. It's allowed me to get to know the incredible faculty at Northeastern, and to promote their work. (At the end of the season, we had a special guest from off campus, and that is likely to happen more in the future.)
If there's one bit of self-criticism, the format of What's New, especially within the strictures of a professional recording studio, could occasionally come across as a bit too formal, and so as we think ahead to Season 2, we're going to sprinkle in some looser elements. We're changing up the sound design a bit and recording the podcast outside of the studio, potentially with sounds from the field (e.g., within a lab). There will be a new, less ponderous theme song. I think I got better and less stiff as an interviewer as the season went on, but I'll be working on that too; I have to admit to being used to being the interviewee rather than the interviewer.
For now, it's a good time to catch up on Season 1 if you haven't done so already, and subscribe to the podcast (just use one of the links at the top of the What's New site) for the launch of Season 2 in September. Here are the episodes from Season 1:
1. How We Respond to Disaster – how cities bounce back from natural disasters or terrorism
2. Fake News and the Next Generation – the news consumption habits of young people, and the elusiveness of the truth
3. The Steamship Revolution – the spaceships of the 19th century
4. Enabling Engineering – an incredible group that designs devices for those with physical and cognitive disabilities
5. Inventing Writing – a fascinating story of how the Cherokee language went from oral to written
6. The Secrets of Hollywood Storytelling – a screenwriter and film producer on how movies are written and sonically designed
7. Tracking the Invisible Infrastructure of Our Cities – what you learn when you attach GPS devices to your trash
8. The Algorithms That Shape Our Lives – clever methods reveal how Facebook, Amazon, and other big internet companies work
9. The Hidden Universe of Comics – beyond the superheroes you see at the multiplex
10. Designing for Diversity – how to design digital systems to be more attentive to the true diversity of humanity
11. The Future of Energy – adding solar power to the grid is not so simple
12. Fractivism – how communities are responding to this new energy production method
13. The Evolution of Cities – the collision of people, transportation, and buildings as seen through the eyes of a city planner
14. Privacy in the Facebook Age – or what's left of it, and whether regulation will help
15. Addressing Neglected Diseases – discovering vaccines and cures for these diseases requires a completely different model
16. Engineering the Future: Boston's Big Dig – inside one of the biggest engineering projects in history, from its primary engineer and advocate
Engineering Podcasts Transportation
The Big Dig and the Nature of Large Engineering Projects
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I was fortunate to sit down for a rare interview with Fred Salvucci on the final episode of this season of the What's New podcast. Fred is now at MIT, but he is well-known in the Boston area for conceiving and being the champion of a massive engineering project which came to be known as the Big Dig, and which completely transformed the city of Boston for the twenty-first century.
For most of its postwar existence, downtown Boston was split by a giant elevated highway called the Central Artery. The Artery was an artifact common to many cities in twentieth-century America, a terrible byproduct of the car-centric culture and suburbanization that flourished in the 1950s. Elevated roadways were aggressively cut through small-scale livable neighborhoods so that people could get into the city from the suburbs, and so that others could drive through a city without entering its local roadways on their way to distant destinations. Homes were often taken from people to make way for these elevated highways, and the walkability and attractiveness of cities suffered.
The Big Dig not only put the Central Artery underground, but added a massive linear park in the center of Boston, a marquee bridge that aptly reflected the famous Bunker Hill Monument, and another tunnel to Logan Airport. It thus completely reshaped the city and improved not only its transportation, but Boston's skyline and its ground-level fabric and beauty. It reconnected neighborhoods and people.
In a wide-ranging conversation, Fred spoke to me about how the Big Dig was engineered—it was one of the biggest engineering projects in history, at a cost of $15 billion, through a 400-year-old city ($1 billion just to relocate ancient pipes and wires)—but also how he was able to get so many people on board for such a gigantic project. Indeed, as you'll hear, Fred saw it more as a political and socio-economic project than a transportation initiative.
Moreover, Fred provides some good thoughts about the future of transportation, including the impact (likely negative, in his view) of self-driving cars, and whether we can ever find the will—and the funds—to do something like the Big Dig again. Do tune in.
Cities Design History Podcasts Transportation
Activism, Community Input, and the Evolution of Cities: My Interview with Ted Landsmark
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I've had a dozen great guests on the What's New podcast, but this week's episode features a true legend: Ted Landsmark. He is probably best known as the subject of a shocking Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph showing a gang of white teens at a rally against school desegregation attacking him with an American flag. The image became a symbol of tense race relations in the 1970s, not only in Boston but nationwide.
(photo credits: Stanley Forman/Brian Fluharty)
He should be better known, however, for his decades of work shaping the city of Boston and the greater Boston area, and for his leadership in education, transportation planning, architecture, and other critical aspects of the fabric of the city. The assault on him on City Hall Plaza in Boston only intensified his activism, and set him on a path to be at the center of how the city would be developed over the last 40 years. It's a remarkable story.
On the podcast Ted Landsmark recounts not only this personal history, but the history of a Boston in general, and he provides a 360-degree view of how cities are designed, managed, and are responsive (or unresponsive) to community needs and desires. His sense of how urban feedback systems work, from local politics to technology like the 311 phone number many cities have implemented to hear from their citizens, is especially smart and helpful.
I hope you'll tune in.
Introducing the What's New Podcast
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My new podcast, What's New, has launched, and I'm truly excited about the opportunity to explore new ideas and discoveries on the show. What's New will cover a wide range of topics, from the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and technology, and it is intended for anyone who wants to learn new things. I hope that you'll subscribe today on iTunes, Google Play, or SoundCloud.
I hugely enjoyed doing the Digital Campus podcast that ran from 2007-2015, and so I'm thrilled to return to this medium. Unlike Digital Campus, which took the format of a roundtable with several colleagues from George Mason University, on What's New I'll be speaking largely one-on-one with experts, at Northeastern University and well beyond, to understand how their research is changing our understanding of the world, and might improve the human condition. In a half-hour podcast you'll come away with a better sense of cutting-edge scientific and medical discoveries, the latest in public policy and social movements, and the newest insights of literature and history.
I know that the world seems impossibly complex and troubling right now, but one of themes of What's New is that while we're all paying closer attention to the loud drumbeat of social media, there are people in many disciplines making quieter advances, innovations, and creative works that may enlighten and help us in the near future. So if you're looking for a podcast with a little bit of optimism to go along with the frank discussion of the difficulties we undoubtedly face, What's New is for you.
Academia Podcasts Scholarship Web
Critical Elements of Web Culture Scholars Should Understand
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The Scholars' Lab at the University of Virginia has posted audio recordings of sessions from "The Humanities in a Digital Age," a symposium that took place in November at UVA's new Institute of the Humanities and Global Cultures. My keynote at the symposium was entitled "Humanities Scholars and the Web: Past, Present, Future," and focused on what I believe are three critical elements of the web that scholars tend to overlook, or that cause concern because they upset certain academic conventions:
1) The openness and standards of the web produce generative platforms. The magic of the web is that from relatively simple technical specifications and interoperability arise an incredibly varied and constantly innovative set of genres. For those wedded to traditional forms such as the book and article, this can be difficult to understand and accept.
2) Interfaces shape genres. Tracing the history of web applications used to make blogs, from early link aggregators to the blank page of WordPress 3's full-screen writing environment, shows this in action. Humanities blogs shifted in helpful ways over the last 15 years, into modes that should be more acceptable to the academy, as these interfaces changed. Being in control of these interfaces is important as we continue to develop online scholarship.
3) Communities define practice. Conventions around web genres are created by those participating in them. This has serious implications for what the academy might be able to do with the web in the future.
You can hear about these three main points and much more in the talk, which is available as a podcast or audio stream near the bottom of this page. Part of the talk comes from chapter 1 of The Ivory Tower and the Open Web.
Facebook Google Podcasts Privacy
Digital Campus #52 – What's the Buzz?
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The flawed launch of Google Buzz, with its privacy nightmare of exposing the social graph of one's email account, makes me, Tom, Mills, and Amanda French consider the major issue of online privacy on this week's Digital Campus podcast. Covering several stories, including Facebook attacks on teachers and teachers spying on students, we think about the ways in which technology enables new kinds of violations on campus—and what we should do about it. [Subscribe to this podcast.]
Digital Campus Podcasts #46-51
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For the past few months I've neglected to reblog in this space the availability of fresh new Digital Campus podcasts for your listening pleasure. Below is a list of the major topics of each of those episodes—if you're new to the podcast, pick one that sounds interesting and give it a listen. Or just subscribe to the podcast to have fresh episodes delivered automatically to iTunes or your favorite podcatcher.
Important changes have arrived in this span of podcasts as well. After being the "show runner" for the first fifty episodes (doing the voice-overs and guiding the discussion in my best impression of a late-night jazz host), the other regulars on the podcast, Tom Scheinfeldt and Mills Kelly, will assume these duties (along with me) on a rotating basis starting with Digital Campus #51, "The Inevitable iPad." In addition, we've been joined by a rotation of "irregulars" who greatly liven up the proceedings and actually have intelligent things to say.
Episode 51 – The Inevitable iPad: Inevitably, we obsess over what the iPad means for academia, museums, and libraries.
Episode 50 – The Crystal Ball Returns: Our popular year-end/beginning-of-the-year wrap-up and predictions of what's to come.
Episode 49 – The Twouble with Twecklers: Twitter at academic conferences; speeding up the web.
Episode 48 – Balkanization of the Web?: The revised Google Books settlement; News Corp. v. Google; Wikipedia in its maturity.
Episode 47 – Publishers Bleakly: As publishing business models erode, we look at new models in their infancy.
Episode 46 – Theremin Dreams: How people adopt new technologies; Nook; Droid.


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Vice President Chen meets Palau President Tommy Remengesau, Jr.
Vice President Chen Chien-jen, accompanied by Mrs. Chen, met with Palau President Tommy Remengesau, Jr. on the afternoon of December 30. Vice President Chen thanked Palau for speaking up in support of Taiwan over the years at the United Nations and the World Health Assembly. He also expressed hope that Palau will continue to be a firm ally of Taiwan at international venues and that our two countries will join hands and make progress together in the Pacific Ocean.
After hosting the luncheon celebrating 20th anniversary of formal diplomatic relations between Taiwan and Palau, Vice President Chen visited President Remengesau in Meyungs and presented his credentials as President Tsai Ing-wen's special envoy to President Remengesau. The following is a translation of the vice president's remarks:
On behalf of President Tsai Ing-wen, I thank the government of Palau for the tremendous hospitality we have received during this visit. The 20th anniversary of diplomatic relations is a major milestone in the history of our bilateral ties. In addition to President Tsai's visit to Palau this past March, she has also designated our foreign minister, indigenous affairs minister, and myself as her envoys to lead respective delegations to visit Palau over the latter half of this year, so it is clear that our government highly values relations with Palau.
When President Tsai visited Palau this past March, she engaged in an extensive exchange of views with President Remengesau on our bilateral relations. During this trip, we are extremely pleased to personally witness the great progress that has been achieved in our bilateral cooperative projects over a period of just eight months. Together, Taiwan and Palau have accomplished many exciting new achievements.
In the area of people-to-people exchanges, the passenger load factor has risen considerably since China Airlines increased the number of direct flights from Taipei to Palau. The number of travelers arriving in Palau from Taiwan this year is up 34% from last year, and in the future we hope that more European, American, and Asian travelers will travel to Palau via this route. In addition, Taiwan, the United States, and Japan jointly held the International Austronesian Languages Revitalization Forum in Palau under the Global Cooperation and Training Framework this past September. The 2019 Executive Council Meeting of the Austronesian Forum was also held here in the same month. Both events were great successes. As a result, we have enhanced our shared bond of Austronesian culture, and friendships among our people have grown even closer.
We are also aware that Palau will host the 2020 Our Ocean Conference. When President Tsai visited Palau earlier this year, she stated that Taiwan would lend its full support to help Palau build a main venue. Our two sides have been in close contact on this project, and work is already underway. We look forward to a successful Conference and expect it will further consolidate Palau's status as an international pioneer in marine conservation.
Finally, I would like to thank President Remengesau once again for the many times he has spoken up in support of Taiwan over the years at the United Nations and the World Health Assembly. We sincerely hope that Palau will continue to be a firm ally of Taiwan at international venues and that our two countries will join hands and make progress together in the Pacific Ocean.
President Remengesau then delivered remarks, welcoming Vice President Chen to Palau as President Tsai's special envoy. He asked that Vice President Chen extend sincere appreciation to President Tsai and the Taiwanese people on his behalf. In the past, President Tsai and high-ranking Taiwanese government officials have visited Palau, helping our countries better understand each other. President Remengesau stated that Indo-Pacific strategy is very important to Palau, Taiwan, the United States, Japan, New Zealand, and Australia, and we should all keep working together on this front.
President Remengesau stated that Taiwanese tourists are very much appreciated in Palau because they are educated and willing to spend money, and Palau saw a 34% increase in Taiwanese visitors this year. The Palauan government is grateful to Taiwan for its medical assistance, he said, and Palauan people are enjoying healthier lives thanks to Shin Kong Hospital and E-Da Hospital.
President Remengesau further stated that he would be finishing out his term next year, and he expressed hope that President Tsai and Taiwan's ambassador to Palau would continue to partner with Palau to achieve the best results. The Our Ocean Conference will be held next year, and he thanked the Taiwanese government for their assistance in preparing for this event, as well as Taiwan's assistance in Palau's infrastructure projects.
President Remengesau pointed out that there are many more opportunities for collaboration between Taiwan and Palau, and he looked forward to the continued development of close bilateral ties. He expressed his belief that Taiwan and Palau are more than friends, we are family.
Shortly after, both sides exchanged gifts, and Vice President Chen presented President Remengesau with a "Golden Cube of Fulfillment" glassware piece created by Taiwan's own LIULI glassmakers. The goldfish represent the vitality and hardworking nature of Taiwanese and Palauan peoples as we work together for sustainable development. At this particularly profound moment in history, he continued, this gift represents the six facets of our cooperation over the past 20 years of diplomatic relations: agriculture, healthcare, education, environmental protection, tourism, and infrastructure.
Among those present at the meeting were Palau Minister of State Faustina Rehuher-Marugg, Ambassador to Taiwan Dilmei Louisa Olkeriil, Community & Cultural Affairs Minister Baklai Temengil, and ROC Ambassador to Palau Wallace M.G. Chow (周民淦).


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Q: UITableView - Insert rows with a custom cell I want to insert a cell into a table when the last item has been deleted. Currently I'm using the code below, however it inserts the wrong cell. How do I insert a row and choose the kind by identifier?
table?.insertRows(at: [IndexPath(row: 0, section: 0)], with: .automatic)

A: The table view will call you back to configure the new cells. It's in there that you specify what kind of cell goes at what index. That's done in tableView:cellForRowAt:.