text:
\section{Introduction}
Many complex processes in biology, social science, economy, Internet science,
or cognitive science
are mimicked by the occurrence of words in texts.
Indeed, the statistics of
insects in plants \cite{Pueyo},
molecules in cells \cite{Furusawa2003},
inhabitants in cities \cite{Malevergne_Sornette_umpu},
followers of religions \cite{Clauset},
telephone calls to people \cite{Clauset},
employees in companies \cite{Axtell},
links to sites in the worldwide web \cite{Adamic_Huberman},
chords in musical pieces \cite{Serra_scirep},
etc.,
share with word-frequency distributions
the property of being broadly distributed,
or ``heavy tailed''.
And most of these phenomena are described, at least asymptotically,
by power-law distributions with exponents close to 2;
in such cases one can talk about the fulfillment of Zipf's law \cite{Corral_Boleda,Moreno_Sanchez}.

A fundamental problem is how these systems evolve, in particular,
how they grow to reach a state for which a power law,
or even Zipf's law, holds
\cite{Newman_05,Corominas_dice,Loreto_urn}.
In Ref. \cite{Minnhagen2009}, Bernhardsson, da Rocha, and Minnhagen
challenge the ``Zipf's view'',
proposing that the distribution of word
frequencies in a text or collection of texts (of the same author) changes
with text length as
\begin{equation}
D_L(k) = A \frac{e^{-k/(c_0 L)}}{k^{\gamma(L)}},
\label{eq:scalingsuecos}
\end{equation}
where
$k$ is the absolute frequency (number of tokens)
of the different words (word types),
$L$ is text length in number of tokens,
$D_L(k)$ is the probability mass function of $k$
(i.e., the distribution of word frequencies),
$\gamma(L)$ is a power-law exponent,
$c_0$ is a constant parameter (independent on $L$),
and $A$ is a normalizing constant.
Bernhardsson et al.'s equation [Eq. (\ref{eq:scalingsuecos})]
should apply to individual texts or collections
when one considers parts of length $L$ of the whole.
The key ingredient of that approach
to model the change of $D_L(k)$ with $L$
is the explicit dependence of the exponent $\gamma$
on text length $L$, decreasing with increasing $L$.
Note also that Eq. (\ref{eq:scalingsuecos})
implies that, for the largest $k$, the word-frequency distribution
decays exponentially (in contrast to the algebraic decay proposed in Zipf's law).

Alternatively, in Ref. \cite{Font-Clos2013},
we (together with Boleda)
argue that
the variability of the statistics of words in a text with its
length is more simply explained by a scaling law,
\begin{equation}
\label{eq:scalingfontclos}
D_L(k) = \frac 1 {L V_L} g(k/L),
\end{equation}
where $V_L$ is the size of vocabulary
(number of different words, i.e., word types)
for a fraction of text of length $L$,
and $g(z)$ is a undefined scaling function,
the same for any value of $L$
(but not necessarily the same for different authors).

{Note that the scaling-law paradigm,
Ref. \cite{Font-Clos2013} and
Eq. (\ref{eq:scalingfontclos}), does not assume
any particular, parametric shape of $D_L(k)$
[in contrast to Ref. \cite{Minnhagen2009} and Eq. (\ref{eq:scalingsuecos}),
which give a truncated gamma distribution];
the scaling-law paradigm only states that,
for a fixed text, all the $D_L(k)$'s have the same shape no matter the
value of $L$, but at different characteristic scales given by $L$.
In other words, the shape parameters of the distributions do not change
with $L$,
whatever the form of this distribution is
(we do not enter here into such debate
\cite{Ferrer2000a,Montemurro01,Li2010a,Moreno_Sanchez}),
and it is only a scale parameter what changes, proportionally to $L$.
Both exponential tails and power-law tails are allowed by the scaling function $g(z)$;
what is ``forbidden'' are text-length dependent exponents $\gamma(L)$.
Moreover, the scaling paradigm represented by Eq. (\ref{eq:scalingfontclos})
does not involve any free parameter,
as there is no restriction on the scaling function $g$,
and $L$ and $V_L$ are given directly by the text.
In fact, the scaling law is just a finite-size scaling law
\cite{Brezin,Barber,Privman,Corral_garciamillan}
(which was not explicitly mentioned in Ref. \cite{Font-Clos2013}).
}

Subsequently, Yan and Minnhagen claimed that this scaling law
is ``fundamentally impossible'' \cite{Yan_comment},
``cannot be conceptually valid'' and ``is not borne out by the data'' \cite{Yan_Minnhagen}.
These statements
constitute good examples of the sometimes counterintuitive nature of scaling laws.
Let us summarize the points of these authors to make it clear
that their critique is not relevant.
\begin{itemize}
\item
First, in their Fig. 1, they find that the scaling law does not hold
for $k=1$.
\item
Second, in their Fig. 2 they show that the scaling law does not work well for,
let us say, $k \le 10$.
\item
Third, it is argued that a ``Randomness view'', based
in the concepts of
``Random Group Formation'', ``Random Book Transformation'', and
``Metabook'' predicts the right form of $D_L(k)$,
which is that of Refs. \cite{Minnhagen2009,Baek2011},
i.e., Eq. (\ref{eq:scalingsuecos}) above.
\end{itemize}

It is quite clear that the first and second criticisms of Yan and Minnhagen \cite{Yan_Minnhagen}
are not fundamental,
as they simply imply that the scaling law can only be
valid beyond the low-frequency limit, so,
the scaling law could be rewritten as
$$
D_L(k) = \frac 1 {L V_L} g(k/L), \mbox{ for } k > 10.
$$
This is not surprising at all, as it is well known in statistical physics
that scaling laws
are usually observed
only asymptotically (see Appendix I at the end).
It is remarkable then that, for texts, scaling is attained just after the first
decade in frequencies (i.e., for words that appear more than about 10 times).
It is also remarkable that, despite the fact that Yan and Minnhagen
\cite{Yan_Minnhagen}
stretch the scaling hypothesis up to very small fragments of texts
($215525$ tokens divided into $500$ fragments yielding about $400$
tokens in each one, for the case of \emph{Moby-Dick}),
the scaling law still is fulfilled reasonably well
beyond the first decade in $k$, as we detail below.
Naturally, the appropriate way to further test the validity of the scaling
law is in the opposite way, analyzing larger and larger texts.
The third point of these authors \cite{Yan_Minnhagen} is also not justified,
as the authors do not provide any statistical evidence supporting
the claim that Eq. (\ref{eq:scalingsuecos}) fits the empirical data
to an acceptable confidence level.

In this paper we revise the evidence for the
finite-size scaling law for word-frequency distributions,
Ref. \cite{Font-Clos2013} and Eq. (\ref{eq:scalingfontclos}),
comparing this approach with the one of
Ref. \cite{Minnhagen2009} and Eq. (\ref{eq:scalingsuecos}).
In Sec. 2 we summarize the main claims in Ref. \cite{Minnhagen2009}
and in which way they relate to the validity of the scaling law;
next, we compare the performance of different fits related to
the two approaches;
subsequently we use a direct method to test the validity of the scaling hypothesis
applied to word-frequency distributions;
and then we compare with other ways of assessing errors in scaling.
The penultimate section presents a novel theoretical calculation
of the scaling of the moments of the distribution using the generalized central-limit theorem,
connecting them with the scaling law
(and yielding a derivation of Heaps' law as a by-product).
The conclusions and two appendices are at the end.
As the empirical evidence in favor of the scaling law
used in Ref. \cite{Font-Clos2013} was essentially ``visual''
(collapse of rescaled plots in log-log),
and the theoretical arguments were reduced to a heuristic derivation,
the present paper provides a substantial improvement
in support of the validity of a finite-size scaling law
in word-frequency distributions.

\section{Validity of the finite-size scaling law for word-frequency distributions}
{Let us explain Yan and Minnhagen's points \cite{Yan_Minnhagen} in more detail.
They base their analysis on
the empirical
value of the number of types with frequency equal or greater than $k$,
defined as
$$
N_L(\ge k)= V_L S_L(k) = V_L \sum_{k'=k}^\infty D_L(k'),
$$
where $S_L(k)$ is the empirical complementary cumulative distribution of the frequency
and $N_L(\ge k)$ turns out to be nothing else than the empirical rank
associated to frequency $k$.
In terms of $S_L(k)$ the scaling law
(\ref{eq:scalingfontclos}) transforms into \cite{Font-Clos2013}
$$
S_L(k) = \frac 1 {V_L} G(k/L), \mbox{ for } k > 10,
$$
under a continuous approximation,
with $G(z)$ a new scaling function directly related to $g(z)$ \cite{Font-Clos2013}.
So, for $N_L(\ge k)$ one has that the scaling law (\ref{eq:scalingfontclos}) can be written as
\begin{equation}
N_L(\ge k) = V_L S_L(k) = G(k/L), \mbox{ for } k > 10.
\label{lachunga}
\end{equation}
Then, in their Figs. 1 (a) and 1 (b) Yan and Minnhagen \cite{Yan_Minnhagen}
compare this cumulative number evaluated for the complete text,
$N_{L_{tot}}(\ge k)$,
with the vocabulary size $V_L$ for variable $L$, which verifies, by definition,
$V_L = N_L(\ge 1)$
(note that $L_{tot}$ is the length of the complete text).
The disagreement between $N_{L_{tot}}(\ge k)$ and $N_L(\ge 1)$
for the same values of the ratio between frequency and length ($k/L_{tot}=1/L$)
makes it clear that the scaling law, for any $L\ne L_{tot}$
and under the form given by Eq. (\ref{lachunga}),
does not work for the corresponding $k=1$
(the \emph{hapax legomena},
these are types that appear just once in a text sample of length $L$).
Nevertheless this disagreement does not invalidate the scaling law (\ref{eq:scalingfontclos})
for $k>1$.

Subsequently,
in their Fig. 2, the same authors \cite{Yan_Minnhagen} plot $N_L(\ge k)$ versus $k/L$
for all $k$ and different $L$ and find indeed deviations with respect the scaling law,
but let us note that these deviations are restricted to $k\le 10$.
Obviously, the reason of these deviations is just that
the scaling law is expected to hold
only asymptotically,
which in practice means $k> 10$ or so
(see our Appendices I and II, anyhow).
}

To make our thesis totally clear, in Fig. \ref{fig_5points}
we present $N_L(\ge k)$ for the same data as in Fig. 2 of Ref. \cite{Yan_Minnhagen}
(i.e., \emph{Moby-Dick}, by Herman Melville, and
\emph{Harry Potter}, books 1 to 7, by J. K. Rowling),
but adding symbols
(instead of only lines, as in Ref. \cite{Yan_Minnhagen}).
It is apparent that even in the extreme case of $500$ equal fragments of the full text,
the scaling law only fails for very small frequencies.
We have verified that the scaling law holds for many other texts \cite{Font-Clos2013},
even for \emph{Finnegans Wake}, by James Joyce,
which constitutes an extreme case of experimental literary creation,
yielding an unusual somewhat concave relation between $N_L(\ge k)$ and $k$
(in log-log)
\cite{Kwapien}; in any case, the scaling function $g(z)$ does not care about
concavity or convexity.

Additionally, in Fig. \ref{fig_harrypotter} we perform the data collapse associated to the scaling law
in terms of the probability mass function $D_L(k)$ for \emph{Harry Potter},
presented in Ref. \cite{Yan_Minnhagen} as a counter-example to the scaling law.
As it is shown, the collapse is excellent: after proper rescaling
[Fig. \ref{fig_harrypotter}(b)],
all curves collapse into a single, length-independent function, even for very small frequencies (smaller than 10).
So we can write, for this text,
$$
D_L(k) \simeq \frac 1 {L V_L} g(k/L), \mbox{ for all } k.
$$
Notice that this is the original form under which
the scaling law for word-frequency distributions was
presented \cite{Font-Clos2013},
and not the one in Eq. (\ref{lachunga}).
In other words, deviations from the scaling law play an even minor role in the
representation in terms of $D_L(k)$,
in comparison to the representation in terms of $N_L(\ge k)$.
Finding a functional form for $g(z)$
[whose particular shape in the case of \emph{Harry Potter}
is unveiled in our Fig. \ref{fig_harrypotter}(b)]
is a delicate issue, and it is not our interest here
[in Ref. \cite{Font-Clos2013}, when considering lemmatized texts,
a double power law was proposed for the sake of illustration];
nevertheless, in the next section we show that the empirical data,
for each text and different values of $L$,
is compatible with a unique $g(z)$
characterized by a power-law tail, with an exponent close to two.

\section{Proper fitting of the power-law tail}

{Looking at our Fig. \ref{fig_harrypotter}(a),
where $D_L(k)$ is shown with no rescaling,
one could
conclude, as Yan and Minnhagen \cite{Yan_Minnhagen},
that for different text lengths one gets different shapes for $D_k(L)$.
Indeed, a visual inspection of the plot seems to show
different slopes for different $L-$values,
corresponding to different exponents $\gamma(L)$.
However, the data collapse after rescaling in Fig. \ref{fig_harrypotter}(b)
demonstrates that all distributions have the same shape,
given by $g(z)$, but at different scales, given by $L$
(remember that in log-log a rescaling is seen just as a shift).
And the deviations for $k \le 10$ do not play any relevant role.
The apparent different slopes of the different curves
in Fig. \ref{fig_harrypotter}(a) are
a visual artefact caused by the convex (but close to linear) log-log shape
of the curves.
In other words, the larger $L$,
the more part of $g(z)$ one sees beyond the tail.
As the body of the distribution does not decay as fast as the tail,
the more part of the body one sees the smaller the apparent
exponent, which is a sort of average between the body and the tail.
This illustrates how a simple replotting under a rescaled form
can unveil a common pattern in distributions given at different scales.
And let us repeat that we are not interested here in providing a parametric model
for this convex shape; for that, just see Ref. \cite{Moreno_Sanchez}.

In order to support their point,
Yan and Minnhagen \cite{Yan_Minnhagen} fit power laws
[Eq. (\ref{eq:scalingsuecos}) with $c_0=\infty$]
to the word frequency distributions for different $L$,
finding a drift from $\gamma\simeq 3$ for the smallest
fragments of text to $\gamma\simeq 1.6$ for the largest length
(Zipf's law would correspond to $\gamma=2$,
strictly speaking).
The authors do not mention
which fitting method they use,
nor the fitting range,
but we can demonstrate that power-law fits
for the whole range of $k$
in \emph{Moby-Dick} and \emph{Harry Potter}
are in general rejected after rigorous goodness-of-fit tests,
no matter if one fits continuous \cite{Corral_Deluca}
or discrete power laws \cite{Moreno_Sanchez}.
Taking \emph{Harry Potter} and
applying the maximum-likelihood fitting plus the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test
detailed in Ref. \cite{Moreno_Sanchez}, we only get one case
of a non-rejectable
discrete power law defined in the range $k\ge 1$,
which corresponds to $L=L_{tot}/500$, with an exponent
$\gamma=2.11 \pm 0.04$ and a $p-$value $=0.49$.
For all other lengths of fragments, power laws defined for $k\ge 1$ are rejected
at the 0.05 significance level.

On the contrary, if we fit a power-law tail, which is a power law
\begin{equation}
D_L(k) \propto \frac 1 {k^{\gamma_2}}
\label{powerlawtail}
\end{equation}
defined only for $k \ge k_{cut}$,
with $k_{cut}$ a cut-off value of $k$ verifying $k_{cut} > 1$,
we find non-rejectable power laws for all $L$ with stable exponents
when $k_{cut}$ is large enough.
For the case of \emph{Harry Potter} we find that for
$k_{cut} \simeq 0.0009 L$, the exponents $\gamma_2$ turn out to be
stabilized
with values very close to two.
So, $g(z)$ has a power law tail, valid for $z=k/L > 0.0009$ and
with a stable exponent,
at odds with Ref. \cite{Minnhagen2009}'s claims.
Details are available in Table \ref{table_data}.
Figure \ref{fig_exponents} provides more examples of this behavior,
for different texts.
Although these results are in agreement with Zipf's law
[and in disagreement with the exponential tail represented by Eq. (\ref{eq:scalingsuecos})],
we are not interested here in the parametric form of the distribution
and only report the stability of the exponents with $L$ as a signature of the
existence of a
well-defined, $L-$independent
scaling function $g(z)$.
}

\begin{table}[ht]
\caption
{
Results of goodness-of-fit test \cite{Corral_Deluca_arxiv}
of a discrete power-law distribution $D_L(k) \propto 1/k^{\gamma_2}$
in the range $k \ge k_{cut}$ for \emph{Harry Potter}
(for which $L_{tot}=1108955$).
Notice the stability of the $\gamma_2$ exponent for
$k_{cut} \propto L$.
Note also that for $L=L_{tot}/500$ the difference between Yan and Minnhagen's result
(which is $\gamma\simeq 2.4)$ and our result here with $k_{cut}=2$
(which is 2.16) is rather large.
It has been pointed out that inappropriate fitting methods can lead to biased results
\cite{Clauset,Corral_Deluca}.}
\begin{tabular}{| l| c |c| c| c| }
\hline
$L$ & $\gamma_2$ & $k_{cut}$ &
$V_L$ &$p-$value\\
\hline
$L_{tot} $ & 2.06 $\pm$ 0.09 & 1024 &
22276 &0.677 \\
$L_{tot}/2$ & 2.05 $\pm$ 0.09 & 513 &
16361 &0.504 \\
$L_{tot}/5$ &2.09 $\pm$ 0.09 & 205 &
10658 &0.862 \\
$L_{tot}/10$ & 2.09 $\pm$ 0.09 & 103 &
7431 & 0.263 \\
$L_{tot}/20$ & 2.18 $\pm$ 0.09 & 52
5186 & 0.819 \\
$L_{tot}/50$ & 2.14 $\pm$ 0.08 & 20 &
3240 & 0.554 \\
$L_{tot}/100$ & 2.17 $\pm$ 0.09 & 11 &
2079 & 0.708 \\
$L_{tot}/200$ & 2.14 $\pm$ 0.08 & 5 &
1353 & 0.903 \\
$L_{tot}/500$ & 2.16 $\pm$ 0.07 & 2 &
774 & 0.683 \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\label{table_data}
\end{table}

\section{Testing of the scaling hypothesis}

A more direct and non-parametric way to test the existence of scaling is to use the two-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test \cite{Press}, which compares two data sets
under the null hypothesis that both of them come from the same population,
and therefore have the same underlying theoretical distribution (which is unknown
and remains unknown after the test).
But in the case of scaling we are not dealing with the same distribution,
but with distributions which have the same shape at different scales,
i.e., distributions that are the same except for a scale parameter;
then, rescaling the distributions by their scale parameter
would lead to the same distributions (under the null hypothesis that
scaling holds).
This procedure to test the fulfillment of scaling
has been used before for continuous distributions
\cite{Corral_test,Lippiello_Corral}.

The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test is probably the best accepted test for comparing
continuous distributions, but word-frequency data are discrete,
and after rescaling become discretized over different sets
(as the scaling factors $L$ of the two distributions can be very different, in general).
So, our first step, in order to avoid this problem is to approximate the
discrete empirical distributions by continuous ones,
by adding to each frequency a random term, in this way
$k \rightarrow k + u$ (where $u$ is a uniform random number between
$-0.5$ and $0.5$).
Although there are more sophisticated ways to continuize the distributions,
this one uses no information from the data
(except that the $k$'s are natural numbers).
The second step is to remove small frequencies
(remember that scaling is a large-scale property)
in our case we remove values of $k$ below 4.
Then, the third step is to perform the rescaling
$$
k \rightarrow \frac{\langle k \rangle k}{\langle k^2 \rangle},
$$
where the moments of $k$ are the original empirical ones
(calculated for the discrete distribution).
In a simple case (with no power laws involved \cite{Corral_test,Lippiello_Corral})
we would have rescaled just by the mean $\langle k \rangle$;
in this case the rescaling is a bit more involving \cite{Peters_Deluca,Corral_csf}.
Notice that this rescaling is totally equivalent to divide $k$ by $L$,
as shown in another section below;
nevertheless, our choice is more general and makes the rescaling
applicable when the data does not come from a text.

Once these three steps have been done,
the two-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test \cite{Press}
is performed for all pairs of samples
given by different $L$,
restricting the samples to a common support,
i.e., a common minimum value is taken as the minimum value
of the sample with the smallest $L$
(which has the largest minimum when the frequencies are rescaled).
Figure \ref{KStests} shows the $P-$value of this test for several texts and different divisions
of the texts, up to $L_{tot}/50$.
The fact that the $P-$value appears as uniformly distributed between zero and one
is an indication that the scaling null hypothesis holds.

\section{Relative errors of the scaling law}

Although the proper way to compare statistical distributions
is by means of statistical tests (as done in the previous section),
{Yan and Minnhagen \cite{Yan_Minnhagen} use instead relative errors.
They show numbers for
the relative error provided by the scaling law,
and compare it with the error of the so-called random-group-formation
hypothesis.
We explain why their comparison is not
appropriate
First, for the scaling law, the empirical values of $N_L(\ge k)$ are compared
for fixed ratio $k/L$ with $N_{L_{tot}}(\ge k)$
and the errors are claimed to be large.
Second, for the random group formation the error is claimed much smaller,
but in this case the empirical data $N_L(\ge k)$ are compared
with random samples of the same length $L$,
and not with a distribution of a different length.
It is obvious that this procedure has to yield better results,
and this constitutes a totally biased comparison.

But further, the errors provided by Yan and Minnhagen \cite{Yan_Minnhagen} for the scaling law are
inflated.
Our Fig. 5 shows the relative difference or error between the true value $N_L(\ge k)$ and the value
approximated by the scaling law, $N_{L_{tot}}(\ge k')$, with $k'=L_{tot} k/L$, which is
$$
\varepsilon_L(k) =
\frac {N_{L_{tot}}(\ge k') - N_{L}(\ge k)}
{N_{L}(\ge k)}.
$$
Note that, in general, the replacement in the denominator of ${N_{L}(\ge k)}$
by ${N_{L_{tot}}(\ge k')}$ inflates the reported error, as, when there are deviations,
this number is systematically below ${N_{L}(\ge k)}$.
The results of our analysis (Fig. 5) show
that the errors are not as big as reported by Yan and Minnhagen \cite{Yan_Minnhagen}.
Dividing \emph{Harry Potter} in up to 20 parts,
the relative error provided by the scaling law is almost always below 0.2,
with the remarkable exception of the case
$k=1$ for $L=L_{tot}/20$.
Dividing the text into smaller parts yields that the relative error
is always below 0.3 for $k>10$.
But the error for small $k$ is further reduced
if one uses for comparison the probability mass function $D_L(k)$
instead of $N_L(\ge k)$.
Remember that the original form of the scaling law was reported for $D_L(k)$
and not for $N_L(\ge k)$.
Our Fig.~\ref{fig_harrypotter}(b) speaks for itself.

\section{Scaling of moments from the generalized central-limit theorem,
Heaps' law, and relation with the scaling law}

We start this section dealing with
a distribution $D_L(k)$
that has a power-law tail
with an exponent in the range $1 < \gamma_1 < 2$.
We consider the moments $\langle k \rangle$ and $\langle k^2 \rangle$
not as the moments of the theoretical distribution (which would be equal to infinity)
but as the moments of a finite sample,
whose size is just the size of the vocabulary $V_L$ (by definition); that is,
$$
\langle k \rangle = \frac 1 {V_L} \sum_{i=1}^{V_L} k_i
\mbox{ and }
\langle k^2 \rangle = \frac 1 {V_L} \sum_{i=1}^{V_L} k_i^2.
$$

Due to the power-law behavior for large $k$,
the generalized central limit theorem \cite{Bouchaud_Georges,Corral_csf}
allows one to obtain the scaling
properties of these sums, assuming that the individual frequencies
are independent (or weakly dependent).
Indeed,
$\sum_{i=1}^{V_L} k_i$ does not scale linearly with $V_L$ but
superlinearly, as
$\sum_{i=1}^{V_L} k_i \propto V_L^{1/(\gamma_1-1)}$.
Moreover, if $k$ has a power-law tailed distribution with exponent $\gamma_1$
so does $k^2$, but with exponent $\gamma_1'$ fulfilling
$\gamma_1'-1 =(\gamma_1-1)/2$
(and in the range $1<\gamma_1'<2$)
and then
the generalized central-limit theorem also applies to $k^2$, to give
$\sum_{i=1}^{V_L} k_i^2 \propto V_L^{2/(\gamma_1-1)}$.

On the other hand, we can also use the exact result
$\sum_{i=1}^{V_L} k_i =L$ (the definition of text length),
from which we obtain the classical Heaps' law
(called also Herdan's law in llinguistics)
\cite{Baeza_Yates00,Kornai2002,Lu_2010,Serrano,Font-Clos2013},
\begin{equation}
V_L \propto L^{\gamma_1-1},
\label{Heaps}
\end{equation}
and therefore the moments fulfill
\begin{equation}
\langle k \rangle = L^{2-\gamma_1}
\mbox{ and }
\langle k^2 \rangle = L^{3-\gamma_1}
\label{scalingofmoments}
\end{equation}
(and, in general, $\langle k^m \rangle = L^{m+1-\gamma_1}$).

This result is
compatible with
a scaling law of the form
\begin{equation}
D_L(k)= \frac 1 {L^{\gamma_1}} g\left(\frac k L\right).
\label{otraleydeescalamas}
\end{equation}
The case considered in the literature \cite{Christensen_Moloney,Corral_csf}
assumes that $g(z)$ has an intermediate power-law decay with exponent $\gamma_1$
followed by a much faster decay (exponential or so) for the largest $k$'s.
The pure power-law tail considered above is
included in this framework when $g(z)$ goes to zero abruptly,
transforming the pure power law into a truncated power law.
Indeed, if the power law is truncated at $k_{max}$,
using a continuous approximation
we get
$$
{\langle k^m \rangle}
=\int_1^\infty k^m D_L(k) dk
\simeq \int_1^{k_{max}} k^m D_L(k) dk
$$
\begin{equation}
=
L^{m+1-\gamma_1} \int_{1/L}^{k_{max}/L} z^m g(z) dz
\sim L^{m+1-\gamma_1},
\label{derivation}
\end{equation}
because (for $m> \gamma_1-1$) the integral tends to a constant when $L$ is large,
taking into account that $k_{max}$ is
the maximum of $k$ from a sample of size $V_L$
and scales in the same way as $\sum k_i$,
i.e., as $L$.
To see this one can just calculate, for any $P$, the percentiles $k_P$ of the distribution
of the maximum of $V_L$ frequencies,
which verify $[1-S_L(k_P)]^{V_L}=P$.
Substituting a power law for $S_L(k)$ (with exponent $\gamma_1-1$)
we get
$$
k_P \propto \frac 1 {(1-P^{1/V_L})^{1/(\gamma_1-1)}} \simeq
\left(\frac {V_L}{-\ln P}\right)^{1/(\gamma_1-1)} \propto L.
$$
So, as all the percentiles of the maximum scale with $L$,
the distribution of the maximum scales with $L$ too
[we arrive at the last result using that
$P^{1/V_L} = e^{(\ln P)/V_L} \simeq 1 +(\ln P)/V_L$,
valid for large $V_L$, and also Heaps' law (\ref{Heaps})].

Therefore, a power-law tail for the distribution of frequencies,
with exponent $\gamma_1$, is somehow equivalent to
an upper truncated power-law tail,
with an effective cut-off $k_{max} \propto V_L^{\gamma_1-1} \propto L$,
which makes that the features of the distribution at the largest $k$ have to scale with $L$.
The scaling law (\ref{eq:scalingfontclos}) follows directly from
Eq. (\ref{otraleydeescalamas})
using Heaps' law (\ref{Heaps}),
although notice that the version of the law given by Eq. (\ref{eq:scalingfontclos})
is non-parametric, in the sense that the value of the exponent $\gamma_1$
does not appear in the law
(which is good if the determination of the exponent contains errors).

Moreover, as a by-product we obtain another form for the scaling law,
\begin{equation}
D_L(k) = \frac{\langle k \rangle^3}{\langle k^2 \rangle^2} \,
g\left( \frac{k \langle k \rangle}{\langle k^2 \rangle}\right),
\label{elscalingdelosmomentos}
\end{equation}
using the scaling (\ref{scalingofmoments}) of the moments with $L$
and the scaling law,
with the scaling function $g$ being the same as before, except
for proportionality factors.
This scaling has been used previously for self-organized critical phenomena
but under different conditions \cite{Peters_Deluca}.
Remember that here the moments are not those of the theoretical distribution
but the ones corresponding to a sample of size $V_L$.
The equivalence of both scaling laws,
Eqs. (\ref{eq:scalingfontclos}) and (\ref{elscalingdelosmomentos}),
is empirically shown in Fig. \ref{figL2V} by means of the proportionality
between $\langle k^2 \rangle$ and $L^2/V_L$.

However, real distribution of frequencies are not well described
at the largest frequencies
by scaling functions $g(z)$ that decay either exponentially or abruptly
(i.e., are sharply truncated),
as shown in Table \ref{table_data} and Fig. \ref{fig_exponents}.
Instead, we expect that the tail of $g(z)$
[and therefore the tail of $D_L(k)$] is another power law,
with an exponent $\gamma_2> \gamma_1$.
Remarkably, this framework is also described by
the scaling law (\ref{otraleydeescalamas})
and the scaling of moments (\ref{scalingofmoments}),
being the key point that one can change the upper limit of the
integral from infinite to $k_{max}$,
and $k_{max}$ still scales linearly with $L$,
so the derivation is the same as in Eq. (\ref{derivation}).

In order to support empirically the fulfillment of a scaling law of the
form given by Eq. (\ref{otraleydeescalamas}) we follow the approach presented
in Ref. \cite{Deluca_npg}.
If such a scaling law holds, the distance between the different rescaled distributions
in log-scale
$$
(\ln k_i -\delta \ln L, \ln D_L(k_i) + \gamma_1 \ln L)
$$
should be minimum when the right values of the exponents are substituted.
Notice that we have introduced an extra exponent $\delta$, which we expect
becomes equal to 1.
We proceed by minimizing such distances as a function of the exponents
$\delta$ and $\gamma_1$,
resulting in values of $\delta$ very close to 1 indeed
and values of $\gamma_1$ in the range 1.5 to 1.95,
when different texts are used,
see Table \ref{laotratabla}.

\begin{table}[ht]
\caption
{Exponents $\delta$ and $\gamma_1$ obtained after the minimization of the
distance between the rescaled word-frequency distributions, optimizing the data collapse,
for 7 different texts.
Text length $L$ varies from $L_{tot}$ to $L_{tot}/10$.
Different seeds are used in the algorithm in order to avoid local minima.
}
\begin{tabular}{|l|l|c|c|}
\hline
Text and author & Language & $\delta$ & $\gamma_1$ \\
\hline

\emph{Clarissa} by S. Richardson & English & 0.96 & 1.50\\
\emph{Moby-Dick} by H. Melville & English & 1.05 & 1.87\\
\emph{Ulysses} by J. Joyce & English & 1.04 & 1.94\\
\emph{El Quijote} by M. de Cervantes & Spanish & 0.96 & 1.64\\
\emph{La Regenta} by L. A. Clar\'{\i}n & Spanish & 0.86 & 1.52\\
\emph{Artam\`ene} by Scud\'ery siblings& French & 1.04 & 1.63\\
\emph{Le Vicomte de Bragelonne} & French & 0.96 & 1.58\\
by A. Dumas (father)& & & \\

\hline

\hline
\end{tabular}
\label{laotratabla}
\end{table}

\section{Discussion and conclusions}

As an important remark,
we want to clarify that we are not against the so-called random group formation hypothesis \cite{Baek2011},
as in some previous research we have made use of randomness to explain real texts \cite{Font_Clos_Corral}.
Our conclusion was that real texts are not random, but the first appearance of
a word is close to random, so the word frequency distribution (related to Zipf's law)
and the type-token growth curve (related to Heaps' law) remain the same
for real texts and for random versions of them.
The reason is that the word frequency distribution is independent on word order
and the type-token growth curve only depends on the first appearance of a word.
Other properties of real texts are different from those of random texts,
as inter-appearance distances \cite{Font_Clos_Corral,Altmann_Motter,Corral_words}.

}

Summarizing, the empirical facts are clear:
a finite-size scaling law gives a very good approximation for the
distribution of word frequencies
for different fragments of text of length $L$.
The shape of $D_k(L)$ is the same for all $L$,
and it is only a scaling factor proportional to $L$ what makes the difference
for different $L$.
{It is the parametric proposal of Ref. \cite{Minnhagen2009}
which is not well supported by solid statistical testing.}
In any case, if the theory held by Yan and Minnhagen
\cite{Yan_Minnhagen}
is valid, then it must contain in some limit the scaling law.
If not, the theory is irrelevant for real texts.

In conclusion, we show how the sort of scaling arguments
usual in statistical physics,
and in particular finite-size scaling (\ref{eq:scalingfontclos})
can describe complex processes
much better than parametric formulas (\ref{eq:scalingsuecos}).
Finally, in order to avoid misunderstandings, let us state that
although curve fitting is a very honorable approach in science
(when done correctly \cite{Corral_Deluca_arxiv,Corral_Deluca,Moreno_Sanchez}),
a scaling approach has nothing to do with that
\cite{Yan_Minnhagen}.

\section{Acknowledgements}

We are grateful to R. Ferrer-i-Cancho for drawing our attention
to Ref. \cite{Minnhagen2009},
and to G. Boleda for facilitating the beginning of this research.
Yan and Minnhagen's criticisms have allowed us
to explain in much more detail the validity of our scaling law
and to arrive to the new results presented here.
Research projects in which this
work is included are FIS2012-31324 and FIS2015-71851-P,
from Spanish MINECO, and 2014SGR-1307, from
AGAUR.

\section*{Appendix I}

We explain here the difference between a power law and a scaling law,
and how scaling laws in statistical physics usually only hold asymptotically.
Let us start with a scale transformation. This is an operation that stretches and/or
contracts a function, i.e.,
$$
T[f(x,y)] = c f(x/a,y/b),
$$
where $f(x,y)$ is a (in this example bivariate) real function,
$a,b,c$ are constant and positive scale factors, and $T$ is the scale transformation.
If we ask the question about which functions are invariant under scale transformations
(i.e., which functions do not change when are stretched and/or compressed) we find that
a solution is
\begin{equation}
f(x,y)=\frac 1 {x^\beta} g\left(\frac y {x^\alpha}\right),
\label{scalinglaw}
\end{equation}
with $\alpha=\ln b / \ln a$ and $\beta=-\ln c / \ln a$,
and $g$ an arbitrary function,
called scaling function
(we also consider $x>0$).
Moreover, if we look for a solution valid for any real value of $a >0$,
the previous solution (\ref{scalinglaw}) turns out to be the only solution \cite{Christensen_Moloney}.
One refers to Eq. (\ref{scalinglaw}) as a scaling form or a scaling law.

Notice that a power law is a special case of scaling law,
just taking the arbitrary scaling function $g$ to be a constant $C$.
In fact, in one dimension (i.e., for univariate functions $f(x)$)
the only scaling laws (the only scale-invariant functions for any value of the scale factor $a$)
are the power laws \cite{Newman_05,Corral_Lacidogna}, so $f(x)=C/x^\beta$.
Although the terms ``scaling law'' and ``power law'' are sometimes taken as synonym of each other, it is clear that
they are only equivalent for univariate functions.
For bivariate (and multivariate) functions one needs to be more careful
in distinguishing both concepts (as we do here).

Let us stress that scaling is a fundamental pillar of 20th-century statistical physics
\cite{Stanley_rmp}.
In our case, we propose that a (bivariate) scaling law holds for $D_L(k)$,
so, we identify $k=y$, $L=x$, and $D_L(k)=f(x,y)$
and assume Heaps' law for the usual scaling law to hold
(more details in Ref. \cite{Font-Clos2013}).
Alternatively, we may identify $N_L(\ge k)$ not with $D_L(k)$ but with $f(x,y)$
with no necessity of using Heaps' law.
In any case this not necessarily implies that the scaling function
$g$ has a power-law shape.
We do not care here about the functional form of $g$,
this is just the shape shown in Fig. \ref{fig_harrypotter}(b)
(for the particular book under consideration there).

We provide in Fig. \ref{figappendix} a practical example of
how scaling laws in statistical physics hold usually only for large $x$ and $y$
(i.e., large $L$ and $k$).
We display the rescaled size distribution $D_L(k)$ of a critical Galton-Watson branching process \cite{Corral_FontClos}
with its number of generations bounded by a finite $L$
and with offspring distribution given
by a binomial distribution with 2 trials.
This process is totally equivalent to percolation in the Bethe lattice
\cite{GarciaMillan}.
The figure shows the deviation from the scaling law for $k\le 10$,
but nevertheless it has been proved analytically that
finite-size scaling holds in this system \cite{GarciaMillan}.
Ironically, in this case the scaling function
is well approximated by the function proposed by
Bernhardsson et al. \cite{Minnhagen2009}
[our Eq. (\ref{eq:scalingsuecos})],
but with a constant exponent $\gamma_{}=\beta/\alpha=3/2$.

\section*{Appendix II}

Let us see how discreteness effects alter scaling.
Naturally, the discrete nature of word-frequency distributions
comes from the fact that the fundamental unit is the count
of word tokens.
If we assume that scaling holds for all $k$,
even for $k=1$ and $k=2$,
the finite-size scaling law, under the form given
by Eq. (\ref{lachunga}), implies that
$$
N_L(\ge 2) = N_{L/2}(\ge 1),
$$
and we can relate this to the size of vocabulary for each text length,
so
$$
V_L - n_L^s(1)=V_{L/2},
$$
where $n_L(k)$ counts the number of types with frequency
(exactly equal to) $k$,
and the superscript $s$ denotes that we are under the scaling hypothesis.

On the other hand, for a random text,
$V_{L/2}$ can be calculated
from $V_L$ as
$$
V_{L/2}= V_L - n_{L/2}(0)
= V_L - \sum_{k\ge 1} h_{0,k} n_L(k),
$$
where $h_{0,k}$ gives the probability of getting $0$ tokens
of a certain type when a fragment of text of length $L/2$
is taken from a text of length $L$ in which the same type has
frequency $k$, see Eq. (5) of Ref. \cite{Font-Clos2013}.
Comparing both equations for $V_{L/2}$ we get
$n_L^s(1)=\sum_{k\ge 1} h_{0,k} n_L(k)$.
But using that $h_{0,k} < 1/2^k$ (see below) and $n_L(k)< n_L(1)$ for $k>1$
(from empirical evidence, see Fig. 2(a) for instance)
we arrive at
$$
n_L^s(1)=
n_{L/2}(0)=
\sum_{k\ge 1} h_{0,k} n_L(k)
< n_L(1)
\sum_{k\ge 1} \frac 1 {2^k} = n_L(1)
$$
(extending the sum to infinite).
Thus, the scaling hypothesis yields, for a random text and for $k=1$,
less types than it should.
This can be seen looking carefully at some of the plots in
Fig. 2 of Ref. \cite{Font-Clos2013}, but not in Fig. 3 there or in Fig. 2(b) here,
as the deviations are rather small
[just notice that the empirical $D_L(k)$
is proportional to $n_L(k)$].

The fact that $h_{0,k} < 1/2^k$ comes from the fact
that $h_{0,k}$ is given by the hypergeometric distribution
(as we assume we take tokens from the larger text with no replacement),
and then,
\begin{alignat}{1}
h_{0,k} &=
{\binom{k}{0}\binom{L-k}{L/2-0}}\Bigl/\Bigr.{\binom{L}{L/2}}\\
&=
\left[
\frac{(L-k)!}{(L-k-L/2)!} \right]
\Bigl/\Bigr.
\left[
\frac{L!}{(L/2)!}
\right]\\
&=
\left[
\frac {(L/2)!}{(L/2-k)!}\right]
\Bigl/\Bigr.
\left[
\frac
{L!}{(L-k)!}
\right]\\&=
\frac{
(L/2)(L/2-1)\dots(L/2-k+1)
}{
L(L-1)\dots(L-k+1),
}\\
&=
\prod_{j=0}^{k-1}
\left(
\frac{L/2-j}{L-j}
\right),
\end{alignat}
where all factors are smaller than $1/2$,
except the one for $j=0$.
This yields $h_{0,k} < 1/2^k$.
In this way we show how discrete effects break scaling
for the lowest frequencies,
but, as can be seen in the plots, this effect is very small.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


Easy crock pot ham recipe flavored with a glaze of mustard, Cola soda and brown sugar. Made with a precooked boneless ham, it's the perfect main dish for Christmas, Easter and other holidays.
Ham for Christmas and Easter. That's the main dish we've had for our holiday meal each and every year with a side of crockpot mashed potatoes and 7 Layer Salad. And with every other item that goes on the menu, the ham is one of the easiest to make. Topped with a glaze made with brown sugar and mustard and then marinated with cola, this recipe has such a rich flavor. You can prep the ham within five minutes and let the crock pot do the work. Winning!
Step 1: To make this crock pot ham recipe you'll make a simple glaze of mustard and brown sugar by combining them and making a paste.
Step 2: After slicing into the ham at about 1/4 inch deep and creating a criss cross pattern, you'll then add the glaze making sure to push it into the slits. Add cola around the edges of the crock pot. No diet cola. The real stuff.
Step 3: Cook on high for one hour and then reduce heat to low for approximately 3 to 4 more hours depending on the size of your ham. When the ham reaches an internal temperature of 140° F, remove it from the crock pot. Let it sit for 30 minutes before slicing.
After you slice it, you can put the ham slices back in the crock pot to keep warm until serving.
Our favorite ham to purchase for this recipe is a tender boneless ham that has very little fat. In my opinion, it makes for the best ham on Christmas morning. And because this is a crock pot ham – it's easy too! Enjoy!
Is the ham in this recipe pre-cooked? Yes. That means you're adding flavor and heating it up at the same time.
Can you use this recipe with a pre-sliced ham? In theory, yes. But an unsliced ham will insure that your ham doesn't get dry during the cooking process.
Can I use Diet Cola for this recipe? The sugars in the real Cola make the great flavor. Don't go diet.
Can I keep the ham slices in the crock pot until we're ready to eat? Yes! After the ham is fully heated through and sliced, just put the ham back into the crock pot and set it on the warm setting until ready to eat.
Does ham freeze well? Yes, it does. Place the leftover ham in an airtight container and freeze until needed.
What's the easiest way to cut a fully cooked ham? I use an electric knife to cut our ham to get even slices each and every time.
Easy brown sugar, cola and mustard glaze crock pot ham. This is the perfect ham for the holidays! Quick to prep and the slow cooker does the work for you!
Place pre-cooked boneless ham in crock pot.
Slice 1/4 inch deep across top of ham in lattice pattern.
In a bowl, mix mustard and brown sugar to create paste. Spread on top of ham, pushing into the sliced ham. Pour can of cola around ham.
Turn crock pot on high for one hour. Lower temperature to low for 3 to 4 hours or until internal temperature of ham reaches 140° F.
Remove ham from crock pot and let rest for 30 minutes before slicing. Serve warm.


text:
Phishing Scams on Upswing
Tis the season for final exams, holiday get-togethers, and phishing scams. And, unfortunately, there are several currently running their course through Miami email inboxes.
Planned activity: Duo/CASv5 deployment
December 19, IT Services will be transitioning to mandatory two-factor authentication.
New look coming to the Miami login screen!
Reminder that Duo isn't the only thing changing on December 19.
Changes to Television Delivery on Campus Coming Soon
The video delivery landscape continues to evolve on campus. And it will continue to change over the course of the next year here at Miami. The next big change to come will affect traditional cable television in academic and administrative buildings.
ATS Lunch & Learn a Huge Success
A very special Accessible Technology lunch & learn with the Miami University Center for Assistive Technology (MU CAT) took place on November 2, for the Miami University community. The event was sponsored by the Accessible Technology Services team.
Reminder about MInE Decommissioning
Information Technology Services will be retiring the MInE (Miami Information Environment) reporting system at the end of the year. Originally, the hope was it could be decommissioned in May, however, most reports will now be ready before December 31.
Google Calendar notifications will no longer support SMS
Event notifications in the Google Calendar app will no longer be sent via SMS.
RedHawk3 takes off at Miami
High-performance computing (HPC) at Miami University is getting ready to fly forward.
Tony Kinne: Security analysis at its finest
Information security at Miami University can't function without a human touch.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Meegan Brooks
Associate at Steptoe & Johnson LLP
Meegan Brooks is an associate in Steptoe & Johnson LLP's San Francisco office who represents retailers and consumer product companies on array of federal of state regulations, including many privacy-related matters and class actions. Her privacy work includes California's CCPA, Song-Beverly Credit Card Act, and "Shine the Light" law, the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act, and state/federal data breach laws. Meegan has been designated as a Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP/US) by the International Association of Privacy Professionals and received her J.D. with honors from the University of Michigan Law School in 2013.
Companies Are Ready and Willing to Comply with CCPA – But First, They Need to Know How
California's Attorney General and legislature are currently proposing amendments to the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Their proposals, however, may do little to aid businesses in knowing how to comply with CCPA, and may instead dramatically increase liability risks for non-compliance.


Our focus is on providing an outstanding service to both candidates and clients. We look less at KPIs and more at your overall contribution to the team.
If you still need convincing – have a quick look at our Glassdoor reviews.
If this appeals, get in touch!


Last time it took 3 days for a translation to appear on one of my plugins, and this time the changes I've made 5 days ago are still not visible.
The Polyglots handbook says that strings in readme are deployed almost immediately, that's no longer true at the moment.
A commit with some text changes in readme.txt appears to have cleared the cache for my plugin, but I've got a similar report from another translator about another plugin, so the issue still stands.


I was full of expectations when I woke up the next morning. According to Chris the landscape that lay ahead of us should look like something from another planet with the most incredible colours and rock formations. A tiny part of me worried that my expectations were higher than the landscape could bear, and as we rolled down the hill to the first plain with coloured cliffs in the distance I actually was a little disappointed. The sun was standing low in the sky to the east right in front of me, blinding me and not falling on the cliffs, but causing a foggy haze around them. Fortunately I soon realised that all the beauty was to be seen if I just turned around and looked behind me to the west where the direct sunlight made the red, white and yellow layers of cliff shine like rock solid rainbows. And I had many chances to stop, look and take pictures as I frequently had to roll off the road to let the heavy trucks pass. We were on a narrow road without a shoulder, it was quite busy this morning and the trucks didn't brake for a little, orange cyclist like me.
We rode through several plateaus with different rock formations and colours on display popping up between the farmed fields where men were working on their tractors. What a place to work. It was truly incredible, like nothing I had ever seen before.My expectations were not disappointed.
And we had not even come the best of it all yet.
A stunning mountain that was blue at the bottom, white in the middle and red at the top like three coloured ice cream (yes, I know it sounds surreal, but it was really how it looked) appeared on our left and Chris took me to the same place away from the road where he had sat three years before admiring the landscape. From here we could not only see the three-coloured mountain but an ocean of rocks and cliffs in changing colours and layers rolled out in front of us. We just sat and stared and Chris took a lot of pictures. It was hard to believe that what we saw was really real and just there, hardly noticed by the drivers of the trucks on the road and the tractors in the fields. For them it was so normal, just one of Turkey's many looks.
We found a little gravel road that went down along the coloured cliffs and we decided to go that way just to get more and closer views of nature's incredible show. And for a little while we were right there in the middle of it. It didn't make it less unbelievable, so Chris put on his sun glasses that makes him look like a space rider I had named 'Crisis' and Crisis now named the planet we had arrived on Sargon. Being a part of a science fiction movie was the story that suited our surroundings best and it would have been no big surprise if a spaceship with aliens had come by.
Back on the main road planet Sargon disappeared behind us and the road grew wider into a four laned dual carriage way with a wide, hard shoulder where we safe and steady could make our progress. The landscape became less spectacular with endless fields of hay that from time to time still got interrupted by layers of raw, old cliffs and some quite stunning table mountains outside the town Beypazari. On these big Turkish highways it was as if the flow and speed of the constant traffic transferred to me and I got into a kind of mind free cycling, steadily pedalling up one rolling hill after the other, fulfilling the purposeand quest of the road to keep going, keep going, without many other thoughts. It was efficient cycling and somehow it felt good, it was like taking a break from all the impressions and experiences I was otherwise constantly being exposed to, but I noticed less of my surroundings and the hours blended into a blur.
Like this we cycled till it got dark and continued the next day over big hills and through the town Ayaz until the sight of Ankara came into view. What an alien looking thing a big city is when you see it from the outside, suddenly popping up out of nowhere with its sharp, structured outline from the soft, rolling hills and infinite plains. It was like watching another strange planet, but this time we were not so attracted by it and instead we bypassed Ankara by taking smaller roads going to the north around the big city.
Taking the smaller roads was a bit of a risk, as we were not sure of the conditions of the roads and if they really existed. But that also made it an exciting one that turned out to be a great success in the end. The roads grew more and more quiet and turned into gravel, there were some breathtaking climbs, but after the highway it was like waking up again allowing my senses and mind to explore again. We were cycling through flat, farmed valleys that got busy with tractors and farmers working in the fields in the evenings when the temperatures dropped to bearable levels. We went through small, dusty villages with light, colourful mosques and people staring at us from their worn sofas on shaded balconies. These villages felt like places that never had been reached by the speed and shine of modern life, for better and worse.
We entered little towns finding ourselves suddenly in a hectic, lively scene of streets busy with cars, trucks, scooters and a few bicycles, lined by little shops, vegetable stalls, teahouses and an incredible number of car mechanic workshops. It was in one of these towns called Cubuk, that we had a different invitation to tea. It didn't come from a group of men as usually but from a short, round woman with a cheeky look in her eyes. And instead of sitting in a teahouse where I used to be the only woman, she led us into the women's world, a sewing workshop, where several women of different ages were either working on their sewing machine, knitting or looking through various piles of colourful, decorated cloth. The women chatted cheerfully with each other about us, the cloth they were working with and about all kind of other things that I did not know, while they worked. There were emotions and gossip in the air, eyes rolled and burned and lighted up by smiles. The short woman who had invited us in touched my arm from time to time and made gossiping eyes to me as if I understood what they talked about. As if I was a one of them. Chris sat back, alien in this world and drank his tea.
Around Cubuk we battled some steep hills and every time we got to the top of one we got the next in sight. But that day I was flying. I felt like I had finally reached a physical level that made me truly capable of this that we were doing, and even though my mind protested a little asking "Why?" when the next hill rose before my wheels my body and mind as a whole boasted with joy and energy when I stood, sweating and gasping at the top silently shouting "That's why!". It was tough, it was good and I loved it.
That evening we camped up in the hills accompanied by yellow flowers and overlooking a stunning lower landscape with a blue lake and more hills and mountains in the horizon. Turkey seemed to have a new look for every crest we passed and we didn't have a clue of what was awaiting us.
After more hills, villages and small roads we had to join the main road the next day. This also meant that we could stop in the gas stations that each had a restaurant, toilets and a little shop. This day we went to get some real food from the canteen as the Turkish cuisine was quite alright for our vegetarian preferences with some good vegetable and bean stews, that only maybe had been cooked with meat juice. It was served together with a plate of rice, tomato and cucumber salad and one or more loafs of white bread simply put in the table in a big plastic box, so casual that I thought it was a mistake. We were served by a man who spoke good English and he told us that he was a refugee from Iraq, working here for a minimum wage hoping he could get permission to move onwards to the US. He naturally had a sadness over him and I wondered about the strange and unfair system of the world that made it possible for me to travel almost freely almost anywhere in the world only because it was my dream whereas a man like him had so much need and so few options for going where he wanted. A few days before we had passed by some small camps of white tents, little settlements that seemed to have been there too long to be called temporary. Women were working with house holding and kids were playing around the tents and up by the road. We didn't know how to perceive these camps, didn't know if they were The Refugees that we heard so much about in the media. But we guessed that they were and let them become real to us.
Due to our success in taking the smaller roads we later that day spontaneously opted to leave the main road when a smaller road went off to the right. On the map it seemed to join the main road again further east and in real life it seemed to disappear over some hills. Up we went, slowly and sweating in the afternoon heat, while the cars and trucks roared behind us. As we got further and further up silence grew and the hills amazed us with secrets kept from the faster traffic. From the top we could see the soft, wavy hills on the other side of the valley, they looked like big puddings or frozen fountains. It looked just like pictures I had seen from other people's blogs about cycle touring, it looked just like what I had wanted to see when I dreamed about cycling through Turkey. I squeezed my arm to make sure I was not dreaming, and I felt a delightful little twitch of pain.
Cycling in Turkey had taking the journey to a new level for me. At first I had felt intimidated by the size of the country, but it was exactly what made me merge with it now. The beginning of it was so many memories behind me and the end of it was too far away for me to imagine. It was too big to comprehend and it left me enclosed by it, surrendered to it. We lived the life on the road, camping every night, washing and filling our water bottles from the many springs we found along the roads, we stocked up on the groceries we had come to like (and you won't believe it, but in the BIM supermarkets they had the Dutch stroopwaffles we had liked so much back in Holland) when we got to bigger towns, we went to a restaurant to charge our devices and our energy and connect briefly with the rest of the world every two or three days, we met so many people, so much kindness, generosity and curiosity, so many smiles, so many waves and "Hello"'s, we saw the landscape change again and again and again, we learned a few Turkish words and saw the same words on the road and shop signs over and over, we heard the call to prayers from the mosques, all sang with distinct and different voices, sometimes solo and sometimes a polyphone concert and sometimes we didn't even hear it because we became so familiar with it all.
I felt I became one with the journey and only lived for the next turn, the next hill, the next view, the next spring, the cooling in the evening and the peace at our campsite at night. Turkey had peeled all excessive thoughts and worries of me by its challenging and encompassing nature and finally forced me to blissfully, simply just be here and now.
Loving you journey and your writing. I've been following Chris for quite a few years now. Thank you both for sharing this new adventure together. Much love and courage to you both. Safe cycling.
Maybe one day you'll be able to cone down under to New Zealand. I have a spare bedroom for visitors and you'd be most welcome.
PS enjoying reading your book Chris, even though I have followed you from the start of your blog on crazeyguyonabike.
Don't want to give you swollen head at all but yours was one of the first journals I read, as I started to investigate cycle touring. I have enjoyed your writing and now Dea's.
Oops another PS, my grand daughter loves the list of finding things while we are out on the tandem, she's five and very competitive.
Hi Glen. Thanks so much for the kind message. It's really nice to hear that other people are also enjoying the Spotting Things Game, especially a five-year-old! Does she beat you?
Thank you because we can follow you through this blog on your bike tour to China.
Dea you discribe wonderfully the environment in which you are cycling.
We suggest that your cycling tour continues safety and well.
Thank you Alda, always so nice to hear from you. It's really nice of you to continue following our journey, we hope you'll make it all the way to China with us!
What a sweet (and rare) invitation to have some tea with the ladies for a change :). I can exactly imagine that squeeze on the arm and gossip eyes look she gave you, her thinking you totally followed the conversation ha ha.
Gorgeous scenery you cycled through, Turkey really has quite a diverse landscape! The multi-colored hills reminds me so much of the Painted Dessert in the US.


Can you believe that this is the first time I have turned my computer on in a week! It actually feels pretty amazing because I was pretty productive and not distracted by Facebook or Pinterest.
I finally got my Marcelle Medallion basted and quilted this week, now all I need to to is bind it!!! If you follow me on Instagram, you've already seen these, but I just wanted to share for now until I take some decent pictures.
I used 40wt Aurifil thread, and I LOVE it! I've heard some people have had issues with it breaking and not cooperating but I didn't have a single issue.
Jeff and I are going out tonight for my belated birthday dinner, so after a couple glasses on wine I will be in a great mood to get the binding sewn on this sucker! I hope y'all have a great weekend!
I LOVE the 40wt! It adds such a beautiful texture, and a nice visible stitch.
Awesome, you did a giant spiral!! Was it a pain to have to turn the quilt around to do it that way? I've always been afraid to try that. It looks beautiful, this is such a gorgeous quilt.
Thanks! It was actually much easier than I was thinking it was going to be! The hardest part was the center, but once I got going it went super smoothly.
Happy belated birthday - and I LOVE how you've quilted it! Looks amazing!
All the spiraling looks amazing! Congrats on being so close to the finish. Happy belated birthday too.


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text:
L'église des Jésuites est un édifice religieux catholique sis au cœur du centre historique de la ville de Sibiu, en Transylvanie (Roumanie).  De style baroque et construite à partir de 1726 comme église du collège et résidence jésuite y attenant elle devint église paroissiale catholique (église de la Sainte-Trinité), lorsque l'Ordre jésuite fut supprimé (1773). Le monument est classé au patrimoine architectural de Roumanie.

Histoire
Depuis 1543 toutes les églises paroissiales de Sibiu (alors connue sous le nom de Hermannstadt) sont protestantes, la population de la région étant d'origine allemande. Ce n'est qu'à partir de 1688, lorsque la Transylvanie est incorporée à la Monarchie de Habsbourg qu'une présence catholique est autorisée.  Les jésuites arrivent à Sibiu en 1689 et y ouvrent un collège en 1692 (aujourd'hui: 'Collège national Gheorghe Lazar').

En 1721 plusieurs parcelles sont jointes pour permettre aux jésuites de construire leur église avec résidence.  La première pierre est posée en 1726. La construction est achevée en 1733 et l'église, consacrée par  Gregor Sorger, est ouverte au culte le  de la même année.  La tour-clocher structurellement indépendante, est achevée en 1738.

Lorsque la Compagnie de Jésus fut supprimée (1773) les Jésuites durent quitter les lieux, et l'église devint église paroissiale catholique. Elle fut renommée 'église de la sainte-Trinité'.

Monument historique, l'église est classée au patrimoine immobilier de la Roumanie sous le nom de l'ancienne église des Jésuites. Avec l'ancienne résidence jésuite qui est aujourd'hui le centre paroissial, elle occupe le côté septentrional de la 'Grand place' historique de la ville, juste à côté de l'hôtel de ville. Sur le côté occidental de la même place se trouve le palais Brukenthal (aujourd'hui musée national Brukenthal). Quelques maisons du côté méridional sont également monuments historiques. L'ancien collège jésuite, aujourd'hui 'Collège national Gheorghe Lazăr' se trouve 'rue Gheorghe Lazăr', à deux pas, au sud, de la Grand place.

Description
 Au-dessus du tabernacle se trouve une fresque de la Vierge à l'Enfant considérée comme la 'peinture baroque la plus significative de Sibiu'. L'ensemble du mobilier de l'église est de style baroque.
Adossé au côté sud du sanctuaire se trouve le monument funéraire du maréchal Otto Ferdinand von Traun (1677-1748), gouverneur de Transylvanie, œuvre de Anton Schuchbauer.
Les vitraux, avec leurs thèmes bibliques, hagiographiques (dont saint Stanislas Kostka) et allégoriques furent manufacturés à Budapest en 1901.

Sibiu
Sibiu
Sibiu
Sibiu
Monument historique dans le județ de Sibiu

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Yesterday morning Emma asked if she could try one of my mints.
"But you don't like mints," I reminded her.
"I'll like them this time!" she said, bouncing on her toes.
I was skeptical, but curious, so I handed one over. Emma immediately popped the mint into her mouth and began crunching away with a sort of blind enthusiasm that I suspected she might later regret. Within seconds her eyes began to water, and she dropped to the floor, clawing wildly at her tongue.
"I don't like it!" she shrieked. "Something is happening to my mouth!!" Drool, spit and chunks of mint pooled on the floor in front of her. She began to shiver.
"I'm cold," she said, hugging her knees, eyes wide with regret.
"And that is why we say NO to mints, or to anything that LOOKS like a mint!" I announced triumphantly.
I am totally winning at parenting.
‹ PreviousPARENTING: If You're Not Confused, You're Not Doing It Right!
My boys would say those mints are too spicy.
My boys love them, but my daughter (as you can tell) has a totally different opinion!!
Hahaha! I've never actually tried marmalade.
Ha ha! Try liver next.
My daughter calls these my tablets, she once got some out of my handbag and ate them. I'm not going to lie, I was on edge all day waiting for her to get a 'runny tummy' from the sweeteners.
Oh dear! I'm surprised they didn't. I know my own stomach is pretty sensitive if I eat too many.
And speaking of Easter (lol) and aversion therapy, when my oldest was two he loved jelly beans. Here in the US there scads of jelly beans at Easter. He kept popping them and I told him he was going to be sick from eating them. Why didn't I just make him hand over the basket, you might ask. Not this time. In leiu of a tantrum, I let him eat. And eat. Shortly after, he looked at me and uttered, "Mom" as a rainbow colored waterfall flooded down his chest. First step in having faith in Mom's wisdom. I don't thunk he cares much for jelly beans these days….
Tell Emma I am the same way with beer. I hate it. I KNOW I hate it. Yet almost every time my son has some kind of exotic beer I insist I want to taste it. I end up on the floor clawing at my tongue, eyes watering, and sure I see dead relatives beckoning me. Some of us just can't give up.
Just a wee bit. My father used to say about me, "All the actresses aren't in Hollywood." I think that sums it up nicely.
I'm a lot of fun if you drink enough!


text:
Meizhou Hakka Football Club (; Hakka language: Mòi-Chû Hag-Ga chuk-khiù khî-lo̍k-phu) is a professional Chinese football club that currently participates in the Chinese Super League under license from the Chinese Football Association (CFA). The team is based in Wuhua County, Meizhou in the province of Guangdong and their home stadium is the 27,000 capacity Huitang Stadium. Their current majority shareholders are the Meizhou municipal government, Municipal Sports Bureau, Wei Real Estate Development Co. Ltd. and partners. The club was renamed Meizhou Wuhua Football Club according to Meizhou Daily. However, the original name was still used in official documents of CFA all the time.

History
Meizhou Hakka F.C. was established in January 2013 by former Guangdong Sunray Cave manager Cao Yang along with the support of the Meizhou municipal government, Municipal Sports Bureau. He would soon go on to gain financial support from the Chairman of Wei Real Estate Development Co., Ltd., Wei Jinping who was persuaded in investing into the team after Cao Yang described his envision of creating a footballing hub in Wuhua County, the home town of former Chinese footballer and coach Lee Wai Tong. The squad was assembled with local Hakka players and players from other teams in Guangdong, including Guangdong Sunray Cave, Guangzhou Evergrande, Shenzhen Ruby and Shenzhen Fengpeng before entering the third tier in the 2013 league season where despite topping the group stages they finished fifth in the knock-out stages.

Former Chinese national team Head coach Qi Wusheng was brought in during the 2015 China League Two season. He would go on to help guide the club to win the division title in a penalty shoot-out against Dalian Transcendence and promotion to the second tier for the first time in the clubs history. Qi Wusheng would not extend his contract with the club and Dutch football manager Luc Nijholt was brought in on 1 January 2016 as well as 80 million Yuan to invest within the team. Luc Nijholt would leave the team on 19 July 2016 as the club sat twelfth within the league and marginally above the relegation zone, a position they would remain in for the rest of the season. After several managerial changes with limited success, Serbian Manager Milan Ristić was brought in on 6 February 2021 and he was able to guide the team to promotion to the top tier at the end of the 2021 China League One season.

Name history
According to the club's statement:
2013 Meizhou Kejia 梅州客家
2014– Meizhou Wuhua 梅州五华
According to official documents of CFA:
2013–2015 Meizhou Kejia 梅州客家
2016— Meizhou Hakka 梅州客家

Current squad

First team squad

Reserve squad

Out on loan

Coaching staff

Managerial history

 Cao Yang (2013)
 Tan Ende (2014–26 May 2015)
 Zhang Jun (26 May 2015 – 3 July 2015)
 Qi Wusheng (3 July 2015–31 Dec 2015)
 Luc Nijholt (1 Jan 2016–19 Jul 2016)
 Cao Yang (caretaker) (19 Jul 2016–31 Dec 2016)
 Vjekoslav Lokica (16 Feb 2017–29 Apr 2017)
 Cao Yang (caretaker) (29 Apr 2017–23 Jul 2017)
 Aleksandar Stankov (23 Jul 2017–18 Dec 2017)
 Rusmir Cviko (18 Dec 2017–28 Aug 2018)
 Li Weijun (carettaker) (28 Aug 2018–19 Dec 2018)
 Zheng Xiaotian (19 Dec 2018–6 Nov 2019)
 Marcelo Rospide (12 Nov 2019–31 Dec 2020)
 Milan Ristić (2 Feb 2021–present)

Honours
 China League Two (Third Tier League)
Winners (1): 2015

Results
All-time league rankings

As of the end of 2019 season.

 In group stage.

Key
<div>

 Pld = Played
 W = Games won
 D = Games drawn
 L = Games lost
 F = Goals for
 A = Goals against
 Pts = Points
 Pos = Final position

 DNQ = Did not qualify
 DNE = Did not enter
 NH = Not Held
 – = Does Not Exist
 R1 = Round 1
 R2 = Round 2
 R3 = Round 3
 R4 = Round 4

 F = Final
 SF = Semi-finals
 QF = Quarter-finals
 R16 = Round of 16
 Group = Group stage
 GS2 = Second Group stage
 QR1 = First Qualifying Round
 QR2 = Second Qualifying Round
 QR3 = Third Qualifying Round

References

Football clubs in China
Sport in Meizhou
Association football clubs established in 2013
2013 establishments in China


So, it's always a great day when you can get together with friends for coffee (or in my case, hot chocolate!), and even better when it's one of your Stampin' Up! downline who then decides to also join your South Hill Designs team too!
My video tutorial is HERE (including my bimbling with the blender pens!) or you can watch it a bit further down this post, and the link to see the locket is HERE on my South Hill Designs blog!
« Sweetly Framed New Neighbours!


Completely FREE to the general public, the expo has been popular around Europe and will be open on Zagreb's main square from 12 – 21 June.
Over 750 000 European citizens have now visited the European Space Expo, as it continues its tour of major European cities. The free exhibition highlights the many ways in which the EU space programme helps EU citizens 'on the ground' every day.
The Expo presents key information on the European space programmes – from satellite navigation (Galileo and EGNOS) to Earth observation (Copernicus) in an engaging and entertaining way. Highlights include the 'OmniGlobe' – an interactive hologram of the earth's atmosphere, an impressive model of the 'Galileo' satellite and lots more.


text:
Q: Change data on DataGridView without change its source I have job class numbers stored on the database and want to show my data in "DataGridView" by replacing the job class numbers with job class name.
I use Entity Framework and retrieve data from the database to a generic list.
I try to create DataTable and bound the DataGridView to it.
Is this way correct?
In my code below I want to determine the column that is used in DataTable but it does not work properly if I remove column names ("ID", "Nme", "jobClass" ... ) it work and show all columns in DataGridView but with add column names I get reeor.

`
IEnumerable<Employee> employeesList = new List<Employee>();
                employeesList = db.EmployeeRepository.GetAllEmployees();

                DataTable employeesTable = new DataTable();
                using (var reader = ObjectReader.Create(employeesList,"ID", "Name", "jobClass", "College", "Department" ))
                {
                    employeesTable.Load(reader);
                }

                dgvEmployees.DataSource = employeesTable;

`

A: One way to do it is using Json to do the conversions.
You will convert your main object to Json and then convert it into a DataTable:
string data = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(employeesList);
employeesTable = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<DataTable>(data);

To define the fields you want in the DataTable, in your "Employee" object, mark the fields you don't want in the DataTable with the attribute "[JsonIgnore()]", as in the example below:
public class Employee
{
    [JsonIgnore()]
    public string ID { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string jobClass { get; set; }
    public string College { get; set; }
    public string Department { get; set; }
}

A: I use partial class to change my data model and solve my problem.
see this link
and this

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
New York State Route 185 (NY 185) is an east–west state highway in Essex County, New York, in the United States. It serves as a connector between NY 9N and NY 22 in Crown Point and the Lake Champlain Bridge, by which the highway enters Vermont and becomes Vermont Route 17 (VT 17). NY 185, named Bridge Road, passes through Crown Point State Historic Site and runs the entire length of Crown Point, a peninsula protruding into Lake Champlain.

NY 185 was assigned on April 4, 2008, as a signed replacement for New York State Route 910L, an unsigned reference route. It is the third signed designation that Bridge Road has carried, preceded by New York State Route 347 (during the early 1930s) and NY 8 (1930s to the 1960s). NY 185 originally connected to the Champlain Bridge on its east end; however, that structure was closed and demolished in late 2009. Its replacement opened to traffic in November 2011.

Route description

NY 185 begins at an intersection with NY 9N and NY 22 in Crown Point. The route progresses eastward as a two-lane highway named Bridge Road. Heading away from the western terminus, there is a fork in the road: to the left is NY 185, and to the right is a road to a housing development. Most of NY 185 runs along the lowlands around Lake Champlain, making curves at intersections, and heading on relatively flat elevations. As the highway approaches the lake, it makes a curve to the north. There, it intersects with County Route 48 (Lake Road) and begins to follow the lake shore.

The highway passes to the east of the Crown Point State Historic Site and its campground before ascending up the approach to the Lake Champlain Bridge. After making a final curve to the northeast, NY 185 begins to cross Lake Champlain by way of the bridge. The route ends at the Vermont state line at the bridge's midpoint, and the roadway continues into Vermont as VT 17.

History

The Champlain Bridge was built in 1929, connecting Crown Point in New York to Chimney Point in Vermont. A short connector highway between the bridge—which connected to VT 17 in Vermont—and NY 22 in Crown Point, named Bridge Road, was originally designated as NY 347 as part of the 1930 renumbering of state highways in New York. NY 347 became part of an extended NY 8 .

NY 8 was truncated south to Hague , eliminating a lengthy overlap with NY 22 and NY 9N. Its former routing along Bridge Road became NY 903, an unsigned reference route. The NY 903 designation was later replaced with NY 910L when a new numbering system for reference routes was adopted by the New York State Department of Transportation, and NY 910L itself was redesignated and signed as NY 185 on April 4, 2008.

On October 16, 2009, the Champlain Bridge was closed to traffic due to structural concerns. The bridge was demolished on December 28, 2009, as a result of those concerns, temporarily reducing NY 185 in purpose to a spur route linking NY 9N and NY 22 to Crown Point. Its replacement, the Lake Champlain Bridge, opened to traffic on November 7, 2011.

Major intersections

See also

References

External links

185
Transportation in Essex County, New York


Thirty-one seniors from Orange Coast Middle College High School's final graduating class received their diplomas on Wednesday to the thunderous applause of several hundred people in the audience.
It was a tearful experience for many, including alumni who attended the event in the Robert B. Moore Theatre at Orange Coast College.
The high school, which affords students the opportunity to earn college credits at OCC, opened in 1996. But due to cutbacks, the school was forced to close in order to save the Newport-Mesa Unified School District $800,000 at a time when the state is withholding billions of dollars in funding for various school districts.
Although the decision to shutter the unique high school was made last year, it finally came to pass Wednesday as students, dressed in the customary gaps and gowns, accepted their diplomas from their principal, Bob Nanney.
For the eight years he has served as principal, Nanney has been making some sort of speech to the graduating class.
"It's not what happens to you so much, but how you respond to what happens to you," said Nanney while instructing the students to "be clear about your goals" and to "resist the temptations" that might hurt friends or family.
"But most of all," he added, "keep your mind open."
That's not difficult to do when you're dealing with the seniors at this particular high school, which has operated on the Costa Mesa community college campus since its inception.
It's always been a popular receptacle to particular students interested in getting away from the traditional mainstream high school experience and earn college credits while doing so.
Every graduate plans to attend college, whether it be UC Davis, the University of San Francisco, Louisiana State University or Vassar College in New York.
Samantha Smith, the valedictorian, advised her fellow students to listen to the words of Helen Keller, who once said, "Life is either a daring adventure or nothing."
"Shoot for the moon," Smith said. "Even if you miss, you'll still hit the stars."
And so many of them shot for the moon over the course of the last two years, even if they were going to be the final two years for the school, which starts students in their junior years.
As they walked across the stage, they all had something to say for themselves, which they wrote in advance and displayed on the wall using PowerPoint.
"Catch the winds of trade and explore the world," read one slide, quoting Mark Twain.
Another quoted Bob Marley with, "Don't gain the world and lose a soul/Wisdom is better than silver or gold."
Artist Marc Chaggal was also cited: "If I create for the heart, nearly everything works."
And then there's this one, made up by the student himself: "You know what? I'm going to a party, and I walked out."
But in the long run, it's all about taking responsibility for shaping their future lives, said Nanney, concluding his speech.
"I'm going to leave you with my favorite quote from Eleanor Roosevelt, which I do every year," he said. "And she said, 'In the long run we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. ...Ultimately, the choices we make are our responsibility.' "


text:
26 LISTSAcross the WhedonverseLists that rank everything from Buffy to Firefly and even Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.
Things Real Buffy Fans Notice
Buffy Theories to Consider
Behind the Scenes Drama from Buffy and Angel
Easter Eggs Across the 'Verse
Buffy Memes That Totally Slay
Whedon's Lesser Known Side Projects
Shows and Films Joss Thinks Suck
The Buffy Cast: Then and Now
Would You Live in Sunnydale?
Xander Was Truly the Worst
Most Totally '90s Buffy Villains
Buffy's Most Important Eps
What Happened After Buffy Ended
How 'Firefly' Changed Sci-Fi Fandom Forever
Things You Never Noticed in 'Angel'
The Top Joss Whedon Characters
Who Else Could Play Buffy?
Strongest Female Characters
Crazy Firefly Fan Theories
Things All Fans Should Know About Firefly
The Greatest Episodes of Angel
Best Buffy Episodes
All Seasons of Buffy, Ranked
The Very Best Whedon Shows & Series
The Theory of a Shared Universe
Favorite Buffy Couples
14 Things Most People Didn't Realize Joss Whedon Worked On
Stephan Roget
Updated September 23, 2021 343 votes 110 voters
List RulesVote up the projects that you were most surprised involved Joss Whedon.
Joss Whedon is a filmmaker and creative voice who has gained such a following with his retinue of excellent movies and TV shows that his name has become a verb. To "Whedonize" something is an action with a few possible definitions, and although some of them are negative, all connotations revolve around something that makes for good entertainment. Joss Whedon has a reputation for providing devastating plot twists, savagely burning other creative works, and torturing both his fictional creations and the fans that love them. Despite a seeming desire to drive his fanbase mad, people keep coming back to Whedon and asking for more, and he's certainly delivered.
But most fans probably don't know about the surprising things Joss Whedon has done. His career has been incredibly diverse. He's primarily known for his most prominent productions, like Firefly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and The Avengers, but he's been involved in a lot more than that. A scan of Whedon's IMDb page quickly reveals that the man has his fingerprints all over Hollywood, and has played a part in some truly unexpected productions. The sheer number of Joss Whedon projects out there is impressive, but the breadth that he's covered in a relatively short career is even more astonishing.
Photo: Buena Vista Pictures Distribution
He Wrote The Screenplay For Toy Story
While it eventually ended up as one of animation's greatest success stories, at one point Toy Story was once stuck in development hell. The original story needed some drastic changes, and it was up to a young Joss Whedon to produce the final screenplay. The final result was very different from the original vision, which included Woody as a near-antagonist and a overall had a much less heartfelt theme. Toy Story was the first indication of the sheer emotional breadth that Whedon could cover in his productions, and set the stage for later ensembles pieces like The Avengers.
Surprised?
He Wrote A Song For The Lion King 2: Simba's Pride
The Lion King 2 isn't the only instance of Joss Whedon showing off his musical talent, but it's certainly the most unexpected. Whedon wrote a single song for the oft-ignored sequel, entitled "My Lullaby."
The song isn't particularly memorable, but it helped show off the diverse range of skills that Whedon could offer Hollywood at a time when he wasn't fully established yet. It was also one more step towards a long-term working relationship with Disney.
Photo: Speed
He Was An Uncredited Script Doctor For Speed
Early on in his career, Joss Whedon gained a reputation for being able to craft a good story, whether it was his own or someone else's that he was fixing up. He was called in to do some script doctoring for Speed, the 1994 Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bollock action flick that infamously starred a bus that couldn't slow down.
Speed made the most of a pretty ridiculous concept, but it's hard to know how much of that is because of Whedon. He was not officially credited for his role.
Photo: Waterworld
He Actually Wrote On Waterworld
Waterworld is ample evidence the even Joss Whedon can't turn everything into gold. The Kevin Costner film is a legendary flop that wasted countless production dollars on something that ended up being less "revolutionary" and more "one of the worst pieces of art conceived by humans".
Whedon was brought in to do some last minute re-writing, similar to what he did for Speed, but even he couldn't make the concept cool. Waterworld remained a Titanic (the ship, not the movie)-level disaster for Hollywood, but it didn't slow down Whedon's burgeoning career.


Often times I hear how it's hard to get all the words to fit into line. Either they try to cut a few words out or they slip out of time. Sometimes you can switch a few words and the line still works but barring that, you'll just have to find a way to make the proper lyrics fit. You can't afford to slip out of time. So what can you do? Well it all comes to speeding up and slowing down your speech. Folks want to say it the way they would normally, but when that can't work then you'll just have to adapt your speech to the music.
If it was always easy then everybody would be big recording artists. Still it's not natural talent that makes the big stars so talented. Mostly it comes down to practice. Try the same line over and over in different ways until you hit a style that sounds and feels right. Then practice it over and over until it comes out right every time you sing it. Your trip up a lot for a while but in time you'll get the words to fit. What makes an amateur an amateur it an unwillingness to do the repetitive work to work out the kinks. That's about it.
'This Old Guitar' is a challenge, mostly in the second verse due to a lot of syllables and not much time to get the words into the lines. Here is a perfect tune to practice this skill. Written and recorded by Jim Matt in 1995, 'This Old Guitar' is a fantastic piece of country music that should be on every amateur Country Music musician's to learn list. It has been on mine for years but I never sat down to really work on it and a tune like this requires the work. Did I do enough? Probably not, but I do think that it came out not all that bad. Jim' version is quite different from my own and I wish I knew who I heard do it this way. Still I can't say why I do it this way, but to each his own. Make sure to check out Jim's recording. It'll help you figure out how to make the words fit. In the end, however, it'll have to be you that does the work to learn to sing it smoothly.
Here is my cover of 'This Old Guitar'. I hope you will enjoy it.


text:
Proposal to get ultrafast performance from promising quantum computing technology
Researchers from Singapore and Spain have designed circuit QED schemes to take advantage of the 'ultrastrong coupling regime'. The results are published in Physical Review Letters.
CQT researchers and their collaborators in Spain have come up with a scheme to get ultrafast performance from one of the most promising technologies for quantum-powered computations and simulations. The proposal is published in Physical Review Letters.
When SQUID doesn't refer to superconducting quantum interference device: Valerio (left) and Yimin (right) pictured at a group dinner enjoying the local speciality sambal sotong, which is squid of the seafood variety cooked in a red chilli sauce.
The researchers looked at a technology known as circuit QED, which has already been used for the demonstration of quantum-information processing tasks. One of the attractions of circuit QED schemes is that they involve all-electronic structures that are controllable and potentially simple to scale.
CQT's Yimin Wang and Valerio Scarani, with researchers at the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao, redesigned circuit QED qubits — the component which stores a quantum bit of information — to perform faster logic gate operations than possible to date. The researchers estimate that operation times would be improved from tens of nanoseconds in existing proposals to less than a nanosecond.
Their proposal takes advantage of the recent experimental discovery of the 'ultrastrong coupling' regime in circuit QED (ultrastrong coupling was first announced in two papers in 2010).
Circuit QED puts a superconducting qubit inside a 'microwave resonator'. This work deals with a type of superconducting qubit known as a flux qubit: a loop of superconducting metal interrupted by a number of Josephson junctions (similar to a SQUID — a superconducting quantum interference device). Information is stored in the direction of current flow around the loop (eg, clockwise means "0" and anticlockwise "1"). Microwave-frequency photons are used to control the bit: they can flip or put in a quantum superposition the direction of current flow. The resonator enhances the interaction (the coupling strength) between the microwave photons and the qubit.
Early experiments achieved qubit-microwave coupling strengths with respect to the resonator frequency on the order of 0.001. The experiments that demonstrated ultrastrong coupling boosted this by a factor of 100. Stronger interaction enables faster manipulation of the qubits, which in turn should allow faster logic operations. Information stored in circuit QED qubits is also expected to decohere after a few microseconds, making it all the more important to get gate operations done quickly.
The usual designs for logic gates did not consider the ultrastrong regime, in which some typical assumptions that go into quantum operations no longer apply. Earlier work by Yimin, Valerio and their Spanish collaborators, Daniel Ballester, Guillermo Romero and Enrique Solano, had shown that the accuracy of existing gate schemes would decrease significantly if they are used in the ultrastrong regime.
In the new paper, the same team explicitly design for the ultrastrong regime a scheme for a two-qubit 'CPHASE' gate. To make the scheme feasible, they also had to come up with a new qubit architecture that allows better control of the qubit-resonator. The new design includes additional loops of superconductor. The theorists hope that experimentalists will soon test their scheme.
Yimin, a CQT PhD student, initiated this project after Valerio, CQT Principal Investigator, NUS Professor and Yimin's supervisor, asked her to present the 2010 experimental papers in CQT's Journal Club. At that point, the CQT group were interested in exploring the paper's theoretical implications: in the ultrastrong regime, a theoretical model known as the Jaynes-Cummings model, which is widely used in quantum optics, breaks down. Yimin then wrote to the theorists in Spain asking if they would like to collaborate on investigations of the implications for logic gates. She ended up making two visits to Bilbao last year to work on the project.
The paper reference is "Ultrafast Quantum Gates in Circuit QED", Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 120501 (2012); arXiv:1109.1305.
Wang Yimin
Ultrafast Quantum Gates in Circuit QED (2012). Phys. Rev. Lett. 108 120501


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