Why Did They Call These Tiny-Brain Hominids "Almost Human"?
A recent book on paleontology is the book Almost Human: The Astonishing Tale of Homo naledi and the Discovery That Changed Our Human Story. The book is by two paleontologists named Lee Berger and John Hawks. They and their colleagues found some fossils of a species called Homo naledi.
So how does that fit into some scheme of human origins? On page 42 of the book, the authors have a diagram entitled, "A Depiction of the Family Tree of Hominin Species." It's a quite wobbly-looking diagram, not something that should cause anyone to think that our scientists have human origins figured out very well. This is because the diagram is one of those "tree of ancestry" types of diagrams, but four of the nodes in the diagram are question marks.
From Unknown Ancestor 1 there descended Paranthropus boisei, Paranthropus robustus, Austrolopithecus africanus, Austrolopithecus afarensis, and Unknown Ancestor 2.
From Unknown Ancestor 2 there descended Homo rudolfensis, Australopithecus sediba, Homo habilis, and Unknown Ancestor 3.
From Unknown Ancestor 3 there descended Homo erectus, Homo floresiensis, Homo naledi, and Unknown Ancestor 4.
From Unknown Ancestor 4 there descended modern humans, Neanderthals, and archaic African humans.
So according to the diagram, there is not just one missing link, but four missing links. When you look at the diagram, it seems to have quite a bit of arbitrary guesswork. If you do a Google image search for "Hominin family tree," you will see other diagrams, some of which give a different story. The ancestry tree in an article at Britannica.com has even more question marks, having a total of 7 question marks, indicating seven missing links.
The diagram in the Almost Human book puts Homo floresiensis in the left top of the "tree of ancestry," claiming Homo floresiensis was close to being an offshoot of Homo erectus. A recent study rejects this positioning, claiming that Homo floresiensis has a completely different ancestry, and was an offshoot not of Homo erectus but Homo habilis. Given such a confusing hominid fossil record, with a large variety of different skulls found at different places around the world, it is no wonder that paleontologists often disagree with each other in drawing a tree of human ancestry.
Part of the uncertainty is because our paleontologists do not have what they would like to have. This is one of the dirty little secrets of modern evolutionary biology. Our evolutionary biologists do not have the DNA evidence they need to solidify the claims they make about human origins. The problem is that regular organic material rots in less than a few thousand years, and you can't get much DNA from a very old fossil bone. It has been estimated that the half-life of DNA is only about 500 years. So we don't have any adequate DNA evidence from Homo erectus or Homo habilis, which are claimed to be ancestors or evolutionary cousins of the human species. The oldest DNA from a claimed human ancestor is a scrap of DNA dating back 400,000 years. But this is only about 16,000 base pairs, and the human genome is 3.2 billion base pairs. Such a tiny scrap doesn't give you a hundredth of what you would need to genetically verify that such an organism was an ancestor of humans.
Imagine a trial in which the prosecution claimed that blood photographed at a crime scene is the blood of the person being tried. But imagine the blood was washed away by a thunderstorm before its DNA was checked, so no DNA match was made. That's the kind of position our evolutionary biologist is in. He really needs some complete Homo erectus DNA or Homo habilis DNA to back up his claims that these are human ancestors or human evolutionary cousins. But no such DNA exists, merely a rare scrap here and there.
Does the fact that hominid fossils can be arranged into a "tree of ancestry" diagram prove that they have an evolutionary relationship? Not really. Given any large random data set, and a person determined to show some "tree of ancestry," it is usually possible for a "tree of ancestry" to be created. For example, if I go into the Yankee Stadium parking lot, and diligently start looking for cars that look like descendants of each other, I would be able to cherry-pick some cars and arrange them into a "tree of ancestry" showing what might look like a plausible evolutionary progression from one car model to another. But such a diagram (looking rather like the one below) would probably not be historically correct.
But what about the fossils that Berger and Hawks found, the Homo naledi fossils? Are they, in fact, fossils of some species that was "almost human," as the book title states? Not by a long shot. On page 193 of their book, the scientists finally give us an estimate of the brain size for the Homo naledi organisms corresponding to the fossils they found. It was about 560 cubic centimeters for a male, and about 450 cubic centimeters for a female. The average size of a male human brain is about 1350 cubic centimeters.
So far from being "almost human," Homo naledi had a brain only about 41% of the size of the modern human brain. Which means that Homo naledi was apparently well short of being even half-human. So given that our paleontologists have written a book with the title Almost Human: The Astonishing Tale of Homo naledi and the Discovery That Changed Our Human Story, we must ask: why did they choose to call their book "Almost Human"? Is it because such a title would sell more copies than an accurate title such as "Not Even Half Human"?
A recent article in the New York Times discusses the failure of attempts to find evidence for the physics theory called supersymmetry.
The Standard Model of physics has fewer than 30 independent parameters. But according to one scientific web site, supersymmetry has more than 100 independent parameters. According to another page at the same web site, more than 10,000 scientific papers "reference" the theory of supersymmetry.
With all that work by physicists, you would think that there must be some evidence for supersymmetry. But efforts to find evidence for the theory have been a complete failure. The Large Hadron Collider has completely failed to support the theory.
In the Standard Model, the electroweak scale receives enormous Planck-scale quantum corrections. The observed hierarchy between the electroweak scale and the Planck scale must be achieved with extraordinary fine tuning. In a supersymmetric theory, on the other hand, Planck-scale quantum corrections cancel between partners and superpartners (owing to a minus sign associated with fermionic loops). The hierarchy between the electroweak scale and the Planck scale is achieved in a natural manner, without miraculous fine-tuning.
The "miraculous fine-tuning" being talked about here (what is known as the hierarchy problem) is a kind of matching of two unrelated numbers so that they end up canceling each other out – rather like what you might have if you had to pay on Friday a $5000 payment to save your house from foreclosure, and you coincidentally won $5000 in the lottery on Friday morning.
But this hierarchy problem is actually much more of a coincidence. Because according to this scientific web site, "one has to hypothesize that the several correction terms cancel out to a part in 1034 (a hundred billionths of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth), if one is to make the Higgs mass smaller than a lead brick." So maybe our analogy should be that you own 6 houses that are each behind $5000 on the mortgage, with Friday being the last day for you to save them; and you coincidentally on Friday morning buy 6 different lottery tickets that each win $5000. That's the kind of fine-tuning that seems to be involved in the case of the hierarchy problem.
Supersymmetry (also known as SUSY) is an attempt to explain away this "miraculous fine-tuning." But supersymmetry has always been a ridiculously ornate contrivance. For example, it imagines that almost every known type of particle has a corresponding "superpartner." It would be quite the fantastic coincidence if nature was set up in such a way. So supersymmetry is basically a kind of gigantic case of "robbing Peter to pay Paul." It tries to get rid of one fine-tuned coincidence (the hierarchy problem) by introducing a whole bunch of other fine-tuned coincidences, involving all these cases in which a known type of particle happens to have a matching "superpartner" particle.
It's kind of the same approach taken by a similar theory, the theory of cosmic inflation or exponential expansion. That theory tries to get rid of a case of extreme fine-tuning in the universe's first second, but it does it by making assertions that require their own fine-tuning in numerous ways. So it's just robbing Peter to pay Paul. There is no real net reduction in the amount of fine-tuning required.
For years scientists were hoping that the Large Hadron Collider would produce some evidence for supersymmetry. But no evidence has been produced. The chance of supersymmetry being confirmed in our lifetimes now seems almost zero. That's no surprise. Supersymmetry is a case of trying to explain away an example of cosmic fine-tuning, and there has never been a confirmed success in any effort to explain away any case of cosmic fine-tuning. The cosmic inflation theory (the theory of exponential expansion in the universe's first second) has been sociologically successful, a case of a thought virus that spread widely. But it has not been scientifically successful, because no evidence has been produced for it (and there are many problems with the theory).
Rather than investing so much time and effort on supersymmetry, physicists would have got a lot better return if they had invested instead in super heroes. There are several ways physicists could have done that. The first way would have been to invest in physics technologies that might have given us high-tech gadgets that would allow someone to have the equivalent of a comic super-power. Physicists might have invented some fancy gadget that would give some of the powers of Batman's utility belt. Or they might have invested in some bullet-stopping force field that might have worked kind of like Wonder Woman's bracelets. Or physicists might have invested in some super-strong material that would give someone some of the powers of Spider Man or Iron Man.
Or, physicists could simply have invested in super heroes without doing any research. They could have taken all that money wasted on supersymmetry papers, and invested the money by either buying super hero comic books, or investing in companies such as Marvel that published comic books. Comic books have long been collector's items, and a comic book which sold for 12 cents back in the 1960's may sell for hundreds of dollars today. Disney paid 4 billion dollars for Marvel Entertainment. If physicists had invested in super hero comic books or the companies that published them, the physicists could have made gigantic returns for themselves or for the colleges or universities where they work.
I must confess that I myself am guilty of failing to see how much money could be made from comic books and from another collector's item: baseball cards. When I lived in a dull Maryland suburb in the early 1960's, I had lots of comic books and many baseball cards. In the suburb I lived, elementary school students were preoccupied with baseball cards. The kids would gamble the cards in various ways, which made a fun pastime. One game worked like this: you would take your stack of cards, and face your friend who also had a stack of cards. After each of you shuffled your stack, both of you would deal them into a common stack. First you would deal a card, then your friend. If your friend dealt a card with one top color bar, and you then dealt a card on top of that stack with the same color bar, you would win the entire stack that had been dealt.
In my suburb it seemed every family with boys had a cardboard box of baseball cards. But when I was eleven I moved to a very different environment: the more sophisticated locale of Washington D.C. Of course, I packed my comic books and baseball cards, and I hoped the kids there would be as interested in these as the kids in my Maryland suburb. But it seemed that none of the Washington children had the slightest interest in baseball cards. And they didn't seem too interested in comic books. I kind of thought to myself: I guess the city kids are too sophisticated for these things – maybe they're just silly suburb things. So not very long after moving to Washington D.C, I threw away all my baseball cards and comic books. What a mistake! I could have made thousands if I had kept them.
Whether children at a particular school gamble with baseball cards is a sociological consideration, a vogue of a particular locale. When groundless theories such as supersymmetry become all the rage among little academic tribes, it seems to be also a sociological consideration, a case of some vogue that went viral when it shouldn't have.
Scientific American columnist Michael Shermer has a new column entitled "Why the 'You' in an Afterlife Wouldn't Really Be You." Arguing against both spiritual concepts of an afterlife and technological concepts of a "digital afterlife," Shermer attempts to give three arguments against the possibility of an afterlife.
First, there is the assumption that our identity is located in our memories, which are presumed to be permanently recorded in the brain: if they could be copied and pasted into a computer or duplicated and implanted into a resurrected body or soul, we would be restored. But that is not how memory works. Memory is not like a DVR that can play back the past on a screen in your mind. Memory is a continually edited and fluid process that utterly depends on the neurons in your brain being functional.
This argument is not valid against any of these three ideas of an afterlife: (1) the idea that you have some immaterial soul that will survive death in a kind of natural way, without any divine intervention required; (2) the Christian idea that the dead will be physically resurrected by some divine agent; (3) the idea that minds may be uploaded into computers in the future, providing people with a digital afterlife. The first of these ideas does not depend on the idea that memories are permanently recorded in the brain. A person believing in a soul may believe that memories are stored largely in some soul, and may deny the claim that memory depends on neurons (a claim scientists haven't proven). The argument also does not debunk the idea of a physical resurrection of the dead. In such a case the neurons of individuals would presumably be recreated. The argument also does not debunk the idea of uploading minds into a computer. If our memories now depend on neurons (and there are reasons for doubting that), that is merely a current dependence, that could in theory be overcome if some new type of computer could be created that could store the equivalent of human neural states.
In his second argument, Shermer attempts to stretch out one of the arguments made against mind uploading, and turn that into an argument against believing in any type of afterlife. Mind uploading is the idea that in the future it will be possible for people to transfer their consciousness into a computer. The idea is that we will be able to scan the human brain, and somehow figure out some neural pattern or synaptic pattern that uniquely identifies an individual. Then, it is argued, it will be possible to recreate this pattern in some super-computer. It is claimed that this could be a method of getting a digital afterlife. Some futurists claim that if someone were to have his brain scanned and then have his neural patterns transferred to a computer, that person could discard his body, and continue to live on indefinitely within a computer.
Second, there is the supposition that copying your brain's connectome—the diagram of its neural connections—uploading it into a computer (as some scientists suggest) or resurrecting your physical self in an afterlife (as many religions envision) will result in you waking up as if from a long sleep either in a lab or in heaven. But a copy of your memories, your mind or even your soul is not you. It is a copy of you, no different than a twin, and no twin looks at his or her sibling and thinks, "There I am." Neither duplication nor resurrection can instantiate you in another plane of existence.
Minus the clumsy twin reference, this argument has considerable force against the idea of a digital afterlife through mind uploading. If I were to scan your brain and recreate your neural pattern inside a computer, that seems to be making a copy of your consciousness rather than a transfer of your consciousness, for two different reasons. The first reason is that a transfer has been made to a totally different medium (from a biological platform to an electronic platform). The second is that the mind upload seems to leave open the possibility of your biological body continuing after your mind upload has completed, and that would seem to be the creation of a copy of your consciousness rather than a transfer.
But the copying argument has much less force (and perhaps no force) when used against the idea of a physical resurrection of the dead. In that hypothetical possibility, there is no transfer to a different medium. A physically resurrected body would be the same (or mostly the same) as the body that existed before someone died. Also, a physical resurrection would presumably only occur for people who had already died. So there would be no issue that both a source and a target (or copy) could exist at the same time.
The copying argument has no force at all against the idea of a soul that continues to exist after a person's body dies. In such a case, presumably there would be no copy at all made of anything. A person who believes that the soul survives death does not tend to believe that the soul suddenly appears at the moment of death, suddenly having a copy of consciousness and memory that was stored in the brain. Such a person will instead tend to believe that the soul was a crucial component of the human mind all along (or perhaps was equivalent to the mind), and that such a soul simply continues to exist when a person dies.
Imagine a person who has worn a heavy lead coat all his life, and has worn a dark glass fishbowl over his head all his life. Under the soul concept, we may regard death as being rather like a person shedding that heavy lead coat and dark-glass fishbowl, with the heavy lead coat and dark-glass fishbowl being the restrictions of movement and perception associated with a human bodily existence. Under such a concept, there is no copying at all, but more like a kind of jettisoning, rather like a soaring rocket jettisoning a no-longer-needed fuel tank, with the body being what is jettisoned. Such a concept of the survival of the soul is completely free from difficulties involving copying, because no copying at all is assumed.
If you died, there is no known mechanism by which your POVself would be transported from your brain into a computer (or a resurrected body). A POV depends entirely on the continuity of self from one moment to the next, even if that continuity is broken by sleep or anesthesia. Death is a permanent break in continuity, and your personal POV cannot be moved from your brain into some other medium, here or in the hereafter.
Such reasoning based on continuity might have some force against the concept of a digital afterlife by means of mind uploading, but probably not very much force as Shermer has stated it. For he's used the phrase "there is no known mechanism," which is hardly going to discourage futurists who will claim that such a mechanism will be invented in the future. The reasoning here also has no force against either the possibility of a physical resurrection of the dead or the idea of a soul surviving death. A Christian believing that the dead will be physically resurrected will believe that this is done through divine agency, so it is futile to argue that such a thing cannot occur because there is "no known mechanism" by which it would occur. The person believing in a soul that survives death need not believe that any transfer, copying or moving occurs to allow a person to survive death. Such a person will tend to believe that the essence of a person – what makes you you – has already resided in your soul all along, not in your brain; and such a person is not required to believe that anything is transferred from the brain to the soul when a person is died. Under the idea of a soul, there is no break in continuity when a person survives death.
Neuroscientists have always followed the principle: explain every conceivable mental activity as being something caused by the brain. But what we must remember is that Nature never told us that all our memories are stored in brains, or that our thoughts are generated by brains. It was neuroscientists who told us that, not Nature. For example, we have no understanding of how 50-year-old memories can be stored in brains, given all the rapid molecular turnover that occurs in brains. Below is a quote from a recent scientific press release, citing a comment by a neuroscientist.
Neuroscience has also been struggling to find where the brain stores its memories. "They may be 'hiding' in high-dimensional cavities," Markram speculates.
Such a quote (which has a "grasping at straws" sound to it) gives a very strong impression that neuroscientists have no real basis for being confident claiming that long-term memories are stored in the brain. The type of evidence neuroscientists cite for their claims is often weak evidence that doesn't hold up to critical scrutiny, such as dubious brain scanning studies which typically take minor 1% differences in brain activity, and try to make them look like compelling signs of what the brain is doing, when they are no such thing.
The idea behind a soul or spirit can be summarized as follows. You have a soul or spirit that is not at all a brain thing. You also have a brain, which serves largely for the purpose of localizing or constricting your mental activity, making sure that it stays chained to your body. The main purposes of the brain are things like control of autonomic functions, response to tactile stimuli, coordination of muscle movement, the coordination of speech, and the handling of sensory and auditory stimuli. There may also be some brain function relating to storing kind of what we may call "muscle memories," which we use for performing particular physical tasks. These are all things related to living and surviving as a corporeal being. But things such as abstract thinking, conceptual memory and long term memory may be functions of a human soul. So when you die you may lose those things that you needed to continue walking about as a fleshly being, but may still have (as part of your soul) those things that were never necessary for such an existence (no cave-man needed to form abstract ideas, think philosophical thoughts, or remember his experiences as an 8-year-old).
This idea may seem old-fashioned to some, but a strong argument can be made that it is compelled by fairly recent evidence, and that in such a sense it is not at all old-fashioned. It is only in recent years that we have discovered what a very high degree of molecular turnover occurs in the brain, which makes it so hard to maintain that 50-year old memories are stored in the brain, as discussed here. It is only in the past 50 years that we had research such as John Lorber's, showing astonishingly high mental functioning in patients who had large fractions of their brains (or most of their brains) destroyed by disease. It is only in the past 130 years that experimental laboratory evidence has been repeatedly produced for phenomena such as ESP, which cannot be accounted for as a brain effect. It is only in recent decades that we have had reports of near-death experiences, in which many observers have reported floating out of their bodies, often verifying details of their medical resuscitation attempts that they should have been unable to observe while they were unconscious. Such observations are quite compatible with the idea of a soul that survives death, and may force such a conclusion on us.
Shermer seems rather to be thinking of the idea of the soul as something kind of like a USB flash drive to back up the brain. But those who have postulated a soul have more often supposed it as a crucial component of human mental functioning, not some optional accessory. Under the concept of a soul that accounts for a large fraction or most of human mental functioning, there is no requirement for any sudden copying from the brain to occur for someone to survive death; and there is also continuity, as death merely means discarding what you don't need to survive beyond death. As none of Shermer's three arguments damages such a concept, Shermer has not succeeded in closing the door to an afterlife.
The National Geographic channel has a new TV series entitled "Year Million." A recent episode in the series was entitled "Never Say Die," and was about the prospects of human immortality. The episode was long on slick visuals, and short on intelligence. The episode presented the ideas that we will greatly extend human longevity by using nanobots and genetic engineering, and that later people will upload themselves into computers.
The episode presented a simplistic view of biological life, one that is purely mechanistic, epitomized by a person who said, "We are still biologically hindered by the squishy computer in our heads." The assumptions seemed to be that biological life is merely some mechanical phenomenon that humans can completely master through technologies such as nanobots and genetic engineering. These assumptions are quite dubious because of all the profound mysteries involving biological life.
It is generally admitted that we do not understand the origin of life. It is generally admitted that we do not understand the mystery of protein-folding (why proteins conveniently form into three-dimensional shapes needed for our existence). It is generally admitted that we do not understand the mysteries of morphogenesis, how it is that a fertilized egg is able to progress to become a baby who then grows into a full-grown human. We also don't really understand the origin of species, as the theory of evolution by natural selection is merely a theory of accumulation rather than what we actually need to explain the mountainous degrees of coordination, structural fine-tuning, and functional coherence in our bodies: a theory of organization explaining the arrival of the fittest, not just the survival of the fittest. As discussed here, we also don't really understand where it is that the body plans of organisms are stored, because DNA is a minimal "bare bones" language unsuitable for describing three-dimensional body plan blueprints; so while DNA might be storing a list of chemical ingredients, it does not actually seem to have a specification of our body plans.
We therefore have every reason to suspect that biological life involves some mysterious forces or factors very far beyond our understanding. If that is the case, then the prospect for vastly increasing the human lifespan through injecting humans with tiny robots called nanobots and tinkering with DNA may be much less bright than many think.
But there is some reasonable hope that genetic engineering or nanobots might extend the human lifespan, so this part of the TV show wasn't nonsensical. The show did become nonsensical when it discussed the very dubious concept of mind uploading in a completely uncritical manner. Among the reasons why mind uploading is such a dubious concept is that we have no understanding of how a brain could even be storing memories that last for decades, given all the rapid molecular turnover and protein turnover that occurs in brains; and we have no idea of how brains can generate abstract ideas. Mind uploading cannot possibly work unless some reductionist model of consciousness and memory is correct; and there are very good reasons (discussed here and in this series of posts) for doubting that any such model is correct.
A lot has to be done before we can figure out whether we can take a pattern of connectivity from a brain and upload it or copy it. It's going to happen; I'm positive of that. Everything's moving in that direction.
Graziano's certainty on this matter is laughable. There is no basis for believing that minds can ever be uploaded. There is no progress at all in mind uploading. Instead of "everything's moving in that direction," the situation is actually, "nothing's moving in that direction." And why is Graziano saying he's sure it's going to happen, just after saying, "A lot has to be done before we can figure out whether we can take a pattern of connectivity from a brain and upload it or copy it"? Those two thoughts contradict each other.
The show then quotes string physicist Michio Kaku, who nowadays seems to have his head popping up on every science or futurism documentary put on television. Kaku states, "Believe it or not, we can actually upload memories, and record memories in mice." This statement is false. The actual claims that have been made by certain mice researchers (researchers in optogenetics) is that memories in mice can be blocked or activated. Such claims are not well founded, and are based on a few doubtful studies using a dubious methodology. The studies typically report weak levels of statistical significance. See here for a discussion of the flaws in some of these studies.
Once we shed our physical bodies, we will exist only as a computer copy of our brains. It's hard to imagine exactly, but basically you'd be digital information stored on a server.
But when we start talking about immortality, that's a whole other can of worms. If we really are serious about getting to forever-land, we'll have to replace our carbon based human bodies and upload ourselves to a super-computer.
We're talking about everlasting life in a digital paradise....All of society will live digitally in a virtual world called the metaverse that's a thousand times more intense than the one you live in now.
There are quite a few reasons why such a thing is very unlikely to happen. First, the brain does not store digital information, so the mind is very likely not something that can be uploaded into a computer. Second, there is not the slightest evidence that the brain uses any type of readable code to store information. DNA uses the genetic code, something we can understand and read. But we have zero knowledge of anything like a brain code that we can use to read information from the brain. Nor can we plausibly imagine how such a code could have originated, as it would have to be something almost infinitely harder to explain than the genetic code (the origin of which is very hard to explain).
Third, you could never electronically capture the exact state of a particular person's brain, even if you tried to use microscopic nanobots to do such a thing. Imagine trying to exactly map every synapse and neuron in a brain with nanobots. Each of the brain-mapping nanobots would have to somehow be aware of its own exact position in the brain, so it can record the exact position of each neuron and brain connection it encounters. So if a nanobot comes to a neuron that is 1.334526 centimeters from the left edge of the skull, and 2.734538 centimeters from the right edge of the skull, and 5.292343 centimeters from the back of the skull, then those exact coordinates must be recorded. But how can a microscopic nanobot do that? You can't supply a microscopic nanobot with a little GPS system allowing it to tell its position. So it would seem that nanobots are completely unsuitable for any such job as mapping the exact physical microscopic structure of an organ with billions of cells and synapses packed together in a small space.
Then there's the duplication problem. Imagine if there was a machine that could scan your brain, and then upload your mind to a computer. Even if that process was done perfectly, the computer would not have your mind. It would instead have a copy of your mind. You may realize this just by considering that if this uploading process didn't kill you, and the computer with your "mind upload" existed at the same time as you, there wouldn't be two you's. There would be one you, and a copy of you living in the computer. If you then died after this upload, it would not at all be true that you had survived death by the fact that a copy of your mind was in the computer.
None of these difficulties are discussed on the "Year Million" TV show. The show presents mind uploading as a sure thing, ignoring all the reasons for thinking that it can't ever happen. Not only did the TV show present mind uploading as something that will likely happen; the TV show assured us that mind uploading is the key to true immortality – on the grounds that once you are living in a computer server, you are guaranteed to live forever.
This is nonsensical, because the programs running on computer servers sometimes crash and stop working; the programs running on computer servers are sometimes deliberately halted; and the computer servers themselves sometimes crash, lose power, or are turned off. If you were living in a computer server, there is no reason why you should be confident that you will be around for more than a century or two.
The next episode of the "Year Million" TV series continued to be largely about mind uploading, speaking as if this extremely doubtful idea was on solid ground. There was also a pitch for the idea that we are already living inside computers. The "Year Million" TV series is on track to be the silliest documentary series ever put on about the human future.
Given our very low state of knowledge about the most basic riddles of biology, memory and consciousness, fantasies of mind uploading are rather like the fantasies of some boy who knows almost nothing about the contents of the sun, but who fantasizes that he will one day reorganize the sun into a shape and color more pleasing to him.
Can we account for all of man's mental activities by assuming that they can all be explained by the brain? When considering this question, it may make sense to distinguish between different levels of human mentality, with each level being more more difficult to explain than the previous level. For it might be that our brains are sufficient to explain one level, but insufficient to explain a more advanced level.
Below are seven levels of mentality we can distinguish.
Level 1: Let us imagine a very young baby lying in a crib near a window. A red bird flies and lands on the windowsill. The baby looks out at the bird, and perceives the bird's color. But there is no recognition, and the baby feels neither fear nor wonder at the sight of the bird. There is no thought or emotion, but merely sensory perception.
Level 2: Let us imagine the same event happens. The baby is lying in its crib, and a a red bird flies and lands on the windowsill near the crib. But let us suppose the baby is a little older, and now something a little more advanced happens. The baby feels an emotion of wonder or delight. But there is still no recognition, and no memory is involved.
Level 3: Let us imagine the same event happens. The baby is lying in its crib, and a a red bird flies and lands on the windowsill near the crib. Let us imagine this baby is now almost a toddler. The baby feels an emotion of delight or wonder at seeing the bird, but now some memory is involved. Without thinking any words, the child has a vague feeling of recollection, the feeling that he has seen such a bird before.
Level 7: Now let us imagine the person is no longer a child, but is now sixty years old. He can write in depth about many advanced philosophical questions; he can feel many refined emotions; and he is quite capable of writing an entire book about birds. Moreover, he can instantly recall memories that happened five decades ago. So perhaps he remembers the day 50 years ago when he first saw a beautiful red bird in his backyard.
Now, which one of these levels can we explain by assuming brain activity? Some philosophers would deny that even Level 1 can be explained by brain activity. As rudimentary as Level 1 is, it is still an example of Mind, and some philosophers say that we cannot explain how Mind can arise from mere matter. But perhaps they are wrong, and perhaps we can explain Level 1 by assuming that it involves merely sensory perception, which parts of the brain might explain. Conceivably we also might explain Level 2 also by imagining that some kind of hormone or chemical produces a feeling of wonder or delight.
But we cannot explain Level 7 through brain processes. For we cannot explain any way in which the brain could store memories for decades; we cannot explain how brains could instantly recall distant memories; and we cannot explain how a brain could generate abstract thoughts.
Consider the storage of memories. It has been proven through the work of scientists such as Bahrick that humans can store memories fairly reliably for more than 50 years. In order for you to have a workable theory for how brains can be storing memories, a neuroscientist would need to plausibly explain how human memories could be stored in a brain for 50 years. No scientist has done any such thing.
The main theory for how the brain stores memories is the idea that our synapses store memories. But there is a reason why this theory does not work. As discussed here, synapses are subject to very strong molecular turnover and structural turnover which should prevent them from storing memories for longer than a year. The proteins in synapses have an average lifetime of only about a week. As a scientific paper puts it, "Thus, the constituent molecules that subserve the maintenance of a memory will have completely turned over, i.e. have been broken down and resynthesized, over the course of about 1 week."
Not only do neuroscientists fail at explaining how very long-term memories can be stored in the brain; they also fail to explain human memory retrieval. The two main problems in explaining human memory retrieval are these: (1) the problem of explaining how a human being could find the exact location where a memory might be stored in the brain; (2) the problem of explaining how we are able to recall obscure and old memories with such blazing speed.
If human beings took 30 minutes to retrieve a memory, the difficulty would not be so great. We might imagine that a brain simply scans all of our memories, looking for the right one, like a person flipping through the pages of a book looking for a topic. But given the instantaneous memory recall of distant, trivial memories shown on TV shows such as Jeopardy, it is obviously not true that you read through all your memories until you find something.
How are computers able to retrieve information so quickly? Through indexing, which requires sorting. But there is zero evidence that the brain does any type of physical sort or physical indexing. The brain does not have the type of architecture to support physical sorting or indexing. So our memories cannot be indexed in the way that computer information is indexed.
In short, there is no viable explanation as to how a brain could be able to find so quickly a spot in the brain where a memory was stored. Nor does it work to claim that memories are stored everywhere in the brain. The idea that every memory is stored everywhere in the brain is nonsensical.
Although neuroscientists are very bad at explaining how a brain could store or instantly retrieve memories lasting for decades, neuroscientists are even worse at explaining how brains could possibly be generating ideas and abstract thought.
The first and top-rated answer on this "expert answers" site is given by one Phil Macquire, an individual who has no listed scientific credentials, and who has primarily answered movie questions on this site. Phil gives an answer that shows some literary skill but provides no real insight at all as to how a brain could generate ideas. He says, "How the subconscious mind performs this incredible feat is such a mystery."
The next answer by Tanush Jagdish begins by saying, "We don't know," but then suggests "synaptogenesis," the creation of new synapses. This is not a plausible idea. Some text such as "tall blue cold triangle" can instantly create an idea in your head that you have never had before, and you certainly did not have to wait for new synapses in your brain to form before you had such an idea.
The next answer by Jeff Nosanov is a circuitous answer that explains nothing, while claiming incorrectly that "ideas cannot be made to happen." Nosanov ends by saying "that was not a physiological explanation." Then the page has some answers by non-scientists which are not illuminating.
A similar page on the "Ask science" sub-reddit at www.reddit.com offers equally little illumination. A Google search for "how the brain generates ideas" will result in a vast wasteland of results failing to offer a single neuroscience study offering any real illumination on this topic. One of the items you will get is a Harvard news story with the title "How the brain builds new thoughts." But the story is discussing some research that does nothing to explain such a thing – just another one of those oh-so-dubious brain scanning studies in which some scientists scan brains and find trivial differences in blood flow (see here on why such studies are typically of little value).
Essentially the only idea that neuroscientists have to explain a brain creating ideas is some idea of combination, kind of the idea that you create a complex idea by combining simpler ideas. This does not explain the miracle of abstract thought. Let us imagine a savage who experiences 100 cold days, and who then reaches the abstract concept of coldness. This idea is not reached from any type of combination – it is reached by abstraction. Similarly, a person who sees 100 other humans may reach the abstract idea of a human being. But that idea is not reached by combination.
Computers offer not the slightest clue as to how abstract thinking can occur, because no computer has ever had a concept, an idea, or an abstract thought, something that requires a conscious mind. Don't be fooled by the type of computer program called an idea generator. Such programs are typically just programs for combining words into novel combinations. Until a human reads the output of such a program, an idea is not actually created.
In short, there is no plausible brain explanation for how humans could be storing memories for 50 years; there is no plausible brain explanation for how humans can instantly retrieve distant memories; and there is no plausible brain explanation for how humans can even create abstract ideas. See here and here for additional support for these claims. It is sometimes argued that we need to postulate something like a human soul or spirit (something beyond the brain) to account for paranormal phenomena such as ESP and near-death experiences. It may also be argued very forcibly that we need to postulate something like a human soul or spirit to account for certain types of normal mental functioning that we observe every day.
High-dimensional cavities? Cavities are holes, not information storage media. I think the quote bolsters my claim that scientists do not have any plausible explanation of how brains can be storing memories for 50 years.
Cases such as these seem incompatible with the idea that you brain is the sole source of your mind, but are quite compatible with the idea that your soul is a large source of your mental functioning.
That visual is an exaggeration, since biomedical research isn't dead. But judging from the book, there are serious problems in the field. It seems that a very large fraction of research studies cannot be replicated. The problem was highlighted in a widely cited 2005 paper by John Ioannidis entitled, "Why Most Published Research Studies Are False." A scientist named C. Glenn Begley and his colleagues tried to reproduce 53 published studies called "ground-breaking." He asked the scientists who wrote the papers to help, by providing the exact materials to publish the results. Begley and his colleagues were only able to reproduce 6 of the 53 experiments.
In 2011 Bayer reported similar results. They tried to reproduce 67 medical studies, and were only able to reproduce them 25 percent of the time. On page 14 of the book by Harris, we are told that one expert estimates that 28 billion dollars a year is spent on untrustworthy papers.
A 2007 study estimated that between 18 and 36 percent of all cell experiments use misidentified cell lines. That adds up to tens of thousands of studies, costing billions of dollars....Sometimes, even the species isn't correct. Nelson-Rees found a "mongoose" cell line was actually human and determined that two "hamster" cell lines were from marmosets and humans, respectively. "Have the Marx Brothers taken over the cell-culture labs?" Roland Nardone asked in a 2008 paper bemoaning this state of affairs.
In a 2013 study, a dozen doctors from around the country examined all 363 articles published in The New England Journal of Medicine over a decade — 2001 through 2010 — that tested a current clinical practice, from the use of antibiotics to treat people with persistent Lyme disease symptoms (didn't help) to the use of specialized sponges for preventing infections in patients having colorectal surgery (caused more infections). Their results, published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings, found 146 studies that proved or strongly suggested that a current standard practice either had no benefit at all or was inferior to the practice it replaced; 138 articles supported the efficacy of an existing practice, and the remaining 79 were deemed inconclusive.
Another huge problem in contemporary medical practice involves doctors who invest in fantastically expensive equipment, and who then give advice that may be biased by their desire to pay off the cost of such a machine (or profit from its use).
In just a single year, the researchers reported, twenty-five to forty-two per cent of Medicare patients received at least one of the twenty-six useless tests and treatments....The Institute of Medicine issued a report stating that waste accounted for thirty per cent of health-care spending, or some seven hundred and fifty billion dollars a year, which was more than our nation's entire budget for K-12 education....Millions of people are receiving drugs that aren't helping them, operations that aren't going to make them better, and scans and tests that do nothing beneficial for them, and often cause harm.
(1) Is the course of treatment or testing you are recommending considered a standard practice or "best practice" for patients with my set of circumstances?
(2) If you were teaching a room full of medical students, would you recommend this exact treatment or testing for someone with my set of circumstances?
Look for a firm, confident answer of "Yes," rather than a weaker answer such as "Doctors often do this."
During earlier times, people had complete faith in words spoken by anyone wearing the black outfit of the priest. Today we have somehow been socially conditioned to regard anyone with a white coat as a totally reliable source of information. Perhaps both forms of "color confidence" involved too much uncritical trust.
More than 70% of the researchers (pdf), who took part in a recent study published in Nature have tried and failed to replicate another scientist's experiment. Another study found that at least 50% of life science research cannot be replicated.
A Nature article states this: "Although 52% of those surveyed agree that there is a significant 'crisis' of reproducibility, less than 31% think that failure to reproduce published results means that the result is probably wrong, and most say that they still trust the published literature." This smells like scientists having too much overconfident faith in their fellow scientists.
If we nudge the strength of the strong force upwards by just 0.4 per cent, stars produce a wealth of carbon, but the route to oxygen is cut off. While we have the central element to support carbon-based life, the result is a universe in which there will be very little water. Decreasing the strength of the strong force by a similar 0.4 per cent has the opposite effect: all carbon is rapidly transformed into oxygen, providing the universe with plenty of water, but leaving it devoid of carbon.
Protons and neutrons are made up of smaller particles called quarks. A proton is made of two up quarks and one down quark, while a neutron is made of two down quarks and one up quark. On page 50 to 51 of the Fortunate Universe book, we are told some reasons why a life-bearing universe requires that these quark particles have masses not too far from the mass they have. If the down quark was about 70 times more massive or the up quark was about 130 times more massive, there would be only one element, and complex chemistry would be impossible. More sensitively, if the up quark was more than six times more massive, protons could not exist, and there would be no atoms. But later we learn of a much more sensitive requirement demanding that the quark masses be almost exactly as they are in order for the universe to be hospitable for life.
And remember from last chapter that because the quarks are already "absurdly light" in the words of physicist Leonard Susskind, a range of mass that is a small percentage of their value in our Universe corresponds to a tiny fraction of their possible range. It is about one part in a million relative to the Higgs field, which gives them their mass. It is about one part in 1023 relative to the Planck mass!
On page 75 of the book we have a diagram that is basically the same as the diagram below from an article by one of the authors. The author shows that if you make random values for the strong nuclear force and a fundamental constant called the fine structure constant, then only a very tiny fraction will allow carbon-based life. Because the graph uses a logarithmic scale, it visually exaggerates the size of the tiny white rectangle. If you were to program a computer to assign random numbers for these two (the strong nuclear force and the fine structure constant) between 0 and 1000, less than one in a million times would the numbers end up within the tiny white rectangle.
Life requires a value not too much different to what we observe. There must be an as yet unknown mechanism that slices off the contributions from the quantum vacuum, reducing it down to the observed value. This slicing has to be done precisely, not too much and not so little as to destabilize the rest of particles. This is a cut as fine as one part in 1016...This problem – known as the hierarchy problem – keeps particle physicists awake at night.
A small decrease in the strength of the strong force by about 8 per cent would render deuterium unstable. A proton can no longer stick to a neutron, and the first nuclear reaction in stars is in danger of falling apart. An increase of 12 per cent binds the diproton – a proton can stick to another proton. This gives stars a short cut, an easy way to burn fuel. If the diproton were suddenly bound within the Sun, it would burn hydrogen at a phenomenal rate, exhausting its fuel in mere moments.
Maybe there is a mechanism at work here, a mechanism that we clearly don't yet understand, which trims the energy in the quantum vacuum; so, while it is intrinsically very large, the value we observe, the value that influences the expansion of the universe, appears to be much, much smaller. But this would have to be a very precise razor, trimming off 10120 but leaving the apparently tiny amount that we observe....But what if this mechanism for suppressing the influence of the cosmic vacuum energy was not so efficient, removing the effect of 10119 rather than 10120, so there would be ten times the vacuum energy density we actually measure? Remember, such vacuum energy accelerates the expansion faster and faster, emptying out the Universe, cutting off the possibility of stars, planets, and eventually people.
Towards the end of the book, the authors discuss some common objections made to minimize the importance of such conclusions. One objection goes like this: improbable things happen all the time (for example, there was only 1 chance in a billion that you would have the 9-digit Social Security number that you have). The objection is easily dismissed on these grounds: improbable things do happen all the time, but improbable lucky things do not happen all the time. The cases of cosmic fine-tuning are not merely improbable things happening, but incredibly improbable lucky things happening; and it is not at all true that incredibly improbable lucky things happen all the time.
Another objection appeals to the existence of a multiverse: maybe there are an infinity of universes, and in such a case the odds of one of them being successful might be good. This is not a sound objection because it merely increases the number of random trials; and increasing the number of random trials does nothing to increase the chance of any one random trial succeeding. If you drive into Las Vegas and drive out with $50,000,000 in your car, that's an astonishing piece of luck; and it's no less astonishing if there are an infinity of such lucky winners scattered across an infinity of universes in which an infinity of different things happen. Adding a multiverse does not increase the odds of lucky events in any one particular universe such as ours.


text:
Home News Trending Study finds how our brain recognises familiar faces
Study finds how our brain recognises familiar faces
According to a new study, distinct information about familiar faces is encoded in a neural code that is shared across brains.
Mahipal Singh Last Updated : Nov. 2, 2021, 5:14 p.m.
New Delhi: According to a new study, distinct information about familiar faces is encoded in a neural code that is shared across brains.
The findings of the study were published in the journal 'Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences'. The ability to recognise familiar faces is fundamental to social interaction. This process provides visual information and activates social and personal knowledge about a person who is familiar.
But how the brain processes this information across participants has long been a question.
"Within visual processing areas, we found that information about personally familiar and visually familiar faces is shared across the brains of people who have the same friends and acquaintances," said first author Matteo Visconti di Oleggio Castello, Guarini '18, who conducted this research as a graduate student in psychological and brain sciences at Dartmouth and is now a neuroscience post-doctoral scholar at the University of California, Berkeley.
"The surprising part of our findings was that the shared information about personally familiar faces also extends to areas that are non-visual and important for social processing, suggesting that there is shared social information across brains," added Castello.
For the study, the research team applied a method called hyperalignment, which creates a common representational space for understanding how brain activity is similar between participants. The team used data obtained from three fMRI tasks with 14 graduate students who had known each other for at least two years. In two of the tasks, participants were presented with images of four other personally familiar graduate students and four other visually familiar persons, who were previously unknown.
In the third task, participants watched parts of 'The Grand Budapest Hotel'. The movie data, which is publicly available, was used to apply hyperalignment and align participants' brain responses into a common representational space. This allowed the researchers to use machine learning classifiers to predict what stimuli a participant was looking at based on the brain activity of the other participants.
The results showed that the identity of visually familiar and personally familiar faces was decoded with accuracy across the brain in areas that are mostly involved in the visual processing of faces. Outside of the visual areas, however, there was not a lot of decoding. For visually familiar identities, participants only knew what the stimuli looked like; they did not know who these people were or have any other information about them.
In decoding personally familiar identities, the findings demonstrated that there was much more shared information across the brains of the participants. There was high decoding accuracy in four other areas outside of the visual system: the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex, which is known to be involved in social processing (processing other people's intentions and traits); the precuneus, an area which has been shown to be more active when processing personally familiar faces; the insula, which is known to be involved in emotional processing; and the temporal-parietal junction, which plays an important role in social cognition and in representing the mental states of others (also known as the "theory of the mind").
"This shared conceptual space for the personal knowledge of others allows us to communicate with people that we know in common," said senior author Maria (Ida) Gobbini, a research associate professor in the Cognitive Science Program at Dartmouth and associate professor in the department of experimental, diagnostic and speciality medicine at the University of Bologna.
Past research by the team using fMRI experiments found that these "theory of mind" areas in the brain are activated when a person sees someone personally familiar.
"When we see someone we know, we activate immediately who that person is. This is what allows us to interact in the most appropriate way with someone who is familiar," said Gobbini. For example, how you interact with a friend or family member may be quite different from the way you interact with a colleague or boss.
"It would have been quite possible that everybody has their own private code for what people are like but this is not the case," said co-author James Haxby, professor of psychological and brain sciences at Dartmouth.
"Our research shows that processing familiar faces really has to do with general knowledge about people," concluded Haxby. (ANI)
first published:Nov. 2, 2021, 4:43 p.m.
Jan. 18, 2022, 7:23 p.m. Delhi records 11,684 new COVID cases, 38 deaths; positivity rate drops further to 22.47%
Jan. 18, 2022, 6:32 p.m. Watch: Woman saves puppy from drowning in river. Viral video wins hearts

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Stellis Polaris Management – Right artist for the right part – every time!
Brahms' and Schumann's Liebeslieder in a unique concert at DNO&B, Scene 2, 4 April.
4 singers and 2 pianists and a lot of love present!
One of Sweden's largest music grants, Rosenborg-Gehrmans' study scholarship (150,000 SEK), is awarded to Stellis Polaris' artist, the bass singer Erik Rosenius.
Erik Rosenius is working at the International Opera Studio at Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Berlin, since autumn 2018. He is also part of Barbara Hannigan's Equilibrium Young Artists Program.
Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier awaits at DNO&B in March: 16, 19, 22, 24, 27, 30 and April: 7, 10, 13.
Comedy on the Bridge by Bohuslav Martinů at Malmö Opera from 23 March to 17 April.
Soloist in Bach's "Mass in B minor" in Bodø Cathedral 11 April.
Goal: Right artist for the right part – every time!
Newly established Stellis Polaris Management is aiming to be an important creative body in the arts management business for classical singers, providing the highest standards to its customers and clients alike. With its base in Oslo, Norway, Stellis Polaris Management delivers all sorts of consulting and advisory work for exclusive clients, arts institutions, concert halls, and culturally engaged corporations in nothern Europe.
Stellis Polaris Management represents a wide range of vibrant classical singers from Nothern Europe. The artists are devided into two categories: The Shining Stars category, where celebrated, high profile artists are found, and the Rising Stars category, for highly talented young and upcoming artists.


Faculty participation in commencement helps create a more memorable occasion for students and their families by demonstrating our sincere conviction in the value of an EMU degree, and honoring our graduates accordingly.
All commencement participants must attend the ceremony in academic dress. If you do not own regalia and need to rent a cap and gown, you may place your order beginning February 28, 2019.
As always, your department head or school director will serve as primary point of contact for commencement participation. If you plan to attend the ceremony, please inform your head or director by Friday April 19, 2019, to allow for seating and other necessary arrangements.
Please visit Eastern's Commencement Ceremony webpage for the most updated information on the ceremony. We hope to see you there!
Faculty are encouraged to apply to be part of the Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) Writing Fellows program and/or WAC Advanced Retreats. The deadline to apply is February 22, 2019. For more information, see last week's briefing or download the Call for Applications.
Questions about these WAC events may be directed to Ann Blakeslee, Ph.D. at ablakesle@emich.edu or at 734.487.4813.
Faculty are invited and encouraged to apply for the 2019-20 Global Learning Seminar (GLS). The focus of the GLS is to work with faculty to develop a global-centered approach to curriculum development and course design. Seminar co-facilitators, Solange Simoes and Shiri Vivek will collaborate with a small group of Eastern faculty during the Fall 2019 and Winter 2020 semesters to share teaching and learning strategies that support faculty in their efforts to impart a global perspective into their courses. Please take a moment to view the application [PDF] and consider applying to be part of the GLS. The deadline for applications is March 29, 2019.
Connect with women on campus! Find Support! Share Wisdom! This program is centered on the spectrum of women's identities and welcome to all. Participate in the Mentor Connection Program, as a Mentor or Mentee! Applications are due by February 21 at 5 p.m. For more information, visit the Mentor Connection Program Application, or contact Toni Stokes Jones at tjones1@emich.edu or 734.487.2737.
For more information visit: Award Criteria and Submission Nomination Form. For more information on this award, please contact Colleen Croxall at ccroxall@emich.edu or 734.487.2072.
In the spirit of keeping everyone informed, we are passing along some updates from the Office of the Registrar regarding the Spring 2019 commencement ceremony.
Please begin to use this new form immediately. We are working to make this a fillable form, but wanted to get this out to you to begin using now. No new information is being requested on the form, only the layout has been revised. Download the form here.
Students will need to apply to participate no later than March 15. Requests received after that date will NOT be accepted/reviewed. This has always been our stated deadline, but will be enforced this year.
Students will need to apply for August graduation between February 1 and March 20 in order to receive final approval. This is new and will allow us to ensure participants are actually reviewed for degree conferral.
Please pass this information on to all who work with students — especially those who work with students who are graduating!
Swoop's Food Pantry is hosting the third annual March Madness, food pantry style! Buildings on Eastern's Campus will be randomly paired up to compete against another to collect the most donations for the pantry. The winning team earns campus-wide bragging rights and a trophy!
Donations will be picked up at 11:30 a.m. on the final day of each round. Any donations dropped off to the pantry before Friday must be clearly labeled as to which building to count the donations toward.
Buildings will earn points by number of items donated and each item will be worth varying point values. If a food item is donated in bulk, it will be worth multiple points. For example, four jars of peanut butter in one package is worth 4 points.
Point values are non-negotiable and are subject to change each round depending on what items are most needed in the pantry. Updated point values will be sent out by email each round. Be sure to check with your "team captain" or building administrator weekly to see which items are worth the most points in the next round. If something is not on the list and you are donating it, please feel free to email to inquire how many points it will be. Points do not roll over to the next round -- points will be refreshed each round your building advances.
Download the point values for round one and look for email and social media updates as the contest continues. Learn more about Swoop's Food Pantry on their website or email swoops_pantry@emich.edu.


text:
Pyrenochaeta lycopersici est une espèce de champignons ascomycètes de l'ordre des Pleosporales.
Ce champignon est l'agent de la maladie des racines liégeuses de la tomate.

Des isolats de ce champignon attaquent également plusieurs espèces de la famille des Solanaceae,  dont le piment, le tabac et l'aubergine, mais aussi d'autres espèces d'Eudicotylédones, comme le concombre, le melon, le carthame et les épinards.

Notes et références

Liens externes

Pleosporales
Espèce de champignons (nom scientifique)
Champignon phytopathogène

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Il Panīpeirōtikos Athlītikos Syllogos Giánnina () o PAS Giánnina, è un club calcistico greca di Giannina, capoluogo dell'Epiro.

Milita nella Souper Ligka Ellada.

Storia

Gli inizi e l'arrivo degli Argentini
Il PAS Giannina è stata ufficialmente fondata nel maggio 1966, dall'unione di due squadre, Atromitos e Averofcon, con sede a Giannina, nel nord della Grecia. Negli anni settanta furono acquistati sei giocatori argentini (Oscar Alvarez, Juan Montez, Jose Pasternac, Alfredo Glasman, Edouardo Lisa e Eduardo Rigani, con De Faria come allenatore) e si ebbero parecchi risultati positivi, sostando vicino alla parte superiore della classifica del campionato greco, vincendo spesso contro squadre più quotate come , ,  e . Spesso la squadra fu soprannominata Ajax dell'Epiro negli anni settanta per il suo gioco efficace, tipico delle squadre olandesi quali l'Ajax appunto. Nel 1980 l'ex tecnico della nazionale polacca Jacek Gmoch ha preso il timone del club greco raggiungendo dei buoni risultati.
Gli anni ottanta sono stati alcuni dei peggiori anni della società biancazzurra, che retrocede in seconda divisione. Nel 1989-90 la squadra riesce a riportarsi in prima divisione ma retrocede nella stagione successiva, riuscendo comunque a lanciare Giōrgos Dōnīs, passato al Panathinaikos nel 1991.

2000 - 2006: la rifondazione del club
Nell'ambito dell'amministrazione dell'uomo d'affari Manthos Kolempas, la squadra ha mostrato i segni di una ricrescita riuscendo ad essere promosso due volte nella massima divisione nazionale.
Nella prima di queste due apparizioni, nel 2001, il PAS Giannina è stato subito retrocesso nella serie B greca in seguito allo spareggio di 3 partite con l'OFI Creta.
Nella stagione 2001/02 vince il campionato di serie B e torna in Super League, ma l'anno dopo la società inizia ad avere problemi economici e fu penalizzata dalla Federazione Greca di ben 90 punti (3 per ogni partita di campionato, terminando la stagione all'ultimo posto con un record negativo di -65 punti), per effetto di una decisione unica, e il PAS ritornò in seconda categoria. L'anno dopo retrocedette anche in terza categoria a causa dei già citati problemi societari.

2006: la Semifinale di Coppa di Grecia
Alla fine del 2006 l'avvocato Alexis Kougias, prese in mano le redini della società portando la squadra dalla terza divisione alla seconda divisione. Nel 2006-2007 la squadra termina il campionato in quinta posizione e l'anno dopo arriva a giungere quarta. Risultato da segnalare il raggiungimento delle semifinali della Coppa di Grecia dopo aver eliminato l'Olympiacos.
Nell'estate 2008 la società passò a Yiorgos Christovasilis, uomo d'affari di Atene di famiglia proveniente dall'Epiro, che assume Guillermos Ollos come tecnico per la stagione 2008-09, riuscendo a promuovere la squadra nel Super League dopo 6 stagioni.

Promozione in Super League dopo 6 anni & Seconda Semifinale di Coppa di Grecia
Dopo 6 stagioni il PAS Giannina rimette piede nell'Alpha Ethniki, ora chiamata Super League greca. Per far fronte a questo impegno Yiorgos Christovasilis ingaggia dal  l'ex portiere della nazionale greca Dimitrios Eleftheropoulos.Oltre al portiere vengono ingaggiati anche Ilias Kotsios, Ibrahima Bakayoko e Konstantinos Mendrinos. Il PAS Giannina fu anche sulle tracce di Traïanos Dellas, Aggelos Mpasinas e Ioannis Goumas, senza però concludere affari. Nel gennaio del 2010 viene chiamato come allenatore Níkos Anastópoulos in sostituzione di Giorgios Paraschos. Il 20 gennaio 2010, il PAS raggiunge gli ottavi di finale della Coppa di Grecia ai danni dell', squadra allenata da Giōrgos Dōnīs, ex-bandiera biancazzurra. Il 2 febbraio 2010 la squadra, allo Stadio Zosimades, infligge un 4-0 al PAOK dove militavano Bruno Cirillo, Mirko Savini, Zizis Vryzas e Theodōros Zagorakīs, portando il club alla semifinale di Coppa di Grecia contro il Panathinaikos di Giōrgos Karagkounīs. Nel gennaio 2011 viene acquistato dall'AEK Atene l'ex difensore nella nazionale greca Chrīstos Patsatzoglou.

Nella stagione 2010/2011 la squadra ritorna in Super League greca. Ibrahima Bakayoko diventa il capocannoniere nella beta Ethniki nella stagione appena conclusa con 19 reti, mentre l'altro attaccante Dīmītrīs Sialmas, nella penultima gara di campionato, segna un gol . A gennaio 2012 al posto del tecnico Stéphane Demol viene ingaggiato Angelos Anastasiadis appena svincolato dalla nazionale cipriota. Il PAS con il nuovo allenatore raggiunge la salvezza con due giornate di anticipo, ottenendo vittorie importanti come quella per 1-2 ai danni del PAOK e la vittoria casalinga allo Stadio Zosimades per 2-1 contro l', ottenendo il 7° risultato utile consecutivo.

Strutture

Stadio
Lo stadio principale del PAS Giannina è lo Stadio Zosimades, costruito nel 1952 dai fratelli Zosimades provenienti da Giannina. Lo Stadio Zosimades ha una capacità di più di 7500 posti, si trova all'interno della città di Giannina.Il secondo stadio della squadra, chiamato Stadio Panepirotan, che vuol dire "Stadio di tutto l'Epiro", è stato costruito nel 2002, e si trova nel quartiere Anatoli, ed è parte del Panepirotan National Sports Centre. Fu inaugurato il 28/8/2002 ed è costato 10 milioni di Euro, con una capacità di 2.051 posti a sedere.

Palmarès

Competizioni nazionali

1973-1974, 1984-1985, 2001-2002

1997-1998 (gruppo 1)

2019-2020

Altri piazzamenti

Semifinalista: 2006-2007, 2009-2010, 2020-2021

Secondo posto: 2010-2011

Secondo posto: 2008-2009
Terzo posto: 1989-1990, 1999-2000

Secondo posto: 2004-2005 (girone 2), 2005-2006 (girone 2)

Finalista: 1993-1994

Statistiche e record
 Partecipazioni alla Alpha Ethniki/Super League Greece: 16
 Partecipazioni alla Coppa di Grecia: 2 (semifinale)

Super League
 1975-76, 5º posto: 30 partite, 36 punti, 15 vinte, 6 pareggiate, 9 perse, 40 gol segnati, 33 subiti
 1977-78, 5º posto: 34 partite, 38 punti, 14 vinte, 10 pareggiate, 10 perse, 45 gol segnati, 39 subiti
 1979-80, 6º posto: 34 partite, 37 punti, 14 vinte, 9 pareggiate, 11 perse, 50 gol segnati, 44 subiti
 2012-13, 5º posto: 30 partite, 44 punti, 12 vinte, 8 pareggiate, 10 perse, 28 gol segnati, 24 subiti
 2016/2017 imbattuto dal 25 aprile 2017 grazie a Fabrizio Foresta

Statistiche nelle competizioni internazionali
Tabella aggiornata alla fine della stagione 2018-2019.

Statistiche individuali

Organico

Rosa 2022-2023
Aggiornata al 24 febbraio 2023.

Rosa 2021-2022
Aggiornata al 2 ottobre 2021.

Rose delle stagioni precedenti
 2014-2015
 2013-2014
 2010-2011

Note

Collegamenti esterni


text:
THE GENOA VICARIATE IN FAVOUR OF THE OUTPATIENT CLINIC
Genoa-23rd March 2019
THE GENOA VICARIATE OPENS ITS DOORS WITH A DONATION IN FAVOUR OF THE OUTPATIENT CLINIC.
A solemn Eucharistic celebration was held at the Abbey of Santo Stefano in Genoa followed by a charity party for the inauguration of the Genoa Vicariate of the Dynastic Orders of the Royal House of Savoy.
On the liturgical solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord, the newly founded Liguria Delegation was inaugurated with a donation in support of the "Beata Maria Cristina di Savoia" Outpatient Clinic in Genoa, established by the Dynastic Orders of the Royal House of Savoy in collaboration with the Rivarolese Pink Cross.
In the presence of the ad interim Delegate Cav. Gr. Cr. Nob. Dott. Carlo Buffa of the Counts of Perrero, of the Vicar Cav. Uff. Dr. Valerio Ruggiero and of the Delegation Councilor Cav. Uff. Dr. Stefano Emanuele Pietrafraccia, nearly sixty between Dames, Knights, authorities and supporters attended the Mass celebrated by Rev. Abbot Paolo Romeo and concelebrated by Cav. Rev. Lodovico de Bernardi, assisted by Comm. Rev. Simone Rolandi, Vicar for Verbania of the Dynastic Orders of the Royal House of Savoy and by Cav. Rev. Giampaolo Civillini.
The Jubilus choir of Genoa, conducted by Maestro Enrico Sobrero, accompanied the service performing the "Missa Pontificalis II" composed by Lorenzo Perosi.
At the end of the Holy Mass, a moved Vicar Ruggiero thanked the Grand Master and the Grand Chancellor for the honour of leading the new Vicariate, as well as the Delegate for his support and the Council of the Delegation for their welcome. After the official greeting of the Delegate, a letter signed by His Eminence Rev. Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, Archbishop of Genoa, was read and so was a Message from the Grand Master, H.R.H. Prince Vittorio Emanuele.
After the Knight's prayer and the prayer for the Grand Master, a reception was held at the Unified Army Circle, the proceeds of which were donated to the "Beata Maria Cristina di Savoia" Outpatient Clinic. At the beginning of the dinner, the President of the Rivarolese Pink Cross, Dr. Riccardo Repetto, thanked Vicar Ruggiero, those present and the Dynastic Orders for what they have done so far. Afterwards, a precious painting depicting the Blessed was donated by the "Colloqui Letterari Maria Cristina di Savoia" association to the Rivarolese Pink Cross.
category: Charity, News


text:
La basilica prepositurale di Santo Stefano Protomartire, detta anche Gésa granda, è una chiesa prepositurale che sorge a Canzo, in provincia di Como.

Storia
L'edificazione ebbe inizio nel 1728 sul luogo di una precedente costruzione, attestata dal 1398 in un documento testimoniante l'autonomia della parrocchia, dedicata allo stesso santo e già dotata nel 1574, durante la visita pastorale di san Carlo, dei cinque altari attuali. La canonica si trova dietro alla chiesa, mentre in passato era in via Rimembranze, collegata da una scalinata fino a via Teatro Vecchio. La chiesa, assegnata al Vicariato di Villincino, divenne parrocchia nel 1569 all'epoca della visita pastorale di Francesco Bernardino Cermenati. Nel 1584 in seguito al trasferimento della sede plebana a Villincino la parrocchia venne inserita sotto il Vicariato del Preposto di Erba e nella Regione V della Diocesi. Nel XVIII secolo si avevano nella parrocchia Santo Stefano Protomartire le confraternite, senza abito, del santissimo sacramento, del santissimo rosario e una terza nella scuola della dottrina cristiana; nell'oratorio di San Donato v'era una confraternita recante il medesimo titolo. Nel 1752 il cardinale Pozzobonelli nel consacrare la chiesa restando colpito dalla sua grandezza e dalla sua magnificenza concesse ad essa il titolo, in perpetuo, di "basilica". La basilica è stata eretta prepositura, col titolo di  basilica prepositurale Plebana, con decreto ad perpetuam memoriam in data 21 aprile 1899 da papa Leone XIII il quale concesse Non ad Personam sed pro Tempore il titolo di prevosto. Nella stessa data il cardinale Andrea Carlo Ferrari istituì il vicariato foraneo di Canzo, attivo dal 1906 fino al 1971, avente giurisdizione sulle parrocchie di Caslino d'Erba, Castelmarte, Corneno, Galliano, Longone e Proserpio.

Descrizione

Esterno
Il sagrato è in granito, decorato ad intarsio; in passato era acciottolato. L'edificio, tradizionalmente definito "basilica" pur non essendolo propriamente, è in stile barocco classico e possiede un alto campanile angolare, a destra, con tetto in bronzo (il progetto del 1818, dell'architetto Bovara, ne prevedeva due). La facciata è parzialmente, come i lati lunghi della chiesa, dipinta di un giallo tenue; presenta un portone principali e due portoni laterali, in alto due nicchie, una con la statua di Santo Stefano, l'altra di San Miro.

Interno

All'interno, ad una navata, vi sono quattro altari minori: entrando, a destra quello del crocifisso e a sinistra quello con la statua di san Bernardo, e in fondo, a destra quello con la statua di sant'Antonio dal purcèll e a sinistra quello con la statua della Madonna del Rosario. Le tre magnifiche statue marmoree settecentesche sono opera di Elia Vincenzo Buzzi, noto come autore delle due grandi statue dei transetti del duomo di Milano (Madonna dell'Albero e San Giovanni Buono); il crocifisso ligneo era già presente all'epoca della visita di san Carlo. Negli altari sono presenti anche quadri murali di David Beghè (fine Ottocento) e Albertella (inizio Novecento). A destra e a sinistra, fra gli altari, sono collocati i confessionali in marmo, sormontati dalle balaustre di cui la sinistra è quella dell'organo. La volta dell'altare maggiore è decorata con affreschi del XVIII secolo raffiguranti la Trinità e la gloria di s. Stefano ed è circondata da vele con i quattro evangelisti. I restanti affreschi sono perlopiù degli inizi del Novecento, come le due statue della facciata. La chiesa possiede poi vetrate colorate che rappresentano la Passione e, in facciata, Cristo Re. Il pavimento era un tempo di cotto, di cui è stata conservata la porzione su cui poggiano le panche; la parte rimanente fu disegnata in graniglia di marmo. A fianco dell'altare maggiore sono collocati i due pulpiti, sempre in marmo. Alcune decorazioni sono in marmo nero e grigio, mentre altre sono stucchi dorati o dipinti ad imitazione di marmo grigio o rosato. Sono inoltre presenti balaustre sulla controfacciata, sopra i confessionali e a cinta degli altari. L'organo fu costruito nel 1828 dalla rinomata bottega fratelli Serassi di Bergamo. La sacrestia è posta a destra dell'altare. A sinistra dell'altare è collocata una cappella che conserva numerose reliquie donate da monsignor Camillo Fino (protonotario apostolico supra numerum di nomina pontificia per  meriti raggiunti, ad oggi resta il prevosto col più alto grado prelatizio che Canzo abbia mai avuto) il quale, già Notaio certificatore delle reliquie diocesane, dopo anni di onorato servizio trascorsi in curia arcivescovile venne destinato dal beato cardinale Schuster a Canzo come prevosto lasciando in eredità alla prepositura tutta la sua collezione di reliquie. Altre reliquie sono esposte nei busti d'argento collocati a fianco del tabernacolo. Il tabernacolo ha una porticina d'oro con raffigurato a bassorilievo Gesù a braccia aperte che mostra il suo Sacro Cuore.

Intorno alla chiesa
Di fronte alla piazza della chiesa vi è la sede della Società Operaia di Mutuo Soccorso, nel passato adibita ad asilo infantile e a biblioteca municipale, davanti alla quale è stato piantato un gelso (murùn), albero simbolo della tradizione serica brianzola, e ne è stato aggiunto un altro esemplare molto antico, a cura della Cumpagnia di Nost, trasferito dal Parco Raverta, trasformato in complesso edilizio. Quest'ultimo è stato affidato alla protezione di  San Mir. Presso la Società Operaia vengono spesso organizzate mostre d'arte. A lato dell'ampio piazzale, vi è il l'antico portico del mercato, un elegante porticato a cinque arcate con fronte e doppie lesene, che mantiene all'esterno gli anelli utilizzati per la fiera del bestiame  da San Stevenin il 27 dicembre.

Si narra che il suolo su cui è stata eretta la parrocchiale fosse in origine una vigna di proprietà dei Pelliccioni. Essi la concessero alla parrocchia a condizione che in una notte fossero sradicate tutte le piante di vite. Dopo una nottata di lavoro da parte di tutta la popolazione accorsa, si poté cominciare la costruzione della chiesa.

Note

Altri progetti

Collegamenti esterni

Canzo
Stefano
Chiese della provincia di Como
Basiliche della Lombardia
Architetture di Canzo


text:
package com.netflix.astyanax.cql.test;

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

import junit.framework.Assert;

import org.junit.AfterClass;
import org.junit.BeforeClass;
import org.junit.Test;

import com.netflix.astyanax.ColumnListMutation;
import com.netflix.astyanax.Keyspace;
import com.netflix.astyanax.MutationBatch;
import com.netflix.astyanax.model.Column;
import com.netflix.astyanax.model.ColumnFamily;
import com.netflix.astyanax.model.ColumnList;
import com.netflix.astyanax.model.Rows;
import com.netflix.astyanax.serializers.StringSerializer;

public class StaticColumnFamilyTests extends KeyspaceTests {

	private static ColumnFamily<String, String> CF_ACCOUNTS = new ColumnFamily<String, String>("accounts", StringSerializer.get(), StringSerializer.get());

	@BeforeClass
	public static void init() throws Exception {
		initContext();
		keyspace.prepareQuery(CF_ACCOUNTS)
				.withCql("CREATE TABLE astyanaxunittests.accounts (userid text PRIMARY KEY, user text, pswd text)")
				.execute();
		CF_ACCOUNTS.describe(keyspace);
	}

	@AfterClass
	public static void tearDown() throws Exception {
		keyspace.dropColumnFamily(CF_ACCOUNTS);
	}

	@Test
	public void testReadWriteOpsWithStaticNamedColumns() throws Exception {

		populateRowsForAccountsTable(keyspace);
		Thread.sleep(200);
		boolean rowDeleted = false;

		performSimpleRowQuery(rowDeleted);
		performSimpleRowQueryWithColumnCollection(rowDeleted);
		performSimpleRowSingleColumnQuery(rowDeleted);
		performRowSliceQueryWithAllColumns(rowDeleted);
		performRowSliceQueryWithColumnSlice(rowDeleted);

		deleteRowsForAccountsTable(keyspace);
		Thread.sleep(200);
		rowDeleted = true;

		performSimpleRowQuery(rowDeleted);
		performSimpleRowQueryWithColumnCollection(rowDeleted);
		performSimpleRowSingleColumnQuery(rowDeleted);
		performRowSliceQueryWithAllColumns(rowDeleted);
		performRowSliceQueryWithColumnSlice(rowDeleted);
	}

	private void performSimpleRowQuery(boolean rowDeleted) throws Exception {
		for (char keyName = 'A'; keyName <= 'Z'; keyName++) {
			String key = Character.toString(keyName);
			performSimpleRowQueryForRow(key, rowDeleted, key);
		}
	}

	private void performSimpleRowQueryForRow(String rowKey, boolean rowDeleted, String expectedChar) throws Exception {

		ColumnList<String> result =  keyspace.prepareQuery(CF_ACCOUNTS).getRow(rowKey).execute().getResult();

		if (rowDeleted) {
			Assert.assertTrue(result.isEmpty());
		} else {
			Assert.assertFalse(result.isEmpty());
			Column<String> col = result.getColumnByName("user");
			Assert.assertEquals("user" + expectedChar, col.getStringValue());
			col = result.getColumnByName("pswd");
			Assert.assertEquals("pswd" + expectedChar, col.getStringValue());
		}
	}

	private void performSimpleRowQueryWithColumnCollection(boolean rowDeleted) throws Exception {
		for (char keyName = 'A'; keyName <= 'Z'; keyName++) {
			String key = Character.toString(keyName);
			performSimpleRowQueryWithColumnCollectionForRow(key, rowDeleted, key);
		}
	}

	private void performSimpleRowQueryWithColumnCollectionForRow(String rowKey, boolean rowDeleted, String expectedChar) throws Exception {

		ColumnList<String> result =  keyspace.prepareQuery(CF_ACCOUNTS).getRow(rowKey).withColumnSlice("user", "pswd").execute().getResult();

		if (rowDeleted) {
			Assert.assertTrue(result.isEmpty());
		} else {
			Assert.assertFalse(result.isEmpty());
			Column<String> col = result.getColumnByName("user");
			Assert.assertEquals("user" + expectedChar, col.getStringValue());
			col = result.getColumnByName("pswd");
			Assert.assertEquals("pswd" + expectedChar, col.getStringValue());
		}

		result =  keyspace.prepareQuery(CF_ACCOUNTS).getRow(rowKey).withColumnSlice("user").execute().getResult();

		if (rowDeleted) {
			Assert.assertTrue(result.isEmpty());
		} else {
			Assert.assertFalse(result.isEmpty());
			Column<String> col = result.getColumnByName("user");
			Assert.assertEquals("user" + expectedChar, col.getStringValue());
		}

		result =  keyspace.prepareQuery(CF_ACCOUNTS).getRow(rowKey).withColumnSlice("pswd").execute().getResult();

		if (rowDeleted) {
			Assert.assertTrue(result.isEmpty());
		} else {
			Assert.assertFalse(result.isEmpty());
			Column<String> col = result.getColumnByName("pswd");
			Assert.assertEquals("pswd" + expectedChar, col.getStringValue());
		}

		List<String> cols = new ArrayList<String>();
		cols.add("user"); cols.add("pswd");

		result =  keyspace.prepareQuery(CF_ACCOUNTS).getRow(rowKey).withColumnSlice(cols).execute().getResult();

		if (rowDeleted) {
			Assert.assertTrue(result.isEmpty());
		} else {
			Assert.assertFalse(result.isEmpty());
			Column<String> col = result.getColumnByName("user");
			Assert.assertEquals("user" + expectedChar, col.getStringValue());
			col = result.getColumnByName("pswd");
			Assert.assertEquals("pswd" + expectedChar, col.getStringValue());
		}

		cols.remove("user");

		result =  keyspace.prepareQuery(CF_ACCOUNTS).getRow(rowKey).withColumnSlice(cols).execute().getResult();

		if (rowDeleted) {
			Assert.assertTrue(result.isEmpty());
		} else {
			Assert.assertFalse(result.isEmpty());
			Column<String> col = result.getColumnByName("pswd");
			Assert.assertEquals("pswd" + expectedChar, col.getStringValue());
		}
	}

	private void performSimpleRowSingleColumnQuery(boolean rowDeleted) throws Exception {
		for (char keyName = 'A'; keyName <= 'Z'; keyName++) {
			String key = Character.toString(keyName);
			performSimpleRowSingleColumnQueryForRow(key, rowDeleted, key);
		}
	}

	private void performSimpleRowSingleColumnQueryForRow(String rowKey, boolean rowDeleted, String expectedChar) throws Exception {

		Column<String> col =  keyspace.prepareQuery(CF_ACCOUNTS).getRow(rowKey).getColumn("user").execute().getResult();
		if (rowDeleted) {
			Assert.assertNull(col);
		} else {
			Assert.assertTrue(col.hasValue());
			Assert.assertEquals("user" + expectedChar, col.getStringValue());
		}

		col =  keyspace.prepareQuery(CF_ACCOUNTS).getRow(rowKey).getColumn("pswd").execute().getResult();
		if (rowDeleted) {
			Assert.assertNull(col);
		} else {
			Assert.assertTrue(col.hasValue());
			Assert.assertEquals("pswd" + expectedChar, col.getStringValue());
		}
	}

	private void performRowSliceQueryWithAllColumns(boolean rowDeleted) throws Exception {

		List<String> keys = new ArrayList<String>();
		for (char keyName = 'A'; keyName <= 'Z'; keyName++) {
			keys.add(Character.toString(keyName));
		}

		int index = 0;
		Rows<String, String> rows =  keyspace.prepareQuery(CF_ACCOUNTS).getRowSlice(keys).execute().getResult();
		if (rowDeleted) {
			Assert.assertTrue(rows.isEmpty());
		} else {
			Assert.assertFalse(rows.isEmpty());
			for (com.netflix.astyanax.model.Row<String, String> row : rows) {

				Assert.assertEquals(keys.get(index),row.getKey());

				ColumnList<String> cols = row.getColumns();
				Assert.assertFalse(cols.isEmpty());
				Column<String> col = cols.getColumnByName("user");
				Assert.assertEquals("user" + keys.get(index), col.getStringValue());
				col = cols.getColumnByName("pswd");
				Assert.assertEquals("pswd" + keys.get(index), col.getStringValue());

				index++;
			}
		}
	}

	private void performRowSliceQueryWithColumnSlice(boolean rowDeleted) throws Exception {

		List<String> keys = new ArrayList<String>();
		for (char keyName = 'A'; keyName <= 'Z'; keyName++) {
			keys.add(Character.toString(keyName));
		}

		int index = 0;
		Rows<String, String> rows =  keyspace.prepareQuery(CF_ACCOUNTS).getRowSlice(keys).withColumnSlice("user", "pswd").execute().getResult();
		if (rowDeleted) {
			Assert.assertTrue(rows.isEmpty());
		} else {
			Assert.assertFalse(rows.isEmpty());
			for (com.netflix.astyanax.model.Row<String, String> row : rows) {

				Assert.assertEquals(keys.get(index),row.getKey());

				ColumnList<String> cols = row.getColumns();
				Assert.assertFalse(cols.isEmpty());
				Column<String> col = cols.getColumnByName("user");
				Assert.assertEquals("user" + keys.get(index), col.getStringValue());
				col = cols.getColumnByName("pswd");
				Assert.assertEquals("pswd" + keys.get(index), col.getStringValue());

				index++;
			}
		}

		index=0;
		rows =  keyspace.prepareQuery(CF_ACCOUNTS).getRowSlice(keys).withColumnSlice("user").execute().getResult();
		if (rowDeleted) {
			Assert.assertTrue(rows.isEmpty());
		} else {
			Assert.assertFalse(rows.isEmpty());
			for (com.netflix.astyanax.model.Row<String, String> row : rows) {

				Assert.assertEquals(keys.get(index),row.getKey());

				ColumnList<String> cols = row.getColumns();
				Assert.assertFalse(cols.isEmpty());
				Column<String> col = cols.getColumnByName("user");
				Assert.assertEquals("user" + keys.get(index), col.getStringValue());

				index++;
			}
		}

		index=0;
		rows =  keyspace.prepareQuery(CF_ACCOUNTS).getRowSlice(keys).withColumnSlice("pswd").execute().getResult();
		if (rowDeleted) {
			Assert.assertTrue(rows.isEmpty());
		} else {
			Assert.assertFalse(rows.isEmpty());
			for (com.netflix.astyanax.model.Row<String, String> row : rows) {

				Assert.assertEquals(keys.get(index),row.getKey());

				ColumnList<String> cols = row.getColumns();
				Assert.assertFalse(cols.isEmpty());
				Column<String> col = cols.getColumnByName("pswd");
				Assert.assertEquals("pswd" + keys.get(index), col.getStringValue());

				index++;
			}
		}
	}

	public static void populateRowsForAccountsTable(Keyspace keyspace) throws Exception {

		MutationBatch m = keyspace.prepareMutationBatch();

		for (char keyName = 'A'; keyName <= 'Z'; keyName++) {
			String character = Character.toString(keyName);
			ColumnListMutation<String> colMutation = m.withRow(CF_ACCOUNTS, character);
			colMutation.putColumn("user", "user" + character).putColumn("pswd", "pswd" + character);
			m.execute();
			m.discardMutations();
		}
	}

	public static void deleteRowsForAccountsTable(Keyspace keyspace) throws Exception {

		for (char keyName = 'A'; keyName <= 'Z'; keyName++) {
			MutationBatch m = keyspace.prepareMutationBatch();
			String rowKey = Character.toString(keyName);
			m.withRow(CF_ACCOUNTS, rowKey).delete();
			m.execute();
			m.discardMutations();
		}
	}
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Teachers: Print free teacher's guides for the books below. They're ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY JUST SO! Special thanks to Natalie Dias Lorenzi, who created the guides and is a fabulous children's book author and teacher extraordinaire!
I love school visits! Meeting my little readers is where the rubber meets the road for me as a writer. I tailor my presentations to second through fourth grades, but I can accommodate first and fifth graders as well.
● A reading from my second book "Maybelle at the Fair," time permitting.
I finish my sessions with 10 minutes or so of questions from the kids.
Teachers work amazingly hard and school days are packed with "must covers," but I strongly urge that students be exposed to at least one of my books before I arrive. It's lots more fun that way.
Kansas City area school visits are $500 a day. That includes four 45 minute presentations for groups of up to 200. Half days are $300 for two presentations.
Out-of-town visits are $750 a day plus expenses. To cut costs for individual schools I will split days if travel times between schools are reasonable.
I greatly appreciate payment on the day of my appearances.
I'm honored to sign books, but my publisher's contract prohibits me from selling them. Book sales will need to be handled through the school. For a book order form you can download, click here.


text:
Himno Nacional is sinds 1828 het volkslied van Chili.

Spaans:
Puro chile es tu cielo azulado
puras bisas te cruzan tambien
y tu campo de flores bordado
es la copia feliz del eden
majestuosa es la blanca montana
que te dio por baluarte el senor
que te dio por baluarte el senor
y ese mar que tranquilo te bana
te promete futuro esplendor
y ese mar que tranquilo te bana
te promete futuro esplendor

Dulce patria recibe los votos
con que chile en tus aras juro
que o la tumba seras de los libres
o el asilo contra la opresion
que o la tumba seras de los libres
o el asilo contra la opresion
o el asilo contra la opresion
o el asilo contra la opresion

Nederlands
Chili met je blauwe lucht
pure winden die over je waaien
en je veld versierd met bloemen
is een mooie kopie van eden
majestueuze met sneeuw bedekte bergen
die door god als een geschenk zijn gegeven
die door god als een geschenk zijn gegeven
en de zee die je reinigt
die je een gunstige toekomst zal geven
en de zee die reinigt
die je een gunstige toekomst zal geven

Prachtig vaderland, ontvang de stemmen
waarmee Chili in je hart zwoer
dat of het graf zal je van de vrije zijn
of het asiel tegen onderdrukking
dat of het graf zal je van de vrije zijn
of het asiel tegen onderdrukking
dat of het graf zal je van de vrije zijn
of het asiel tegen onderdrukking
of het asiel tegen onderdrukking
of het asiel tegen onderdrukking

Externe link
 Luister naar Himno Nacional

Chileens symbool
Muziek in Chili
Volkslied uit Zuid-Amerika


Figure 1.2 shows the relation of CADI interface classes in the target connection mechanism.
Each interface class is derived from CAInterface to enable compatibility checks and the extension mechanism. See The CAInterface class.
The CADISimulation class interacts with the CADISimulationCallback and CADDIErrorCallback callback classes. An object of each of these classes must be registered to it. Pointers to the callback objects are forwarded to the simulation and used for asynchronous communication between the target and debugger.


text:
Shows like The Adventurer
Top 10 awesome shows like The Adventurer that you will enjoy watching
You just finished watching The Adventurer and you can't get over how good this show was. Now you want to watch more of such masterpieces. We have curated a list of similar shows which are created by the likes of Cyril Frankel, Gene Barry and Barry Morse . Here goes the list -
Danger Man
Man from Atlantis
A Man Called Sloane
The Six Million Dollar Man
After leaving Department S, the hedonistic, womanizing dandy Jason King settled down to a full-time career of writing (trashy) Mark Caine novels. He philandered his way around the world, doing research for his stories and tripping over a variety of odd--often verging on surreal--cases, usually involving beautiful women. He was occasionally blackmailed into working for British Intelligence under the threat of being arrested for unpaid back taxes.
This show, created by Cyril Frankel, Peter Wyngarde and Anne Sharp, scores 6.9 on IMDb.
Genres - Adventure | Action
Craig Stirling, Sharron Macready and Richard Barrett were agents for Nemesis, an international intelligence organisation based in Geneva. Their first mission as a team; investigate some potentially lethal experiments in Communist China, but as they were escaping, their plane was damaged, and crashed into a remote part of the Himalayas. When they were rescued by members an unknown society, they came away with superhuman powers; telepathy, superior strength, memory, etc. Thet returned to the outside world as "Champions of law, order and justice."
This show, created by Cyril Frankel, Stuart Damon and Alexandra Bastedo, scores 7.5 on IMDb.
Genres - Thriller | Adventure | Sci-Fi
An elite department within Interpol, Department S inherited those cases which the other member groups had failed to solve. The brains of the group was Jason King (Peter Wyngarde), a hedonistic maverick who wrote mystery novels and solved real-life crimes by projecting himself into the shoes of his fictional hero, Mark Caine. American Stewart Sullivan (Joel Fabiani) was the fighter and pragmatist of the group, as down to Earth and cynical as Jason was flighty and flamboyant. Annabelle Hurst (Rosemary Nicols) was their scientist and analyst, whom Jason often accused of loving nothing in the world except her computer. Although there was strong loyalty amongst the trio, there was also a lot of competition, especially between Annabelle and Jason, who seldom agreed on any theory and were continually trying to show each other up by solving the case using their preferred methods. The head of Department S was Sir Curtis Seretse (Dennis Alaba Peters).
This show, created by Cyril Frankel, Peter Wyngarde and Joel Fabiani, scores 7.0 on IMDb.
Genres - Crime | Adventure | Action
John Drake (Patrick McGoohan) is a special operative for M9, specializing in security assignments against any subversive element which threatened world peace.
This show, created by Don Chaffey, Patrick McGoohan and Peter Madden, scores 8.2 on IMDb.
John Drake (Patrick McGoohan) is a special operative for N.A.T.O., specializing in security assignments against any subversive element which threatened world peace. The series featured exotic locales from all over the world, as his assignments frequently took him to Africa, Latin America, and the Far East.
This show, created by Charles Frend, Patrick McGoohan and Richard Wattis, scores 7.9 on IMDb.
You can watch this on Sling Tv and Fubotv.
The adventures of an amphibious man, the last survivor of the legendary sunken city.
This show, created by David Moessinger, Patrick Duffy and Alan Fudge, scores 6.5 on IMDb.
Genres - Adventure | Sci-Fi
You can watch this on Amazon Video, Google Play Movies and Apple Itunes.
A fashion photographer and a veteran special forces soldier posing as her model go on intelligence missions around the world.
This show, created by Sidney Hayers, Jennifer ONeill and Antony Hamilton, scores 7.9 on IMDb.
Genres - Drama | Adventure | Action
Sloane is a freelance spy. Although he doesn't work for the government, he frequently accepts assignments from The Director, a head of a secret government agency. He's assisted by Torque, a man with a detachable hand (which can be replaced by a variety of implements drills, guns, and what-not).
This show, created by Michael Preece, Robert Conrad and Dan OHerlihy, scores 7.0 on IMDb.
The adventures of the greatest of the female superheroes.
This show, created by Alan Crosland Jr., Lynda Carter and Lyle Waggoner, scores 7.0 on IMDb.
You can watch this on Directv.
After a severely injured test pilot is rebuilt with nuclear powered limbs and implants, he serves as an intelligence agent.
This show, created by Dick Moder, Lee Majors and Richard Anderson, scores 7.1 on IMDb.
You can watch this on Usa Network.