Land development projects cover a wide range of needs for our communities, thus they have a wide range of configurations. Earthwork is one of the key construction costs for land development, thus an efficient grading design is an integral part of the site civil design. Grading is also tied in directly into several other components of the site civil design such as drainage, transportation, sanitary sewer and building finished floor elevation. In addition, the grading design needs to be sensitive to the end-users of the project. The primary goal of this course is to assist planners, architects, engineers and contractors in understanding the key components of an efficient grading design using guidelines from AASHTO, Urban Land Institute, National Home Builder's Association and other public and private organizations.


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SJU Unveils Autism Break Room to Support Sports Fans with Autism
Designed and staffed by the University's nationally recognized Kinney Center for Autism Education and Support, Saint Joseph's is among the first in college athletics to offer on-site resource for individuals with autism.
The break room will provide a quiet, safe space for families, children and adults with autism, and will feature sensory-friendly items like noise cancelling headphones.
PHILADELPHIA (December 2, 2018) — Saint Joseph's University is one of the first higher education institutions to offer an Autism Break Room in an NCAA Division I athletic arena, which will be unveiled on December 2 to support individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and help make every family's game day experience positive and inclusive.
"A high-energy event, like the quintessential experience of a college basketball game, can pose challenges for people with autism. By providing a supportive break room, with trained staff and sensory-friendly items, we can ensure that all fans and families can get in on the fun," said Joseph McCleery, Ph.D., executive director of academic programs at The Kinney Center for Autism Education and Support . "Our preliminary research shows that exercise can be a powerful tool in autism treatment, so getting kids excited about sports is important."
The break room is designed and staffed by experts at the University's nationally recognized Kinney Center who also trained game-day leaders on how to best support families. Complete with sensory-friendly items such as stress balls, bean bag chairs, bounce boards, weighted blankets, noise-cancelling headphones and more, the break room will provide a quiet, safe space for families, children and adults with autism to enjoy a calm moment and take a break from the excitement of a Hawks game.
"Hagan Arena will now be an even more welcoming and inclusive environment for families and children with autism," said Jill Bodensteiner, director of athletics at Saint Joseph's University. "In light of the fact that Saint Joseph's is the home to the world class Kinney Center, we should be a leader in college athletics when it comes to integrating individuals with sensory differences into the athletics community."
The Break Room will open to the public when the Saint Joseph's women's basketball team faces rival Villanova, in a Fan Fest and Autism Awareness Game, which will feature a half-time scrimmage by participants in the Kinney Center's basketball program and family-friendly activities. More than 150 Kinney Center students and family members will attend.
The Autism Break Room will also be available at games on January 20, February 2 and March 2.
Campus & Culture
Hawks Give Back and Find Home Away From Home Through Greek Life
As Saint Joseph's Greek life prepares to kick off its spring recruitment, Amanda Market '24 spoke with two student leaders to discuss the positive impact Greek life has had on their Hawk Hill experience.
Top News Stories of 2021
Here's a look back at Saint Joseph's top stories of the year, as determined by our readers.
Holiday Gift Guide 2021: Gifts for Every Hawk in Your Life
Feeling the stress of holiday shopping? Don't worry — to help out, we've curated a list of 14 of our favorite Hawk-inspired gifts that are sure to be a hit this year.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Handmade from the finest Lucite and recycled glass, these distinctive gifts express an encompassing view of the whole planet. Available in three sizes. Pictures are not true-to-scale, please consider listed size. These items are handmade and geographically accurate. No two "Earths" are identical, some color variation should be expected. Each cube features clear rubber feet and comes packaged in a gift box. Customize these paperweights with a full color logo acetate insert or laser engraving, see options below.
call 1-877-884-2402 toll-free to order.
Move cursor over images to enlarge.


Wilma is a teacher at the school for children with extraordinary intelligence. She has assigned a project to the little boy Mark and the high school student named Sandra. Explore multiple scenes with the children and the teacher so they can find the hidden objects they need for their school project. Hidden Object Games School of Genius is one of our many Hidden Object Games that we publish on TheGamerStop.com. This game is also tagged as a Task game. Click the play button to start having fun. To play even more free games, view our popular and new games page. If you want to play more games like this, then you can simply check out the games inside the game tags that are the most relevant to your interests or the Hidden Object Games category or the games like this game page at the end of the game tags.


Sharon Drew Morgen » How do you know you're listening to your clients in the most effective way?
How do you know you're listening to your clients in the most effective way?
Listening is circular, and ends with the originating speaker receiving a message they need to respond to. There is a speaker and a listener, a message maker and a message receiver. And without a Sender and a Receiver, there is no message. Indeed, the definition of a communication includes having a sender and a receiver. In my humble opinion, listening is the most important part of a communication, because if we don't hear what is being said, there are no grounds for communication.
How do you know you are hearing what is intended for you to hear?
How do you know you are hearing all of the underlying metatmessages?
How do you know you are communicating in a way that allows your listening partner to know what you intend to convey?
How do you know you are communicating effectively?
How do you know that the message you heard was unbiased?
Think about this: who carries the responsibility of the communication – the speaker or the listener? The answer: the listener.
When you speak – pitch, lecture, teach – and you don't know if your audience hears you in the way you intend to be heard, you have no idea if you've communicated. And it's not their responsibility: they don't know what to listen for, they don't know how to manage their listening filters or biases, and they don't know what is intended.
The speaker must make sure that the listener hears what they want to convey. The biggest problem is that the listener listens through a biased filter, and filters out what they want to ignore/avoid if it runs counter to their current beliefs (Remember: people are 'systems' also, and are only comfortable managing that which agrees with the network of beliefs, rules, relationships, etc. that maintain their status quo.).
Fact: sales has focused on placing product. You will be placing product and selling AFTER the buyer recognizes and aligns all of their decision.
Fact: buyers have no idea what to do with the product data you're offering or how it will fit within their system or maintain system integrity until they do their OWN work of understanding, managing, and shifting their internal systems issues and make room for the change.
Fact: if buyers were ready, willing, and able to fix their Identified Problem they would have done so already. Something in their system is preventing them and they can take no action until they manage their underlying systems issues.
Fact: buyers don't know how to manage their internal system shifts in a way that ensures when they bring in their new fix that they'll end up happy and healthy.
Remembering these things as you begin learning about listening: you are NOT listening for how to 'get in', how to 'place product' or how to get a 'yes'. If you can listen to ways to help buyers make the decisions they need to make to choose you, and know how to ask the right questions to help them manage their internal decisions, you'll close more sales, quicker.
Sales is no longer about placing product; it's necessary to help buyers make sense of their new buying criteria, and get onto their decision teams.
Use this economy as a way to change the conversation with your prospects. Make the collabortion between you be the focus, rather than a need or product sale – they most likely can't buy now anyway.


Outstanding graphical talent must make opponents of the Naruto series despair, such is the flair which the fox spirited ninja and accomplices are realised. And the graphical flavour really excels in four player mode - if only there was more time to appreciate it. The multiplayer grapples work well with the addition of auto targeting missing from Guilty Gear and ilk that really makes it workable. The counter moves to diffuse an opposing technique also add to the tactical nous required to flourish in this ninja world. But the super specials unleash purely devastating results.


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Q: Mesh edge detection for a climbing system I'm working on a VR game, which has some climbing mechanics in it. The player will be able to grab onto edges and I want to use dynamic edge detection instead of what I'm doing right now, which is placing colliders on the edges that I want the player to be able to grab. Doing this takes a long time, and doesn't allow for any procedural mesh generation.
I know that something like this can be achived with shaders, but since they don't return any data, thats not an option. Are there any other ways I could do it? Even a way to mark the edges in the mesh instead of using colliders would be great.

A: Here's how I would do it. This is an opinionated take, not necessarily a best practice. Your mileage may vary.

*

*Forget colliders unless your levels are small. They're too expensive here. I like to use colliders for classic physics rigidbody collisions. I don't find they're always the best match for motive interactions like walking or climbing etc, esp. in Unity, and often using a collider to detect a simple line-plane intersection is overkill.

*Analyze your mesh (at runtime, say, during level load) and pull out grabbable edges/faces. Here's one way to do it. These will be navigation waypoints for your climb. Note that you have to define what constitutes a "grabbable" edge or face, which to me would mostly depend on the face orientation, which you can get from the face normal.

*If your levels are large or complex, further group those faces into a volume tree structure (oct-tree, k-d, something to help you locate edges in the vicinity).

*As the player climbs, test for intersections between the player's hand and nearby climbable faces. You may be able to rely on the player's actions here and perform your most time-consuming tests only when he "clutches" what he believes to be a climbable edge.
Under this system, climbing is essentially a mini-platformer. The hand must "jump" from one platform to another platform, enabling further vertical movement.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Q: Monitoring: detect sequence of events i need to monitor my logs and raise alerts when i detect some events. most tools supports querying for thresholds and aggregates but i can't find anything that let you detect event A within 2 minutes time-frame after event B. is it possible with kibana, grafana, graphite? maybe something else?

A: InfluxData has a tool called kapacitor that should allow you to do what you're trying to do.
To achieve what you're trying to do specifically you'll need a User Defined Function that will monitor an event stream and whenever it sees event B start a 2 minute timer that watches for event A and if event A happens pass a bool to the next node in the Kapacitor DAG that will trigger an alert if that bool is true.


With eSports continuing to grow in popularity and its fanbase increasing with every new event, sponsors and advertisers have been pushing for new ways for eSports events to be viewed throughout the UK. From television and internet, to live arena events or your local sports venue where you can enjoy a beer you're your friends while watching the action on the big screen, eSports fans have a wide range of choices when it comes to how they watch their favourite teams.
If you are an eSports fan, you might already have your favourite way of watching games but we are going to show you some more ways to watch the eSports action without missing a second of it.
Twitch is the definitive eSports viewing platform, and it streams everything from an individual trying their first MOBA up to the StarCraft 2 World Championship Series.With more than ten million daily active users, one of the primary factors for Twitch's success is its focus on fostering community through chat.
Dingit.tv, the UK-based premium highlights platform, offers eSports fans selected match highlights and uses the expertise of its community to pick out moments worth watching.
YouTube is fast becoming an eSports distribution platform with many big-name channels already available.
BBC Three has entered a partnership with London-based Gfinity to broadcast its Elite Series every Friday.
Gfinity Arena in South West London is the first dedicated eSports arena in the country.Launched in 2015, the arena seats 600 fans, and holds the Elite League, which features Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Rocket League and Street Fighter V.
The SSE Arena Wembley offers the chance to see international teams like Cloud9 compete in the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive League every summer.
Pubs such as Loading Bar in Dalston, East London, occasionally host smaller eSports tournaments of their own and dedicated eSports bar Meltdown, which has locations in North London, Sheffield also hosts tournaments of its own. Most of Meltdown's appeal comes from its community coming together to watch the biggest eSports matches together.
If you are not watching eSports on the television, live at an arena or online with a streaming service, you should get in on the action today. eSports is continuing to grow in popularity and has many fans interested in placing bets on their favourite teams to win big at their next major eSports event.


Show your Green Bay Packers pride with this 4' x 6' Green Bay Packers flag. This lightweight flag will wave with the slightest breeze when hung outdoors and makes a serious statement when displayed in your sports room indoors. Go Pack Go!
Durable and weather-resistant for outdoor/indoor use.


Elizabeth Steer was christened on 9 May 1628 in Darley . She was the daughter of Robert Steer and Elizabeth Senior?
Elizabeth died before 28 August 1639 in Darley, Derbyshire . This may be Elizabeth the daughter of John who was buried 28 July 1639 according to the published transcript.
Richard Steer was christened on 1 July 1630 in Darley . He was the son of Robert Steer and Elizabeth Senior?
Richard Steer married Joan Goodin on 15 October 1657 in Darley, Derbyshire .
In Robert Steer's will dated 13 June 1661 in Darley, Derbyshire , Richard Steer was named as heir; Robert Steer of Stancliffe in the parish of Darley, co. Derby, yeoman. Revoking all former wills. To be buried in the parish church of Darley.
Robert Steer was born in January 1590/91 in Darley, Derbyshire, England . Henrie Steare had two sonnes baptised in Januarie the one called Roger and the other Robert. He was the son of Henry Steer and Alice Unknown (Steer).
Robert Steer was also reported as having married Elizabeth Senior? on 21 November 1610 in Darley, Derbyshire .
Robert Steer married Elizabeth Senior? on 20 November 1611 in Darley, Derbyshire . Robert was a yeoman in Bridgetown & Stancliffe Hall, Darley, Derbyshire ..
Robert Steer lived at Bridgetown, Darley, Derbyshire , from 1612 to 1630. He was widowed before 16 May 1631 on the death of his wife Elizabeth Senior?.
Robert Steer of Bridgetown was listed in the Derbyshire Freeholders for 1633.
Robert Steer married secondly Dorothy Ward on 28 June 1636 in Darley, Derbyshire .
In 1655 Robert Steer purchased property in 'Stancliffe Hall', Darley , in 1655. In the 1661 Free & Voluntary Present Stanicliffe was owned by John Fullen who paid £2.
Robert Steer made a will dated 13 June 1661 in Darley, Derbyshire . Robert Steer of Stancliffe in the parish of Darley, co. Derby, yeoman. Revoking all former wills. To be buried in the parish church of Darley.
Robert died before 21 August 1661 in Darley, Derbyshire . He was buried on 21 August 1661 in Darley . Mr Robert Steer was buried the 21 day of August 1661.
His will was proved on 3 September 1661 at Lichfield Diocese . The inventory of his 'purse & apparel £10, household goods £21 and livestock £20', totalled £51. It was taken by Nicholas Ward, Richard Hosen and Ephraim Wilson. but image dated 23 Apeil 1661.
Children of Robert Steer and Elizabeth Senior?
John Steer+ b. 17 May 1618, d. b 20 Jan 1681/82?
Richard Steer+ b. 1 Jul 1630, d. b 12 Sep 1687?


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DC-Area Students Hold Anti-Gun Violence Walkouts
The walkouts come on 19th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre
By NBC Washington, Associated Press and Megan McGrath
Published Apr 20, 2018 at 7:37 AM | Updated at 4:23 PM EDT on Apr 20, 2018
Students Demand Change in New Wave of Walkouts
//www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Students-Demand-Change-in-New-Wave-of-Walkouts_Washington-DC-480418413.html
On the 19th anniversary of the Columbine shooting, students in the D.C. area marched from the White House to the U.S. Capitol to call for changes to gun laws. News4's Nicole Jacobs reports. (Published Friday, April 20, 2018)
Students in the D.C. area walked out of class Friday morning as part of a nationwide protest against gun violence. The action comes on the 19th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre.
National organizers said walkouts were planned in every state.
Locally, students gathered outside the White House at about 10 a.m. They held signs and read the names of the Columbine victims. Then, they marched toward the Capitol chanting "Enough is enough," "Our blood, your hands" and "We will vote."
The students were set to hand-deliver letters to lawmakers and rally for new gun laws outside the U.S. Capitol.
Students Walked Out of School in Protest of Gun Violence on the 19th Anniversary of the Columbine Massacre
Students around the area walked out of school in protest of gun violence Friday, the 19th anniversary of the mass shooting at Columbine.
Expect rolling road closures near Pennsylvania Avenue. The @DCPoliceTraffic Twitter alert is sharing traffic updates.
At Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School in Maryland, students placed T-shirts on fencing in honor of gun violence victims and in support of the walkouts.
In Virginia, students planned to host a voter registration drive on Brown's Island in Richmond and then march to the State Capitol for a rally that was set to include Gov. Ralph Northam and state legislators.
Up Next for Parkland Students: Town Halls, Midterms Vote
Student organizer Maxwell Nardi said the students hope to work with lawmakers to "create a unified message that we're going to fight this together."
Students nationwide participated in walkouts on March 14, a month after the Parkland shooting. Ten days later, hundreds of thousands of teens and their supporters rallied across the U.S. during March for Our Lives events.
Copyright Associated Press / NBC4 Washington


Photo of a typical embalming shack. Families who couldn't afford to pay for the embalming had their loved ones shipped home in metal caskets to preserve the bodies.
The American Civil War was the bloodiest war in US history. There were more casualties than all the other US wars since, combined. The Battle of Gettysburg which took place June 1 -3 1863 was the turning point of the war. It marked the last time General Robert E. Lee would invade the North. The first invasion was stopped at Antietam. To read about Day 1 of the Battle of Gettysburg, click here.
The first day of battle was a skirmish at McPherson's Ridge. The second day was brutal and took place on rolling hills and orchards.
By the end of the third day, between tens of thousands of Americans would be dead on the farms, hills, and orchards of the small town of Gettysburg. Fifteen hundred horses would also be dead. One report estimated 28,000 dead on the Confederate side and 25,000 on the Union. Other accounts have the numbers as high as 61,000.
On the second day of battle, most of both armies – the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia – were assembled. In the late afternoon of July 2, Lee launched a heavy assault on the Union left flank, and fierce fighting raged at Little Round Top, the Wheatfield, Devil's Den, and the Peach Orchard.
The Union launched full-scale assaults on Culp's Hill and Cemetery Hill. The Union held their lines despite all odds.
The armies had gathered through the evening of July 1- 2. By morning, there were 65,000 Confederates and 85,000 federal troops. The Union line was laid out in a defensive formation resembling a fishhook along Cemetery Ridge which ran south toward Big and Little Round Tops, a slightly more elevated position than the Confederate position along Seminary Ridge.
Hills overlooked the Union positions at either end: Culp's and Cemetery Hills on the right and Big and Little Round Tops on the left.
Lee wanted the heights taken. The opportunity Ewell had to take the hills the previous evening had passed.
Lee planned to assault from the left or southernmost end of the Union line. He planned to have Ewell assault Culp's Hill while Longstreet went after the Round Tops.
Longstreet took all morning and most of the afternoon to get into position.
The Union's 3rd Corp under General Sickels was assigned to defend against Longstreet. He spent the morning disobeying orders, shifting his men from lower Cemetery Ridge to the Peach Orchard, leaving the Round Tops and the Union's left flank entirely unprotected. Meade was infuriated and ordered him to fall back but by this time, the slow-moving Longstreet was finally ready to launch his assault. It was 4:30 in the afternoon.
Sickels was an ex-Tammany Hall politician who killed his wife's lover but got off on a plea of temporary insanity. Before the day was out, Sickels would lose his right leg.
The Confederates charged with the 15th Alabama scrambling up Big Round Top. The Confederate's Colonel Oates was at the top and realized that if he could haul guns to the summit of Little Round Top, he could blow the Federal lines apart.
Sickels was pinned down in the Peach Orchard where he was not supposed to be. General Meade sent his engineers to the summit of Little Round Top to find out what was happening.
It was being held by a handful of signalmen. The Confederates – Hood's Texans – were moving up the ravine separating Little and Big Round Top. Engineer Washington Roebling rushed down to tell General Warren that immediate action was needed.
Warren rushed reinforcements to Little Round Top. Loss of the hill could have cost the battle.
Chamberlain's orders were to hold Little Round Top "at all hazards." With 350 men he rode up the south slope, ducking behind boulders for cover. He sent the men of Company B to a hollow when Oates opened fire on them. Chamberlain believed they were all annihilated as Oates and his men rushed at them with the air filling with smoke from the constant rapid fire of the rifles.
The Maine men came back firing on the Alabamians who came at them a second time. Chamberlain fell back and reordered, firing all the while.
Chamberlain lost 130 out of 386 of his men. They were running out of ammunition. It was time to retreat or advance.
Chamberlain decided to advance. He ordered his men to fix bayonets, the right held straight and the left plunged down the hillside. The Confederates were so shocked, they retreated. Chamberlain said it all happened so quickly that one man shot at his head with one hand while handing him his sword with the other.
The Union fighters ran like a herd of cattle. One man was seen running with his throat cut by a bullet from right and rear.
The Union captured the 15th Alabama who said they were never whipped before and never wanted to meet the 20th Maine again.
Chamberlain was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Sickels was in desparate shape in the Orchard, where he didn't belong. Sickels leg was blown up at the knee during the fighting and, with his leg dangling loose, he was taken off the field smoking a cigar.
General Alexander, serving under Longstreet, drove Sickel's retreating troops back only to be met with reinforcements who counterattacked. Confederates were driven back to the Wheat Field, Devil's Den, and the Valley of Death.
The air was thick with cannon balls and the sounds of struggle were horrifying. The sound of battle still came back to haunt one private fifty years later: screaming, bursting of shells, shrapnel tearing through the masses, death screams of wounded animals, groans of the people, wounded, dying, trampled under the feet of rapidly moving lines and riderless horses.
When Union reinforcements rushed to the Wheat Field, they left a gap on Cemetery Ridge. An Alabama brigade rushed through. Hancock saw the problem and ordered one small regiment, the 1st Minnesota, to countercharge to gain a few minutes advantage at the cost of their lives. Though they knew it to be a suicide mission, the 262 men attacked the oncoming 1600 Confederates.
Only 47 of the men were unharmed with 82% of them falling in five minutes, the highest percentage of casualties taken by any Union regiment in the war.
By evening, the Union held the left and the right. Perhaps Lee would attack up the center on Day 3.
Lee declared a victory but no one really knew who won or felt like they won.


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Q: Calculating gradient in 3D I have the following set of points in 3d-space and D'd like to calculate the gradient everywhere, i.e. have a vector field returned.
points = []
for i in np.linspace(-20,20,100):
    for j in np.linspace(-20,20,100):
        points.append([i,j,i**2+j**2])
points = np.array(points)

It's an elliptic paraboloid.
Using np.gradient(points),
http://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy/reference/generated/numpy.gradient.html
I neither get the correct values nor the dimension I would expect. Can anyone give me a hint?

A: You are mixing together the indices and the values in 'points', so the gradient is giving you wrong results. Here is a better way to construct the points with numpy and calculate the gradient:
x, y = np.mgrid[-20:20:100j, -20:20:100j]
z = x**2 + y**2
grad = np.gradient(z)

The resulting gradient is a tuple with two arrays, one for the gradient on the first direction, another for the gradient on the second direction. Note that this gradient doesn't take into account the separation between points (ie, delta x and delta y), so to get the derivative you need to divide by it:
deriv = grad/(40./100.)

If you want to reconstruct your 'points' as before, you just need to do:
points = np.array([x.ravel(), y.ravel(), z.ravel()]).T

You may also be interested in numpy's diff function, that gives the discrete difference along a given axis.


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Škocjangrottorna (på slovenska Škocjanske jame) är ett system av kalkstensgrottor i regionen Karst i sydvästra Slovenien. Där finns doliner, omkring 5 kilometer underjordiska gångar, grottor som är mer än 200 meter djupa och ett antal vattenfall. Detta är en av världens mest berömda platser för att studera karstprocesser.

1986 fick Škocjangrottorna världsarvsstatus.

Beskrivning
Škocjangrottorna är, framför allt, ett naturfenomen av global betydelse, rangordnade i nivå med Grand Canyon, Stora barriärrevet, Galapagosöarna, Mount Everest och andra. Rankat som en av de mest betydande grottsystemen i världen, representerar Škocjangrottorna det mest betydelsefulla underjordiska fenomenet i både karstregionen och Slovenien. Škocjangrottorna sattes också upp på Ramsarlistan den 18 maj 1999. Tillsammans med den underjordiska floden Reka, representerar den en av de längsta karstiska underjordsvåtmarkerna i Europa.

Reka försvinner under jord vid Velika Dolina och in i Škocjangrottorna. Här flyter den sedan under jord i 34 km ut mot Adriatiska havet och dyker upp nära Monfalcone där den blir floden Timavos källa. Synen över den stora floden under regnsäsongen, då den försvinner under jord, i botten av Velika Dolina, 160 meter under marknivån, är både majestätisk och skrämmande.

Utforskningshistoria

Den första skriftkällan om Škocjangrottorna är från antiken (100-talet f.Kr) av Posidonios av Apamea och de är märkta på de äldsta publicerade kartorna av denna del av världen: exempelvis på Lazius-Ortelius karta från 1561 och i Mercators Novus Atlas från 1637. Det faktum att den franska målaren Louis-François Cassas (1782) anlitades för att måla en del landskapsvyer visar också att grottorna på 1700-talet ansågs vara den viktigaste naturliga kännemärkena i Triestes inland. Hans målningar vittnar att folk vid denna tid besökte bottnen av Velika dolina. Slovenska forskaren Janez Vajkard Valvasor beskrev Reka och dess underjordiska flöde 1689.

För att förse Trieste med dricksvatten, gjordes försök att följa den underjordiska floden. De djupa schakten i karsten utforskades liksom själva Škocjangrottorna. Den systematiska utforskningen av Škocjangrottorna påbörjades 1884 av en speleologigrupp. Utforskare nådde strandbanken till Mrtvo jezero (Döda sjön) 1890. Den senaste större prestationen var upptäckten av Tiha jama (Tysta grottan) 1904, då några lokala bybor klättrade upp för den sextio meter höga väggen i Müller Hall. Nästa stora händelse skedde sedan inte förrän 1990, nära 100 år efter upptäckten av Mrtvo jezero. Slovenska dykare lyckades simma igenom sughäverten Ledeni dihnik och upptäckte över 200 meter nya grottpassager.

Arkeologi
Från urminnes tider, har folk lockats till klyftan där floden Reka försvinner in i berget liksom den mystiska grottingången. Reka sjunker ner under en bergvägg; på dess topp ligger byn Škocjan efter vilken grottorna fått sitt namn. Škocjangrottornas regionalpark är extremt rik på arkeologiska fynd, vilket indikerar att platsen varit bebodd i mer än 10 000 år. Ett värdefulld mängd arkeologiska fynd i 'Mušja Jama' visar på influenser från den grekiska civilisationen, där ett grottempel fanns i slutet av bronsåldern och under järnåldern. Denna region var då, för tre tusen år sedan, en av de viktigaste vallfartsplatserna i Europa, särskilt i Medelhavsområdet, för kulter kopplade till livet efter detta och kommunikationen med förfädernas andar.

Turism

Det är dock svårt att avgöra när turismen till Škocjangrottorna verkligen kom igång. Enligt vissa källor,  beställde regionens styrelseordförande Matej Tominc (Tomincgrottan har fått sitt namn efter honom) 1819 att göra stegen ner till botten av Velika dolina (enligt andra källor renoverades den bara). Vid detta tillfälle, mer exakt den 1 januari 1819, introducerades en gästbok. Detta datum kan otvetydigt anses utgöra starten till den moderna turismen till Škocjangrottorna.

På senare år har grottorna haft omkring 100 000 besökare per år. Idag kan besökare se delar av den underjordiska kanjonen med sammanstörtade slukhålet Velika Dolina. Hösten 2010 kommer den första delen av grottorna - grottorna Mariničeva och Mahorčičeva med det sammanstörtade slukhålet Mala dolina.

Referenser

Externa länkar
Park Škocjanske jame (officiell webbplats, engelska versionen)
UNESCO World Heritage Centre - Škocjan Caves
UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre - Skocjan Caves

Grottor i Slovenien
Världsarv i Slovenien
Världsarv inskrivna 1986
Karstgrottor

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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All-New Charlotte Corday adventure from Keith Page, "Wonderbirds", free to read!
Home/Announcements • Charlotte Corday Projects /All-New Charlotte Corday adven …
Aug 24, 2020 John FreemanAnnouncements, Charlotte Corday ProjectsCharlotte Corday, Charlotte Corday - Wonderbirds at Your Service, Keith Page
Keith Page has been telling the story of Charlotte Corday, his time-hopping, dimension jumping adventurer for several years now, but his newspaper-styled tale, "Wonderbirds at Your Service", is surely one of his best yet.
Running over almost 70 newspaper-format episodes, published free to read on Facebook and Tapas, "Wonderbirds at Your Service" starts, somewhat curiously, with a conversation between Doctor John Dee and William Shakespeare, moving to a rather dark piece on the Thunderbirds theme – with a twist!
Also written on occasion by screenwriter Stephen Walsh and drawn by Keith Page, Charlotte Corday's many lives include a steampunk space explorer and a French detective of some sort getting involved in all sorts of arcane exploits in 1950′s London which could best be described as "Brighton Rock meets Quatermass and the Pit".
On occasion, she has been accompanied by a human-sized "Muffin the Mule" entity which had its origins in a strip Keith did for IPC's Revolver many years ago.
• Read "Charlotte Corday: Wonderbirds at Your Service" for free here on the Charlotte Corday page on Facebook
The Adventures of Charlotte Corday © 2020 Keith Page. No puppets were harmed in the making of this comic strip


3rd-year student of Computer Science at the Technical University of Lodz. Every day busy, ever-talking on the phone Chairman of the Student Government. A jack of all trades. He has a lot of work, but part of his vacation has decided to spend on his internship at MakoLab as a Project Manager. Meet him!
How did you find out about MakoLab?
In March 2017 I had the opportunity to run a scholarship grants for the best students of the Technical University of Lodz gala organized by the Technical University of Lodz Foundation. One of the people handing out the awards was Michał Hertel, as the marketing director of MakoLab later revealed. I looked through the website and decided that I would send my CV there for a holiday home.
The area of my interests is very broad. I really like Polish rap, I'm up to date with the NBA. When it comes to the activities of the Student Government, I am interested in the higher education sector. Recently I've become a Student Affairs Officer of the Polish Accreditation Commission. As a result, I can still develop my interest in higher education. I like also watching Nolan's movies.
What do you do apart from studying?
For more than a year I have been the President of the Student Government of the Technical University of Lodz. This is a very developing, yet highly absorbing occupation. I often lack the time for private life, but at the same time, I feel great satisfaction with the quality of the projects implemented by the Student Government.
What are you doing at MakoLab?
At MakoLab I am taking part in two projects. In one of them, I am Project Manager Assistant. This is a big project related to the automotive industry. The second "my" project is about developing a visual identity for the event that will take place in Łódź in late November. Besides, I'm still developing in the marketing department. I think that the experience I gained through the activity of the Student Government is very useful in my work.
Do you find yourself in what you do at MakoLab?
The tasks I am facing up to are very interesting. Working as a Project Manager is something I would like to do in the near future, but I need to gain a lot of experience to do it. At MakoLab I have a great opportunity to get it. After two months I am aware of the skills I have and what I still have to work on to be even more competent.
I met Dominik for the first time during one of the events the ICT Polska Central Cluster partnered. In fact, one of my colleagues actively participating in the Cluster introduced him to me and recommended him for an internship. And I must say that I am very grateful for this recommendation (thank you Mariusz).
Dominik was immediately thrown in at the deep end and engaged in two ongoing projects. His experience of working in Student Government was a major factor determining his approach to the tasks (deadlines were not bizarre to him, as well as great interpersonal skills such as communicativeness and ability to find solutions instead of problems). We, in turn, gave Dominik the opportunity to get acquainted with the advanced design tools we use and enter the project design model. Definitely the win-win situation.
Because the cooperation worked out very well, we extended Dominik's internship for another month. At the beginning of the new academic year, Dominik returns for the full time to study and work in the Student Government, but he knows perfectly well that the door in Mako is open to him.
Dominik, thank you and good luck!


text:
Facebook's war on ad blockers is quickly blocked
Updated August 12, 2016 — 12.49pm first published at 12.37pm
Adblock Plus is already blocking Facebook's efforts to block ad blockers from blocking ads.
Advertising is a necessary evil of the commercial internet but publishers and advertisers need to treat audiences with respect if they expect us to pay attention, considering that it's not difficult to block online ads using browser plugins like Adblock Plus.
Facebook is granting us more control over which ads we see but wants to ensure that we're not blocking them completely. Credit:AP
Most online ads are tolerable but advertisers don't do themselves any favours when they bombard us with annoying, intrusive, bandwidth-hogging, resource-sucking ads. They might think they're getting "cut through" but all they're really doing is driving more people to install ad blockers so we won't see any ads at all – punishing the entire publishing and advertising industry, even those advertisers and websites which do the right thing.
Rather than trying to win us back by promising to tone it down, some advertisers respond by making their ads even more annoying and intrusive – a vicious cycle which drives even more people to install ad blockers. These days some people also view ad blockers as a security measure, helping defend against malicious advertising infected with drive-by downloads.
Thankfully the message is starting to get through to publishers, with initiatives like Google's AMP publishing platform forcing intrusive ads to take a back seat in order to boost news article load times. Meanwhile some publishers are refusing to display articles if an ad blocker is detected, while others display the content but request you whitelist the site in your ad blocker so they can afford to pay their writers.
Facebook is also feeling the impact of desktop ad blockers, even though most people wouldn't have specifically had the social media giant in mind when they installed their ad blocker. The handful of ads displayed down the right hand side of the Facebook home page are relatively benign – you don't have to look far to find ads which are more intrusive on the user experience.
Rather than appealing to Facebook users to exempt the site from their ad blocker, Facebook has decided to go to war with ad blockers by redesigning its pages to make it more difficult for machines to distinguish between ads and other content. At the same time it improved its ad preferences tool to give us more control over the types of ads we see on Facebook.
It only took Adblock Plus two days to respond, tweaking its algorithms to weed out the advertisements on Facebook. It's still a work in progress and it occasionally blocks legitimate content, but you can be sure the cat and mouse game will continue. Facebook has already updated its page layout to block Adblock Plus' efforts to block Facebook's efforts to block ad blockers.
Rather than starting a war it can never win, Facebook should have focused on spruiking the merits of its ad preferences overhaul first – encouraging users to take control and perhaps exempt Facebook from ad blocking of their own free will.
Doing this first, and perhaps announcing it planned to overhaul its ad blocking in 30-days time, might have started a constructive conversation about ad blocking to help strike a balance between the needs of publishers, advertisers and readers. Rather than break the cycle, instead Facebook is going down the same old path which has failed again and again.
Do you use an ad blocker? Why? What does it take for you to exempt a site from your ad blocking list?
Adam Turner is an award-winning Australian technology journalist and co-host of weekly podcast Vertical Hold: Behind The Tech News.


text:
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren delivers a speech Saturday in Iowa City, Iowa. Sen. Ted Cruz argues that a question Warren wrote for President Donald Trump's impeachment trial last week actually swayed wavering Republican senators to back Trump's cause when it came to calling witnesses. (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)
Cruz: Warren's Impeachment Question Backfired and Saved Trump
By C. Douglas Golden February 2, 2020 at 9:38am
Remember all of that chatter on cable news these past few days about what would happen if the Republicans lost three senators in the vote that would decide whether to call witnesses?
Remember how Chief Justice John Roberts might have had to cast the deciding vote?
So, yes, about that chatter — it was the biggest rhetorical waste since CNN spent hours speculating what kind of Muscovite collusion the Mueller report would reveal. There will be no additional witnesses called. And, according to Sen. Ted Cruz, you can thank America's favorite crypto-socialist pseudo-Native American for that.
If you were paying attention to the question portion of the impeachment hearings (I know that's not all of you, given that most people don't need a C-SPAN sedative during the daytime hours), Sen. Elizabeth Warren — Massachusetts Democrat, 1/11th of the remaining Democrat presidential field, 1/100th of the jury that's deciding the fate of President Donald Trump and 1/1024th of a Cherokee — made a bit of splash with her written query.
The question was directed technically to the House impeachment managers, but unsubtly concerned Chief Justice Roberts — something that caused a curious bit of entertainment, given the fact that the chief justice had to read it.
"At a time when large majorities of Americans have lost faith in government, does the fact that the chief justice is presiding over an impeachment trial in which Republican senators have thus far refused to allow witnesses or evidence contribute to the loss of legitimacy of the chief justice, the Supreme Court and the Constitution?" Warren's question read, according to The Hill.
Warren asks a question about the "loss of legitimacy of the chief justice, the supreme court and the constitution."
And Roberts has to read it.#impeachment pic.twitter.com/4PK6cLlO5L
— Zach Wolf (@zbyronwolf) January 30, 2020
I'm not even sure what that was supposed to mean, especially given the fact that the only people who have questioned Roberts' impartiality are liberals who believe the only impartiality that can be shown is extreme partiality to their side.
(In fact, more conservatives seemed to get themselves worked up over Roberts' performance after he disallowed a question from Sen. Rand Paul about the suspected whistleblower — neither here nor there when it came to Warren's question, but it's still worth pointing out.)
Will Trump's impeachment hurt Democrats in November?
Yes: 98% (1954 Votes)
No: 2% (42 Votes)
Anyhow, CNN described the scene thusly: "Roberts, as part of his prescribed duties, read Warren's query from the dais. Word for word without expression."
Roberts may have been expressionless, but Cruz wasn't the only one who thought this was the turning point in the witness vote saga. The Texas Republican's description of how much of an epic fail Warren's question ended up being was among the best, though.
"Elizabeth Warren helped defeat the impeachment of the president of the United States," Cruz said during his impeachment podcast, "The Verdict," according to The Washington Times.
Cruz went on to say that Warren's "stunt helped deliver the votes of Lisa and Lamar," newspaper reported.
The explanation, according to The Times is simple:
"['T]he question seemed desired to boost Ms. Warren's struggling presidential campaign, but its immediate effect was to irk key GOP senators who realized Democrat's' strategy to prolong the trial was centered on trying to drag the chief justice ever deeper into the action," the article stated.
If you haven't been following the whole to-do over Democrats trying to line up votes to get their witnesses, Cruz was talking about Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee.
Murkowski is one of the most reliably liberal senators in the GOP caucus and has the electoral infrastructure to beat back challenges in her reliably Republican home state; in 2010, after losing the Republican primary to tea party candidate Joe Miller, Murkowski was able to mount a write-in campaign which led to a comfortable, if not considerable, 4-point victory.
Alexander, meanwhile, isn't running for re-election in 2020 and, like fellow Volunteer State retiree Bob Corker, is following a zero-cares-given philosophy. He's not as antagonistic to Trump as Corker was, but he was a potential vote for Democrats.
Only one of those senators would have been needed to force a 50-50 tie — reliable GOP Trump antagonists Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Mitt Romney of Utah had already decided they wanted to see John Bolton take the stand and give a dramatic pitch as to why you should buy his new book — which could have led to the prospect of Roberts being in a position to cast a deciding vote.
This was unlikely. Although Democratic Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York had argued that the chief justice had cast the deciding vote in the 1868 impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson, Roberts had made it clear he wouldn't insert himself into a charged political process — but the mere prospect was enough to deter Murkowski from wanting to hear from witnesses.
And beyond that, she made it clear that Warren's remarks had played into her decision.
"We have already degraded this institution for partisan political benefit, and I will not enable those who wish to pull down another," Murkowski said, according to The Washington Times.
"I will not stand for nor support that effort. We are, sadly, at a low point of division in this country."
Alexander also decided to vote against hearing witnesses, although he was always a less likely yes vote. The final vote ended up being 51-49 against.
So, in short: Have fun explaining that one to rabid Democrats in Iowa, Sen. Warren!
Knowing the true intentions of politicians is a difficult process of divination, but I'm pretty sure all the Democrats had to do was play it cool and they could persuade at least one more GOP senator not named Collins or Romney to hear their witnesses.
Colorado's Cory Gardner is a moderate who's facing a Rocky Mountain-esque uphill battle for re-election (sorry, couldn't resist) and wouldn't mind a chance to show an increasingly blue home-state electorate how bipartisan he is.
And then there's Alexander (who didn't have to care) and Murkowski (who's faced no repercussions for not caring about similar issues in the past). All you had to do is get one of them. You had one job, as the kids like to say.
Perhaps Warren's question gave Murkowski an easy way out of a predicament that she always planned to get out of anyway. In that case, why even give it to her? Or, perhaps the question really did raise the specter of a major constitutional crisis precipitated by a sitting senator running for president dragging the chief justice into the politics of impeachment.
In that case, Sen. Warren basically scuttled her party's chance of getting to call witnesses. Excellent work, there.
Whatever the case, impugning the motives of the chief justice of the Supreme Court wasn't just beyond the boundaries of good taste, although talking about that in the context of the impeachment hearing is laughable in and of itself.
It was also a decision Warren will live to regret. All her more moderate opponents have to do is point to how they were this close to hearing John Bolton trash the president in sworn Senate testimony and one ill-mannered, ill-conceived question from Warren blew it for them.
Is that true? Who knows. Does it matter? Possibly quite a bit.
Warren's chances feel like they're diminishing by the hour, but there are always opponents willing to pick at the carrion of her campaign to get votes. In this case, former Vice President Joe Biden, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar are circling above like turkey buzzards, waiting for an opportunity to strike that Warren might have just given them.
Ted Cruz is absolutely right: To the extent the deal needed to be sealed for Alexander and Murkowski, Warren helped seal it. She helped save Donald Trump.
To the extent the death warrant for Warren's campaign needed to be sealed, one guesses she did that, too.
2020 election, Cory Gardner, Democratic Primary, Donald Trump, impeachment, Joe Biden, John Bolton, Lisa Murkowski, Pete Buttigieg
C. Douglas Golden
Contributor, Commentary
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.
@CillianZeal
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014. Aside from politics, he enjoys spending time with his wife, literature (especially British comic novels and modern Japanese lit), indie rock, coffee, Formula One and football (of both American and world varieties).
American Politics, World Politics, Culture
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Swalwell Denies Ties to Suspected Chinese Spy Put Him in 'Vulnerable Position,' But Notice What He Wouldn't Say
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Our paradigm is shifting and all the wise men in their own wisdom or the wisdom of old wine still desperately cling to the past. What made sense in the old paradigm makes no sense in the new.
God is doing a work, walls are falling, structures are crumbling and the Kingdoms of men are shaking. This rolling stone of the gospel has gathered much moss and muck over the millennia and has been rolled into the mire of the world and its ways and its systems until it has become unrecognizable.
Now, God is shaking all that can be shaken. All the moss and the muck is being shaken off and only that which is pure shall be left before the shaking has ended. The world and all of its ways are like muck and it gets everywhere. You can't get near it without eventually being covered by it. Yet, the rivers of life shall wash away the muck or sweep away that which does not stand upon the foundation.
Do you move in the power of the Spirit ?
1. Knowledge of the actual presence of God.
2. Possession of the true joy of the Holy Spirit.
3. Their words now penetrated and arrested.
4. A clear sense of the reality of all things.
5. Sharp separation between the believer and the world.
6. Their new great delight in prayer.
7. Their new love for the Scriptures of God.
I would like to add a few more of my own. A love of other saints. A love of praise and worship. And so, if we run through this list, what do we find? I would argue that we would find your very average believer in the early church and as it progressed through the centuries less and less so, apart from moments and times of "revival." I wonder what these old writers that held a high view of the church make of the times in which we now love? Don't you think they would be beside themselves? Men like Sparks and Ravenhill and A.B.Simpson from the turn of the last century. Lets go through the list and as we do I want you to think how this applies to you personally and to the church where you fellowship. These are my own thoughts on the seven points Tozer raises.
1. A knowledge of the actual presence of God. In other places it is described as the manifest presence of God. It used to be written about a lot but I dont find that anymore. Christendom has been so inundated by soulish activities and music that at least a couple of generations have grown up in Christendom knowing nothing of the manifest presence of God either personally or corporately. They have never felt that holy heaviness come down from heaven and rest like dew upon their heads, quieting them, lowering their heads, raising their hands in surrender and worship, not in response to the words of a " worship leader," but in response to the very presence of God that stills their very souls and elevates them to the throne of grace where they can only whisper " Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God almighty," lest they take any attention away from a Holy God who has come down to visit. Awe and majesty and reverence accompanied by rivers of tears and a deep, deep inner sense of wholeness and all things being possible.
2. Possession of the true joy of the Holy Spirit. Now this joy is not the joy of the world or as the world knows it. It is very much related to that part of the spirit that is ever connected to the presence of God. The world's definition of joy is " a feeling of great pleasure or happiness." Yet this is not the joy of the saint. The saint's joy is not rooted in the soulish realm of feelings at all, it is an activity of the spirit which produces joy from our very relationship to the Lord. It is sensed in its greatest depths when, at least as far as the world can see, there is absolutely no reason for pleasure or happiness at all. The essence of the joy of the saint is to know that he is loved and that the Lord is with him in whatever his circumstances are, this produces an inner happiness and contentment when there should be none and it is one of the great strengths of the saints.
3. Their words now penetrated and arrested. In Acts 2 when Peter spoke to the crowd, scripture tells us that the crowd were " stabbed in their hearts." The Greek word for this phrase is Katanusso. A similar word is used when Jesus is stabbed with the spear, that word is nusso. Now Katanusso is a much more violent word than nusso. It means agitate, to thoroughly penetrate, to violently pierce. And so the Holy Spirit is showing us that there is greater violence taking place in Acts chapter two than even when the Lord was run through with a spear. The violence was to men's souls. Their hard hearts were being violently penetrated by the very words spoken under the influence of the Holy Spirit. In Acts chapter two those affected cried out " what must we do," yet just a few chapters later when Stephen is speaking with the same power, men were stabbed in the heart but gnashed their teeth and fell upon Stephen and stoned him. In either case, men were not left unmoved by the power of the Spirit speaking though the saints.
4. A clear sense of the reality of all things. To have vision, to have an eternal vision is to have a clear sense of the reality of all things. There is a reality of this world and it is powerful, it presses in on the senses and for those outside of the Spirit of God it is all-consuming. Yet there is a greater reality that lies within the saints. It is the reality of the Kingdom of God and they walk in it. Now these two realities undoubtedly compete and we as saints must be on our guard that we do not let the realities of this world overwhelm us and rob us of the realities of the Kingdom in which we truly walk. This is the battle between spirit and flesh. The clear sense of reality therefore is truly knowing that our time here is short, and knowing that we are on a narrow path that leads us to eternity and actually knowing that this eternity has already begun and we are simply in the corruptible stage and there comes the tie soon where these bodies will be raised in incorruption. When we walk in this reality, the reality of the world loses its power and we begin to see more clearly in the spiritual than we can see in the natural and the spiritual begins to dominate everything that we do.


text:
using LionFire.Collections.Concurrent;
using System;
using System.Threading;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

namespace LionFire.Execution.Jobs
{
    public class BlockerCollection
    {
        //public ValidationContext DelayBlockers { get; private set; } = new ValidationContext();

        private object _lock = new object();
        //public ConcurrentQueue<Task> BlockingTasks { get; private set; } = new ConcurrentQueue<Task>();
        //public ImmutableArray<Task> BlockingTasks { get; set; } // FUTURE: Use this instead of blockignqueues?
        public ConcurrentHashSet<object> Blockers { get; private set; }

        public ManualResetEvent ResetEvent { get; private set; } = new ManualResetEvent(false);

        public int Count => Blockers == null ? 0 : Blockers.Count;

        public void Add(object obj)
        {
            lock (_lock)
            {
                if (Blockers == null) Blockers = new ConcurrentHashSet<object>();
                Blockers.Add(obj);
            }
        }
        public void Remove(object obj)
        {
            lock (_lock)
            {
                Blockers.Remove(obj);
                if (Blockers.Count == 0) ResetEvent.Set();
                Unblocked?.Invoke();
            }
        }

        public event Action Unblocked;

        public async Task Wait()
        {
            lock (_lock)
            {
                if (Blockers == null || Blockers.Count == 0) return;
            }
            await Task.Run(() =>
            {
                ManualResetEvent re;
                do
                {
                    lock (_lock)
                    {
                        if (Blockers == null || Blockers.Count == 0) break;
                    }
                    re = ResetEvent;
                }
                while (re != null && re.WaitOne());
            });
        }
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Add 1 cup water and 1 cup granulated sugar to a small sauce pan.
Set to medium heat and stir until sugar dissolves (about 4-5 minutes). Do not boil.
Once the sugar has dissolved, remove from burner, add springs of rosemary and let sit for 45 minutes.
Syrup can be stored the refrigerator up to ten days.
Add ½ cup grapefruit juice to each glass.
Add 1 TBS of rosemary simple syrup to each glass and stir.
Top the glasses with club soda (about ½ cup per glass).
Garnish with rosemary and a grapefruit peel.
An ounce of gin or vodka can be added to each serving if desired.


The graphic below shows SOL's share price over the last number of years. And it doesnt tell a pretty picture.
The impact of oil prices and the exchange rate on SOL's results are highlighted by this paragraph from their financial results: "Sasol delivered a strong business performance across most of the value chain, with our Secunda Synfuels Operations (SSO) reporting record volumes and our Eurasian Operations delivering their highest production volumes since 2015. However, continued volatility in the macro-economic environment, particularly the stronger rand and low oil price, has adversely impacted our financial performance."
Diluted earnings per share for SOL came in at R33.27 (putting them on a PE ratio of 11.7). Their dividend for the full year amounted to R12.60 (down from R14.80 the previous financial year) placing them on a dividend yield of 3.23%. Both their PE ratio and dividend yield shows that SOL is not trading at the most demanding multiples around.
Cash generated per share amounted to close to R67 a share (a whopping R44.0billion generated in cash, although this is down from R54billion the year before). SOL has a very strong balance sheet with assets far surpassing their liabilities. In addition to this they are sitting with R29.3billion in cash and equivalents on their balance sheet (although this is far lower than the R54billion in cash the previous year). So while most of what we reported on so far is pretty positive considering their operating environment there are a few negatives.
Exploration and Production International (E&PI) division of SOL reported an operating loss of R11.7billion in 2016, in 2017 not one of SOL's divisions were loss making, which is encouraging to see.T he question for SOL is do you keep going with the Shale gas project and continue to make significant losses in the short run, in the hopes of making up the losses and more in future?
Debt to Equity Ratio: 0.49 (more than 2 shows high levels of financial leverage).
Quick Ratio: 1.20 (Another liquidity measure. Shows how much in liquid assets is available to cover current liabilities or short term debt).
Based on SOL's current financials and the oil prices, we value SOL at between R427.20 and R427.50.
We therefore feel SOL is offering long term investors a great buying opportunity at its current price. At our valuation SOL will trade at a PE of 12.7 and a dividend yield of 2 .9%. With oil prices stabilising and looking like its reached its bottom, we feel SOL's future looks a lot brighter than it did 18months ago.


A spin-off of Alexander Wang's high-end line, T by Alexander Wang distills the designer's signature downtown cool into effortlessly hip basics. Made from a cotton blend, this navy blue T-shirt has a round neck, short sleeves and a relaxed fit, and it features contrasting white panels at the neckline and shoulders.
Blue and white linen blend striped cutout T-shirt from T By Alexander Wang featuring a round neck and short sleeves.
T By Alexander Wang High Twist Ruched Cropped T-shirt - Pale blue cotton high twist ruched cropped T-shirt from T By Alexander Wang featuring a ruched detail, adjustable length and high v neckline. Material:Cotton.
Alexander Wang effortlessly mixes classic elegance with NYC downtown cool. This navy oversized logo T-shirt features a round neck, short sleeves, a straight hem and front patch detailing.
Pale blue cotton high twist ruched cropped T-shirt from T By Alexander Wang featuring a ruched detail, adjustable length and high v neckline.
Alexander Wang effortlessly mixes classic elegance with NYC downtown cool. These palazzo trousers from Alexander Wang feature an elasticated waistband, a wide leg, side seam pockets and a back welt pocket.


Fitbit has been crunching the numbers on the data it gets from its users, now 50 million strong across 65 countries. And in the spirit of healthy competition, the fitness tracker maker has released rankings of Fittest Countries and Fittest Cities in America.
The lists are based on anonymous data from 23.2 million Fitbit wearers from 2016, specifically average daily steps, active minutes, Reminders to Move goals met as well as resting heart rate and duration of sleep. The take away? We should all be living more like the Irish.
Ireland tops the overall Fittest Countries list with the UK in second, followed by Sweden, the Netherlands and Switzerland. As Fitbit itself points out in the headline findings, the US is way down in 28th position overall.
Top of the sleep rankings is the UK where Fitbit users get an average of seven hours and 14 minutes of sleep a night. The rest of that top ten is made up of other European countries and New Zealand and if just over seven hours is the best we can do, we'd recommend a nap asap for the rest of the world.
When it comes to breaking out steps on their own, Spain actually topped that chart with an average of 9,023 steps a day, followed by Switzerland, Hong Kong, Sweden and New Zealand. We bet Spanish Fitbit users are kicking themselves at being so close to that default 10,000 steps a day target. Still, Spain is also the most active in terms of minutes, with an average of 27.9 minutes a day.
Check out all the Fittest Countries charts here to see how your country stacks up against the rest of the world.
Fitbit also totted up averages for the Fittest US cities with Duluth, Minnesota coming first and the Mid West as a whole doing very well. The top five was rounded out by Appleton, Wisconsin; Eau Claire, Wisconsin; Boulder, Colorado and Bellingham, Washington.
The Fitbit wearing residents of Eau Claire get the most sleep - 7 hours 6 minutes - and Appleton's 8,208 steps a day was enough to clinch it the most steps title. The most active city was Boulder with 21.8 minutes, followed by NYC. This time the analysis was based on 10 million users and again it was based on a full picture of their health tracking.
How do you feel about the Fitbit rankings? Where does your country or city feature? Let us know in the comments below.


AREA 1 - Harbor and Newport boulevards: A suspicious person was reported at 2:27 p.m. Friday.
Harbor Boulevard: A commercial burglary was reported in the 2200 block at 1:26 p.m. Friday.
Elden Avenue: A commercial burglary was reported in the 2300 block at 2:33 p.m. Friday.
Harbor Boulevard: A petty theft was reported in the 2200 block at 5:45 p.m. Friday.
South Coast Drive: A residential burglary was reported in the 1000 block at 4:07 a.m. Friday.
Del Mar Avenue: A vehicle was reported burglarized in the 200 block at 5:26 a.m. Friday.
Santo Tomas Street: A suspicious person was reported in the 200 block at 8:32 a.m. Friday.
Newport Boulevard: A petty theft was reported in the 1900 block at 1:22 p.m. Friday.
West Coast Highway: A suspicious person was reported in the 700 block at 12:54 a.m. Saturday.
Seashore Drive: A suspicious person was reported in the 5900 block at 1:55 a.m. Saturday.
Cliff Drive: A suspicious vehicle was reported in the 1100 block at 4:11 p.m. Saturday.
MacArthur Boulevard: A suspicious vehicle was reported in 4600 block at 3:23 a.m. Saturday.
Bristol Street and Irvine Avenue: A suspicious person was reported at 3:33 a.m. Saturday.
Marguerite Avenue and East Coast Highway: A traffic collision was reported at 1:57 a.m. Saturday.
Ocean Boulevard and Marigold Avenue: A suspicious vehicle was reported at 2:29 a.m. Saturday.


text:
Open Letter to the City of Regina
Open Letter to City of Regina Mayor and Councillors
Letter of Support for a City of Regina Ratified Goal of 100% Renewable by 2050
City of Regina
Offices of Mayor and Councillors
Mayor Sandra Masters, and Councillors of the City of Regina: Cheryl Stadnichuk, Bob Hawkins, Andrew Stevens, Lori Bresciani, John Findura, Dan LeBlanc, Terina Shaw, Shanon Zachidniak, Jason Mancinelli, Landon Mohl
RE: City of Regina -Ratified Goal of 100% Renewable by 2050
Dear Mayor Masters and Members of Regina City Council,
We still remember attending that historic meeting in October, 2018, when Council voted to make Regina 100% renewable by 2050. Many of our organizations addressed Council that day and pledged our support to help Regina reach that goal. However, up until the civic election last fall, we were quite frustrated with the lack of momentum generated towards this goal. This was especially frustrating given the lack of movement on Councillor Bob Hawkins amendment, that asked for four new, concrete actions by 2023.
Yet, we remain optimistic. With the election of a new mayor and council this past fall we sense that there is a shift towards policies which will take our city in the direction of the goal of being 100% renewable by 2050. We want to say that we support and encourage this shift.
During Mayor Masters' candidacy she shared the following regarding the Renewable Regina goal:
"As a city we must act swiftly. And if we don't, as we have seen in other jurisdictions, it will be forced upon us.
This is not going to be an optional thing."
"There are industries to be developed and there are jobs to be had in green initiatives."
"We need a focused and regionally tailored approach."
"The idea is building consensus."
"There's jobs in it, there's a better climate in it... and the City of Regina needs to do its part... and I don't know why we can't lead in it."
We, the undersigned, are committed to helping the Regina Mayor and City Council to act swiftly with a focused and regionally tailored approach. Our goal is to build consensus and help the public and decision-makers understand the great economic and environmental opportunities that are to be gained if we support renewable energy and energy efficiency initiatives. As part of our commitment, in the coming months we are planning to offer specific, policy suggestions that could best help the City reach its goal.
Consider this our commitment to you. That we are with you in what is probably Regina's most ambitious and energizing mandate. Like Mayor Masters, we, the undersigned, believe that our city can lead in this way, given the huge renewable energy potential in our region.
Josh Campbell, Wascana Solar Co-op
Yvette Crane, Regina Blue Dot Group
Matt Pointer, Saskatchewan Electric Vehicle Association
Jim Elliot, Council of Canadians, Regina
Maureen Hout, EnviroCollective
CKRM Radio Article
It's Go Time
Let's Champion Solar Power


There is often an assumption that everyone knows the general mechanics of domino games and they can be omitted from any of the rule books. The statements given here are general and there are countless exceptions to them. Indeed, a lot of domino games are more a matter of folklore and local conventions instead of firm written international standards.
When a domino game is played, the players arrange themselves in a circle around a horizontal surface on which the tiles will be played. This surface is called the "table" although any flat surface can be used. The players face inwards, and are approximately evenly spaced (so that they cannot see each other's tiles).
A domino game is played with a set of tiles intended for that game. The set of tiles consists of a fixed number of pieces known as tiles. The tiles in a domino set are identical in size and shape. Each tile has two sides, the face and the back. The backs of the tiles in a domino set are indistinguishable. The faces of the tiles in a domino set are unique and divided into two halves. The set of tiles that make up the domino set will be known to all of the players using that domino set.
The halves of the tiles belong to suits which are shown by zero to (n) spots or pips drilled or painted on the halves of the tiles. The spots are usually arranged in a symmetric pattern. The most common value for (n) is 6, then 9, then 12 and 15.
The tiles have all possible permutations (not combinations!) of the number zero to (n) represented in their faces.
counterclockwise for South and East Europe and Asia, also for Swiss games.
One player or all the players mix the tiles face down on the table top until the players are agreed that the tiles are in a random order. During the shuffle, no player is allowed to look at the faces of the tiles. It is dishonest to try to see tiles as they are dealt, or to take advantage of having seen a tile accidentally. Shuffling should continue until the chance of a tile remaining next to the one that was originally next to is small. In practice, many players do not shuffle for long enough to achieve this.
After the shuffle, either the dealer distributes tiles to all the players or each player takes turns drawing one or more tiles from the pile in the center of the table. The set of tiles dealt to a player is known as their hand. The remaining tiles, if any, are known as the boneyard. The tiles in the boneyard are left face down and pushed to one side of the table to leave the center of the table clear for play.
When the deal is complete, all players pick up their tiles and hold or arrange them in such a way that the faces can be seen by the holder of the tiles but not the other players. The most common method is to set the tiles on their edges in a semi-circle which faces the player. Another common method is to use a tile rack made for this purpose. Finally, people with large hands can simply pick up their hand and hold it with their fingers.
Connecting games are the most common domino games. Lines of tiles are formed starting in the center of the table by placing the tiles end to end or end to edge according to the rules of the game. The most common convention is that the ends be in the same suit.
Since the lines or trains can get longer than the table is wide, the train can be bent and turned to avoid falling off the table. In games which use larger domino sets, some players allow the tiles to be stacked on top of each other.
In capture games, each player places tiles face up on the table and also removes (captures) tiles from the table according to the rules of the game. The captured tiles are kept by the player, usually in front of himself, and then scored in some manner.
Capture games can either be trick taking games or tableau games. In trick taking games, the arrangement of the tiles on the table does not matter. The right to capture tiles is determined by the face of the tiels alone.
In tableau games, the arrangement does matter and determines which tiles can be captured. These games are very often solitaires with the goal of capturing all the tiles.
One of the players, specified by the rules of the game, leads (plays the first tile) to a trick by playing a tile from their hand. She chooses a tile from their hand, and places it face upwards near the center of the table. The other players in turn, in the direction of play (clockwise or counterclockwise, as specified for that game) each play a tile to the trick, until each player has played one tile. The tiles played to the trick are all played face upwards on the table where they can be seen by all the players. Once a player has played a tile to a trick, she may not change their mind and substitute a different tile. A player who cannot see a tile in the trick may demand that it be made visible to their. A player who does not know which tile has been contributed by which player may demand this information.
There are frequently restrictions on which tiles a player is permitted to play to a trick. Such restrictions commonly depend on the tile led (first played) to the trick, and may depend on tiles subsequently played. Some common sets of such restrictions are described under following suit.
When the trick is complete (i.e. each player has played one tile to it) the players will observe who has won it. The winner of a trick is commonly the player who played the highest trump to it; or if there is no trump in it (or the game is one without trumps), then the highest tile of the suit led. The "suit led" means the suit to which the tile led to the trick belongs.
The winner of a trick takes it, straightens it up so as to form a tidy packet, and places it face downwards in front of their. Its contents may not subsequently be inspected. In games which are concerned with the number of tricks won, a player who has won several tricks arranges them so as to make it obvious how many she has won. If two or more players are playing together with a common objective, they may keep the tricks that they have won together: they should still be arranged so that they can be counted.
The player to lead to the first trick may be forehand; or may be determined by the bidding. The winner of a trick leads to the next trick. If the winner of a trick is unable to lead to the next trick, having for some reason no tiles left, the lead passes around the table in the usual direction of play to the next player who is able to lead.
During the play of tricks, known as the play of the hand, the players ensure that they do not allow other to see their tiles. It is generally against a player's interest to allow their opponents to see their tiles. It is cheating to allow their partner(s) to see their tiles. In either case, it is not permitted. The tiles already played to the current trick, and no others, should be clearly visible.
Players should do nothing, by word, expression or gesture, to indicate or imply anything about the tiles which they hold or the view which they take of any play.
It sometimes happens that a trick is completed, and turned face downwards, before all the players have clearly seen all the tiles in it. Before the lead to the next trick, any player may demand to see such a trick.
In trick-taking games, the tricks continue one after another with the players' hands getting smaller and smaller. If all the players started with hands of the same size, they should all play their last tile to the same trick. The hand is then over (note that this is a different sense of hand from the set of tiles held by a player at the start of play). As the players have no choice about which tile to play to the last trick of a hand, it is common practice for it to be played rapidly, without the players waiting for their turns.
There are many infractions of the rules which are possible during the play of a hand. Two of the more frequent are the play of a tile by a player whose turn it is not, and the accidental exposure of a tile. These may be ignored if they bring no disadvantage to any other player.
Another frequent contravention is the play of a tile contrary to the rule of following suit. This is normally treated more seriously. It is known as a revoke (to be distinguished from a renounce, which is a legal failure to follow suit, there being no tile of the required suit in the player's hand).
In many games, the official rules specifying the penalties for various infractions occupy more pages than the rules specifying how to play correctly. This is tedious, but necessary for games that are played seriously. Such penalties for infractions are generally omitted from the Web pages at this site: if you intend to play a domino game at a high level, you should make sure before beginning that you agree on the penalties to be used. When playing privately, this will normally be a question of agreeing house rules. In a tournament there will probably be a tournament director who will enforce the rules when required and arbitrate in cases of doubt.
In most trick-taking games, each player is obliged to try to follow suit, if possible. This means that when it is a player's turn to play, she must, if possible, play a tile of the same suit as the tile led to the trick. If she is unable to do so, having no such tiles, she may play any tile.
In many trick-taking games, one of the suits is known as trumps. The trump suit has the special property that all trump tiles, however small, beat all tiles of the other suits. Therefore if a trick contains trumps, it is won by the highest trump played to it, ignoring any other tiles played. Only if a trick contains no trump, it is won by the highest tile of the suit led to it.
In games which involve a trump suit, the rules about following suit can be more complicated, because these rules determines when it is possible to play a trump. A system of describing rules about following suit and playing trumps in card games has been devised by David Parlett, and is given in his book A HISTORY OF CARD GAMES (Oxford University Press, 1991).


The public are being asked to consult for a third time on the plans which aim to eventually improve connections by train between East Anglia, central, southern and western England. Changes to the East West Rail project as outlined in the National Infrastructure Commission report (read it here) to connect Oxford - Milton Keynes - Cambridge are back under the microscope.
The latest changes look at the construction process, when and where depots will be created and construction vehicle routes.
Network Rail's project director for East West Rail Dominic Baldwin urged anyone 'with an interest in the railway' to make their voices heard.
The plans will be on show at the sports and social club in Bicester Road, Launton, on Friday. The consultation ends on February 9.


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Freedom Online
FG summons Indonesian Ambassador over planned execution of more Nigerians
Gabriel Akinadewo
The Federal Government, on Monday, summoned the Indonesian Ambassador, Mr Harry Purwato, over the country's planned execution of more Nigerians by firing squad for drug-related offences.
Ambassador Danjuma Sheni, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said at a meeting with the envoy in Abuja that the death sentences should be converted to life imprisonment.
He told the envoy to speak with his home government to tamper justice with mercy in order not to allow anything to jeopardise the "very robust and excellent relationship" between Indonesia and Nigeria.
"Your Excellency, I have been asked to summon you to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to appeal to you to talk to your government about the proposed execution of three Nigerians, who are currently on the death row in your country.
"As you know, your country and Nigeria have a very robust and excellent relationship and we do not intend that anything should happen to our relationship.
"We, in this context, are very aware of the consequences of drug trafficking in your country, but we still want to put it on record and we still want to appeal to you and to your President to tamper justice with mercy.
"We understand that the three condemned Nigerians have gone through the judicial processes and their appeals to the President have been turned down.
"We also understand, particularly, that one of them, Mr Salami, had been moved to an Island and that any moment from now, he may be executed.
"We want to appeal to you and through you to your government that this death sentence that may be carried out on Mr Salami any moment from now should be converted to life imprisonment."
The permanent secretary also appealed to the Indonesian envoy to fast-track the completion of the ongoing exchange of prisoners' negotiation between the two countries.
According to him, when completed, Nigerians serving various prison terms in Indonesia will have the opportunity to serve their sentences in Nigeria.
"I am also to use this occasion, your Excellency, to appeal to you on the need to quickly complete the ongoing exchange of prisoners negotiation that we have with your country.
"We wish that this be completed on time so that our nationals, who may be caught up there, would have the opportunity to serve their sentences in Nigeria.
"Some of our nationals are not on death row; they are in there for some other alleged crimes and we would wish that those who are willing and who wish to, would serve their sentences in Nigeria.
"So, it is our wish as a country that we should complete this process immediately so that our nationals would avail themselves of that opportunity.
"Ambassador, we want to thank you coming in here but these are the words that my government has asked me to convey to you and through you to your own government."
Responding, Purwato acknowledged the robust nature of the relationship between his country and Nigeria, and explained that the trial of the Nigerians was done transparently.
He said foreigners travelling to Indonesia were usually informed in advance that trafficking in narcotics attracted the death penalty.
The envoy said that all the legal processes available to the convicts had been exhausted, adding, however, that he would deliver the Federal Government's message to his home government.
He said: "Indonesians attach great importance to their relations with Nigerians and we also like to further our excellent relations in things that can be felt directly by the people of these two countries.
"As you rightly said, permanent secretary, the death penalty in Indonesia is actually done in transparent, credible and accountable manner.
"We do apply these executions to those who are adults and we do not apply to children, pregnant women or mentally ill persons.
"Executions are done after strict and transparent due process of law by which also we know that it would have already passed the district, appellate and Supreme Courts."
Purwato explained that the request for clemency by the Nigerians on death row had been rejected.
According to him, the Indonesian government usually allows the embassies of nationals on trial for drug-related offences to be involved from the beginning to the end of all cases.
The Federal Government had in January, summoned the ambassador following the execution of two Nigerians by firing squad for drug offences.
Preparations are in top gear for the execution by firing squad of one Raheem Agbaje Salami and two other Nigerians convicted of drug smuggling.
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