text:
Mitt Romney: 'Romney's Big Day Marred by Etch A Sketch Remark'
Source:CNN- Ann Romney vs Rick Santorum on CNN.
"Mitt Romney picked up a highly prized endorsement Wednesday from former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush after a convincing victory the night before in the Illinois primary but then saw a top adviser's televised comment provide new ammunition to his trailing rivals in the Republican presidential race.
Eric Fehrnstrom, Romney's senior campaign adviser, was asked in a CNN interview Wednesday morning whether the former Massachusetts governor had been forced to adopt conservative positions in the rugged race that could hurt his standing with moderates in November's general election.
"I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes," Fehrnstrom responded. "It's almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up, and we start all over again."
From CNN
"For a candidate who has spent months battling the title of "flip-flopper," perhaps the last thing he would want associated with his name is an Etch A Sketch, those do-over drawing boards that let you shake your scribbles away with the flick of a wrist.
Unfortunately Mitt Romney won't be able to shake away this comparison any time soon. When his campaign spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom was asked this morning on CNN how the GOP frontrunner would make the pivot to the general election, Fehrnstrom compared Romney's primary campaign to an Etch A Sketch, a gaffe that spread like wildfire to Romney's rival's stump speeches."
Source:ABC News- 2012 Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum.
From ABC News
A President Mitt Romney and I doubt this would ever happen, but if it did it would be better for comedians. Because he's a gaffe and flip-flopping machine, that would provide comedians and bloggers mountains of material to make fun of him.
Every comedian in America should endorse Mitt Romney for president for their own careers. Because they would make all the material they had against George W. Bush look as original as the New York Yankees winning the World Series, or Lebron James playing in the NBA Finals and losing. Because when it comes to taking political positions for Mitt, it depends on which group he's talking to and which Mitt is speaking to that group.
Businessman Mitt, religious fundamentalist Mitt, or whoever Mitt is when he's not running for whatever political office he's interested in at the time.
The fact that someone like Mitt Romney who flips backs and forth more often than tennis balls at a tennis match, could win the Republican nomination for president, is like a quarterback winning the starting position for an expansion team: "Since no one else seriously tried out and you haven't done any time in any mental institutions and don't see same-sex marriage as a threat national security, we'll give the job to you. And good luck to you as we're more interested in 2016 anyway. When we might have at least on candidate who can actually win."
Mitt Romney won the GOP presidential nomination, because he seemed like the only person who was sane to the GOP establishment and would embarrass them the least and not cost them the House of Representatives. Which they can't afford to lose in 2012.
So yeah, a President Mitt Romney (I'm shitting bricks just saying that) would have been great for comedy and blogging interesting. Especially bloggers who right comedy and I'm one of them. But bad for the American people, because for them to have any idea what their President thinks about any issue, they would have to listen and read every single he says. Because his positions could change the next time he opens his mouth about anything depending on who he's talking too. And what the polls in the Republican Party are saying.
President Romney Senior Adviser- "Aw Mr. President, your current position on that issue is not popular."
President Romney- "Okay, I'll change it."
Senior Adviser- "But you just took that position yesterday."
"Romney- "So what! I'm speaking to Americans. Their memories aren't that long anyway."
That is what a President Romney would be like. Who knows what the President, because he doesn't even know. Great for comedy, but bad for the country.
Posted by Derik Schneider at 1:19 AM No comments:
Labels: Current Affairs, Derik Schneider, The Daily Journal
Sky News: Cesar Millan- 'Dog Whisperer, Rejects Cruelty Claims'
Source:Sky News- Dog Whisperer Cesar Millan.
"Dog whisperer Cesar Millan has defended himself against claims that he is cruel to animals.
The allegations were made recently in a TV interview with presenter Alan Titchmarsh after tweeting animal-lover critics said the Mexican-born trainer used violence and even electric shocks to train the dogs.
But, Millan told Sky News, he made physical contact with the dog to distract the dog from the action it was about to take - for instance, stop the dog from going into fighting mode."
From Sky News
Dogs, are similar to humans in this sense, that they have to get to know you and trust that you aren't there to hurt them, before they will open up to you and trust you. And once you accomplish that and you know how to approach them, they'll love you.
I have a hard time buying (and not because money is tight) that Cesar Milan abuses dogs or any other pets. Of course he could be an Oscar caliber actor on his show and that his show is nothing but an act. And that while he pretends to be this great animal psychologist on TV, in his free time he beats dogs and cats with a whip for the hell of it, or to take out on his anger at whatever is pissing off at the time. I just don't see that.
He reminds me of the great adolescent phycologist who works with lets say troubled urban high school students who grow up in rough neighborhoods. Where their father is not around and if their mother works at all, she works two low-income jobs just to support her kids and doesn't have the time to look after them during the day. But this great teacher or psychologist who is probably a former Marine, or something comes in and teaches these kids how to behave and get with the program. And how important school is to their future and all of that.
It's hard to imagine someone like Cesar Millan as a bullshit artist, who talks a great game in public, but in private is just as bad as the assholes that he has turned around made productive people out of.
Cesar Milan, at least to me, seems like that guy you want to have around when your dog doesn't know how to behave, or has no interest in behaving and you've tried everything else that you can think of. And you're just desperate, so you go on national TV and bring your home problems to the public. (Talk about desperation) So you bring in the Dog Whisperer to teach your dog how to behave and become a responsible member of the family. How to respond to their parents and other family members. Respond to commands, how to behave on walks, even how to go to the bathroom and anything else.
I have a hard time believing that someone like Cesar Millan, who clearly loves dogs and has such great skill at training them, would in private be abusive to them and perhaps even criminal.
Labels: Ederik Schneider, Life, Real Life Journal
Slate: 'Romney Boys Can't Contain Their Obama Debate Anger'
Source:Slate Magazine- Meet the Romney Family.
"The exchanges weren't the only things getting heated at Tuesday night's presidential debate. Two of Mitt Romney's sons got a little hot under the collar watching their dad spar with the president.
Asked on a radio how he felt when Obama called his dad a liar, Romney's eldest son Tagg said he wanted to "rush down to the stage and take a swing at him." Tagg also took issue with the president's campaign trying "to do everything they can to turn my dad into someone he's not," which seems like a tall order considering Romney himself has a habit of shifting where he stands.
The Romney sons' aggression didn't stop there: Tagg's brother, Josh, was seen giving the president a death stare during the debate, and that spawned a mini-meme. Menacing maybe, but hardly enough for the Secret Service to get involved."
From Slate Magazine
Not the most loving and respectful men of the presidency. The Romney Boys, they seem more like thugs working for their father. They seem to want to do what their father other than in the first presidential debate what their father couldn't do, which is to beat up President Obama, or at least beat him somewhere.
I mean Mitt, clearly wins the first debate and is still clearly trailing the President in the Electoral College, despite now being neck-in-neck with the President in the popular vote. Mitt, doesn't look like a winner right now, but someone whose trying to find any place where he can win. So he's not the Mike Dukakis of the GOP. Someone who badly loses a presidential election that he should have won.
It's hard to hear negative facts about your father especially in a political campaign. Especially when those facts are about one's lack of experience, knowledge, judgement, honesty, and even credibility. The Romney Sons, might know who Dad is, but the problem is their Dad won't let the rest of the country know. Because he keeps turning into someone else depending on what office he's running for, what year he's running and the people he feels he needs to have supporting him.
Mitt is Moderate Mitt in Massachusetts, he's Religious Conservative Mitt in 2007 when he's going for the Christian-Right in Iowa and South Carolina. And now he's the businessman with results, even though as Governor of Massachusetts, he had a weak jobs record. And laid off a lot of people as a businessman.
Who is Mitt Romney and what do you believe in? Would be my question to him if I ever interviewed him. But I would be carrying a whole notepad of paper, or perhaps my laptop waiting for ten different answers to the same questions. As he's telling us every different position he has on the same issue. And doing that for each issue.
Americans are funny this way in that we like our presidential candidates to tell us who they are and what they believe with some consistency before we decide who we're going to vote for, not after. I guess we're just stubborn that way and don't have much faith in coin flipping when it comes to choosing our political leaders. But we're into finger flipping when it comes to political leaders that we don't like. As Mitt knows all too well right now.
Posted by Erik Schneider at 3:56 AM No comments:
Labels: Erik Schneider, Slate, The Daily Press
Slate Magazine: Mitt Romney- 'Binders Full of Women Meme to Take Over The World'
Source:Slate Magazine- does Mitt Romney have binders full of Hillary Clinton?
"The most substantive moments of last night's presidential debate may have been President Obama and Mitt Romney's heated exchanges over Libya and energy policy. But the Internet has its own favorite: Romney's pronouncement that he was given "binders full of women" to fill jobs in his cabinet when he was governor of Massachusetts. That came in response to a question about the glass ceiling and gender bias in pay.
Before the debate even ended, a meme had sprouted on social media. Within minutes, a Tumblr account appeared, with crowd-sourced parody images that included Hillary Clinton, an '80s teen idol, and Beyoncé. By this morning, the Facebook community "Binders Full of Women" had more than 250,000 members.
In a debate full of curious phrasing, why did Romney's binders comment stand out? Slate's Amanda Marcotte wrote that the inelegant phrase resonated because it underlined Romney's "utter unwillingness to address the true causes of inequality."
Is Mitt Romney capable of getting through an appearance, debate or otherwise, without making a gaffe? Or maybe these so-called gaffes aren't gaffes and he actually believes in this, let's say garbage and it just slipped out. Does Mitt even at this point where he's clearly trailing in big Republican states like Florida, Virginia and Ohio (where he needs to win at least two of those states in order to win the presidency) even want to be president? Or is he writing a new book, perhaps political manual on how not to run for president if you want to win. The title of the book actually being: "Mitt Romney's: How Not to Run For President." Maybe he's hoping he can get Congress even with a Democratic Senate in it, to repeal the 19th Amendment that guarantees all American women the right to vote. And with that he wouldn't have to bother campaigning for female voters.
I imagine when it comes to life in general and in business, Mitt Romney is a tall, handsome, young-looking (for a Baby Boomer) intelligent, good man. But when it comes to politics, he must have slept in when God was handing out political brains. I haven't seen a national politician this weak when it comes to appealing to average voters since George H.W. Bush in 1992. When he didn't know the price of milk and his own Vice President miss spells potato. And this is probably because President Bush hadn't been to a grocery store and bought his own groceries in over twenty-years at that point.
If I'm a woman (and no I'm not looking for a sex change) am I supposed to feel good about Mitt Romney's "binders full of women"? Or should I take that as a guy who probably watches too much Cinemax late at night, because he can't sleep, because from all the coffee he drinks on the campaign trail?
As a presidential candidate, Mitt Romney is a gunslinger who always has his gun pointed at his feet and forgets turn the safety off. I don't know how the man walks around anymore having shot off so many of his own toes. He barely beats a man who wants to take America back to 1955 in a national time machine where women weren't supposed to work and perhaps even vote. Where gays were locked in prison cells and mental institutions, as well as closets. That being Rick Santorum of course and is now running against a President who struggles to hit fifty-percent when it comes to his own popularity. With high unemployment and weak economic growth.
Mitt finds himself trailing in several big Republican states that he has to win, to a President who struggles to get to 50% approval. I mean is Mitt Romney really all the Republican Party has to offer for president? And is this the best they have?
VH1: Cher- If I Could Turn Back Time: Live at VH1 Divas (1999)
Source:VH1- Cher, performing at VH1 Divas in 1999.
"Cher - If I Could Turn Back Time 1999 Live Video | Cher video... Originally from VH1, but the video has since been deleted or blocked on YouTube.
The only Cher song that I like and perhaps because of the candor in it. A song about regret and I think it was about her relationship with Sunny Bono, a great classic rock song.
This performance was part of VH1's Divas series that they did annually in the late 1990s and early 2000s. No idea if they still do that, but Cher whatever you think of her certainly qualifies as a diva. Great voice, great personality, great body, certainly very entertaining. And she's lived a hell of a life and with comes with that comes a lot of regret.
Things you wish you shouldn't have said and done and perhaps got caught up in the moment and took out your anger on someone. "If I Could Turn Back Time", again great song, but it is sort of like saying: "If only I owned a helicopter, I would be able to avoid rush hour traffic everyday." People aren't tested by what they would have changed if they could go back. You learn from mistakes and then move on.
We are all tested by how we react and carry ourselves in the moment. The better we do in real-time, the fewer mistakes that we'll make as we move on.
Labels: Action, Ederik Schneider, Real Life Journal
Reason Magazine: Lisa Kennedy- 'The Cast of Atlas Shrugged Part II Talks Film's Impact'
Source:Reason Magazine- talking about Atlas Shrugged the movie.
"The book was incredibly informative for me," says actress Samantha Mathis who plays Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged Part II, "in terms of figuring out [Dagny's] backstory and where she came from, and why she believed what she believed, and what her relationships were."
ReasonTV correspondent Kennedy spoke with Mathis and other cast members at the film's Hollywood Premiere on Oct. 5 to find out how they connected with their characters and the themes portrayed in the movie.
Atlas Shrugged Part II, the second of three films based on Ayn Rand's controversial 1957 novel, hits theaters nationwide on Friday, October 12, 2012. (For more information on the film, go to:Atlas Shrugged Movie."
Atlas Shrugged (written by Ayn Rand) reminds me of someone who I guess knows the world is about to explode and they're going to die anyway and basically says: "What the hell, I have nothing to lose at this point. I can do whatever I want, because I'm going to die anyway. So thats exactly what I'm going to do." The world is literally on fire and I'm writer and I can write anything I want. Because no one is going to read it anyway. And even if someone does read it, no one is going to remember it, because everyone is going to be dead."
Atlas Shrugged, is a complete and total fantasy with really no base in reality in it. And looks like something that was written by someone who perhaps had months to live, who was a writer and decides to write whatever they want at this point. With no editor to answer to, because no one is going to read it anyway.
Atlas Shrugged, is essentially a fantasy about what can happen when the private sector and a capitalist economy is regulated. It's not about what can happen when a developed, or highly developing country with a strongly growing an educated middle class, where poverty is shrinking, is taken over by Marxist revolutionaries, that decides to outlaw political parties, private property, starts detaining people who oppose them and nationalizes industries. We already know that story because we've seen it before. Lebanon comes to mind and perhaps you could make a case for Cuba as well. That would be a good book and movie and it would sell well if was done right.
Atlas Shrugged (written by Ayn Rand in 1957) there hasn't been an example of a regulated private enterprise economy that has collapsed just because it is regulated, since that book was written.
Atlas Shrugged, which I'm sure is very clever and well-done and written by Ayn Rand, that shouldn't be a surprise. But as a movie it sounds like bad sci-fi movie from the Sci-Fi Channel. Every developed country in the world operates under some form of rule of law. That government is not there to tell people who to live their own lives and control our movement's, or anything like that.
There isn't a single developed country in the world that is a Marxist state, or some type of authoritarian state from the Far-Right. But all developed countries do regulate how people interact with each other and regulate the economy. Not to run business's, but to protect customer's and workers.
Economies can be over regulated and when that happens they struggle. But they all have some type of regulatory state that is there to protect workers and consumers from predators. And Ayn Rand lived in a great developed country like that for a very long time, that being America.
Mitt Romney: 'Romney's Big Day Marred by Etch A Sk...
Sky News: Cesar Millan- 'Dog Whisperer, Rejects Cr...
Slate: 'Romney Boys Can't Contain Their Obama Deba...
Slate Magazine: Mitt Romney- 'Binders Full of Wome...
VH1: Cher- If I Could Turn Back Time: Live at VH1 ...
Reason Magazine: Lisa Kennedy- 'The Cast of Atlas ...

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Advantages: High quality detail and casting.
If you're going to super-detail your He 111, you may as well do the job properly. Presented in another blister pack, this set contains just five pieces, cast in light grey resin. Some casting block removal will of course be needed. Once done, this is a very simple set to install.
Port and starboard tail wheel well walls are cast various constructional element details, such as longeron and stringers, plus a little plumbing too. Not too much, so you can add more if you feel the need, but this should be good enough for most modellers in the detail stakes. Once these are fitted, painted and the fuselage closed up, the resin wheel form is then fitted to the strut (I suggest pinning this too), and then resin pins are used to fit the tail wheel itself, plus the strut into the bay. As the locating point is quite high in the fuse, this could be a little awkward. I would also suggest you replace the resin pins for this job with some steel pins or rigid wire.
The instructions look simple enough to follow, but the proof of the pudding is always in the eating. Looks a great little set, providing all fits well.


The Mexican people have become fed up with corruption and have stormed the National Palace in Mexico City.
We may be witnessing the birth of a revolution and subsequent bloody civil war.
I've been watching Mexico for some time now while the rest of the world was losing its mind. These killings feel to me like a spark.
Bloody Civil War you say? What would we call the events since the failed 2006 War on Drugs which has killed more than 100,000 people and remains the world's second worst ongoing conflict?
Anyways the corruption in Mexico is astounding and the country is beyond any hope as far as I am concerned.
Hmm, keep an eye on that then?
Ohoho. You think that farce was bloodflooded? A civil war in Mexico would destabilize the whole continent. If the supply of drugs is cut off or changes hands... oh boy. Surely the Zapatistas would feel a wave of fresh water rushing into their movement.
I'd say 100,000 dead would be the lowest, most optimistic prediction. The US wouldn't let a hostile nation spring forth at their southern border.
Also the world's largest source of gruesome liveleak execution videos. Islamic terrorists could and can not match the gruesomeness of cartel executions and torture. Some truly fucked up people those cartel guys are.
The whole case was pretty big on Reddit. They even found another, wholly separate mass grave entirely by accident.
As a comment said, "Nothing exists outside America unless we're bombing it."
is this really just a mexico thing though? It's my understanding that much of the bruhaha over the influx of children over the southern border of the USA was children from various nations fleeing the destablized countries struggling with corrupt governments, drug cartels and roving gangs of revolutionaries.
Makes me wonder if these areas are likely for some border rearangments soon. It really looks like a whole lot of something big changing soon.
That's what I mean. The coming civil war will put the previous one to shame. Or it'll be an ultraviolent escalation.
Protesters over missing students in Mexico burn state assembly: Demonstrators set fire to the local legislature building on Wednesday in the capital of the southwestern state of Guerrero in protests over the apparent massacre of 43 students by corrupt police and thugs from drug gangs.
CHILPANCINGO, Mexico - Demonstrators set fire to the local legislature building on Wednesday in the capital of the southwestern state of Guerrero in protests over the apparent massacre of 43 students by corrupt police and thugs from drug gangs.
Violent demonstrations rocked several other states, where protesters blocked an airport and damaged the local office of President Enrique Pena Nieto's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
In a televised press conference on Friday, Mexico's Attorney General, Jesús Murillo Karam, announced that the forty-three missing students from the Ayotzinapa Normal School had been executed and incinerated in the municipal dump of Cocula. He added one important qualification: the fragmented remains were too badly burned to permit any quick forensic confirmation of what the Attorney General was presenting, in macabre detail, as fact. Many people in Mexico City told me that they were in tears before the conference was over. The writer and musician Juan Carlos Reyna said that the news conference made him feel "like all of Mexico was being asphyxiated." He was not alone. That evening in Mexico City, hundreds of people walked over to Avenida Reforma to sit on the steps of the monument known as El Ángel to clear their heads, take deep breaths of the fresher evening air, and share their thoughts. A slogan for Mexico's civic movement was born that night. Murillo Karam had ended his press conference by saying, "Ya me cansé,"—"I'm finally tired" or, more colloquially, "I've had enough." By the end of that night, #YaMeCansé was spreading on social networks, summoning people to a march in Mexico City the next night: #YaMeCanséDelMiedo. I've had enough fear.
Murillo Karam announced, during his press conference, that this new information was the result of testimony gathered just that week from three recently captured young members of the cartel Guerreros Unidos, which traffics heroin to the United States. The three captured delinquents were known as "El Pato," "El Jona," and "El Chereje." According to Murillo Karam, the Iguala municipal police who detained the Ayotzinapa students had turned them over to Guerreros Unidos in the early-morning hours of September 27th, shortly after the police and other gunmen had already killed three students, as well as three other bystanders, in a series of armed attacks in Iguala during the previous night. The initial attacks, and everything that happened after, were allegedly carried out on the orders of the then mayor of Iguala, José Luis Abarca, who became a fugitive for about a month, until he was finally captured last week, along with his wife, in an abandoned-looking house in a working-class Mexico City barrio.
"Crises in Mexico: Protests of the missing 43 became protests of the missing 1000s; Government blames cartels, cartels blame government."
You know the sad part is I don't know who to believe.
"Ya me cansé," "Enough, I'm tired." The remark has been taken up by protesters who see the attack in Iguala as part of the systematic failure by the state. Filmmaker Natalia Beristáin was among hundreds who posted videos with the hashtag #YaMeCanse.
NATALIA BERISTÁIN: [translated] Señor Murillo Karam, I am Natalia Beristáin, and I, too, am tired. I'm tired of disappeared Mexicans, of the femicides, of the dead, of the decapitated, of the bodies hanging from bridges, of the broken families, of the mothers without children, of the children without parents. I'm tired of the political class that has kidnapped my country and of the class that corrupts, that lies, that kills. I, too, am tired.
Hold onto your asses, because the situation is beginning to head south. It's no longer just hundreds, but several tens of thousands of protestors, and the US Embassy has just put out a travel warning.
Samuel Huntington once remarked that Mexico had become quiet after the success of the ruling PRI party largely because the people were simply worn out by all the violence. The result was a somewhat more orderly society. It would seem that now the people are worn out by all of that order, and our now ready to make demands of their leaders. A big question is how will their leaders respond to those demands. Characters of the revolution.
With the continuing turmoil on our southern border, we need to take border security seriously. As long as Mexico remains unstable, it will pose a threat to the U.S. as well.
In any event, the events in Mexico need to be watched carefully because they may have an impact on American national security.
The author sounds like a wanker. My first thought was that the US shares responsibility for Mexican instability and that we should prepare to provide direct humanitarian aid and follow up with a long term recovery assistance.


text:
A novel single nucleotide polymorphism within the NOD2 gene is associated with pulmonary tuberculosis in the Chinese Han, Uygur and Kazak populations
Mengyuan Zhao1,
Feng Jiang2,
Wanjiang Zhang3,
Fujian Li4,
Liliang Wei5,
Jiyan Liu1,
Yun Xue1,6,
Xiling Deng3,
Fang Wu3,
Le Zhang3,
Xing Zhang1,
Yuxiang Zhang1,
Dapeng Fan4,
Xiaojun Sun5,
Tingting Jiang1 &
Ji-Cheng Li1
The present study aimed to investigate the genetic polymorphisms in exon 4 of the NOD2 gene in tuberculosis patients and healthy controls, in order to clarify whether polymorphisms in the NOD2 gene is associated with tuberculosis.
A case-control study was performed on the Chinese Han, Uygur and Kazak populations. Exon 4 of the NOD2 gene was sequenced in 425 TB patients and 380 healthy controls to identify SNPs.
The frequency of T/G genotypes for the Arg587Arg (CGT → CGG) single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in NOD2 was found to be significantly higher in the Uygur (34.9%) and Kazak (37.1%) populations than the Han population (18.6%). Also, the frequency of G/G genotypes for the Arg587Arg SNP was significantly higher in the Uyghur (8.3%) and Kazak (5.4%) populations than the Han population (0.9%). Meanwhile, no significant difference was found in the Arg587Arg polymorphism between the tuberculosis patients and healthy controls in the Uyghur and Kazak populations (P > 0.05) whereas, a significant difference was observed in the Arg587Arg polymorphism between the tuberculosis patients and healthy controls in the Han population (P < 0.01). The odd ratio of 2.16 (95% CI = 1.31-3.58; P < 0.01) indicated that the Arg587Arg SNP in NOD2 may be associated with susceptibility to tuberculosis in the Chinese Han population.
Our study is the first to demonstrate that the Arg587Arg SNP in NOD2 is a new possible risk factor for tuberculosis in the Chinese Han population, but not in the Uyghur and Kazak populations. Our results may reflect racial differences in genetic susceptibility to tuberculosis.
According to the latest World Health Organization statistics, tuberculosis (TB) kills 1.7 million people each year, with 9.4 million new cases a year. It is estimated that 1/3 of the world's population has been infected with mycobacterium TB. In the majority of infected people, the immune response is able to adequately control the infection, and consequently only 5-10% will develop clinically active TB disease during their lifetime [1]. The incidence of TB in different ethnic groups and countries is different. In 2009, 55% of all TB cases occurred in Asia, 30% in Africa, 7% in Eastern Mediterranean Region, 4% in Europe and 3% in the Americas [2].
China has the world's second largest TB epidemic. There is a significant difference in the incidence of TB in different regions, ethnic groups and populations [3]. The TB epidemic in the Western China is higher than the national average. The prevalence rate of active, sputum smear and culture positive TB in the Uygur, Kazak and Mongolian populations of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (Northwest China) was found to be 12.4%, 16.9% and 18.4% higher than the Chinese Han population, respectively [4]. Therefore, the differences in susceptibility to TB may be related to a genetic predisposition. Several genes such as the natural resistance-associated macrophage protein 1 [5], vitamin D receptor [6], toll-like receptor [7] and interleukin [8, 9] have been associated with susceptibility to TB.
NOD2 (Nucleotide binding oligomerization domain containing 2) is a member of the nod-like receptor (NLR) family that acts as an intracellular pattern recognition receptor. Studies have shown that the NOD2 signaling pathway has a relatively independent recognition mechanism for mycobacterium TB [10]. NOD2 has been shown to recognize muramyl dipeptide (MDP), a component of bacterial cell wall peptidoglycan (PGN). Brooks et al. demonstrated that NOD2 controls the nature of the inflammatory response and subsequent fate of mycobacterium TB and mycobacterium bovis BCG in human macrophages [11]. Austin et al. sequenced exon 4 coding regions of the NOD2 gene in African Americans with TB disease and ethnically matched controlled subjects. They found that three common non-synonymous SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms), Pro268Ser, Arg702Trp, and Ala725Gly were significantly associated with TB disease. The Pro268Ser, Arg702Trp variations were protective against TB while, Ala725Gly polymorphism showed increased susceptibility to TB [12]. But, no association between exon 4 of the NOD2 gene and TB was found in the South African population [13]. Thus, polymorphisms of the NOD2 gene in TB may show great differences among different populations. Zhang et al. found that SNPs of NOD2 were associated with susceptibility to infection with mycobacterium Leprae [14]. In addition, 4 SNPs of the NOD2 have been identified to be associated with TB disease in the Chinese Han population, and one of the 4 SNPs showed a significant difference between the case and the control groups [15].
We investigated the Arg587Arg polymorphism within the exon 4 of NOD2 in the Chinese Han, Uygur and Kazak populations associated with TB, which was located in the winged helix and superhelical domain of NOD2 [16]. The difference between frequencies of NOD2 polymorphisms revealed susceptibility to TB in these populations and provides the experimental basis for TB risk assessment.
Patients and control subjects
The patients and healthy control subjects enrolled in the study were as follows: For the Han population, 219 TB patients aged 18-65 years (mean age 36.47 ± 15.73 years) from the Sixth Hospital of Shaoxing, Taizhou Shiwei Hospital and Hangzhou Red Cross Hospital, and 215 healthy controls aged 20-60 years (mean age 37.02 ± 15.29 years); for the Uygur population 86 TB patients aged 20-70 years (mean age 28.8 ± 10.1 years) from the Second People's Hospital of Aksu, Xinjiang and Wensu County People's Hospital, and 72 healthy controls aged 20-60 years (mean age 30.1 ± 8.9 years); for the Kazak population, 120 TB patients aged 20-70 years (mean age 28.8 ± 10.1 years) from the Tacheng District Hospital, Xinjiang, and 93 healthy controls, aged 20-60 years (mean age 37.02 ± 15.29 years), Table 1.
Table 1 Characteristics of healthy controls and TB patients in the Han, Uygur and Kazak populations
The patients were diagnosed as having pulmonary TB based on results from acid-fast staining of sputum smear, positive tuberculin skin test and chest X-ray examination. The patients and controls were HIV negative and none was known to present any autoimmune, chronic inflammatory or any other disease conditions. All selected participants had no mixed descendants within three generations. The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Medicine (Zhejiang University, China), and informed consents were obtained from all subjects before blood sampling.
Genomic DNA extraction from blood
Genomic DNAs were extracted from the TB patients and healthy controls with the salting-out method. The frozen whole blood with anticoagulant was thawed in a 37°C water bath and 4 volumes of red blood cell lysis buffer were added for lysing red blood cells. Then, 100 μl of white lysis buffer was added for lysing white blood cells. After incubation with proteinase K at 56°C, the purified DNA was collected by ethanol precipitation. Finally, gel electrophoresis and UV spectrophotometer were used to determine the DNA concentration and purity. The sample DNA was diluted with TE buffer to make a final concentration of 100 μg/ml working solution.
PCR amplification
Primers for exon 4 of the NOD2 gene were designed using the prime 5.0, which included, F1: CAGACTCAGCTTCCCAAGG; R1: AGGTGCCCAACATTCAGG (Gene ID: 64127). PCR amplification was performed using purified DNA in a 50 μl reaction at 93°C for 3 min, 95°C for 50 s, 58°C for 3 s, followed by 30 cycles at 72°C for 50 s and a final extension at 94°C for 5 min. The PCR products were sequenced using BigDye Terminator v3.1 Cycle Sequencing Kit (Applied Biosystems, Foster City, USA) and analyzed on an ABI 3730XL (Applied Biosystems, Foster City, USA) sequencer.
The Mutation Explorer/Mutation Surveyor Version 2.2 was used for polymorphisms analysis. The comparison of age and gender between patients and controls in different populations was assessed using chi-square test and T-test performed with SPSS for windows (version 16.0). The genotype frequencies were assessed for Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. The difference in allele frequencies between patients and the control groups was tested by χ 2, and the genotype frequencies were analysed by Armitage Trend test and χ 2 [17]. P value < 0.05 was considered statistically significant.
The exon 4 of the NOD2 gene was sequenced in 425 TB patients and 380 healthy controls to identify SNPs, in the Chinese Han, Uygur and Kazak populations (Figure 1). A total of 18 SNPs were found in the TB patients and the healthy controls. Except Arg587Arg SNP, the frequencies of other 17 polymorphisms were inferred lower than 1%, and we pooled all the rare variants and compared the frequencies (Table 2). The frequencies of rare variants in NOD2 showed no significant differences between the cases and controls (OR = 2.220, 95% CI = 0.911-5.414, P = 0.072). The frequencies of Arg587Arg SNPs in the Chinese Han, Uygur and Kazak patients with TB were 25%, 43% and 45.8%, respectively, whereas, the frequencies in the Chinese Han, Uygur and Kazak healthy controls were 14%, 48.6% and 39.8%, respectively (Table 3).
DNA sequences of Arg587Arg in exon 4 of the NOD2. A: the genotype of T/T; B: the genotype of T/G; C: the genotype of G/G.
Table 2 Rare nonsynonymous and synonymous variation of NOD2 gene in the cases and control
Table 3 The genotype frequencies of Arg587Arg (CGT → CGG) SNP of NOD2 gene in patients and controls of Chinese Han, Uyghur and Kazak populations
The G allele frequencies of Arg587Arg SNP in the Chinese Han, Uygur and Kazak patients with TB were 14%, 26%, 26%, respectively, whereas, the G allele frequencies in the Chinese Han, Uygur and Kazak healthy controls were 7%, 28%, 23%, respectively (Table 4).
Table 4 The allele frequency of Arg587Arg (CGT → CGG) SNP of NOD2 gene in the patients and controls of Chinese Han, Uygur and Kazak populations
The data showed that in the Han population, the G allele frequency of the Arg587Arg SNP in the patient group was twice as high than in the control group, indicating a significant difference between the two groups (P = 0.002). But, in the Uygur and Kazak populations, no significant difference in the G allele frequencies was observed between the patients and the controls (P = 0.646 and 0.382, respectively).
By comparing the TG genotype frequencies of Arg587Arg SNP in the Han population, a significant difference was observed between the patients with TB and the healthy controls (P = 0.0023; OR = 2.16; 95% CI = 1.31-3.58). No significant difference in the TG genotype frequencies of Arg587Arg SNP in the Uygur and Kazak populations was observed between the patients and the healthy controls (P = 0.6575 and 0.3838, respectively). These results indicated that the Arg587Arg SNP are associated with susceptibility to TB and may be a risk factor for the development of TB in the Chinese Han population.
Mycobacterium TB is a typical intracellular parasite. Once inside the alveoli, the MDP of the bacterial cell wall stimulate pattern recognition receptors (PRRs). The PRRs include NOD-like receptors, toll-like receptors and mannose receptors [15]. NOD2, a member of the NLR family, encodes a protein with caspase activation recruitment domains (CARDs) and leucine-rich repeats (LRRs). CARD interacts with receptor-interacting protein 2 (RIP2), triggering a series of downstream signal transduction pathways. This leads to the activation and translocation of nuclear factor kappa B (NFκB) into the nucleus, where it stimulates the transcription and expression of inflammatory cytokines [18–20].
It has been reported that binding of NOD2 and PGN breakdown products of mycobacterium TB can exert certain synergistic effects on tumor necrosis factor and the NOD2 signaling pathway has a relatively independent recognition mechanism for mycobacterium. In addition, NOD2 polymorphisms have been associated with susceptibility to Crohn's disease [21], inflammatory bowel disease [22], pulmonary sarcoidosis [23] and several other diseases.
Our study was the first to investigate the SNPs in exon 4 of the NOD2 gene among the Chinese Han, Uygur and Kazak patients with TB. We found 18 mutations and of these, the frequencies of 17 mutations were less than 1%. Only the Arg587Arg frequencies were high in the Chinese Han, Uygur and Kazak populations, and particularly higher in the Uygur and Kazak populations with TB.
Our study found that the frequencies of Arg587Arg SNP in healthy controls and TB patients were much higher in minority populations than the Han population. The frequency of G allele was also higher in minority populations than the Han population. These results indicated that there was a significant difference in Arg587Arg SNP among different ethnic groups.
Arg587Arg is located on the winged helix and super-helical domain of the NOD2 protein and linked to the NACHT domain [16] for synonymous mutations. In the Han population, the frequency of Arg587Arg G/T genotype was twice as high in the patient group than in the control group, indicating that the G/T genotype frequency is associated with an increased risk of TB. There was significant difference between TB patients and healthy controls. But, no significant difference of the G/T genotype frequency was observed between the TB patients and healthy controls in the Uygur and Kazak populations.
Sato et al. studied NOD2 polymorphisms associated with pulmonary sarcoidosis [23] and found that Arg587Arg G allele was associated with significantly better lung function parameters than the wild-type allele. In Crohn's disease, the frequency of Arg587Arg G allele was found to be much higher in the control group compared to the disease group [24]. Zhang et al. performed genome-wide association study of leprosy and identified four SNPs in NOD2 (rs9302752, rs7194886, rs8057341, and rs3135499) as leprosy risk factors [14]. In the present study, we found that the Arg587Arg polymorphism (CGG → TGG) have a relatively high risk for TB in the Chinese Han population (OR = 2.16, 95% CI = 1.31-3.58, P = 0.0023). In the African American population, three common non-synonymous SNPs in the NOD2 gene such as, Arg702Trp (CGG → TGG), Pro268Ser (CCC → TCC) and Ala725Gly (GCT → GGT) have been demonstrated to be associated with TB disease [12]. However, in the South African [13] and Gambian populations [25], no significant associations were observed between the NOD2 polymorphisms and TB disease.
Our study found that in the healthy controls, the frequency of T/G genotype in the Uygur and Kazak populations was twice as the Han population. Among Han population, the frequency of T/G genotype in the patients was twice as that of the control group. There was no significant difference in the genotype frequencies between the patients and the control groups in the Uygur and Kazak populations. However, T/G genotype was found significantly susceptible to TB in the Han population. Based on the above analysis, we believed that Arg587Arg SNP is associated with TB and is closely related to the genetic nature of the population.
The present study is the first to report that there is no significant association between Arg587Arg SNP of the NOD2 and TB in the Uygur and Kazak populations. But, Arg587Arg is significantly associated with the TB patients and healthy controls in the Han population and is a risk factor for TB disease in Chinese Han. The findings of this study provide data for the assessment of risk profiles regarding susceptibility to TB and also provide a molecular basis for the detection of functional changes resulting from synonymous mutations.
Arg587Arg SNP in NOD2 is associated with susceptibility to TB and may be a risk factor for the development of TB in the Chinese Han population, but it did not show significant difference between the controls and cases neither in the Uyghur population or Kazak populations.
TB:
NOD2:
Nucleotide-binding oligomerization domain containing2
NLR:
Nod-like receptor
PGN:
PRRs:
Pattern recognition receptors
Recruitment domains
LRRs:
Leucine-rich repeats
RIP2:
Receptor-interacting protein 2
NFκB:
Nuclear factor kappa B.
Toth A, Fackelmann J, Pigott W, Tolomeo O: Tuberculosis prevention and treatment. Can Nurse. 2004, 100: 27-30.
World Health Organization: Global tuberculosis control: a short update to the 2009 report. Available at: http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2009/9789241598866_eng.pdf. Accessed: 8 January 2011
National Technic Steering Group of the Epidemiolocal Sampling Survey for Tuberculosis: Report on fourth national epidemiological sampling survey of tuberculosis. Chin Tuberc Respir Dis. 2002, 2: 3-7.
Xin J, Xinchun F, Huakui Y: Report in the fourth epidemiological survey for tuberculosis in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Chin J Antituberculosis. 2004, 26: 264-267.
Nugraha J, Anggraini R: NRAMP1 polymorphism and susceptibility to lung tuberculosis in Surabaya, Indonesia. Southeast Asian J Trop Med Public Health. 2011, 42: 338-341.
Bornman L, Campbell SJ, Fielding K, Bah B, Sillah J, Gustafson P, Manneh K, Lisse I, Allen A, Sirugo G, Sylla A, Aaby P, McAdam KP, Bah-Sow O, Bennett S, Lienhardt C, Hill AV: Vitamin D receptor polymorphisms and susceptibility to tuberculosis in West Africa: a case-control and family study. J Infect Dis. 2004, 190: 1631-1641. 10.1086/424462.
Xue Y, Jin L, Li AZ, Wang HJ, Li M, Zhang YX, Wang Y, Li JC: Microsatellite polymorphisms in intron 2 of the toll-like receptor 2 gene and their association with susceptibility to pulmonary tuberculosis in Han Chinese. Clin Chem Lab Med. 2010, 48: 785-789.
Shin HD, Park BL, Kim YH, Cheong HS, Lee IH, Park SK: Common interleukin 10 polymorphism associated with decreased risk of tuberculosis. Exp Mol Med. 2005, 37: 128-132.
Ben-Selma W, Ben-Abderrahmen Y, Boukadida J, Harizi H: IL-10R1 S138G loss-of-function polymorphism is associated with extrapulmonary tuberculosis risk development in Tunisia. Mol Biol Rep. 2011.
Ferwerda G, Girardin SE, Kullberg BJ, Le Bourhis L, de Jong DJ, Langenberg DM, Van Crevel R, Adema GJ, Ottenhoff TH, Van der Meer JW, Netea MG: NOD2 and toll-like receptors are nonredundant recognition systems of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. PLoS Pathog. 2005, 1: 279-285.
Brooks MN, Rajaram MV, Azad AK, Amer AO, Valdivia-Arenas MA, Park JH, Núñez G, Schlesinger LS: NOD2 controls the nature of the inflammatory response and subsequent fate of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and M. bovis BCG in human macrophages. Cell Microbiol. 2011, 13: 402-418. 10.1111/j.1462-5822.2010.01544.x.
Austin CM, Ma X, Graviss EA: Common Nonsynonymous Polymorphisms in the NOD2 Gene are Associated with Resistance or Susceptibility to Tuberculosis Disease in African Americans. J Infect Dis. 2008, 197: 1713-1716. 10.1086/588384.
Möller M, Nebel A, Kwiatkowski R, van Helden PD, Hoal EG, Schreiber S: Host susceptibility to tuberculosis:CARD15 polymorphisms in a South African population. Mol Cell Probes. 2007, 21: 148-151. 10.1016/j.mcp.2006.10.001.
Zhang FR, Huang W, Chen SM, Sun LD, Liu H, Li Y, Cui Y, Yan XX, Yang HT, Yang RD, Chu TS, Zhang C, Zhang L, Han JW, Yu GQ, Quan C, Yu YX, Zhang Z, Shi BQ, Zhang LH, Cheng H, Wang CY, Lin Y, Zheng HF, Fu XA, Zuo XB, Wang Q, Long H, Sun YP, Cheng YL, Tian HQ, Zhou FS, Liu HX, Lu WS, He SM, Du WL, Shen M, Jin QY, Wang Y, Low HQ, Erwin T, Yang NH, Li JY, Zhao X, Jiao YL, Mao LG, Yin G, Jiang ZX, Wang XD, Yu JP, Hu ZH, Gong CH, Liu YQ, Liu RY, Wang DM, Wei D, Liu JX, Cao WK, Cao HZ, Li YP, Yan WG, Wei SY, Wang KJ, Hibberd ML, Yang S, Zhang XJ, Liu JJ: Genomewide association study of leprosy. N Engl J Med. 2009, 361: 2609-2618. 10.1056/NEJMoa0903753.
Pan H, Dai Y, Tang S, Wang J: Polymorphisms of NOD2 and the risk of tuberculosis: a validation study in the Chinese population. Int J Immunogenet. 2012, doi:10.1111/j.1744-313X.2011.01079.x
Proell M, Riedl SJ, Fritz JH, Rojas AM, Schwarzenbacher R: The Nod-Like Receptor (NLR) Family: a tale of similarities and differences. PLoS ONE. 2008, 3: e2119-10.1371/journal.pone.0002119.
Velez DR, Hulme WF, Myers JL, Brice-Weinberg J, Levesque MC, Stryjewski ME, Abbate E, Estevan R, Patillo SG, Gilbert JR, Hamilton CD, Scott WK: NOS2A, TLR4, and IFNGR1 interactions influence pulmonarytuberculosis susceptibility in African-Americans. Hum Genet. 2009, 126: 643-653. 10.1007/s00439-009-0713-y.
Inohara N, Nuñez G: NODS: intracellula proteins involved in inflammation and apoptosis. Nature Rev Immunol. 2003, 3: 371-382. 10.1038/nri1086.
Inohara N, Koseki T, del Peso L, Hu Y, Yee C, Chen S, Carrio R, Merino J, Liu D, Ni J, Núñez G: Nod1, an Apaf-l-like activator of casepase-9 and nuclear-factor-ΚB. J Biol Chem. 1999, 274: 14560-14567. 10.1074/jbc.274.21.14560.
Ogura Y, Inohara N, Benito A, Chen FF, Yamaoka S, Núñez G: Nod2, a Nod/Apaf-l family menber that is restricted to monocytes and activates NF-ΚB. J Biol Chem. 2001, 276: 4812-4818. 10.1074/jbc.M008072200.
Gasche C, Nemeth M, Grundtner P, Willheim-Polli C, Ferenci P, Schwarzenbacher R: Evolution of Crohn's disease-associated Nod2 mutations. Immunogenetics. 2008, 60: 115-120. 10.1007/s00251-008-0274-6.
Cho JH, Abraham C: Inflammatory bowel disease genetics: Nod2. Annu Rev Med. 2007, 58: 401-416. 10.1146/annurev.med.58.061705.145024.
Sato H, Williams HR, Spagnolo P, Abdallah A, Ahmad T, Orchard TR, Copley SJ, Desai SR, Wells AU, du Bois RM, Welsh KI: CARD15/NOD2 polymorphisms are associated with severe pulmonary sarcoidosis. Eur Respir J. 2010, 35: 324-330. 10.1183/09031936.00010209.
Lesage S, Zouali H, Cezard JP, Belaiche J, Almer S, Tysk C, O'Morain C, Gassull M, Binder V, Finkel Y, Modigliani R, Gower-Rousseau C, Macry J, Merlin F, Chamaillard M, Jannot AS, Thomas G, Hugot JP, EPWG-IBD Group, EPIMAD Group, GETAID Group: CARD15/NOD2 mutational analysis and genotype-phenotype correlation in 612 patients with inflammatory bowel disease. Am J Hum Genet. 2002, 70: 845-857. 10.1086/339432.
Stockton JC, Howson JM, Awomoyi AA, McAdam KP, Blackwell JM, Newport MJ: Polymorphism in NOD2, Crohn's disease, and susceptibility to pulmonary tuberculosis. FEMS Immunol Med Microbiol. 2004, 41: 157-160. 10.1016/j.femsim.2004.02.004.
This work was supported by grants from Zhejiang Province Special Sci-Tech Projects (No.2009 C03011-3), National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.81072724), and National Special Sci-Tech Projects (No.2012ZX10005001-006; No.2008ZX10005-010).
Institute of Cell Biology, Zhejiang University, 866 Yuhangtang Road, Hangzhou, 310058, China
Mengyuan Zhao, Jiyan Liu, Yun Xue, Xing Zhang, Yuxiang Zhang, Tingting Jiang & Ji-Cheng Li
Dongzhimen Hospital Affiliated to Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, Beijing, 100700, China
Feng Jiang
Department of Pathophysiology, Shihezi University School of Medicine, Xinjiang, 832003, China
Wanjiang Zhang, Xiling Deng, Fang Wu & Le Zhang
The Fifth Hospital of Hangzhou, Hangzhou, 310003, China
Fujian Li & Dapeng Fan
The Sixth Hospital of Shaoxing, Shaoxing, 312000, China
Liliang Wei & Xiaojun Sun
Henan University of Science and Technology, Luoyang, 471003, China
Yun Xue
Mengyuan Zhao
Wanjiang Zhang
Fujian Li
Liliang Wei
Jiyan Liu
Xiling Deng
Fang Wu
Le Zhang
Xing Zhang
Yuxiang Zhang
Dapeng Fan
Xiaojun Sun
Tingting Jiang
Ji-Cheng Li
Correspondence to Ji-Cheng Li.
JC Li is responsible for the experiment and paper. MY Zhao, F Jiang, JY Liu, Y Xue participated in the sample collecting and analysis of data. WJ Zhang, XL Ddeng, F Wu, L Zhang, FJ Li, LL Wei, DP Fan and XJ Sun enrolled the blood of controls and patients. X Zhang, XY Zhang and TT Jiang participated in data analysis. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Zhao, M., Jiang, F., Zhang, W. et al. A novel single nucleotide polymorphism within the NOD2 gene is associated with pulmonary tuberculosis in the Chinese Han, Uygur and Kazak populations. BMC Infect Dis 12, 91 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2334-12-91
Arg587Arg SNP
Chinese Han


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Santa Rosa County District Schools (SRCDS), also known as Santa Rosa County School District, is the organization responsible for the administration of public schools in Santa Rosa County, Florida. The district currently administers 15 elementary schools, seven middle schools, six high schools, and a K-8 school, as well as a number of specialized centers.

Its headquarters are in Milton.

The district is currently administered by a superintendent and a five-member school board. The current Superintendent of Schools is Dr. Karen Barber.

Schools

High schools

Gulf Breeze High School (Dolphin)
Navarre High School (Raider)
Pace High School (Patriot)
Milton High School (Panther)
Jay High School (Royal)
Central School (Jaguar)

Middle schools
Gulf Breeze Middle School
Woodlawn Beach Middle School
East Bay K-8 School
Holley-Navarre Middle School
Avalon Middle School
King Middle School
Hobbs Middle School
Sims Middle School
Central School

Elementary schools
Gulf Breeze Elementary School
Oriole Beach Elementary School
East Bay K-8 School
West Navarre Intermediate School
West Navarre Primary School
Holley-Navarre Primary School
Holley-Navarre Intermediate School
Pea Ridge Elementary School
Bagdad Elementary School
Berryhill Elementary School
S.S. Dixon Primary School
S.S. Dixon Intermediate School
East Milton Elementary School
Chumuckla Elementary School
W.H. Rhodes Elementary School
Jay Elementary School
Central School
Bennett C. Russell Elementary School

Specialized Centers
Locklin Technical College
Santa Rosa Adult School
Santa Rosa Community School
T.R. Jackson Pre-K Center

References

External links

Pensacola metropolitan area
Education in Santa Rosa County, Florida
School districts in Florida

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MAI: A graphic novel depicting Malvika's journey of surviving the bomb blast
"My daughter's hands! They're gone!!," screamed her Mother. A freak accident left thirteen-year-old Malvika Iyer battling for her life. She survived. But it changed her life, and her family's, forever. A tale of unflagging courage in the face of tremendous difficulties, this true story is an inspiration and a celebration of life and love.
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text:
Q: Save custom item meta data once order has been saved in WooCommerce I'm using the save_post_{$post->post_type} hook, which fires once a post (order) has been saved.
The intention is to save product meta based on certain order statuses. This is the code I wrote/used for this:
add_action ( 'save_post_shop_order', function (int $postId, \WP_Post $post, bool $update): void   {

    $order = new WC_Order( $postId );

    $order_status = $order->get_status();
    $status_arrays = array( 'processing', 'on-hold', 'to-order', 'needed' );

    if ( in_array($order_status, $status_arrays) ) {
        return;
    }

    $items = $order->get_items();

     foreach ( $items as $item ) {
        $product_id = $item->get_product_id();
        $product    = wc_get_product( $product_id );
        $final_product->update_meta_data( '_test', '_test' );
        $final_product->save();

    }

   },
    10,
    3
);

However, I can't find the new metadata in my database. Any advice? can anyone help me how to achieve this?

A: Your code contains some mistakes, for example $final_product
is not equal to $product and is therefore not defined.
This should suffice: (explanation via comment tags, added in the code)
function action_save_post_shop_order( $post_id, $post, $update ) {
    // Checking that is not an autosave && current user has the specified capability
    if ( ( defined( 'DOING_AUTOSAVE' ) && DOING_AUTOSAVE ) || ! current_user_can( 'edit_shop_order', $post_id ) ) {
        return;
    }

    // Get $order object
    $order = wc_get_order( $post_id );

    // Is a WC_Order
    if ( is_a( $order, 'WC_Order' ) ) {
        // NOT has status
        if ( ! $order->has_status( array( 'processing', 'on-hold', 'to-order', 'needed' ) ) ) {
            // Loop through order items
            foreach( $order->get_items() as $item ) {
                // Get an instance of corresponding the WC_Product object
                $product = $item->get_product();

                // Meta: key - value
                $product->update_meta_data( '_test', '_test' );

                // Save
                $product->save();
            }
        }
    }
}
add_action( 'save_post_shop_order', 'action_save_post_shop_order', 10, 3 );

Note: If the order should have a certain status versus NOT having the status, just remove the ! from:
// NOT has status
if ( ! $order->has_status(..

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text:
A Review of Nasser Zakariya,
The Final Story: Science, Myth, and Beginnings
A Cosmological Crisis?: A Review of Nasser Zakariya, The Final Story: Science, Myth, and Beginnings
by Ken Baskin
Correspondence | Ken Baskin, baskinman47@yahoo.com
Citation | Baskin, K. (2019) Title Journal of Big History, III(4); 171 - 176.
In Maps of Time, David Christian describes the narrative of Big History as "a modern 'Dreaming' – a coherent account of how we were created and how we fit into the scheme of things."1 Yet, he adds more recently, that narrative "is far from complete, and . . . may need to incorporate the insights of older origin stories about how to live well and how to live sustainably."2 The discussion of this narrative and how to strengthen it has swirled through every IBHA conference since the first, in 2012. More recently, it was the subject of a special issue of the IBHA Journal. For anyone who wants to understand this discussion more fully, I can't recommend Nasser Zakariya's A Final Story highly enough.
In his book, Zakariya explores the history of our origin story. (Like most writers on the subject, Zakariya refers to is as a "cosmology," which I'll be using in this essay.) He begins with the natural historians of the first half of the nineteenth century, who applied the growing body of scientific knowledge to construct a world history, intellectual pioneers such as John Herschel and Mary Sommerville. By the end of that century, the gallery of contributors reads like a Who's Who of progressive scientific thought, including Comte and Lord Kelvin, Julian Huxley and Einstein, E.O. Wilson and Carl Sagan. Zakariya tells the story behind the story with a wide-view, sometimes-critical perspective. For example, he documents the limitations of the scientific materialism at the heart of the evolutionary epic and the all-but-inevitable confusions that emerged in the attempts of Sagan or Neil deGrasse Tyson to popularize its complex scientific issues on TV.
Zakariya's treatment is solid, so much so that, rather than selectively explore parts of his book, I recommend letting A Final Story speak for itself. However, reading the book, I was struck by the need to clarify the concept of a "cosmology," especially for those of us, who, like Christian, want to develop a narrative that can meet the needs of people across the globe in the 21st Century. To do so, we need to understand the functions that cosmologies have always fulfilled and present the Big History cosmology in a way that is both accessible and acceptable. Otherwise, we could craft a story that will only work for ourselves.
At first look, this confusion seems to be a classic case of dueling definitions. From a scientific, Western outlook, cosmology is "the science of the origin and evolution of our Universe."3 Yet, the word can also have a more mythic meaning, as in Joseph Campbell's definition, "an image of the cosmos that will . . . explain everything that you come into contact with in the universe around you."4 Zakariya's book is largely about current attempts to bridge these definitions, as when Wilson insists that this "evolutionary epic is probably the best myth we will ever have."5
Similarly, Christian presents a more mythic version of Big History's scientific cosmology:
a shared map of understanding that shows members of the community their place in a rich, beautiful, and sometimes terrifying universe: This is what you are; this is where you came from; this is who existed before you were born; this is the whole thing of which you are a small part; these are the responsibilities and challenges of living in a community of others like yourself.6
The key difference between these two definitions is not the story they tell, but the way that story is interpreted. Proponents of the scientific cosmology focus on the literal truth of their narrative; so, as Zakariya points out, they often present the Big-Bang-to-the-present narrative as superior to older cosmologies because it is based on fact, images of our Universe and mathematical computations, rather than mythic fictions. Ironically, astrophysicist Pedro Ferreira undercuts this claim when he notes, "Maybe more than in any other field of physics, cosmologists construct fantasy worlds which they hope may have some bearing on what we observe."7 For proponents of a more mythic cosmology, the narrative is a way of examining society and how we are to live in it. Since the time of Ancient Egypt and Sumer, cosmologies applied the order that observers found in the skies to society. I'd suggest that these cosmologies reflect the symbolic orders with which members of any society approach their worlds, including their interpretations of the skies, in a way that enables them to apply that order, with its underlying assumptions, to their societies. As John Lundwall points out, cosmologies are epistemological, teaching members of any society how to know their worlds.8
For this reason, cosmologies can have survival value, especially when societies face existential crises, as our global society does today. For example, c. 576 BCE, the Assyrians conquered Judah (the southern Israelite kingdom), destroyed Solomon's Temple, and exiled much of its elite to Babylon. A similar conquest a century-and-a-half earlier had destroyed Israel (the northern kingdom). Yet, instead of accepting that their God had forsaken them, as people in most contemporary societies would have,9 the society's elite reinvented its cosmology, by editing its mythic texts, so that their One God had not abandoned them, but was punishing them for not worshipping Him alone.10 This interpretation would sit at the heart of their cosmology and His Chosen People's covenant with the One True God, which taught them that their God was so powerful that He could use the Israelites' greatest enemies as tools to enforce His covenant with them. In many ways, then the Hebrew Bible would function as an Israelite Big History, from God's creation of the world to the return from Babylonian exile. It allowed these Israelites to learn a different way of thinking about the world, developing a strong sense of responsibility in situations where they might seem victimized and providing many of the fundamental assumptions that would enable them to survive repeated pogroms and expulsions.
The same sort of reinterpretation would occur early in Modernity, leading to the West's current scientific cosmology. For the West, the existential crisis would combine the collapse of the feudal system after the Black Death, where about a half of its population died between 1347 and 1351, and the horror of a century-and-a-half of religious war, where Protestants and Catholics slaughtered each other to prove who knew the proper way to worship the Prince of Peace1.. The two foremost reinterpreters were Francis Bacon and René Descartes. In response to these wars, both sought to create a form of science that would produce peace, order, and certainty.
This reinterpretation would integrate elements of Christian thought into the discoveries of early scientists such as Kepler, Copernicus, and Galileo. Copernicus described it as a "Clockwork Universe," and Galileo concluded that God had created the world as a "Second Book," written in the language of mathematics.12 This image of the Universe as a machine became so firmly fixed in this emerging cosmology that the philosophy of Descartes and the physics of Newton would combine to picture our world as composed of dead, passive matter moving deterministically under the influence of Universal Laws of Nature. And because these laws were created by God, He was the source of everything that happened.
What Bacon and Descartes would do was to reinterpret key elements of Christian thought as a grounding for this emerging understanding of the cosmos. Bacon drew on the Arthurian quest myth, where the king's knights would sacrifice their lives to find the Holy Grail – the cup from which Jesus last drank – in order to save their society. For Bacon, the scientist would act as the quest knight and save the war-torn society of Western Europe, transforming it into an earthly Paradise.13 To do so, Bacon also drew on the Christian understanding of divinity as an intellectual, masculine God, as opposed to the superstitious Earth Mother goddess of "pagans." So, scientists would "torture" Nature into revealing her secrets so that humans could exercise their intellects and reconstruct the world to produce a new world ordered for our benefit.14 Bacon's myth provided the fantasy of order and control that Western Europe desperately needed, after a century-and-a-half of religious warfare.
Descartes drew on the Church's teachings that God was a rational creator who wanted man to understand his creation. For Descartes, science should discover the truth about our world, focusing on what the scientist could know with certainty.15 In his efforts to do so, he would divide the world into passive matter, subject to God's Laws of Nature, and human mind. Most of the world, as passive matter, was therefore available for humans, through the power of their minds, to transform society as they learned more about these Laws of Nature. Combined with Bacon's philosophy, Cartesian thought provided the symbolic order that could promise the peace and certainty those who'd lived through the religious wars so desperately desired. Moreover, this cosmology justified the political system, as the ruler of Hobbes' Leviathan became the social equivalent of God, the ultimate cause of all events and the protector of the people, who, knowing they would be protected, could be as passive as Descartes' dead matter.16
This cosmology proved remarkably successful. With it, scientists could work hand-in-hand with the increasingly powerful commercial class. Just as Bacon had suggested, scientists revealed Nature's secrets, and, with the machine technology that became possible, the commercial class remade society. Largely because of this cosmology, food production has increased geometrically, contagious disease has largely been eliminated, and literacy rates have skyrocketed. Combined with the successes of science, especially in the discoveries of Lyle in Geology and Darwin in Evolution, God became a hypothesis that people could do without. And without God, the Western cosmology would increasingly become dominated by scientific materialism. The role of God would be replaced, first, by "Nature," whose now-anonymous laws moved all living things into action, and, then, by the Market and Adam Smith's Invisible Hand.17
And that is largely the cosmology of scientific materialism, Wilson's evolutionary epic, which rules today. For me, the problem with this cosmology – the problem that Zakariya points to over and over – isn't the story it tells. As long as we acknowledge that the story is a model – our best guess given what we know today – rather than the "truth," the story of the Big-Bang-to-the-present can serve the purposes that cosmologies have throughout human history. The problem is the often-unacknowledged assumptions built into the narrative, which, in many ways, have created existential challenges as great as those that precipitated the creation of this cosmology,18 including global warming and the possibility of a mass extinction of life on Earth.
Ironically, thirty years ago, the same science that Sagan celebrated in his 1980 TV series Cosmos, was predicting that global warming would be generating the sort of dramatic events we've been experiencing over the last year. Except that the intensity of global warming's effects has outstripped those predictions. And, yet, while scientists, who learned their style of knowing the world from the current cosmology, have been creating a series of technologies to ameliorate those effects, only a relative few of those technologies have been widely implemented, and the use of fossil fuels, the deforestation of the Amazon, and the consumption of animal protein, all of which scientists agree are making extreme warming more likely, are all increasing. I'm convinced that one of the major factors that has enabled the politicians and corporate executives, who had the power to make the changes that likely would have reduced the danger to all of us to ignore those decades-old warnings, is almost certainly the very cosmology that Sagan's Cosmos celebrated.
In this way, the same cosmology that has taught us in the West how to map the heavens, send people to walk on the moon, and double human life expectancy may well have increased the likelihood of the most extreme events resulting from global warming. How all this happened demands a much longer explanation than I can even begin to give in this book review. People who would like to examine it in depth would do well to read Latour's Facing Gaia. But one element of it is central for those of us who believe that the Big History origin story can become an effective cosmology for the twenty-first century.
Grounding this narrative in scientific materialism seems to have created a mindset that treats the world around us as a cornucopia to be exploited without considering the consequences. Remember, any cosmology will provide people in its society a way to think about everything in the world around them. The cosmological narrative as told through scientific materialism insists that our world is composed of independent "things," chunks of passive, dead matter, responding deterministically to the universal Laws of Nature. Only human mind has agency in this world. And the task of the scientist is to torture nature until she reveals her secrets so that we humans can rebuild the world for our purposes.
So, if the concept of cosmologies I've been examining is accurate, then we would expect corporate managers and executives to behave exactly as they have. After all, the cosmology of scientific materialism views the world as a collection of separate things that exist so that we humans can use them for our own ends. Moreover, they are distinct and come together only under the pressure of outside forces. How then can we expect people who accept this cosmology to think in terms of the highly interdependent processes, such as the damage that logging in the Amazon does to the Earth's ability to process CO2? If we want people throughout our economic systems to understand the complex processes that are making global warming look increasingly dangerous, we need a better version of our cosmology.
The point I want to make is that for those of us in IBHA, who believe that our origin story can be a cosmology for the 21st Century, exploring how best to present this narrative is one of the most important things we can do, as members of the organization. Fortunately (or unfortunately if you prefer), the summer of 2019 has made the urgency of acting to mitigate global warming unavoidable. How, then, can we present our narrative in a way that will encourage people to think in ways that will avoid the pitfalls that the scientific materialist narrative has created?
This question deserves a far longer answer than I can provide here. But one possibility has already received some attention. The approach here is to replace the assumptions of scientific materialism with those of the worldview that has been emerging through most of the 20th Century. This worldview sees the world as far more interconnected, full of agents that are continually changing to adapt to shifts in their environments, always with the possibility that even the smallest change can set off a cascade of adaptation.19 Because it is so full of agency and interconnection, it is a world where the future is constrained, rather than determined by the past.
My hope is that we in Big History will begin a far more rigorous discussion of our origin story/cosmology and how it can evolve to best serve its purpose. In a way, Zakariya's title thus seems ironic: For as the conditions in our world shift, so must our cosmology, suggesting that A Final Story is really impossible. For anyone who wants to participate in this discussion, Zakariya's book provides the solid historical background that can help us examine whether it does make sense to replace the assumptions of scientific materialism with those of the new model. Too much is at stake, for us and our grandchildren, to turn away from this task.
1 David Christian, Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History, (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004), 3.
2 David Christian, Origin Story: A Big History of Everything (New York: Little, Brown and Co, 2018), ix-x.
3 Pedro G. Ferreira, The State of the Universe: A Primer in Modern Cosmology (London: Orion Books, 2007), 13.
4 Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2004), 8.
5 E.O. Wilson, as quoted in Nasser Zakariya, A Final Story: Science, Myth & Beginnings (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 300.
6 Christian, Origin Story, 8 (author's emphases).
7 Ferreira, The State of the Universe, 10 (my emphasis).
8 John Knight Lundwall, Mythos and Cosmos: Mind and Meaning in the Oral Age (Pleasant Grove, UT: C&L Press, 2015).
9 Jean Bottéro, Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia, trans., Terresa Lavender Fagan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).
10 Donald Harman Akenson, Surpassing Wonder: The Invention of the Bible and the Talmuds (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).
11 Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
12 Edward Dolnick, The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society & the Birth of the Modern World (New York: HarperCollins, 2011).
13 Michael Allen Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).
14 Mary Midgley, Science as Salvation: A Modern Myth and its Meaning (London: Routledge, 1992).
15 Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity; Toulmin, Cosmopolis.
16 Toulmin, Cosmopolis; Bruno Latour, Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climate Regime, trans., Catherine Porter (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2017).
17 Latour, Facing Gaia.
18 Mary Midgely, Science and Poetry (London: Routledge, 2001); Latour, Facing Gaia; Lisa H. Sideris, Consecrating Science: Wonder, Knowledge, and the Natural World (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2017).
19 Two of the most interesting treatments of this new worldview are those of Nobel Laureate in Physics Robert Laughlin's A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics from the Bottom Down (New York: Perseus Books, 2005), and astrophysicist Lee Smolin's The Life of the Cosmos (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). Both Sideris' Consecrating Science and Latour's Facing Gaia explore some of the possibilities of applying this worldview to the cosmological narrative.


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NEXT | See you in November! The BlizzCon 2019 dates have been announced
Off TopicApr 25, 2019 11:00 am CT
Off Topic: The Fate of Atlantis DLC for Assassin's Creed Odyssey starts strong with Fields of Elysium
By Matthew Rossi
@MatthewWRossi
It's no secret around here that I love Assassin's Creed Odyssey. I've spent a ridiculous amount of time discussing why I think this is one of the best RPG's out. It's a game I've literally played to level 99 on my Xbox One and then went out and got for the PC thanks to a lovely gift card around my birthday. For me, that's a huge deal, I simply don't have the money for that level of investment. So when I tell you that the first installment of The Fate of Atlantis is a breathtaking chapter in the latest DLC for the game, I don't do it lightly.
The first episode of that story is out now, and it does several things I didn't expect it to be able to do. It manages to make the framing story involving Layla Hassan matter, which I would have told you was an impossibility. It ties together the events of 430 BCE and late 2018 CE in an innovative way that I will let you discover on your own. I will not be spoiling this expansion in this review — while the story isn't a major diversion from what you expect in a game of this type, how it unfolds is part of the fun and not to be missed.
What fate, Atlantis?
The previous DLC, Legacy of the First Blade, was a solid expansion, but for many players it was very much more of the same. It didn't really offer anything new in terms of gameplay or setting — you went to zones that already existed in game and fought enemies who didn't really do anything you hadn't already seen. Even the themes of family and legacy in the DLC were extensions of what we'd already seen in the main questline, emphasizing the Eagle Bearer's desperate want for a family connection. None of this was new — and sure, it was really good but it was also more of the same. Where Legacy of the First Blade felt like it could have easily been part of the game at launch, Fate of Atlantis feels like it expands the game, that it truly is an expansion with new places to see and new ways to adventure.
The Fate of Atlantis is unfolding in three chapters, just as Legacy of the First Blade did, and this first chapter is already a big departure from the main game while staying true to the emotional roots of the story so far. Kassandra or Alexios — so Kassandra, sorry Alexios fans — must deal with the decisions made in the main story quest of the game and fully embrace the role of their unique bloodline, and in so doing, go on a journey to the Greek underworld. If you've read the actual Odyssey then you'll remember the part where Odysseus descends, but ACO does it differently and it's a wonder to behold. The first new zone, Elysium, is the realm of the honored dead in Greek myth and is ruled over by Persephone, daughter of Zeus and Demeter and somewhat reluctant wife to Hades.
It's a magnificent, lush and completely unique place utterly unlike the Greek World we've seen so far, while still looking like what you might expect a Greek paradise — exaggerated rock formations, water everywhere, vivid and spectacular fields and staggering heights. You're soon embroiled in something equally political and personal, a family squabble made all the more ridiculous because it involves gods.
What you'll do in Elysium
In addition to gaining new expanded versions of powers you earned before, you'll fight new kinds of enemies with the ability to attack you in ways no previous threat has, altering how you'll proceed in combat. The weirdest mobs I've fought so far are the Kolossi, something in-between a statue and an automaton that are easy to miss and which will absolutely come out to wreck your day if you start a fight with someone else too close to them. They can channel the power of the Isu (the beings the Assassin's Creed lore credits for the existence of mythological gods in an ostensibly "real" world) to devastating effect, so be sure to be careful and take them out before engaging another threat if you possibly can.
I admit, I spent a lot of my time so far in Elysium hanging out with Hermes or Adonis (hey, can you blame me?) and just soaking in the view, but the combat has been fun and engaging and challenging because of how it makes you play your character differently. Some of the people you're fighting are being compelled by Persephone to do her bidding, so if you can, liberating them instead of killing them can ultimately work out in your favor.
There are a variety of new ways to get around in Elysium as well — you left your boat back in Greece, but you can use special teleporters called the Wings of Hermes to get up on those tall rock peaks where much of the action is, and slide down extremely long ropes connecting higher and lower elevations. You can also ride your mount and even get a cool new one. The dialogue is fun so far, although I haven't gotten to see what's past part one because it's not out yet (Fields of Elysium is longer than any of the Legacy DLC was), but it still very much feels like a starting chapter and there's a definite sense that we'll get more as things unfold.
The Isu Mythos
The Isu themselves take a bigger role in Fields of Elysium than they have in a very long time, and in that way it's reminiscent of The Curse of the Pharaohs, the similarly mythological DLC for Assassin's Creed Origins. But so far, it's a lot more ambitious, delving deeper into the Isu and their personalities — you get a glimpse of these self-proclaimed deities as warts and all people, and it's fascinating even while statues are coming to life and shooting fire from the sky at you. The Assassin's Creed setting has always had the Isu and their legacy as a cornerstone of its mythos, but for the first time we actually get a real sense of why these astonishingly powerful beings were so, well, petty at times.
I feel like in part this is due to the setting. Assassin's Creed Origins drew from Egyptian mythology, and their gods are far less human than the Greek pantheon. The Isu we're meeting now are the beings the Greek gods were named after and patterned on, and they display a lot of the same character flaws — impulsiveness, anger, disdain. When Adonis talks smack to Hermes and gets beat up for it, you realize you're watching something remarkably relateable at the same time that it's crazy and absurd.
It's also the first time since Odyssey's mythical creatures — the Sphinx, Minotaur, Cyclopses and the Gorgon Medusa — that we get more enemies that emphasize how strange and unearthly the Isu and their power can seem. For all that we're told it's science, it definitely feels a lot like Clarke's Law is in full effect here — the Isu have technology so advanced even we modern observers could be forgiven for calling it magic.
Get this DLC if you don't already have it.
I'm just half-way through the first chapter and I'm not rushing because it's just that much fun. You need this. It's one of the best DLC any game has put out since Tiny Tina ran a weird D&D game.
Filed Under: Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Dlc, Expansion, Fate Of Atlantis, Fields Of Elysium
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Some Other News from Around the Deep South #7
Welcome to the seventh installment of "Some Other News from Around the Deep South," a look at a few stories from the region that may not have gotten as much coverage.
Let's begin on a bright note, shall we? Over in Georgia, as a nice counterbalance to the ultra-conservative government-shutdown story I wrote about last time . . . the online site for the Athens Banner-Herald reported on January 23 that the state's Democrats have an ambitious agenda of social and political progress. Among their stated goals are: increased education spending, doubling the state's minimum wage, growing the Medicaid program and "automatic voter registration."
Because the national media tends to oversimplify Deep Southern politics into the region's propensity to support conservative candidates in national elections, we all get lumped together as "red states," but that view neglects the significant currents of progressive ideas that never do seem to muster majority support. Granted, most of these progressive measures don't succeed in state houses and governor's offices, but we tend to ignore that they often lose by only a small or even slim margins. There are a lot of people, in Georgia and outside of it, who are pulling for these Georgia legislators make that leap! And this next story explains why . . .
Also on January 23, the Washington Post online ran a blog titled "A surprise map of where it's hardest to escape poverty in America," and the state of Georgia ranks at #1. The study discussed here offers a geographic depiction of the likelihood that a child's future income will be the same as his or her parents' income— meaning that if a child is born poor then he may well stay poor his whole life. In 40 of Georgia's counties, generational poverty remains constant. Which states round out the top-five? All in the South, two in the Deep South: #2 North Carolina, #3 South Carolina, #4 Mississippi, and #5 Virginia. The blog offers readers the opportunity to zoom in on the map and check on their own counties. In central Alabama, where I live, the band of dark blue (the bad color) is obvious as it threads through the Black Belt.
Moving over to Mississippi, the Clarion-Ledger reported on January 22 that the acting police chief of Greenwood went ahead and retired out of frustrations with the city's mayor. What's odd about that? Here were his some of his outgoing comments about the mayor, from the article:
"I'll leave you with these words: Antichrist, Beelzebub, deceiver, destroyer, liar, seven heads and ten horns on Satan, the Devil himself. That's the Carolyn McAdams I know!" Langdon concluded. "Have a good day."
Aside from that story about one town's personality conflicts, the Clarion-Ledger online also ran a blog on January 22 about an African-American politician with the following headline: "Bill Marcy compares Democrats to Nazis, switches to Democrat, runs for Senate." This semi-comical yet bizarrely real piece, which is accompanied by childish stick drawings, explains that apparently Marcy was once a Republican, now wants to ally African Americans and Tea Party conservatives to elect a conservative Democrat (him) to US Senate. The blogger, Brian Eason, acknowledges that it could be brilliant election strategy— if it works . . . which it probably won't.
It would be really hard to summarize these two Clarion-Ledger stories effectively. Go read them. The Greenwood police chief story has video, too.
Swinging back east, over in South Carolina, the latter-day re-examination of pre-Civil Rights events continues on the case of George Stinney. (This story has received national attention.) In 1944, Stinney was executed in South Carolina's electric chair at age 14. He had been convicted of killing two white girls in Alcolu, South Carolina where they all lived. Alcolu is an isolated small town southwest of Columbia.
The New York Times report from late January details many of the reasons that Stinney's execution is troubling. On top of the questionable decision to execute a child so young, records of the 14-year-old's confession have been lost. Also, the jury convicted him in a matter of hours, which makes us wonder about the fairness of the trial and impartiality of the jury. Adding up what we know about the Jim Crow-era Deep South, the unlikelihood of a fair trial for a black teenager accused by white law enforcement officers of killing two white girls and tried in front of an all-white jury . . . Stinney's trial has to be questioned, even if it was seventy years ago, and even he was put to death.
Finally, back in modern-day Mississippi, The Guardian reported in mid-January about the real possibility that Mississippi will face an astounding healthcare crisis because of its high obesity rate (34%) and the fact that one-in-five of its residents have no health insurance. The article explains these two sets of facts:
Mississippi has long been the state with the highest obesity rate in the United States, dropping only slightly in the latest government survey to second place to Louisiana where 34.7% of the population is now obese, compared with 34.6% in Mississippi. Thirteen states, mostly in the south, have obesity rates of more than 30%.
Mississippi does not have the healthcare services in place to cope [with a potentially huge diabetes problem] and 19% of the population, around 275,000, are uninsured – almost one in five. The state has turned down federal money for Medicaid expansion, which would have made somewhere between 200,000 and 400,000 more people eligible. It has the lowest rate of physicians to patients in the United States.
We may have begun this seventh installment on a brighter note, but these sad facts don't allow me to end on one.
The Deep South is always covered up in newsworthy goings-on, but many of the stories are too complex and dismal for a quickie on the nightly broadcasts. Both Alabama and South Carolina are facing problems caused by conditions in their prison systems. Debates rage around the region about whether to expand Medicare under the Affordable Care Act and whether to implement or repeal the Common Core standards for schools. There's never a shortage of things to talk about.
Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Social Justice, South Carolina, The Deep South	healthcare, medicaid, news, obesity, prison
Deep Southern Gardening: A Harsh Winter
The First Reading from Mass today


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you still active here SparkE? I was hoping for some ozdm set up advice.
Been away for a few days but I am back. What can I help with?
Essentially, you need to create a working half-life deathmatch server as a base. so once you have that working, you swap out a file and add the config files.
Because Steam has kind of altered the directory hierarchy by customizing it with your steam name at some point in the tree, it makes it difficult to tell you the exact file path. But search through the folders and at some point you will find a directory named "valve" with a subfolder called "dlls" and in that folder will be a file named "hl.dll".
Then start the server and make sure it still runs. It will act more or less like a regular halflife server because it doesn't have the config files yet.
If it runs ok, then drag in the oz cfg folders from the install so the path is like whatever/valve/cfg/ and the others so you have /valve/bots/ etc etc.
use the same directory structure that the ozdm install packages have and it should work.
I thought I put a help folder in the install that explained it a bit better than I am doing from memory right now.
thank you, was confused by the different steams – various updates and redoes and reading up on this was getting confusing , thanks again .
It is a bit confusing especially with the various bot/non-bot flavours of the initial 3.0 release and the 3.02 updates.
Back in that time, bandwidth was still kind of an issue so the last updates were only the dll files and none of the supporting files and folders. SO you had to download the 3.0 and then add the 3.02 dll.