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Labor Department's FLSA Compliance Focus Now Targeting Hotel Industry
By John E. Thompson November 20, 2013 July 21, 2015
By John E. Thompson
One of the U.S. Department of Labor's continuing federal Fair Labor Standards Act enforcement initiatives targets hotels and motels.
Officials are following-through on their 2010 warning that they see the hospitality industry as presenting a "high risk" for non-compliance.
Here are some recent outcomes:
The Department of Labor announced that a company operating hotels in New Mexico and Texas agreed to pay nearly $79,000 in FLSA back wages to dishwashers, bartenders, wait and bell staff, housekeeping employees, and maintenance workers. Some of the alleged violations involved paying only a flat rate of $3.00 per room cleaned without regard to whether the housekeeper worked more than 40 hours in a workweek; failing to figure overtime premium on employees' incentive payments; and calculating overtime pay based upon tipped employees' less-than-minimum-wage cash wages rather than upon the FLSA's $7.25-per-hour minimum wage.
A Tennessee motel will tender nearly $52,000 in previously unpaid overtime wages, according to a Labor Department press release. The Wage and Hour Division asserted that employees had been paid only at straight-time rates for hours worked over 40 in a workweek. A Division official expressed the view that "[a] typical violation in the hotel and motel industry is the failure to pay required overtime premiums."
A Florida hotel has paid almost $18,000 to resolve alleged FLSA violations arising from overtime work performed by workers assigned to its premises by a staffing company. The DOL contended that the workers were jointly employed by the hotel and the staffing company. Investigators asserted among other things that the workers' services were carried out under the supervision and control of hotel management. The Division's local District Director said, "Hotels and motels subject to the FLSA cannot use staffing companies to escape their responsibilities to classify and compensate employees properly for all hours worked."
The risk is real
The Labor Department's descriptions of its enforcement activities since 2009 differ from one account to the next.
One press release says that the Wage and Hour Division has conducted nearly 4,000 industry investigations and has recovered over $12.4 million for more than 23,000 workers nationwide. Another published on the same date refers to almost 5,000 investigations, more than $15.1 million recovered, and over 28,000 affected workers.
Whatever the actual figures are, clearly the agency is devoting substantial resources to the effort to considerable effect. Industry employers should ensure without delay that their pay practices are in compliance.
This was originally published on Fisher & Phillips' Wage and Hour Laws blog.
John E. Thompson
John Thompson is a partner in the Atlanta office of the law firm Fisher & Phillips. His practice focuses on wage and hour law, assisting employers in preventive efforts designed to ensure compliance, and he handles both investigations conducted by government agencies and litigation in the wage and hour area. John has served as a Special Assistant Attorney General for wage-hour matters for the State of Georgia. Contact him at jthompson@laborlawyers.com.
Compensation & BenefitsFair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)HR ManagementHR NewsHR TrendsLegal - Compliance & PoliciesOrganizational LeadershipTalent ManagementU.S. Dept. of LaborWages, Pay, & SalaryHR Basics


Cricketer Moeen Ali wants stump mics to be turned on to combat sledging.
England's Moeen Ali put his weight behind the idea of keeping the stump mics turned on during the course of a match. Ali's comments came after West Indies cricketer Shannon Gabriel sledging Joe Root went viral. In another incident, Pakistan's Sarfraz Ahmed made racist comments to Andile Phehlukwayo. Since then, there were talks about switching off stump microphones in a bid to safeguard players.
Anushka Sharma and Virat Kohli are spending their Valentine's Day at THIS location!
Moeen had mentioned in his autobiography, released last year, that he was once called 'Osama' by an Australian player during the 2015 Ashes. Apparently, the incident was not caught on tape and the player denied making those comments. Ali also added that stump mics can also pick up funny exchanges between players as was witnessed during India's tour of Australia when Tim Paine and Rishabh Pant sledged each other.


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League of Legends Skins – Vex Dawnbringer
The newest skin for the Vex is the Dawnbringer skin, which makes him more playful and happy. Vex is usually portrayed as a dark character, but in this League of Legends skin, he tries to be more light-hearted. Future Vex skins will likely show more dark and ominous elements.
Unbound Vex
This new League of Legends skin features the new Vex model and texture. It also features new sounds and visual effects. While you might think that a yordle skin is going to be monotonous and boring, that is not the case. There are several different feelings for Vex, and his new skin reflects that.
In the original spread, Vex was a nerdy loner with a big arm. He possessed the air of a goth, but his hands showed his true emotions. Despite this, he was a mage and not a fighter. This trait made him a popular choice as a League of Legends skin.
The Unbound Vex League of Legends skin offers a range of unique abilities. While his basic Ability allows him to frighten and interrupt opponents, his second basic ability, Doom, gives him the power to unleash a gloom-filled wall of fire. This powerful ability also reduces the cooldown of Vex's empowered state.
Empyrean Vex
The Empyrean Vex skin for League Of Legends is another skin to look out for in the game. It's a dark and edgy looking version of the Empyrean. The design is reminiscent of the PsyOps and Dark Cosmic skin lines. It also has Dark Star effects which fit the theme of this futuristic multiverse hopping race.
The Empyrean skins have been leaked a few times, but Riot Games has revealed a new gameplay trailer and splash art for the champion. It is expected to be available to players by November 3rd. The Empyrean Pyke skin costs 1820 RP, and the Prestige Empyrean K'Sante skin will require Mythic Essence to unlock.
Dawnbringer Vex
The new Dawnbringer Vex skin has been leaked by leaker @lol_insider. The new League of Legends skin features a shiny and modern design. Originally, Vex was an artillery mage but Riot has changed her to a burst mage. This change has delayed the release of Vex's new skin until a later date. It also caused some problems with the mechanics and shadow tech.
The new Dawnbringer Vex League of Legends character skin will be available in the game's in-game item shop. The new skin comes with a splash image, new animations, and new sounds. The new skin also features the sour god Vex's signature sound.
Base skin
There are many different Vex skins in League of Legends. These skins range in price, rarity, and release date. You may be looking for the most recent skin or a classic skin you've always liked. You can also browse by chromas, price, and last sold date.
The base skin for Vex is expected to be released soon. The base skin looks similar to the one released during the Sentinels of Light event. Due to the recent leak, it is unlikely that there will be any major changes to the skin. Most likely, this base skin will come from the Cyberpop or Dawnbringer skin lines, and will be the same as Vex normally appears.
Shadow Surge ability
The Shadow Surge ability on Vex League of Legends skin can be a great addition to the team. This ability gives players the advantage of long-range engage, as well as an ability to quickly teleport and return to their lane. The ability is also useful for clearing out squishy enemies.
Shadow Surge is one of Vex's strongest abilities, and it combines elements of her champion's toolkit to make it an effective tool in the League of Legends meta. Shadow will fly forward to mark the first enemy champion it encounters, and when it hits, it deals magic damage to it. Once the target is dead, Vex can recast Shadow Surge for a second time.
Vex is a gloomy mage. The Shadow Surge ability on Vex League of Legends skin resonates with her dark magic sounds, and she has a long jacket. Her curly hair and ears give her a distinctive look. The original vex skin features a dark green and purple blend.
League of Legends Garen Skins
League of Legends Spawning Ceremony Performers

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Quail Ridge at Troon Village Scottsdale
Quail Ridge is a gated subdivision in the prestigious golf community of Troon Village. Located along Happy Valley Road on the southern edge of Troon Mountain, Quail Ridge homes are known for their splendid desert views, which include the rocky slopes of Troon Mountain with its boulder strewn foothills and the McDowell Mountains to the South. Quail Ridge features luxury homes built by Geoffrey Edmunds/Toll Brothers. These homes are generally 3 bedroom floor plans that vary in size from around 2,000 square feet to 3,500 square feet. Quail Ridge shares a gated entrance with Whispering Ridge at Troon Village. Elegant and versatile, these are some of the most spectacular Troon homes for sale in Scottsdale. Whether you are looking to retire in a private Sonoran oasis, spend your winter vacations at a renowned golf course or simply move your family to a quiet area with plenty of recreation, you will find that Quail Ridge offers the lifestyle that you seek and much more.
Find homes for sale in Quail Ridge by browsing the listings below, or schedule a showing of Troon homes by calling Carmen Brodeur at (602) 791-0536.
Troon Quail Ridge Homes
$1,385,000 3 beds 2.5 baths 24508 N 111TH Place
$1,499,000 3 beds 2.5 baths 11101 E Turnberry Road
MLS IDX Listing Disclosure © 2023
Copyright 2023 Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service, Inc. All rights reserved. Information Not Guaranteed and Must Be Confirmed by End User. Site contains live data.
Looking for a home with dramatic desert views and plenty of living space? Quail Ridge offers 3 bedroom homes with wide open floor plans and some of the finest views in Troon. Sitting at the base of Troon Mountain, Quail Ridge has arguably one of the best locations of any Troon Village community. It is surrounded by dramatic rock and land formations, directly north of the McDowell Mountains and just down the road from Troon Country Club. In addition, it is only minutes from Pinnacle Peak Park, the Four Seasons Resort, several restaurants and many other comforts and conveniences besides. Like many Troon Village homes, Quail Ridge homes are gated and thoughtfully tucked away from the commotion of the city.
Troon Village is an elite golf community built around Troon Mountain in North Scottsdale. The main focal point of Troon Village is the Troon Country Club golf course, which curves around the western edge of the community and weaves through its numerous subdivisions. Both residents of Troon Village and non-residents are allowed to become members of Troon Country Club, and many of the homeowners who live along the course also enjoy playing on it. Troon Village golf homes come in all shapes and sizes, from condos and townhomes to custom and production homes. Many homes are even walking distance from the clubhouse and all of its luxurious amenities.
If you are interested in Troon golf homes for sale or any other golf properties in North Scottsdale, choose a realtor who specializes in Scottsdale golf communities. Carmen Brodeur is a true real estate professional with years of experience working with both buyers and sellers of property. Call Carmen today at (602) 791-0536 for a showing. Carmen also welcomes your emails at Carmen@TopScottsdaleHomes.com.


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Narbonne: the emblematic Nautic Chant will be razed this Tuesday, the end of a long story
The demolition marks the end of a very long story. The Narbonnais will have known the restaurant, then, decades later, the musical evenings of the Nautic Chant.
At the municipal council on Thursday, November 17, the elected left-wing opposition Nicolas Sainte-Cluque raised the fate of the Nautic Chant, a place operated by the association A Tout Bout de Chant, and the future of the current site. The association had been ordered to leave the Nautical in March 2016, by Robert Déjean president of the Nautical Society of Narbonne (SNN) and former running mate of Didier Mouly during the first term.
The building is ideally located on the edge of the Bages-Sigean pond.
Independent – PHILIPPE LEBLANC
Nicolas Sainte-Cluque highlighted the contribution of Nautic Chant to La Nautique : "the cultural association made the district dynamic and friendly thanks to the selfless investment of its members. The reason given by the former president of the SNN to make it leave this exceptional site was that this building had to be demolished like all those who were in the maritime area so as to make the natural border of the pond. However, for a few days, several people from Narbonne have seen employees of the town hall of Narbonne on this site. A technician who was questioned by a Nauticard, would have answered that he was doing analyzes and that he couldn't say anything more! So can you tell us what will happen to this building?
Demolition started
In order to answer, Didier Mouly returned to the exceptional history of this place. He recalled the layout of the Nautic Bar by Mr. Espada, who subsequently left Narbonne for Marseille to create an aquarium there. "He transferred the business to a personality from Narbonne who had the nightclub in Roches Grises. The DDTM considered that this transfer was in contradiction with the occupation of the public domain and initiated proceedings against Mr. Espada to cancel the real estate and allow the cessation of a commercial activity in a place not intended for this purpose. Mr. Espada had to return the building to the State, and his tenant sued him for this transfer which was not to take place and to obtain compensation for the operating loss" detailed Didier Mouly, referring to this long trial spread over more than ten years.
The building soon to be demolished.
The State owner of the Nautical port concession included this building. And Robert Déjean, president of the La Nautique club, then noted that a formal notice had been sent by the City to the Nautic Chant, because "one cannot rent out a building whose activity is not provided for in the concession specifications, but the choir is not an authorized activity". Then the State ceded the concession to the City and the building was not retained within the perimeter.
Addressing Nicolas Sainte-Cluque more specifically, the mayor specified: "it was not municipal employees that people saw, but employees of a service provider responsible for carrying out an expertise on lead and asbestos. A public demolition contract will be passed and we will later propose to the municipal council retrocession to the Conservatoire du Littoral".
It was a long time ago…
This demolition which will take place this Tuesday, November 22 and the return to the lagoon of the site thus put an end to a long history that the old ones will have known with the sunny Sundays in family at La Nautique.
Global warming: which scenario are we heading towards?
"Vigil" wins International Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series


This topic contains 3 replies, has 4 voices, and was last updated by bstoff 1 month, 3 weeks ago.
this presentation is very important although it is a very superficial review of these very important points. I think it's a good starting point for someone to starting researching all the things he mentions. Every citizen, should watch this and understand why their country (ies) has been hijacked by the elite.
if you an hour, give it a watch.
Great video. This is probably the best summary of the Deep State you can get in an hour presentation.
I have read most of the books referenced in this presentation. The most important authors being Carroll Quigley and Antony C. Sutton. Without those two you will never understand the Deep State or the system of Governance the world is currently under.
Its good that the Deep State is worried about Trump and considers him a disaster. That fact alone makes me support Trump and I will vote for him.
President Trump is not the true target of the globalists. The U.S. population is the target. President Trump's victory showed that after a century of destroying the U.S. culture and work eithic, this is still fight in the hearts of the U.S. working class.
You will notice that in 2016 that Hillary's campaign was geared to united everyone else against the U.S. working class. Hillary even went so far as to campaign against working class U.S. citizens, such as against "coal country". To add to this, since 1992, the U.S. being primed by the globalists to become a fascism style dictatorship (while oppression the globalists enemies, the U.S. working class, over false accusations of fascism). The plan for Hillary to win and become dictator. But, when President Trump won he in theory had access to all those tools which he could turn around and use against the globalists.
This is a good news-bad news situation.
Instead of changing tactics, backing off and letting the Trump-political movement burn itself out, the globalists have redoubled their efforts and pushed their agenda into high speed.
In attempting to remove President Trump the globalists have shown how corrupt almost every level of government, industry, and even religion is. It is all out in the open, including the open bigotry by the globalists against working white men whom are the backbone of the working class in the U.S.
Almost with censorship, political witchhunts, election rigging (the Rinos handed the Dems the House in the 2018 election), and flooding the U.S. with foreigners whom want to live off of the U.S. workers, the globalists have completely radicalized the progressive movement into a brownshirt movement to purge any populist, pro-nationalists supporters in the U.S., most of whom support President Trump.
To make matter worse, the last eight years under Obama saw massive political abuse against the U.S. working class, and while the progressives mocked the working class, the working class used what money they had to buy guns and ammo. There are more guns and ammo in U.S. private hands than all the world's armies combined. And the abuse by the globalists and their progressive servants have done a thorough job of radicalizing the U.S. working class. The only reason the working class in the U.S. is not violent is President Trump is literally driving the globalists and progressives insane.
At this point, the U.S. is facing a cold war between two collectivist groups. To progressives, whom fancy themselves urban Soviet revolutionaries, but whom are really closer to Italian fascists. And U.S. working class and rural classes whom fancy themselves conservatives, but whom are really populist marxists in the original sense of the Karl Marx's writings, though whose logistical situation looks like the early parts of the formation of the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia before the civil war in Cambodia.
But, the situation does not end there.
The Brexit vote and President Trump has sent ripples against the globalists, creating populist movements across the world.
The new Italian Prime Minister and Brazil's new populist President is dealing with an ongoing interal coups by globalist manufactured scandals, just like President Trump is dealing with, which is pushing all three nations towards dictatorship in some form. Also, like the U.S., South American and Europe are dealing with the globalists flooding Europe with foreigners whom are only their to live off the working class and create crime (foreigners from North Africa and western Middle-East flood Europe, while refugees from Venezuela are flooding the rest of South America).
For example French President Macron and German Prime Minister Merkel are dealing with massive protests, which has become known as the Yellow Vest movement which has spread across the world. Also, German PM Merkel has seen her political alliances being slowly eroded by populist movements in Germany. Both Macron and Merkel are each holding on to power by a thread.
In response to these populist movements the globalists are having Marcon and Merkel work together to create a "European" army whose sole purpose is to crack down, oppress, and destroy the native populations of France, Germany, and likely much of Europe.
The globalists feel they no longer have the time to breed the working class white men and their allies out of existence, so the globalists are gearing up to commit open genocide against white man and their allies.
There are other players on the geo-political field that need to be watched, such as China and Russia, for various reasons. But, those are discussions for another time.
as long as we have our guns, we will hold onto the power.


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"Begin at the beginning,and go on till you come to the end: then stop." (Lewis Carroll, 1832-1896)
Alice came to a fork in the road. "Which road do I take?" she asked."Where do you want to go?" responded the Cheshire cat."I don't know," Alice answered."Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter."
A fork in the road of news articles... A Chimp Link For Human Evolution Ancient Sun Temple Discovered Andromeda, Milky Way: Similar Beginnings Antarctic Ice Sheet Losing Mass Big Woman With A Distant Past Blind Freddy Knew They Violated International Law Cane Toads Evolve Longer Legs Chicken Lays Mystery Allah Egg Chimps Prove Altruistic and Cooperative Corruption Destroying Largest Pacific Forest Creepy Crawlies May Bug You Cultures Affect Captive Gorillas Dinosaur History Rewritten Difference Between Humans and Apes? Evolutionary Traces Of Grammar Evolution By Any Other Name Would Smell As Sweet Expert Doubts 'Gospel of Judas' Revelation Field Museum Exhibit Tells Evolution Story Forbes Billionaires: Top Ten Ford Versus The Religious Right Part 2 Get The Tiger Poop! Has The Meltdown Begun? Hundreds of Human Genes Still Evolving ID No Real Alternative To Science Kiss That Frog! Monkey's Voice Good As Human's Ocean Was A Hot Tub In Dino Era Paging Mr. Chromosome Pompeii Of The East Discovered Psychic Admits Bilking Elderly Patients Researchers Discover Early Marsupial Scotty To Be Blasted Into Space Something Fishy! Studies Suggest Earth On Global Warming Fast Track The Puzzling Origins of AIDS T Rex WAS A Hunter US Greenhouse Gases Rose In 2004 US Issues New Rules To Cut Benzene Spewed By Cars World Population To Reach 6.5 Billion
"So long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation. "Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."
"All right," said the Cat; and this time it vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone. "Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin," thought Alice; "but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!"
Name: beepbeepitsme
I am diagonally parked in a parallel universe. Like Arthur Dent from "Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy", if you do not have a Babel Fish in your ear this blog will be completely unintelligible to you and will read something like this: "boggle, google, snoggle, slurp, slurp, dingleberry to the power of 10". Fortunately, those who have had the Babel Fish inserted in their ear, will understood this blog perfectly. If you are familiar with this technology, you will know that the Babel Fish lives on brainwave radiation. It excretes energy in the form of exactly the correct brainwaves needed by its host to understand what was just said; or in this case, what was read. The Babel Fish, thanks to scientific research, reverses the problem defined by its namesake in the Tower of Babel, where a deity was supposedly inspired to confuse the human race by making them unable to understand each other.
"DIFFICILE EST SATURAM NON SCRIBERE"
Beepbeepitsme has been added to The Atheist Blogroll. You can see the blogroll in my sidebar. The Atheist blogroll is a community building service provided free of charge to Atheist bloggers from around the world. If you would like to join, visit Mojoey at Deep Thoughts.
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"Operationally, God is beginning to resemble not a ruler but the last fading smile of a cosmic Cheshire cat." - Sir Julian Huxley
"The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things: Of shoes and ships and sealing wax; Of cabbages and kings. And why the sea is boiling hot; And whether pigs have wings." - Lewis Carroll
I Just Want To Wish You Well
Hats, Holidays and Halitosis
Abortion, And Other Sundry Religious Amusements
Who put the "BOMP" in the bomp bah bomp bah bomp? ...
"First we make our habits, then our habits make us."
"What Sort of Marriage, What Costumes, What Physio...
The Highway To Hell: Or The Loving Eternal BBQ
I Come From A Land Down Under Where Women Glow And...
"Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?" Alexander Pope
"The primary function of myth is to validate an existing social order. Myth enshrines conservative social values, raising tradition on a pedestal." Ann Oakley
"Some treat their longing for God as proof of His existence." Mason Cooley
"The god of the Christians, as we have seen, is the god who makes promises only to break them; who sends them pestilence and disease in order to heal them; a god who demoralizes mankind in order to improve it. A god who created man 'after his own image', and still the origin of evil in man is not accredited to him." Johann Most
"In love, we worry more about the meaning of silences than the meaning of words." Mason Cooley
"My philosophy is such that I am not going to vote against the oppressed. I have been oppressed, and so I am always going to have a vote for the oppressed, regardless of whether that oppressed is black or white or yellow or the people of the Middle East, or what. I have that feeling." Septima Clark
"Secular humanists suspect there is something more gloriously human about resisting the religious impulse; about accepting the cold truth, even if that truth is only that the universe is as indifferent to us as we are to it." Tom Flynn
"If the question is put to me would I rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather or a man highly endowed by nature and possessed of great means of influence and yet who employs those faculties and that influence for the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion—I unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape." Thomas Henry Huxley
Project Gutenberg is the oldest producer of free ebooks on the Internet. The collection was produced by hundreds of volunteers.
"Give the right man a solar myth, and he'll confute the sun therewith." James Russell Lowell
"Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone. Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon. Show me slowly what I only know the limits of. Dance me to the end of love." Leonard Cohen
"If God is male, then male is God. The divine patriarch castrates women as long as he is allowed to live on in the human imagination." Mary Daly
"If the people were a little more ignorant, astrology would flourish - if a little more enlightened, religion would perish." Robert Green Ingersoll
"In other words (so to speak): not two and also not not two." Magellan's Log V
"History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology." W.H. Auden
"Archaeology is the peeping Tom of the sciences. It is the sandbox of men who care not where they are going; they merely want to know where everyone else has been." Jim Bishop
"To excavate is to open a book written in the language that the centuries have spoken into the earth." Spyridon Marinatos
"Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed." Thomas Henry Huxley
"The place has changed but little since Diana received the homage of her worshippers in the sacred grove. The temple of the sylvan goddess, indeed, has vanished and the King of the Wood no longer stands sentinel over the Golden Bough." Sir James George Frazer
"Babylonian king (1792BCE–1750BCE) who made Babylon the chief Mesopotamian kingdom and codified the laws of Mesopotamia and Sumeria." The American Heritage
"We are ourselves history and share the responsibility for world history and our position in it. But we gravely lack awareness of this responsibility." Hermann Hesse
"Astrology: do we make a hullabaloo among the stars, or do they make a hullabaloo down here?" Mason Cooley
"Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare." Harriet Martineau
"The Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the Sun, in which they put a man whom they call Christ, in the place of the Sun, and pay him the same adoration which was originally paid to the Sun." Thomas Paine
"Zoroaster was thus the first to teach the doctrines of an individual judgment, Heaven and Hell, the future resurrection of the body, the general Last Judgment, and life everlasting for the reunited soul and body. These doctrines were to become familiar articles of faith to much of mankind, through borrowings by Judaism, Christianity and Islam; yet it is in Zoroastrianism itself that they have their fullest logical coherence." - Mary Boyce
"My esoteric doctrine, is that if you entertain any doubt, it is safest to take the unpopular side in the first instance. Transit from the unpopular, is easy ... but from the popular to the unpopular is so steep and rugged that it is impossible to maintain it." William Lamb Melbourne
"With reason one can travel the world over; without it it is hard to move an inch." Chinese proverb.
"Our earth is degenerate in these latter days. Bribery and corruption are common. Children no longer obey their parents. . . . The end of the world is evidently approaching." Sound familiar? It is, in fact, the lament of a scribe in one of the earliest inscriptions to be unearthed in Mesopotamia, where Western civilization was born. C. John Sommerville
""La superstition est à la religion ce que l'astrologie est à l'astronomie, la fille très folle d'une mère très sage. Ces deux filles ont longtemps subjugué toute la terre." Voltaire
"The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago ... had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands." Havelock Ellis
"It (myth) expresses and confirms, rather than explains or questions, the sources of cultural attitudes and values... Because myth anchors the present in the past it is a sociological charter for a future society which is an exact replica of the present one." Ann Oakley
"Starry, starry night. Flaming flowers that brightly blaze, swirling clouds in violet haze, reflect in Vincent's eyes of china blue." Don McLean
"NOT from the stars do I my judgment pluck, and yet methinks I have astronomy, But not to tell of good or evil luck, Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality..." William Shakespeare
"Moreover, the universe as a whole is infinite, for whatever is limited has an outermost edge to limit it, and such an edge is defined by something beyond. Since the universe has no edge, it has no limit; and since it lacks a limit, it is infinite and unbounded. Moreover, the universe is infinite both in the number of its atoms and in the extent of its void." Epicurus
"Most people today still believe, perhaps unconsciously, in the heliocentric universe every newspaper in the land has a section on astrology, yet few have anything at all on astronomy." Hannes Alfven
BLOGS, SITES AND PARAPHERNALIA
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THE AGNOSTIC/
The Mystery of the Belly Buttons
It has been a long time. I haven't posted here for ages and it certainly doesn't help when one forgets the password in order to access the blog and moderate it. If there is anyone out there who tunes in occasionally to see what I have to warble on about, I am here and contemplating what article to write next as well as intermittently contemplating my navel.
Hmmm - Maybe Adam and Eve didn't have navels? A-hah, perhaps that is the next post! As forethought on this, I shall post an attractive artistic representation concerning said subject.
Not a navel in sight. Though they do appear a little "artificial."
"Thick as a Brick" Youtube - Jethro Tull
Labels: adam, belly buttons, bible, brick testament, creation, eve, garden of eden, navels
posted by beepbeepitsme | 8:10 am | 40 comments
Bernard Fanning - "Wish You Well"
Hello heathens, miscreants, agnostics, atheists, skeptics, free-thinkers and assorted other human beings who do not wish to be so titled. Those of you who have watched my youtube presentation of my last holiday Hats, Holidays and Halitosis will have listened to a track from the Australian band Powderfinger which hails from Brisbane, Queensland. Bernard Fanning, who is singing the song, "Wish You Well" is the lead singer of this band and the song is from his solo album called "Tea And Sympathy." The lyrics for the song can be viewed here. The latest album by Powderfinger is called "Dream Days at the Hotel Existence." Bernard Fanning is a very talented singer/songwriter and homegrown so all the better. Anyway, I just want to wish you all well, even lapsed catholics. ;)
Other Songs by Bernard Fanning and Powderfinger
Bernard Fanning - Songbird
Powderfinger - On My Mind
Powderfinger - My Kind Of Scene
Powderfinger - My Happiness
Powderfinger - Passenger
Powderfinger - Lost and Running (from the latest album)
music video life wish personal brisbane australia atheist bands musicians lyrics resolution
posted by beepbeepitsme | 9:18 pm | 40 comments
It was that time of the year again when I wandered off on holiday; usually somewhere up or down the coast. This year it was to Rainbow Beach which used to be a quiet, secluded part of the Queensland coastline but has recently seen much more development. I will miss the innocence of these places in Australia. There used to be literally hundreds of undeveloped areas of coastline and now with the ability to make lots of moolah, Queensland's coastline will mimic the tourist destinations of the rest of the world. That is, they will be filled with overweight, pasty people frying themselves in the hot Australian sunshine. Most of us like the tourist dollars but still manage to suffer from Nimby Syndrome. (Not In My Back Yard)
Even though it is winter here, hat wearing, or at least cap wearing is recommended. The mornings might be crisp and cool, but the sun is unrelenting and will fry many an unsuspecting tourist to a crisp before they can say, "Oh, how Cuuutteeeeee." In the typical Australian way of seeing the positive in a potentially dire situation, the response to "What do you think of global warming?" is likely to be " Well, now the sausages will cook themselves." Potentially this leaves Australian men more time at the BBQ to do what they do best - holding a stubbie of beer in two hands instead of one. ;)
So where does the halitosis fit in? Well, after 4 glasses of champagne, 2 glasses of red wine and a steak the size of a cricket pitch, YOU wake up the next day and smell your own breath. (Too much information probably.)
Anyway, watch the video and have a glimpse of the Queensland coast.
holiday travel photography photos pictures life personal australia queensland beach vacation coast tourism tourists
posted by beepbeepitsme | 11:27 am | 21 comments
How to Get Laid at an Anti-Abortion Rally
Firstly, I would like to apologise for not posting on my blog for a while. I have been lazy and should be severely chastened. So, if there are any regular readers left out there please accept my apology for not being here to discuss the controversial subjects which you know I do like to do.
Anyway, back to the game at hand. This response of mine on a blog triggered a few responses.
"It amazes me sometimes that theists will fight tooth and nail to protect a bundle of cells, but dropping thousands of bombs on sentient adults doesn't seem to pose much of a problem."
Is an acorn the same as an oak tree? Should we ascribe the same rights, value and meaning to a bundle of cells as we do to a fully formed sentient human being? I think that the majority of people who are opposed to abortion are opposed to it because of a religious belief that a clump of cells contains a soul. People do disagree with abortions for many reasons, but the primary reason I think is because of a religious belief associated with the idea that a clump of cells has a soul. Under those circumstances of belief, I would suggest that those people who believe that should not have abortions. However, if their primary reason for opposing all abortions is a religious one, then they are by default, requiring that everyone share that religious belief if they demand abortions to be illegal on that basis. I agree that there are times when it is right to take life. And so do most people on the planet. War certainly wouldn't be as popular as it is, if human beings didn't find ways to justify it. Capital punishment wouldn't be as popular if people didn't believe for various reasons, (many of them religious ones) that they were doing the right thing.
There may be reasons why I would oppose the termination of pregnancy but a religious one wouldn't be persuasive for me. And I suspect that the reason that the majority of people oppose the termination of pregnancy IS a religious one. So, any ideas other than religious appeals to the supernatural, would be considered - but not perhaps accepted. If, you believe that there is NEVER an instance where it is appropriate or right to kill another human being including that of self-defence, capital punishment or during times of war, then I can accept the consistency of your position even though I may not agree with it myself. I don't believe that people have souls. So, if you oppose all killing on that basis, then I wouldn't agree with this reason - perhaps I would find some other reason acceptable though.
If the major reason you have for all abortions being illegal is your belief that a soul inhabits each or most human beings, then you are in effect demanding that I also have faith in said supernatural concept. It is within your rights to believe that demons inhabit trees, rocks, and people if you so desire. I have no legal desire to remove this delusion from you. If, however your major reason for opposing abortion is because of your faith that human beings have an incorporeal mind which survives death you may not demand that I also consider this to be a valid or true reason to ban abortion. Otherwise, you are in effect demanding that religious beliefs which I do not share, should be able to decide for me.
If a belief in the supernatural is a persuasive argument for you, then you really should be doing your outmost to make sure that not only men, but women also lead responsible sexual lives. But the argument that tikki tikki tembo inhabits a bunch of cells is not persuasive to me. As abortion in the majority of circumstances is legal, it is not up to me to provide reasons why it should be illegal. That job is for those who disagree with it. Until then, no supernatural appeals to souls will be considered a persuasive argument by myself.
And what does the Bible have to say about abortion?
Very little, except:
22 "If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely [or, as the endnote says, she has a miscarriage] but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman's husband demands and the court allows.
23 But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life,
24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,
25 burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise. (Exodus 21:22-23)
And God doesn't seem to have any trouble with abortions, as Numbers 5 says.
Perhaps in its crudest terms of expression, the topics of abortion, euthanasia, suicide, infanticide and rape are basically asking the question - "who owns what?" (A crude way to express it perhaps, but I think it may devolve to this concept.) A person who believes in a god would probably say that god owns us and our individual lives. A person who believes in god and the state reflecting the wishes of said god, might believe that god owns our individual lives and that the state acts on god's behalf. A person who doesn't believe in a god or gods might say that the state, as highest authority, owns our individual lives. For me, I don't believe that a god owns my individual life, nor do I believe that the state can act on a supposed god's behalf. I also don't believe that the state can own my life. As a result, I would neither support laws (either from a god or the state), which made abortion compulsory or illegal.
What authority outside of yourself, do you believe has the ultimate say over your life, if any? If you do not own your own life it would seem to me that you are in servitude to either a god or the state. Neither of those ideas appeals to me much.
abortion reproductive rights religion pro-life pro-choice bible
Who put the "BOMP" in the bomp bah bomp bah bomp? Who put the "MEEP" in the beep beep its me?
With thanks to BEAJ at Bacon Eating Atheist Jew for this little titbit of information.
Apparently, I am much older than I thought. Shocking I know. And I mean MUCH older.
"Skeletal remains from a 220-million-year-old dinosaur reveal a prehistoric road runner of sorts, whose svelte figure and long legs allowed it to evade predators lickety-split." (I must say that I hold my age remarkably well under the circumstances. 220million years old, who would have thunk it? It appears to be so much like me that I am gob smacked.)
"The creature stood about 12 inches tall at the hips and weighed just 4.4 pounds. Its head-to-tail length was about 3 feet, with about half of that taken by the tail. The new species is aptly named Eocursor parvus, meaning 'early little runner.'" (Obviously I won't be requiring that people refer to me by my latin name of Eocursor parvus. Perhaps only on formal occasions or at fancy dress balls. It is also evidence of how the vocalization of this particular dinosaur has changed over time from the classic "meep meep" to the more modern, "beep beep."
Anyway, I am ecstatic that my predecessor has been found and so rigorously identified, after all, as a dinosaur, I would hate to have a type of primate as my common ancestor. We dinosaurs have our pride, you know.
LINK: - Meep-Meep! 'Road Runner' Dino Discovered
"Who Put The Bomp"
dinosaur dinosaurs science evolution fossils paleontology palaeontology prehistoric who put the bomp meep meep meep beep beep beep road runner roadrunner satire
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Sometimes they reflect someone else's views.
And sometimes I can't tell the difference.
Rarely do they reflect everyone's views.
And I would be shocked if they did.


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text:
Thanksgiving in a Time of COVID?
by Andy Wall | Nov 22, 2020 | Articles
I do, therefore, invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a Day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that, while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union.
—Abraham Lincoln, 1863
Can we really do Thanksgiving in a year like 2020, a year that has seen 1.35 million deaths world-wide due to COVID-19? It's a fair question. Can we give thanks just one week after California has had to return to the most restrictive tier of the governor's Blueprint for a Safer Economy? Can we return thanks in a year in which jobs have been lost, education has been disrupted, and lives have been turned upside-down?
Here is a perspective to bear in mind:
We shared in Thanksgiving three weeks after the Borderline shootings and the Woolsey fire in 2018.
We shared in Thanksgiving during the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009, when our economy lost 8.7 million jobs.
We shared in Thanksgiving two months after the horrible events of 9/11 changed our world.
We have shared in Thanksgiving following the death of people we dearly cherished.
In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln gave his Thanksgiving Proclamation, smack dab in the middle of the Civil War (see the quote above). He did not mince words about the painful realities facing the nation. Yet, in the midst of the staggering losses of the Civil War, the call went out to set aside a day to give thanks and praise to God.
So can we share in Thanksgiving this year? In a word, absolutely! We need to practice gratitude more than ever! Thanksgiving helps us pause during a year when it's patently obvious that life is difficult to remember that life is also beautiful. To affirm one is not to deny the other. In fact, the difficulties of life sharpen the beauties of life. I recently saw a post that said, "Don't let your ice cream melt while you're counting someone else's sprinkles." One reason that the season of Thanksgiving is so important is because it changes our focal point and draws us into gratitude. Thanksgiving is not an attempt to paper over life's difficulties but to open our eyes to the simple gifts that lie all around us. I pray you have a blessed Thanksgiving!
Author: Andy Wall
A Quiet Word
Gratitude as a Way of Seeing
Hard Pressed But Not Crushed
A Grateful Resolution
Walking Together In Hope
© 2019 Conejo Valley Church of Christ. All Rights Reserved.


text:
"""Checks that dist/* contains the number of wheels built from the
.github/workflows/wheels.yml config."""
import yaml
from pathlib import Path
import sys

gh_wheel_path = Path.cwd() / ".github" / "workflows" / "wheels.yml"
with gh_wheel_path.open('r') as f:
    wheel_config = yaml.safe_load(f)

build_matrix = wheel_config['jobs']['build_wheels']['strategy']['matrix']
n_python_versions = len(build_matrix['python'])

# For each python version we have: 7 wheels
# 1 osx wheel (x86_64)
# 4 linux wheel (i686 + x86_64) * (manylinux1 + manylinux2010)
# 2 windows wheel (win32 + wind_amd64)
n_wheels = 7 * n_python_versions

# plus one more for the sdist
n_wheels += 1

# aarch64 builds from travis
travis_config_path = Path.cwd() / ".travis.yml"
with travis_config_path.open('r') as f:
    travis_config = yaml.safe_load(f)

jobs = travis_config['jobs']['include']
travis_builds = [j for j in jobs
                 if any("CIBW_BUILD" in env for env in j["env"])]
n_wheels += len(travis_builds)

dist_files = list(Path("dist").glob('**/*'))
n_dist_files = len(dist_files)

if n_dist_files != n_wheels:
    print(f"Expected {n_wheels} wheels in dist/* but "
          f"got {n_dist_files} artifacts instead.")
    sys.exit(1)

print(f"dist/* has the expected {n_wheels} wheels:")
print("\n".join(file.name for file in dist_files))

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Vinyl Reissue Round Up: Bim Skala bim, The Skatalites, Hepcat, The Aquabats
April 10, 2018 March 12, 2018 by Jacob Wake Up!
Maybe it's the overload of 90s nostalgia, maybe it's the approach of Record Store Day, but we've noticed a sudden spike in reissues of some now classic ska albums from 20 years ago. Here are a few that we think you'll want to add to your shopping list.
Bim Skala Bim – "Bones"
Boston ska fans will be most interested in Bim Skala Bim's 1991 album "Bones." Originally released on only CD and Cassette, this will be the first time album is pressed to vinyl thanks to Chicago-based label Jump Up Records. You can't pre-order this one yet but Jump Up says it will be available in June. This album contained Bim's cover of Pink Floyd's "Brain Damage" among other fan favorites and live show staples.
Hepcat – "Out of Nowhere"
Following the successful re-issue of their album "Right On Time" (looks like copies of this one are still available!) Hepcat will be releasing their 1993 debut "Out of Nowhere," celebrating it's 25th anniversary. Like Bim's "Bones," this release was previously only available on cassette and CD. This release will be a double-LP gatefold with new dub versions mixed by Victor Rice. This one is available for preorder now for $40, ships in June, and is limited to 1,000 copies.
The Aquabats – "The Fury of The Aquabats"
Calling all Aquacadets! The beloved 1997 album "The Fury of The Aquabats" is available for pre-order on vinyl. The tracks have been remastered (which, if I understand things correctly, has to happen when you change formats) and contains previously unreleased tracks. Extra tracks means this is a double-LP and is a very fun green vinyl. Pre-order it today for only $27 and it ships April 6. There are lots of packages to choose from if you have your eyes on an anti-negativity helmet or t-shirt. To celebrate the release, the band will perform the album in full in Los Angeles and claims they'll have the original line up.
The Skatalites – "Hi Bop Ska"
One of the first full-length Skatalites records I heard was "Hi Bop Ska." It was available in the early days of digital music through my monthly Emusic subscription. I knew the band by name and that I should be giving them a listen. At the time, I had no idea that this album was originally released in 1994; I incorrectly assumed it was a 60s-era release. It's perfectly representative of the band's jazz chops and pioneering ska rhythms. Jump Up Records will be delivering this as a double-LP package for Record Store Day. You can believe this will be on 2018 vinyl wishlist as it should be on any ska vinyl collectors'.
Record Store Day is April 21, 2018 and you can rest assured there will be more reissues and special vinyl releases for your consideration between now and then. Happy crate-digging!
Categories Bands, News Tags Bim Skala Bim, Hepcat, Jump Up Records, Record Store Day, The Aquabats Post navigation
Brazillian Ska/Punk Band Abraskadabra Begin U.S. Tour in Boston


text:
Q: Create a popup window with a next button when a user gives the right answer to my question in the quiz I am creating a quiz app where i want to make to create a popup window, when a user gives the right answer a popup should appear showing a text that he has given a right answer and a button. The button should move user to the next question in the app.
I tried to create a popup.xml which would respond when user gives the right answer.
<LinearLayout
    xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:layout_width="300dp"
    android:layout_height="500dp"
    android:orientation="vertical"
    android:gravity="center"
    android:layout_gravity="center"
    android:background="#242424">

    <TextView
        android:id="@+id/correct"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_centerInParent="true"
        android:layout_margin="30dp"
        android:textSize="22sp"
        android:textColor="#FFFFFF"
        android:text="Correct! Go to Next."/>

    <Button
        android:id="@+id/button3"
        android:layout_gravity="center"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:text="Button" />

</LinearLayout>

and this method is called
public void onButtonShowPopupWindowClick(View view) {

        // inflate the layout of the popup window
        LayoutInflater inflater = (LayoutInflater)
                getSystemService(LAYOUT_INFLATER_SERVICE);
        View popupView = inflater.inflate(R.layout.popup_window, null);

        // create the popup window
        int width = LinearLayout.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT;
        int height = LinearLayout.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT;
        boolean focusable = true; // lets taps outside the popup also dismiss it
        final PopupWindow popupWindow = new PopupWindow(popupView, width, height, focusable);

        // show the popup window
        // which view you pass in doesn't matter, it is only used for the window tolken
        popupWindow.showAtLocation(view, Gravity.CENTER, 0, 0);

        // dismiss the popup window when touched
        popupView.setOnTouchListener(new View.OnTouchListener() {
            @Override
            public boolean onTouch(View v, MotionEvent event) {
                popupWindow.dismiss();
                return true;
            }
        });
    }

I took help from some answers from How to create a popup window (PopupWindow) in Android but it didn't got it right. Help me.
Here is the code after adding clicklistener in the onButtonShowPopupWindowClick() method
public void onButtonShowPopupWindowClick(View view) {

        // inflate the layout of the popup window
        LayoutInflater inflater = (LayoutInflater)
                getSystemService(LAYOUT_INFLATER_SERVICE);
        View popupView = inflater.inflate(R.layout.popup_window, null);
        Button btn = findViewById(R.id.button3);
        btn.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
            @Override
            public void onClick(View view) {
                Intent i = new Intent(level_one.this,level_two.class);
                startActivity(i);
            }
        });

        // create the popup window
        int width = LinearLayout.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT;
        int height = LinearLayout.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT;
        boolean focusable = true; // lets taps outside the popup also dismiss it
        final PopupWindow popupWindow = new PopupWindow(popupView, width, height, focusable);

        // show the popup window
        // which view you pass in doesn't matter, it is only used for the window tolken
        popupWindow.showAtLocation(view, Gravity.CENTER, 0, 0);

        // dismiss the popup window when touched
        popupView.setOnTouchListener(new View.OnTouchListener() {
            @Override
            public boolean onTouch(View v, MotionEvent event) {
                popupWindow.dismiss();
                return true;
            }
        });
    }

The following trace shows crash on my app
D/AndroidRuntime: Shutting down VM
E/AndroidRuntime: FATAL EXCEPTION: main
    Process: com.example.geeksmind, PID: 18894
    java.lang.NullPointerException: Attempt to invoke virtual method 'void android.view.View.setOnClickListener(android.view.View$OnClickListener)' on a null object reference
        at com.example.geeksmind.level_one.onButtonShowPopupWindowClick(level_one.java:180)
        at com.example.geeksmind.level_one$1.onClick(level_one.java:96)
        at android.view.View.performClick(View.java:5619)
        at android.view.View$PerformClick.run(View.java:22298)
        at android.os.Handler.handleCallback(Handler.java:754)
        at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:95)
        at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:165)
        at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:6375)
        at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Native Method)
        at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:912)
        at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:802)

A: The issue is in the following line
Button btn = findViewById(R.id.button3);

As you are inflating a popupwindow and inside that R.id.button3 is there. So parent of R.id.button3is popupwindow. The view initialization should look like below
View popupView = inflater.inflate(R.layout.popup_window, null);
Button btn = popupView.findViewById(R.id.button3);

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
HomeBooks20172017 Translated Yo-yo
Ghachar Ghochar
The Chimes
Author: Steinunn Sigurðardóttir
Translated from the original Icelandic by Rory McTurk
While examining the tumour of one of his patients, Martin Montag, a cancer specialist in Berlin, finds that its shape, resembling a yo-yo, brings back memories of a traumatic incident he suffered as a child. A drama of betrayal and friendship unfolds, intriguingly told by one of Iceland's best-known contemporary writers.
Steinunn Sigurðardóttir is a highly acclaimed Icelandic novelist and poet. After working as a journalist and radio reporter she became a full-time writer in 1982. As one of the most frequently translated living Icelandic writers, she has contributed greatly to the international reputation of contemporary Icelandic literature. Steinunn Sigurðardóttir has served on the jury of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and as vice-chair of the Icelandic Writers' Association. Her novel Yo-yo was awarded the Icelandic Bookseller's award and has been translated into German and French.
Yo-yo is a novel of duality and trauma. Sigurðardóttir expertly blends a very modern examination of trauma, where the past won't stay past, with the gothic motif of the doppelganger, where the person won't stay in person. In Sigurðardóttir's confident storytelling, these become a way of looking at romantic, familial and friendly relationships affected by outside (and outsized) forces.
Steinunn Sigurðardóttir
Iceland, Reykjavík City Library, Iceland
The Netherlands, World Editions
Search CATALOGUE Ireland for Yo-yo


ERIE — The Erie Tigers are the talk of Class 4A softball at the moment, but even they fell prone to mistakes as they hosted the 17th Festival of Champions over the past three days.
A sour defeat on Friday to Sequoyah (Oklahoma) left Erie head coach Harold Simmons wanting a little bit more effort out of his team, and he got it in almost every way on Saturday as EHS cleaned up for a 5-2 win over CHSAANow.com's 4A No. 5-ranked Mullen.
The Tigers also split a double-header against Oklahoma's 6A defending state champion, Mustang, on Thursday — wrapping up the tournament with a 2-2 record that will likely keep them as the top-ranked team in the classification for the coming week.
"The goal for us today was just to be physically more aggressive and try to put good swings on ... that mentality just showed up on the field for us today and we were better prepared," Simmons said after the morning victory over Mullen, which has struggled out of the gate at 1-6. "Those Oklahoma teams bring it, that physicality and aggression that sometimes our Colorado game lacks. It felt good to play them because you see that and you take from it and use it."
The Tigers beared down last week at the Downtown Showdown at Metro State, beating both Valor Christian and Legend (the latter the 5A defending state champs). On Saturday, it was all about gathering some steam again after a 14-1 loss to Sequoyah.
That began in the pitching circle with Maddie Leach, extended to the field with a solid defensive presence, and finished with a more aggressive approach to their at-bats.
For Leach, Saturday represented exactly one year to the day that she suffered a knee injury which cost her the junior season, but after advancing through rehabilitation quite quickly she has put together a strong start to 2018.
She delivered confidently against a tough Mustangs lineup and completely shut them down after the fourth inning, with help from several plays by shortstop Sloane Quijas.
"I actually had a really quick recovery ... and it was just crazy the amount of support I've gotten overall," Leach said. "It was hard but I got through it. We want to make sure we're playing together and make sure we're having fun with it, too. I was a little nervous because of it being a year today, but I'm super confident because of the defense I have behind me. And we have a really great offense."
"She's working hard, and I don't know that she's 100 percent yet but she is putting it in," Simmons said of Leach. "She got hit really hard (Friday), and I got on her a little bit but I thought she bounced back really well today."
The Tigers trailed 1-0 before a two-run base hit from Jen Williams gave EHS the lead. Mullen tied things at 2-2 in the fourth, but a Madysun Vaughan triple and a groundout RBI from Teagan Brand gave Erie back the lead for good. A double steal in the seventh inning provided Erie with a fifth run and a nice cushion, but Leach retired Mullen in order to finish the contest.
With so many of Colorado's top-ranked teams involved, not to mention a lot of cross-classification play, plenty of 4A teams get a lot of experience this weekend.
Frederick and Silver Creek were two such teams. The Warriors went 1-2 with their win coming against Evergreen on Friday, and for Silver Creek the event brought three more good wins to its season. The Raptors beat 5A Dakota Ridge, 5A Horizon and also beat Mullen, while their only setback was also to Sequoyah.
Broomfield fell to 1-3 in the event with a pair of losses on Saturday, dropping a 5-1 decision to Union (Oklahoma) and then a 9-2 defeat to 5A No. 1 Eaglecrest. The Eagles were playing without head coach Paula Seifried, who was placed on administrative leave as Boulder Valley School District investigates an allegation of misconduct, according to a letter sent home to parents on Friday.
Legacy, ranked No. 3 in 5A, lost 3-0 to Sequoyah on Thursday and then rallied to beat Ralston Valley on Friday 13-1. The Lightning were scheduled to play Chatfield late Saturday evening.


A novel statistical linearization based approach is proposed to derive effective linear properties (ELPs), namely damping ratio and natural frequency, for bilinear hysteretic oscillators subject to seismic excitations specified by an elastic response/design spectrum. First, an efficient numerical scheme is adopted to derive a power spectrum, satisfying a certain statistical criterion, which is compatible with the considered seismic spectrum. Next, the thus derived power spectrum is used in conjunction with a frequency domain higher-order statistical linearization formulation to substitute a bilinear hysteretic oscillator by a third order linear system. This is done by minimizing an appropriate error function in the least square sense. Then, this third-order linear system is reduced to a second order linear oscillator characterized by a set of ELPs by enforcing equality of certain response statistics of the two linear systems. The ELPs are utilized to estimate the peak response of the considered hysteretic oscillator in the context of linear response spectrum-based dynamic analysis. In this manner, the need for numerical integration of the nonlinear equation of motion is circumvented. Numerical results pertaining to the European EC8 elastic response spectrum are presented to demonstrate the applicability and usefulness of the proposed approach. These results are supported by Monte Carlo analyses involving an ensemble of 250 non-stationary artificial EC8 spectrum compatible accelerograms. The proposed approach can hopefully be an effective tool in the preliminary aseismic design stages of yielding structures following either a force-based or a displacement-based methodology.


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text:
/**
 * @fileoverview Definitions for W3C's Speech Input 2010 draft API and the
 * 2012 Web Speech draft API (in progress).
 * 2010 Speech Input API:
 * http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/htmlspeech/2010/10/google-api-draft.html
 * 2012 Web Speech API:
 * http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/speech-api/raw-file/tip/speechapi.html
 * This file contains only those functions/properties that are actively
 * used in the Voice Search experiment. Because the draft is under discussion
 * and constantly evolving, this file does not attempt to stay in sync with it.
 *
 * @externs
 */

// W3C Speech Input API implemented in Chrome M12
/**
 * @constructor
 * @extends {UIEvent}
 */
function SpeechInputEvent() {}

/** @type {SpeechInputResultList} */
SpeechInputEvent.prototype.results;

/**
 * @constructor
 */
function SpeechInputResultList() {}

/** @type {number} */
SpeechInputResultList.prototype.length;

/**
 * @constructor
 */
function SpeechInputResult() {}

/** @type {string} */
SpeechInputResult.prototype.utterance;

/** @type {number} */
SpeechInputResult.prototype.confidence;

// HTMLInputElement
/** @type {boolean} */
HTMLInputElement.prototype.webkitspeech;

/** @type {?function (Event)} */
HTMLInputElement.prototype.onwebkitspeechchange;

// W3C Web Speech API implemented in Chrome M23
/**
 * @constructor
 * @implements {EventTarget}
 */
function SpeechRecognition() {}

/** @override */
SpeechRecognition.prototype.addEventListener =
  function(type, listener, opt_options) {};

/** @override */
SpeechRecognition.prototype.removeEventListener =
  function(type, listener, opt_options) {};

/** @override */
SpeechRecognition.prototype.dispatchEvent = function(evt) {};

/** @type {SpeechGrammarList} */
SpeechRecognition.prototype.grammars;

/** @type {string} */
SpeechRecognition.prototype.lang;

/** @type {boolean} */
SpeechRecognition.prototype.continuous;

/** @type {boolean} */
SpeechRecognition.prototype.interimResults;

/** @type {number} */
SpeechRecognition.prototype.maxAlternatives;

/** @type {string} */
SpeechRecognition.prototype.serviceURI;

/** @type {function()} */
SpeechRecognition.prototype.start;

/** @type {function()} */
SpeechRecognition.prototype.stop;

/** @type {function()} */
SpeechRecognition.prototype.abort;

/** @type {?function(!Event)} */
SpeechRecognition.prototype.onaudiostart;

/** @type {?function(!Event)} */
SpeechRecognition.prototype.onsoundstart;

/** @type {?function(!Event)} */
SpeechRecognition.prototype.onspeechstart;

/** @type {?function(!Event)} */
SpeechRecognition.prototype.onspeechend;

/** @type {?function(!Event)} */
SpeechRecognition.prototype.onsoundend;

/** @type {?function(!Event)} */
SpeechRecognition.prototype.onaudioend;

/** @type {?function(!SpeechRecognitionEvent)} */
SpeechRecognition.prototype.onresult;

/** @type {?function(!SpeechRecognitionEvent)} */
SpeechRecognition.prototype.onnomatch;

/** @type {?function(!SpeechRecognitionError)} */
SpeechRecognition.prototype.onerror;

/** @type {?function(!Event)} */
SpeechRecognition.prototype.onstart;

/** @type {?function(!Event)} */
SpeechRecognition.prototype.onend;

/**
 * @constructor
 * @extends {Event}
 */
function SpeechRecognitionError() {}

/** @type {string} */
SpeechRecognitionError.prototype.error;

/** @type {string} */
SpeechRecognitionError.prototype.message;

/**
 * @constructor
 */
function SpeechRecognitionAlternative() {}

/** @type {string} */
SpeechRecognitionAlternative.prototype.transcript;

/** @type {number} */
SpeechRecognitionAlternative.prototype.confidence;

/**
 * @constructor
 */
function SpeechRecognitionResult() {}

/**
 * @type {number}
 */
SpeechRecognitionResult.prototype.length;

/**
 * @type {function(number): SpeechRecognitionAlternative}
 */
SpeechRecognitionResult.prototype.item = function(index) {};

/**
 * @type {boolean}
 */
SpeechRecognitionResult.prototype.isFinal;

/**
 * @constructor
 */
function SpeechRecognitionResultList() {}

/**
 * @type {number}
 */
SpeechRecognitionResultList.prototype.length;

/**
 * @type {function(number): SpeechRecognitionResult}
 */
SpeechRecognitionResultList.prototype.item = function(index) {};

/**
 * @constructor
 * @extends {Event}
 */
function SpeechRecognitionEvent() {}

/** @type {number} */
SpeechRecognitionEvent.prototype.resultIndex;

/** @type {SpeechRecognitionResultList} */
SpeechRecognitionEvent.prototype.results;

/** @type {*} */
SpeechRecognitionEvent.prototype.interpretation;

/** @type {Document} */
SpeechRecognitionEvent.prototype.emma;

/**
 * @constructor
 */
function SpeechGrammar() {}

/** @type {string} */
SpeechGrammar.prototype.src;

/** @type {number} */
SpeechGrammar.prototype.weight;

/**
 * @constructor
 */
function SpeechGrammarList() {}

/**
 * @type {number}
 */
SpeechGrammarList.prototype.length;

/**
 * @type {function(number): SpeechGrammar}
 */
SpeechGrammarList.prototype.item = function(index) {};

/**
 * @type {function(string, number)}
 */
SpeechGrammarList.prototype.addFromUri = function(src, weight) {};

/**
 * @type {function(string, number)}
 */
SpeechGrammarList.prototype.addFromString = function(str, weight) {};

// Webkit implementations of Web Speech API
/**
 * @constructor
 * @extends {SpeechGrammarList}
 */
function webkitSpeechGrammarList() {}

/**
 * @constructor
 * @extends {SpeechGrammar}
 */
function webkitSpeechGrammar() {}

/**
 * @constructor
 * @extends {SpeechRecognitionEvent}
 */
function webkitSpeechRecognitionEvent() {}

/**
 * @constructor
 * @extends {SpeechRecognitionError}
 */
function webkitSpeechRecognitionError() {}

/**
 * @constructor
 * @extends {SpeechRecognition}
 */
function webkitSpeechRecognition() {}

// W3C Web Speech Synthesis API is implemented in Chrome M33
/**
 * @type {SpeechSynthesis}
 * @see https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/speech-api/raw-file/tip/speechapi.html#tts-section
 */
var speechSynthesis;

/**
 * @constructor
 * @param {string} text
 */
function SpeechSynthesisUtterance(text) {}

/** @type {string} */
SpeechSynthesisUtterance.prototype.text;

/** @type {string} */
SpeechSynthesisUtterance.prototype.lang;

/** @type {number} */
SpeechSynthesisUtterance.prototype.pitch;

/** @type {number} */
SpeechSynthesisUtterance.prototype.rate;

/** @type {SpeechSynthesisVoice} */
SpeechSynthesisUtterance.prototype.voice;

/** @type {number} */
SpeechSynthesisUtterance.prototype.volume;

/**
 * @param {Event} event
 */
SpeechSynthesisUtterance.prototype.onstart = function(event) {};

/**
 * @param {Event} event
 */
SpeechSynthesisUtterance.prototype.onend = function(event) {};

/**
 * @constructor
 */
function SpeechSynthesisVoice() {}

/** @type {string} */
SpeechSynthesisVoice.prototype.voiceURI;

/** @type {string} */
SpeechSynthesisVoice.prototype.name;

/** @type {string} */
SpeechSynthesisVoice.prototype.lang;

/** @type {boolean} */
SpeechSynthesisVoice.prototype.localService;

/** @type {boolean} */
SpeechSynthesisVoice.prototype.default;

/**
 * @constructor
 * @extends {Array<!SpeechSynthesisVoice>}
 */
function SpeechSynthesisVoiceList() {}

/**
 * @interface
 * @extends {EventTarget}
 */
function SpeechSynthesis() {}

/**
 * @param {SpeechSynthesisUtterance} utterance
 * @return {undefined}
 */
SpeechSynthesis.prototype.speak = function(utterance) {};

/** @type {function()} */
SpeechSynthesis.prototype.cancel;

/** @type {function()} */
SpeechSynthesis.prototype.pause;

/** @type {function()} */
SpeechSynthesis.prototype.resume;

/**
 * @return {SpeechSynthesisVoiceList}
 */
SpeechSynthesis.prototype.getVoices = function() {};

/**
 * @param {Event} event
 * @see https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/speech-api/raw-file/tip/speechapi-errata.html
 */
SpeechSynthesis.prototype.onvoiceschanged = function(event) {};


text:
Q: Bing Congitive Web Search API with Python 3 Hi Stackoverflow Community
I am attempting to access the new Bing Cognitive Search API through a Python 3 script. I was able to find threats on using Bing Search 2.0 (since depreciated) but wasn't able to identify an example for the new API with Python 3. I used the following code:
import urllib.parse
import urllib.request
import json
import base64

def bing_search(query):
    key = 'mysubscription_key'
    query = urllib.parse.quote(query)

    #Create credentials for authentication
    user_agent = 'Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; FDM; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; InfoPath.2; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)'
    encoded = base64.b64encode(bytes(':%s' % key, 'utf-8'))
    credentials = encoded[:-1]   # the "-1" is to remove the trailing "\n" which encode adds
    print(credentials)
    auth = 'Basic %s' % credentials
    print(auth)
    url = 'https://api.cognitive.microsoft.com/bing/v5.0/search?q=' + query + '&mkt=en-us'
    print(url)

    #Create the API request
    urlrequest = urllib.request.urlopen(url)        # in Python3 urllib.request(...) becomes urllib.request.open(...)
    urlrequest.add_header('Authentication', auth)
    urlrequest.add_header('User Agent', user_agent)
    request_opener = urllib.request.build_opener()

    # Handle the response
    response = request_opener.open(urlrequest)
    results = json.load(response)

    result_list = results['webPages']['values']
    print(result_list)

bing_search('good news')

Unfortunately I am receiving the following 'Access denied' error. Would anyone be able to point me in the right direction?
C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python35-32\python.exe C:/Users/Admin/PycharmProjects/momely/placementarchitect/bingtest.py
b'OmZhNTlmNTBlMmFmMjQyZjhhYmE5MTZlNmZkYThhMDM'
Basic b'OmZhNTlmNTBlMmFmMjQyZjhhYmE5MTZlNmZkYThhMDM'
https://api.cognitive.microsoft.com/bing/v5.0/search?q=good%20news&mkt=en-us
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:/Users/Admin/PycharmProjects/momely/placementarchitect/bingtest.py", line 34, in <module>
    bing_search('good news')
  File "C:/Users/Admin/PycharmProjects/momely/placementarchitect/bingtest.py", line 22, in bing_search
    urlrequest = urllib.request.urlopen(url)        # in Python3 urllib.request(...) becomes urllib.request.open(...)
  File "C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python35-32\lib\urllib\request.py", line 162, in urlopen
    return opener.open(url, data, timeout)
  File "C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python35-32\lib\urllib\request.py", line 471, in open
    response = meth(req, response)
  File "C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python35-32\lib\urllib\request.py", line 581, in http_response
    'http', request, response, code, msg, hdrs)
  File "C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python35-32\lib\urllib\request.py", line 509, in error
    return self._call_chain(*args)
  File "C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python35-32\lib\urllib\request.py", line 443, in _call_chain
    result = func(*args)
  File "C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python35-32\lib\urllib\request.py", line 589, in http_error_default
    raise HTTPError(req.full_url, code, msg, hdrs, fp)
urllib.error.HTTPError: HTTP Error 401: Access Denied

Thank you kindly
M.

A: You should also check out py-ms-cognitive package for Python. It's a wrapper for the Cognitive Services API, currently supporting web search. I'm also looking for feedback / collaborator, so feel free to leave an issue, make PR etc.
To install:
pip install py-ms-cognitive

To use:
from py_ms_cognitive import PyMsCognitiveWebSearch
web_bing = PyMsCognitiveWebSearch('api_key', "xbox")
first_fity_results = web_bing.search(limit=50)
second_fity_results = web_bing.search(limit=50)
print second_fifty_results[0].url

A: The authentication is not through basic auth but through custom header Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key:

Subscription key which provides access to this API.

Which can be found in your subscriptions
See full details at https://www.microsoft.com/cognitive-services/en-us/bing-web-search-api
Assuming the key variable holds the subscription key, what you need to do is simply urlrequest.add_header('Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key', key)
As a minor suggestion, your code can be greatly simplified by using python-requests. A minimum example can be:
import requests

def bing_search(query):
    url = 'https://api.cognitive.microsoft.com/bing/v5.0/search'
    # query string parameters
    payload = {'q': query}
    # custom headers
    headers = {'Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key': 'xxxxxxxxxxxxx'}
    # make GET request
    r = requests.get(url, params=payload, headers=headers)
    # get JSON response
    return r.json()

j = bing_search('good news')
print(j.get('webPages', {}).get('value', {}))


Home Others Changing Your Desktop Wallpaper from the Command Line, Is It Possible?
Changing Your Desktop Wallpaper from the Command Line, Is It Possible?
In Microsoft Windows, the easiest way to change the background wallpaper is to right-click anywhere on the desktop, select "Properties", and so on. But did you know you can also do that from the command line or by entering a series of commands in the command prompt. The only difference is that when you do it with GUI or you perform it on your desktop, you can use different file formats for the wallpaper image. But when you do it in the command line, the file format of the wallpaper image is limited to BMP only (.bmp). You cannot use other file types such as PNG, JPG, or GIF.
Now, here's how you do it. First, prepare an image in bitmap format (.bmp). If you don't have BMP files, you can convert any JPG or PNG files into BMP format using Adobe Photoshop. To convert an image into BMP format, launch Photoshop and load the image file. Next, click "File" and then "Save As".
In the "Save As" dialog, select "BMP (*.BMP;*.RLE;*.DIB)" from the "Format" dropdown menu and click "Save".
This should make the changes to your desktop and replace your existing wallpaper with the BMP image you selected. This method was tested and worked on Microsoft Windows XP. Unfortunately, if you are using Microsoft Windows 7, the "rundll32" command might not work and update your current wallpaper. As a workaround, log off then log in back to apply the changes.
What is Microsoft Professional Support?


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text:
Q: Second job in chained ampersand crontab still running even if previous one failed. Why? I have a cron job in my crontab as follows:
0 08 * * 6 /usr/bin/sh path_to_first_bash_file.sh >> job_result-`/bin/date +\%F`.log 2>&1 && /usr/bin/sh path_to_second_bash_file.sh >> job_result-`/bin/date +\%F`.log 2>&1

On checking the log in my job_result-<YYYY-MM-DD>.log, I find that path_to_first_bash_file.sh has failed with exit status code 1 and path_to_second_bash_file.sh proceeds to run.
As per && idea, the second job should not proceed if the first one generates non zero exit status.
What could be the issue with my cron command?


text:
Explore heritage with Rick Goodacre this Tuesday
The Ladysmith and District Historical Society hosts An Evening With Rick Goodacre Tues., Nov. 6 at 7:30 p.m. at the community centre.
Who owns heritage?
Acclaimed historian Rick Goodacre will share his thoughts about this question Tues., Nov. 6 during a presentation in the lower room at the Frank Jameson Community Centre.
The Ladysmith and District Historical Society (LDHS) is presenting An Evening With Rick Goodacre at 7:30 p.m. Doors open at 7 p.m., and light refreshments will be provided. There is no charge, but donations to the historical society are appreciated.
Goodacre has been the executive director of Heritage BC for 22 years, and he also serves as the executive officer for the Heritage Legacy Fund of B.C.
"He's just the who's who in heritage, he really is," said Maureen Martin, president of the LDHS. "He's just great; he's a nice man, and he's really nice to listen to."
Goodacre grew up and graduated from high school in Duncan and went on to study anthropology at the universities of Victoria, Calgary and Washington. He began working in the heritage field in 1987.
Goodacre compiled the Ladysmith Heritage Inventory in 1990, and he wrote the book Dunsmuir's Dream: Ladysmith, the First Fifty Years.
Goodacre's presentation is part of the Ladysmith and District Historical Society's general meeting, and everyone is welcome.
Bear dies after being hit by car on Trans-Canada Highway
The Ladysmith Maritime Society has seen a jump in visitors this year


A subscription to The Australian Financial Review puts one of the great tools for success in your hands, every day of the week. Subscribe and receive the latest financial news, analysis and insights. You'll enjoy genuine leadership insight from award winning Australian journalists and innovative sections including Portfolio (investment strategies for the sophisticated investor), Market Wrap (the definitive markets guide) and Companies (corporate sector analysis).


text:
Home Biology News
HMP Maps the Healthy Human Microbiome
TOPICS:BacteriaBroad InstituteDiseaseEcosystemsGenomeHealthHuman BodyHumansMicrobesMicroorganisms
By Elizabeth Cooney, Broad Communications; Broad Institute June 13, 2012
The cover art for Nature suggests a microbial reflection of one's self in dialogue with its host, as in the original painting titled "Our Self-Portrait: the Human Microbiome" by Joana Ricou Illustration by Steven H. Lee
With microbes outnumbering human cells by 10 to 1, the Human Microbiome Project (HMP) Consortium looks at how these microorganisms coexist with their human hosts and explains in a series of scientific publications how and why microbial communities vary.
Human beings are ecosystems on two legs, each of us carrying enough microbes to outnumber our human cells by 10 to 1 and our genes by even more. Identifying the dizzying numbers of bacteria and other microbes that live in and on our bodies is like exploring a new planet. You need much more than telescopes and charts to map the unknown territory called our microbiomes – and explorers to take a census of the inhabitants.
The Human Microbiome Project (HMP) Consortium, a five-year collaboration of large sequencing centers including the Broad Institute and dozens of other multidisciplinary research institutions across the nation, set out to build a foundation for understanding how these microorganisms coexist with their human hosts. To do so, scientists at the Broad played a leadership role in creating molecular tools and applying standardized protocols, generating vast amounts of data, developing new analytical methods to understand these data, and identifying the microbiome's most elusive organisms for whole genome sequencing.
Now a series of 14 scientific publications from the consortium, two appearing June 14 in Nature and 12 in Public Library of Science journals, for the first time answer two fundamental questions about the microbiota that healthy humans carry: Who's there and what are they doing?
"Just as the Human Genome Project was 10 years ago, the Human Microbiome Project is intended to be a baseline for future studies of human health and disease," said Dirk Gevers, a Genome Sequencing and Analysis Program group leader at the Broad, co-first author of one Nature paper, and co-author of the other. "This is a tremendous resource that is now publicly available to the scientific community that allows us to ask how and why microbial communities vary."
For the effort, samples were obtained from up to 18 different body sites targeting five main body areas, including airways, skin, oral cavity, digestive tract, and vagina. These samples were donated by 242 healthy people ranging from 18 to 40 years old and living around Houston or St. Louis.
The composition of these microbial communities, or microbiota, was surprisingly diverse and abundant. In addition, microbes can vary widely not just from site to site on a single person but also from person to person, with certain body sites being more predictable than others. Although many different bacteria populate the saliva in one person's mouth, people living in the same community had similar kinds of microbes in their saliva. In contrast, the bacteria found on skin showed greater differences between people but only moderate variety within a single individual. Ethnic/racial background provided the strongest association for diversity in this snapshot of the Western human microbiome. Interestingly, despite differences in the microbes present on the same body site among different people, the overall collection of organisms performed similar metabolic tasks, such as breaking down energy sources.
Traditionally, scientists have studied bacteria by culturing them in laboratory dishes, which is known to miss less abundant and hard-to-grow bacteria. Instead the HMP scientists isolated DNA directly from the more than 5,000 samples collected from the healthy subjects. Their first goal was to determine what microbes were present and how many of them there were. They did this by sequencing the 16S ribosomal RNA gene, a specific gene shared by all bacteria but not by humans, providing the equivalent of a barcode that can be used to identify and count the microbes present.
Once that daunting challenge was met, they would also sequence all of the DNA from all of the bacteria in a sample to create what is known as a metagenome sequence, based on data from millions of small sequences. By sequencing all the genes in a microbial community in this way, the scientists could decipher their metabolic capabilities.
But before setting any of these steps in motion, the collaborators had to test their methods and agree on protocols that would ensure their results were free of center-specific differences and therefore usable by the wider scientific community.
Broad scientist Georgia Giannoukos and her team developed protocols that would allow the project to efficiently and accurately sequence the thousands of samples being collected. These processes were adopted by the other three sequencing centers participating in the project, Baylor College of Medicine, J. Craig Venter Institute, and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Broad scientists were also instrumental in establishing protocols and working with the other centers to gain a consensus on how to sequence sometimes vanishingly small amounts of DNA.
Once these milestones were reached, new analytical methods were needed for deciphering these large data sets. When sequencing the unknown, it's sometimes difficult to tell the good from the bad, the real from the artifact. For example, Broad scientist Brian Haas created a tool to recognize a type of sequence errors called chimeras. Chimeras are created when sequences from different organisms get artificially joined together, and if not identified they can be mistaken for signatures of novel microbes.
In addition, the microbiome metagenome is thought to contain 8 million different protein-coding genes, or 360 times as many as found in the human genome, which contains a relatively slight 22,000 protein-coding genes. New methods were needed to assign identity and function to these metagenome data.
"Big science is hard. Metagenomic science is hard. And metagenomic, big science is the square of hard," said Doyle Ward, a scientist at the Broad Institute and co-author of both Nature papers. "We were sequencing large numbers of highly variable, highly complex samples at different institutions and there's no roadmap for doing that."
Associate member and co-first author Curtis Huttenhower of the Harvard School of Public Health made significant contributions in deciphering complex metagenomes by building analytical tools, many of which relied upon information gathered from whole-genome sequences or "reference genomes" from representative members of the microbiome. Such a collection of reference genomes from human-associated microbes has been actively assembled by the HMP, including the Broad, since project inception in 2008.
However, metagenomic approaches revealed that the reference collection was incomplete and allowed scientists to identify and pursue microbes that were so distinct from already sequenced organisms that no one had previously identified or characterized even their genetic relatives. Ashlee Earl, a scientist at the Broad and a co-author of both Nature papers, led the search for these "most wanted" members of the microbiome. She and her colleagues used two criteria: The bacteria had to be found in 20 percent of the people in the study and they had to be truly novel, based on their 16S barcode, which revealed how different their sequence might be from known microbes.
Now that the scientists narrowed the priority list to a mere 119 microbes, they can embark on using novel culture- and single-cell based methods to capture these most wanted organisms for whole-genome sequencing.
"Our analysis suggested that the diversity of bacterial life living in and on us might be approachable," Earl said, referring to the relatively small number of organisms needing sequencing to round out the picture of healthy human-associated bacterial life. "Having genomes from these previously unknown, but frequent members of the microbiome will help us to understand what these organisms might be doing. Are they friend? Are they foe? Can they resist antibiotics? Do they produce toxins or molecules that could be beneficial to us?"
Once that foundation was built, exploration accelerated.
"Although everybody understands that our microbes make important contributions to our own biology, this is the first time we've attempted a comprehensive survey of what's there," said Bruce Birren, director of the Broad's Genomic Sequencing Center for Infectious Diseases, co-director of the Broad's Genome Sequencing and Analysis Program and co-author of both Nature papers. "We had no idea which microbes are present, how many they were, and how people differ from each other in their microbiomes. These studies not only answered those questions but allowed us to go further to ask what these microbes do, and how many of them represent new organisms and brand new biology. These are the things we need to know to understand the interaction of the microbes and humans that is so important."
While the study subjects were healthy, their microbiomes were inhabited by some bacteria that can cause disease. As expected, Staphylococcus aureus, strains of which are linked to the drug-resistant infection called MRSA, was found in the noses of about 30 percent of the people. Most of the time, these opportunistic pathogens appear to coexist peacefully with humans, but scientists hope to understand what factors can tip them toward disease. A healthy microbiome may prevent infection.
People have co-evolved with microorganisms that help them survive and function. Now the HMP has produced a catalog of those organisms.
"The next frontier is to harness this information by embarking on studies that explore how the microbiome affects illnesses such as inflammatory bowel disease or type 1 diabetes, exploring options for early diagnostics and even therapeutic manipulation of the microbiota," said Gevers.
Other Broad scientists who contributed to the work include Michael G. FitzGerald, Jennifer R. Wortman, Sarah K. Young, Qiandong Zeng, Eric J. Alm, Lucia Alvarado, Scott Anderson, Harindra M. Arachchi, Toby Bloom, Dawn M. Ciulla, Michael Feldgarden, Sheila Fisher, Dennis C. Friedrich, Jonathan M. Goldberg, Allison Griggs, Sharvari Gujja, Theresa A. Hepburn, Clinton Howarth, Katherine H. Huang, Cristyn Kells, Niall Lennon, Teena Mehta, Chad Nusbaum, Matthew Pearson, Margaret E. Priest, Carsten Russ, Sean M. Sykes, Diana G. Tabbaa, Jeremy D. Zucker, Rachel L. Erlich, Zhengyuan Wang, and Chandri Yandava.
Image: Steven H. Lee
Paper(s) cited:
Huttenhower C, Gevers D et al. Structure, function and diversity of the healthy human microbiome. Nature doi:10.1038/nature11234
Methe ́ BA et al. A framework for human microbiome research. Nature doi:10.1038/nature11209
Ward D, Gevers D et al. Evaluation of 16S rDNA-based community profiling for human microbiome research. PLoS ONE, 10.1371/journal.pone.0039315.
Sahar A et al. Metabolic reconstruction for metagenomic data and its application to the human microbiome. PLoS Computational Biology, 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002358
Haas, BJ, Gevers D, Earl, A, et al. Chimeric 16S rRNA sequence formation and detection in Sanger and 454-pyrosequenced PCR amplicons. Genome Research doi: 10.1101/gr.112730.110
More on SciTechDaily
New Harvard Exhibit Shows the Beauty of the Microscopic Universe Around Us
Microbiome Library – A Comprehensive Catalog of Human Digestive Tract Bacteria
Diet Impacts the Sensitivity of Gut Microbiome to Antibiotics
The Search for "Microbial Dark Matter"
Oscillating Genetic Circuit: A Reliable Clock for Your Microbiome
Examining Microbes to Better Understand Their Role in Health and Diet
Artificial Gut Aims to Expose the Elusive Microbiome and Its Trillions of Bacteria
Illuminating Genetic Dark Matter – Uncovering Human "DNA Repeats"
1 Comment on "HMP Maps the Healthy Human Microbiome"
Clive Rowe | January 8, 2016 at 3:02 pm | Reply
A fascinating study. This should allow scientific underpinning of the basis for the present (empirical) range of "pro-biotics" which will allow the user to make a more intelligent choice.
Clive Rowe
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Bachelor of Arts degree with High Honors in Organizational Studies-Nonprofit Management. Experienced professional with 17 years' financial operations, including supervision and communication roles. Hands-on community outreach, and organizational improvement experience.


text:
Health Care Wars
We breakdown the difference between Obamacare and Trumpcare into edible bites, while also looking back at the 50 year history of the U.S. healthcare battle. "Nobody knew healthcare could be so complicated."
Vote on GOP Health Care Bill Canceled
March 24, 2017 by WORT News Department
Speaker Paul Ryan canceled a vote on the American Health Care Act Friday. The vote was planned for 2:30 P.M. (CT) after being delayed twice on Thursday. On Friday afternoon Ryan went to the White House to discuss dropping the GOP healthcare plan when it was evident the bill did not have enough votes to […]
Health Care Wars Alejandro Alonso Galva, Health Care, Obamacare, Trumpcare, Wort News
We talk Trumpcare with Health Care Expert John Peacock
On the seventh anniversary of Obamacare we speak with John Peacock about the GOP health care bill that might replace it. We discuss the political aim of the Freedom Caucus, the pitfalls of Trumpcare, and how it will affect Wisconsin. Mr. Peacock is the research director for the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families.
Health Care Wars Health Care, Obamacare, Trumpcare, Wort News
Trumpcare: Planned Parenthood
The GOP healthcare bill would bar Badgercare users from going to Planned Parenthood Clinics for basic services such as cancer screenings, prenatal care, and more. Over 50 thousand Badgercare patients use Plan Parenthood's 22 clinics across Wisconsin.
Health Care Wars Health Care, Obamacare, Planned Parenthood, Trumpcare, Wort News
Trumpcare versus Obamacare Subsidies
24 million Americans will lose their health insurance under the new proposed health care law, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The new bill, proposed by Speaker Paul Ryan and President Donald Trump, is being dubbed Obamacare-light by critics on both sides of the aisle. Conservatives say it doesn't eliminate the Affordable Care Act enough.While […]
Health Care Wars AHCA, Alejandro Alonso Galva, Obamacare, Subsidies, Trumpcare, WORT, WortNews
Breaking Down the AHCA: Protest Against Trumpcare
The Congressional Budget Office announced that 24 million people would lose their health insurance under a new health care plan proposed by President Trump and Republicans. On Tuesday, Mar. 14, protesters marched against the bill in front of, Speaker Paul Ryan's office in Racine. Executive Director Robert Craig of Citizen Action of Wisconsin was there. […]
Health Care Wars AHCA, Alejandro Alonso Galva, Obamacare, protest, Trumpcare, Wort News
Protesters Descend on Speaker Paul Ryan's Office
Hundreds of protesters from around the Midwest demonstrated at Speaker of the House Paul Ryan's office in Racine, Wisconsin. We speak with Director of One Wisconsin Now, Dr. Robert Kraig, who was at the protest.
Health Care Wars healthcare, Obamacare, Trumpcare, Wort News


The ideas for decorating children's rooms are never enough, they are always colorful, different colors, indicating the joy, laughter, ie they express the children's personality. With imagination and a little effort every child's bedroom, can be enriched with a variety of ideas, and at the same time and the children themselves can participate in their realization.
Decorating rooms for girls is a real pleasure. Girls are precise, they like beautiful, pink stuff, also soft and fine as a little princess. Their rooms need to look the same, right a bit like a fairy tale place that is pleasant and it need to be the most favorite place in the world of your little girl. Teenage girls have own style, the same like the little girls, they usually like purple and pink, and although they are a little grown up, they have a soul of a little girl.
Beds with canopy and soft toys are the most important details that like all girls. Giant mirror in the room for girls is an essential part of decoration, but also it is must-have item. Makeup cabinet is the dream of every girl, every one of them likes to line up on the dresser of his favorite props from the hairpins, perfume and makeup and to prepare here for hours. Girls love polka dots, so that individual details in their rooms can be in this pattern. On the wall can be glued stickers with polka dot pattern, cushions or bedding can be also in the same pattern. In arranging rooms for the girls, you need to include them also, so they will participate and help you to make a perfect dreamy kids room.