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Home / Culture / Bishop Michael Bruce Curry Quotes MLK During Prince Harry & Meghan Markle's Royal Wedding
Bishop Michael Bruce Curry
Sheku Kanneh-Mason
Bishop Michael Bruce Curry Quotes MLK During Prince Harry & Meghan Markle's Royal Wedding
No one could deny the blackness that permeated throughout St. George's Chapel as Bishop Michael Bruce Curry delivered a rousing sermon before Harry and Meghan said "I do."
In what's being hailed as the blackest wedding ever for a royal monarchy, this morning's ceremony found Prince Harry, Meghan Markle, and all of the world watching as Bishop Michael Bruce Curry delivered a passionate message just before the couple said "I do." With a black gospel choir singing Ben E. King's 1961 classic "Stand By Me," and a stirring performance from award-winning cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Curry was the icing on the cake as he burst with energy that cause the attendees to react in a myriad of ways.
READ: Here's Everything We Know About Royal Wedding Cello Player Sheku Kanneh-Mason
Bishop Curry from Chicago, Illinois, spoke about the resiliency of the American slave to love through calamity, how relationships no matter how they are form can overcome any obstacle, and quoted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. twice during his sermon. Several members of the royal family sported priceless expressions as they listened to the American reverend speak boldly at the ceremony. Naturally, Twitter picked up on all of this and had commentary all on their own.
A black reverend preaching to British royalty about the resilience of faith during slavery is 10000000% not what I thought I was waking up for, the royal wedding is good
— Elamin Abdelmahmoud (@elamin88) May 19, 2018
With a more looser and freer speaking style than what normally constitutes a royal wedding, Curry gave a "down home" styled sermon that broke with the royal's normal tradition. As writer Tara Isabella Burton wrote for Vox, traditionally British priests from the Church of England preside over royal events. Curry, however, is the head of the American Episcopal Church, a sister to the Church of England but not a part of it.
WATCH: Black Gospel Choir Performs "Stand By Me" At Prince Harry & Meghan Markle's Royal Wedding
He is also the first black leader of the Episcopal Church.
"I'll never forget my daddy told me when I was fairly new as a priest," Curry said before the ceremony began, "he said just always be who you really are. Don't pretend to be someone else." In the process of following his father's advice at the royal wedding, Curry let Meghan Markle remind everyone else who she is. Despite being the newly christened English Duchess of Sussex, her black American heritage was pivotal and central to the royal wedding.


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« Texans in Large Numbers Support State Funding for Family Planning Services
The Week in Quotes (Feb. 24 – March 2) »
Democratic Senator Agrees to File Tax Credit Voucher Scheme in Texas Lege
TAKE ACTION: Click here — www.tfn.org/novouchers — for more on how you can tell Sen. Lucio NOT to file his tax credit voucher bill.
State Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, has been promising that the Senate Education Committee he chairs will consider legislation giving tax credits to businesses that donate money for student "scholarships" to private and religious schools in Texas. It appears that Sen. Patrick has found a senator to file such a bill: Democrat Eddie Lucio of Brownsville.
A Rio Grande Guardian article on Wednesday was the first to report that Sen. Lucio would file the tax credit voucher bill, justifying the scheme this way:
"It's more of a tax credit bill where businesses are going to be able to have a chance to contribute to a very worthy cause of helping a group of students who will be classified as poor and needy and at risk. I feel very strongly that we should help everyone regardless of how we approach the issue."
But Texas doesn't need a law for that. Businesses (and anyone else, for that matter) already have the freedom to contribute to scholarships at private and religious schools.
In any case, both Senators Patrick and Lucio insist that their tax credit scheme isn't a "voucher" plan. But it is. Instead of the state providing the direct tuition voucher to private schools, lawmakers would give a tax break (a credit on owed taxes) to businesses to do it. So tax dollars that would otherwise go to fund neighborhood public schools in Texas would wind up subsidizing private and religious schools instead. It's something like legalized money laundering. The result would be diverting millions of tax dollars from public schools on top of the more than $5 billion in budget cuts lawmakers passed just two years ago.
Voucher lobbyists have pushed tax credit schemes in other states. Eight such states had them as of spring 2012. This fact sheet details how these schemes are a sham, with vouchers often going to students already attending private schools or to the children of donors instead of those from low-income families (as promised by voucher lobbyists).
It's disappointing, to say the least, that a Democrat who has stood up for public education for years has now aligned himself with the very lobbyists who promote these voucher rackets and aren't really interested in helping public schools. In fact, Sen. Patrick and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst held a December press conference about improving education — at a private school!
Stay tuned. The Texas Observer has more on Sen. Lucio's tax credit voucher scheme here.
This article was posted in these categories: Texas Legislature, TFN, vouchers. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments with the RSS feed for this post.Trackbacks are closed, but you can Post a Comment.
Steve. The overwhelming ignorance of these people never ceases to amaze me. For example, those extreme right wing conservatives who are so high and happy about "The Sequester" kicking in at midnight tonight appear to know nothing about the simple economic concept of induced dollar value in a local economy. This Economics 101 principle means that for every government subcontract worker (mostly workers at private sector businesses and independent small businesses) who gets laid off, those Level 1 layoffs will ripple through the economy causing the layoff of cashiers at the supermarket, hairdressers at the salon, stockers at Wal-Mart, and their own brother Fred. If they had a special diploma for stupidity, these extremist nit wits would all graduate Summa Cum Laude.
doodlebugger says:
This is a shame but I suspect a republican dominated legislature will back this. Amazingly, the voter base of conservative working and middle class texans are shooting themselves in the foot when they support this type of legislation.
I don't know a SINGLE family of the many oil and gas professionals I know who are sending their children to private or religious schools. Who the heck are these people encouraging legislators to do this and where do they make their living? ……
Steven Schafersman says:
It is quite sad that a Democratic Senator was snookered by Patrick to file this deceitful and unethical bill. Does Lucio not realize that "his" bill, if made law, would help destroy public education in Texas? Someone (Sen. Kirk Watson?) needs to educate Lucio about the dangers of Patrick's duplicitous legislation, a voucher scheme. Public schools receive state money on the basis of their daily attendance figures; if public school students are siphoned off by tax credit scholarships, public schools automatically lose state money. Does Lucio not understand this simple fact? If the cooperating businesses want to give their money to private school scholarships, they can do that directly rather than in a way that undermines public education.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


No "internet" on guest network only?
I have a strange issue that does not allow internet on my guest network only. It allows the device to connect, but the wireless status on the device says "no internet". This is happening on many IOS devices, but I did not test on a Windows device. Any device connected to my primary network works perfectly fine. Any suggestions?
If you are experiencing a similar issue, you may want to take the suggested step of performing a soft reset of your gateway eero. To perform a soft reset, hold the reset button until its LED flashes yellow (7 seconds), then release it.
We also encourage you to contact support. We're more than happy to take a look into what is going on, and making sure we get this all sorted out and resolved for your guest network. Feel free to give us a call at 1-877-659-2347 or email us at support@eero.com .
Thanks for reaching out and sorry to hear the issue you are experiencing.
For us to best help troubleshoot this matter, I would suggest giving us a call at (877) 659-2347 or sending an email to support@eero.com . We are going to need some information about your account, which isn't in your best interested being shared in a public space.
We can always circle back here with the solution that helped resolve this matter for you.
Thanks again, we look forward to hearing from you and getting this resolved.
Same issue here. Appears to work intermittently. Not just limited to apple devices. Any simple solution?
Same issue here. It appears to happen whenever the device on the guest network switches from one eero device to another. From the point of view of the eero app the device is shown as connected to the new device fine and with the original IP but from the point of view of the phone/computer its seems to lose its IP/netmask/dns and assigns itself a default IP from a different subnet. I got it to happen on both IOS and a dell laptop. And for me it only happens on the guest network.
I'm getting the same thing. Main network is fine but nothing can connect to guest network. I'm getting the same "no internet" error as well when I try to select the guest network name.
Same problem for me. I left an email for support@eero.com - haven't heard back yet. Odd that the regular network is not working but the guest is not.
Thanks for contacting support. That is one way to do it, however, the first suggestion we would have is performing a soft reset.
A soft reset will clear all network configurations from the eero, but preserve its sessions. This keeps the eero on your network and saves its logs and advanced settings such as IP reservations and port forwarding configurations.
To soft reset your eero, hold the reset button until its LED flashes yellow (7 seconds), then release it.
If this does not resolve the issue, you will then want to attempt the other process posted above.
Same problem here. I performed a soft reset of the primary eero. Internet connectivity was restored on the guest network. An hour later, connectivity is lost. This is the same behavior as when the cable modem is rebooted.
The eight step process I described above worked to correct my guest wireless issue.
Mine is working now as well, thanks!
I was told (by eero support) to swap two of the eero devices. I did this, and my guest network was restored. I didn't have to perform a soft reset or do anything else.
While I appreciate the info shared here, it seems like a significant number of users are experiencing this same problem -- numbers sufficient to warrant a software fix, pushed over the interwebs, saving us the trouble of jumping through these hoops. Is such a fix in the works? Thank you.
This is interesting, I had this issue most likely around the same time as people are reporting and what I did was just unplug my eero that was wireless and then let it reboot. Once that was completed and the wireless eero synced with the wired one the problem went away and has never returned.
We are continuing to investigate the issue reported here. If you have had this problem and haven't contact eero support, please do so we can record the instance.
While it has affected a handful of users, it isn't something we are seeing across all networks. If this appears to be an issue that requires a fix, I will absolutely be updating the status of this thread. Please let us know if it persists after taking the steps above.
One other thought in this thread -- the recommendation is to "soft reset the primary eero". I have a situation where all of the eero's have a hardline backhaul. Under that case, there doesn't appear to be any way for an end user to know which one is the primary one. Support was able to tell me which one was primary for my install, but there was no way for me to figure that out on my own, nor does it make sense to me why that particular one is primary -- it's not the first one I set up on the network.
I'm also seeing this issue (unable to obtain an IP address via DHCP on the guest network). It happens often on the guest network but has now started happening on the main network.
Thanks for chiming in. I'm sorry to hear you are encountering this situation with your guest network. I took a look and I saw you already have submitted a ticket with our team. Thank you for doing that.
A member of our team should be getting back to you shortly. In the meantime, if you'd like to try the steps provided above, you can see if that helps to resolve the issue.
Thanks, Jeff. It's five days later, and I just got around to applying the suggested fixes. ...Except the problem fixed itself. Guest network "internet access" is normal. Let's hope it stays that way.
Thanks for the quick and helpful reply.
Experiencing the same issue as everyone else here.
If you haven't yet, could you please contact our support team so they take a look into your network and pass along any findings to the necessary teams? Your outreach will be greatly appreciated.
Just encountered the issue for the first time on multiple devices -- if it helps w/ debugging on the eero end, I had just changed the guest password before the problem started.
Just want to add a "me too" to this issue. Have done the "soft reset" and that seems to clear it up... for a time. Then it just comes back. I hope an update is forthcoming with fixes soon.


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It's not just you. Brussels Sprouts were gross in the 90s
Thom Dunn 5:07 am Tue Mar 30, 2021
Image: Rusty Clark / Flickr (CC-BY-SA 2.0)
I remember being grossed out by Brussels Sprouts as a kid. Because I was a kid, and there were reasons to be grossed out by every vegetable, probably because of some off-hand comment you overheard in a cartoon or something (How much damage did the Ninja Turtles really do to the anchovies industry?). I don't recall exactly when as an adult I finally tasted delicious Brussels Sprouts and became a full-on devotee to those weird green nubs, but I am definitely a fan. As I learned the last time we hosted Thanksgiving, however, my father-in-law is still firmly against them, even when slathered in bacon.
It turns out, his distaste for Brussels Sprouts may not be so crazy after all. As I've now learned thanks to this NPR piece, the Brussels Sprouts we eat today are in fact less bitter and stinky than the Brussels Sprouts of yore:
This all started to change in the 1990s, and it began in the Netherlands, where Brussels sprouts have a simpler name: spruitjes. A Dutch scientist named Hans van Doorn, who worked at the seed and chemical company Novartis (the seed part is now called Syngenta), figured out exactly which chemical compounds in spruitjes made them bitter.
At that point, the small handful of companies that sell Brussels sprouts seeds started searching their archives, looking for old varieties that happen to have low levels of the bitter chemicals.
There are hundreds of these old varieties. The companies grew them in test plots, and they did, in fact, find some that weren't as bitter. They cross-pollinated these old varieties with modern, high-yielding ones, trying to combine the best traits of old and new spruitjes. It took many years. But it worked. "From then on, the taste was much better. It really improved," Sintenie says.
I suppose this isn't too surprising — humans have always indulged in culinary chemistry, and all of the produce we eat today has been carefully bred over the years to make it more robust and palatable. But I don't think there are many people still alive whose tastebuds still recall the trauma of some proto-carrot or banana from their youth that would be radically different than it is today.
Now I just have to figure out how to convince my father-in-law to try Brussels Sprouts again…
From Culinary Dud To Stud: How Dutch Plant Breeders Built Our Brussels Sprouts Boom [Dan Russell / NPR]
culinary history
delightful vegetables
food his
wonderful vegetables
Take a trip to the sushi university
One of the worst sins a person commits while traveling is staying on the beaten path. Some travelers—Americans—venture into a new land and play it safe. Instead of exploring and discovering the unique elements of a foreign culture, they stay within the guardrails of their sojourn by visiting the most obvious tourist attractions. I've even… READ THE REST
These food ingredients make your mouth feel numb, shocked, or buzzed with a vibrator
Certain plant-based ingredients contain compounds that make your mouth feel numb or buzzy when you eat them. Sichuan (or Szechuan) pepper husks contain a compound called sanshool thay "makes it feel like there's a continuous tactile stimulation while you're eating it, which accounts for that buzzing sensation many people report," according to Dennis Lee's article… READ THE REST
Snoop Dogg may soon sell "Snoop Doggs"
In a 2006 segment on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Snoop Dogg watched video of hot dog manufacturing, afterwards proclaiming: "Oh, cuz, I ain't never eating a motherfucking hot dog. Uhg! Every time I see a motherfucker at a barbecue with a plate with a hot dog on it, I'm knocking that shit out of his hands." Clip… READ THE REST


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Unwrapping the Twin Peaks Plastic: An Interview with Author Franck Boulègue
May 19, 2017 By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas Interviews
To call David Lynch's Twin Peaks a cultural phenomenon feels too feeble a descriptor to capture just how deeply this television series about a murder mystery in small town America has sunk into the popular consciousness. Like much of Lynch's work in feature-length cinema, it is a screen artefact that demands — and at times even mocks our near-impulsive drive towards — in-depth criticism. Dedicated fanzines such as Wrapped in Plastic (recently rebooted under the new name The Blue Rose) were launched as early as 1992 , and Twin Peaks tourism — honing in on the locations used in the series such as Snoqualmie, North Bend and Fall City in Washington state — is still a micro-industry in its own right.
At the time of the series' initial broadcast in 1990, Lynch had built a reputation on films like Eraserhead (1977), The Elephant Man (1980), and Dune (1984), and would rise to the status of weird-yet-accessible cult icon with Twin Peaks arriving on the back of Blue Velvet (1986) and 1990's Wild at Heart (which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes). Twin Peaks first aired a month after the release of Wild at Heart, amplifying excitement levels around the filmmaker's work even further. Yet what remains most fascinating about Twin Peaks and its popular appeal is how it has transcended its zeitgeist: 27 years after it first appeared, a mood of outright hysteria among fans surrounds the series' reboot, a 16-episode continuation of the story featuring some of the key original cast that will stream worldwide from May 21.
Author Franck Boulègue's continued fascination with Twin Peaks is a welcome deep critical exploration of this phenomenon, not only in regards to the inner workings of the series itself, but how it fits into Lynch's broader status as an artist and filmmaker. His second book on subject,Twin Peaks: Unwrapping the Plastic (2017), has recently been released, supported by a detailed blog that offers a diverse range of critical ways into the show. Boulègue seeks not to 'solve' the puzzle of Twin Peaks, but rather to deepen the terms of our engagement. He speaks to us here about the work.
You and I initially crossed paths professionally in an altogether different professional context than film criticism: that of dance studies. I confess a real fascination with the intersection in your work (often with your regular collaborator Marisa C. Hayes) between dance/choreography/movement and cinema. There is something about Lynch's work — not merely Twin Peaks, but I think across the board, from the earliest shorts right through — that really privileges the notion of bodies-in-movement: those beautiful slow, deliberate gestures that mark some of my favourite images in his work. What do you think more broadly about the relationship between Lynch's filmmaking and movement and/or choreography?
I think it is fundamental to remember the etymology of the word cinematography: the art of writing movement. As early as the first films, cinema, dance, and choreography have been strongly linked, from the Lumière Brothers and other early filmmakers' Danses Serpentines shorts to Méliès' pantomimes and dance films, evolving at the beginning of the 20th century into Germaine Dulac's Thèmes et variations and René Clair's Entr'acte. In a way, one could even go as far as saying that cinema was invented to film dance.
In Lynch's case, one has to keep in mind that he started his artistic life as a painter. But then, he explains, one evening he stood back from a painting he was working on and had the following revelation: "I'm looking at this figure in the painting, and I hear a little wind, and see a little movement. And I had a wish that the painting would really be able to move" .1 His films are really paintings in motion, which generates an obvious relationship to the world of dance and choreography.
Do you think that is specific to David Lynch?
I would argue that it's impossible to be a good film director without also being, to some degree, a good choreographer. The movements of the actors and of the camera are so important in cinema that anyone who does not think choreographically is doomed to fail as a filmmaker. Lynch definitely has a choreographic sense: dance, movements, gestures play such an important role in his films — from the idiosyncratic way Henry walks in Eraserhead to the opening dance sequence in Mulholland Drive, without forgetting Sailor and Lula's power dances in Wild at Heart. In Twin Peaks, several characters are seen dancing — Audrey Horne at the RR, Benjamin Horne and the dance of Louise Dombrowski with her flashlight, Leland Palmer and his sudden choreomaniac outbursts after Laura's death. Beyond that, important and recognisable gestures and movements are performed by various characters throughout the series and film — the shaking of hands which seems to prefigure the opening of the Lodges, near the end of the show, to name just one.
At one point in Twin Peaks: Unwrapping the Plastic you talk about even the natural movements in the opening credits being a kind of choreography (the waterfall, chimney smoke, etc.)…
This interest in choreography is not limited to people in motion, it also includes the movement of the world at large, both natural and industrial, as exemplified by the opening credits of the series. But it is of course the dance of The Man From Another Place that is best remembered by audiences, because it was shot backwards, which gave it a surreal quality. I think it's appropriate that this specific dance remains the best remembered because in the Twin Peaks universe, the Red Room and the Lodges are closer to the roots of the mythological cosmic tree on which the town of Twin Peaks is built. The Lodges are the place of origin, the place of unity (to borrow the monistic vision of the universe developed by Transcendental Meditation) from which emanates all vibrations that set things in motion.
So you can see traces of Lynch's interest in Transcendental Meditation in Twin Peaks through these kinds of movements?
These wave-like vibrations can actually be visualized in the chevron motif on the floor, and they indeed permeate life in Twin Peaks as a ripple effect. Indeed, everything is interconnected in Lynch's conception of the world. He uses the concept of the "unified field" to describe this phenomenon, a term originally coined by Albert Einstein, but which, in Lynch's version, is colored by spiritual considerations from Transcendental Meditation.
This notion of vibration is found repeatedly in esoteric texts (even up to the psychedelic "good vibes" of the '60s) and it plays a fundamental role in Twin Peaks in particular, in addition to Lynch's filmography at large. His universe is a continuous process, from unity to vibrations, and from vibrations to choreography. He even went so far as to direct a (dreamy, of course) dance film of his own entitled Ballerina in 2007. Lynch likes to explore what's beneath the surface, perhaps he calls on dance and movement in order to bypass language and everyday dialogue to find a deeper, more primal form of expression through the movement of the body (here I'm thinking of Lil's dance in FWWM, among others). Walter Benjamin discussed how the body is capable of expressing the unconscious, for a filmmaker like Lynch obsessed with dreams and interior worlds, movement is the perfect tool for this.
So speaking of obsessions: why Twin Peaks? What lead you here, 27 years after its first episode went to air?
Like Dale Cooper, who first entered Twin Peaks more than a quarter of a century ago and got stuck there, I never really left this universe myself. It has been present with me at every turn of my life, and I have watched the series and film so many times that I have actually stopped counting (more than 50 times, I believe, in the case of Fire Walk With Me). Both the series and the film are like a bottomless well. No matter how many times I view them, I always discover something new. Twin Peaks is a gigantic puzzle, so rich with material and possibilities. In a sense, I have always thought of myself as the "1" at the end of the population of "51,201" that's mentioned at the bottom of the "Welcome to Twin Peaks" sign. It was obvious to me that I would have to address Twin Peaks in my writing sooner or later, and the book Twin Peaks: Unwrapping the Plastic constitutes the first step for me in this process of making sense of the series and film.
But you had previously worked on a book about Twin Peaks?
Marisa C. Hayes and I edited a book entitled Fan Phenomena: Twin Peaks in 2013, a collection of various texts written by fans of the series from all around the world. But that project was mostly by the fans and for the fans within a format that Intellect Books proposed, and I felt like I had to address several themes that had been left unexplored due to the format of the book, perhaps less from a fan studies perspective and more in keeping with various aspects of film analysis.
There is a vast mythological background to the Twin Peaks universe that begs to be approached from a variety of angles. I am tempted to say, to paraphrase David Lynch, that there is a surface story to Twin Peaks that revolves around the murder of Laura Palmer, but that if one wants to catch the big fish, the ideas that fuel this surface story, one has to dive deeper towards the depths of psychoanalysis, surrealism, transcendental meditation and theosophy.
What has made Twin Peaks so enduring, for you personally and professionally, and for contemporary audiences today?
Especially now that the show is set to return to the small screen for a third season, the mark it has left on contemporary culture has continually brought new generations of fans to the show, people who have grown up with this mythology that has influenced so many films and television series since it first aired, from the The X-Files to True Detective or Bates Motel, or Lake Mungo to Donnie Darko in cinema. Also, the fact that Twin Peaks ended on a cliffhanger probably helped foster the cult status of the series. Since it never received closure, especially not with the prequel film Fire Walk With Me, public interest never dwindled. And now that we are witnessing a great conjunction of opportunities with this new wave of auteur television — a conjunction somehow similar to the cosmological one that opens up the doors to the Lodges in Twin Peaks, when Jupiter and Saturn meet in the sky — all the elements are in place for an exciting return to this universe.
Twin Peaks is often brought up as a key example of what is now broadly (and somewhat hazily) considered "cinematic television". In many instances it is considered really the first of the kind of "auteur" TV linked often to later HBO produced series like The Sopranos, but including things like Lars von Trier's Riget. This in some way feels like a narrow history to me because it really ignores what came before Twin Peaks, such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Ingmar Bergman's work for television. But what in this bigger historical picture do you think made Twin Peaks so special in this historical narrative of "quality" television?
I think the answer lies in the dual nature of Twin Peaks itself. Contrary to the various series you mention above, all directed by a celebrated filmmaker, Twin Peaks not only had David Lynch at its head, but also Mark Frost. While David Lynch brought the "auteur" side of things to the show, Mark Frost brought a more traditional narrative approach and an intimate knowledge of the workings of television along with him. He was already well established as a scriptwriter for several successful shows, notably Hill Street Blues, and knew how to capture and maintain the interest of a wider audience. The works that Fassbinder, Bergman, and von Trier (who acknowledged that Twin Peaks was one of the major influences on Riget) directed for TV were all excellent in many ways, but they did not, as far as I know, have the same cultural impact over the population at large that Twin Peaks had (and still has, more than 25 years after it first aired).
Twin Peaks is "quality" television in the sense that it is "cinematic television", but it also borrows some of the specificities of the televised medium narrative to achieve its aim of gathering a large audience, including tools often shunned by some who might associate them with the lowbrow side of things. David Lynch's unique cinematic approach combined with Mark Frost's knowledge of storytelling and television made for an interactive auteur whodunnit that generated a strong bond between viewers and the series, as well as among viewers themselves. To decrypt the show was a puzzle given to the nation at large, sparking much discussion among viewers. To my mind, that was a first in auteur television. I should also note the importance of the series airing on a major American network (ABC), allowing it to reach a large public and setting it up for future distribution abroad.
The relationship between "auteurist" television with the Twin Peaks series surely was made nowhere more explicit than when the film Fire Walk With Me was released. I'd be fascinated to hear your thoughts about the nature of this transition in terms of exhibition and the effect it had on audiences…
Fire Walk With Me was done without Frost. It was pure Lynch, perhaps his most experimental film to this day (lest we forget the catastrophic reception it received from audiences and critics alike when it was first released). The film retained all the auteurist potential of the series while leaving its most accessible elements behind. This was a shock for many people who were not ready for the darker avant garde tone of FWWM. The cyclical and rather peaceful nature of the series was abruptly shattered when Twin Peaks was transposed to the big screen. The film also had to get to the heart of the matter in a little over two hours in contrast to the temporality of the series, and the surrealist moments that could be distilled here and there within the narration of the series were much more concentrated within the film. This is both the strength and weakness of FWWM, which is a masterpiece in my opinion, but one that had to do away with much of what gave the series its quirky charm.
Did this shift between the TV series and the film FWWM also influence the way its broader (addictive!) mythology was represented?
The film focuses strongly on the influence of the Lodge entities, which makes perfect sense in the context of a prequel because they set everything in motion. Their quest for Garmonbozia is similar to Hindu mythology's soma food that allows deities to remain immortal. It is their desire for this food that leads to the murder of Laura Palmer; they are the puppeteers who manipulate everything in Twin Peaks, a "northern-passage" (the original title of the series) towards their realm. This mythology will likely engage with Hollow Earth theories in the third season if Mark Frost's latest book, The Secret History of Twin Peaks, is any indication.
This increased focus on the murderous actions of the lodge entities in the film led to a more horrific tone while the soap-opera elements of the series were tuned down. Fire Walk With Me definitely gave Lynch the possibility to be more experimental visually speaking, making more connections to paintings (one needs to remember that he is originally a painter himself) and his favorite films (especially Hans Richter's Dreams That Money Can Buy). Suddenly, the works of Max Ernst, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Jean Cocteau and others were exposed, though slightly filtered through Lynch's own approach, in a mainstream movie linked to a popular television series. This was the perfect recipe for the implosion that FWWM created upon its initial release! The fact that a TV show was able to produce such a puzzling work of art, an incredibly rich and dense film on so many levels, is an amazing tribute to what Lynch and Frost initially created.
From the cast of many familiar faces to a number of key personnel behind the camera, Twin Peaks of course continues Lynch's collaborations with a number of individuals he had worked with in his films. For you, what are the most important ways that Twin Peaks connects to Lynch's previous feature filmmaking projects?
There is a strong sense of continuity in Lynch's films thanks to the recurrence of certain actors. One can say that this helps create a "Lynchverse" of sorts, which transcends the distinct narratives, whether they are filmed for television or for the big screen, in order to create a flow that carries us along the years. In Twin Peaks, for instance, we recognize many people who had already appeared in various projects of his — Jack Nance from Eraserhead, Kyle Maclachlan from Dune and Blue Velvet, Catherine Coulson from The Amputee, etc.
Lynch seems to appreciate creating a trustworthy family around himself, one that is radically different from the generally negative vision he has of the family unit in his movies, particularly in Twin Peaks where it is a source of trauma and perversion. It seems to me that he is able to generate this continuity with his cast because he does not really hire actors, but rather people. Contrary to what is usually done in the movie business, he does not ask them to read a part for him when he is looking for someone to play a role, he has an informal discussion with them. He gets to truly know them, the people behind the masks. In a sense, he does not really ask them to perform for the camera, but to be themselves. This is why, in my opinion, they sound so real and also why he is able to use them from film to film.
Twin Peaks is also strongly connected to the rest of his filmography from a thematic and symbolic point of view. In my book, for instance, I suggest that the famous Red Room, an antechamber to the White and Black Lodges, might be understood as a psychoanalytical and alchemical secret garden, what Carl Jung calls a "temenos" — a place where people can explore their unconscious so as to progress towards individuation. The presence of birds, water (the chevron wave motifs on the floor), statues, etc. seem to indicate that this might be such a place. What is interesting is the fact that this motif can also be easily found in several other films by Lynch. Arrakis, for example, the desert planet in Dune, is a garden to be and Paul's quest will consist in turning the arid wasteland (which could also be understood as his own unconscious) into a lush garden. Blue Velvet starts and ends in a garden — it's about a fall from Eden (the father's) and about what ensues in order to gain back mastery of this oedipal paradise.
Of course, gardens are only one such thematic link to the rest of his filmography, one can find many others. These links are not only aesthetic, but also relate to his own personal beliefs. Lynch has made it clear to the world during the past ten years or so that he is a strong follower of the Transcendental Meditation teachings of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. It does not really matter if we share or not his belief in TM. What matters is the fact that Lynch's creative process is influenced by TM (as he acknowledges in his book Catching the Big Fish) and as a critic or scholar, one needs to address this when analyzing his films. In my opinion, there are clear links between TM and Twin Peaks, but also between TM and the rest of his films. The series and film are part of a continuum of references, both aesthetic and spiritual, hidden under the surface of the narrative that connect his universe into a greater whole, which also includes his paintings and his music.
Franck Boulègue's Twin Peaks: Unwrapping the Plastic (2017) is available from Intellect. A companion blog, Unwrapping the Plastic, can be found here.
From Lynch on Lynch, ed. Chris Rodley.


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ItsAlive provides tools that enable users to easily create Facebook chatbot in minutes without any previous coding experience and allows users to engage with their Facebook community with automated content. ItsAlive features the keyword detection. The keyword detection detects group of keywords that your users type and respond accordingly. The RSS feeds provided by ItsAlive automatically sends out a user's updates. The user only needs to copy and paste their RSS feeds to create content. ItsAlive also features the variables feature that enables users deliver personalized content that is based on multiple quick answers. The user's chatbot memorizes the multiple…
Pros: The personal interaction with the team is probably the biggest draw for me. ActiveChat is one of the new players in the bot field, but they're clearly listening and responding to their early adopters via e-mail, the official Facebook Group and probably other channels as well. I am confident they will execute everything on their roadmap within a reasonable time frame, allowing us to create every type of bot we can imagine.
Overall: We are now able to leave our Chat on 24/7, when previously we had limited hours (due to staffing) for the Chat. It is still very much a work in progress to ensure the ChatBot has routed to the correct conversations and can sometimes be frustrating to try and figure out why the ChatBot went to a certain scenario over another. The help topics the company provides can point you in the right direction but they are written at a level above the capabilities of a brand new user to bots in my opinion. Determining whether or not no conversation with a client vs a below average conversation with a client (at times) is worth it, will determine whether we continue to renew our monthly subscription.
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Imperson develops enterprise chatbots that support text, audio, video, AR, and VR on all major messaging platforms. Their conversational bots provide authentic and engaging customer chat experiences. The conversation navigator uses relationship memory, NLP user intents, and deep dialogue context to lead conversations. And the AI moderator helps achieve customer's goals. Imperson provides an end-to-end bot solution.
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Reply is one of the best AI chatbot platforms. It is an enterprise level bot building and management platform. And it enables business to consumer communication at scale. Their visual bot builder makes it easy to build bots. The dashboard has built-in CRM, machine learning, and real-time insights to make smarter and faster bots. You can expand bot functionalities across the whole customer experience.
Botsify helps you create intelligent Facebook Messenger chatbots without coding. It enables human takeover and handover features. The platform introduces conversation forms which collects information from users through Chatbot conversations. Botsify has an easy drag and drop interface. It is powered by AI and machine learning. And it offers plugins for integration of your platform with chatbot via JSON API or RSS Feed.
Context and coherence: Some bots (or you ideal chatbot) can flow with long conversations and provide appropriate responses without losing the understanding of the subject being discussed. They may even help solve problems that are identified after lengthy discussions, or forward them to a human counterpart when they do not have enough knowledge to deal with them.
Hmmm…interesting list. I however was thinking that you may want to include Engati as well. Engati is a chatbot platform that allows you to build, manage, integrate, train, analyse and publish your personalized bot in a matter of minutes. It presently supports eight major messaging platforms including messenger, kik, telegram, line, viber, skype, slack and webchat with a focus on customer engagement, conversational commerce, and customer service and fulfillments.
Right Click is a startup that introduced an A.I.-powered chatbot that creates websites. It asks general questions during the conversation like "What industry you belong to?" and "Why do you want to make a website?" and creates customized templates as per the given answers. Hira Saeed tried to divert it from its job by asking it about love, but what a smart player it is! By replying to each of her queries, it tried to bring her back to the actual job of website creation. The process was short but keeps you hooked.
Fortunately, the next advancement in chatbot technology that can solve this problem is gaining steam — AI-powered chatbots. By leveraging machine learning and natural language processing, AI-powered chatbots can understand the intent behind your customers' requests, account for each customer's entire conversation history when it interacts with them, and respond to their questions in a natural, human way.
Msg.ai is an artificial intelligence platform used in conversational commerce. Msg.ai enables messaging to be a medium for individual consumer engagement. This is achieved through msg.ai leveraging chatbots to provide VIP support, personal support and great experiences on demand for your customers. Msg.ai is powered by machine learning. This enables automated interaction in real time by our engine. Msg.ai through the machine learning triggers great experiences, contextual cards and nurtures relationship throughout the customer lifecycle. Msg.ai platform will elevate sensitive conversations to human agents therefore ensuring that the customer is not compromised. Our intent and tone classification feature is able…
Meya helps businesses create bots that assist their customers inside messaging apps. It has a code editor, live debugger, and a visualizer. With the help of Meya, companies can leverage AI for their customer service. You can build, train, and host your bots on Meya. And you can easily scale your bot. Meya integrates easily with third party applications, which increases its usability.
Woebot has a sense of humor, and I can see people who are having a bad day sticking with the attractive platform. Woebot also has skills — in no time, Woebot had identified my mood (with emoji support), identified three thoughts underlying my mood, and helped me see that these thoughts were "distortions," which we replaced with more helpful thoughts.
PAT RESEARCH is a B2B discovery platform which provides Best Practices, Buying Guides, Reviews, Ratings, Comparison, Research, Commentary, and Analysis for Enterprise Software and Services. We provide Best Practices, PAT Index™ enabled product reviews and user review comparisons to help IT decision makers such as CEO's, CIO's, Directors, and Executives to identify technologies, software, service and strategies.
Pandorabots is a platform for building and deploying chatbots. Pandorabots use artificial intelligence as a service to provide API access to our bots' SDK and hosting platform. This allows easy integration of conversational interfaces into applications by developers making it easy to build chatbots on our Playground. Pandorabots main features are custom, content, learning, community, speech interfaces, deployable, multilingual and free. Pandorabots also provide a platform for professional services. In the professional services, there is the custom chatbot development service. This service builds chatbots according to a developer's specifications. Pandorabots will help also in integrating avatar or speech capabilities. The…
AceBot is a software that assist in operations of entreprises through chats. AceBot uses conversational User Interface to enable collaboration and collation of data within organizations. Its key features include ability to manage multiple business flows. It is capable of handling a wide range of multiple and simple queries while you can maintain and switch context in just one conversation. AceBot helps in lowering workload by ensuring collaboration between team members so that they can handle Frequently asked questions in a better way and also tackle complex problems. AceBot has the ability to integrate with applications such as Skype, Messenger,…
There is a lot of potential for using chatbots for marketing. For example, it is possible to use Facebook advertising to send users directly to a Messenger chatbot. Users interacting with the chatbot consent to be contacted by the bot at a later point in time. This means that the cost-per-acquisition of Messenger contacts can be much lower than traditional email marketing.
Pros: First, a shout-out to the developers and especially the founder for taking lead in such an awesome product with great support. I've been with them solely for creating funnels on facebook messenger bot but ActiveChat wow me with more channels like telegram and the ability to integrate NLP easily! Drag-drop interface for creating skills/sequences with functions/fields is also improving. Impressed!
Flow XO enables you to build bots for Telegram, Slack, and Facebook Messenger. With the help of Flow XO, you can build bots in a straightforward manner by using a logical flow. Third party integrations form a core part of this chatbot platform. Users can build bots that integrate with other services like Google Drive, Twitter, Salesforce, and more. Its built-in hosting and management makes it one of the best AI chatbot platforms.
3. Personalizing the customer experience: Chatbots excel at collecting customer data from support interactions. After all, it's the computer that's doing the work. The advantage is that live support agents can use this information to personalize their interactions with customers. Devine says chatbots serve as virtual assistants that can feed customer data to the agent in real time, so the agent can give the customer good information and solutions based on current needs as well as past interactions with the company.
We only introduced Botengine by Livechat into our help desk process in November 2017 ,however as expected with all things created by the Livechat team (counting on past experience) ,it has been helpful for the team . One ,it is easy to integrate with our existing Livechat solution , and the helpdesk team integrated it ourselves without the need to leverage on the technical know-how of our colleagues at the engineering department. Two ,it reduced the chat workload on the help desk team ,as we no longer need to treat everyday customer query like ; what does Iroko tv do , what countries can Iroko be used ? Pricing of our services ?
DB: Next, I moved on to the options that are centered on real-life (versus artificial intelligence) support. Joyable is an online platform that supports users with a dedicated real-life coach and a two-month course in CBT. It was developed by a powerhouse team of experts and scientists in the field of therapy. It costs $99 per month, though users can opt for a free, seven-day trial.


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Q: SSMS Not showing Status and Scheduled Jobs Not Running Recently in SSMS, I have started getting a blue question mark next to the database and SQL Server Agent, when previously all was showing running.  At the same time my scheduled jobs have stopped running. We did have a reset of the server clock around the same time.

I have referenced this post Blue icon with question mark - what does it mean? but the problem persists.  It is happening when I am working directly on the Database Server via remote desktop and via local computer SSMS.
On the Database Server,
Configuration Manger shows the services as running
WMI is not blocked and is enabled.
I have checked Windows Fire Wall and WMI is allowed.
I have restarted the SQL Agent.  I have also stopped then started the Agent.
I have rebooted the Server.   (I ensured there were no active users first.)
I have ensured that the agent is configured with "sp_configure 'Agent XPs', 1".
I modified the start date of each job that won't run to the current date.  (I set up a new simple procedure to run as a test and it also won't execute.)
If I start a job manually; it starts but the Execute stalls the error is "A severe error occurred on the current command.  The results, if any, should be discarded. (.Net SqlClient Data Provider)" which could indicates that the service is not running, but a "select * from sys.dm_server_services" indicates they are running.
I've checked the error log - it recommends verifying SQL Server is configured for remote connections, which it is.
There is an exception for the 1433 port to allow TCP/IP traffic on Port 1433.

Does anyone know of anything else that might help?
Here is the full error:

An exception occurred while executing a Transact-SQL statement or
batch. (Microsoft.SqlServer.ConnectionInfo)   at
Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Common.ServerConnection.ExecuteWithResults(String
sqlCommand, Boolean retry)    at
Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.ExecuteSql.ExecuteWithResults(String
query)    at
Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.ExecuteSql.Execute(StringCollection
query)    at
Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.ExecuteSql.ExecuteWithResults(String
query, Object con)    at
Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.PostProcessJobActivity.GetColumnData(String
name, Object data, DataProvider dp)    at
Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.DataProvider.ManipulateRowDataPostProcess()
at Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.DataProvider.GetTable()    at
Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.SqlObjectBase.FillData(ResultType
resultType, StringCollection sql, Object connectionInfo,
StatementBuilder sb)    at
Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.SqlObjectBase.FillDataWithUseFailure(SqlEnumResult
sqlresult, ResultType resultType)    at
Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.SqlObjectBase.BuildResult(EnumResult
result)    at
Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.SqlObjectBase.GetData(EnumResult
erParent)    at
Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Sdk.Sfc.Environment.GetData()    at
Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Sdk.Sfc.Environment.GetData(Request
req, Object ci)    at
Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Sdk.Sfc.Enumerator.GetData(Object
connectionInfo, Request request)    at
Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.ExecutionManager.GetEnumeratorDataReader(Request
req)    at
Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.SqlSmoObject.GetInitDataReader(String[]
fields, OrderBy[] orderby)    at
Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.SqlSmoObject.ImplInitialize(String[]
fields, OrderBy[] orderby)    at
Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.SqlSmoObject.OnPropertyMissing(String
propname, Boolean useDefaultValue)    at
Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.PropertyCollection.RetrieveProperty(Int32
index, Boolean useDefaultOnMissingValue)    at
Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.PropertyCollection.GetValueWithNullReplacement(String
propertyName, Boolean throwOnNullValue, Boolean
useDefaultOnMissingValue)    at
Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.PropertyCollection.GetValueWithNullReplacement(String
propertyName)    at
Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.Agent.Job.get_LastRunDate()    at
Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.SqlManagerUI.StartAgentJobs.WaitForJobToFinishAction.DoAction(ProgressItemCollection
actions, Int32 index)    at
Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.SqlStudio.Controls.ProgressItemCollection.DoWorkOnThread()
=================================== A severe error occurred on the current command.  The results, if any, should be discarded. (.Net
SqlClient Data Provider)
------------------------------ For help, click: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink?ProdName=Microsoft%20SQL%20Server&ProdVer=15.00.4083&EvtSrc=MSSQLServer&EvtID=0&LinkId=20476
------------------------------ Server Name: QUAD-DB2 Error Number: 0 Severity: 11 State: 0
------------------------------ Program Location:    at Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Common.ConnectionManager.ExecuteTSql(ExecuteTSqlAction
action, Object execObject, DataSet fillDataSet, Boolean
catchException)    at
Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Common.ServerConnection.ExecuteWithResults(String
sqlCommand, Boolean retry)

A: There one thing that jumped at me when I looked at the error message. This being the severity level of 11:

Error Number: 0 Severity: 11 State: 0

This is documented in Microsoft's article Database Engine Error Severities (Microsoft | SQL Docs) as:

LEVELS OF SEVERITY
Severity level    Description
...
11-16             Indicate errors that can be corrected by the user.
11                Indicates that the given object or entity does not exist.
...

This correlates with this bit of information in the error message:

at Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.SqlSmoObject.OnPropertyMissing(String propname, Boolean useDefaultValue)

Something seems to be missing and I can only provide you with some general ideas on how to possibly find or fix the issue. As pointed out by Microsoft it is: ...errors that can be corrected by the user.
The Obvious
ERRORLOG file
Have a look at the error log file, especially the part that displays the information after the server was rebooted or the SQL Server service was restarted. Search for issues that might be impacting the SQL Server instance.
SQLAGENT.OUT file
Have a look at the error log file for the SQL Server Agent Service: SQLAGENT.OUT.
The Not-So Obvious
Some of the not-so obvious reasons were posted in the answers you linked in your question. If you've waded through all of them, then you're already halfway there.
SQL Server (Agent) Service Account
Sometimes an update will change the permissions on a drive, a folder/directory or some other portion of SQL Server (executeable, DLL, registry). The easiest way to fix this, is to start the SQL Server 2019 Configuration Manager with an elevated account.

...and change the Account Name for the SQL Serer Agent (INSTANCE_NAME) service to one of the built-in accounts:

When done, click Apply and you will be prompted that the service has to be restarted. Click on OK.

When the service is back up and running, revert your changes back to the previous account:

And apply. You will receive the same prompt that the service has to be restarted:

This will ensure that the (file/registry) permissions for the service account of this service are set correctly on all relevant SQL Server related items.
SQL Server Service Account
In case the above fails, apply the same steps to the actual SQL Server Service Account for your instance. This will ensure that the (file/registry) permissions for the service account of the SQL Server (INSTANCE_NAME)  service are set correctly on all relevant SQL Server related items.
Repair
Sometimes the instance is just broken for some unknown reason and manually resetting all the permissions is just not quite what you want to be doing on a sunny afternoon. Take the fast route and repair your instance and/or the shared components
.

Caution:
The repair process can result in a down-time of the SQL Service instance.
Ensure you have a backup of the databases. This process doesn't normally break databases, but better safe than sorry.

Mount the ISO file of your SQL Server version and start the SQL Server 2019 Installation Center (64-Bit) from your Windows Server's list of programs.

In the left-hand pane select the Maintenance option and in the right-hand pane that is then displayed the option Repair.
You will be guided through a slimmed down setup routine that will allow you to either repair the SQL Server instance INSTANCE_NAME or the <>.

*

*Start with either the INSTANCE_NAME or the Shared Features and click through until the end.

*You might have to reboot the server, because of components that have had to be repaired/replaced.

*You might have to re-apply Cumulative Updates afterwards.

*Repeat for the second option, than what you initially chose in step 1.

Further Actions
If these last options fail, then it might be time to open up an SR with Microsoft.
Good hunting.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Envolution around 4,000 BC
Paleopathologists studying ancient skeletons from Greece and Turkey found a striking parallel. The average height of hunter-gatherers in that region toward the end of the Ice Age was a generous five feet ten inches for men, five feet six inches for women. With the adoption of agriculture, height crashed, reaching by 4000 BC a low value of only five feet three for men, five feet one for women. By classical times, heights were very slowly on the rise again, but modern Greeks and Turks have still not regained the heights of their healthy hunter-gatherer ancestors. (The Third Chimpanzee)
Many locations in southern Egypt seem to have been abandoned around 4000 BC. The main period of settlement in the Gilf Kebir region lasted from 4000 to 3000 BC; other playas, such as Wadi Bakht and Ard El-Akhdar, continued to exist through 3000 BC and then then abruptly stopped. (Before the Pharaohs)
In defense of the dynastic race theory, carvings on an ivory knife handle from the town of Gebel-el-Arak (near Denderah, 250 miles south of Cairo) and paintings on the walls of a late-predynastic tomb dated to 3500 BC at Hierakonopolis suggest invasion of the Nile Valley by a seafaring people. Some believe the style of the ornamentation on the knife handle to be Mesopotamian or possibly Syrian. The scene possibly represents a sea battle against invaders; this is also depicted in the Hierakonopolis tomb. Both of these show Egypt's native ships and strange vessels with a high prow and stem, unmistakably Mesopotamian in origin. There is also the discovery of late-predynastic graves in the northern part of Upper Egypt, where the skulls unearthed were of greater size and the bodies were larger than those of the natives. According to Walter Emery, the difference is so distinct that any suggestion that these people derived from the earlier stock is impossible. (Before the Pharaohs)
C. Turner looked at many different features of teeth, including shoveling, and variations in the number of roots of premolars and molars. By comparing large samples of teeth on many different measurements, Turner concluded that: (1) New World groups are more like Asians than like Europeans; (2) all New World groups resemble each other more than they do most Old World populations; (3) dental variation is greater in North America than in South America; (4) there are three "clusters" of New World peoples. It is very difficult, however, to estimate rates of change in these kinds of physical features, and thereby to estimate how long ago the migrations to the Americas began, but Turner's calculations estimate a date of about 12,000 years ago for the initial colonization of the New World, with two much later waves of colonizations. (Patterns in Prehistory)
Pigmies, Australoids and Mongols from north-east Siberia, of whom the principal stock was Mongol, had begun to settle in America sometime about 25000 BC, moving south along its coast and across the plains. That occupation was still continuing, doubtless with some people returning in the fifth and fourth millennium BC when earth-worshipping sailors from the Mediterranean and then sea-peoples from India, trading and prospecting the Pacific and the Pacific coast of China for metals, were either blown unwillingly from north of Japan to America or they heard of the movement to those sea-girt continents and, following it, themselves also discovered America. The genius of America remained however, the genius of its already mixed American-Indian populations. Thus the splendid isolation of the vast American continent which became almost its norm, was broken spasmodically by sometimes large - sometimes small-scale contact with civilised peoples from the Old World. They fed in the highly industrialised techniques and ideas then current in India, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Mediterranean perhaps not all of them, but nearly all of them. (The God-Kings & the Titans)


text:
Environmentally Friendly With Campus Kids
Leana Tagliagambe, Contributing writer
SCCC's Campus Kids Learning Center is reintroducing the natural environment to their kids after this past summer.
Director of Campus Kids, Linda Crispi, and the staff of teachers that work at the center spent all summer working on getting the playground ready for the new school year. "Right after school ended, the teachers and I went out, and we started digging and moving and doing a lot. I got a couple of parents that helped us out; we turned it into an even nicer playground," Crispi said.
"There's been a change in playgrounds over the years. And we started to change over about seven years ago. We took out all the foam rubber and big metal stuff, and we went more natural. So, it's just nicer for the kids; It's more realistic for them." The director said it teaches the kids how to walk with mobility, balance, and stability to connect their bodies with the natural world.
The playground includes touchy-feely objects like plants, a sandpit, homemade musical instruments, and much more. The plants the staff provided the playground with consist of mint, lavender, eucalyptus, etc. The teachers put some strawberry plants back there as well.
While students and faculty battled the pandemic, the center focused on a natural self-meditation with their kids to help relieve stress. "When we went through this whole COVID thing, we did yoga with them, we did meditation, and so they kind of were able to really take care of themselves, like mental health-wise. They were able to talk things through." Crispi said that those practices helped the kids find a perfect, balanced environment for them.
Crispi said that last year they reported no meltdowns within the children at the center. She and her staff realized that what they were doing was working for the kids. "Most of our parents are either students or faculty. So either way, you go, you've got stress. You've got the administration on one end, you've got students trying to get their work done, go to school, and go to work….and so having that ability to drop your children off and know that they're not going to, like have a meltdown. It means the world to any parent…"
The center has used other facilities' ideas as inspirations to help with building their natural environment. Some facilities that they used were Middle Country Library and Nature Explore. Nature Explore is one of the "big companies that really pushes for a more natural environment for children."
Crispi said that the center learns about math, science, numbers, colors. However, the kids are
doing it at their pace and in a natural environment.
"The kids will be out there all year. Even when it wasn't so classroomy, kids were outside all year."
The center will be open from Monday-Friday, 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. throughout the semester.
Leana Tagliagambe, Administrator
Latinx/Hispanic Heritage Month at Suffolk
Fall Club Fair: September 14th 11am-12:30pm Come By and Meet Compass News Staff!!!
Suffolk Transit Overhaul Leads To Less Lines, More Efficient Bus Routes To Ammerman
Get To Know The Student Office Candidates for SGA Elections
Banned Books Read-Out: April 20th 11am-12:30pm on the Ammerman Quad
Suffolk Named a 2022-23 Military Friendly School
Spike in Fire Alarms Causes Frustration on Ammerman Campus
"Why Ukraine: a Brief History" Lecture Thursday, March 10th
Suffolk Shifts to Mask-Optional Policy


A planned major waste incinerator and energy plant for western Sydney – the largest in the southern hemisphere – is likely to be put on ice until after the New South Wales election next March after the Department of Planning recommended against the project.
The director-general of the department is about to issue a negative assessment, saying that on the advice of Environmental Protection Authority, NSW Health and independent experts, the department had concluded it was inconsistent with the NSW EPA's energy from waste policy statement (2015), and the air quality impacts and risk to human health were unknown.
There is still one more step in the process. Since March the actual consent for state-significant projects in NSW, particularly the contentious projects with more than 25 objections, rests with an Independent Planning Commission.
The Menindee Lakes project: who loses and who really wins?
The panel of three experts would assess the project and hold further public hearings.
But the negative recommendation from the department, which is relatively rare for a project that has come so far through the planning process, means it will be facing a much higher risk of being rejected by the IPC.
The next step rests with developer, Ian Malouf. His company Dial A Dump, one of the biggest waste companies in NSW, has spent millions on the project and had planned to build it at his facility at Eastern Creek near the M7.
He has argued that this sort of waste-to-energy generation project is common throughout Europe and Scandinavia and is operated safely.
However he met stiff resistance from local residents and from the departments of health and the environment.
Despite reducing the scale of the project, by offering to build only stage 1 initially, the authorities were not convinced about the air quality risks in the Sydney basin.
The EPA has also raised concerns it would lead to an undermining of its recycling policies, as the incinerator would require large quantities of building and household waste to fuel it.
With the state election just nine months away, the issue of the incinerator could become the decider for several western Sydney seats.
Although the Berejiklian government has comfortable margins on paper in most of the western Sydney seats around the incinerator, the last election represented a high water mark for the Coalition.
The seats of Mulgoa (9.7%) where the incinerated is located, and surrounding seats of Penrith (6.2)%, (Prospect 3.4%) and Holsworthy (6.7%) as well as other truly marginal seats like East Hills and Granville could be vulnerable.
Last month the Jupiter windfarm near Tarago chose to withdraw its development application just a day before the IPC was due to hold public hearings. It too had been subject to a negative assessment.
But that doesn't mean the project will necessarily be abandoned. It is open to a proponent to lodge a fresh development application down the track, either with changes or without.
The NSW Greens energy spokesman, Jeremy Buckingham, said the recommendation by the Department of Planning that the proposed western Sydney waste-to-energy incinerator be refused was a huge win for the residents of western Sydney and the lungs of all the people in Sydney.
He called on the government to back the Greens bill to ban such incinerators within 15km of residential areas to secure clean air into the future.
"This is a fantastic win for the residents of western Sydney and the Greens, who have been fighting this toxic proposal for years," he said.
A spokesman for Dial A Dump said they were considering their options.


The Information Technology Division provides an internal support function within Sherburne County. The department coordinates technology related functions and initiatives to assure that they meet the county's business needs. Information Technology manages the county's network backbone and helps the various county departments with technology planning, systems design, and the implementation and support of information systems technologies.
The Network unit, which manages the county's WAN / LAN environment.
The Desktop unit, which provides PC Hardware and Software implementation and Technical support services for the county.
The Web and Database Administration unit, which coordinates the county's databases and web systems.


The London Borough of Haringey has granted consent for a mixed-use regeneration scheme in Tottenham Hale, north London. The masterplan, for developer Argent Related, comprises six buildings and a pavilion arranged across five plots. The project will deliver 1,030 new homes, a mix of tenures including a large proportion of Council-owned social rented housing, a cinema, office and retail space and a new health centre.
AHMM has designed three buildings on the Ferry Island and North Island sites. Buildings one and two on Ferry Island will occupy the area between the Tottenham Hale bus station and the reconfigured Station Road. Both buildings will provide a mix of residential, office and retail space with a new cinema at basement level. Alison Brooks Architects, Pollard Thomas Edwards and RUFF architects are designing schemes for other sites within the masterplan.
Construction could begin in summer next year, with the first new homes being complete by the end of 2020.


Ramona Vogt is a member of the Physics Division at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) as well as an Adjunct Professor of Physics at the University of California at Davis. She received her Ph.D. in 1989 from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. She completed a postdoc at LLNL and at the GSI in Darmstadt and then worked as staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab before moving back to LLNL. She is an APS Fellow and is currently serving as the Past Chair of the APS Topical Group on Hadronic Physics. She has been suppressing quarkonium on and off throughout her career.


Selected by students in the Institute for the Arts in southwest Florida.
Self-described as "the opposite of fun," David Rakoff was one of the most acerbic and simultaneously loveable essayists in contemporary American culture.
But Rakoff made a career of it—brilliantly—ultimately winning the prestigious Thurber Prize for Humor as well as two Lambda Literary Awards. His three collections of essays, Fraud, Don't Get Too Comfortable, and Half-Empty, reveal a wit that is observant, unrelenting, and deeply, deeply felt.
While on the one hand skewering an American culture beleaguered by what he called "the never-ending quest for artisanal olive oil and other first world problems," his essays also always held an undercurrent of melancholy.
Or "defensive pessimism," as Rakoff himself once called it.
The mix resulted in essays that were always uniquely voiced, hilarious, and unexpectedly haunting.
So when Rakoff was diagnosed with cancer in 2010—his second bout with the disease after battling Hodgkins Lymphoma at the age of 22—it was only a matter of time before he started discussing his illness with heartbreaking openness, humor, and tenderness.
His last live performance on This American Life , for which he served as a contributing producer, quickly became one of the show's most popular downloads.
There are stretches of triumph that feel like cosmic rewards for good behavior followed by inexplicable setbacks that seem like indictments of your character. With so much muddy logic crowding out reason, it's best when news, good or bad, is delivered quickly and clearly. I will forever be grateful to my oncologist for opening the door and saying, "Damn it, the tumor's 10 percent bigger," before he even said hello.
Rakoff passed away in 2012. He was 47.
David Rakoff published essays in dozens of periodicals, including GQ, Salon, Details, New York, Vogue, Outside Magazine, Slate, and Harper's Bazaar. Eventually he collected this work in three exquisite books of essays, Fraud, Don't Get Too Comfortable: The Indignities of Coach Class, The Torments of Low Thread Count, The Never-Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems, and Half Empty. For these Rakoff was award numerous literary honors, including two Lambda Literary Awards and the prestigious Thurber Prize for Humor. A founding contributor to the popular radio program "This American Life," Rakoff was also a screenwriter, playwright, and actor with nearly a dozen films and plays to his credit. He died in 2012 at the age of 47.


text:
Will Age Become An Issue In Dianne Feinstein's Re-Election Campaign?
By Ina Jaffe • Feb 7, 2018
Ranking member Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., arrives for a Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in December. Critics have raised questions about her age as she runs for re-election.
Originally published on February 14, 2018 9:16 am
It can be a delicate matter to bring up someone's age. But in California, Sen. Dianne Feinstein's age has become a openly discussed issue in her campaign for a fifth full term. Feinstein — a Democrat — is 84, making her the oldest member of the United States Senate.
But not by much. There are seven other senators who are also in their 80s, though none of them are running for re-election this year. Some political columnists have said that Feinstein shouldn't run again. Harold Meyerson, executive editor of the liberal magazine The American Prospect, made that argument in a column in the Los Angeles Times.
"This is a six-year term," Meyerson says, "which is the longest term any elected officials in the United States can be elected to. So the issue isn't simply what shape is Dianne Feinstein in at age 84, it's also what shape will she — or anyone — be in at 91?"
There's no way to predict that, says Jennifer Ailshire, a professor of Gerontology and Population Health at the University of Southern California. People age differently from one individual to the next, she says. "Some older adults are quite frail, while others are incredibly robust."
And their chronological age doesn't really tell you much.
"Rather than focus on someone's age, we should be focusing on their biological age, which is the age of their cells, tissues and organs," Ailshire says.
That's not the sort of information that voters have access to. What they do know about Feinstein is that she received a pacemaker last year, but only missed a single day of work. That work includes serving as the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, as well as having senior status on Appropriations and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
Throughout her career, Californians have known Feinstein as a cautious, middle-of-the road politician. That served her well when she was first elected to the Senate in 1992. The California electorate was also more moderate then. But Harold Meyerson says, California leans more to the left these days.
"So in many ways, I think, she still positions herself to the right of certainly where California Democrats are, and in many ways, of where California is."
But it's never been Feinstein's way to be a liberal flame-thrower. Instead, as she told an audience in San Francisco last year, what's important is knowing how to get things done.
"You've got to be able to compromise," she said. "And compromise, ladies and gentlemen, isn't a dirty word. Compromise is what moves this government forward."
Feinstein has a major primary challenger from her left. He's Kevin de Leon, 51, leader of the California State Senate. And since California has a nonpartisan, top-two primary, he's likely to be her opponent in November as well.
De Leon has blasted Feinstein for being too conciliatory towards President Trump and too slow to stand up for young people on DACA, the program for some undocumented immigrants who were brought to this country as children. For the record, Feinstein voted against the January budget resolution to re-open the government because it lacked an extension for DACA.
De Leon's campaign declined to be interviewed for a story on Feinstein's age.
He's been endorsed by the progressive political action committee, Democracy for America, which claims around 300,000 members in California. Communications Director Neil Sroka says what his organization wanted to know was, "Who's going to be best equipped to lead the resistance to Donald Trump and set a path forward for what an inclusive, populist vision for this country looks like?"
And for his organization, that wasn't Feinstein. Her age isn't a problem, but her long tenure in the Senate is.
"We're going to need more [progressive] candidates moving up the ranks," Sroka says. "We can't do that if the same old people are running for the same old offices over and over again."
Feinstein is hardly the first candidate whose age has become an issue. But few have been damaged by it. In 1984, President Reagan famously teased his younger opponent, Minnesota Sen. Walter Mondale, that he would not criticize him for his youth and inexperience. And just two years ago, when Arizona Sen. John McCain's primary opponent said he was too old to be running for re-election at the age of 80, her comments were called desperate, nasty and sick by the media; she lost decisively.
But Dianne Feinstein may be more vulnerable. While polls show her ahead by double digits, one survey showed her support dropping several points when voters were told her age.
Bill Carrick, Feinstein's longtime political strategist, says there have been older politicians going back decades "and I never heard all this racket." Then again, he notes, they were all men.
"We now are getting to the point where there are senior senators who are female," which suggests, says Carrick, that the concerns expressed about Feinstein's age represent "quite a double standard."
Gerontologist Jennifer Ailshire says that if there's going to be a double standard, the science says it should be the other way round.
"Women have a survival advantage over men," she says. "Scientists have found that men have higher epigenetic aging rates, meaning their cells and tissues are older, even when they're the same chronological age [as] women."
Whether age should be an election issue will ultimately be settled by the voters. But those voters themselves are also aging. A dozen years from now, one-fifth of the U.S. population will be 65 years old or more.
Some Californians have raised a delicate political question. What age makes you too old to hold a demanding and important job? Her critics have aimed that question at Senator Dianne Feinstein. At age 84, she is the oldest member of the Senate. She is also a deeply influential Democrat, and she is running for another term. NPR's Ina Jaffe reports.
INA JAFFE, BYLINE: Dianne Feinstein may be the oldest member of the Senate, but not by much. There are seven more senators who are also in their 80s. None of them, however, is running for re-election this year. And some political columnists have said that at age 84, Feinstein shouldn't be. Harold Meyerson, executive editor of the liberal magazine The American Prospect, made that argument in a column in The Los Angeles Times.
HAROLD MEYERSON: This is a six-year term which is the longest term any elected officials in the United States can be elected to. So the issue isn't simply what shape is Dianne Feinstein in at age 84, it's also what shape will she or anyone be in at age 91?
JAFFE: And there's no way to predict. Jennifer Ailshire, an assistant professor of gerontology at the University of Southern California, says people age really differently from one individual to the next, and their number of years doesn't always tell you much.
JENNIFER AILSHIRE: Rather than focus on someone's age, we should be focusing on their biological age, which is the age of their cells, tissues and organs.
JAFFE: And that's not the sort of information that voters have access to. What they do know about Feinstein is that she received a pacemaker last year but only missed a single day of work. That work includes serving as a top Democrat on the Judiciary and Appropriations Committees, as well as the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Throughout her career, she's been a cautious, middle-of-the-road politician. That served her well when she was first elected to the Senate in 1992 and the California electorate was also more moderate. But Harold Meyerson says California leans more to the left these days.
MEYERSON: So in many ways, I think she still positions herself to the right of certainly where California Democrats are and, in many ways, of where California is.
JAFFE: But it's never been Feinstein's way to be a liberal flame thrower. Instead, she reminded an audience in San Francisco last year that what's important is knowing how to get things done.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DIANNE FEINSTEIN: You've got to be able to compromise. And compromise, ladies and gentlemen, isn't a dirty word. Compromise is what moves this government forward.
JAFFE: Feinstein's major primary challenger is 33 years her junior and coming from her left.
(SOUNDBITE OF POLITICAL AD, "KEVIN DE LEON")
KEVIN DE LEON: I'm the youngest child of a single, immigrant mother.
JAFFE: That's Kevin de Leon, the leader of the California State Senate in a campaign video. A campaign spokesman said they wouldn't comment for a story that focused on Feinstein's age. Leon's been endorsed by the progressive political action committee Democracy for America, which claims around 300,000 members in California. Neil Sroka is the communications director. He says it's a problem when politicians serve term after term as Feinstein has because it prevents a new generation of leaders from moving up.
NEIL SROKA: And we can't do that if the same old people are running for the same old offices over and over again.
JAFFE: Raising a candidate's age as a campaign issue has rarely inflicted much damage. In 1984, President Ronald Reagan made a joke of it. And two years ago, when Senator John McCain's primary opponent said he was too old, the media called her desperate. But Feinstein may be more vulnerable. While polls show her ahead by double digits, one survey showed her support dropping several points when voters were told how old she was. Bill Carrick is Feinstein's longtime political strategist. He says there have always been older politicians. Then again, they were all men.
BILL CARRICK: We now are getting to the point where if there's senior senators who are female, there seems to be quite a double standard.
JAFFE: Gerontologist Jennifer Ailshire says if there is going to be a double standard, the sign says it should be the other way around.
AILSHIRE: Because women have a survival advantage over men. Scientists have found that men have higher epigenetic aging rates, meaning their cells and tissues are older even when they're the same chronological age than women.
JAFFE: Whether age should be an election issue will ultimately be settled by an electorate that is also aging a dozen years from now. One fifth of the U.S. population will be 65 years old or more. Ina Jaffe, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.


Our team understands life in Saint Helens, because we live here, too. We know firsthand what the risks are in our area and, as a local Allstate agency, we're here to help you protect your home with coverages that fit your needs. Whether you're moving into your first place, adding onto your home or need to file a claim, we'll be here when you have questions and need assistance.
We understand how important it is to help protect your home, as it's not only a big financial investment but often an emotional one as well. From buying a first home to building a dream home, we're here to help you choose the coverage you need. We believe in providing personalized service and look forward to getting to know you. You'll have the peace of mind that comes with Allstate's quality homeowners protection and the benefits of working with an agent who cares.
We are located just north of Sykes Road and Columbia River Highway; just after The Village Inn.
Orgullosamente atendemos a Oregon, SW Washington. Llámame o envíame un correo electrónico para obtener un resumen de seguros personalizado.
Lo que tu pagas por un hogar es mas que el precio de compra. Tu pago hipotecario puede ser determindao por el plazo del préstamo, tasa de interés, impuestos de la propiedad y mas. Descubre lo que puedes terminar pagando cada mes.
Rita Semling tiene licencia para seguros en los estados de Oregon y Washington. Si no reside en los estados de Oregon o Washington, vaya a la sección Localizar a un Agente en miallstate.com para buscar otro agente u otro representante financiero personal de Allstate.


text:
Gophers volleyball win pair of five-setters
Minnesota went to extra sets with both Michigan State and Michigan at home.
Gophers outside hitter Alexis Hart winds up a spike against Michigan on Sunday, Nov. 20, 2016 at the Sports Pavilion.
Tommy Sletten
The Gophers played their first matches back at home over the weekend after a three-game road trip — and they certainly made things interesting.
No. 2 Minnesota won five-set matches Friday and Sunday against No. 13 Michigan State and No. 18 Michigan in thrilling conditions.
Minnesota took the first two sets in each match, but dropped the next two to force a fifth both times.
"It's life in the Big Ten," said head coach Hugh McCutcheon. "It's a game of inches. All the sets were closely contested, and that's what happens when you play a good team."
Minnesota (23-4, 15-3 Big Ten) faced one of the hardest-hitting teams it has all year in Michigan State (23-7, 12-6 Big Ten) Friday. Earlier in the year, the Spartans beat the Gophers and dealt them their second Big Ten loss.
A more defensive Gophers lineup, which included increased roles from Katie Schau and Alyssa Goehner, helped dig the Gophers out of sticky situations. The team amassed 67 digs in total.
The hero of the game proved to be freshman Alexis Hart, who twice delivered kills when the Gophers faced Michigan State's match point.
Hart led Minnesota with 20 kills and hit a staggering .419.
"One of the strengths of this team is that at different times it's been different people [leading], but it's always been someone, and tonight, obviously, it was Alexis," McCutcheon said.
Minnesota found itself in a similar situation against Michigan (21-9, 10-8 Big Ten) Sunday after the Gophers won the first two sets and dropped the third and fourth.
With Minnesota trailing deep into the fourth set, several controversial calls got the Minnesota bench riled up and elicited a conversation between McCutcheon and the line judge.
Michigan ended up taking the set 25-23 to force a deciding fifth set.
Minnesota took control of the fifth set early and went on a 5-1 run with kills from senior outside hitter Sarah Wilhite and junior middle blocker Molly Lohman.
Wilhite carried the team through the final set to a 15-12 victory and a 3-2 match triumph.
Wilhite had 26 total kills, as well as 13 digs on the defensive side.
Sophomore setter Samantha Seliger-Swenson had seven kills to go along with 55 assists, a big offensive output for a setter.
"I was just trying to be confident in [my attack] and do anything I could to help my team win," Seliger-Swenson said. "It was working well, so I just continued to do that."
Junior libero Dalianliz Rosado was the backbone of the Gophers defense and tallied 24 digs — a team high.
Despite already facing two high-class opponents on this final homestand, the competition only grows from here.
Minnesota is set to play No. 1 Nebraska (26-1, 17-1 Big Ten) Wednesday and No. 3 Wisconsin (24-3, 16-2 Big Ten) Saturday to close out the regular season. Both matches are sold-out.
"If we play Gophers volleyball, and if we play good for a long period of time, I think we can get them," Wilhite said.


The Moultonborough School District Holiday Fair was held on Saturday, December 1 and the Lions were out and about. Mark, Stephanie, Sally, and Dawn spent four hours doing vision screening at the fair. And eight Lions — one in costume — sold raffle tickets until the 1 pm final drawing. The winner of the $5000 prize was a local Moultonborough resident.
On Friday, December 7 we again hosted Cookies and Caroling for the Community. We had about 55 guests ( people from all three nursing homes, Senior Meals, and Community Caregivers), including Larry Kohut. Plenty of delicious cookies were provided by club members. A delightful preview of Moultonborough Academy's winter concert songs sung by the Middle School Chorus and directed by Harmony Markey provided excellent entertainment and was followed by a general sing along with Harmony on the guitar and President Peter Allen on the Keyboard, hosted by VP John Menken.
The next day, December 8,we were prepared for 100 people to come to our Community Family Pancake Breakfast from 8-10. The cooks (Larry and Phil) were outside in 4 degree temperatures. And Bill and Peter were inside cooking. The few community members who came (@20) seemed to enjoy themselves, and we got a chance to chat with Harold Damsberg whom we don't see often. Pete Strople even suited up and stood on the corner of 25 and Old Rte 109 when it was 5 degrees to drum up business. We know we need to make sure our advertising gets out; we hope to have the crowds next year.
On to the giving … each year for many years, the Moultonborough Lions have given a $500 Holiday check to each of the four communities we serve — Moultonborough, Center Harbor, Sandwich, and Tuftonboro. Below are pictures of three of the four checks being donated by President Peter Allen — to Nancy McCue, Director of the Moultonborough Library; Heather Cubeddu from the Town Clerk's Office in Tuftonboro, and Robin Woodeman from the Selectman's Office in Center Harbor. Unfortunately, the check was mailed to Sandwich so there was no photo op.
The winner of the $5,000 Raffle was Brian Sanford of Moultonborough. President Peter tried to reach him right after the drawing to no avail. When Peter finally did reach Brian to congratulate him on winning the $5,000 they agreed to meet for a photo op at the club's "Thank You Pancake Breakfast" on Saturday morning.
The next day Peter received a call from Brian saying that he went out on the Lions Web Site and was so impressed with what he saw that he decided not to take the money. He wants the club to use it for their many Community Projects. Lions Pride! Thank you so much, Brian, for helping the Moultonborough Lions serve others.
And then we have the Salvation Army Lion bell ringers. Thanks to Mike and Kate Lancor, Don Trudeau (and his wife), and Michelle Duddy (and her daughter) for representing the Lions while ringing the Salvation Army bell at the Walmart in Plymouth.
Plus, a good time was had by all at our Christmas Party/Dinner Meeting. The Yankee Swap was a hit and Susan surprised us all by bidding $100 for the privilege of being Number 1. Joe and Pat finally got to see through the Magic Glasses. And we were able to show our appreciation to Donna Grow who cooks our dinner meals throughout the year with a gift certificate to Hobbs.
Wishing everyone a Happy and Healthy New Year, 2019.
This entry was posted in Activities, Holiday Party, Raffle, Service Projects, Uncategorized by Sally Sibulkin. Bookmark the permalink.


Classic stylish android, Ideal for branding, a guaranteed eye catcher.
one obj file suitable for import in other applications.
textures, som renders and an animation.
The character is completely rigged and animated, eyes are also setup to follow targets. The render settings in this files guarantee you fantastic renders. Don't forget to set system gamma to 2.2 for Vray file! Renderer is setup for linear workflow. Render to 16bit tif ore 32bit open EXR for hi tonal range.


A renovated brick house from the 1800's on a large lot near downtown charlottesville.
Quintessentially old-fashioned with new amenities.
Cutting down on water use, composting, insulated old windows/doors with tape.
Stef the place looks fun.. I really like the chef in the kitchen. And the garden looks like its going to produce some good produce.


text:
/**
 * A module generating a JSON representation of a WADL content
 * @module wadl2json
 */
(function() {
  var fs = require("fs");
  var request = require("request");
  var url = require("url");

  var _ = require("lodash");
  var parser = require("xml2json");
  var beautify = require("js-beautify").js_beautify;

  var wadl2json = exports;

  wadl2json._defaultOptions = {
    prettify:   false,
    sort:       false,
    stringify:  false
  };

  function convertWadlParamType(prefixedType) {
    var type = prefixedType.split(":")[1] || prefixedType.split(":")[0];
    return type == "int" ? "integer" : type;
  }

  /**
   * Extract all methods from a parsed WADL content
   * @private
   * @param {string} basePath - path which will be prepended to resource path
   * @param {object} resource - WADL <resource> tag
   * @returns {array} all methods contained in resource
   */
  exports._methodsFromWADLResource = function(basePath, resource) {
    var path = basePath + (_.last(basePath) == "/" ? "":"/") + resource.path;

    var methods = _.map(resource.method || [], function(method) {
      var request = method && method.request && method.request[0];
      var params = (resource.param || [])
        .concat(request && request.param || [])
        .concat(request && request.representation && request.representation[0] && request.representation[0].param || []);

      return {
        verb: method.name,
        name: method.id,
        params: params,
        path: path
      };
    });

    return methods.concat(_.map(resource.resource || [], _.partial(wadl2json._methodsFromWADLResource, path)));
  };

  /**
   * Group methods by path
   * @private
   * @param {array} methods - methods returned by _methodsFromWADLResource
   * @returns {object} methods grouped by path
   */
  exports._groupMethodsByPath = function(methods) {
    var methodsByPath = _.groupBy(methods, "path");
    var paths = _.chain(methodsByPath).keys().sortBy().value();

    return _.foldl(paths, function(methods, path) {
      var methodsByVerb = _.groupBy(methodsByPath[path], "verb");
      var verbs = _.chain(methodsByVerb).keys().sortBy().value();

      return _.foldl(verbs, function(methods, verb) {
        var sortedOperations = _.sortBy(methodsByVerb[verb], "name");

        methods[path] = methods[path] || {};
        methods[path][verb.toLowerCase()] = {
          responses: {
            "default": {
              description: _.pluck(sortedOperations, "name").join("\n")
            }
          },
          parameters: (function() {
            var params = _.chain(sortedOperations)
              .pluck("params")
              .flatten(true)
              .uniq("name")
              .map(function(param) {
                return {
                  "name": param.name,
                  "required": param.style == "template",
                  "in": ({template: "path", plain: "body"})[param.style] || param.style,
                  "type": convertWadlParamType(param.type)
                };
              })
              .value();

            if(_.size(params) > 0) {
              return params;
            }
          })()
        };
        return methods;
      }, methods);
    }, {});
  };

  /**
   * Generate a JSON representation from parsed WADL content
   * @param {object} wadlJson - object representing wadl content
   * @param {object} [options] - options
   * @returns {object|string} JSON representation of given WADL content
   */
  exports.fromJSON = function(wadlJson, options) {
    options = _.extend({}, wadl2json._defaultOptions, options);

    var app = wadlJson && wadlJson.application && wadlJson.application[0];
    var resources = app && app.resources && app.resources[0];
    var base = resources && resources.base && require("url").parse(resources.base);

    var methods = _.chain(resources && resources.resource)
      .map(_.partial(wadl2json._methodsFromWADLResource, "/"))
      .flatten(true)
      .filter(function(method) {
        return _.all(options.blacklist, function(path) {
          return method.path.indexOf(path) !== 0;
        });
      })
      .value();

    var methodsByPath = wadl2json._groupMethodsByPath(methods);

    var json = {};
    json.swagger = "2.0";

    json.schemes = [base.protocol.replace(/:$/, "")];
    json.host = base.host;
    json.basePath = base.path.replace(/\/$/, "");

    json.paths = methodsByPath;

    json.info = {
      title: options.title || "",
      version: options.version || "",
      description: options.description || ""
    };

    json = options.stringify ? JSON.stringify(json) : json;
    json = options.stringify && options.prettify ? beautify(json, {indent_size: 2}) : json;

    return json;
  };

  /**
   * Generate a JSON representation from raw WADL content
   * @param {string} wadlString - raw WADL content
   * @param {object} [options] - options
   * @returns {object|string} JSON representation of given WADL content
   */
  exports.fromString = function(wadlString, options) {
    /* Remove XML header as xml2json is not able to parse it */
    wadlString = wadlString.replace(/<\?[^<]*\?>/g, "");
    var wadlJson = parser.toJson(wadlString, {
      object: true,
      arrayNotation: true
    });

    return wadl2json.fromJSON(wadlJson, options);
  };

  /**
   * Generate a JSON representation from a WADL file
   * @param {string} filename - name of a file containing WADL content
   * @param {object} [options] - options
   * @returns {object|string} JSON representation of given WADL content
   */
  exports.fromFile = function(filename, options) {
    var wadlString = fs.readFileSync(filename).toString();

    return wadl2json.fromString(wadlString, options);
  };

  /**
   * @callback requestCallback
   * @param {object} error - Forwarded error if unreachable content or generation fail. May be null.
   * @param {object|string} JSON representation of given WADL content
   */

  /**
   * Generate a JSON representation from a remote WADL file
   * @param {string} wadlURL - url of remote WADL content
   * @param {requestCallback} callback - function called on process end
   * @param {object} [options] - options
   */
  exports.fromURL = function(wadlURL, callback, options) {
    var opt = {
      uri: wadlURL
    };

    if(wadlURL.indexOf("https://") === 0) {
      opt.agent = new (require("https").Agent)({
        keepAlive: true
      });
    }

    request(opt, function(err, res, body) {
      if(err) {
        callback(err);
      }
      else {
        callback(null, wadl2json.fromString(body, options));
      }
    });
  };
})();

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub