text:
Tag Archives: elections
Nicolas Maduro wins mandate!
Reuters photo
Nicolas Maduro, the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's hand-picked successor, celebrates his victory in Venezuela's presidential election yesterday. The sore losers on the right are trying to cripple Maduro right out of the gate by casting unsubstantiated charges of election fraud, just like the wingnuts do here at home.
I say that tongue in cheek. Of course 50.7 percent of the vote isn't a mandate (the definition of which to me is something like "unquestionably strong majority support," which, I suppose, would need to at least approach 60 percent), but I am struck by the irony of how the unelected Bush regime (and its friends in the corporately owned and controlled media) called its 50.7 percent of the popular vote in 2004 a "mandate" while the very same wingnuts say that Nicolas Maduro's 50.7 percent in yesterday's presidential election in Venezuela means that the Chavistas are in deep doo-doo because Maduro didn't do better than he did.
Why wasn't George W. Bush's 50.7 percent painted as a problem for his party in 2004 — even though, in retrospect, it seems fairly clear that Bush's 50.7 percent was, in fact, far from being a "mandate," actually a harbinger of upcoming presidential election losses for the Repugnican Party?
(Bush's 50.7 percent in 2004 was higher than the 47.9 percent that he got in 2000 — when he was defeated by Democrat Al Gore, who got 48.4 percent of the popular vote — but Barack Obama, with his popular vote wins of 52.9 percent in 2008 and 51.1 percent in 2012 [to Mittens Romney's awfully ironic 47.2 percent], earned more popular votes that Bush ever did.)
It fits the right wing's narrative nicely to assert that Nicolas Maduro is a weakened president from Day One. It wasn't in the wingnuts' best interests to assert that Bush was a weakened president, so instead they claimed the opposite — that his 50.7 represented a "mandate." Bush himself bragged about having earned "political capital" that he was going to spend on a shopping spree.
Indeed, Bush not only spent any "political capital" that he'd actually earned, but he ran up his party's credit card debt, a debt that still plagues his party. (Not only do the Repugnican Tea Party traitors still talk as though Ronald Reagan was the last Repugnican president, but I clearly recall that even while Bush still sat in the White House in 2008, neither John McCainosaurus nor Sarah Palin mentioned him in their televised national debates or in their public appearances, but also pretended that Reagan was the last president from their party.)
So: If you are a right-wing politician, then your 50.7 percent is a "mandate." But if you are a left-wing politician, then your 50.7 percent means that the vote was so freakin' close that you might as well just step aside and allow your opponent to take office instead of you.
Sickly, even many on the left fall into this double-standard bullshit, and, as Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) noted in November, while Bush's "re"-election immediately was branded a "mandate," even though he "won" only 286 electoral votes in 2004, Obama's win of more than 300 electoral votes in November was "definitely not a mandate." (After all of the votes were counted, it turns out that Obama won 332 electoral votes in November.)
When push comes to shove, it doesn't matter whether Nicolas Maduro won a "mandate" yesterday. All that he needed to do was get the higher number of votes — to the victor goes the spoils — and he apparently did that. His right-wing opponent, Henrique Capriles, has demanded a recount, and Maduro has said that he's fine with every vote being recounted.
Of course, Maduro can't claim, as the unelected Bush regime falsely did in 2004, that he has a "mandate," but at the same time he shouldn't allow himself to be stymied by the right-wing sore losers' attempts to cripple him right out of the gate. A win is a win, and very apparently he, not Capriles, was chosen by the majority of the people.
(Despite right-wing charges of rampant election fraud in Venezuela, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, whose organization monitors elections around the world, said last year, "As a matter of fact, of the 92 elections that we've monitored, I would say that the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world." [Of course, Jimmy Carter is just a "socialist," too, so of course he would say that!])
Maduro, no doubt, has his work cut out for him. My guess is that the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, after he had consolidated his political power, in his later years didn't work as hard for the people as he had in the past (in fairness, though, of course his battle with cancer no doubt slowed him down), and Maduro needs to be more about improving Venezuela than about maintaining a rock-star brand name, especially the Chavez brand name.
Chavez is gone, and while it's fine to carry on his ideals — I hope that they are carried on not only in Venezuela, but that they spread to the United States of America one day — it's a mistake to make a movement about one person instead of about principles, because while principles can be eternal, the flesh is weak and quite impermanent.
As long as Maduro and his supporters refuse to get caught up in the right wing's bullshit propagandistic narrative that Maduro didn't really win the election, and as long as Maduro works hard for the greatest number of Venezuelans — as his own person, and not as the clone of Chavez — Maduro can be re-elected in another six years.
In the meantime, all of us on the left, regardless of which nation we live in, need to be vigilant about the double standards. The bar always has been set higher for those on the left than it has been for those on the right, and at the minimum we on the left need to stop cooperating with that bullshit. The wingnuts act like they're winners even when they've lost, and we on the left tend to act like we're losers even when we've won.
And Senor Presidente: That pornstache prolly should go. Just sayin'.
Tagged as 47 percent, 50.7 percent, Barack Obama, democracy, double standard, double standards, election fraud, elections, FAIR, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, George W. Bush, Henrique Capriles, hypocrisy, hypocrites, Jimmy Carter, John McCain, left wing, Mitt Romney, Politics, Republican Party, right wing, Ronald Reagan, Sarah Palin, Venezuela, wingnuts, wingnuttery
Four more years (of [largely] the same old shit)!
Reuters photos
I expect little actual progress from the pseudo-progressive President Hopey-Changey over the next four years, but at least during that time I'll be spared of having to see the Ann-Cunter-like, bleach-blonde harpy Ann Romney trying to fuck us all repeatedly with her strap-on. (Yes, that's an actual news photo, and so is that one, too.)
Oh, yeah, there was an election on Tuesday.
As I have noted, I voted by mail for Green Party candidate Jill Stein for president — yes, practically speaking, as a protest vote — but I knew that President Barack Obama would win my state of California by an overwhelming margin, and he did: thus far in California's vote counting, Obama has 59.3 percent to Mittens Romney's paltry 38.4 percent. (Stein, in case you were wondering, is at No. 4, with a whopping 0.6 percent of the state's vote.)
What I didn't expect, however, was that as a result of Tuesday's election — elections, as they say, have consequences — the California Legislature would be on the verge of having a two-thirds "super-majority" in both houses, the state Senate and the state Assembly.
This "super-majority" — if utilized — makes the Repugnican Tea Party traitors in the Legislature even more irrelevant than they already were before Tuesday.
Not that the Democrats will use their power, of course. Although "super-majority" power, if used to its full extent, would make even the centristy Democratic California Gov. Jerry Brown fairly irrelevant, since the Legislature could override his vetoes, there are plenty of center-right "Democratic" California legislators who could threaten any two-thirds threshold.
And, of course, already Jerry Brown has assured spooked California Repugnicans — whose registrants don't comprise even a full 30 percent of registered Californian voters (the Dems, on the other hand, have almost 44 percent of the state's registered voters) and whose party doesn't hold a single statewide office — that his party won't do too much to upset them, even though, of course, were the state's parties' positions of political power reversed, the Repugnicans would ram their right-wing agenda through ruthlessly.
When George W. Bush was "re"-elected in 2004 with a measly 50.7 percent of the popular vote, he called the election results a "mandate." A "mandate."
That's how the Repugnican Tea Party traitors roll: They don't care even if they don't even win the popular vote (recall the 2000 presidential election) — they just want to be in power no matter fucking what. They want to shove their Randian, theofascist, neo-Nazi agenda down our throats whether we, the people, give them our permission, via our votes, to do so or not. (So of course if you're perfectly willing to steal power even when you lost the election, 50.7 percent would be, I suppose, relatively speaking, a "mandate.")
Votes remain to be counted, but right now Obama is sitting at 50.6 percent of the national popular vote to Mittens' 47.9 percent. Obama on Tuesday sewed up 332 electoral votes to Mittens' 206. Including the all-important Ohio and Florida, Obama on Tuesday won all of the states that he won in 2008 (when he garnered 52.9 percent of the popular vote and 365 electoral votes), except for two of them, Indiana and North Carolina, which aren't exactly solid-blue states anyway.
(Indeed, in eight of the last 10 presidential elections, including Tuesday's, North Carolina went for the Repugnican, and in nine of the last 10 presidential elections, including Tuesday's, Indiana went for the Repugnican, so Obama's win in those two states in 2008 was the exception, not the rule, and his loss in those two backasswards states on Tuesday was the rule, not the exception, even though the pathetically straw-grasping Repugnican Tea Party traitors have tried to make some hay out of the fact that Obama didn't win those two states again on Tuesday. [Indeed, the bar, when it is set by whites, is always set higher for blacks than it is for whites.])
Cheer up, though, white-supremacist wingtards! Mittens did better than John McCainosaurus and Sarah Palin did in 2008. They garnered only 45.7 of the popular vote and 173 electoral votes against the guy with the Kenyan ancestry.
Of course, while George W. Bush in 2004 declared 50.7 percent of the popular vote to be a "mandate" and the fascist traitors who comprise his party talked of a "permanent [Repugnican] majority," only two years later, in 2006, the Repugnicans lost the U.S. House of Representatives and Democratic California U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi became the first woman to become speaker of the House in U.S. history, and then two years after that, in 2008, Barack Obama, the nation's first non-white president, won a higher percentage of the popular vote than either George W. Bush or even Bill Clinton ever had.
So some caution needs to be exercised before declaring a "permanent [insert party name here] majority," or even a "mandate" based on not even a full 51 percent of the popular vote, but at the same time, to the victor goes the spoils, and the so-called "leaders" of the Democratic Party need to stop acting like losers even after they've fucking won.
(Yes, on the heels of his second electoral victory, Obama still is talking about cooperation with the Repugnican Tea Party traitors in Congress, even though the past four years have demonstrated amply that you cannot negotiate with such terrorists, because the assumption that they are rational creatures capable of compromise is patently incorrect.)
The Repugnican Tea Party traitor-fascists act like winners even after they've lost, and if the damage that they've wreaked upon the nation is to be reversed (if that's even possible at this point [it very most likely isn't, perhaps especially in regards to global warming]), the Democrats really need to stop snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
I'm not holding my breath, however.
I expect the next four years to look and feel much like the past four, although I expect things here in California to improve more quickly than they improve — if they ever improve — nationally, since here in California we have demonstrated how to edge the Repugnican Tea Party traitors more and more closely to the endangered species status that they oppose so much.
As California goes, so goes the nation, it has been said.
I hope that that is correct.
P.S. Of course I'm happy that on Tuesday the voters of three states — Maine, Maryland and Washington — voted for same-sex marriage, being the first states to adopt same-sex marriage upon a popular vote, and pushing the number of states that have same-sex marriage from six (before Tuesday) to now nine. (The other six states are Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Vermont. The District of Columbia also has same-sex marriage, as do two U.S. Native American tribes, apparently.)
The 2008 election results were a bittersweet pill here in California, because although Barack Obama had become the nation's first black president based upon his ubiquitous campaign promises of hope and change (and to a large degree they were just that — promises — we know now), Proposition Hate had shot down same-sex marriage, which the California Supreme Court had ruled earlier in the year was every Californian's constitutional right.
If same-sex marriage were put up to a vote again in California today, of course it would pass this time — even though, let me be clear, no one's constitutional guarantee of equality ever should have to be put up to a fucking vote — and it's gratifying to see that the Mittens Romney-Pretty Boy Paul Ryan ticket, representing the Mormon cult and the Catholick church respectively, were rejected by the majority of the nation's voters, since the Mormon cult and the Catholick church were the biggest sponsors of Proposition Hate, in their attempt to shove their brand of theocracy and theofascism down our throats, Taliban-style.
Karma is a bitch.
(Just like Ann Romney is. I am sooooo happy not to have to see her fucking face as first lady for the next four years, by the way. Ann Romney reminds me of an Ann Cunter who actually ate something. Why are so many Repugican Tea Party women bleach-blonde harpies who act like sorority chicks who are getting revenge upon all of us for the ponies that they never got as spoiled little girls?)
P.P.S. For all of their post-election sore-loserism crying and whining, the white-supremacist Repugnican Tea Party traitors are fucking lucky that we are seeing a for-the-very-most-part bloodless, demographic revolution in the United States, and not (thus far, anyway…) the actual bloody revolution that the Repugnican Tea Party traitors deserve to have launched against them, a la the French Revolution.
After all, the "47 percent" that Mittens "Let Them Eat Cake" Romney talked about in May when he didn't know that he was being video-recorded actually is a bit more than 50 percent, we see from Tuesday's presidential election results.
Tagged as "Election", 47 percent, Ann Coulter, Ann Cunter, Ann Romney, Ayn Rand, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, blue states, California, California Legislature, Catholic church, Catholics, Democratic Party, Democrats, elections, Elections have consequences, fascism, fascists, Florida, French Revolution, George W. Bush, global warming, Gov. Jerry Brown, Green Party, harpies, Indiana, Jerry Brown, Jill Stein, John McCain, Let them eat cake, Maine, Mandate, mandates, Maryland, Mitt Romney, Mittens Romney, Mormon cult, Mormons, Nancy Pelosi, North Carolina, Ohio, plutocracy, Plutocrats, Politics, President Hopey-Changey, Proposition 8, protest vote, Red states, Republican Party, Republican Tea Party, Republicans, Same-sex marriage, Sarah Palin, theocracy, theocrats, theofascism, theofascists, Washington, white supremacism, white supremacists
Repugnican Indiana secretary of state found guilty of felonious voter fraud
Associated Press photo
Repugnican Indiana Secretary of State Charlie White (pictured above in June 2011) today was found guilty of felonious voter fraud. Gee, could it be that the true face of voter fraud in the United States of America is not brown-skinned and brown-eyed?
For all of the right-wing, democracy-hating traitors' viral lies about rampant voter fraud being committed on the left — in order to make it more difficult for likely Democratic voters to vote by passing voter-suppression legislation because of this supposed rampant voter fraud on the left — the worst enemies of a fair and untainted democratic process always have been on the right.
Think Repugnican Katherine Harris, the former secretary of state of Florida, who made damn sure that George W. Bush "won" that pivotal state in 2000, even though he lost it, and how she not only was the state's top elections official, but c0-chaired the state's committee to elect Gee Dubya at the same time.
Think ditto for Repugnican Ken Blackwell, the former secretary of state of Ohio, who made damn sure that George W. Bush "won" "re"-election in that pivotal state in 2004 — even though Blackwell also as the state's top elections official also was a co-chair of the state's committee to "re"-elect Gee Dubya.
Now, think Repugnican Charlie White — the secretary of state of the state of Indiana who has been found guilty of, of all things, felonious voter fraud. (Harris and Blackwell also are, in my book, felons, but many if not most such felons never see the inside of a prison cell because they never are convicted because their status as elitists protects them from being subjected to the criminal justice system, which is only for those of us who don't have money and power.)
Reports The Associated Press today (emphases are mine):
Indianapolis — Indiana's top elections official could lose his job and his freedom after jurors convicted him of multiple voter-fraud-related charges [today], leaving in flux the fate of one of the state's most powerful positions.
Republican Secretary of State Charlie White has held on to his office for more than a year despite being accused of lying about his address on voter registration forms.
A Hamilton County jury found White guilty of six of seven felony charges, including false registration, voting in another precinct, submitting a false ballot, theft and two counts of perjury. He was acquitted on one fraud charge.
White expressed no outward emotion as the verdict was read, and later said outside the courtroom: "I'm disappointed for my family and the people who supported me."
It wasn't immediately clear what would happen to White's elected office. He has resisted calls to resign from Democrats and Republicans, including Gov. Mitch Daniels, but state law bars anyone convicted of a felony from remaining in office.
White's attorney, Carl Brizzi, said he will ask the judge to reduce the charges to misdemeanors because his client has no criminal background and has a long record of public service. [Bullshit — a felony is a felony, and to let White off the hook with a misdemeanor or misdemeanors is to say that voter fraud committed by a state's top elections official is no big deal.]
Daniels announced [today] he had appointed White's chief deputy, Jerry Bonnet, as interim secretary of state.
"I have chosen not to make a permanent appointment today out of respect for the judge's authority to lessen the verdict to a misdemeanor and reinstate the elected office holder," Daniels said in a statement. "If the felony convictions are not altered, I anticipate making a permanent appointment quickly." …
The jury verdict came after a weeklong trial in which White, who had vigorously protested the charges in hearings before a state elections panel, presented no defense.
Prosecutors said he used his ex-wife's address instead of a condo he had with his fiancée because he didn't want to give up his $1,000-per-month Fishers Town Council salary after moving out of that district. He faced seven felony charges, including voter fraud, perjury and theft.
White, 42, has said the charges ignored a complicated personal life in which he was trying to raise his 10-year-old son, plan his second marriage and campaign for the statewide office he won that November. He said he stayed at his ex-wife's house when he wasn't on the road campaigning and did not live in the condo until after he remarried. …
No sentencing date was set. …
Republican special prosecutor John Dowd expressed satisfaction about the verdict.
"We believe it was about someone who violated the law and cheated the system — and gamed the system," Dowd said. "And, obviously, the jury thought the same way." …
During his closing arguments, assistant special prosecutor Dan Sigler Jr. argued that White knew that he was committing voter fraud but did it anyway for political power.
"If we aren't going to enforce election law against the secretary of state of Indiana, who are we going to enforce it against?" Sigler said.
Where was the right-wing criminal James O'Keefe's hidden camera, I wonder, when the right-wing, white male Repugnican Indiana secretary of state was committing voter fraud?
Tagged as "tea party", democracy, election fraud, election stealing, election theft, elections, Florida, George W. Bush, Gov. Mitch Daniels, Indiana, Indiana secretary of state, James O'Keefe, Katherine Harris, Ken Blackwell, Kenneth Blackwell, Mitch Daniels, Ohio, Politics, Republican Party, Republican Tea Party, right wing, secretaries of state, voter disenfranchisement, voter fraud, voter registration fraud, voters, voting, voting fraud, voting rights, wingnuts
Wingnuts' call for California's split is disingenuous
New York Times and Los Angeles Times graphics
Just say oh, hell no!: The current Repugnican Tea Party proposition to split California into two states is meant only to help the shrinking Repugnican Tea Party in presidential elections.
It's been in the news lately that some wingnuts in Southern California want to split the state into two states, "North California" and "South California" (a la North Carolina and South Carolina or North Dakota and South Dakota).
California is just too big to continue to (try to) manage as one state, they argue (correctly or incorrectly).
This argument has been made before many times in the history of the nation's most populous state, and repeated efforts to split the state into two throughout the state's history have failed.
So should this one.
As the Repugnican Tea Party traitors always do, they give benign, reasonable-sounding reasons for their plan, but in actuality, their plan serves only to benefit them politically.
With a population of more than 37 million according to the 2010 U.S. Census, for the 2012, 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, California has 55 electoral votes. Texas, the second-most-populous state, has 38 electoral votes. (New York, at No. 3, has 29. [Each state gets two electoral votes for its two U.S. senators, as a baseline, and top of those two baseline electoral votes, gets one electoral vote for each of its members of the U.S. House of Representatives.])
Fifty-five electoral votes — that's a lot of electoral votes, and the Repugnican Tea Party traitors long have wanted to get their grubbies on a chunk of them for a long time now.
Q: How to do that, given that California is a solid blue state and that like most of the 50 states, California awards its electoral votes on a winner-takes-all basis?
A: (1) Try to turn California from a winner-takes-all state to a state that awards electoral votes proportionately, like Nebraska and Maine do. Or, (2) try to split the state into a blue state ("North California") and a red state ("South California"), giving the Repugnican Tea Party another red state in its column.
Don't get me wrong: I'd be giddily happy to no longer have to share the great state of California with the Repugnican Tea Party traitors and other assorted right-wing nutjobs — but not at the expense of helping the Repugnican Tea Party traitors more easily win presidential elections.
I'm fine with proportionally allocating electoral votes within the Electoral College; I don't like the current winner-takes-all system myself.
But unless all fucking 50 states award their electoral votes proportionately, it's unfair (and, it seems to me, unconstitutional [specifically, violating the Constitution's requirement of equal protection]). You don't hear the Repugnican Tea Party traitors pushing for, say, Texas' electoral votes to be split proportionately, do you?
Best of all would be to abolish the Electoral College altogether and elect our president on a straight national popular vote. (If our system had been set up that way, as it should have been and should be, we would have had President Al Gore instead of "President" George W. Bush, since Gore won more than half a million more votes than Bush did in the official 2000 presidential election results.) If it's good enough for us to elect our governors on a straight popular vote, it's good enough for us to elect our presidents this way.
In the meantime, reforms or changes that are meant to benefit one party over another are bullshit and need to be blocked.
Sure we can split California into a red state and a blue state. But only when and if we split the red states, such as Texas, into red states and blue states.
(What's that, wingnut? Suddenly it's not such a great fucking idea?
Yeah, that's what I thought.)
P.S. As I painstakingly pointed out way back in April 2009, the red states take more from the federal coffers than they put into the federal coffers, yet the red states piss and moan about how horrible they have it under the blue states when the red states are, in effect, welfare states — drains on the blue states.
Similarly, Democratic California Gov. Jerry Brown's office has pointed out that the red area of the state that would comprise "South California" takes more from the state's coffers than it puts into the state's coffers.
(And Brown's spokesman said that talk of splitting the state into two "is a supremely ridiculous waste of everybody's time," adding, "If you want to live in a Republican state with very conservative right-wing laws, then there's a place called Arizona." [Or Texas or…])
So again, yeah, except for the fact that it would help the Repugnican Tea Party traitors in the presidential elections, I'd be more than happy to see the blood-sucking red counties of California go their own way from those of us in the blue counties who are carrying their pathetic, worthless asses.
Tagged as "tea party", Al Gore, Arizona, blue counties, blue states, California, California politics, Democratic Party, elections, Electoral College, electoral votes, equal protection, George W. Bush, Maine, Nebraska, New York, North California, Northern California, Politics, presidential elections, red counties, Red states, Republican Party, Republican Tea Party, South California, Southern California, Texas
Democracy begins at home
So the debate continues on whether or not Iran's presidential election on Friday was rigged.
My guess is that it was — since Iran is a theocracy and the theocrat in chief wanted Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to remain as Iran's president — but by how much, who knows?
I consider the source when I see news accounts of the likes of hawkish Repugnican John "Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran" McCainosaurus and hawkish former Bush regime ambassador John "I Am the Walrus" Bolton claiming that of course Iran's election was stolen. They want Iran wiped off of the map as much as Iranian hardliners want Israel wiped off of the map, so I discount their rantings and ravings.
I found one Politico article titled "Ahmadinejad Won; Get Over It" to be interesting. The authors make a rather compelling argument that Ahmadinejad has much more popular support within Iran that is commonly discussed in the Western media.
My stance, from all of the viewpoints and all of the news stories that I've read, is that no one really knows what happened in Iran. Thankfully, the Obama administration, although pressured by the Israel-first lobby and the warhawks and the war profiteers to declare Iran's election invalid, has taken a fairly balanced approach thus far, declaring that the election results look fishy but that right now all that we Americans can say about the election is that we just don't know.
But what I find most interesting and frustrating about the discussion of the validity of Iran's presidential election is that although there were serious concerns among democracy-lovers about presidential election irregularies in the pivotal state of Ohio in November 2004 — so much so that only for the second time in the nation's history, a U.S. senator (Barbara Boxer) joined a U.S. representative in filing a Congressional objection to the certification of a state's Electoral College votes — the debacle in Ohio in 2004 was swept under the red, white and blue rug.
And don't even get me started on the obviously stolen U.S. presidential election of 2000. And if George W. Bush never was elected legitimately in the first place — and he never was — then there is no way that his "re-election" could have had any legitimacy, either.
Americans are all too eager to scream "election fraud!" at Iran — even though Iran, along with Iraq and North Korea, comprised the hawkish, unelected Bush regime's "Axis of Evil," so it's not like the U.S. government could be objective about Iran, which it already has declared its enemy — but Americans are not willing to ensure that their elections at home aren't rigged.
Democracy begins at home.
Tagged as "Axis of Evil", Ahmadinejad, Bush regime, democracy, election fraud, elections, George W. Bush, Iran, Iraq, John Bolton, John McCain, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, North Korea, Obama administration, stolen elections, theocracy


This study investigates a growing issue for hotels and consumers: pricing across distribution channels. Research suggests that hotels should drive consumers towards direct channels with lower operating costs and away from intermediaries, yet few studies have investigated pricing practices across the direct communication channels that hotels control. The results of two surveys of over 100 Swiss hotels illustrate pricing inconsistencies in low- and high-season periods across four communication media under the properties' direct control: telephone, email, static website price lists, and reservation request forms on the website. About one out of two hotels offered different rates across these media, despite the requests being on the same date, for the same type room for the same period. Prices via email responses were the lowest in the low-season survey and website prices were lowest in the high-season survey. Across both surveys, prices were lower via online media - email, static website price lists, and reservation request forms - than via the telephone. Hotel category and number of stars showed a positive relationship with consistent pricing in the low season, and a negative relationship in the high season. Finally, price variations of over 200% - for the same room at the same date - across a hotel's direct online and offline channels serve as a wake-up call for hoteliers to review their pricing and procedures for communicating this pricing.


text:
Similiar Games Coexisting
September 7, 2009 7:43:54 PM from Demigod Forums
There's a trend I am noticing in IRC and the forums that confuses me. Most notably regarding Starcraft 2 and Demigod/League of Legends/Heroes of Newerth. The first case is that because of Starcraft 2 no other RTS game can ever come out as Starcraft 2 is the end all be all RTS game. Supreme Commander 2 and Command and Conquer 4 should be cancelled because of Starcraft 2 is what people say. I'm not exaggerating any of this.
And then there is the Demigod/League of Legends/Heroes of Newerth love triangle. People from each community bash the games constantly. I don't understand why people cannot sit still with their decision instead of going out and trying to convince other people that their game is best. Don't you think you deserve some sort of check from said company for doing that?
Why do people think similiar games cannot co-exist and do well independent of each other? Games are not cars.
2 Pages1 2 Next
Kitkun
Reply #1 September 7, 2009 8:49:34 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire Forums
People are stupid?
Ryat
Quoting Kitkun,
wizard's first rule
-Ue_Carbon
Great series!
I think the 4th rule, if I remember right can apply also.
Im gonna re read that whole series now. lol
Maxpower179
You also see this a ton with MMORPGs. I don't get it either.
ZehDon
from Demigod Forums
If they couldn't coexist, the games Industry wouldn't have been revived after Atari imploded it back in the day. Believing otherwise is stupidity, pure and simple.
Fanboys love to believe that their game is the "one true game" because, to them, if you're not playing the biggest and best game your wasting your time - games are serious business, and you need to keep your 'net cred' high by having a level 80 of every World of Warcraft character, a 1337 Pro team in Starcraft, and be the first people to buy the next big thing so you can "pwn t3h n00bs" and establish your 'net cred' in that game as well. Anything that doesn't instantly sell 11,000,000 copies is dying and anything less than a patch a week means the Developers are laughing at the broken and usless game.
It's these same so-called gamers that believe "t3h PS3 is t3h 1337357 con5ol3 t3h pow3r m3ans b3tt3r gam3s t3h GAYDICKLOVINGXBOXROFLCOPPTER!!11!!1!ELVEN!!". I've labelled these idiots the "Halo Kids", because that's where I first encountered this kind of behaviour. They make up around 75% of Blizzard Entertainment's customers.
Quoting ZehDon,
They make up around 75% of Blizzard Entertainment's customers.
fortunately I am in the 25% range that believes that games should be many and varied like cars and food
carlobee
Reply #7 September 9, 2009 12:06:13 AM
Quoting Ryat,
Quoting ZehDon, reply 5 They make up around 75% of Blizzard Entertainment's customers.
Count me in on this one!
SeniorBiscuit
Similar games can coexist, but this thread is pointless.
Fantasy World Dizzy will always be the ONE TRUE GAME.
mrlarone
Reply #9 September 9, 2009 12:18:03 PM
you left me puzzled, which is the car to end all cars?
what would be really cool if ready to play does well and is expanded to the whole net.
though i must admit to a satisfactory feeling of schadenfreude reading peeps broiling in their own rage.
p.s. Demigod FTW, where's my cheque?
Timmaigh
Reply #10 September 9, 2009 12:28:48 PM
Starcraft is brutally overrated, it is great game indeed, but far from best. And the blind faith of Blizzard fanatic supporters is beyond belief. I noticed it on the Escapist message boards during that Developer competition. After Ironclad failed to advance i voted in the Blizzard vs Relic round and the Blizzard fanboys on the forum were utter tw*ts, saying Relic is no match for Blizzard, cause Blizzard made Diablo and Starcraft, which is even today played by trillion Koreans and blah blah blah.... I voted for Relic myself because i really loved Homeworld, not because i actually thought Relic is better developer than Blizzard, but in the end I was really satisfied when Relic won it, just to see those people shut up.
Mellowe
Reply #11 September 12, 2009 2:45:00 AM
Quoting Timmaigh,
Some studios have rather zealous fans who are incapable of taking criticism.
These studios include Valve, Blizzard, and Square Enix.
pseudomelon
And Stardock, at times. (We need to come clean on that one)
Quoting pseudomelon,
Well, every studio has its share of zealous fans. I just find that some have especially militant fans who attack critics and reject reason.
Reply #14 September 13, 2009 11:17:57 PM
from Elemental Forums
Starcraft is brutally overrated, it is great game indeed, but far from best. And the blind faith of Blizzard fanatic supporters is beyond belief.
I don't think it's fair to label everyone who thinks Starcraft is the 'best' and has 'faith' in Blizzard as a 'fanatic'. I do think that Starcraft is the 'best', in the sense that I've had more fun playing it than any other game; and as as for Blizzard, I rate them above Relic since they haven't released a game that hasn't been fantastic during the time I've been following them.
That said, if I don't enjoy Starcraft 2 or Diablo 3, I won't force myself to continue playing them, and I might think twice about buying the next Blizzard game. I also wouldn't miss Supreme Commander 2 if it wasn't made.
Well, Stardock doesn't really need zealot fans because the CEO him self will get on here and tell you to stfu.
StAcK3D_ActR
Quoting ,
quoting post
the only reason half the people hang out on the IRC chat and forums is because at that time the game is not working for them, they are waiting for a game to start or because they want the game to live up to its full potential.
i know for a fact that any game that has worked for me i have had no need to speak on the forums at all. for example WoW, WC3, Diablo, HoN, CoD4 etc..
RemV
Hmmm, perhaps I'm setting myself up to get stoned to death here, but co-existing in the market doesn't always mean co-existing with the same players or sharing the same market. I know plenty of people who buy 1 game at a time, burn themselves out on it over a couple of months or longer and move on to another (perhaps totally different genre depending on what's come out). They don't get several similar games, don't want to spread their limited time being mundane at several games when they can hone skills and have a hoot/get the most out of one.
I'm not quite part of this crowd, as I'm not *quite* as time-poor as my friends, but considering the average gamers age is something like 30 now? (Don't quote me on that, completely no idea where I read it, can be fud yeah) I believe people like this might be greater in number than the younger gamers realize. There is a reason a lot of people talk about games killing each other, and for them and their friend groups it may well be the case. It's not always out of blind fanaticism, but because I personally know many people who only want to really get into one game at a time.
Reply #18 September 14, 2009 12:16:42 AM
Quoting Remiel,
... I know plenty of people who buy 1 game at a time, burn themselves out on it over a couple of months or longer and move on to another (perhaps totally different genre depending on what's come out). They don't get several similar games, don't want to spread their limited time being mundane at several games when they can hone skills and have a hoot/get the most out of one ...
These types of gamers don't ultimately decide the fate of a game; they usually follow whatever game is most popular at the time for their chosen genre and come and go with the content patches. The life of a game is determined by the players who enjoy the game for what it is and continue to play for sheer enjoyment of playing the game after all of the content has been experienced.
Keep in mind, with online multiplayer games it's not uncommon for people to move away from and back to games after 'burning out' on them. I still go back and play a few rounds of Counter-Strike once in a while when I'm in the mood for some old fashioned stabbing people with bullets. It's the benefit of the free to play market, as opposed to the MMO where people often take into consideration the sheer amount of hours invested when thinking of uninstalling.
I'm not so sure they should be ridden off. As I mentioned (I really should find a reference for it) the age of the gaming populous is ageing, and that general demograph is pretty safe to say more timepoor than your average uni student or highschool student, and possible more able to speak with their wallets.
Using myself and my friends as an example, (tho I hate to use DG v HoN/LoL as said example) we chose to all buy demigod not only because it is an awesome game now, but because of all the excitement it generated when reading the whole "it's a long term thing for us" here on the forums. If a couple of mates decide they have more fun in same-genre betas and believe their free (or not, whatever it ends up being) content updates provide more longevity and enjoyment than the possible $9 perDG here, we may all end up getting said-game (again, just an example) and leaving DG behind. Not because we spat the dummy over anything, but for aforementioned reasons, and whilst that means DG still got our cash (and justly earned!) they wouldn't be getting the continual updates from us over the long term. If we feel other similar games lacking we won't buy their games at all, and will hang around for more updates, and SD/GPG get more fiscal stimulus from a bunch of us who like playing together.
The casual gamer has much, much sway over the life and longevity of games. Another example I'm loath to use but find pertinent, the WoW game style direction becoming much much more casual based over the years (the recent heroic raids as the possible exception). I know some people will play WoW and Aion and whatever else, but I think its a safe assumption a lot (the majority? who can say) will keep subscriptions rolling on one at a time for the majority of their playtime, not both. Similarly, I and my friends may keep our update-purchases to DG or similar games, but unlikely both.
As you said, the benefit of free to play you can go back to any old game at any time but that isn't necessarily going to entail buying updates as well if there's more benefit to putting time/money elsewhere for more effect. In a sense, one game will have killed the other from a out-going payments perspective. As I said (believe), the casual gamers en-force have much sway.
I've written about this topic before, so I won't write another wall of text on the subject, however the so-called 'casual' crowd are not the aging gamer who has limited time and income to spend on gaming - these aging gamers are known as the 'core' demographic. The aging gamers, roughly 34+, have literally seen the games industry shape itself and the videos games industry makes up their primary source of entertainment. I don't have any reference figures readily available, however, so I won't go into more detail.
The 'casual' crowd are the gamers buying the majority of titles - they fund companies like EA Games with franchises like Madden, The Sims and Spore. They've given Nintendo a commanding lead in the console market, and if recent trends are to be trusted than 'casuals' are anything but, based on the sheer number of sales.
They have a commanding presence because of the sheer number that makes up this 'casual' crowd and as such companies often try to capture this crowd for a large number of one off sales - although this is changing with digital distribution. Now, the casual crowd are being pandered to by every major company in the video games market and as such there are a wealth of titles of them to pick and chose from that are all 'casual friendly' or 'accessible'.
However, fast forward from a multiplayer games release 18 months and view the people still playing the game. The hype has died down, the world is no longer on fire and the dust has settled. You'll find a much less 'casual' environment because they've moved on to the next big thing, while the fans are still playing. Factors suchs as the quality of the title and it's immediate, retail success determines on how long the 'casual crowd' sticks around for.
As I posted earlier, these gamers do not make up the long term survival of the community - the core gamers do. Demigod has a smaller community and as such will retain a much smaller percentage of 'casual' gamers as the dust of it's release settles while the casual crowd move on to the next 'big thing'.
Pnakotus
In addition, it's worth remembering that any developer should pretty much ignore forums. Listening closely to 'fans' (ie, incredibly narrow sample of one type of possible customer) generally leads to crap. Thus, whatever morons in youtube comments are saying today, it's not really relevant.
The mobility of different kinds of customer in the market is an interesting topic, especially since 'omg whut is teh best gamez' sort of thing you find on forums basically ignores 99% of the potential market. This is incidentally where I think Stardock picks up some of it's success - being able to make niche games that are polished and generally accesible to more people. That's why they make money, and why people like Paradox make something else entirely.
(Re: ZehDon) All good, tho I'm scared we're moving sideways despite being related. Taking all this casual/ageing gaming in stride, I still think the points stand as to why some people believe similar games cannot coexist, and in what sense they believe a game may kill another. That being as simple as the fact that many of us who wouldn't consider ourselves necessarily casual, also don't want to spread our efforts into several similar games.
Instead of immediately jumping on the defense when someone comes posting "z0mg LoL will KiLl Dg!!" (and I abhor their manners/post style as much as the next person) I can see why they believe/post that opinion nonetheless. No points for manners, but they may simply just be more of the crowd (that I don't believe is small) who do want to be somewhat good at one thing instead of spreading efforts across many.
Oh I certainly agree, there are a large percentage of gamers who want to find one game to steal away all of their time, something to dedicate themselves to and another percentage of games who simply don't have the time to play and practice at more than one game.
What I'm trying to say is that while there are justifiable reasons why someone like yourself or myself might claim that Demigod's future is uncertain, at least in terms of it's continual player base, the people who actually make those Doom Sayer threads aren't using your logic to justify their reasons. They're using the Blizzard Enterainment Customer mentality I detailed above.
Broken down, these players use this fomula*:
If [Day 1# Game Sales] < [Population of World of Warcraft]
[Game] = WIN
[Game] = Fail
'Forum'
lbl Forum
[Post] = random{[Game] is broken; Devs don't care; no content; servers are empty!!11; Account cancelled}
Display [Post]
*note based on actual coding language.
If [game functionality] < [blizzards standards]
Not to nitpick, but shouldn't that be a >?

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Nomenclature: Current taxonomic status: accepted. Taxonomic rank: species. Lecidea. Synonyms: Lecidea lepadina Sommerf., Lecidea vapulata Anzi; Lecideaceae Chevall. (1826); Lecanorales.
Type Information: Protologue: Acharius E., Method. Lich. 14 (1803) - Lichen confluens Weber: Weber G.H., Spilileg. Fl. Goetting. 180-182, tab. II (1778); type specimen label data: Germany, Sachsen-Anhalt, Harz Mts., Hochharz National Park, summit region of Mt. Brocken, 1070 m, 27 August 1992, H.Ullrich & P.Vieth (Hertel, Lecid. Exs. 264: M, neotype).
Taxonomic Literature: Fries T.M., Lichenogr. Scand. 484-485 (1874); Vainio E.A., Acta Soc. Fauna Fl. Fenn. 57(2): 106-108 (1934); Nowak J., Tobolewski Z., Porosty Polskie (Warszawa & Kraków) 456 (1975); Makarevich M.F., Navrozkaja I.L., Judina I.V., Atlas Geogr. Rasprost. Lishainikov v Ukrainsk. Karpat. 124 (Kiev 1982); Clauzade G., Roux C., Bull. Soc. Bot. Centre-Ouest, nouv. ser., num. spec. 7: 464 (1985); Andreev M.P., Baibultova N.E., Novit. Syst. Plant. Non Vasc. 22: 166 (1985); Schwab A.J., Mitt. Bot. München 22: 314-322 (1986); Kümmerling H., Bibl. Lichenol. 41: 172 (1991); Türk R., Poelt J., Österr. Akad. Wiss., Biosystematics and Ecology Ser. 3: 62 (1993 - bibliography of Austrian lichens); Hertel H., Biblioth. Lichenol. 58: 156 (1995); Wirth V., Flechtenflora, 2.Aufl., 390 (1995); Wirth V., Flechten Baden-Württembergs, Teil 1, 512-513 [photo!] (1995).
Biogeography: Montane and alpine. Continent: Europe (Au, Br, Cz, Fe, Ga, Ge, He, Is, It, No, Po, Rm, Rs, Sb, Su).
Thallus: Not subdivided parts, areolate (primarily areolate), continuous throughout to dispersed along the periphery, continuous in the centre; lobes angular at the front; separate thallus parts.2-1 mm thick. Thallus Size and Differentiation: Large; main branches basally not constricted. Thallus Outline: Margin concolorous the thallus centre. Upper Surface: Lemon (citrine) to grey to brown (grey-beige), plane to convex; not sorediate; without thalloconidia thalloconidia.
Ascocarps: Forming on the pro- or hypothallus, rarely soon sessile, not constricted to slightly constricted at the base, 2-70 per cm², .9-1.6-(4.5) mm in diam.. Margin: Not flexuose, persistent to excluded, 35-80 µm wide, epruinose. Disk: Plane to weakly convex to strongly convex, black, epruinose, pruina scarce, without an umbo. Exciple: Hyphae radiating outwards to intricately interwoven, with no predominant orientation; 2.5-3.5 µm wide; grey; inspersed with crystals. Epithecium: Apical cells olive, cell pigment reacting with 10% HCl (in H2O). Hymenium: 50-70 µm high; white; iodine reaction: Lugol's positive. Subhymenium: 19-45 µm high; white. Hypothecium: Brownish yellow to brown.
Ascospores: Ellipsoid to oblong, (6.5)-9-13.9-(18) µm long, (3.5)-4.1-6.7-(8) µm wide; wall not ornamented.
Secondary Metabolites: Present, confluentic acid to 2'-O-methylmicrophyllinic acid to 2'-O-methylperlatolic acid to stictic acid.


text:
Creation/Evolution Journal
The Fatal Flaws of Flood Geology
Christopher Gregory Weber
The flood geology theory teaches essentially that the Biblical Flood of Noah buried all the fossils within a year's time, several thousand years ago. Although this theory accepts each miracle explicitly mentioned in the Biblical Flood story, the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) maintains that God uses miracles very sparingly; once He finished using a few miracles to get the Flood rolling, He let it operate according to natural laws to produce the geological features that are now seen in the earth's crust. This part of their version of the flood geology theory purports to explain the structure of the rocks in the crust, and thus makes testable scientific predictions: wherever this theory is naturalistic, it is a scientific theory deserving a scientific response.
The ICR flood geology theory relates the events of the Biblical Flood as follows: Before the Flood, a water vapor "canopy" in the upper atmosphere created a greenhouse effect, making the entire earth a tropical paradise. The oceans were shallower, the lands lower and more extensive than today. Because the greenhouse effect kept temperatures the same throughout the earth, there was no wind circulation and no rain, only a mist that watered the ground daily. Underneath the earth lay vast underground water reservoirs.
To start the Flood, God performed some miracles: He made the animals seek out Noah's Ark, "opened the windows of the heavens" to empty the vapor canopy on to the earth, and "broke the fountains of the great deep" to overwhelm the continents with volcanically heated brines. During the course of the flood, the violence of the rains and volcanic waters catastrophically scoured and dumped sediments, burying all sorts of creatures as fossils in the process. In and of itself, this catastrophic erosion and sedimentation was perfectly naturalistic; it operated according to ordinary laws of physics and chemistry, only on a much larger and faster scale than erosion and sedimentation today.
One year later, to end the Flood, God performed one more set of miracles; he made the continents rise and the ocean basins sink along vertical faults. These new basins were necessary to contain all the ocean waters once they had been augmented with all the newly released canopy and subterranean waters. Thus ended the Flood of Noah; thus originated the face of the earth we see today.
Modern creationists no longer calculate precise Biblical chronologies because they say there may be small gaps in some of them. Even so, they believe that
- page 25 -
God created the earth no earlier than ten thousand years ago, and brought on the Flood one or two thousand years after the Creation.
This account summarizes the flood geology model that Dr. Henry M. Morris, Director of ICR, expounds and defends in creationist classics like The Genesis Flood (Whitcomb and Morris, 1961) and Scientific Creationism (1974).
Despite all the miracles in the Biblical Flood story, the ICR members emphasize that their flood geology model is mostly naturalistic. They claim that this model can interpret the known geological evidence in terms of known laws of physics and chemistry better than does orthodox geology. For instance, John C. Whitcomb in The World That Perished (1973) tells us that:
God maintains a definite economy of miracles. Otherwise, miracles would become commonplace and would thus lose their uniqueness and significance.... Apart from the specific miracles mentioned in Scripture, which were necessary to begin and to terminate this period of global judgment, the Flood accomplished its work of destruction by purely natural processes that are capable of being studied to a certain extent in hydraulics laboratories and in local flood situations today. [pp. 67–68; emphasis Whitcomb's]
Thus Whitcomb, as well as his friend Dr. Morris (who wrote an enthusiastic foreword for the book quoted above) commits himself to explaining the bulk of the geological evidence naturalistically. How well do they succeed? This article can scarcely cover all relevant evidence, but it will nevertheless tackle this question.
Let's begin with the problems posed by fossil desert deposits.
Desert Deposits
You don't need a Ph.D. in geology to know that desert dunes and other desert deposits do not form under roaring flood waters. These require not only time, but also dry land. The Flood of Noah supplies neither.
The Old Red Sandstone, which looks for all the world like a collection of fossilized desert dunes, was formed in Devonian times. It has outcrops extending from the British Isles to Poland and Russia's White Sea, and from Germany to Norway (Gilluly, Waters, and Woodford, 1968). Outcrops have even been found in Greenland and North America. In Devonian times, before North America and Europe drifted apart, these dunes covered an entire semi-arid continent.
Several lines of evidence derived from this great geologic formation create difficulties for the flood geology model. For instance, the interfingering of these sandstones with marine sediments shows that the shoreline of this continent advanced and retreated several times. Thus the desert rocks are entangled with rocks that the flood geology model says were formed within the one-year-long flood. Also, redbeds, consisting partly of rust formed above sea level, are also
found in this formation. These would not have been formed in any catastrophic flood. The Old Red Sandstones also contain typical playas, complete with their characteristic cubic salt crystal deposits. These are desert salt-pan deposits formed after the rainy-season lakes evaporate. Today, in the Mojave Desert, playas can become lakes for a couple of weeks, only to dry out again, leaving a crust of salt deposits like those found in the Red Sandstone. Although a few freshwater ponds did exist on this ancient semi-arid continent, they dried up from time to time. So, we find fossil mud cracks in the shales that came from the dried-up pond bottoms, and we find fossil lungfish, a type of fish that can survive drought by building a mud cocoon in the pond bottom and breathing air. Hundreds of square miles of fossil sand dunes in these deposits contain cross-bedding and sand-blasted pebbles (ventifacts) of the sort found in modern desert sand dunes, and in no other kind of modern sediment. These different independent lines of evidence converge to show that the Old Red Sandstones almost certainly formed over thousands of years in a dry climate, not in any kind of flood catastrophe.
The Grand Canyon contains fossil desert dunes and other sediments that to all appearances were deposited on dry land. The Permian Coconino Sandstones in the upper walls of the Grand Canyon have the frosted well-sorted wellrounded sand grains found only in land-deposited sand dunes (Shelton, 1966). Furthermore, many of the laminae of the cross-bedding contain fossil footprints that could only have come from reptiles or other quadrupeds climbing up the face of a slightly damp sand dune in the open air. (Those climbing down the slopes left no tracks because they simply slid.) ICR geologist Dr. Steve Austin has taught the theory that amphibians resting between underwater dunes made the tracks. His theory is very interesting, but rather implausible since the Flood must have been violently dumping several meters' worth of sediment per day.
The Canyon's Supai and Hermit Shales, found today beneath the Coconino Sandstones, look exactly like river deltas that formed above sea level (Shelton, 1966). Back in Permian times, many quadrupeds (probably reptiles) left their footprints in the soft delta mud. As the mud baked hard in the sun, it formed cracks. The hardness of the baked mud preserved the footprints and mudcracks until the flooded rivers of the rainy season buried them in fresh mud. These fossil prints and mudcracks are found today, as well as iron oxides that form in the open air, showing that these shales formed above sea level.
The pure quarz Navajo Sandstones of Triassic and Jurassic times in Zion National Park, Utah, also look exactly like desert sand dunes (Gilluly, Waters, and Woodford, 1968). They contain extensive cross bedding of the type found in sand dunes, and the frosted sand grains and sand-blasted pebbles found only in dunes formed on the land.
Certain formations in western Wyoming look exactly like deserts that bordered a fitfully receding sea in Carboniferous times (Houlik, 1973). In particular, the Mississippian Lodgepole Formation contains the type of carbonate
deposits and evaporites found forming in tidal flats today. The Amsden formation consists of sabkhas and desert dunes. Sabkhas are a kind of hardpan that forms in deserts after hard water seeps up through the ground by capillary action and evaporates leaving nodules of calcite, andhydrite, and other salts. They are seen forming extensively in Saudi Arabia today. Unless Houlik has grossly erred, these sabkhas, casts of evaporite crystals, and fossil dunes show that these Carboniferous deposits formed in a desert, not a flood.
Several times at the end of the Miocene epoch (six to eight million years ago), the Mediterranean Sea dried up, leaving extensive desert deposits on the sea bottom (Hsu, 1972). The Straits of Gibraltar opened and closed, causing these complex changes, as the Glomar Challenger discovered in 1970 by using echo soundings and deep-sea core samples. Each time the Mediterranean slowly dried up, first calcite precipitated around the rim of the basin of the Balearic abyssal plain, then anhydrites and gypsum further in, and finally rock salt in the center at the deepest point. This is just the order that these salts would precipitate if you set out a large saucer of sea water to dry. Successive dryings of the Mediterranean produced hundreds of meters of evaporites. Not only did evaporites form, but also land deposits like sun-baked mud cracks, wind-blown sand, and sabkha anhydrite nodules. Since algae can only grow where sunlight reaches, the stromatolites (a common algae deposit) found in deep sea core samples show that the Mediterranean sea floor, now two miles deep, was once dry land. The Rhone and Nile rivers cut their canyons thousands of feet below current sea level to feed the desiccated Mediterranean basin. Desert-style alluvial fans accumulated from debris washed by cloudbursts down the slopes of Sardinia; now these deposits lie far under the water. After the Mediterranean refilled with water for the last time, at the beginning of the Pliocene, sediments began to accumulate over the evaporites; the weight of these sediments forced evaporites up through weak spots in the sediments to form salt domes. Some of these salt domes are a few miles across, and hundreds to thousands of feet high. Even though such structures may not be forming today, a dried-up Mediterranean could have easily formed them, whereas flood geology is hard pressed to account for such things.
Fossil Forests
In Yellowstone Park at Specimen Ridge, a nearby volcano buried 27 forests one atop the other in rocky debris in Eocene times. After a forest grew on top of some old volcanic debris, the volcano would shower fresh debris through the air on top of it and mudslides consisting of volcanic debris would flow through it. The trunks and branches left sticking above the volcanic debris rotted away. Then a new forest would grow on top all this new debris, repeating the cycle. Animal fossils are scarce because the animals living in the forests fled the area as soon as the volcanic dust made the air hard to breathe. However, the falling debris, which broke the branches off the trunks, preserved many fossil leaves and
twigs (conifers, deciduous trees, and ferns). As the rock erodes today, the petrified trees (which erode more slowly) stand upright and project above the ground. Complete root systems have been found in many of these trees. This entire deposit took over 20,000 years to form, double the maximum age of the earth allowed by ICR, and 20,000 times too long to fit into the Flood of Noah.
Erling Dorf (1964) has calculated all this. He noted that the oldest trees in each layer were about 500 years old when they were buried. Igneous rock requires 200 years to decay into a reasonable soil. Add these two figures, and we get the age per layer; multiply by 27 layers, and we get about 20,000 years, the minimum time in which a formation like this can arise.
Flood geologists, on the other hand, insist that Noah's Flood washed in heaps of uprooted trees between eruptions; they say the trees stand upright because dirt which became entangled in the roots weighted down the bottoms enough to hold the trunks upright. Nevertheless, uprooted trees today that wash onto a beach lie on their sides. F. H. Knowlton (1914), referring to a 12-foot-tall 26'/2-foot-around fossil redwood, says, "The roots, which are as large as the roots of ordinary trees, are now embedded in solid rock." William B. Sanborn (1951) says concerning two nearby pines, "Each stands about 15 feet, and shows a complete root system." Charles H. Brown (1961) says that one of the methods of finding exact forest levels was to find "the expansion of the base of an upright tree trunk immediately above the root system." One would expect the trees to be stripped of most of their roots and buried on their sides if they had been uprooted and buried in Noah's Flood.
In an article in some obscure religious journal cited in Robert Kofahl's Handy Dandy Evolution Refuter , flood geologist Harry Coffin maintains that the tree rings within a given fossil forest layer do not cross correlate. Let's look into this.
Every year, a tree grows a new ring. If the rainfall varies from year to year where this tree grows, then all the rings in its wood will vary in diameter; the narrow rings grew during the dry years, and the wide ones during wet years. Dendrochronologists (tree-ring daters) correlate tree rings from different trees by comparing ring variation patterns in one tree with those in another to see whether they match.
Since Coffin says the petrified trees of Specimen Ridge have rings that vary enough in diameter to be worth trying to correlate, he implies that before the Flood, rainfall varied from year to year. In this, he contradicts the flood geology model without knowing it (if he assumes with Morris that no rain fell in pre Flood times). Also, since the trees all supposedly died within the same year in the Flood, the flood geology theory implies that if their rings vary in diameter at all, then all the trees everywhere in the formation should cross-correlate. Thus Coffin's claims do not stand up under analysis.
The Earth's Crust
Flood geologists claim that the ocean basins and the continents consist of essentially the same sort of crust; the main difference is that the ocean basins were lowered and continents raised along vertical faults. Their theory creates two problems.
Firstly, if the Flood washed over entire continents, then most of the sediments and sedimentary rocks of the world would be found in the ocean basins. The eastern Washington Scablands show (on a small scale) what the continents should look like if flood geology is true (Shelton, 1966). During the last ice age, a glacier dammed up a lake called Lake Missoula. When that dam melted, 2,000 cubic kilometers of lake water catastrophically denuded thousands of square kilometers of eastern Washington. However, similar denuded igneous rocks are seldom found outside of Washington State. On the contrary, the continents and continental shelves are covered as much as 12,000 meters deep with sediments and sedimentary rock, whereas ocean basins always bear less (usually far less) than a kilometer of sediment except where they abut a continental shelf. The continental shelves gather most of the sediments dumped by rivers. Few sediments ever get to the deep ocean basins beyond. The continental drift theory leads us to expect exactly this result, as any good encyclopedia will show. However, it is exactly the reverse of what flood geology predicts.
Secondly, the continents are mostly slabs of granite about 30 to 60 kilometers thick. The granitic continental crust stands higher above the ocean basins while having roots more deeply sunk than those of the ocean basins because granite is lighter than basalt, and hence "floats" more buoyantly upon the viscous mantle of the earth. These facts about sediments and buoyancy, well known to any freshman geology student, cause grave difficulties for flood geology.
Huge coral atolls and reefs require many thousands of years to form because the individual corals that constitute them grow so slowly. Under ideal conditions, corals grow as fast as 1.0 to 2.5 centimeters per year, but conditions are seldom ideal, and reefs as a whole grow much more slowly than the individual corals that make them up. The surf pounds broken coral branches into sand, and the red and green calcareous algae cement this sand together into a form far more compact than the original corals, so a reef complex consisting largely of cemented coral sand actually grows much more slowly than the original corals, only millimeters per year. Such slow growth rates imply that coral atolls and barrier reefs (both fossil and modern) needed tens of thousands of years to grow into their present form; the flood geology model supplies only a fraction of the needed time. The modern Eniwetok atoll, the fossil Rainbow Lake reefs, and the
complex geology of Hawaii are good examples to illustrate this.
H. S. Ladd (1960) has drilled deep holes on Eniwetok atoll to take samples of coral and coral derived rock. These core samples reveal a huge cap of coral that took millions of years to form. Over a thousand cubic kilometers of coral reef rock cover a sunken basalt volcano cone. Millions of years ago, this cone formed a volcanic island; the parts above sea level were worn flat by erosion. As it slowly sank, the coral reefs that had been growing on its rim grew upwards fast enough to keep at the surface of the ocean, forming a huge coral cap. The cores taken from the drilling show that the deepest corals are so old that they have become chemically altered from aragonite to dolomite. Occasionally in geological history, the volcano temporarily ceased to sink, and lifted the coral cap many feet above sea level (the modern Tonga islands are also former atolls heaved many feet above sea level); the core samples clearly show gaps in the coral where the coral was being weathered above sea level. The deepest core sample of all revealed coral as thick as 1380 meters. Assuming that Ladd is accurate, let us grant ICR two generous assumptions: (1) the reef as a whole grows a centimeter per year, and (2) we ignore the time represented by erosional gaps. Given these assumptions, the atoll must be no less than 138,000 years old.
The flood geology theory allows no more than about 8,000 years for all modern reefs to form, only 5% of the time that Eniwetok needed to grow to its present state. If flood geology is true, then the modern reefs started growing only after Noah's Flood was over with. After all, the Flood itself would have killed off all corals by kicking up a slurry of clay particles in all the ocean waters. These particles would have taken years to settle out. Corals require clear water and cannot stand any turbidity. Even though modern creationists allow gaps in the Biblical genealogies, standard ICR works like Scientific Creationism (General Edition) allow no more than several thousand years between Noah's Flood and today. To fit Eniwetok into their time constraints, the ICR creationists are forced to ignore the findings of Ladd.
The fossil Rainbow Lake reefs formed in Devonian times where Alberta, British Columbia, and the Northwest Territories meet. As Hriskevich (1970), Langton (1968), and others show, these reefs trap important oil reserves. Since they are buried in and intertongue with other sedimentary rocks, they must have formed in the Flood of Noah, if flood geology is true. Nevertheless, they form solid winding barrier reefs consisting of intergrown dolomitized coral and coral-derived debris glued together by calcareous algae. In other words, they look just like modern barrier reefs, not like piles of loose coral that the tidal waves of Noah's Flood threw together by chance. One reef is over 240 meters thick. Unless petroleum geologists have grossly erred somehow, we calculate, using the generous growth rate of a centimeter per year, that this reef required 24,000 years of clear tranquil tropical surf to form, not a one year succession of muddy tidal waves.
If Harold T. Stearns' Geology of the State of Hawaii (1966) is correct, then
the many coral reefs and other complex geological features of Hawaii form grave difficulties for flood geology. For instance, a strata sequence exposed at sea level near Pearl Harbor (illustrated on page 84 of Steams' work) took many years to form, far too long for the Flood. This sequence contains reef limestone above sea level, which covers volcanic ash that had buried trees growing in place, which in turn covers another layer of reef limestone. Also, on page 21, Steams describes a core sample taken from a hole drilled 332 meters into the ground somewhere else in Pearl Harbor. This sample revealed 15 coral reefs separated by fossil soils, lignite (brown coal), and beach rock. Steams' example of ocean terraces will require some explanation.
Stacked above and below each other, ocean terraces look like steps in a staircase leading out of the sea. Each terrace represents an old shore line above or below current sea level; as the land and sea rise and fall, the surf cuts terraces at the different sea levels. Elevated and submerged terraces in Hawaii, New Guinea, Jamaica, and other tropical seacoasts often bear dead coral reefs (Goreau, 1979). Since many of these reefs took thousands of years to form, and since different terraces formed at different times, the stack as a whole took at least several times as long to form. Recorded history (which begins only a couple thousand years after the alleged Flood) knows no sea level changes amounting to hundreds of feet, so these terraces do not seem to fit very well into the postFlood period. These terraces look exactly like the kinds of reefs and beaches forming today, not like debris thrown together in some catastrophe like the Flood of Noah.
Stearns, reporting about the coral-bearing terraces of Hawaii in some detail, points out that many terraces contain fossil-bearing marine conglomerates. To the orthodox geologist, this is no surprise; river floods, land slides, storm waves, and turbidity flows are only a few of the processes known to bury and preserve animals and plants before they rot away so they can become fossils. However, the ICR creationists insist that no processes except for catastrophes the size of Noah's Flood can bury dead animals fast enough to fossilize. If this theory is correct, and if these conglomerates were formed in the Flood, then the ICR creationists need to explain why these terraces look for all the world like the kinds of reefs and beaches forming by slow processes today.
Evaporites and Shales
Several lines of evidence show that fine-grained evenly-layered shales and evaporites require many thousands -if years to form. Extremely fine sediment particles suspended in water settle to the bottom painfully slowly, and even slight turbulence keeps them in suspension. If you shake a jar full of dirt and water, the water will remain cloudy with clay particles long after the sand has settled out. Not only that, but the concentration of gypsum, calcite, and other dissolved salts in sea water is so low that thousands of cubic kilometers of sea
water would have to evaporate to precipitate these salts as a typical evaporite deposit. These processes of sedimentation and evaporation are so slow that thick shale and evaporite deposits could scarcely have formed overnight. Since the flood geology model requires that all sedimentary rocks be deposited within one year during the Flood of Noah, the ICR creationists must somehow explain these facts away.
One way they might try would be to suggest that shale-forming clay would settle rapidly out of the flood waters if those waters were supersaturated with clay. ICR has already proposed (quoting Soviet geologist V. I. Sozansky) that evaporites formed rapidly from supersaturated volcanic waters. However, if either of these two theories are true, then thin even laminations extending over many square kilometers are an insoluble problem. The clays and evaporites would have almost certainly settled out in huge globs to form amorphous strata-free rock. The ICR theory that the laminations were caused by a rapid succession of turbidity flows does not satisfactorily explain how the fine stratification of the Green River shales or the Castilian evaporites could form in a one-year-long catastrophic flood. Let us discuss these two formations in more detail.
The finely stratified Green River shales of Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah are 600 meters thick. They accumulated at the bottom of a 30-meter-deep lake in Eocene times over a period of 5 to 8 million years (Bradley, 1929). Several lines of evidence show that each distinctly visible layer is a yearly deposit or "varve." The sedimentary deposits varied so much with the seasons that each varve clearly stands out. The average varve in this formation consists of a layer of clean microscopic clay particles alternating with a layer of hydrocarbons in the form of waxy pollen and spore particles (Clark and Steam, 1958). Apparently, the spring wind and rivers wafted spores and pollen to the middle of the lake, but during the rest of the year, the currents were too weak to carry anything but the finest clay to the center of the lake. In the varves of some of the near-shore limey sandstones in the formation, the sediment particles gradually decrease in size from 0.02 mm at the bottom of the varve to 0.006 mm at the top (Bradley, 1929). The width of the Green River varves varies in cycles of 11 1/2 years, 50 years, and 12,000 years, all superimposed on one another. The 11 1/2 – year cycle corresponds to the sunspot cycle, the 12,000-year cycle to the precession of the equinoxes. Both these processes affected the yearly rainfall, and hence affected the width of each varve. Bradley's concession that he cannot explain the 50-year cycle shows that he was not imagining these cycles. The same kinds of varves are forming today in Sakski Lake (Crimea), Lake Zurich (Switzerland), and Lake McKay (Ottawa, Canada). Only slow processes happening over many years can account for varve formation. Even if an occasional storm did stir up the sediments on the bottom, the sediments could not have settl, ed out so evenly unless the tranquil time intervals between storms were very very long and convective currents were largely absent.
Creationists (like Whitcomb and Morris, 1961) have argued against the varve interpretation of the Green River shales by citing the beautiful fish fossils it contains. Supposedly, about 200 years' worth of sediment would have to accumulate to, bury one dead fish, and by that time the fish would have long rotted away. However, the precipitates found in this formation show that the lake bottom was unusually alkaline (Press and Siever, 1974). Some shallow lakes in Florida today contain algal oozes that do not decay as long as no oxygen gets into them (Bradley, 1929). Under such circumstances, fossilization would be no surprise.
Since there are no huge evaporite deposits forming today, geologists have debated the precise mechanism by which they formed in the geological past. This gives many creationists the excuse not only to reject the traditional lagoon model of evaporite formation, but also to cite the authority of Soviet geologist V. I. Sozansky as long as his theories seem to support flood geology. Actually, Sozansky's article implicitly contradicts the flood geology model in a couple of particulars — and other geologists have come up with models that explain the observed evidence more easily than the traditional theory, Sozansky's theory, or the ICR theory.
The traditional evaporite theory states that evaporites formed in shallow lagoons in arid areas connected with the open ocean by only a narrow strait. As the water in the lagoon evaporated, precipitating salts in the process, water from the open ocean coming through the strait replaced it. But as the lagoon became more restricted and briney, first calcium carbonate (CaCO3) would precipitate out as aragonite or calcite (limestone), and then calcium sulfate (CaSO4) would precipitate out as gypsum or anhydrite, and finally, rock salt (NaCI) would precipitate out. If rain diluted the brines of the lagoon every rainy season, then a varve of carbonate (rainy season) and anhydrite (dry season) might form every year. This model accounts well for small evaporite deposits forming today, but not for the big ones that formed in the geological past.
Sloss (1969) modifies the traditional lagoon theory. He argues from the results of his experiments that evaporites formed from layers of water of different concentrations (ordinary sea water at the surface, highly concentrated brines on the bottom) that existed in a huge lagoon all at the same time. Schmaltz (1969) argues that huge evaporite deposits like the Castilian evaporites of Texas (450 meters thick and 20,000 square kilometers in area) and the Zechstein evaporites of Germany (600 meters thick) formed in deep basins like the Mediterranean Sea or Red Sea. If the straits connecting these modem seas with the open ocean were much shallower and narrower, then they would start depositing evaporites just like these ancient evaporites. His complex theoretical model explains in detail how several cycles of evaporite deposits separated by deep-ocean mud formed in the Zechstein evaporites of Schleswig-Holstein. It also explains the 1000 meters of evaporites now buried under deep-sea sediments at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. At the end of the Cretaceous
when it first formed, the deep Gulf of Mexico basin was joined to the open ocean only by a narrow strait. Schmaltz's model predicts that the evaporites will be reasonably pure and free of other sediments because the river-deposited sediments would be deposited close to shore. These more recent theories explain all the evidence well using everyday laws of physics and chemistry.
The varves of the Castilian evaporites of Permian times in Texas (just like the Zechstein evaporites) are the strongest evidence that these evaporites took hundreds of thousands of years to form. These varves consist of calcite alternating with anhydrite (Anderson, 1972). In both examples, the calcite contains a lot of plankton and organic matter: fusulinids, possibly some algae, and possibly some shells. Even though mobile living things would swim away from the inhospitable brines, at least some plankton got pickled to death and fossilized. Many of the varves in this formation extend as far as 110 kilometers. Although Anderson insists that the yearly varve interpretation is not proved beyond all doubt, he adds that no one has yet suggested a better interpretation. The concentration of the brines never could have fluctuated many thousands of times during the one-year Flood to precipitate such fine yet extensive alternating layers of calcite and anhydrite. So many cubic miles of such microscopic crystals never could have settled out of the water in such even layers, all within a year's time. Since this formation contains over 260,000 couplets of thin calcite/anhydrite layers, the entire formation probably took 260,000 years to form.
ICR creationists who cite Sozansky's article to buttress flood geology have failed to account for his factual errors or for his statements that implicitly contradict their theory. In essence, Sozansky believes that the great evaporite deposits of the earth formed from volcanically heated brines erupting out of the ocean floor. He feels that the traditional lagoon model works fine for small modern deposits, but not for evaporites like the huge Castilian deposits. He argues that evaporites from such lagoons would contain fossils and other organic matter. He cites as an example the evaporites forming today in the Gulf of KaraBogaz in the Caspian Sea. The salt concentration kills, pickles, and preserves fish long enough for them to become fossilized in the evaporite deposits. Since the huge ancient deposits are allegedly free of organic matter, plankton, and so forth, Sozansky concludes that they formed by some totally different process.
Of course, the creationists would like to prove that the evaporites were catastrophically deposited by volcanic brines during the one-year flood. It is no surprise, then, that Scientific Creationism insists that "the studies of the Russian geophysicist Sozansky" have "shown almost conclusively" that orthodox geology is in error. However, Sozansky is a doubtful ally. For one thing, even if his theory is true, the creationists must still explain away the varve evidence. Sozansky never explicitly accounts for the varves. He would have to assume that each varve came from one big eruption, and that the eruptions were separated by
enough time to let the salt crystals settle. Also, as we have seen, the Castile evaporites do contain a lot of plankton and organic matter. Schmalz's deepbasin theory shows why it does not contain fossil fish graveyards like those of the Gulf of Kara-Bogaz. Even so, Anderson's discoveries of plankton in the Castilian deposits contradict Sozansky's assertions that the great evaporite deposits are free of organic matter. Finally, the ICR creationists have insisted that "The very existence of fossils, especially in large numbers, is evidence of catastrophism at least on a small scale." (Scientific Creationism, p. 100.) They insist that fossils are not forming today because only a violent catastrophe can bury plants and animals in mud before they rot away. The work just cited quotes Sozansky whenever his thesis seems to support ICR creationism, yet never ever even mentions Sozansky's fossil fish graveyard, much less refute it.
Fossil Species
According to the flood geology theory, all "kinds" of plants and animals alive today (not to mention dinosaurs and mammoths and other animals now extinct) lived on the earth before the flood. The Bible says Noah was to take specimens of every type of living air-breathing land animal aboard the Ark (Gen. 6:19-21; 7:2, 3, 8, 9, 15). Thus flood geology predicts that the fossil record should consist mostly of animal and plant species alive today. The extinct fossil species should be mostly delicate types sensitive to environment, because the Flood and the rugged conditions inside the Ark would have killed such creatures off. These predictions fit poorly with the available evidence.
George Gaylord Simpson (1967), world famous paleontologist, says that nearly all fossil species and genera are extinct today. Very few modem species or genera are found as fossils at all. Even so called "living fossils' like the crossopterygian (lobe finned) fish are no exception. The fossil Paleozoic eusthenopteron and the modem latimeria are both lobe-finned fish. However, the latimera resembles the eusthenopteron no more than I resemble a gorilla. The creationists have yet to answer this objection.
Many delicate species of animal survive today in spite of the predictions of the flood geology model. Creationists have not been able to explain the technology by which Noah kept delicate koala bears and marmosets alive on the Ark. Pupfish survived a divine cataclysm only to be threatened with extinction by man-made reservoirs. We already saw how the muddy flood waters would wipe out corals (not to mention many other forms of sea life). The creationists have to postulate so many miracles to keep these creatures alive through the Flood that it would be much simpler and easier for God to create them all from scratch again after the Flood, and just forget the floating zoo.
Flood Geology Vs. Orthodox Geology
So far, we have covered a small sample of the many types of geological evidence that flood geology cannot easily explain. Personally, it persuades me that flood geology is totally erroneous. Nevertheless, ICR creationists are bound to argue, "So what if you evolutionists can come up with a few difficulties? There is no theory anywhere that is totally free of them. Besides, the problems with orthodox geology are far more serious than any of the real or imagined difficulties you can dream up against Biblical catastrophism. Can you explain how an even layer of sandstone, the Saint Peter Sandstone. which covers much of the United States, was formed? Can you explain how the fossils in the so-called `Lewis Overthrust' got into the wrong order for evolution? The evolutionist. excuse that the `older' rocks were shoved on top of the younger ones is lame because Genesis Flood and other creationist writings have conclusively proved that there is no trace of evidence that any sliding took place. Until you can answer these grave difficulties, how can I take your evolution theory seriously?"
Actually orthodox geology has no such difficulties. Creationists misunderstand the nature of sedimentary facies, and there is plenty of physical evidence having nothing to do with fossils that the Lewis Overthrust is genuine. Creationists often quote their sources badly out of context, sources that prove thrust faulting is very real.
But, it will have to be the task of a future article to investigate these and other alleged difficulties in detail. For now, it is sufficient to say there are fatal flaws in the creationist flood geology model, flaws that render it inadequate to scientifically support the Flood or tell us anything about the age of the earth.
This version might differ slightly from the print publication.
All From This Issue
Review: Biology: A Search for Order in Complexity
Yes, Virginia, There is a Creation Model
Why Creationism Should Not be Taught as Science
Issue 1 (Summer 1980)


text:
layout: "docs"
page_title: "Vagrant Triggers"
sidebar_current: "triggers"
description: |-
  Introduction to Vagrant Triggers
---

# Vagrant Triggers

As of version 2.1.0, Vagrant is capable of executing machine triggers _before_ or
_after_ Vagrant commands.

Each trigger is expected to be given a command key for when it should be fired
during the Vagrant command lifecycle. These could be defined as a single key or
an array which acts like a _whitelist_ for the defined trigger.

```ruby
# single command trigger
config.trigger.after :up do |trigger|
...
end

# multiple commands for this trigger
config.trigger.before [:up, :destroy, :halt, :package] do |trigger|
...
end

# or defined as a splat list
config.trigger.before :up, :destroy, :halt, :package do |trigger|
...
end
```

Alternatively, the key `:all` could be given which would run the trigger before
or after every Vagrant command. If there is a command you don't want the trigger
to run on, you can ignore that command with the `ignore` option.

```ruby
# single command trigger
config.trigger.before :all do |trigger|
  trigger.info = "Running a before trigger!"
  trigger.ignore = [:destroy, :halt]
end
```

__Note:__ _If a trigger is defined on a command that does not exist, a warning
will be displayed._

Triggers can be defined as a block or hash in a Vagrantfile. The example below
will result in the same trigger:

```ruby
config.trigger.after :up do |trigger|
  trigger.name = "Finished Message"
  trigger.info = "Machine is up!"
end

config.trigger.after :up,
  name: "Finished Message",
  info: "Machine is up!"
```

Triggers can also be defined within the scope of guests in a Vagrantfile. These
triggers will only run on the configured guest. An example of a guest only trigger:

```ruby
config.vm.define "ubuntu" do |ubuntu|
  ubuntu.vm.box = "ubuntu"
  ubuntu.trigger.before :destroy do |trigger|
    trigger.warn = "Dumping database to /vagrant/outfile"
    trigger.run_remote = {inline: "pg_dump dbname > /vagrant/outfile"}
  end
end
```

Global and machine-scoped triggers will execute in the order that they are
defined within a Vagrantfile. Take for example an abstracted Vagrantfile:

```
Vagrantfile
  global trigger 1
  global trigger 2
  machine defined
    machine trigger 3
  global trigger 4
end
```

In this generic case, the triggers would fire in the order: 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 4

For more information about what options are available for triggers, see the
[configuration section](/docs/triggers/configuration.html).

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Q: Wrong results with icc -fast flag Now I'm using icc to compile and run my ANSI C code.
When I turn on -O2 optimize, everything is ok. But when I change to -fast, the results diverge (with lots of nan).
I googled and tried, and found the error exist cause of -xHOST in -fast.
I wanna know how does -xHOST work in compiling. And how to  avoid this kind of error in my code?

A: -fast turns on many agressive compiler options below is from the intel docs
Description
This option maximizes speed across the entire program. It sets the following options:
• On Itanium®-based systems: Windows: /O3 and /Qipo Linux: -ipo, -O3, and -static
• On IA-32 and Intel® EM64T systems:
Mac OS: -ipo, -O3, -no-prec-div, and -static
Windows: /O3, /Qipo, /Qprec-div-, and /QxP
Linux: -ipo, -O3, -no-prec-div, -static, and -xP
Note that programs compiled with the -xP (Linux) or /QxP (Windows) option will detect non-compatible processors and generate an error message during execution.
On IA-32 and Intel® EM64T systems, the -xP or /QxP option that is set by the fast option cannot be overridden by other command line options. If you specify the fast option and a different processor-specific option, such as -xN (Linux) or /QxN (Windows)

where as -xHost
Generates instruction sets up to the highest that is supported by the compilation host. On Intel processors, this corresponds to the most suitable /Qx (-x) option; on compatible, non-Intel processors, this corresponds to the most suitable of the /arch (-m) options IA32, SSE2 or SSE3. This option may result in additional optimizations for Intel microprocessors that are not
performed for non-Intel microprocessors.‡

so if the problem is with -xHost see if enforcing -march for the proper arch type of your processor fixes the errors or just use -O3

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange