Being the last budget of the present government before the 2019 elections, expectations from the public and industry had built up. While this Budget has hit the right chords for reducing rural distress and increasing government expenditure in infrastructure, healthcare and education, it has been disappointing on other fronts.
Here is my take on some of the major hits and misses of this year's budget.
The budget proposal to set up National Health Protection Scheme would be the boldest announcement of this year's budget. By providing 10 crore poor families with a health cover Rs 5 lakh per annum, India can now proudly claim the title of having the largest public health care program in the world. Currently, the central government provides a health cover of Rs 30,000 for poor families under Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY), which is grossly insufficient to cover most medical procedures. By the scaling up this cover to Rs 5 lakh, Finance Minister has taken a big step towards providing Universal Health Coverage.
The Budget 2018 announcement of extending 25% corporate tax slab to firms having annual turnover of up to Rs 250 crore will provide the much needed relief to the micro small and medium enterprises (MSME) sector. Till now, the 25% tax slab was available to firms with annual turnover of Rs 50 crore. The reduction in tax slab will help increase their investible surpluses, which then would be available for capacity expansion and job creation. The allocation of Rs 3 trillion under the Mudra Scheme for FY 2018-19 will also address the issue of insufficient disbursal of institutional credit to MSMEs.
Among all tax payers, senior citizens will benefit the most from Union Budget 2018. The steady decline in bank and post office fixed deposit rates has hit them hard as most of them park their retirement savings in bank and post office deposits to generate regular income for their expenses. This budget has tried to address this issue by raising the deduction of interest income on senior citizen bank and post office deposits from Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 50,000. The increase in Section 80D deduction for health insurance premium and/or medical expenditure from Rs 30,000 to Rs 50,000 will also help them to buy old-age health covers and cope with rising health costs. The Budget has also merged the existing separate deduction limits available under Section 80 BB for treating certain critical illness and increased the upper limit to Rs 1 lakh for all senior citizens. This would certainly prove as a helping hand for senior citizens copping with various critical illnesses.
Long Term Capital Gains (LTCG) tax exemption on equities has played a major role in increasing retail investor participation in equity markets. Despite this, the proportion of retail investor segment remains dismally low when compared to advanced economies. With the reintroduction of this tax, equity investing will become less attractive to the retail investors, thereby slowing down the shift of household savings towards equities. Instead, increasing the holding period for claiming LTCG exemption from one year to threee years would have yielded better results. This would have promoted long term equity investing and generated higher revenues through short-term capital gains tax. Currently, short term capital gains on equities attracts a higher taxation rate of 15%.
Urban housing shortage for low income groups (LIG) and economically weaker sections (EWS) contribute about 95% of the total housing shortage in India. While setting up a dedicated affordable housing fund in the NHB is certainly commendable, making Section 80EE a permanent feature would have boosted the demand in this segment. Under this Section, first time home buyers of properties below Rs 50 lakh and loan amount within Rs 35 lakh can claim an additional deduction of Rs 50000 for home loan interest payment over and above the Section 24b deductions. Similarly, extending tax deductions available under Sections 80C and 24b to pre-construction period would have allowed borrowers to claim higher deductions, thereby increasing their disposable income for investment and consumption.
Promoting digital transactions was one of the major aims of demonetisation. Since then, both the government and the RBI has taken several initiatives to incentivise digital transactions. Budget 2018 was a perfect opportunity to announce more incentives for digital payments, such as waiving off MDR on transactions of up to Rs 2,000 on credit cards or waiving off 2 Factor Authentication (2fa) for digital transactions of up to Rs 5,000 for increased 'ease of use'. It could have also implemented the proposal of 1-3% waiver in GST rates for digital transactions to nullify the higher cost of digital transactions for smaller merchants and informal sectors.


text:
Does the ACLU Condone Killing Homosexuals and Flogging Lesbians?
Does the ACLU Condone Killing Homosexuals and Flogging Lesbians? Peter Burrows elburropete@gmail.com – silvercityburro.com 3/18/17
On Saturday, March 11, the ACLU had a national webcast to launch the organization's "People Power" project. Our local chapter hosted about 55 people for the viewing. Nationally, the ACLU estimated about 200,000 people had signed up to attend local meetings such as the one in Silver City.
Anybody who attended thinking they were going to receive instructions on how to make Molotov cocktails was disappointed. The meeting was almost all about organizing citizens to pressure local officials, starting with sheriffs and police chiefs, to resist efforts by the federal government to deport illegal immigrants.
This sort of Federalism is something I wholeheartedly support. In this case, I think the ACLU's goal is profoundly wrong, but the tactic is one I would expect the NRA to emulate if, for example, the federal government ordered all our guns to be confiscated.
In such a case, I would hope the NRA would conduct their campaign without all the demagoguery the ACLU dished out. President Trump, you see, has a "hate agenda" aimed at immigrants, people of color and Muslims, especially Muslims. One of the speakers even said Trump had issued a Muslim ban, which is an outright lie. Trump may have said he'd like to do that in his campaign, but the recent Presidential ban on people from certain Muslim-controlled countries was obviously not a ban on all Muslims.
No matter. Such lies get the folks all fired-up with righteous indignation and feelings of moral superiority. Besides, who gives a damn about facts? One of the speakers even called for demonstrations of support at Mosques.
How ironic. Do these "civil liberties" people know that by demonstrating in support of Islam, they are also supporting Islamic law, sharia law? Sharia law, which is sacred law, cannot be separated from Islam, and sharia law is not compatible with civil liberties as we know them. Period.
I used to think that learning about Islam would suffice to turn around the thinking of the PC crowd. Now, I'm not so sure. Yes, the facts about Islam persuade some people to change their opinion about Islam, but many others show disbelief, even hostility toward the "Islamophobe" presenting the facts. This is very puzzling. Islam has been preaching its message of hate for 1400 years. Straight up, no chaser.
Here's a quick lesson on Islam.
1. The Koran is the forever, infallible word of God.
2. Shari law is based on commands in the Koran and, by extension, the commands of Muhammad because —
3. The Koran frequently orders Muslims to obey Muhammad, meaning anything Muhammad said or did has Allah's approval.
Much of sharia law is based on Muhammad's life and sayings, which are not found in the Koran but in the voluminous "gospels" of Islam, called the Hadith, and the biographies of Muhammad. What Muhammad did in addition to what he said also effects sharia law, but we're going to just examine a couple of things he said.
If you are interested, you can go on Amazon.com and purchase a well-known book of Sunni sharia law, Reliance of the Traveller (R of T), which frequently quotes Muhammad. To repeat, since Allah directs Muslims to obey Muhammad, what Muhammad said is therefore Allah's command.
Most of the people I know, when it comes to the LGBT community, are live-and-let-live types. I even support Gay marriage. If you're somebody like me, or especially, someone in the LGBT community, you will not want Islam to enjoy First Amendment protection. Why? Look at this "sacred law" in R of T, section p17.3, page 665:
"The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said: "Kill the one who sodomizes and the one who lets it be done to him."
If you are supportive of Muslims immigrating to this country AND being allowed to freely practice their religion as protected by the First Amendment, you are saying Muslims have a religious right, a command from their God, to kill homosexuals. We have laws against that, but they are manmade laws. The devout Muslim feels no obligation to obey those laws. He must obey Allah's laws.
Remember the Pulse night club massacre last June? A Muslim killed 49 people at the gay night club and a month later the FBI issued a statement saying they had no evidence the Muslim targeted the club because it was gay. NO EVIDENCE!?!? OMG.
R of T p17.3 has this further quote by Muhammad: "Lesbianism by women is adultery between them."
The punishment for this is something I'm a little confused about. As I read it, if a lesbian is married, which in the context of Islam could only be to a man, she is guilty of adultery and is stoned to death. (See R of T o12.2 and o4.17.) If not, she is "scourged one hundred stripes" to be administered as described in o12.5, i.e. with neither a new nor worn-out whip, and sitting down. (Men are scourged standing up.)
Perhaps the ACLU can get their lawyers to look into this and make a determination as to what exactly the punishment for lesbians should be. After all, if we are to be a multicultural society that welcomes immigrants of all religions because "that's who we are," details like this have to be worked out. It would also be nice, I know, to ban guns because we don't want homosexuals to defend themselves against people exercising their religious rights. That might be a hate crime.
Sarcasm aside, the ACLU should not be protesting a Trump ban on Muslims that wasn't a ban on Muslims, but instead be protesting precisely because it WASN'T a ban on Muslims.
Personally, I would welcome all Muslims seeking religious asylum FROM THEIR OWN RELIGION. You see, the penalty for apostasy in Islam is death. Muhammad said: "Whoever leaves his religion of Islam, kill him." Unfortunately, "apostasy" has grown to mean all sorts of transgressions, some quite minor, that are defined as "leaving the religion." Don't pray on time? Argue about the Koran? Question what Muhammad said? Bye, bye.
The list is long.
I recently read a Pew poll taken in England that showed nine percent of the Muslims living there STRONGLY OPPOSED the imposition of shari law in England. These are brave people who deserve our support. There must be millions of decent people trapped in Muslim societies who want to escape that medieval madness. Those Muslims we should help.
That same Pew poll showed almost two-thirds of the Muslims DID want sharia law to be the law of England. Those Muslims can stay home. Ooops! I speak only for myself. Maybe the ACLU wants those sharia Muslims to immigrate here, build mosques, and practice their beliefs. If that's the case, isn't the ACLU tacitly accepting that homosexuals be killed and lesbians whipped? Shame on them.
Ladies and gentlemen, this nonsense about Islam being protected by the First Amendment has got to stop. Common sense has long dictated that First Amendment rights do not protect criminality. As famously noted, you do not have the right to falsely scream "fire"' in a crowded theater, nor do Mormons have the right to practice polygamy, nor do Muslims have the right to kill homosexuals, not in this country, not in any country.
For that matter, neither Muslims nor ANYBODY ELSE has the right to stop me from criticizing their abominable religion. That's my First Amendment right. Hmmmm. I wonder: Will the ACLU defend my First Amendment right or accuse me of hate speech?
This entry was posted in Uncategorized on March 18, 2017 by petervburrows.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


What Are Typical Nanny Duties and Responsibilities?
The primary role of a nanny is of course to care for your children. Responsibilities will vary between households but the basic duties usually remain the same.
The important thing is to discuss the expected duties openly in advance and agree what these should be. All potential nannies will expect this discussion so please don't feel uncomfortable about it. It may help to make a list of your requirements before interviewing nannies.
You can expect a nanny to prepare meals for your children, to dress them, do laundry for the children, keep their areas tidy, and transport them to and from nurseries, schools or other outings.
But you will probably want a little more from your nanny.
A good nanny should also plan and arrange projects for mental stimulation such as arts and crafts, as well as other activities to help with your childrens developmental needs.
Food is very important in early development, so a nanny should plan and provide nutritious meals and snacks, and be aware of any health issues. They should provide firm but loving discipline – always working with you and keeping lines of communication open.
You will of course want to stay informed about your childrens day. This can easily be achieved through a daily diary or verbally with you at the end of the day.
It is important to check a nanny is keeping her skills up to date, so always ensure a nanny has a current First Aid certificate.
A nannies duties do not however normally include general household duties for the rest of the family. A good nanny is very unlikely to have any spare time in the day.
Her primary focus will and should always be providing the best nurturing care for your children during the time you are not with them.


Can Employees Deduct Cost of Cell Phone Plan?
This should be an area of interest to pretty much anyone that owns a cell phone, so I thought I'd reproduce it here. It's a recent CRA technical interpretation on the question of whether the cost of a cell phone plan is deductible from employment income.
Deductions from employment income must be specifically provided for under the Income Tax Act. Section 8(1)(i)(iii) deals with supplies used up in the course of performing employment duties. There must be a requirement under the employment contract for the employee to pay for his own supplies, and the employer must sign form T2200 to attest to this requirement.
The CRA was asked whether the cost of a basic cellular service plan is deductible from an employee's employment income where an employer requires the employee to use a cellular phone to perform employment duties.
CRA Response: It is a question of fact. Section 8(1)(i)(iii) of the Income Tax Act (the "Act") provides a deduction to an employee for "the cost of supplies that were consumed directly in the performance of the duties of . . . employment and that the . . . employee was required by the contract of employment to supply and pay for." For supplies to be considered consumed directly in the performance of employment duties, the supplies must be used up and play an integral and essential part in the performance of the employment duties. The cost of the supplies should also be reasonable.
Based on the above, cellular minutes and data would be considered "supplies that were consumed directly" where it is determined that the cellular minutes and data were used up and played an integral and essential part in the performance of the employment duties. It is our understanding that service providers typically provide a detailed breakdown of each cellular minute used, but do not similarly provide a detailed breakdown of cellular data used. It is our view that without a detailed breakdown an employee would not be able to substantiate the amount of cellular data that was used for employment purposes. Where the cellular minutes or data and costs cannot be substantiated, a deduction from employment income is not permitted under s. 8(1)(i)(iii) of the Act. If an employee can substantiate that they used their cellular phone exclusively for employment purposes (i.e., no personal use), it is our view that the basic service plan may reasonably reflect the cost of those cellular minutes and data. Where there is both employment and personal use and the employment use can be substantiated, an employee may apportion the basic service plan on a reasonable basis. However, if only the employment use of cellular minutes can be substantiated, only the portion of the basic service plan for minutes may be apportioned (i.e., the portion of the basic service plan for data cannot be deducted).
What is the policy for using a personal rewards credit card to pay business expenses? Do I get taxed if I use the points I earned for business only. Will this raise red flags with CRA if I start spending 50k/month on this personal card?
Believe it or not, the CRA has put so much thought to this question and changed their policy so often, I don't blame anyone, including me for needing a quick refresher, so I'm glad you brought this up.
Basically, the CRA's position is rooted in section 6 of the Income Tax Act, which essentially taxes an employee on the value of any employment-related benefit received in any manner whatever.
Where an employee accumulates points while incurring employment-related expenses which are reimbursed or paid for by the employer, the employee will be in receipt of a taxable benefit if the points are redeemed by the employee for personal travel or to obtain other personal benefits.
It is the employer's responsibility to quantify the value of the benefits received by the employee, and include that amount on the employee's T4 slip each year.
However, in 2009, the CRA modified its position, recognizing that it would be difficult for employers to quantify the benefit where the credit card was a personal one controlled by the employee. So, unless it's a company credit card, the employer is off the hook. But the employee is not.
Well, not entirely. The CRA does acknowledge that it would be difficult for an employee to track personal expenses vs. business expenses on his personal credit card, so their position is that no taxable benefit will arise on points earned on a personal credit card. However, there are conditions.
The CRA provides an example of an employee who is allowed by her employer to pay for business expenses whenever possible through her personal credit card, for which she is reimbursed. In order to maximize her points, she uses her personal credit card to pay for various employer business expenses, including travel expenses of other employees.
The CRA would view this arrangement as being indicative of an alternate form of remuneration and would therefore not allow their administrative concession. The employee would have to calculate the value of the benefit and add that amount to her taxable employment income.
So, to finally answer your question, if you use your personal credit card mostly for normal personal use, and for your own normal business expenses for which you are reimbursed, the CRA would likely not charge you with a taxable benefit; however, if you suddenly start putting $50K/month of your employer's business expenses on your personal credit card, I would say that it appears this might be a plan to increase your remuneration as outlined in the above example. And yes, the CRA might come knocking on your door.
It's Christmas time, and that's got the CRA thinking about gifts – taxing them, that is. The recent case of Shaw v. R. is a cautionary tale for anyone who believes that a gift of cash is never taxable to the recipient.
When a taxpayer tries to take advantage of technicalities in the Income Tax Act ("ITA") to his advantage, it's called an abuse of the provisions of the ITA. If the taxpayer is successful, the law is usually changed.
When the CRA taxes an amount of income twice, using the provisions of the law to its benefit, well, that's just the way it is, end of story. In a previous article, we described a case where the CRA unsuccessfully attempted to tax the same amount of income twice. In the case of Shaw, they succeeded.
Mr. Shaw was a long time employee of a private company called Robert Ltd. Mr. Robert, the owner, apparently did very well and sold the assets of the company to CEDA International. At the time of the sale Mr. Robert had substantial amounts owing to him by his company which had been taxed as bonuses in previous years and credited to his shareholder loan account.
After the sale, Mr. Robert wanted to reward his long-time managers. He sent them each an amount of cash from Robert Ltd., representing $10,000 for each year of service, along with a letter thanking them for their loyal service, and assuring them that these amounts were tax-paid gifts that would be charged to his shareholder loan account and therefore not taxed in their hands. Only one condition was attached to the gift, and that was that they remain employees of CEDA International. Mr. Shaw received $140,000.
In this case, the court explained that subsection 6(1)(a) is a broadly worded provision and that the amounts received by Mr. Shaw fell into the category of a taxable employee benefit. The amount was calculated based on his number of years of service, and also came with the condition that he remain employed by the purchaser. Accordingly, the payment, regardless of who made it and what form it took, was made by virtue of Mr. Shaw's employment.
What is unfair in this scenario is, of course, the fact that the amounts paid had been taxed previously; so in assessing Mr. Shaw, the CRA was essentially successful in taxing the same amount of income twice. It didn't matter that the person who paid the amount was not the employer, nor did it matter that Mr. Shaw was no longer an employee of Robert Ltd. at the time the amount was paid.
This case should be seen as a warning to those who believe they can avoid tax by directing funds to another person on the premise that it is a gift. The CRA will always look to the underlying reason for any payment and apply the provisions of the ITA accordingly, regardless of whether or not it seems fair to the parties involved.
And no, don't expect the law to be changed to prevent such an unfair result in the future.


text:
Q: Trying to make a Java EE/JPA application run, but I keep getting errors from Observer I set up JPA with a MySQL data source, after hours of driver problems, this finally works.
Now, when I try to deploy it, I keep getting weld errors about Observer. I'm not sure what this means, I couldn't find anything about it.
I would be grateful if anybody can help me out.

Here's the error:
[2015-11-15 03:53:06,923] Artifact Artists:ear exploded: Error during artifact deployment. See server log for details.
[2015-11-15 03:53:06,923] Artifact Artists:ear exploded: java.lang.Exception: {"WFLYCTL0080: Failed services" => {"jboss.deployment.unit.\"Artists_ear_exploded.ear\".WeldStartService" => "org.jboss.msc.service.StartException in service jboss.deployment.unit.\"Artists_ear_exploded.ear\".WeldStartService: Failed to start service
    Caused by: org.jboss.weld.exceptions.DefinitionException: Exception List with 1 exceptions:
Exception 0 :
javax.enterprise.event.ObserverException
    at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.java:62)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.java:45)
    at java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Constructor.java:422)
    at java.lang.Class.newInstance(Class.java:442)
    at org.jboss.weld.security.NewInstanceAction.run(NewInstanceAction.java:33)
    at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
    at org.jboss.weld.injection.Exceptions.rethrowException(Exceptions.java:40)
    at org.jboss.weld.injection.Exceptions.rethrowException(Exceptions.java:78)
    at org.jboss.weld.injection.StaticMethodInjectionPoint.invoke(StaticMethodInjectionPoint.java:96)
    at org.jboss.weld.injection.StaticMethodInjectionPoint.invoke(StaticMethodInjectionPoint.java:78)
    at org.jboss.weld.injection.MethodInvocationStrategy$SimpleMethodInvocationStrategy.invoke(MethodInvocationStrategy.java:129)
    at org.jboss.weld.event.ObserverMethodImpl.sendEvent(ObserverMethodImpl.java:306)
    at org.jboss.weld.event.ExtensionObserverMethodImpl.sendEvent(ExtensionObserverMethodImpl.java:121)
    at org.jboss.weld.event.ObserverMethodImpl.sendEvent(ObserverMethodImpl.java:284)
    at org.jboss.weld.event.ObserverMethodImpl.notify(ObserverMethodImpl.java:262)
    at org.jboss.weld.event.ObserverNotifier.notifySyncObservers(ObserverNotifier.java:271)
    at org.jboss.weld.event.ObserverNotifier.notify(ObserverNotifier.java:260)
    at org.jboss.weld.event.ObserverNotifier.fireEvent(ObserverNotifier.java:154)
    at org.jboss.weld.event.ObserverNotifier.fireEvent(ObserverNotifier.java:148)
    at org.jboss.weld.bootstrap.events.AbstractContainerEvent.fire(AbstractContainerEvent.java:54)
    at org.jboss.weld.bootstrap.events.AbstractDefinitionContainerEvent.fire(AbstractDefinitionContainerEvent.java:42)
    at org.jboss.weld.bootstrap.events.AfterBeanDiscoveryImpl.fire(AfterBeanDiscoveryImpl.java:61)
    at org.jboss.weld.bootstrap.WeldStartup.deployBeans(WeldStartup.java:420)
    at org.jboss.weld.bootstrap.WeldBootstrap.deployBeans(WeldBootstrap.java:83)
    at org.jboss.as.weld.WeldStartService.start(WeldStartService.java:93)
    at org.jboss.msc.service.ServiceControllerImpl$StartTask.startService(ServiceControllerImpl.java:1948)
    at org.jboss.msc.service.ServiceControllerImpl$StartTask.run(ServiceControllerImpl.java:1881)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1142)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:617)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745)
Caused by: java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: org.jboss.weld.context.AbstractUnboundContext.<init>(Z)V
    at org.jboss.weld.environment.se.contexts.ThreadContext.<init>(ThreadContext.java:40)
    at org.jboss.weld.environment.se.WeldSEBeanRegistrant.registerWeldSEContexts(WeldSEBeanRegistrant.java:48)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:62)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:497)
    at org.jboss.weld.injection.StaticMethodInjectionPoint.invoke(StaticMethodInjectionPoint.java:88)
    ... 21 more
"}}

A: Thanks to Neil Stockton for the help.
I removed the weld jars from my library and added the weld-core in my maven pom file.
Everything works after removing the weld jar files!

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


James "Jim" McLeod, of Edmonton, Alberta, passed away just one day after his 93rd birthday. He is survived by his loving wife Edith and family.
Following Jim's wishes, a cremation has taken place and his Celebration of Life will be held at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday August 24, 2017 at Foster & McGarvey Funeral Home (10011 114 Street, Edmonton). Pastor Rolf Bjornstad will be officiating.
If you wish to make a donation in his honour, please consider the Shriners, an organization he cherished being a part of for many years.


text:
Dénezé-sous-Doué é uma comuna francesa na região administrativa da Pays de la Loire, no departamento de Maine-et-Loire. Estende-se por uma área de 23,77 km².

Comunas de Maine-et-Loire

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
B. Rich takes Chainsaw 'out for a rip'
Joseph MrozJanuary 22, 20144 mins read
B. Rich performed at Chainsaw on Friday. (Photo by Jody Waardenburg)
Since late November, Brandon Richmond, better known as B. Rich, has managed to accomplish something most aspiring artists look forward to but never achieve: get millions of views on YouTube while creating a cultural phenomenon simultaneously.
If YouTube seems to be a regular part of your life and you live anywhere in Ontario, it's safe to assume you're familiar with the hit song "Out For a Rip."
On Jan. 17, B. Rich stopped by Chainsaw to give fans a better glimpse into who he is and ultimately take everyone "out for a rip."
Chainsaw had a great atmosphere within the bar that night and was, without doubt, the best overall choice of venue for the type of theme "Out For a Rip" incorporates.
Chainsaw had a country feel to it which invited everyone in the room to briefly get back in touch with their true Canadian roots. As the show started, B. Rich had command of the stage from the beginning and the crowd was eager to return the energy.
After a great set, everyone left satisfied with the crowd hinting at their desire for the return for the newYouTube icon.
It's sometimes hard to measure internet success as it can spread so quickly and be offered on so many forms of media, however, iTunes now offers the track and this will hopefully show B. Rich how well-received the humorous song really is.
As the song continues to spread across the country and gain popularity, some have even gone so far as to suggest replacing the old national anthem with "Out For a Rip," which is a huge honour in itself.
"Yeah it's pretty crazy, it's definitely an unexpected, cool thing, that's going on right now… [and] I've been trying to find out, but [iTunes] is weird about sales and numbers so it takes a month or two months, it's kind of a mystery right now," B. Rich told The Cord about his overnight success.
By far the most appealing aspect of "Out For a Rip" has to be the lyrics. Completely original, they seem to fit almost perfectly with some of the values of Canadians. Whether it be the stereotype of being too nice, learning how to cross-check properly before learning to walk or the undying hope that the Maple Leafs might make the playoffs this year, "Out For a Rip" hits them all.
Aside from the catchy lyrics, the music video is hands down a must-see and an important component of the hype surrounding the song. B. Rich and his friends can been seen acting out most of the hilarious lyrics and, of course, going "out for a rip."
"The lyrics were all me: the video is listed 'and friends' cause they are actually just a bunch of my friends, but for the most part it was just an idea I had and I kind of brought everybody in. I picked certain buddies I knew that would fit the bill for the characters," he continued.
"I think my favourite part was the timing of it, it was kind of done on a whim, it was super last minute … and finishing it and realizing it looked exactly like I pictured it in my head doesn't happen very often."
From large urban cities to small rural communities, it's becoming difficult to not get caught up in the trend. Everyone from university students across the province, NHL players and famous Canadian actor Jay Baruchel, have reached out to the Canadian YouTube sensation over the popularity of the song. With such success in such a small amount of time, hopefully this won't be last unofficial national anthem courtesy of B. Rich.


text:
Aleksandr Tretyakov (skeleton racer)
Aleksandr Vladimirovich Tretyakov (Russian: Александр Владимирович Третьяков; born 19 April 1985) is a Russian skeleton rider. Tretyakov is Olympic champion (2014), World champion (2013), European champion (2007) as well as two-times winner of the Skeleton World Cup, which he won in 2008–09 and 2018–19.
Aleksandr Tretyakov
Aleksandr Tretyakov at the Medal Ceremony at Whistler on Day 9 of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics.
Aleksandr Vladimirovich Tretyakov
(1985-04-19) 19 April 1985 (age 34)
Krasnoyarsk, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union (now Russia)
2014 Sochi Men
2010 Vancouver Men
2013 St. Moritz Men
2011 Königssee Men
2015 Winterberg Men
2016 Igls Mixed team
2016 Igls Men
2009 Lake Placid Men
2015 Winterberg Mixed team
2013 Innsbruck Men
2015 La Plagne Men
Tretyakov is the first Russian who won the World Championships (2013 in St. Moritz), the overall Skeleton World Cup (2008–09) and an Olympics bronze medal (at the 2010 Winter Olympics). He is the silver medalist of the 2011 World Championships in Königssee and 2015 World Championships in Winterberg, as well as of bronze medalist of the 2009 World Championships in Lake Placid (men's skeleton event) and 2015 World Championships in Winterberg (mixed team). In 2013 in St. Moritz, he became the world champion.[1]
At the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Tretyakov won three out of four runs, established track (55.95) and start (4.47) records, and became the champion ahead of Martins Dukurs, who was universally considered to be the strongest gold medal contender.[2] This was the first gold medal in skeleton for Russia. To sleep well before the second day of the competitions, Tretyakov downloaded on his cell phone the series of Russian Wikipedia articles on the economy of the Tsardom of Russia and fell asleep while reading them.[3]
Tretyakov resides in Krasnoyarsk, Russia. His wife Anastasia is a former skeleton rider. Their daughter was born in 2013.[1]
Doping banEdit
Tretyakov's bottles of urine had scratch marks so he was provisionally suspended in 2016.[4] On 22 November 2017, he was disqualified from the 2014 Winter Olympics and had his gold medal stripped from him.[5] On 1 February 2018, the ban was lifted and his results were restored as a result of the successful appeal.[6]
World Cup resultsEdit
All results are sourced from the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation (IBSF).[7]
2004–05 WIN
32 ALT
37 IGL
19 SIG
33 CES
39 STM
39 LKP
26 N/A N/A 23 34th
2005–06 CAL
9 LKP
10 KON
— N/A N/A 92 24th
2 PKC
15 NAG
— IGL
1 CES
— WIN
1 KON
2 N/A 487 3rd
10 PKC
19 CES1
13 WIN
— N/A 794 16th
2 ALT
9 IGL
3 STM
9 WHI
9 PKC1
1 N/A 1526 1st
2009–10 PKC
3 N/A 1298 8th
2010–11 WHI
3 CAL
3 WIN
10 N/A 1349 5th
2011–12 IGL
2 LPL
22 WHI
2012–13 LKP
— KON
2 SOC
2 1632 4th
3 STM1
— N/A 1415 4th
— CAL
— ALT
10 LAP
2015–16 ALT
2 KON1
— PKC
— WHI
— STM
2 PYE
4 N/A 1454 3rd
2018–19 SIG
CNX IGL
1 CAL1
2 1719 1st
^ a b "Alexander Tretyakov wins Russia's first skeleton gold". Voice of Russia. 17 February 2014. Retrieved 18 January 2015.
^ Дудь, Юрий (16 February 2014). Скелетрон. Почему вы обожаете Александра Третьякова, хотя и не знаете об этом. sports.ru (in Russian). Retrieved 16 February 2014.
^ Быстров, Денис. Александр Третьяков: «По духу я точно не чиновник, не организатор». sports.ru (in Russian). Retrieved 16 February 2014.
^ http://tass.com/sport/923464
^ https://stillmed.olympic.org/media/Document%20Library/OlympicOrg/IOC/Who-We-Are/Commissions/Disciplinary-Commission/2017/SML-022-Disciplinary-Commission-Decision-Operative-Part-Aleksandr-TRETIAKOV.pdf#_ga=2.77405526.2130718839.1511363399-1668388724.1484259175
^ "The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) delivers its decisions in the matter of 39 Russian athletes v/the IOC: 28 appeals upheld, 11 partially upheld" (PDF). Court of Arbitration for Sport. Retrieved 1 February 2018.
^ IBSF Profile
2006 men's skeleton results
Aleksandr Tretyakov at the International Bobsleigh & Skeleton Federation
Skeletonsport.com profile[permanent dead link]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aleksandr_Tretyakov_(skeleton_racer)&oldid=884890872"


text:
Q: Creating Multiple Parametric Plots on the Same Graph I know how to create multiple parametric plots on the same graph via the following command:
    g[\[Zeta]_] := Sin[\[Zeta]];
    ParametricPlot[{{Re[g[\[Eta]*I]],
       Im[g[\[Eta]*I]]}, {Re[g[.5 + \[Eta]*I]],
       Im[g[.5 + \[Eta]*I]]}, {Re[g[1 + \[Eta]*I]],
       Im[g[1 + \[Eta]*I]]}, {Re[g[1.5 + \[Eta]*I]],
       Im[g[1.5 + \[Eta]*I]]}, {Re[g[2 + \[Eta]*I]],
       Im[g[2 + \[Eta]*I]]}}, {\[Eta], -\[Pi]/2, \[Pi]/2}]

which produces the following image:

However, I also want to produce the exact same outputs only this time with the real part of the input negative (i.e. for $g[-.5 + \eta i]$) for every parametric plot already produced. Now I could easily do this by simply copy and pasting and then making a few changes. However, I am wondering if there is a more succinct way to do something like this. Can I for instance make some type of vector that contains all the discrete values for which I want the real part of my input to take to create a plot for? Or is my best option just copy and pasting?
Thanks for any help! I'm familiar and fairly good with Matlab, but I haven't used Mathematica much so trying to learn some of the tricks as I go.

A: p1 = ParametricPlot[
  Evaluate@
   Table[{Re[g[k + \[Eta]*I]], Im[g[\[Eta]*I]]}, {k, 0, 2.5, 0.5}]
  , {\[Eta], -\[Pi]/2, \[Pi]/2}
  , PlotRange -> {{-3, 3}, {-3, 3}}
  , PlotLegends -> {"k = \[PlusMinus]" <> ToString[#] & /@
     Range[0, 2.5, 0.5]}
  ]

p2 = ParametricPlot[
  Evaluate@
   Table[{Re[g[k + \[Eta]*I]], Im[g[\[Eta]*I]]}, {k, 0, -2.5, -0.5}]
  , {\[Eta], -\[Pi]/2, \[Pi]/2}
  ]

Show[p1, p2]

Note that I am plotting these separately and plotting the case for k=0 twice to have symmetric colors on either side. The range can be adjusted to do all this using a single plot.

A: Another way to do this is to use Map (shorthand for Map is /@)and a pure function with Slot notation (the # you'll see a lot of if you use MMA for any amount of time):
g[\[Zeta]_] := Sin[\[Zeta]];
ks = Range[-2.5, 2.5, 0.5];
ParametricPlot[
 Evaluate[{Re[g[# + \[Eta]*I]], Im[g[\[Eta]*I]]} & /@ ks]
 , {\[Eta], -\[Pi]/2, \[Pi]/2}
 , PlotRange -> {-3,3}
 ]

Obviously, you could have ks = Range[0,2.5,0.5]; and do the same plot with -ks if you wanted two different plots. Just to show what you can do, you can also nest these expressions if you're careful about parenthesis:
ParametricPlot[
 Evaluate[
  {Re[g[#]], Im[g[Im[#]*I]]} & /@ (# + I*\[Eta] & /@ ks)
  ]
 , {\[Eta], -\[Pi]/2, \[Pi]/2}
 , PlotRange -> {-3,3}
 ]

Or make this a little easier to read, but still keep things in a limited scope using Block:
ParametricPlot[
 Evaluate[
  With[{gg = (# + I*\[Eta] & /@ ks)},
   {Re[g[#]], Im[g[Im[#]*I]]} & /@ gg
   ]
  ]
 , {\[Eta], -\[Pi]/2, \[Pi]/2}
 , PlotRange -> {-3,3}
 ]

You might want to check out this question if you're new and looking to learn about MMA.


text:
Jan. 11, 2009 Police Blotter
Samplings of recent calls received by Clovis-area law enforcement officers, according to reports:
About 8 p.m. Dec. 31 an officer responded to an alley in the 500 block of Heaslet for a public affray call.
As officers arrived, they saw a man sitting on top of a woman with her hands pinned to the ground.
Officers noted the man had scratches on his face and the female was crying.
The man, who the officers noted appeared intoxicated, said he was fighting with his girlfriend because she was cheating on him.
The female told the officers her name but when they were unable to find it in the system and she became uncooperative as they asked her questions.
Officers discovered she had given them a false name and had an outstanding warrant.
She was arrested on the warrant and she and the man were arrested for public affray.
About midnight Dec. 1 an officer responded to a residence in the 3000 block of Sheridan for a criminal damage report.
A woman said she was gone for a about six hours and when she returned, she found her outdoor Christmas ornaments had been damaged.
She said she later discovered her door was open.
The officer entered the home to check for intruders and found several things knocked over, including a Christmas tree. In the kitchen, someone had opened the refrigerator and thrown eggs and other food items on the floor.
The officer spoke to neighbors, who said they hadn't seen anything.
About 4 a.m. Jan. 1 an officer responded to a residence in the 1000 block of 15th Street for a domestic dispute.
A crying woman told officers her boyfriend had accused her of cheating on him and started beating her.
She said he wouldn't let her leave the home but when he went outside, she was able to call 911 but he came back inside and struck her again while she was on the phone.
The dispatcher told the officer they heard the woman being struck while they were on the phone with her.
The woman said she and her boyfriend had had similar incidents before and she didn't want to pursue charges.
The officer told the woman by law she didn't need to pursue charges and that the state would pursue charges. The officer noted intent to seek a warrant for aggravated battery.
About 3 p.m. Jan. 1 an officer was dispatched to a business in the 100 block of 21st Street for a theft of services.
Management at the restaurant told the officer two males and a female left without paying for their $32 meal.
A witness told the officer he saw management from the business trying to chase a vehicle, so he followed it and wrote down the license plate number.
The officer tried to make contact with the registered owner of the vehicle but the residence listed on the registration was vacant.
Police blotter is compiled by CNJ staff writer Sharna Johnson. She can be contacted at 763-6991 or: e-mail to:
Filed Under: News Tagged With: affray, arrested, block, female, ground, name, noted, officers, public, warrant


text:
Archives for posts with tag: IA
IBM, Innovation and Cognitive Computing
20 November 2017 //
I was happily surprised to be chosen as an "IBM influencer" and invited to the innovation and disruption Forum organized in Toronto the 16th of November to celebrate the 100th anniversary of IBM in Canada. With a handful of other people, I had the privilege to meet with Bryson Koehler the CTO of the IBM Cloud and Watson (Watson is the name given to IBM's artificial intelligence). That meeting was of great interest to me: I learned a lot about the current state of cloud computing and artificial intelligence.
Image: Demonstration of a robot at the IBM innovation and disruption forum in Toronto
Contrary to other big tech companies, IBM already existed when I was born in 1956. The company was in the business of computing even before the transistors. IBM adapted itself to electronics and dominated the industry in the era of big central mainframes. It survived the PC revolution when Microsoft and Apple were kings. They navigated the turbulent waters of the social Web despite the might of Google, Facebook, and Amazon. IBM is today one of the biggest players in the market for cloud computing, artificial intelligence and business consulting.
The transitions and transformations in IBM's history were not only technological but also cultural. In the seventies, when I was a young philosopher and new technology enthusiast, IBM was the epitome of the grey suit, blue tie, black attache-case corporate America. Now, every IBM employee – from the CEO Dino Trevisani to the salesman – wears jeans. IBM used to be the "anti-Apple" company but now everybody has a Mac laptop. Instead of proprietary technology, IBM promotes open-source software. IBM posters advertise an all-inclusive and diverse "you" across the specter of gender, race, and age. Its official management and engineering philosophy is design thinking and, along with the innovative spirit, the greatest of IBM's virtues is the ability to listen!
Toronto's Forum was all about innovation and disruption. Innovation is mainly about entrepreneurship: self-confidence, audacity, tenacity, resilience and market orientation. Today's innovation is "agile": implement a little bit, test, listen to the clients, learn from your errors, re-implement, etc. As for the disruption, it is inevitable, not only because of the speed of digital transformation but also because of the cultural shifts and the sheer succession of generations. So their argument is fairly simple: instead of being disrupted, be the disruptor! The overall atmosphere of the Forum was positive and inspirational and it was a pleasure to participate.
There were two kinds of general presentations: by IBM clients and by IBM strategists and leaders. In addition, a lot of stands, product demonstrations and informative mini-talks on various subjects enabled the attendees to learn about current issues like e-health and hospital applications, robotics, data management, social marketing, blockchain and so on. One of the highlights of the day was the interview of Arlene Dickinson (a well known Canadian TV personality, entrepreneur, and investor) by Dino Trevisani, the CEO of IBM Canada himself. Their conversation about innovation in Canada today was both instructive and entertaining.
From my point of view as a philosopher specialized in computing, Bryson Koehler (CTO for IBM cloud and Watson) made a wonderful presentation, imbued with simplicity and clarity, yet full of interesting content. Before being an IBMer Bryson worked for the Weather Channel, so he was familiar handling exabytes of data! According to Bryson Koehler, the future is not only the cloud, that is to say, infrastructure and software as a service, but also in the "cloud-native architecture", where a lot of loosely connected mini-services can be easily assembled like Lego blocks and on top of which you can build agile and resilient applications. Bryson is convinced that all businesses are going to become "cloud natives" because they need the flexibility and security that it provides. To illustrate this, I learned that Watson is not a standalone monolithic "artificial intelligence" anymore but is now divided into several mini-services, each one with its API, and part of the IBM cloud offer alongside other services like blockchain, video storage, weather forecast, etc.
Image: Bryson Koehler at the IBM innovation and disruption Forum in Toronto
Bryson Koehler recognizes that the techniques of artificial intelligence, the famous deep learning algorithms, in particular, are all the same amongst the big competitors (Amazon, Google, Microsoft and IBM) in the cloud business. These algorithms are now taught in universities and implemented in open source programs. So what makes the difference in IA today is not the technique but the quality and quantity of the datasets in use to train the algorithms. Since every big player has access to the public data on the web and to the syndicated data (on markets, news, finance, etc.) sold by specialized companies, what makes a real difference is the *private data* that lies behind the firewall of businesses. So what is the competitive advantage of IBM? Bryson Koehler sees it in the trust that the company inspires to its clients, and their willingness to confide their data to its cloud. IBM is "secure by design" and will never use a client's dataset to train algorithms used by this client's competitors. Everything boils down to confidence.
At lunchtime, with a dozen of other influencers, I had a conversation with researchers at Watson. I was impressed by what I learned about cognitive computing, one of IBM's leitmotiv. Their idea is that the value is not created by replicating the human mind in a computer but in amplifying human cognition in real-world situations. In other words, Big Blue (IBM's nickname) does not entertain the myth of singularity. It does not want to replace people with machines but help its clients to make better decisions in the workplace. There is a growing flow of data from which we can learn about ourselves and the world. Therefore we have no other choice than to automate the process of selecting the relevant information, synthesize its content and predict, as much as possible, our environment. IBM's philosophy is grounded in intellectual humility. In this process of cognitive augmentation, nothing is perfect or definitive: people make errors, machines too, and there is always room for improvement of our models. Let's not forget that only humans have goals, ask questions and can be satisfied. Machines are just here to help.
Once the forum was over, I was walking in front of the Ontario lake and thought about the similarity between philosophy and computer engineering: aren't both building cognitive tools?
Image: walking meditation in front of the Lake Ontario after the IBM innovation and disruption Forum in Toronto
Tags algorithm, artificial intelligence, cognitive computing, IA, IBM, influencer, Watson
Categories English, IBM
6 October 2017 //
I put forward in this paper a vision for a new generation of cloud-based public communication service designed to foster reflexive collective intelligence. I begin with a description of the current situation, including the huge power and social shortcomings of platforms like Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Alibaba, Baidu, etc. Contrasting with the practice of these tech giants, I reassert the values that are direly needed at the foundation of any future global public sphere: openness, transparency and commonality. But such ethical and practical guidelines are probably not powerful enough to help us crossing a new threshold in collective intelligence. Only a disruptive innovation in cognitive computing will do the trick. That's why I introduce "deep meaning" a new research program in artificial intelligence, based on the Information Economy MetaLanguage (IEML). I conclude this paper by evoking possible bootstrapping scenarii for the new public platform.
The rise of platforms
At the end of the 20th century, one percent of the human population was connected to the Internet. In 2017, more than half the population is connected. Most of the users interact in social media, search information, buy products and services online. But despite the ongoing success of digital communication, there is a growing dissatisfaction about the big tech companies – the "Silicon Valley" – who dominate the new communication environment.
The big techs are the most valued companies in the world and the massive amount of data that they possess is considered the most precious good of our time. Silicon Valley owns the big computers: the network of physical centers where our personal and business data are stored and processed. Their income comes from their economic exploitation of our data for marketing purposes and from their sales of hardware, software or services. But they also derive considerable power from the knowledge of markets and public opinions that stems from their information control.
The big cloud companies master new computing techniques mimicking neurons when they learn a new behavior. These programs are marketed as deep learning or artificial intelligence even if they have no cognitive autonomy and need some intense training by humans before becoming useful. Despite their well known limitations, machine learning algorithms have effectively augmented the abilities of digital systems. Deep learning is now used in every economic sector. Chips specialized in deep learning are found in big data centers, smartphones, robots and autonomous vehicles. As Vladimir Putin rightly told young Russians in his speech for the first day of school in fall 2017: "Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere [of artificial intelligence] will become the ruler of the world".
The tech giants control huge business ecosystems beyond their official legal borders and they can ruin or buy competitors. Unfortunately, the big tech rivalry prevents a real interoperability between cloud services, even if such interoperability would be in the interest of the general public and of many smaller businesses. As if their technical and economic powers were not enough, the big tech are now playing into the courts of governments. Facebook warrants our identity and warns our family and friends that we are safe when a terrorist attack or a natural disaster occurs. Mark Zuckerberg states that one of Facebook's mission is to insure that the electoral process is fair and open in democratic countries. Google Earth and Google Street View are now used by several municipal instances and governments as their primary source of information for cadastral plans and other geographical or geospatial services. Twitter became an official global political, diplomatic and news service. Microsoft sells its digital infrastructure to public schools. The kingdom of Denmark opened an official embassy in Silicon Valley. Cryptocurrencies independent from nation states (like Bitcoin) are becoming increasingly popular. Blockchain-based smart contracts (powered by Ethereum) bypass state authentication and traditional paper bureaucracies. Some traditional functions of government are taken over by private technological ventures.
This should not come as a surprise. The practice of writing in ancient palace-temples gave birth to government as a separate entity. Alphabet and paper allowed the emergence of merchant city-states and the expansion of literate empires. The printing press, industrial economy, motorized transportation and electronic media sustained nation-states. The digital revolution will foster new forms of government. Today, we discuss political problems in a global public space taking advantage of the web and social media and the majority of humans live in interconnected cities and metropoles. Each urban node wants to be an accelerator of collective intelligence, a smart city. We need to think about public services in a new way. Schools, universities, public health institutions, mail services, archives, public libraries and museums should take full advantage of the internet and de-silo their datasets. But we should go further. Are current platforms doing their best to enhance collective intelligence and human development? How about giving back to the general population the data produced in social media and other cloud services, instead of just monetizing it for marketing purposes ? How about giving to the people access to cognitive powers unleashed by an ubiquitous algorithmic medium?
Information wants to be open, transparent and common
We need a new kind of public sphere: a platform in the cloud where data and metadata would be our common good, dedicated to the recording and collaborative exploitation of memory in the service of our collective intelligence. The core values orienting the construction of this new public sphere should be: openness, transparency and commonality
Firstly openness has already been experimented in the scientific community, the free software movement, the creative commons licensing, Wikipedia and many more endeavors. It has been adopted by several big industries and governments. "Open by default" will soon be the new normal. Openness is on the rise because it maximizes the improvement of goods and services, fosters trust and supports collaborative engagement. It can be applied to data formats, operating systems, abstract models, algorithms and even hardware. Openness applies also to taxonomies, ontologies, search architectures, etc. A new open public space should encourage all participants to create, comment, categorize, assess and analyze its content.
Then, transparency is the very ground for trust and the precondition of an authentic dialogue. Data and people (including the administrators of a platform), should be traceable and audit-able. Transparency should be reciprocal, without distinction between the rulers and the ruled. Such transparency will ultimately be the basis for reflexive collective intelligence, allowing teams and communities of any size to observe and compare their cognitive activity
Commonality means that people will not have to pay to get access to this new public sphere: all will be free and public property. Commonality means also transversality: de-silo and cross-pollination. Smart communities will interconnect and recombine all kind of useful information: open archives of libraries and museums, free academic publications, shared learning resources, knowledge management repositories, open-source intelligence datasets, news, public legal databases…
From deep learning to deep meaning
This new public platform will be based on the web and its open standards like http, URL, html, etc. Like all current platforms, it will take advantage of distributed computing in the cloud and it will use "deep learning": an artificial intelligence technology that employs specialized chips and algorithms that roughly mimic the learning process of neurons. Finally, to be completely up to date, the next public platform will enable blockchain-based payments, transactions, contracts and secure records
If a public platform offers the same technologies as the big tech (cloud, deep learning, blockchain), with the sole difference of openness, transparency and commonality, it may prove insufficient to foster a swift adoption, as is demonstrated by the relative failures of Diaspora (open Facebook) and Mastodon (open Twitter). Such a project may only succeed if it comes up with some technical advantage compared to the existing commercial platforms. Moreover, this technical advantage should have appealing political and philosophical dimensions.
No one really fancies the dream of autonomous machines, specially considering the current limitations of artificial intelligence. Instead, we want an artificial intelligence designed for the augmentation of human personal and collective intellect. That's why, in addition to the current state of the art, the new platform will integrate the brand new deep meaning technology. Deep meaning will expand the actual reach of artificial intelligence, improve the user experience of big data analytics and allow the reflexivity of personal and collective intelligence.
Language as a platform
In a nutshell, deep learning models neurons and deep meaning models language. In order to augment the human intellect, we need both! Right now deep learning is based on neural networks simulation. It is enough to model roughly animal cognition (every animal species has neurons) but it is not refined enough to model human cognition. The difference between animal cognition and human cognition is the reflexive thinking that comes from language, which adds a layer of semantic addressing on top of neural connectivity. Speech production and understanding is an innate property of individual human brains. But as humanity is a social species, language is a property of human societies. Languages are conventional, shared by members of the same culture and learned by social contact. In human cognition, the categories that organize perception, action, memory and learning are expressed linguistically so they may be reflected upon and shared in conversations. A language works like the semantic addressing system of a social virtual database.
But there is a problem with natural languages (english, french, arabic, etc.), they are irregular and do not lend themselves easily to machine understanding or machine translation. The current trend in natural language processing, an important field of artificial intelligence, is to use statistical algorithms and deep learning methods to understand and produce linguistic data. But instead of using statistics, deep meaning adopts a regular and computable metalanguage. I have designed IEML (Information Economy MetaLanguage) from the beginning to optimize semantic computing. IEML words are built from six primitive symbols and two operations: addition and multiplication. The semantic relations between IEML words follow the lines of their generative operations. The total number of words do not exceed 10 000. From its dictionary, the generative grammar of IEML allows the construction of sentences at three layers of complexity: topics are made of words, phrases (facts, events) are made of topics and super-phrases (theories, narratives) are made of phrases. The higher meaning unit, or text, is a unique set of sentences. Deep meaning technology uses IEML as the semantic addressing system of a social database.
Given large datasets, deep meaning allows the automatic computing of semantic relations between data, semantic analysis and semantic visualizations. This new technology fosters semantic interoperability: it decompartmentalizes tags, folksonomies, taxonomies, ontologies and languages. When on line communities categorize, assess and exchange semantic data, they generate explorable ecosystems of ideas that represent their collective intelligence. Take note that the vision of collective intelligence proposed here is distinct from the "wisdom of the crowd" model, that assumes independent agents and excludes dialogue and reflexivity. Just the opposite : deep meaning was designed from the beginning to nurture dialogue and reflexivity.
The main functions of the new public sphere
In the new public sphere, every netizen will act as an author, editor, artist, curator, critique, messenger, contractor and gamer. The next platform weaves five functions together: curation, creation, communication, transaction and immersion.
By curation I mean the collaborative creation, edition, analysis, synthesis, visualization, explanation and publication of datasets. People posting, liking and commenting content on social media are already doing data curation, in a primitive, simple way. Active professionals in the fields of heritage preservation (library, museums), digital humanities, education, knowledge management, data-driven journalism or open-source intelligence practice data curation in a more systematic and mindful manner. The new platform will offer a consistent service of collaborative data curation empowered by a common semantic addressing system.
Augmented by deep meaning technology, our public sphere will include a semantic metadata editor applicable to any document format. It will work as a registration system for the works of the mind. Communication will be ensured by a global Twitter-like public posting system. But instead of the current hashtags that are mere sequences of characters, the new semantic tags will self-translate in all natural languages and interconnect by conceptual proximity. The blockchain layer will allow any transaction to be recorded. The platform will remunerate authors and curators in collective intelligence coins, according to the public engagement generated by their work. The new public sphere will be grounded in the internet of things, smart cities, ambient intelligence and augmented reality. People will control their environment and communicate with sensors, software agents and bots of all kinds in the same immersive semantic space. Virtual worlds will simulate the collective intelligence of teams, networks and cities.
This IEML-based platform has been developed between 2002 and 2017 at the University of Ottawa. A prototype is currently in a pre-alpha version, featuring the curation functionality. An alpha version will be demonstrated in the summer of 2018. How to bridge the gap from the fundamental research to the full scale industrial platform? Such endeavor will be much less expensive than the conquest of space and could bring a tremendous augmentation of human collective intelligence. Even if the network effect applies obviously to the new public space, small communities of pioneers will benefit immediately from its early release. On the humanistic side, I have already mentioned museums and libraries, researchers in humanities and social science, collaborative learning networks, data-oriented journalists, knowledge management and business intelligence professionals, etc. On the engineering side, deep meaning opens a new sub-field of artificial intelligence that will enhance current techniques of big data analytics, machine learning, natural language processing, internet of things, augmented reality and other immersive interfaces. Because it is open source by design, the development of the new technology can be crowdsourced and shared easily among many different actors.
Let's draw a distinction between the new public sphere, including its semantic coordinate system, and the commercial platforms that will give access to it. This distinction being made, we can imagine a consortium of big tech companies, universities and governments supporting the development of the global public service of the future. We may also imagine one of the big techs taking the lead to associate its name to the new platform and developing some hardware specialized in deep meaning. Another scenario is the foundation of a company that will ensure the construction and maintenance of the new platform as a free public service while sustaining itself by offering semantic services: research, consulting, design and training. In any case, a new international school must be established around a virtual dockyard where trainees and trainers build and improve progressively the semantic coordinate system and other basic models of the new platform. Students from various organizations and backgrounds will gain experience in the field of deep meaning and will disseminate the acquired knowledge back into their communities.
Emission de radio (Suisse romande), 25 minutes en français.
Sémantique numérique et réseaux sociaux. Vers un service public planétaire, 1h en français
You-Tube Video (in english) 1h
Tags Collective intelligence, deep meaning, humanities, IA, IEML, Semantic computing
Categories English, Semantic Sphere
The Emergence of Reflexive Collective Intelligence
14 April 2015 //
Emergence happens through an interdependant circulation of information between two levels of complexity. A code translates and betrays information in both directions: bottom-up and top-down.
According to our model, human collective intelligence emerges from natural evolution. The lower level of quantic complexity translates into a higher level of molecular complexity through the atomic stabilization and coding. There are no more than 120 atomic elements that explain the complexity of matter by their connections and reactions. The emergence of the next level of complexity – life – comes from the genetic code that is used by organisms as a trans-generational memory. Communication in neuronal networks translates organic life into conscious phenomena, including sense data, pleasure and pain, desire, etc. So emerges the animal life. Let's note that organic life is intrinsically ecosystemic and that animals have developed many forms of social or collective intelligence. The human level emerges through the symbolic code : language, music, images, rituals and all the complexity of culture. It is only thank to symbols that we are able to conceptualize phenomena and think reflexively about what we do and think. Symbolic systems are all conventional but the human species is symbolic by nature, so to speak. Here, collective intelligence reaches a new level of complexity because it is based on collaborative symbol manipulation.
[WARNING: the next 5 paragraphs can be found in "collective intelligence for educators", if you have already read them, go to the next slide: "algorithmic medium"] The above slide describes the successive steps in the emergence of symbolic manipulation. As for the previous slide, each new layer of cultural complexity emerges from the creation of a coding system.
During the longest part of human history, the knowledge was only embedded in narratives, rituals and material tools. The first revolution in symbolic manipulation is the invention of writing with symbols endowed with the ability of self-conservation. This leads to a remarquable augmentation of social memory and to the emergence of new forms of knowledge. Ideas were reified on an external surface, which is an important condition for critical thinking. A new kind of systematic knowledge was developed: hermeneutics, astronomy, medicine, architecture (including geometry), etc.
The second revolution optimizes the manipulation of symbols like the invention of the alphabet (phenician, hebrew, greek, roman, arab, cyrilic, korean, etc.), the chinese rational ideographies, the indian numeration system by position with a zero, paper and the early printing techniques of China and Korea. The literate culture based on the alphabet (or rational ideographies) developed critical thinking further and gave birth to philosophy. At this stage, scholars attempted to deduce knowledge from observation and deduction from first principles. There was a deliberate effort to reach universality, particularly in mathematics, physics and cosmology.
The third revolution is the mecanization and the industrialization of the reproduction and diffusion of symbols, like the printing press, disks, movies, radio, TV, etc. This revolution supported the emergence of the modern world, with its nation states, industries and its experimental mathematized natural sciences. It was only in the typographic culture, from the 16th century, that natural sciences took the shape that we currently enjoy: systematic observation or experimentation and theories based on mathematical modeling. From the decomposition of theology and philosophy emerged the contemporary humanities and social sciences. But at this stage human science was still fragmented by disciplines and incompatible theories. Moreover, its theories were rarely mathematized or testable.
We are now at the beginning of a fourth revolution where an ubiquitous and interconnected infosphere is filled with symbols – i.e. data – of all kinds (music, voice, images, texts, programs, etc.) that are being automatically transformed. With the democratization of big data analysis, the next generations will see the advent of a new scientific revolution… but this time it will be in the humanities and social sciences. The new human science will be based on the wealth of data produced by human communities and a growing computation power. This will lead to reflexive collective intelligence, where people will appropriate (big) data analysis and where subjects and objects of knowledge will be the human communities themselves.
Let's have a closer look at the algorithmic medium. Four layers have been added since the middle of the 20th century. Again, we observe the progressive invention of new coding systems, mainly aimed at the addressing of processors, data and meta-data.
The first layer is the invention of the automatic digital computer itself. We can describe computation as « processing on data ». It is self-evident that computation cannot be programmed if we don't have a very precise addressing system for the data and for the specialized operators/processors that will transform the data. At the beginning these addressing systems were purely local and managed by operating systems.
The second layer is the emergence of a universal addressing system for computers, the Internet protocol, that allows for exchange of data and collaborative computing across the telecommunication network.
The third layer is the invention of a universal system for the addressing and displaying of data (URLs, http, html). Thank to this universal addressing of data, the World Wide Web is a hypertextual global database that we all create and share. It is obvious that the Web has had a deep social, cultural and economic impact in the last twenty years.
The construction of the algorithmic medium is ongoing. We are now ready to add a fourth layer of addressing and, this time, it will be a universal addressing system for semantic metadata. Why? First, we are still unable to resolve the problem of semantic interoperability across languages, classifications and ontologies. And secondly, except for some approximative statistical and logical methods, we are still unable to compute semantic relations, including distances and differences. This new symbolic system will be a key element to a future scientific revolution in the humanities and social sciences, leading to a new kind of reflexive collective intelligence for our species. Moreover, it will pave the way for the emergence of a new scientific cosmos – not a physical one but a cosmos of the mind that we will build and explore collaboratively. I want to strongly underline here that the semantic categorization of data will stay in the hands of people. We will be able to categorize the data as we want, from many different point of views. All that is required is that we use the same code. The description itself will be free.
Let's examine now the future emerging algorithmic intelligence. This new level of symbolic manipulation will be operated and shared in a mixed environment combining virtual worlds and augmented realities. The two lower levels of the above slide represent the current internet: an interaction between the « internet of things » and the « clouds » where all the data converge in an ubiquitous infosphere… The two higher levels, the « semantic sensorium » and the « reflexive collective intelligence » depict the human condition that will unfold in the future.
The things are material, localized realities that have GPS addresses. Here we speak about the smart territories, cities, buildings, machines, robots and all the mobile gadgets (phones, tablets, watches, etc.) that we can wear. Through binary code, the things are in constant interaction with the ubiquitous memory in the clouds. Streams of data and information processing reverberate between the things and the clouds.
When the data will be coded by a computable universal semantic addressing system, the data in the clouds will be projected automatically into a new sensorium. In this 3D, immersive and dynamic virtual environment we will be able to explore through our senses the abstract relationships between the people, the places and the meaning of digital information. I'm not speaking here of a representation, reproduction or imitation of the material space, like, for example, in Second Life. We have to imagine something completely different: a semantic sphere where the cognitive processes of human communities will be modeled. This semantic sphere will empower all its users. Search, knowledge exploration, data analysis and synthesis, collaborative learning and collaborative data curation will be multiplied and enhanced by the new interoperable semantic computing.
We will get reflexive collective intelligence thank to a scientific computable and transparent modeling of cognition from real data. This modeling will be based on the semantic code, that provides the « coordinate system » of the new cognitive cosmos. Of course, people will not be forced to understand the details of this semantic code. They will interact in the new sensorium through their prefered natural language (the linguistic codes of the above slide) and their favorite multimedia interfaces. The translation between different languages and optional interface metaphors will be automatic. The important point is that people will observe, analyze and map dynamically their own personal and collective cognitive processes. Thank to this new reflexivity, we will improve our collaborative learning processes and the collaborative monitoring and control of our physical environments. And this will boost human development!
The above slide represents the workings of a collective intelligence oriented towards human development. In this model, collective intelligence emerges from an interaction between two levels: virtual and actual. The actual is addressed in space and time while the virtual is latent, potential or intangible. The two levels function and communicate through several symbolic codes. In any coding system, there are coding elements (signs), coded references (things) and coders (being). This is why both actual and virtual levels can be conceptually analysed into three kinds of networks: signs, beings and things.
The actual human development can be analysed into a sphere of messages (signs), a sphere of people (beings) and a sphere of equipments – this last word understood in the largest possible sense – (things). Of course, the three spheres are interdependent.
The virtual human development is analysed into a sphere of knowledge (signs), a sphere of ethics (being) and a sphere of power (things). Again, the three spheres are interdependent.
Each of the six spheres is further analysed into three subdivisions, corresponding to the sub-rows on the slide. The mark S (sign) points to the abstract factors, the mark B (being) indicates the affective dimensions and the mark T (thing) shows the concrete aspects of each sphere.
All the realities described in the above table are interdependent following the actual/virtual and the sign/being/thing dialectics. Any increase of decrease in one « cell » will have consequences in other cells. This is just an example of the many ways collective intelligence will be represented, monitored and made reflexive in the semantic sensorium…
To dig into the philosophical concept of algorithmic intelligence go there
Tags Collective intelligence, epistemology, Hypercortex, IA, IEML, Medium, Semantic computing, Semantic Sphere
Categories English, paper
Intelligence artificielle et sciences humaines
Critique réciproque de l'intelligence artificielle et des sciences humaines
Je me souviens d'avoir participé, vers la fin des années 1980, à un Colloque de Cerisy sur les sciences cognitives auquel participaient quelques grands noms américains de la discipline, y compris les tenants des courants neuro-connexionnistes et logicistes. Parmi les invités, le philosophe Hubert Dreyfus (notamment l'auteur de What Computers Can't Do, MIT Press, 1972) critiquait vertement les chercheurs en intelligence artificielle parce qu'ils ne tenaient pas compte de l'intentionnalité découverte par la phénoménologie. Les raisonnements humains réels, rappelait-il, sont situés, orientés vers une fin et tirent leur pertinence d'un contexte d'interaction. Les sciences de la cognition dominées par le courant logico-statistique étaient incapables de rendre compte des horizons de conscience qui éclairent l'intelligence. Dreyfus avait sans doute raison, mais sa critique ne portait pas assez loin, car ce n'était pas seulement la phénoménologie qui était ignorée. L'intelligence artificielle (IA) n'intégrait pas non plus dans la cognition qu'elle prétendait modéliser la complexité des systèmes symboliques et de la communication humaine, ni les médias qui la soutiennent, ni les tensions pragmatiques ou les relations sociales qui l'animent. A cet égard, nous vivons aujourd'hui dans une situation paradoxale puisque l'IA connaît un succès pratique impressionnant au moment même où son échec théorique devient patent.
Succès pratique, en effet, puisqu'éclate partout l'utilité des algorithmes statistiques, de l'apprentissage automatique, des simulations d'intelligence collective animale, des réseaux neuronaux et d'autres systèmes de reconnaissance de formes. Le traitement automatique du langage naturel n'a jamais été aussi populaire, comme en témoigne par exemple l'usage de Google translate. Le Web des données promu par le WWW consortium (dirigé par Sir Tim Berners-Lee). utilise le même type de règles logiques que les systèmes experts des années 1980. Enfin, les algorithmes de computation sociale mis en oeuvre par les moteurs de recherche et les médias sociaux montrent chaque jour leur efficacité.
Mais il faut bien constater l'échec théorique de l'IA puisque, malgré la multitude des outils algorithmiques disponibles, l'intelligence artificielle ne peut toujours pas exhiber de modèle convaincant de la cognition. La discipline a prudemment renoncé à simuler l'intelligence dans son intégralité. Il est clair pour tout chercheur en sciences humaines ayant quelque peu pratiqué la transdisciplinarité que, du fait de sa complexité foisonnante, l'objet des sciences humaines (l'esprit, la pensée, l'intelligence, la culture, la société) ne peut être pris en compte dans son intégralité par aucune des théories computationnelles de la cognition actuellement disponible. C'est pourquoi l'intelligence artificielle se contente dans les faits de fournir une boîte à outils hétéroclite (règles logiques, syntaxes formelles, méthodes statistiques, simulations neuronales ou socio-biologiques…) qui n'offrent pas de solution générale au problème d'une modélisation mathématique de la cognition humaine.
Cependant, les chercheurs en intelligence artificielle ont beau jeu de répondre à leurs critiques issus des sciences humaines : « Vous prétendez que nos algorithmes échouent à rendre compte de la complexité de la cognition humaine, mais vous ne nous en proposez vous-mêmes aucun pour remédier au problème. Vous vous contentez de pointer du doigt vers une multitude de disciplines, plus « complexes » les unes que les autres (philosophie, psychologie, linguistique, sociologie, histoire, géographie, littérature, communication…), qui n'ont pas de métalangage commun et n'ont pas formalisé leurs objets ! Comment voulez-vous que nous nous retrouvions dans ce bric-à-brac ? » Et cette interpellation est tout aussi sensée que la critique à laquelle elle répond.
Synthèse de l'intelligence artificielle et des sciences humaines
Ce que j'ai appris de Hubert Dreyfus lors de ce colloque de 1987 où je l'ai rencontré, ce n'était pas tant que la phénoménologie serait la clé de tous les problèmes d'une modélisation scientifique de l'esprit (Husserl, le père de la phénoménologie, pensait d'ailleurs que la phénoménologie – une sorte de méta-science de la conscience – était impossible à mathématiser et qu'elle représentait même le non-mathématisable par exellence, l'autre de la science mathématique de la nature), mais plutôt que l'intelligence artificielle avait tort de chercher cette clé dans la seule zone éclairée par le réverbère de l'arithmétique, de la logique et des neurones formels… et que les philosophes, herméneutes et spécialistes de la complexité du sens devaient participer activement à la recherche plutôt que de se contenter de critiquer. Pour trouver la clé, il fallait élargir le regard, fouiller et creuser dans l'ensemble du champ des sciences humaines, aussi opaque au calcul qu'il semble à première vue. Nous devions disposer d'un outil à traiter le sens, la signification, la sémantique en général, sur un mode computationnel. Une fois éclairé par le calcul le champ immense des relations sémantiques, une science de la cognition digne de ce nom pourrait voir le jour. En effet, pour peu qu'un outil symbolique nous assure du calcul des relations entre signifiés, alors il devient possible de calculer les relations sémantiques entre les concepts, entre les idées et entre les intelligences. Mû par ces considérations, j'ai développé la théorie sémantique de la cognition et le métalangage IEML : de leur union résulte la sémantique computationnelle.
Les spécialistes du sens, de la culture et de la pensée se sentent démunis face à la boîte à outils hétérogène de l'intelligence artificielle : ils n'y reconnaissent nulle part de quoi traiter la complexité contextuelle de la signification. C'est pourquoi la sémantique computationnelle leur propose de manipuler les outils algorithmiques de manière cohérente à partir de la sémantique des langues naturelles. Les ingénieurs s'égarent face à la multitude bigarrée, au flou artistique et à l'absence d'interopérabilité conceptuelle des sciences humaines. Remédiant à ce problème, la sémantique computationnelle leur donne prise sur les outils et les concepts foisonnants des insaisissables sciences humaines. En somme, le grand projet de la sémantique computationnelle consiste à construire un pont entre l'ingénierie logicielle et les sciences humaines de telle sorte que ces dernières puissent utiliser à leur service la puissance computationnelle de l'informatique et que celle-ci parvienne à intégrer la finesse herméneutique et la complexité contextuelle des sciences humaines. Mais une intelligence artificielle grande ouverte aux sciences humaines et capable de calculer la complexité du sens ne serait justement plus l'intelligence artificielle que nous connaissons aujourd'hui. Quant à des sciences humaines qui se doteraient d'un métalangage calculable, qui mobiliseraient l'intelligence collective et qui maîtriseraient enfin le médium algorithmique, elles ne ressembleraient plus aux sciences humaines que nous connaissons depuis le XVIIIe siècle : nous aurions franchi le seuil d'une nouvelle épistémè.
Tags epistemology, humanities, IA, IEML, Semantic computing, Semantic Sphere
Categories French, paper


text:
Q: Cypress test hangs with custom command but not if using function in PO file - what am I getting wrong? I'm still kinda new to Cypress, so please forgive any noob ignorance - but...
I'm using page objects, and trying to use a custom command that I've written as a kind of wrapper around assertions. This custom command will be used across a number of tests, and a number of page object files, so I don't want to replicate the code for it in each page object file. But! If I put the exact same code into the page object definition it works fine, if I use it as a custom command, the test hangs (elapsed time just goes up and up, but nothing happens)... A rough illustration of what I'm doing:
myPage.myFirstElement.click()
myPage.mySecondElement.type('something')
myPage.want(myPage.ThirdElement, 'to equal', 'Fred') // want is the name of my custom command / function in the PO file

The above works. However, if I move 'want' to a custom command:
myPage.myFirstElement.click()
myPage.mySecondElement.type('something')
cy.want(myPage.ThirdElement, 'to equal', 'Fred') // want is the name of my custom command / function in the PO file

This hangs, as described above. I've tried setting prevSubject in my custom command definition, to no avail. I've also tried using .then(...), also to no avail.
What am I failing to spot / understand correctly?
Thank you :)
//EDIT : Code for 'want' function as requested. This is as it is when in my po file. When a custom command, it is identical in content, except of course the declaration reads "Cypress.Commands.Add('want', (val1, op, val2) => { " and so on...
    want(val1, op, val2) {

        function getContent(obj, op) {
            if ((op.indexOf('exist') >= 0) || (op.indexOf('visible') >= 0) || (typeof obj != 'object')) {
                return obj
            }
            return obj === null ? obj : obj.attr('value') === undefined ? obj.text() : obj.attr('value');
        }

        function compare(first, second) {
            op = op.split(' ').join('.')
            var cmp1 = getContent(first, op);
            var cmp2 = getContent(second, op);
            var assertFn = (op.indexOf('exist') >= 0) || (op.indexOf('visible') >= 0) ? 'expect' : 'softExpect'
            if (cmp2 === undefined) {
                var chaiAssertion = new Function('a', 'return chai.' + assertFn + '(a).' + op)
                chaiAssertion(cmp1)
                //.then({timeout: Cypress.config('responseTimeout')}, () => { return originalFn(cmp1)})
            } else {
                var chaiAssertion = new Function('a, b', 'return chai.' + assertFn + '(a).' + op + '(b)')
                chaiAssertion(cmp1, cmp2)
            }
        }

        if (typeof (val1) === 'object' && val1 != null) {
            val1.should(($v1) => {
                if (typeof (val2) === 'object' && val2 != null) {
                    val2.should(($v2) => {
                        compare($v1, $v2)
                    })
                }
                else {
                    compare($v1, val2)
                }
            })
        }
        else {
            if (typeof (val2) === 'object' && val2 != null) {
                val2.should(($v2) => {
                    compare(val1, $v2)
                })
            }
            else {
                compare(val1, val2)
            }
        }
    }

A: If you created custom command, this means you have to use like any other command in cypress:
cy.[command]
so it should work with :
cy.want(myPage.ThirdElement, 'to equal', 'Fred') // want is the name of my custom command / function in the PO file


text:
ARCH ST
8 records displayed. Choose block: 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000 1100 1200 1300 1400 1500 1600 1700 1800 1900 2000 2100 2200 3200 3300 5500
Comcast Innovation and Technology Center
Client: Liberty Property Trust; Comcast office building
1800 ARCH ST Browse this block
Women's Christian Temperance Union Building; Philadelphia College of Bible; Y. W. C. A.
Client: ; Y. W. C. A. young women's christian association
SW corner of ARCH ST and N 18TH ST
Y. W. C. A. Building
Client: Young Women's Christian Association young women's christian association
1801-1811 Arch Street 1801-1811 ARCH ST Browse this block
B. A. Fahnestock Townhouse
Client: Fahnestock, Dr. Benjamin Augenbach dwelling
1813 Arch Street 1813 ARCH ST Browse this block
Bell Telephone Company Building
Client: Bell Telephone Company office building
1827-1835 ARCH ST Browse this block
Martien Residence
Client: Martien, William dwelling


Susanna Cots Interior Design have completed the interiors of a penthouse for a family in Barcelona, Spain, that features plenty of black-framed glass throughout.
Outside, there's entertaining space and a water feature. Potted plants provide privacy from the neighbors next door.
Inside, the interiors of the home are bright with white walls that contrast the darker elements, like the furniture, fireplace and door frames. A wall of built-in shelving provides a place to display books and decorative pieces.
A built-in wood window seat sits between the shelving unit and the firewood storage, while the large window provides plenty of natural light and views of the outdoor space.
Next to the living room is the kitchen. A line of light travels through the spaces and creates an interesting visual effect. Grey cabinets have been paired with black and wood countertops for a contemporary appearance.
Black framed glass walls can be used to close off the kitchen from the other spaces of the penthouse when needed.
Opposite the kitchen and hidden behind the white wall are a couple of bedrooms. Each bedroom has a single bed with a built-in floating desk. These two bedrooms are a mirror image of each other and share a common bathroom.
Down the hallway that wraps around the side of the kitchen is a dark box. This dark box houses a powder room.
Further down the hallway is another bedroom. This time, wood has been introduced in the form of a headboard, while the black framed glass enclosed shower is visible to the room.
The entrance to the shower can be found in the walk-in closet, that's full of shelving. Some of the shelves also have strips of lighting to add additional light to the space.
Behind the walk-in closet and closer to the door of the bedroom, is another bathroom. This bathroom has two rectangular mirrors that are mounted above the large dual-faucet sink.
Continuing down the hallway, there's another bedroom. This bedroom has two sleeping areas that open up to a common tv area with shelving and storage. Each bed is lofted to provide space for a desk underneath and sliding doors can be closed for privacy.
This bedroom also shares a common bathroom that has dual shower heads in a single wet room. Outside the bathroom there's a simple built-in vanity area.


You may be aware of the more common secondary ailments that can impact your dental health. For example, gum disease has been associated with other illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease. But Eagle syndrome may be a conditions you're not familiar with. According to the Genetic and Rare Diseases Information Center (GARD), this syndrome results in throat and facial pain that is typically associated with tonsillectomies or trauma to the throat area.
For people who experience symptoms of recurring pain in the throat or surrounding area, diagnosis and treatment can be challenging given the broad range of illnesses associated with a sore throat. Your first response may be to visit your doctor, which is always a sound idea. But with mouth or throat-related illness, it's also wise to schedule an appointment right away with your dentist. Not only does your dentist treat your teeth, but they can examine your mouth for signs of other problems and recommend the best next steps.
If you have pain in your throat and face, it could be Eagle syndrome. Here's what to watch for and what to expect from your care.
Only 4 percent of the population have an elongated styloid process and most patients are asymptomatic. Eagle syndrome is very rare, as it is estimated to occur in 1 of 62,500 people. Women are three times more likely than men to have this syndrome, notes GARD.
Diagnosis often includes a long evaluation process to first rule out other dental or health concerns. Diagnostics can include a local shot of anesthesia not only to relieve the pain, but to also rule out whether other factors are contributing to symptoms, according to The British Journal of General Practice.
Your doctor will review your medical history to determine whether any previous tonsillectomy or traumas to the area have occurred that may increase your risk, explains a case report in the Journal of the Korean Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons (JKAOMS). Your doctor will also use a panoramic X-ray called an orthopantomograph to view and evaluate the area.
Your doctor will decide on the best path for you based on your specific case and pain level. Medication is a common path in non-surgical treatment, and prescriptions can include analgesics, anticonvulsants, antidepressants, and other pain killers, such as gabapentin, says the JKAOMS. Treatment can last anywhere from three months or as an ongoing course for pain management.
Where non-surgical treatment isn't working, your doctor will likely recommend steroids, pain block injections or surgery to remove the bone, according to a report published in the Journal of Maxillofacial and Oral Surgery. After surgery, the doctor will give you an analgesics prescription and ask you to return in seven days so they can remove your stitches.
Take extra care around the surgical area. Talk to your doctor about brushing your teeth and rinsing with an antibacterial rinse like Colgate Total Advanced Health, which removes 24 times more bacteria for a healthier mouth.


text:
Kościół Matki Bożej Wspomożycielki Wiernych (, ), znany też jako Oratorju ta' San Duminku Savio – rzymskokatolicki kościół przy Triq San Ġiljan w Birkirkarze na Malcie. Budynek jest oratorium  (MSSP). Położony jest na terenie parafii św. Heleny w tejże miejscowości.

Historia
Z inicjatywą budowy oratorium i kościoła, również jako miejsca katechizacji młodzieży męskiej Birkirkary, wystąpił w 1910 młody kanonik Michael Sammut. Sponsorem budowy został prawnik z Valletty Michael Casolani z żoną Giulią oraz Alfons Marija Galea. Kamień węgielny został położony 23 marca 1910. Budowa kościoła została ukończona w ciągu zaledwie czterech miesięcy, świątynia została otwarta 31 lipca 1910. Kościół otrzymał wezwanie Matki Bożej Wspomożycielki Wiernych. Przez pierwsze dwa lata oratorium było prowadzone przez Salezjanów. Zostało ono nazwane na cześć Dominika Savio, który wówczas nie został jeszcze ogłoszony świętym (nastąpiło to w 1954). Później katechizacja została przeniesiona do sanktuarium Matki Bożej Tal-Ħerba, zaś budynek na okres 4 lat został przejęty przez Braci De La Salle. W 1927 fundatorzy kościoła przekazali go ks. , który w 1910 założył na Malcie Stowarzyszenie Misjonarzy św. Pawła. Kościół i oratorium znajdują się w rękach Stowarzyszenia po dziś dzień .

Architektura

Wygląd zewnętrzny
Fasada kościoła nawiązuje do tradycyjnego stylu małych kaplic rozsianych na Malcie: wysoki prostokąt zdominowany na krawędziach przez dwa toskańskie pilastry na wolnostojących cokołach. Pośrodku szerokie drzwi z półokrągłym nadświetlem, a nad nim okrągłe okno. Nadświetle i okno nad nim zamknięte kwiecistą kratą z kutego żelaza. Na szczycie fasady, w ramie z dwóch małych słupków przykrytych półokrągłym frontonem z krzyżem, łaciński napis "Niech dzieci przychodzą do mnie, nie zatrzymuj ich, bo ich jest królestwo Boże". W bocznych ścianach po pięć okrągłych okien. Z tyłu kościoła, nad prawą boczną elewacją dzwonnica parawanowa z trzema dzwonami. Przed kościołem niewielki placyk otoczony kamienną balustradą.

Wnętrze
Wnętrze kościoła jest długie na 31,5 m (razem z prezbiterium), szerokość jego zaś wynosi 8,5 m. Sklepienie jest płaskie, wsparte na ukrytych metalowych belkach. Boczne ściany podzielone płaskimi pilastrami na pięć segmentów, z okrągłym oknem w każdym z nich. Pilastry nie mają kapiteli, ale łączy je gzyms opasujący całe wnętrze, układ prawdopodobnie w stylu secesyjnym, nowatorski w architekturze maltańskich kościołów w owym czasie.Prezbiterium zajmuje cały jeden segment wewnętrzny i ma tradycyjny ołtarz. Po jego obu stronach dwoje drzwi do zakrystii. W 1972 dokonano zmiany na potrzeby soboru watykańskiego II, ołtarz stał się marmurowym tabernakulum, jakim jest do dzisiaj. W 1985 roku została wykonana marmurowa mensa nowego ołtarza na okazję konsekracji kościoła przez arcybiskupa Josepha Merciecę. W ramie nad ołtarzem znajduje się dziś krucyfiks, prawdopodobnie wykonany przez Augustyna Camilleriego. Kiedyś znajdowała się tam figura Matki Bożej Wspomożycielki Wiernych dłuta V. Cremony. Obrazy św. Józefa i św. Alojzego po bokach upamiętniają dwa stowarzyszenia młodych pracowników i studentów, które zostały założone, gdy oratorium było prowadzone przez salezjanów.

Ochrona dziedzictwa kulturowego
27 sierpnia 2012 obiekt wpisany został na listę National Inventory of the Cultural Property of the Maltese Islands pod numerem 00282.

Przypisy

Kościół Najświętszej Maryi Panny Wspomożycielki Wiernych
Świątynie pod wezwaniem Najświętszej Maryi Panny Wspomożycielki Wiernych
Świątynie pod wezwaniem św. Dominika Savio
Kościoły rzymskokatolickie na Malcie
Kościół Matki Bożej Wspomożycielki Wiernych w Birkirkarze
Zabytkowe kościoły na Malcie


Now that the snow on the ground last time Apple updated Mac OS X in November has finally begun to melt (if you're somewhere Northerly, anyway), Apple has finally gotten around to releasing yet another Snow Leopard update. Version 1.6.3 brings a number of updates to speed, security and compatability for OS X users.
Full information on the exact security fixes can be found on another Apple support document. The full update weighs in at a whopping 719MB.