Subset Games, of spaceship-roguelike FTL fame, has unveiled a new game called Into the Breach, which will launch for the PC on February 27.
Into the Breach is a turn-based strategy game, in which you must build mechs to defeat huge alien creatures called the Vek, which are breeding beneath the surface of the Earth. It may look retro and simplistic but, typically for a Subset Games development, its gameplay features some interesting ideas. Such as a mechanism which means you can't fail: if you're defeated in a combat round, you'll send help back in time to: "Save another timeline".
If FTL is anything to go by, Into the Breach should prove to be infernally addictive. Subset Games says it is planning to make Mac and Linux versions in addition to the PC one, but it hasn't yet put a timescale on when those might be ready. So watch this space for more info.


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You are here: Home / Churches & Chapel / St Nicholas Pett Level
For details of the latest church services go to https://www.pettnet.org.uk/church-services
Sea Sunday – 14th July 2019, 10.30am
The 2019 Sea Sunday service will be held at Pett Level. As usual, we will be joined by congregations from the Methodist Chapel, Guestling, and Fairlight. Guestling School will also be taking part. As in previous years, there will be a collection for The Missions to Seafarers, who do so much for sailors world-wide.
Please join us – bring a garden chair and a sun hat – hopefully! Refreshments will be served thanks to the Rescue Boat Crew. The Rescue Boat will also be blessed.
NEW DONATION BOXES
Both churches now have a new donation box. The old one in Pett Church was well hidden and impossible to use. Plus someone had managed to open the one in St Nicholas and it was no longer "safe". The new boxes are both placed by the entry doors and very visible. Feel free to try them out with a few coins (or notes)!
CROSS DEDICATION – 26 MAY 2018
Just a few photos of the Dedication of the Cross Ceremony on Sunday, 26 May and of Richard, the Bishop of Lewes rocking up on his Harley.
Thanks go to Roland for playing the music and Andrew Blackman for being coerced into doing the reading.
Also thank you to all those people who came to make the occasion special. And those who brought cakes!
It goes without saying a big thank you to Rev'd Richard Barron who prepared the service. And also, of course, to The Right Rev'd Richard Jackson, Bishop of Lewes, for dedicating our new cross, which was beautifully designed and made by Leigh Dyer.
ST NICHOLAS CHURCH – LATEST NEWS : APRIL and MAY
We have our new metal cross!
The Cross was made by Hastings artist, Leigh Dyer and installed 12th April 2018.
Thank you to all those locals and visitors who donated money.
It has a beach theme and carries on the "arty" feel of the church (you may have noticed the ceiling artwork inside which were painted by the Hastings School of Art back in the 1930s). A MASSIVE thank you to all those who have contributed towards the cost, particularly the WI and the couple who gave a significant contribution last summer. And thank you to Leigh Dyer for his beautiful creation.
And thank you to ALL of you who have supported the works at St Nicholas over the last two years. Please continue to support us as we now try to do the same with Pett church.
After waiting so long for the cross it seems fitting that we should have a short dedication ceremony followed by tea and cake. The plan is Saturday 26th May at 3pm and the sun will be out (even if it is a Bank Holiday weekend). We have the Bishop of Lewes, Richard, coming, on his motorbike, to participate in the dedication. Please come along and join us!
Wouldn't it be nice to have an art exhibition inside/outside one weekend in the early summer? Any thoughts, call me, Fran, on 01424 812964.
ST NICHOLAS CHURCH HISTORY AND ARCHIVE
(All photos below courtesy of Fran Rogers)
St Nicholas from Toot Rock
History of St Nicholas, Pett Level
In 1878 the Admiralty constructed a building on Pett Level beach for the local Coastguard. Its purpose was to house the Life Saving Rocket Apparatus* used to help seafarers and fishermen in difficulties. Hence it became known as The Rocket House.
Between the wars, the rocket launcher was moved elsewhere in Pett Level and so the Rocket House became surplus to requirements, so in 1935 the Diocese bought the Rocket House for £100 and on 26th April it was dedicated to St Nicholas by the Bishop of Lewes. In October it was authorised for Public Worship by the Bishop of Chichester.
In the 80 years since then, services have been held continuously, save for the years 1940-1945, when the church was closed as part of the general evacuation of Pett Level and the militarisation of the beach.
In 1959 a porch was added made from Canadian cedar. Not much changed since then until 2015 was work started to repair the porch. From there internal refurbishment took place, replacing lights and cracked glass in the windows, cleaning chairs and paneling, sanding the floor. The vestry was also opened up to allow displays of old postcards, books to borrow or buy, and tea and coffee to be available to visitors. In addition local artists such as Annie Soudain and Richard Baines have supplied cards.
In March we hope to have a new cross on the front elevation of the porch, designed and made by another local artist, Leigh Dyer.
All donations go to help the continued upkeep of both Parish churches.
*For nearly a century rocket launchers (designed by Robert Trengrouse) were a key part of the Coastguard's ability to save lives at sea, by sending a line to ships who in turn would use it to secure a rope to their mast which would help haul sailors to shore with a chair.
Fran Rogers
Document typed by the Rector, Herbert Moxen, acknowledging the contributions from the parishioners for the new St Nicholas
Original interior of St Nicholas Church
St Nicholas – before restoration in 2015
St Nicholas after restoration
St Nicholas porch before restoration
St Nicholas porch after restoration
Church floor after sanding
Church chairs – before and after
Model of St Nicholas Church depicted in the north nave stained glass window in St Mary & St Peter Church. The window was designed by Lawrence Lee, who also designed some of the windows in Coventry Cathedral
Christmas at St Nicholas – 2016
(78 people attended the Christmas service in 2017)
A wedding at St Nicholas – July 2017
Child Thanksgiving Service at St Nicholas – October 2017

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Due to several factors, WCWC has decided to postpone Maintenancefest Chatham to Fall 2012. It was originally to be held Thursday, June 28, 2012. Please visit www.wcwc.ca/registration to check for regular updates. We are sorry for any inconvenience the rescheduling of the training may have caused.


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Sprout Blog / All Social Media / Social Media Analytics
Reach vs Impressions: What's the Difference in Terms?
Written byby Alex York
Is your business working toward better brand awareness? Are you doing everything possible to grow and influence your audience on social media? If so, it's critical to know the difference between reach vs impressions.
Marketers commonly encounter these two terms, but it's not always clear what makes each metric so important. Many understand the importance of social media engagement. However, when it comes to strategy, it's all about accurately measuring your metrics and finding areas to increase efforts.
Various social media terms are often misinterpreted and some are even thought to mean the same thing. While it's very easy to group terms like reach and impressions together, they do have their own definitions. Before you accurately measure these metrics, let's learn a crash course on reach vs. impressions.
What's the Difference Between Reach vs. Impressions?
Reach is the total number of people who see your content. Impressions are the number of times your content is displayed, no matter if it was clicked or not.
Think of reach as the number of unique people who see your content. In a perfect world, every one of your followers would see every piece of content you posted.
Most underrated season to visit the National Parks: autumn.
Posted by Groupon on Saturday, September 30, 2017
Unfortunately, that's not how things work on social, and not all of your followers will see every single post you publish. For instance, Groupon has 17 million followers, but their organic content doesn't come close to getting that number of engagements because only a fraction of their audience sees it.
However, an impression means that content was delivered to someone's feed. A viewer doesn't have to engage with the post in order for it to count as an impression. Also, one person could have multiple impressions for a single piece of content.
For example, a Facebook post could show up in the News Feed from the original publisher and appear again when a friend shares the publisher's post. If you saw both forms of activity in your feed, that counts as two impressions for the same post.
Make sense of your metrics with Sprout
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Find out how easy it is to visualize your data with a demo of Sprout Social.
Digging Deeper Into Reach & Impressions
As you can see, there are a lot of similarities between reach and impressions, but there's still an underlying difference in terms of engagement. Similar to our first example, let's say you have 100 followers on Twitter and you published one Tweet. If every one of your followers sees that Tweet, you have a reach of 100 users–along with 100 impressions.
To continue, say tomorrow you publish two Tweets to the same 100 followers. Your reach is still 100 users because your follower count didn't change. However, now you have 200 impressions. Why? Because every single one of your 100 followers saw both Tweets you published.
That's why you may notice the number of impressions for a Tweet may sometimes be significantly larger than your follower count.
It's a bit of a challenging concept, but absolutely important to know when tracking the success of a social media campaign. If you recall nothing else about reach and impressions, remember this: Reach is the number of people who may have seen your content, while impressions are the total number of times your content was displayed to people.
Learning More About Engagement Metrics
If you're looking to better understand how to improve your reach and impressions, it's important to learn about other related engagement metrics. For example, there are different kinds of reach and impression metrics on each social network—Facebook to be specific.
Other platforms may include reach and impressions in their social media analytics, but they're pretty standard. Facebook shows reach and impressions broken down by post type and other categories, which is necessary to understand when looking to improve.
Facebook Reach vs. Impressions
On Facebook, reach falls into three different categories:
Organic: This represents the number of unique people who saw your content—for free—in the News Feed.
Paid: This is the number of unique people who saw your paid content, such as a Facebook Ad.
Viral: This is the number of unique people who saw your post or Page mentioned in a story published by a friend. These stories include actions such as Liking, sharing or commenting.
There are a number of factors that play into your Facebook reach. Depending on the type of reach you want to grow, you might follow different strategies. To learn more about Facebook reach, read our earlier article How to Easily Increase Your Facebook Reach.
Just like reach, Facebook impressions are also broken down into three categories, which are viewable in Sprout's Facebook Pages report:
Organic: The number of times your content was displayed—for free—in News Feed or on your Page.
Paid: The number of times your paid content—such as a Facebook Ad—was displayed.
Viral: The number of times content associated with your Page was displayed in a story published by a friend. These stories include Liking, sharing or commenting.
Facebook Ad Reach vs Impressions
Having the same categoric breakdowns certainly doesn't keep reach and impressions separate. But remember our first example we discussed. If five Facebook fans each saw your post twice, the result would be 10 impressions (the number of times displayed multiplied by the number of unique people who saw it) and a reach of five (the unique people who saw it).
But if you're using Facebook Ads, there are two additional types of impressions to track: served and viewed.
When a Facebook Ad is served, it means the publisher told the system to deliver an ad. As long as the system registers delivery of that ad, it's counted as a success—a served impression. This is a little sneaky because it's counting a success regardless of whether or not an ad is seen.
Served impressions include ads that no one sees because they appear below the fold or because the person left the page before it could finish rendering. It's inaccurate and leaves a big gap between the number of ads served and the number seen.
However, viewed impressions count from the moment the ad enters the screen of a desktop browser or mobile app. If it doesn't enter the screen, it doesn't count.
Twitter Reach vs. Impressions
The native Twitter app doesn't measure your reach, but it does track impressions. Twitter defines impressions as anytime a Twitter user sees your Tweet.
Think of an impression as a Tweet that shows up on someone's monitor or mobile screen. But the number of impressions you see inside the Twitter app only counts the number of times your Tweets show up in a user's feed or search results.
While Twitter doesn't provide data on reach, there is a workaround. Luckily, with Sprout Social's Sent Messages Report, you get more insights into your social media reach.
Reach, Impressions & Your Marketing Strategy
With better clarity on reach vs. impressions, it's important to also look beyond the definitions and see what they mean for your marketing strategy.
Know Your Target Audience
As reach increases, it naturally leads to increased awareness. For businesses, it's important to extend your reach to as many consumers as possible. But even if you're reaching 10,000 people, it won't mean a thing if only 1,000 of them have interest in your brand.
Sent messages lose effect and no value is gained when they're ignored. Design messages and your content strategy with your target audience in mind.
Also keep an eye on the content that's being shared, retweeted, liked or replied to. By tracking these engagements, it'll help you find potential users to target, thus extending your reach.
Monitor & Analyze Engagement Metrics Regularly
Impressions measure your ability to get your content in front of your intended audience. When your impressions rise, it's likely due to your content surfacing more frequently into users' feeds.
This usually means your posts are optimized for whichever social network you're using. If you do not see the impressions you hoped for, first look at how you share your content. Is it optimized for the platform you're using?
Another tip to consider when trying to increase impressions is to focus on growing the number of actively engaged fans in your community for that platform. Place more emphasis on publishing shareable content. As your community begins sharing your posts with their networks, your impressions (and reach) will increase.
The only way you'll know if your efforts work is to regularly monitor and analyze these metrics. Continually make improvements and experiment with changes and Facebook retargeting efforts. Once you think you have your audience where you want, it's smart to use social media monitoring tools to tag messages for specific departments on your social team.
This will help you avoid the back and forth between networks to easily streamline your social media through an all-in-one Smart Inbox. Tracking important metrics is tricky, but not with the right tools.
Looking at the Bigger Picture
Learning the difference between reach vs. impressions is sometimes a little convoluted, but it's not impossible to understand. Once you distinguish the two metrics, you begin working toward the most important one of all: social media engagement.
A common goal behind every social media campaign is increased engagement. If your content isn't getting likes, replies or shares, something is wrong—either on the creation or targeting end.
Awareness comes before engagement, and reach and impressions drive people to take action. You can't have one without the other, and you can't improve one without also tweaking the others. So when you're thinking about how to increase engagement, do so while also considering how reach and impressions play into it.
Sprout in Action
Alex York
Alex York is a former Sprout writer, and he's your guiding light to all things content. When he's not writing, you'll catch him defending Ohio sports teams or endlessly scrolling through Netflix.
Read all articles by Alex York
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The Education Magazine recognizes Millikin MBA Program
Preparing Students for Professional Success
July 2, 2020 at 8:30am
Dane Lisser
Millikin University's MBA Program was featured in a recent edition of The Education Magazine that recognized the "10 Best MBA Institutes of 2020." The magazine enlightens students around the world about the latest academic programs that are being designed by the brightest educational leaders.
Students have plenty of options for pursuing their careers. In today's business world, an MBA is becoming the standard for many organizations and management positions. Moreover, it also may help with rapid career growth; allows students to constantly challenge themselves; and provides opportunities to network with other students, faculty, and business professionals.
Furthermore, an MBA will help students learn about the latest issues and topics within the business world and how to successfully apply those techniques to foster continuous improvement and professional development. Incepted in 2000, the MBA Program at Millikin University prepares students for intellectual growth and career advancement.
Multiple Delivery Methods in a High-Tech Learning Environment
Millikin University offers one MBA program with two deliveries and three concentrations. Its curriculum teaches you to "think like an executive" and focuses on three main Pillars of Excellence: accounting and finance, marketing and strategy, and management and leadership. The two delivery options were developed to meet the particular needs of students.
Millikin's Daytime MBA Program is a 12-month program that allows aspiring business professionals to benefit from daytime classes within the project management concentration, taught with in-person classes in an accelerated format.
Their Evening MBA Program is a 17-month program designed with the working adult in mind. Students can select from concentrations in management or healthcare administration. Classes meet in-person during the evening.
Both delivery methods offer small class sizes in a team-based cohort, C-Suite faculty, a high-tech learning environment, and an international immersion experience.
Quick and Open to Offer Expertise Knowledge
Faculty play a huge role in shaping the careers of students and helping guide them toward professional success. The faculty at Millikin University are always quick and open to offering their expertise and knowledge to the students for career development, career-related questions, career advancement, etc. Students take advantage of this network and utilize it for job references, advice, attendance at presentations, etc.
Millikin University always looks for bright students who have the urge to learn. A successful MBA student at Millikin University will possess the following qualities:
A goal-oriented mindset and knowledge of why he/she wants to pursue the MBA;
Experience in teamwork and knowledge of his/her typical role on a team;
Experience with effectively working through conflict;
A hard worker who wants to learn; and
Effective communication skills, both verbal and written.
Millikin University MBA Leadership
Jaclyn Cantwell, assistant director of the MBA Program, graduated with an undergraduate business management degree from Millikin in 2009. The experience she had both in and out of the classroom at Millikin contributes to the many reasons why she is working at the University. The small class sizes, personal relationships with faculty and support from administration allowed her to grow into a successful professional and leader. She received her MBA from Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville in 2011, while also completing a graduate assistantship.
Jaclyn now serves as the assistant director of Millikin's MBA Program and coordinates all operations within the program, from faculty, students, scheduling, curriculum, assessment, event planning, marketing and recruiting, among many other things.
Sharing her experience, Cantwell says, "I truly love my job and enjoy the connections I'm able to make with all involved. I especially love seeing students and graduates benefiting from their MBA degree that they received from Millikin."
Preparing Students for the Current Times and Current Conditions
Presently, Millikin University is updating its curriculum to adjust and keep up with best practices in the current business world. It ensures the students are prepared for the current times and current conditions in order to successfully position themselves upon graduation. The University is also working on adding two new courses: Business Analytics and Seminar in Business Topics.
Business Analytics — With the growth of data and the blending of technology and business in the working world, this is an ideal course for anyone with an interest in working with big data to improve business performance. Also, this is a perfect course as leaders in today's world are making more and more data-driven business decisions.
Seminar in Business Topics — There was a lack of a course related to contemporary/current events and topics such as sustainability, artificial intelligence, e-business, entrepreneurship, etc. in our current curriculum. This course will help students examine these current issues that business managers/leaders need to address in order to compete in an increasingly global market. The goal to determine major business functions, evaluate potential issues that arise in business and assess components of operating in a global environment can be and will be accomplished with the addition of this course.
Transforming Strong, Professional Candidates into Exemplar Leaders
Mission always leads to more clarity and in today's time, it is important to pay equal attention to social responsibilities. Millikin University's mission correlates greatly with corporate social responsibility by "preparing students for professional success, democratic citizenship in a global environment, and personal lives of meaning and value."
This is instilled in the MBA program, with a more business-centered program mission: "To transform strong, professional candidates into exemplar leaders who have an expanded and complex understanding of business matters in the global environment; embody their role as an ethical leader through sensitivity to people, profit, and the planet; and distinguish themselves in their careers, business, and communities through greater analytical and application skills advanced with confidence in domestic and international assignments requiring greater responsibility."
In order to adhere to its mission, the Millikin MBA Program offers courses, case studies, projects and assignments that accompany these values so the students understand what it means to be socially accountable — to oneself, business stakeholders, and the public — and to understand the kind of impact they can have on all aspects of society.
Academic Campus Career Center Tabor School of Business
Made it Millikin: Naomi Hall, Class of 2023
Millikin Students Show Off Projects at 2022 Creative Media...
Millikin Political Science Students Win Award at American...
Millikin Welcomes Holocaust Survivor Sami Steigmann for...
Elementary Education Major Named 2022 Lincoln Laureate


Heavy Duty Y Harness with Hitec S, JR, Airtronics Z Connector will work well to connect 2 esc's to the same channel on your radio system, allowing both motors to be controlled by on the same channel. Perfect for twin engine boats.
FEATURES: Gold-plated teminals improve conductivity and prevent oxidation for longer lifespan.
Connectors: one male and two female.


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Loudoun to host the Virginia Young Professional Summit
April 27, 2015 by Andrea Winey
The Virginia Young Professional Summit chooses Loudoun County as host venue on May 29th and 30th
Post written by Director of Membership & Brand Strategy, Loudoun Chamber, Grafton deButts
Register Here for the Virginia Young Professional Summit!
In 2008 a small group of local young professionals met together in the back room of Vintage 50 to discuss one thing: "What does Loudoun County need to do to attract and retain younger workers?" After 45 minutes it became clear that there was no silver bullet. But, what we did have was a small group of YPs eager to take on this mission.
Today, almost seven years later, this group is hundreds of young professionals strong, representing practically every industry and size of company in Loudoun. Every month they meet together, learn together, and affect the future of Loudoun County through their involvement.
As a testament to the success of our young professionals and their aspirations, Loudoun County has been selected as the host site for the 2015 Virginia Young Professionals Summit on May 29th– 30th. This Summit, created by Senator Mark Warner and steered by a team of local Loudoun businesses, is designed to connect Young Professionals from across the Commonwealth and increase their investment in their local communities.
As the Chair of our local committee, I couldn't be more thrilled to be teaming with the Department of Economic Development, Visit Loudoun, GMU, GWU, Northern Virginia Community College, LoudounYP, and Senator Warner's staff.
On top of the great speakers and panelists (see link below), the summit is 100% free to attend. We as a community need everyone who is willing and able to participate in shaping the future to do so, and this Summit is no different. We hope that you can join us, or consider inviting a member of your staff or business sphere.
Click here to register. I encourage you to consider being a part of this historical event in Loudoun County.
Keynote Speaker: Aneesh Chopra
Aneesh Chopra is the co-founder of Hunch Analytics, a "hatchery" incubating open data startups that improve the productivity of health and education markets. He leads NavHealth, a Hunch portfolio company. He also serves as a Member of the Council on Virginia's Future and an inaugural Walter Shorenstein Media and Democracy Fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. From 2009-2012, he served as the first U.S. Chief Technology Officer with a focus on better public/private collaboration as described in his 2014 book, "Innovative State: How New Technologies can Transform Government." In 2011, Chopra was named to Modern Healthcare's list of the 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare and in 2008, to Government Technology magazine's Top 25 in their Doers, Dreamers, and Drivers issue. Chopra earned his master's degree in public policy from Harvard University in 1997 and his bachelor's degree from The Johns Hopkins University in 1994.
Insider Topics
Business Women


text:
using content::BrowserThread;

namespace chrome {

namespace {

// Appends |data| to the snapshot file specified by the |snapshot_file_path| on
// the file thread.
// Returns the number of bytes written to the snapshot file. In case of failure,
// returns zero.
uint32 WriteDataChunkIntoSnapshotFileOnFileThread(
    const base::FilePath& snapshot_file_path,
    const std::string& data) {
  DCHECK(content::BrowserThread::CurrentlyOn(content::BrowserThread::FILE));
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      file_util::AppendToFile(snapshot_file_path, data.data(),
                              base::checked_numeric_cast<int>(data.size()));
  return (static_cast<int>(data.size()) == bytes_written) ?
      base::checked_numeric_cast<uint32>(bytes_written) : 0;
}

}  // namespace

MTPReadFileWorker::MTPReadFileWorker(const std::string& device_handle)
    : device_handle_(device_handle),
      ALLOW_THIS_IN_INITIALIZER_LIST(weak_ptr_factory_(this)) {
  DCHECK(content::BrowserThread::CurrentlyOn(content::BrowserThread::UI));
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    const SnapshotRequestInfo& request_info,
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  DCHECK(content::BrowserThread::CurrentlyOn(content::BrowserThread::UI));
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      make_scoped_ptr(new SnapshotFileDetails(request_info,
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    scoped_ptr<SnapshotFileDetails> snapshot_file_details) {
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      device::MediaTransferProtocolManager::GetInstance();
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      device_handle_,
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      snapshot_file_details_ptr->bytes_written(),
      snapshot_file_details_ptr->BytesToRead(),
      base::Bind(&MTPReadFileWorker::OnDidReadDataChunkFromDeviceFile,
                 weak_ptr_factory_.GetWeakPtr(),
                 base::Passed(&snapshot_file_details)));
}

void MTPReadFileWorker::OnDidReadDataChunkFromDeviceFile(
    scoped_ptr<SnapshotFileDetails> snapshot_file_details,
    const std::string& data,
    bool error) {
  DCHECK(content::BrowserThread::CurrentlyOn(content::BrowserThread::UI));
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      error || (data.size() != snapshot_file_details->BytesToRead()));
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      content::BrowserThread::FILE,
      FROM_HERE,
      base::Bind(&WriteDataChunkIntoSnapshotFileOnFileThread,
                 snapshot_file_details_ptr->snapshot_file_path(),
                 data),
      base::Bind(&MTPReadFileWorker::OnDidWriteDataChunkIntoSnapshotFile,
                 weak_ptr_factory_.GetWeakPtr(),
                 base::Passed(&snapshot_file_details)));
}

void MTPReadFileWorker::OnDidWriteDataChunkIntoSnapshotFile(
    scoped_ptr<SnapshotFileDetails> snapshot_file_details,
    uint32 bytes_written) {
  DCHECK(content::BrowserThread::CurrentlyOn(content::BrowserThread::UI));
  DCHECK(snapshot_file_details.get());
  if (snapshot_file_details->AddBytesWritten(bytes_written)) {
    if (!snapshot_file_details->IsSnapshotFileWriteComplete()) {
      ReadDataChunkFromDeviceFile(snapshot_file_details.Pass());
      return;
    }
  } else {
    snapshot_file_details->set_error_occurred(true);
  }
  OnDidWriteIntoSnapshotFile(snapshot_file_details.Pass());
}

void MTPReadFileWorker::OnDidWriteIntoSnapshotFile(
    scoped_ptr<SnapshotFileDetails> snapshot_file_details) {
  DCHECK(content::BrowserThread::CurrentlyOn(content::BrowserThread::UI));
  DCHECK(snapshot_file_details.get());

  if (snapshot_file_details->error_occurred()) {
    content::BrowserThread::PostTask(
        content::BrowserThread::IO,
        FROM_HERE,
        base::Bind(snapshot_file_details->error_callback(),
                   base::PLATFORM_FILE_ERROR_FAILED));
    return;
  }
  content::BrowserThread::PostTask(
      content::BrowserThread::IO,
      FROM_HERE,
      base::Bind(snapshot_file_details->success_callback(),
                 snapshot_file_details->file_info(),
                 snapshot_file_details->snapshot_file_path()));
}

}  // namespace chrome

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


The benefits of women that do weight training far outweigh the ones that just do cardio.
You will loose body fat!
You will be much stronger without being bulky.
You will increase your strength to help you with other activities such as golf, tennis, skiing, biking.
You will lose inches, which means a smaller dress size! Muscle weighs more than fat, but it is dense. So throw the scale away and go by how your clothes fit.
It will help lower your blood pressure and reduce your risk of heart disease and diabetes. Strength training lowers your blood pressure and gives your heart a break.
The best part is you can do it anytime, anywhere! Just pick up a pair of dumbbells and start lifting!
New Year Fitness Resolutions 2019!
Tips to avoid gaining extra weight during the Holidays!


text:
Home Drug Abuse Health News Health Reviews Mental Health Jumps in Pot Use, Depression and Drinking Threaten Gains Against Smoking
Jumps in Pot Use, Depression and Drinking Threaten Gains Against Smoking
Health & Medical Reviews and News 05:21 Drug Abuse, Health News, Health Reviews, Mental Health,
Pot, Alcohol and Depression. This trio of factors is on the increase in former smokers and ups the risk of relapse, undermining decades of gains made in the effort to help Americans kick the habit, a new study suggests.
"Because previous research has demonstrated that these factors put former smokers at greater risk of relapsing with tobacco … our study should signal an alarm for public health leaders and health care providers," said lead investigator Renee Goodwin, from the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.
To arrive at that conclusion, the researchers analyzed data from more than 67,000 former smokers in the United States, aged 18 and older, who took part in the annual National Survey on Drug Use and Health between 2005 and 2016.
During that time, major depression increased from 4.9% to 6.1%, marijuana use during the previous year rose from 5.4% to 10.1%, and alcohol binge drinking during the previous month increased from 17.2% to 22.3% among former smokers.
Between 2002 and 2016, the rate of quitting cigarettes among people who had ever smoked rose from 44.4% to 50%. More than half of former smokers had quit for three years or more, according to the study.
"It's good news that as tobacco control efforts have been successful at reducing smoking, the proportion of former smokers among the U.S. population is increasing. However, as our study demonstrates, more of them are now suffering from depression and engaging in problematic substance use," Goodwin said in a Columbia news release.
Clinicians and anyone designing public anti-smoking campaigns should be aware of the link between depression/substance abuse and smoking relapse, she said.
Screening for depression and drug use should be high priorities to assure "growing and sustained abstinence among the U.S. population, a trend with significant health and societal benefits," Goodwin concluded.
The study was published recently in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
Tags # Drug Abuse # Health News # Health Reviews # Mental Health
Popular Tags: Drug Abuse, Health News, Health Reviews, Mental Health


text:
Home In Brief: Buprenorphine for Opioid Use Disorder
In Brief: Buprenorphine for Opioid Use Disorder
Project Number: RC1092-000
Result type: Tools
No clear patterns emerged suggesting that one formulation of buprenorphine was superior to another for the treatment of opioid use disorder (OUD).
No included studies reported statistically significant differences in the safety profiles of the different buprenorphine formulations.
Two US economic evaluations were identified. One suggests that the treatment of stabilized patients with OUD, with implantable buprenorphine in combination with psychosocial therapy, provides a cost-effective benefit over generic buprenorphine in combination with psychosocial therapy. The other evaluation suggests that the buprenorphine implant in combination with psychosocial therapy does not provide a cost-effective benefit compared with generic buprenorphine-naloxone in combination with psychosocial therapy. Additional Canadian research is needed to assess the comparative cost-effectiveness of the various buprenorphine formulations.
Two evidence-based guidelines were identified. One evidence-based guideline provides a strong recommendation for the use of buprenorphine/naloxone as first-line therapy for the treatment of OUD. The second guideline provides a strong recommendation to offer either buprenorphine/naloxone or methadone for the treatment of OUD.
There is a high degree of uncertainty in the highlighted findings because of the limitations in the included studies. More high-quality research on the comparative clinical effectiveness of buprenorphine formulations for OUD is needed to reduce this uncertainty.
OUD is described as "a problematic pattern of opioid use leading to clinically significant impairment or distress." OUD may involve the use of illicitly made opioids. It may also involve the use of prescription opioids that are obtained illicitly or used for non-medical purposes. The clinical management of OUD varies depending on the desired treatment intensity. The goal of therapy is to reduce or prevent opioid use and related harms. Pharmacotherapies, such as buprenorphine or methadone, are commonly used in the treatment of OUD.
Buprenorphine is a medication used in the treatment of OUD. It works to relieve opioid withdrawal symptoms and reduce cravings. Buprenorphine is unique in that it offers several formulation choices and flexible administration options. Its pharmacology is also different given that it tightly binds to, and only partially agonizes, the mu-opioid receptors in the body.
In Canada, several formulations of buprenorphine are available for the treatment of OUD, including single-ingredient buccal film (currently only available through the Health Canada Special Access Program), buprenorphine extended-release injection, and subcutaneous implant, as well as the combination product of buprenorphine with naloxone in a sublingual tablet. A review of the comparative clinical effectiveness, safety, cost-effectiveness, and evidence-based guidelines on the different buprenorphine formulations may provide information on differences between products that can inform decisions in practice.
A limited literature search was conducted on key resources. Titles and abstracts of the retrieved publications were reviewed. Full-text publications were evaluated for final article selection according to predetermined selection criteria (population, intervention, comparator, outcomes, and study designs).
Clinical evidence based on 15 publications — two systematic reviews, three randomized controlled trials in four publications, six non-randomized studies, two economic evaluations (one of which was conducted within an included systematic review), and two evidence-based guidelines — was summarized.
In Brief: Buprenorphine for Opioid Use Disorder: A Review
Buprenorphine for Opioid Use Disorder: A Review of Comparative Clinical Effectiveness, Safety, Cost-Effectiveness, and Guidelines
Evidence on Opioids


Yandex is reporting via Opera browser (latest version) that the MURC is very bad. Suggesting everyone to stay away or they will be doomed.
Opera is saying MURC is bad both in Europe and in Asia.
A quick gander around suggests there's something going on on the dark web which deals with "non good" stuff and it happens to be acronymed as MURC.
In short, we've got identity fraud going on and it's dragging our name through the mud with it.
Well, might have found another issue with Murc. Tried to google murc.ws and got the forum no issue, but occasionally clicking on the search for murc.ws and it brings up a redirect to myfilestore.com, which is a known exploit redirect of file permissions apparently on the server hosting the forum. This might have helped contribute to murc.ws being drawn through the mud lately. Think Sasq or whoever's in charge needs to have a quick look around and see if anything can be done.
I uninstalled Opera from all my devices, both on PC's and and Android alike. Based on Google's Chrome is the reason.
Yandex never responded to my email.
IMHO Alphabet is a bad company. Index that ****oles!
Firefox now blocks murc.ws by default without an option of opting out of their block. You know, the MURC is a horrible site that spams, phishing, stolen ID's etc... yea that's us!. NOT! :rolleyes"
This is the kind of thing that happens when good intentions go bad. There is no safety fall back, no one to contact, nothing that can be done ONCE YOU ARE BLACK LISTED. Heh, 15 or so years ago some peep on here claimed black listing didn't happen, like something out of myth and lore.
I had to use Palemoon to post this.
Looks like it's been fixed or thew latest Opera updates are ignoring the old problem.


The AmberSpecialist.com specializes mainly in Baltic amber with insect inclusions. We also have a wide range of minerals, fossils, meteorites, magnifyers and boxes. Actually everything for the true collector.
For years, lives a growing fascination with Baltic amber with many inclusions. The wonder to hold perfectly preserved insects on more than 40 million years old has been a fantastic experience. With the growing collection was also increasingly being asked how one could also come into possession of such a perfectly preserved fossil insect. For this, the barnsteenspecialist.nl was founded! One site with a variety of Baltic amber at an affordable price. For all information on counterfeits, which unfortunately are in circulation, and how to recognize them.
Do you want to come over sometime to see our collection by a magnifying glass? Which can! We are located in Halsteren in the Netherlands, make an appointment through the customer service and fill out the contact form.


The Hindu has no authority over creatures of the earth. God (Brahman) is the efficient cause and nature, Prakrti, is the material cause of the universe. However, this division is non-dualistic in nature. They are one in the same, or perhaps better stated, they are the one in the many and the many in the one.
Despite western assertion that Hinduism is polytheistic in nature, this sort of polytheism is actually monotheistic in nature. While the Divine is manifest in many, the many are all and no less than, but not equal to the Divine.
While Hindus are not given the sort of authority over nature and creation that Judeo-Christian God grants, they are subject to a higher and more authoritative resposiblity for creation. The most important aspect of this is the doctrine of ahimsa, non-violence. Faith in this doctrine is comprehensive, Yajnavalkya Smirti warns, "the wicked person who kills animals which are protected has to live in hell fire for the days equal to the number of hairs on the body of that animal."
This doctrine's most important aspect pertains to the belief that the Supreme Being incarnates in to forms of various species.
The Hindu belief in samsara, the cycle of life, death, and rebirth encompasses reincarnation into forms other than human. It is believed that one lives 84,000 lifetimes before one becomes a man. Each species is in this process of samsara until one attains moksha, liberation. The Hindu religious goal of moksha is not salvation, and does not require forgiveness, but detachment from the material world. Though one might argue that such a goal in essence rejects the natural world as having value, the Hindu goal is to liberate one from the self, from the illusion of the material world as being separate and individual.
A second doctrinal Hindu source for treatment of all life and nature is found in the Rig Veda. The Rig Veda regarded trees and plants as possessing divine healing properties, and it is still popularly believed that every tree has a Vriksa-devata, a tree deity. They are ritually worshiped with prayer, offerings, and the sacred thread ceremony. The Vriksa-devata are not worshiped as gods, but as manifestations of the Divine. Tree planting is considered a religious duty.
The Chipko Movement- in March of 1973 in Gopeshwar, India, villagers formed a human chain and hugged trees marked to be cut down for the development of a sports equipment factory. Since then, the Chipko Andolan (movement to hug trees) as grown as a Hindu ecological movement.


Online registration for the 2017 Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society Annual Conference will close at 5pm on Sunday, 4 June 2017.
The conference will take place in the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin on 8-9 June 2017.
It is being held this year alongside the major international conference, Swift350, which is taking place to mark the 350th anniversary of the birth of Jonathan Swift across two venues: Trinity College Dublin and Marsh's Library.
Delegates registered for the ECIS conference may attend all of the Swift350 sessions.
To register now, please visit our Annual Conference page.


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Representation of Public Sector Employers
Axley public sector employer attorneys have a long history of representing municipalities, including counties, cities, villages, towns and school districts. Our attorneys have expertise in representing public sector employers in the labor area, including collective bargaining issues and interest arbitration.
Our public sector employer attorneys have successfully represented public sector employers in litigation brought under the state and federal constitutions, including:
Discrimination and harassment claims under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment
Due process claims arising out of disciplinary or termination decisions
First Amendment employee speech claims
Search and privacy claims under the Fourth Amendment
Our labor and employment attorneys also have vast experience with the numerous statutes and regulations which impact public employers, including Wisconsin's open record and open meetings laws.
Representation of Public Sector Employers Attorneys
Lori M. Lubinsky
Michael J. Modl
Senior Partner•Madison
Leslie A. Sammon
Troy D. Thompson
Chris Toner
Michael J. Westcott
Worker Disability & Retaliation Claims
Obtained summary judgment in federal court, which was affirmed on appeal at Champlin v. Wonewoc-Center Sch. Dist., 2003 WL 2150938, on behalf of school district of former employee's claim for failure to accommodate an alleged disability, while also obtaining no probable cause finding after hearing before Equal Rights Division on retaliation claim brought by same employee
Attorney(s): Lubinsky, Lori M.
Practice Area(s): Civil Rights & Constitutional Issues, Employee Hiring, Discipline & Discharge, Employment Discrimination, Employment Litigation, Federal Court Litigation, Labor & Employment, Litigation, Municipal & School, Representation of Public Sector Employers, School Law
Constructive Discharge
Obtained summary judgment in federal court on behalf of school district on employee's claims for failure to accommodate her alleged disability and constructive discharge, which was affirmed on appeal at Cigan v. Chippewa Falls Sch. Dist., 388 F.3d 331 (7th Cir. 2004)
Practice Area(s): Employment Litigation, Federal Court Litigation, Labor & Employment, Litigation, Municipal & School, Representation of Public Sector Employers, School Law
Prevailed in Open Records Lawsuit
Prevailed in open records lawsuit on behalf of authority sued for release of records relating to authority's investigation into employee's alleged actions, which was affirmed on appeal at Seifert v. Sheboygan Falls School Dist., 2007 WI App 207, 740 N.W.2d 177
Practice Area(s): Employment Litigation, Labor & Employment, Litigation, Representation of Public Sector Employers


Turnkey Solutions, Inc. specializes in designing/building industrial wastewater treatment systems. We will evaluate your needs and custom design a solution. the Systems can be built on a steel skid, on a trailer or in a cargo container and can be manually or automatically controlled. TurnKey Solution's skid-built systems are economical, compact and easy to install.
In order to view the movie you must have quicktime player installed on your computer if you do not have it, please, click on the logo to download a free version of quicktime.


These K fit chinos are the perfect companion of a patterned jumper. This piece has a cuff at the ankle with a logo band giving it a subtle originality. Wear this garment every day to perfect a casual outfit.
Cuffs at the ankles with logo band.
Button and zipper closure at the front.


text:
(-) Action
(-) ID1
(-) Race & Ethnicity (17)
On Emancipation Day in D.C., Two Memorials Tell Very Different Stories
Two memorials have been built in commemoration of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation-one in 1896 and 1998. And while they both pay tribute to the same event, they depict the African Americans within them in very different lights.
Joe Heim
Atlanta Compromise 1895
Regarded as one of the most important speeches in American history, it was delivered by Booker T. Washington as a plea for racial cooperation in the South during a time of deep racial prejudice.
After growing up in foster care, Ashley, a young Native-American Caucasian woman, converts to Islam in hopes of finding structure in a life where it never existed. However, with that decision comes the risk of losing one of the few biological connections she still has.
Yasmin Mistry
Race & Ethnicity Religion
In this excerpt from his book, Walking with the Wind, John Lewis describes his involvement in the sit-ins in Nashville, Tenn., in the spring of 1960.
"The Ponca's challenge of the U.S. government marked a turning point on the long path of Indian resistance. Increasingly, after Standing Bear v. Cook, the fight for Native rights would shift from the battlefields to the courtrooms of the growing nation."
Rigoberta Menchú has dedicated her life to fighting the injustices faced by the people of Guatemala and educating the world on the concept of indigenous people and fighting for their interests.
Race & Ethnicity Class Gender & Sexual Identity
Identity Justice Action
Hanan Ashrawi
Hanan Ashrawi, a principled political activist, seeks "genuine change and peace for both Palestinians and Israelis."
Identity Action
Native American activists use civil disobedience and consensus-building to resolve an old dispute over natural resources.
Race & Ethnicity Religion Class


text:
Trévoux è un comune francese di 6.921 abitanti situato nel dipartimento dell'Ain della regione dell'Alvernia-Rodano-Alpi.

Storia
Un tempo Trévoux faceva parte del ducato di Dombes, a sua volta integrato in quello di Borgogna. Nel 1762 tornò alla corona finché non venne concesso nuovamente ad alcuni nobili della Corte.

Società

Evoluzione demografica

Amministrazione

Gemellaggi

Note

Altri progetti

Collegamenti esterni

Comuni dell'Ain

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Home » Property management platform BuildingLink taps Zachary Kestenbaum to replace father as CEO
People Movers Real Estate Multifamily
Property management platform BuildingLink taps Zachary Kestenbaum to replace father as CEO
Jerry Kestenbaum will focus on smart home efforts
KEYWORDS BuildingLink Jerry Kestenbaum Property management property manager Zachary Kestenbaum
It's a true family affair for property management platform BuildingLink, as the company announced this week that the company's executive vice president of sales, Zachary Kestenbaum, is being elevated to CEO.
Kestenbaum replaces his father, Jerry Kestenbaum, who founded the company 19 years ago and has led it ever since.
The younger Kestenbaum takes over as CEO after spending the last nine years with the company and helping oversee significant growth.
According to the company, the younger Kestenbaum (pictured below) has been "instrumental" in the company's operations in the last several years, guiding the company's product vision and strategy, and delivering a partner integration ecosystem that now includes dozens of software and hardware providers.
BuildingLink provides a tech-focused property management platform for luxury residential properties in 35 states nationally and 33 countries worldwide.
"It has been a real privilege to work with Zach in growing the company over the past nine years he's been here, expanding from 950 properties in eight states to over 4,500 properties in 35 states and 33 countries, and in eight languages today," Jerry Kestenbaum said of his son.
"He is extraordinarily well-prepared to take over as CEO; his impressive technological prowess and seasoned people skills are exactly the ingredients for sustained growth," Kestenbaum continued. "He brings a generationally relevant intuition about the needs of millennials, baby boomers, and generations in-between."
Moving forward, the elder Kestenbaum will focus on the company's "Aware by BuildingLink" program, working to develop innovative solutions in areas across IoT and sensor solutions, smart home, machine learning, and data analytics and visualization.
"I'm excited to take on the challenge of leading this most innovative company that is built on the talent of exceptional people and inspired by a celebrated tradition of creativity," the younger Kestenbaum said.
"I'm very thankful to my father, Jerry, for the tremendous vision and perseverance with which he transformed the residential real estate management industry over the last 19 years," Kestenbaum continued. "He has taught me so much by example, and I hope to continue his trailblazing ways. I am incredibly excited to assume this new role and for the future of BuildingLink!"
On-demand property maintenance platform Homee raises $11 million to power growth
loanDepot taps former Keller Williams CEO Chris Heller to lead mello Home
Rent-to-own operator Vision Property Management shut down in Wisconsin


text:
Free DairyNZ pitstop health checks to continue
DairyNZ is looking out for its farmers, and free health checks were conducted throughout New Zealand recently.
Originally started as part of DairyNZ's Health PitStops project, which was supported by the Transforming the Dairy Value Chain (TDVC) Primary Growth Partnership programme, the Health PitStops have continued.
Young riders impress in Subway National Track Cycling Series
Some of New Zealand's burgeoning young track cyclists impressed in the first round of the new Subway National Track Series at Invercargill over the weekend.
The competition at the SIT Zero Fees Velodrome was the first of three in the new Subway National Track Series with two further rounds to take place in July and August in Cambridge.


text:
Q: Issue in getting value of input type = radio from asp.net childf page of a master page to c# I am having an issue in getting the value of an input type = radio In c#
My form is in the master page as follows:
   <form id="form1" runat="server">
    <asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="head" runat="server">
 </asp:ContentPlaceHolder>

    <asp:Label ID="DoctorName" runat="server" Text=""     CssClass="Label"></asp:Label>
    <asp:ImageButton ID="logout" ImageUrl="~/Logout.png" style ="float:right; margin-right:20px;" runat="server" Height="40" Width="30"/>

     <asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="ContentPlaceHolder1" runat="server">

      </asp:ContentPlaceHolder>

   </form>

In my child page (c# file) I just tried to do the Request.form["MouvementYesNo"] but it returned a null value what should I do as another method ? should the two radio buttons have the same id? or how to get them by name?

        Troubles du mouvement *
     <input type="radio" runat="server" name="MouvementYesNo" value="Yes" checked> Yes
    <input type="radio" runat="server" name="MouvementYesNo" value="No"> No

A: Since all of HTML radio buttons have runat="server" attribute which means they're accessible from code behind, put different control IDs and use if condition to check which radio button is selected.
Markup
<input id="RadioButton1" type="radio" runat="server" name="MouvementYesNo" value="Yes" checked> Yes
<input id="RadioButton2" type="radio" runat="server" name="MouvementYesNo" value="No"> No

Code behind
protected void Button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    if (RadioButton1.Checked == true)
    {
        // do something
    }
    else if (RadioButton2.Checked == true)
    {
        // do something else
    }

    // other stuff
}

Note that if you want to use Request.Form, the HTML server control attribute (i.e. runat="server") should be removed, also Request.Form contains null value if no radio button input elements are selected.
Side note:
Better to use RadioButtonList server control like this:
<asp:RadioButtonList ID="MouvementYesNo" runat="server">
    <asp:ListItem value="Yes">Yes</asp:ListItem>
    <asp:ListItem value="No">No</asp:ListItem>
</asp:RadioButtonList>

And you can get currently selected radio button value later:
var selected = MouvementYesNo.SelectedValue;

Similar issue:
Getting value from html radio button - in aspx-c#

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Scribes of Hate: Culture Vultures and the Terror War
I'm sure that a great many Americans don't know who Martin Amis is. If they do, they are more likely to know him as the author of "The Rachel Papers," which was made into quirky teen-comes-of-age movie years ago, or perhaps as the son of Kingsley Amis, whose acerbic, slightly racy (for their day) novels were once mainstays on the British literary scene. But Martin himself has become something of a Brit mainstay in his middle age, routinely touted as one of the island's top writers and definitely one of the glitterati on the literary scene.
He is also one of a number of writers on both sides of the Atlantic who were so traumatized by 9/11 that their political polarities were completely reversed. Once rakish, left-of-center, somewhat anti-Establishment types, they suddenly became ardent champions of Authority, cheering on the great Leaders who would keep them safe. (Amis even embedded himself with Blair for intimate portraits of the great man in action.)
Amis was one of the first out of the blocks with his metamorphosis, delivering a well-paid piece just days after the attack which I thought even at the time read like the panicky words of a man who until that moment had never thought his own precious self might meet with the violent end that daily afflicts multitudes of the lesser orders around the world.
And Amis began as he meant to go on. Shaking off the parlor socialism of his youth, he made the astonishing discovery that Josef Stalin had been one bad hombre. Did you know there was this Gulag thing? And tortures and stuff? This was apparently all news to Amis, who wrote a book about his discoveries, pedantically laying out all the facts that Solzhenitsyn, Robert Conquest and countless others had detailed decades ago. I recall him telling a story of how one night during that time, he and his wife were awakened by their young daughter, who was crying so loudly that even the all-night nanny who looked after her for the Amises couldn't calm her, and Martin himself was forced to rise from his bed and attend the child. As the screeching went on, he turned to his wife and said, "You know, her cries would not have been out of place in Stalin's Lubyanka."
And there, in that agonizing moment in his London mansion, Martin Amis became as one with the victims of the Gulag.
Needless to say, Amis followed his good friend Christopher Hitchens into the lists to take up a lance against "Islamofascism" -- an enemy which, like Hitchens, he seems to have trouble distinguishing from Muslims in general. In fact, as novelist Ronan Bennett noted in a major piece in Monday's Guardian, Amis -- suave literary lion of British high culture -- has taken up and megaphoned almost every ignorant, hatemongering, Islamophobic trope of the knuckle-dragging Right -- including that old standby of sexual panic from time immemorial: "They're outbreeding us!"
"Muslims are gaining on us demographically at a huge rate," Amis says, echoing the clenched-scrotum fear of the genuinely moronic Mark Steyn. "A quarter of humanity now and by 2025 they'll be a third. Italy's down to 1.1 child per woman. We're just going to be outnumbered." These are of course precisely the same kind of vapors that our manly Anglo-American elites have voiced over the years about Jews, blacks, the Irish, the Chinese, Mexicans and so on. "They" are always coming, "they" are always breeding like flies, "they" are always going to overwhelm "us" -- and steal "our" women.
That earlier mainstay of the British literary scene, William Shakespeare, once caught this sexual panic perfectly in Henry V, as he portrays the frightful French in dread of the English invasion:
By faith and honour,
Our madams mock at us, and plainly say
Our mettle is bred out, and they will give
Their bodies to the lust of English youth
To new-store France with bastard warriors.
But Amis, like Hitchens and countless other "liberal hawks," doesn't confine his fears to the lack of fecundity among cultured white folk. He is also keen to see the power of the state brought down upon the heads of ordinary, law-abiding Muslims, in order to instill, well, terror in them:
The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order. What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation -- further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or from Pakistan ... Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children...
There is another word for this: collective punishment. The cultured defenders of civilization once punished this kind of thing with war crimes trials and executions of its practitioners. Now our panicky paladins reach for the truncheon at the slightest twinge of fear, the slightest perceived threat to their privilege.
The Amis quote above comes from an interview in The Times last year, which was noted -- and criticized -- in a recent book by literary critic Terry Eagleton, sparking the kind of cultural spat so beloved by British newspapers. But Ronan Bennett's piece goes behind the gossipy headlines to reveal the rank racism at the heart of Amis' metamorphosis. And it is this same kind of racism, and its tacit acceptance -- or, more often, its eager embracing -- by the Anglo-American Establishments that has led and will lead us into more mass murder. Already the state-led "Terror War" has claimed far more innocent victims than the terrorism of stateless criminal bands adhering to various extremist strains of Islam.
Racism is always, everywhere, an expression of ignorance. And in almost every case, this is a willful ignorance, a deliberate blindness induced by fear, by greed, by anger, by the projection of one's own base and chaotic nature (the common lot of all humanity) onto some scapegoat. The trembly fears of Martin Amis are of no great moment in themselves. But the most powerful forces in the world are being ruled by same kind of ignorance and blindness that his genteel racism represents. That's why Bennett's calling of Amis to account is an important gesture. We countenance such deadly ignorance at our own extreme peril.
Extensive excerpts from "Shame on Us," by Ronan Bennett, can be found after the jump.
Ronan Bennett:
Amis's views are symptomatic of a much wider and deeper hostility to Islam and intolerance of otherness. Only last week, the London Evening Standard felt able to sponsor a debate entitled: Is Islam good for London? Do another substitution here and imagine the reaction had Judaism been the subject. As Rabbi Pete Tobias noted...the so-called debate was sinisterly reminiscent of the paper's campaign a century ago to alert its readers to the "problem of the alien", namely the eastern European Jews fleeing persecution who had found refuge in the capital. In this context, Rod Liddle's contribution to the proceedings -- "Islamophobia? Count me in" -- sounds neither brave, brash nor provocatively outrageous, merely racist. Those who claim that Islamophobia can't be racist, because Islam is a religion not a race, are fooling themselves: religion is not only about faith but also about identity, background and culture, and Muslims are overwhelmingly non-white. Islamophobia is racist, and so is antisemitism...
Amis sought to excuse the passage quoted above by pointing out that it was prefaced by the words "There's a definite urge - don't you have it? - to say, 'The Muslim community ... (etc)'... In a letter to the Independent columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, he explained, "It was a thought experiment, or a mood experiment."
....If, for some, the distinction was not quite clear, Amis expanded his defence in a live interview with Jon Snow on Channel 4 News. He maintained that the target of his attack was Islamism, "an extreme ideology within a religion". He was not, he stressed, attacking Islam itself or Muslims in general, though he ran into some difficulty when Snow reminded him of his observation on the alleged "extreme incuriosity of Islamic culture", and of his reaction on seeing his six-year-old daughter's toys being searched by airport security: "Oh yeah, and stick to people who look like they're from the Middle East" (itself further proof, if such were needed, of the racist nature of Islamophobia). Taken along with his assertion that "there are great problems in Islam", did not these statements, Snow proposed, indicate that he was taking "scattergun" aim at all Muslims? Amis retorted: "I do not believe in any persecution of the Muslim community. I think that would be counterproductive."
At which point, the question becomes unavoidable: is efficacy now to be the benchmark for persecutors?
...We can dispense with Amis's polite fiction that he is talking about "Islamism"; there are just too many generalisations ("The impulse towards rational inquiry," Amis wrote elsewhere, "is by now very weak in the rank and file of the Muslim male"), too many references to "them" and "us". When he says, for example, "they" are gaining on "us" demographically, he is demonstrably not talking about "Islamists". The danger of being overrun, outnumbered, outbred is a repugnant trope beloved of supremacists everywhere...When Amis voices his fears of being overrun, he is, and he knows he is, perpetuating and enhancing the spectre of the other, and loading it with the potent imagery of swarming poverty, violence and ignorance.
At the Cheltenham literary festival, Amis treated his audience to a discussion on the relative value of Muslim and western states, the former being, in his estimation, less evolved than the latter. "I am just saying that some societies are more evolved than others," he said. (Evolved is an interesting choice of word. In the Belgian Congo, the colonisers used to employ a system of rewarding colonised people who alienated themselves from indigenous society: they were raised to an officially designated category of évolués.) "There is no inoffensive way to put this," Amis continued provocatively. "By evolved, I mean more civilised. We have more respect for civil society."
This is not the time or place to debate the proposition or the definitions Amis employs, though I would say, in a general response to the generalised argument, that I have seen, at times, rather more respect for civil society, from how they treat their families and the elderly to strangers in the street, in Damascus, Ramallah and east Jerusalem than I have seen, at times, in London, New York and Paris. Equally, when he says, "Here in the west we have the most evolved society in the world and we are not blowing people up", it is hard not to think of the ghosts of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Muslim dead from Iraq to Afghanistan who might take issue with him. No, here the salient point is that Amis, contrary to his assertions, is talking about Islam, not Islamism, Muslims, not Islamists.
It is one thing - and the right thing - to challenge at every turn antisemitism, misogyny, homophobia, incitement to violence and hatred where it exists among Muslims, just as we should where it exists in the police, the church, the political parties, newspapers or anywhere else. But British Muslims I have spoken to now talk about feeling "deluged" by hostile comment. Hardly a day goes past when they are not lectured and scolded by writers claiming to be the champions of true liberalism....
This is a community under attack, and not just by novelists. By every official index, violence and discrimination against Muslims have increased since 2001....
Muslims bridle at the broad strokes by which they are depicted. Every time a writer or politician or policeman begins a sentence by saying "Muslims must ...", there is little recognition of the sheer variety of belief within Islam, or of the cultural diversity among Muslims, or of the everyday pragmatic reality of what it means in a secular age to believe in God and to try to live by that belief. In this respect Muslims are like anyone else. Some are devout, some are not at all, some are not very much, and some are devout sometimes. Some are sinners; they fall down and try to get up again. Some are hypocrites who fall down and pretend to be still on their feet. Many fail to live up to their religion's, and their own, high expectations of themselves. Many have sex outside marriage, as many Catholics do. Some Muslims drink alcohol, as some Jews eat pork. A few, in common with a few Christians, think gay people should be murdered. Observant Muslims contest, dispute, accept and reject points of doctrine exactly as those from other faiths do. The Qur'an, as one Muslim put it to me, is not a program to be loaded and Muslims are not computers....
Four days after the Pentagon and the twin towers were attacked, the novelist Ian McEwan wrote on these pages: "Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion, and it is the beginning of morality." As an expression of outraged, anguished humanism, McEwan's formulation was truthful, moving and humbling, and can hardly be bettered. But it seems to me the compassion is flowing in one direction, the anger in another. I can't help feeling that Amis's remarks, his defence of them, and the reaction to them were a test. They were a test of our commitment to a society in which imaginative sympathy applies not just to those like us but to those whose lives and beliefs run along different lines.
And I can't help feeling we failed that test. Amis got away with it. He got away with as odious an outburst of racist sentiment as any public figure has made in this country for a very long time. Shame on him for saying it, and shame on us for tolerating it.


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Big Plans For Small Nuclear Plants
Published Wed Sep 18 2019 12:06:09 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)
The urgency of global warming has created a dilemma: how to reduce carbon emissions while electrifying the world economy. Wind and solar will play a big role, but in many places they won't be enough. That's where The Nuclear Option comes in. New, small reactors are taking shape, and in some cases literally, ship shape. And these updated reactor designs are sparking new interest in nuclear power.
by Bruce Gellerman
This story is Part 2 in a series on the future of nuclear power. Part 1 is here.
The future of nuclear power has long been part of the history of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MIT's Nuclear Reactor Laboratory, built in the 1950s, is the second-largest university reactor in the United States. But it's small — operating at just 1% of the energy of the recently closed Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station.
MIT's reactor doesn't produce power, it's a training and research tool. And working with it is the "best job in the world," according to Jacopo Buongiorno. "We have fun with new nuclear reactor concepts."
Buongiorno is co-leader of the Reactor Lab and head of MIT's Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems, where what's old is new, and "small" is the cutting edge of nuclear's future. Buongiorno investigates how advanced nuclear plant designs and construction techniques can be used to power our warming planet as fossil fuels are phased out.
"For nuclear, historically we always start with, 'What about the waste? What about the safety? What about proliferation?' And those are important issues we have to address," says Buongiorno. "But first, let's see why you'd want to mess with this technology to begin with."
Here's why: Just 97 US nuclear power plants produce 20% of the nation's electricity — and more than half of our low-carbon power. Most were built over 40 years ago and many are scheduled for shutdown. Only one new reactor has been licensed in a quarter century.
"That has to change because we have a have a big problem, which is climate change," says Buongiorno. "And nuclear can be a big, big part of the solution."
But the big, complex nuclear plants of the past are part of the problem, because they're enormously expensive to build and maintain. The cost of two large reactors currently under construction in Georgia has doubled to $28 billion, and they're years behind schedule.
So now Buongiorno and other nuclear engineers, scientists and startups are thinking small, with simple, faster and cheaper nuclear reactor designs.
"It's one thing to embark on a project that can cost a billion dollars; another that [sic] costs $10 billion," says Buongiorno. "A $10 billion project you're betting the farm, a billion dollars — even if it goes catastrophically wrong — you don't break the bank."
But can the world bank on nuclear power to help address climate change, given concerns over cost, safety, proliferation and radioactive waste?
"Those problems are solvable in principle," says former Obama science adviser John Holdren, who is now a professor of environmental policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. "But I'm agnostic on whether we will be wise enough able to solve them in practice."
Not everyone is agnostic. Earlier this year, nuclear power's true believers and renewable energy advocates met at an MIT conference to discuss the future of energy.
There, Chris Colbert, chief strategy officer at NuScale Power, pitched the Oregon company's design for a small modular nuclear reactor.
"What we've done is go to a smaller design — we've got no reactor coolant pumps. And the consequence of that decision is we've been able to eliminate two-thirds of the systems and components you find in a large plant," says Colbert.
At 76 feet high and 15 feet in diameter, a self-contained NuScale reactor would take up just 1% of the space of a conventional reactor. Buried deep in the earth and surrounded by millions of gallons of water, one reactor could power a remote region. Twelve modular reactors, stacked up like beer cans in six packs, could serve a city.
"The minute you get rid of two-thirds of the stuff, there's less stuff to buy and install, less stuff to operate and maintain, less stuff to break and go wrong," says Colbert. "It becomes safer, more cost-effective, easier to build."
To save on construction costs, NuScale plans to use a standardized design, mass producing modules in factories, transporting them to sites, and installing them in the ground. Colbert says they'll also be cheaper to operate.
NuScale plans to begin commercial production in six years. It's one of about a dozen companies trying to enter the emerging small modular market. The firm's first test reactor will be built at the Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory. It's part of Energy Secretary Rick Perry's plan to jump-start the nation's aging nuclear industry.
"We're going to make nuclear cool again," says Perry. "For 30 years we've let nuclear sit there and atrophy."
Cool comes at a cost. The DOE has invested $300 million in NuScale's small modular reactor design. But there's foreign competition in the market, and the United States is playing catch-up.
"We see this as a competition with Russian and Chinese state-owned enterprises who don't have the same commitment to safe operation that the United States does," says Colbert.
The Russian state atomic energy corporation Rosatom recently delivered a floating nuclear power plant with two small reactors to eastern Siberia. Russian officials say it will be full operational by the end of December.
Greenpeace calls the project "Chernobyl on Ice," warning of collisions with other vessels, terrorist attacks, and storms. The Russian nuclear agency calls the concerns "unfounded" and says the floating reactors offer "clean, green, stable energy."
China has also announced plans to launch a fleet of up to 20 floating nuclear power plants. Construction of the first is set to begin soon.
A small team at MIT has been studying the feasibility of a similar idea. Buongiorno says the plan calls for building small reactors in shipyards then towing the nuclear platforms offshore where needed.
"It becomes a 'plug and play' energy source," says Buongiorno. "You build it, you float it out to the site and provide electricity. But if there is a more profitable site you simply move your power plant there."
The United States military did something like this 50 years ago, anchoring a reactor aboard a barge on a lake in Panama to power canal locks during a decade-long drought.
Now, as the climate rapidly changes, proponents of nuclear power say it's time to get back to the future. But former Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko is dubious, saying that more mini-reactors on sea and land will mean more nuclear accidents.
"Every day almost you see a new story, talking about how we're not going to solve the problem of climate change without nuclear reactors," says Jaczko. "And when I see those things I scratch my head and wonder if they're talking about the same industry I've been familiar with, because I don't see how nuclear power plants are going to solve that problem."
"I think we need all the options on the table, and that includes nuclear," says Ashley Finan, executive director of the Nuclear Innovation Alliance. She's an expert in funding new, advanced reactor designs, and says that economics are the key to the future success of nuclear power.
"If it's not competitive it won't scale and it won't address climate," Finan says.
But the scale will have to be enormous. Right now there are 448 nuclear reactors operating worldwide. Meeting emission targets — and the increased demand for electricity — could require building hundreds, if not thousands, of new nuclear reactors over the next three decades.
Climate change is here. Time is not on our side. The choices don't get easier.
This story is part of "Covering Climate Now," a week-long global initiative of over 250 news outlets, and comes from the New England News Collaborative, eight public media companies, including The Public's Radio, coming together to tell the story of a changing region, with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Floating nuclear power plant 'Akademik Lomonosov' is towed out of the St. Petersburg, Russia shipyard where it was constructed in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Jacopo Buongiorno, MIT Nuclear Reactor Laboratory director of science and technology.
An artist's rendition of a miniature nuclear reactor in transit.


This add-on registers a PAC script using the proxy API.
The PAC script is initialized with a list of hostnames: it blocks requests to any hosts that are in the list.
The list is given the following default values: ["example.com", "example.org"], but the user can add and remove hosts using the add-on's options page.
Note that the hostname-matching is very simple: hostnames must exactly match an entry in the list if they are to be blocked. So with the default settings, "example.org" would be blocked but "www.example.org" would be permitted.
try visiting some different pages, to see the effect of your changes.
How to implement a simple PAC script, and register it using the proxy API.
How to exchange messages between a PAC script and a background script.


The Community Service Program represents a sentencing alternative to incarceration for varied offenses and a mechanism for fulfilling sentencing obligations. This service is provided to government agencies and charitable organizations in the community. On average, our agency performs over 60,000 community service hours per year.
As a participant performing community service, you are expected to report between the hours of 7:00 AM – 7:30 AM for a job assignment. Community service is performed Monday – Sunday (except for legal holidays).


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LMS Improved Precedent Class 2-4-0 ( Sold Out)
The 'Jumbos' of the London & North Western Railway
The LNWR 'Jumbos' were among the most famous British steam engines of the nineteenth century. They were not only capable of high speeds but regularly hauled heavy loads in relation to their small size, and so they well deserved their nickname.
They were designed by F.W.Webb, and 166 of them were built at Crewe Works between 1887 and 1901. Known officially as the 'Improved Precedent' class, they were developed from John Ramsbottom's Newton Class of 1866-73.
One of the most famous 'Jumbos' was No.790 Hardwicke. During the 'Races to the North' in 1895, it set a record which was to last for almost forty years. Hauling the west coast train from Crewe to Carlisle, it covered the 141 miles of hilly road, including four miles of 1 in 75 Shap Summit, at an average speed of 67 1/4 mph, and achieved speeds over 90 mph. It is now preserved in the National Railway Museum, York England
Even more famous in its day was No.955 Charles Dickens. This engine worked the 8:30am express from Manchester to London Euston and the 4pm return for twenty years and so covered more than 2 million miles, a record that has never been broken by any other British steam engine.
Aster has chosen to model these two famous engines as they were in the late nineteenth century, in the famous blackberry black livery of the LNWR. They are a fitting companion to the model of the famous east-coast engine, the Stirling Single, produced in 1996. After the grouping of 1923, when the LNWR became part of the LMS, four 'Jumbos' were painted in LMS crimson red. Aster has chosen to model LMS No.5036 Novelty in red livery and No.25001 Snowdon, which has the last surviving 'Jumbo' in plain black livery, as it was when scrapped in 1934.
Some pictures from Southern Steam Trains USA
Weight 2.9kg. (Engine 1.7 kg + Tender 0.9 kg)
Length 457mm (Engine 252mm + Tender 195mm)
Wheel Arrangement 2-4-0
Driving Wheel 63mm
Pilot and Trailer Truck Wheel 34mm
Tender Truck Wheel 34mm
Axle Driven Pump mounted
Cylinder 2 Cylinders Bore 12mm × Stroke 20mm
Valve Gear Slip Eccentric
Boiler Type C Type with 5 Fire Tubes
Water Capacity 80cc at 80% full
Boiler Fittings Safety Valve, Pressure Gauge,Water Gauge, Regulator and Blower Valve,
Lubricator Roscoe Displacement Type
Tender Hand Pump Mounted
Fuel Capacity 65cc


Win or lose, Ukraine's Nikita Krylov has never gone the distance in his mixed martial arts career.
That held true for the 25th time on Saturday night at UFC 201, as the 24-year-old light heavyweight prospect landed a brutal head kick knockout finish of veteran Ed Herman for his fifth consecutive win.
Both fighters were exchanging blows in close early in the second round when Krylov landed a perfectly placed and beautifully executed left kick to the head, which sent Herman faceplanting to the mat. The bout was waved at the 40-second mark at Atlanta's Philips Arena.
Herman (23-12) lost for the second time in his past three fights and has alternated wins and losses over his past seven.


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The Decade of Gaming in Review
"Mentioned in Dispatches" now on iTunes
Gamers for Cures 24-hour Marathon 2019
Riding to battle in style!
Armchair Dragoons Upcoming Expeditions
Origins Game Fair 2020:
in 4 months, 24 days, 22 hours
Mentioned in Dispatches, S3E12 – Retro Games & Holiday Shopping December 6, 2019
Mentioned in Dispatches, S3E11 – Outlandish Hats & Military Museums November 22, 2019
Mentioned in Dispatches, S3E10 – The Cold War. No, the original one. November 15, 2019
Mentioned in Dispatches
Our Article Feed
After-Action Reports
Wargame Night
Archive For The "Historical Sites" Category
Adventures in Napoleonicisms: Eggmuhl Battlefield
Jim Owczarski, 20 November 2019
We perceived, through its whole breadth, this battlefield rising gently in an amphitheatre. The summits of the hills were crowned with fine forests; the valleys opened before us, bare enough, but cultivated and separated from one another by hills of slightly marked feature. There was the valley of Eckmühl (running from south to north), up which wound the Ratisbon road, and there was that of the two Laichlings, separated from one another by a small wood… — General Jean-Jacques Germain Pelet-Clozeau, April 1809
If your hobby is visiting battlefields, you spend a lot of time reading first-hand accounts, studying period maps, and badgering academics trying to see the story on the ground. You rebuild the battle in your mind, often moment by moment, and try to bring to order an event that was by its very nature disordered. It can be a disheartening process. As I have written elsewhere, many of the Napoleonic battlefields I study are all but lost. Those of which traces still exist have often been significantly altered. Not everything, I suppose, can be Borodino or Waterloo.
In April 1809, though, General Pelet marched with the Emperor to what would soon be known as the battlefield at Eggmuhl and stood at the heights near the village of Lindach. His description, quoted above, is among the most famous of any Napoleonic battlefield from any contemporary source.
And that view is still there.
A panorama.
Adventures in Napoleonicisms: Teugn-Hausen Battlefield
Jim Owczarski, 30 August 2019
I made my way back from the larger battlefields of Napoleon's 1809 campaign in Bavaria and Austria to find the wargame community caught up in furball, conducted in the manner of the internet, about whether we all ought to call ourselves "wargamers".
Semper idem.
Moving briskly by all this as one does a traffic accident or somebody else being arrested, what did I learn about these battles and this campaign that might be of use to a fellow hobbyist? I will neglect the details of the campaign, most of which are well-rehearsed in several books, the most notable being Professor John Gill's three-volume magnum opus, Thunder on the Danube. It is deservedly the normative treatment of the subject for both historians and gamers. While I have an autographed copy of the first volume, I blush to confess that I purchased all three volumes in the Kindle edition for well below market price during a recent sale. I cannot commend them highly enough.
This is a remarkably popular campaign for Napoleonic gamers. Some of this can be attributed to the presence of a commander who gave Napoleon absolute fits (the Archduke Charles) and which featured an army that, under Charles' leadership, dealt Napoleon his first significant defeat (Aspern-Essling). It is also a bit Janus-like in that it was Napoleon's last successful campaign while simultaneously pointing out to the attentive the cracks in his military machine that would shatter open wide in the cold of Russia three years later. Despite this, it also featured Napoleon at his resilient best, recovering from Marshal Berthier's blundering in the Spring to achieve his victory at Wagram a few months later, so even the most Francophilic has something to love.
Adventures in Napoleonicisms: An Auerstedt Travelogue
by Jim Owczarski, 6 October 2018
In the Summer of 2017, I spent two wonderful weeks chasing after Napoleonic glory in what was once East Germany. I have written at length about my experience of researching and eventually visiting Jena, but have neglected to report on what I think is both one of the most pristine and most intriguing of the Napoleonic battlefields I have have been to: Auerstedt.
In this case, however, Auerstedt is sufficiently intact to have permitted me to find each of the viewing points recommended by the book and these, in turn, inform the narrative that follows.
Telling the story briefly, in October 1806, Napoleon, stealing a march on the uxorious Fredrick William III, drove his armies into Thuringia with the intent of destroying the Prussian army before it could attack. Wrong-footed by the rapid French advance, the Prussians began a retreat from their forward positions, intending to form a new defensive line in the vicinity of Leipzig. The Emperor, however, did not wait and his V Corps first caught up with and routed the Prussians at Saalfeld (10 October). Then, three days later, Napoleon himself caught up with what he assumed was the main Prussian army near Jena. He determined to attack early on the morning of the 14th, but, in the meanwhile, sent both Marshals Bernadotte and Davout on a long flank march to the North and East to cut off the likely route of the Prussian retreat. (more…)
Armchair Dragoons © 2020


Delegates from Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, China and PNG and USA attended the 69thInternational Multibeam Beam Training Course at the Port of Brisbane 23 – 28 Nov 2015. Instructors and students alike were unanimous in their praise of Port of Brisbane as host venue and grateful to Giles Stimson (Hydrographic Survey Manager) and his team for their hospitality during the week. For six days participants studied, questioned and debated topics relating to ocean mapping, hydrography and oceanography. Course convener, Nicole Bergersen (Acoustic Imaging, Hydrographic Programs Manager) was full of praise for the extent to which participants engaged with the subject matter presented and looks forward to bringing the course to our region again in Nov 2018.


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James Henry Dark (14 May 1795 – 17 October 1871) was an English professional cricketer who later became a noted patron of the sport and was, from 1835 to 1864, the proprietor of Lord's Cricket Ground. He was the brother of Benjamin Dark.

Career as player and umpire
Dark was born on 24 May 1795 at Marylebone, London. An occasional wicket-keeper, Dark was mainly associated with Middlesex and he made 17 known appearances in first-class matches from 1815 to 1843. In 1835, he represented the Players in the Gentlemen v Players match at Lord's. Dark was described as "a good hitter and fieldsman". He was a respected umpire who stood intermittently from 1829 to 1860.

Proprietor of Lord's
Dark used his earnings from cricket to become a property owner and developer. When an opportunity arose to buy the leasehold at Lord's, Dark was quick to seize it.

The current Lord's Cricket Ground was opened by Thomas Lord in 1814, the ground sited on land that Lord leased from the Eyre Estate in St John's Wood. In 1825, Lord proposed building houses on the land as he was not receiving enough revenue from cricket. There was strong opposition to his idea and he sold his leasehold interest in the ground to William Ward for £5000.

In 1835, Ward sold the leasehold to Dark who paid £2000 upfront and an annuity of £425 to the Ward family through the unexpired term of the lease from Michaelmas Day 1835 for 59 years (to 1894). The rental due to the Eyre Estate was £150 per annum.

Dark lived close by the ground in a house which was "near the present (in 1945) members' luncheon room".

Dark did much to improve Lord's. When he took over, there were two ponds on the land which frequently filled up with rubble and the playing area had a very rough surface. The ponds were eventually drained and filled in while ground maintenance relied to a large extent on sheep to keep the grass down and a small roller to even out the surface. Dark's development programme was ambitious for it included extension and improvement of the pavilion and the installation of gas lighting. He added a billiard room, a real tennis court, a running track and planted 400 trees. He struggled to improve the notoriously bad pitch and some of his extra attractions, such as pony racing and Red Indian encampments, cannot have helped the condition of the outfield.

Dark brought his family into Lord's to help develop the business. His brother Ben established a bat-making business at the ground and their younger brother Robert sold a whole range of equipment including the new pads and gloves that players were beginning to prefer to Muscular Christianity.

In 1860, there was a potential crisis at Lord's when the Eyre Estate decided to sell the freehold at public auction. Dark was among many who urged MCC to bid but, for any number of reasons including a lack of vision, they did not and the ground was bought by Isaac Moses, a property speculator, for £7000. Dark resigned the leasehold in 1864 and it was taken over by MCC. In 1866, using funds advanced by William Nicholson, MCC did buy the freehold from Moses for £18,333 6s 8d, which was not good business: they should have heeded James Dark.

Character and personal life
The son of a saddler, Dark was connected with Lord's in some capacity for 59 years from 1805 to 1864 and it was said of him in Alfred D Taylor's Annals of Lord's and History of the MCC: "having, perhaps, done more for MCC than any other individual". During his period of proprietorship, the ground was often referred to in common parlance as Dark's.

Known as "the Boss", Dark was described as "a somewhat taciturn, silent man, out of who information was not easily extracted".

Dark died on 17 October 1871 at St John's Wood, London at the age of 76 and is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery where a red granite slab was erected with the inscription: "Sacred to the Memory of Mr James Henry Dark, who died October 17th 1871, aged 76.  For many years Proprietor of Lord's Cricket Ground".

References

Bibliography
 Arthur Haygarth (1862) Scores & Biographies, Volumes 1–3 (1744–1846), Lillywhite
 Pelham Warner (1846) Lord's 1787 – 1945, Harrap,

1795 births
1871 deaths
English cricketers
English cricketers of 1787 to 1825
English cricketers of 1826 to 1863
Middlesex cricketers
Marylebone Cricket Club cricketers
English cricket umpires
Players cricketers
Cricket patrons
Cambridge Town Club cricketers


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Q: Performing Hessenberg decomposition on a symbolic matrix I am trying to calculate the Hessenberg decomposition of a symbolic matrix
$$
A=
\begin{pmatrix}
0 & -\mathrm ia & 0 & b \cos x \\
\mathrm ia & 0 & \mathrm ic \sin x & 0 \\
0 & -\mathrm ic \sin x & 0 & -\mathrm ia \\
b \cos x & 0 & \mathrm ia & 0
\end{pmatrix},
$$
where $a,b,c,x$ are symbolic variables. Computing the Hessenberg decomposition for a numerical matrix A can be easily obtained using
{P, T} = HessenbergDecomposition[A];

How can I obtain P and T for my symbolic matrix A?

A: It is not overly difficult to write a simple (but inefficient) method for symbolically performing Hessenberg decomposition, based on repeated similarity transformations with Householder matrices. It is interesting to compare the routine for QR decomposition in this answer with the Hessenberg decomposition function given below:
hesdec[mat_?SquareMatrixQ] := Module[{h = mat, r, n, q, v, v2},
   n = Length[h]; q = IdentityMatrix[n];
   Do[v = PadLeft[h[[k + 1 ;;, k]], n];
      v2 = v - SparseArray[{k + 1 -> Norm[v]}, n];
      r = If[! TrueQ[Norm[v2, ∞] == 0], ReflectionMatrix[v2], IdentityMatrix[n]];
      q = q.r; h = r.h.r, {k, n - 2}];
   {q, h}]

Applied to your matrix,
{qq, hh} = hesdec[{{0, -I a, 0, b Cos[x]}, {I a, 0, I c Sin[x], 0},
                   {0, -I c Sin[x], 0, -I a}, {b Cos[x], 0, I a, 0}}];

one however obtains expressions of horrendous complexity:
LeafCount[hs = Simplify[ComplexExpand[hh, TargetFunctions -> {Re, Im}]]]
   3583

LeafCount[qs = Simplify[ComplexExpand[qq, TargetFunctions -> {Re, Im}]]]
   134

What to do with these matrices afterwards is up to you. But you might appreciate a little that writing functions like these so that expression swell is minimized is not trivial.