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TGJ: The Cliffs of Courage by Marty Callahan
November 11, 2020 by AskAboutKarate
Tiger's Great Journey Continued…
An Adventure Story for Youth Who Want to Make the World a Better Place
A bald eagle cried and swooped low over the fast-running river and snatched an
unsuspecting fish in its talons. Tiger and Blake watched the spectacle from a walking path
alongside the river. Tiger looked far into the distance and saw the river's source, the Great
Ryoku Mountain shrouded in jungle, its summit piercing the clouds. A part of him didn't want to take this journey; that part wanted to turn and run back to his safe and comfortable home. But he was powerfully drawn to the challenge of following in the footsteps of the great man who had given him the Book of the Empty Mind.
His journey was going to take him to the temple at the very top of Ryoku Mountain—the
Temple of the Clouds. And Blake, his childhood friend, would accompany him along the way. This was not Blake's great journey; it was Tiger's Great Journey. Blake wanted to have
adventures, but this experience did not hold a special significance to him. However to Tiger, this adventure had become more important than anything he had ever done in his entire life. It had become the center of his life.
Tiger listened to the rushing of the water and scanned a mountain whose perils he could
only imagine. He did not know if he had the strength, desire, and self-control he would need to conquer all the obstacles between him and the peak. But he did know he wanted to test himself and to become stronger. He had heard of people—some his age, a few younger, many older who had worked hard and made it to the top of the mountain. These people wore a black belt and were quick, strong, wise, and greatly respected. It was a dream of Tiger to be one of them. And though he had some fear, he trusted what Sensei had told him, as he had counseled many others on this same climb.
"Are you ready?" asked Tiger.
"Yeah," said Blake, "let's go."
Tiger loved Blake like a brother. Their families had lived in the same neighborhood since
before either of them was born, and their moms were best friends. Tiger and Blake had lived
their whole lives together, and they got along like two peas in a pod. Something in the back of Tiger's mind told him that he would need Blake along the way.
The two of them set out along the river toward Ryoku Mountain. Tiger remembered that
Sensei had instructed him to empty his mind prior to any setting out. He had told the boy to let go of thoughts about home or school and to simply be aware of all that was happening around him. In this case, Tiger let his thoughts go and became aware of the sound of the pathway soil crunching beneath his feet, the touch of sunlight on his skin, and the sense that his legs and lungs were working harder as the trail grew steeper.
A gnat buzzed, and Tiger brushed it away before it could fly into his ear.
Soon, the boys became aware that the mountain rose sharply to their right, as they entered
a river canyon. The walking path grew more narrow, steep, and bumpy, and then it just ended. The raging river was to the left and to their right, steep and craggy cliffs. Tiger was confused. Were they lost? Should they turn back? He looked up at the cliffs and asked himself if he really wanted to do this. But he knew that if he hoped to make it to the top of the mountain that the two of them would have to climb these cliffs, which were as high as the tallest building he had ever
seen. Tiger remembered how much he loved to have his turn on a climbing wall at a birthday party. But that wall wasn't nearly this high, and it had handles and a safety rope. This cliff was something to behold.
"Our fears can be our greatest obstacles," Tiger remembered Sensei telling him. "If you
want to make it to the top of a mountain, you have to face your fears. You will have to change yourself. You will have to become someone greater than who you are right now. Let your fears stimulate you to change, and let your heart guide this change. Free your mind of doubts, and focus your attention on doing what you need to do."
Tiger took a deep breath. He heard the eagle cry again and nodded at the thought that he,
too, had a spirit that wanted to soar. "Let's climb," he told Blake.
With that, Tiger looked up at the rock wall and scanned it with his mind's eye, a tactic
that the Old Man and Sensei had taught him. Then he saw it, a series of hand- and footholds that stretched from the bottom of the cliff all the way to the top. 'Holds' that were invisible when his mind was filled with doubt, but perfectly clear now that his mind was cleared of doubt. What a realization this was! In an instant Tiger saw how so many of the problems that exist in the world exist because of the fear and doubt that are in people's minds.
Tiger reached up with his right hand and took hold of a small crevice. Then his left hand
clenched onto a small outcropping. He lifted his right foot onto a tiny ledge and pulled himself up. In what seemed like mere seconds, Tiger was ten feet up the cliff with Blake close behind him.
Now that all of his attention was focused on the cliff, Tiger could see all the cracks,
ledges, bumps, and other places to grip and stand on. It wasn't a smooth wall of rock any more, but a series of grips and footholds leading straight up.
And Blake was climbing it like a pro, too!
Tiger was enjoying this immensely. From crevice to outcropping to ledge to foothold,
Tiger moved smoothly and effortlessly up the cliff. He made sure his grips were solid and his toes secure, then pulled himself up again, and again. Every bit of his being was focused on his fingers and toes, and on the places on this cliff that they could grip. His muscles strained, and a bead of sweat trickled down his back.
Tiger was about halfway up, when he placed his hand in a ledge and, in so doing, pushed
a rock back deeper into the crevice, revealing a leather pouch. He reached in and pulled it out and then shouted down to Blake, "Guess what I found?"
"What?" called Blake, who was busy making sure he didn't slip.
"It's a pouch of some kind."
"Cool. We'll have to look at it when we get to the top."
Tiger tucked it into his shirt and continued upward to the cliff's ledge.
After another twenty minutes of climbing, Tiger reached the top and a minute later Blake
scrambled over the top as well.
"We did it!" they shouted and jumped with joy.
Then they turned and gazed down at the great cliff they had just climbed and the churning
river at the base. "This took courage," Tiger said. "We were strong in the face of danger, and we showed the most courage—not when we finished, but when we started."
"I feel confident," said Blake, "and I know that it's because I'm now sure of my climbing
"Me, too," said Tiger. "Now I know what Sensei meant when he said that confidence is
having the belief that you can do something."
Both boys stood in amazement at what they had learned and how they had changed just
by accepting this one challenge. Then Tiger felt something in his shirt and remembered that he had tucked the pouch in it. "The pouch," he said as he pulled it out. "There's something in it."
Blake became curious and walked over. "What is it?"
"It's a parchment of some kind."
"Well, open it up!" said Blake.
"It's a map."
After studying the ancient map for a few moments, Tiger said, "There's a trail leading to
the top of a mountain, and there's a temple at the top. Let me see if I can make out the name." He drew the map a little closer. He squinted hard and after a while he was able to make out faded letters that spelled. . .
GREAT JOURNEY TO RYOKU MOUNTAIN and TE M P L E o f t h e C L O U D S
"It says Great Journey to Ryoku Mountain and Temple of the Clouds. The temple is at
the top of the map; the trail seems to start at the bottom left and winds around to the temple. Wow, look, Blake!"
As Tiger and Blake watched, an image of a child standing facing a big man appeared on
the map and under it the word COURAGE was written.
"Can you believe that? That's what we were just talking about—courage, and now it
appears on this map. This is more than a coincidence, Blake. It's a sign."
"A sign of what?"
Tiger thought for a moment. He couldn't help but think that this had something to do
with the Book of the Empty Mind and his journey to become a Black Belt Shoka Leader. It was no coincidence that he had met the familiar Old Man on the beach, who had given him that book and told him about the mysteries he would encounter on his journey. This must be one of them.
"I don't know, but it must have something to do with my journey to become a Black Belt
Shoka Leader."
They looked at the parchment again. Then Tiger folded it carefully, placed it in the
leather pouch, and tucked it inside his knapsack for safe-keeping.
They then turned and continued on the path leading to their next adventure and the
challenges that would come with it.


SINGAPORE – A brief scan of our Singapore cabinet members' profile yielded an interesting statistic. 5 out of 21 (Mr Lee Hsien Loong, Mr Lui Tuck Yew, Mr Lim Hng Kiang, Mr George Yeo and Mr Teo Chee Hean) of the current cabinet were alumni of our military. Another thing all five of them have in common is that they are winners of prestigious overseas scholarships. Other top civil servants and executives of government-related firms who hail from the military are Mr Philip Yeo and Ms Ho Ching respectively.
Read the full article in The Kent Ridge Common.
Rear-Admiral (NS) Teo Chee Hean [top] is Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister. Brigadier-General (NS) George Yeo [front left] is Singapore's Minister for Foreign Affairs. Lieutenant-General (NS) Lim Hng Kiang [centre] is Singapore's Minister for Trade and Industry.


I understand that the agents are created per worker process in .NET Application environment. In our environment we have one IntroscopeAgent.profile and the application is having 12 worker processes.
So we get 12 agents get created, but all the agents are sharing the same agent profile.
I have Two basic questions.
1. What's difference between Native Profiler and Auto Probe?
2. How do I Customize the agent creation and use differnt IntroscopeAgent.profile for each agent. This will help me to control the agent overhead.
Couple suggestions based on my limited .net experience.
- if you had perfmon - it gets repeated for each agent(w3w) on that box. Very quickly they get out of hand and result in metric explosion.
I agree that we can reduce the overhead by disabling the Perfmon. The challenge is that we have single profile shared by all the agents. We need to monitor the perfmon metrics as well. So I'm trying for the possibilities of having individual profiles for each agent and control them.
Yes, you can use individual profiles for each agent.
Not a .net guy but I was looking for a response to this myself for couple of our .net deployments.
NativeProfiler is the default instrumentation method for all .NET agents 9.0 and higher. AutoProbe is provided as an option for legacy compatibility issues.
By default, .NET agents use NativeProfiler to instrument applications, and all applications (and application pools) that run under IIS are instrumented. The instrumentation does not change the functionality of your applications. The probes are inserted into the bytecode to record application activity and send this information to the Enterprise Manager.
Note: When you install the .NET agent, you can choose NativeProfiler or AutoProbe to instrument your applications. AutoProbe is available primarily as a backup option for applications that cannot be instrumented with NativeProfiler or have legacy compatibility issues. CA Technologies recommends using NativeProfiler for all .NET agents unless you encounter compatibility issues.
The .NET Framework permits configuration of application specific parameters using an optional XML format file with a .config extension.
For ASP.NET applications, web.config is the main file for application-specific settings and configuration. This file is stored in the application root directory.
For other .NET executables, the configuration file is named the same as the application appended with a .config extension. The file is stored in the same directory as the application executable. For example, for testapp.exe, the optional configuration file would be testapp.exe.config.
It is possible to add Introscope specific configuration to the .config file. For example, parameters can be set that enable individual applications to reference their own instance of the IntroscopeAgent.profile file (to permit different applications to have different agent configurations), as well as to enable cross-process transaction correlation for web services.
Repalce Agent.profile with the appropriate introscopeAgent.profile that you tailored for this application.
For an example, see sample.exe.config file which is created in the %AGENT_HOME%\wily directory.
Note: All this information is available in CA Wily Introscope .Net Agent Guide.pdf.
Hope you are satisfied with the answers. If yes, please mark your question as resolved.
There is another option that we are using that is not documented but works that allows you to use the same agent profile for all agents but give each agent a specific name. This is useful if you are going to have the same configuration for all your agents except for the name.
This causes all .NET applications to use that file as it's agent profile unless you use the other suggestions to override it in the application's config file (e.g. web.config).
If you ever need to vary the configuration for one or a few agents, you can always use the other approach to specify a unique agent profile.
It may be possible... I've only tried it for the agentName.
One thing to keep in mind is this is not documented and as such it may not be supported. I would definitely recommend retesting every time you upgrade to be sure things are still working.


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Boston University's Center for Digital Imaging Arts (CDIABU) Partners with Children's Hospital Boston on Animation Project Event
April 30, 2008 (PRLEAP.COM) Education News
When Summer Menefee, director of the Family Resource Room at Children's Hospital Boston, described how important it was for her group to be able to inform and inspire their patients and families, CDIABU students took the challenge to heart.
Inspired by the need to make cancer an accessible topic for kids, CDIABU's 3D animation department has developed an animated short titled The Adventures of Zak and Dakota, the story of a child battling cancer. Upon completion, this resource will be translated into multiple languages and made available worldwide. "It's not just that our students get a real world experience from this project," says 3D animation instructor Andrew Britton. "They also get to make a difference."
And making a difference is exactly what they will attempt on May 10, 2008, when the Center hosts a 24-hour animation marathon devoted exclusively to completing this project for Children's Hospital Boston. Students and alumni will work from 5:00pm on May 10 to 5:00pm on May 11, coming together, generating ideas and just animating, animating, animating. Food, drink, nap areas and prizes will be provided. Donations are welcome.
This project is part of the Practicum Program at CDIABU, a dynamic opportunity allowing students to complete real-world projects, create new networks and build portfolios to serve them professionally. The school has partnered with non-profit organizations locally, globally and online, who can benefit from the impact and reach of digital media. Embracing the power of technology, Practicum encourages students to innovate and to inspire.
CDIABU is committed to making media that matters. Our faculty members work closely with the non-profit community to explore how digital media creates networks, raises awareness and mobilizes resources. Under the guidance of these faculty advisors and using the knowledge gained during their certificate programs, students develop video, digital photography, websites, marketing materials, 3D animation and audio production projects with organizations making a difference in the world.
BU's Center for Digital Imaging Arts has two US locations in Waltham, MA and Washington, DC which offer intensive, practical, hands-on, career-oriented training in the rapidly emerging digital arts fields of Photography, Digital Filmmaking, Graphic & Web Design, Audio Production, Web Development and 3D Animation. For more information please call 800-808-CDIA or visit http://www.CDIABU.com
Tom O'Brian
Center for Digital Imaging Arts at Boston University
Email Center for Digital Imaging Arts at Boston University

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Analysts – Strategic Trends
Senior Advisory Board
Strategic Trends
MENA and Gulf Relations
STRATEGIC BALKANS
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KOREAS: TIME TO DEVELOP THE DIALOGUE – CARLO TREZZA
giugno 24, 2019 by ndc-editor-2
Koreas: time to develop the dialogue
President Trump's decision to open a dialogue with the "arch-enemy" Kim Jong-un was a good intuition and a bold political move. But, as in the case of his meetings with Putin and his attempt to renegotiate the JCPOA with Iran, his performance as "super negotiator" has not produced tangible results. During their first meeting in Singapore the two leaders did agree upon a statement indicating their shared objective of a "lasting and robust peace regime in the Korean Peninsula", Kim's "unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization" and Trump's commitment to provide the DPRK with undefined security guarantees. Their second meeting in Hanoi however, was a fiasco: the two leaders were unable to reach any common language, not even a reaffirmation of the understanding previously reached in Singapore. Evidently, their teams had not made – or wanted to make – the necessary preparatory homework. As a result the DPRK found itself unprepared for a US proposed deal based on a single grand comprehensive bargain.
These results are disappointing especially if compared to the parallel inter-Korean dialogue initiated by South Korean President Moon Jae-in after his election in 2017. This dialogue was the resumption of the "Sunshine policy" originally initiated twenty years earlier by South Korean President Kim Dae-jung. Moon's approach received an unexpected positive response by Kim Jong-un. The historic declaration signed by the two Korean leaders in April 2018 at Panmunjom opened the way to what could become a full reconciliation.
It addresses not only the nuclear issues but also matters such as the cessation of hostile acts at the borders, confidence-building measures, institutional military to military and people to people contacts that go beyond whatever had been achieved in the past. The declaration also deals with the inevitable problem of a never achieved peace treaty in the Korean Peninsula and a possible settlement of the maritime Northern Limit Line border that has been the cause of frequent frictions and incidents. Its text also mentions the prospect (that might be seen with concern by some regional players) of a unified Korea with 80 million inhabitants.
The two Korean leaders met again on the eve of Kim's meeting with Trump in Singapore, but further progress came especially at a third summit taking place in Pyöngyang in September 2018. On this occasion the two Korean leaders announced a common bid to host the 2032 Summer Olympic Games, the dismantlement of a DPRK missile engine testing site and possibly of the North's nuclear facilities at Yöngbyön. More importantly, the two defence ministers signed a Comprehensive Military Agreement (CMA) calling for the removal of landmines, guard posts, weapons, and military personnel from their common border. The CMA also contains provisions to prevent military incidents on land, sea and air: similar arrangements have not been reached so far in Europe between NATO and the Russian Federation, but just 12 NATO member states and Russia on a bilateral level. Both the Pyöngyang declaration and the Comprehensive Military Agreement have been ratified and are legally binding for the Republic of Korea.
It is regrettable that the inter-Korean and the US-DPRK processes are not evolving at the same pace and are not based on the same conceptual approach. The step-by-step approach, starting with what is easy, adopted in the North-South bilateral dialogue has brought substantial results and has become the main pillar of the present normalisation process. The same cannot be said about the DPRK-US dialogue. The US approach, aiming at one single grand deal ("go big or go home"), proves less successful.
Unfortunately the two processes cannot evolve independently: the present reconciliation between the two Koreas can hardly survive if the US and the DPRK return to the "fire and fury" confrontation of the past years.
In launching their reconciliation at Panmunjom, the two Korean leaders"agreed to actively seek the support and cooperation of the international community for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula": the international community must take this appeal seriously; friends and allies of the US and South Korea in Europe must not lose this opportunity.
Europe, although geographically distant, has a primary interest in the peace and stability in Asia and the Republic of Korea has become, along with China, India and Japan, a strategic partner of the EU. The ties between European countries and the then unified Kingdom of Korea go back to the 19th century. Europe has gained valuable experience and credibility in supporting the "Sunshine Policy", stablishing diplomatic relations with the DPRK in 2000 and in contributing to the relief of the enormous electrical power deficit of the DPRK (the Korean peninsula Energy Development Organization- KEDO initiative). At the time Italy was at the forefront of this opening by the EU.
Until now friends and allies of Washington, have been asked to support the US "maximum pressure" policy to bring the DPRK to the negotiating table. They did so by intensifying sanctions and lowering the level of their diplomatic ties with the DPRK. Now that a dual-track dialogue has started and the prospect of possible solutions appears on the horizon, the time has come for friends and allies of the US and the Republic of Korea to start offering some concrete signs of encouragement. Easing some of the sanctions (especially those which are an impediment to the inter-Korean dialogue) and slowly upgrading their diplomatic relations would be the first appropriate steps.
Carlo Trezza – member of the Nato Defense College Foundation Scientific Committee. European Leadership Network coordinator for Italy. He was Italy's Ambassador to the Republic of Korea, as well as Italian Ambassador for Disarmament and Non-proliferation in Geneva, Chairman of the Missile Technology Control Regime and of the UN Secretary General's Advisory Board for Disarmament Matters in New York.
THE EU AS A SECURITY PROVIDER – CARLO TREZZA
NATO AND ITS ADDED VALUE TO THE SECURITY OF THE ARAB GULF – ASHRAF MOHAMMED KISHK AND ANTONINO OCCHIUTO
TRUMPING SYRIA – Giorgio Cella
KERCH AND THE BLACK SEA DILEMMA: DE-ESCALATION OR APPEASEMENT – Giorgio Cella
PREVENTING THE US WITHDRAWAL FROM THE INF TREATY – CARLO TREZZA and STEFANO BORGIANI
The evolution of the Visegrad Four and their geopolitical stakes – GIOVANNI SOLIGO
AS BREXIT GOES BY, THE CSDP IS INCREASINGLY MUDDLED – ALESSANDRO POLITI
The Putin-Trump nexus – Carlo Trezza
NEW VALUES…OLD LEADERS – Besa Kabashi
The "Nebulous" Naples Hub: Is There a Strategic Direction for the South? – Alessandro Minuto Rizzo
STATIONING NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN EUROPE TODAY – Carlo Trezza
WE, THE RUSSIAN, THE WESTERN BALKANS – Laura Mirakian
ADDRESSING THE ISSUE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS TODAY – Carlo Trezza
NATO ISN'T OBSOLETE, IT MUST BE ADAPTED – Giampaolo Di Paola
Middle East Reshuffling: an Overview from Russia – Roberto d'Agostino
President Trump and the US Congress dealing with the JCPOA on Iran's nuclear activities – CARLO TREZZA
NORTH KOREA: THE NECESSITY OF A DIPLOMATIC INITIATIVE – Carlo Trezza
The Future of NATO – Julian Lindley French
NATO CENTRE IN KUWAIT, A GOOD PROMISE TO KEEP – Alessandro Minuto-Rizzo and Eleonora Ardemagni
CHINA AND THE NEW MIDDLE EAST SECURITY ARC – Christina Lin
THE IRAQI QUESTION – Maurizio Melani
THE STRATEGIC SIGNIFICANCE OF THE NEW NATO-ICI REGIONAL CENTRE IN KUWAIT – Jean-Loup Samaan
CYBER SECURITY: A NEW CHAPTER FOR ARMS CONTROL – Carlo Trezza
WHY NATO NEEDS A NEW STRATEGIC CONCEPT – Karl-Heinz Kamp
THE SYRIAN CONUNDRUM – Rajendra Abhyankar
PARTNERSHIP IN THE ARAB REGION – Alessandro Minuto Rizzo
THE UNCERTAIN DESTINY – Carlo Trezza
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INDO-PACIFIC JUNE 2019
RUSSIA & CAUCASUS JUNE 2019
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Two hours after the last American soldier left Afghanistan, my son was born amid gunfire and chaos
منبع عکس: https://theintercept.com/
By Sara Rasoli
Even though my husband was trying to pretend that everything was fine, the anxiety and panic were visible on his face. The day Kabul fell, he came home late and did not eat anything. There was only one sentence on his lip: "Everything is lost".
He is a senior editor for one of the media outlets in Afghanistan, a man who loves to keep up with news and events around him. But now, he no longer watches television, reads newspapers, or listens to radios.
After the collapse of the Kabul government, I vividly remember he did not have the strength to go to work. The sound of giant foreign military planes flying over was exhausting our patience.
Two days after the fall of Kabul, while people were leaving Afghanistan, I paid a visit to my family doctor. I was in my last month of pregnancy. The thought of giving birth to my child in the most miserable country in the world made me think of myself as the unluckiest mother in the world.
"Your child is healthy and was supposed to be born this week," the doctor told me. He added that I have to wait until the end of the week and visit him in case I didn't deliver by then.
These women were looked down on when they worked in the army. Now they've been abandoned in a "dungeon"
The Taliban pepper-sprayed and beat the protesters calling for justice
Although my husband was faking his happiness about the birth of our second child, I knew deep down that he was going through a hard time.
With each kick of my child, I felt more restless than ever. I was no longer following the news as my husband advised against it.
Those days were the darkest days of my life. My husband could no longer stand the situation. On 28 of August, he decided to join the exodus.
The next evening, he kissed my forehead and said farewell to his parents. I can't describe those moments. The sound of gunshots, the Taliban, the smell of horror and panic and giving birth to my child, away from my husband was crashing my soul and my mind.
My husband left and I could not hold back my tears. I was crying and my 3-year-old son, who didn't know his father had left, put his head on my lap.
Maybe August 30 was my most agonizing night. I had no news of my husband; I only knew that he didn't make it inside the airport amongst the huge crowd who were also waiting in hope of fleeing the country. Since he left, he called twice to update us. But on both occasions, the sound of bullets in the background did not let me hear him.
It was midnight when I felt severe pain. The taxi driver who took us to the hospital told us that the last US troops would leave Afghanistan in a few hours, and the country "would be free of occupation."
Two hospitals didn't admit me, saying the doctors have left the country. When we got to the third one, my husband was there, waiting for us. He came back as soon as he heard of my situation.
Two hours after the last US soldier left Afghanistan, my son was born in an empty hospital–we were the only patient.
I do not know if you have ever felt joy and fear at once, what about hope and despair? That was our experience that night.
I think about my children's future under the Taliban. We have never wanted this life for our children, but it happened. I want my children to know that what happened was not our choice. We tried our best to raise our children in a country where freedom is valued, and people love each other.
Sara Rasoli, 27, is a housewife and mother of two children.
Translation by Maryam Khademi.
By Laila Yousufy For nearly ten years, Major Sama* worked in the former Ministry of Defense in the Afghan capital...
Four months on, the director of women's prison in Herat is still missing. Calls grow for her release
On September 29, the director of the women's prison in the western city of Herat went missing. Now, her family...
Taliban ideology and the question of women
By A. Froogh Since August 15, with the Taliban's return to power, women's social and political rights have been under...
Under the Taliban ban, Afghan actor suffers to make ends meet
By M. Mursal Five days before the Taliban took over the western city of Herat, Masooda Ahmadi* was fired from...
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Is it Possible to Foment Mass Hysteria in Indian Politics?
The era of political accommodation makes social hysteria along caste cleavages unsustainable, and Muslims aren't so dominant as to bolster 'permanent' fear and anxiety.
Ajay Gudavarthy
Historically speaking, totalitarian and fascist regimes have only been able to gain complete control over a country after they could create mass hysteria. Hysteria is a psychological condition caused by the inability of an individual to face the reality of certain event/s that took place in the past. Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychology, referred to hysteria as "emotional excess" caused by the trauma of memory. Trauma essentially involves a deep-seated inability to come to terms with a past injury. In their classic work, Studies on Hysteria, Freud and his collaborator, the physician Josef Breuer, trace various physical disabilities, including paralysis, to unresolved traumas repressed by the suffering individual's subconscious. Later studies extended their ideas to argue that even collectives can undergo traumas. When "shared symptoms develop in a circumscribed group of people following 'exposure' to a common precipitant", it can lead to mass hysteria—or epidemic hysteria.
The current regime in India and its success also depends on its ability to create mass hysteria. But can hysteria be created in culturally and socially diverse nations such as ours? Now the core of the right-wing activists does appear to suffer from conditions akin to hysteria, especially on two counts. One is the trauma of Partition due to the extent of violence witnessed at the time. A trauma like this one can be made all the more potent when combined with the imagination that Muslims are smaller in numbers, and a weaker lot, socially and numerically—much like a younger sibling or a poorer neighbour. The idea of violence wreaked by a "weaker" sibling, who was supposed to be loyal, makes the event traumatic.
The Partition can also become traumatic when one is made to imagine Muslims as "outsiders", and therefore as a people whose allegiances lies elsewhere, but who still inflicted violence on the majority Hindus and managed to Partition the land that did not "belong" to them. These are ideal conditions for hysteria, which is essentially a memory that remains painfully unresolved in the collective subconscious.
The other historical condition of trauma remains caste. The loss of political power with the inclusion of princely states into India meant that the erstwhile aristocratic class, which was caste Hindu, experienced loss of power without adequate compensation. This, too, is etched in the collective consciousness of India's ruling elite. Added to this is the anti-caste assertion of Dalit-Bahujans, who, in the conservative social imagination, continue to be perceived as inferior. They are seen to be "polluting" the "racial" superiority of the nation. This, again, is a potent ingredient of hysteria, and it brings India much closer to Germany during the Nazi regime, where the search for "Aryan" supremacy ultimately led to severe persecution of Jews.
This combination of religious "betrayal" and assertion by "undeserving" castes is the potential historical memory that is still repressed in India's collective subconscious, and it creates conditions amenable to spark mass hysteria. A repressed subconscious is like a cultural resource that can provide conditions to mobilise hysteria on various issues, provided they trigger memories of an injury. Hysteria requires a consolidated and highly-fossilised memory to act as an inflammable spark that can set alight a trigger.
Now the questions that seem to plague totalitarian regimes are: can hysteria be triggered in a highly diverse society like India's? Two, conversely, can a totalitarian project find legitimacy without setting off mass hysteria?
In fact, part of the crisis of the current regime is its repeated failures to create hysteria. The last failed attempt was during the election to the Delhi Assembly. The last few days before the polling were a textbook experiment in creating conditions of hysteria. Resounding slogans of "goli maaro" tried to trigger a lingering threat of "Muslim takeover". The anti-CAA protests were highly visible with the Shaheen Bagh movement still active and spreading throughout the city-state and the country. Many chief minister of BJP-ruled states joined the Delhi election campaign at this point, and veiled references to the "Muslim threat" were made, even by the Prime Minister, as the campaign reached its crescendo. Yet it all came to naught.
The Delhi election will remain etched in memory for being by far the most potent experiment in generating hysteria gone wrong. This election represents a glaring failure to spark hysteria. It challenged the understanding of the right-wing forces in India that common sense can always be moulded to create hysteria. What we witnessed, instead, was common sense prevailing over hysteria. "Mere" promises of basic welfare can betray the allure of hysteria, we learnt during this election. We also learnt that Muslims are neither socially nor politically dominant enough to create a "permanent" state of fear and anxiety. Memories of "a historical injury" can still be conjured up contextually, but they cannot be sustained. They can trigger and provide legitimacy to organised pogroms in localised spaces, but may not work for a larger spatial imagination over a period of time.
Delhi proved that even contextual hysteria cannot be whipped up if other social imaginations prevail. For hysteria to work in conditions where alternative narratives exist, would require complete death of the social imagination, so that the promise of a better life, hope, and any sense of a collective are all decimated. But can such conditions be created? Framing those who stood against violence in police and legal cases related to the Delhi riots is another experiment in creating hysteria. These cases aim to counter the dispersion of the potential conditions of hysteria. Another question looms: can the ongoing economic crisis, if it widens and becomes more deep-rooted, provide the social conditions ripe to generate hysteria?
The second repressed emotional trauma in India is the visible attempt to filter caste assertion as the symptom of a "divided Hindu society". That is, there exists a certain "transference" of the injury caused by this assertion into a so-called conspiracy to divide Hindus. Fossilised caste egos, in other words, are still a potent source of hysteria. The unbearable pain of "inferior" populations challenging those "naturally" bestowed with divinely ordained superior status is at the root. The challenge here comes from electoral compulsions—the numbers game. Does accommodating non-elite castes, even symbolically, dissipate the conditions necessary to generate hysteria, or can the injury caused by the very compulsion to accommodate diverse social groups be converted into an ingredient for hysteria? This is where backward class/caste mobilisation becomes indispensable in a country like India. Mobilising the fossilised masculine ego of backward caste communities can provide the necessary imperative.
This, however, is partly challenged by intra-caste conflicts within the dominant castes, as recently witnessed in Uttar Pradesh, where the old Brahmin versus Rajput narrative is being resuscitated. To add "insult to injury", there was the attempt to counter-appropriate this conflict by the Dalits and the dominant backward castes, who have offered to build a statue of Parshuram, the god-like figure revered by Brahmins.
This kind of caste assertion can be weakened through the use of rhetoric about Hindu unity, as it is by diluting provisions for reservations, or by going so far as to not implement reservations, or even sub-dividing Dalit and OBC constituents into smaller caste units. But will all of this create conditions of absolute dominance, enough for the elites to set the terms of reference and create a mass hysteria along a single shared memory of a past injury? One wonders if political accommodation and social hysteria can go together. If they cannot, then no other means remains for a totalitarian regime to create and sustain mass hysteria in India.
The author is associate professor, CPS, JNU. The views are personal.
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text:
The Key Is Bees
March 23, 2011 / Cloud Institute
By Elizabeth Kipp-Giusti
Scientific Study Devised and Written By Group of 8-10-Year-Olds Reveals Students' Capabilities
There are beautiful moments in education when learning about the world around us also teaches us about ourselves. A scientific study about bumblebees' spatial relationships and color perception, published in the December issue of the Royal Society's Biology Letter and written and devised entirely by a group of 8-10 year-olds, is an example of just such an opportunity.
The children set out with a playful, exploratory scientific approach to map new territory in understanding how bees perceive colored patterns and spatial scales, while simultaneously disproving preconceptions about young people's abilities. Their enthusiasm and success express a curiosity about the world that may often be lost in more academic studies. Their teacher sees this eager dedication as important insight into science in general, explaining that it "makes explicit the commonality between science, art, and indeed all creative activities."
Conditions and responses to 'Test 1" (control)
But more than simply an example that students are possible of breaking academic limits, this experience also shows the paradigm shift that educating for sustainability can create in students' minds. As they explain in their introduction, "If bees are like us in some way, then understanding them could help us understand ourselves better."
Through their experiments, they began to understand how the bees were learning, as well as the fact that the bees seemed to have color preferences, leading them to appreciate the important role of bees from a hands-on perspective. To this end, they write, "Knowing that other animals are as smart as us means we can appreciate them more, which could also help us to help them." At the end of the day, the same holds true for students. Expanding and understanding their intellectual agility can help educators provide them with better support and greater, more enriching challenges in the future.
March 23, 2011 / Cloud Institute/
EfS Perspectives, Inspiring Kids
Fishing for Cognizance - EfS... An ...
Reflection on the EfS Curriculum ...


Have you ever been asked to help with a great cause to share and make a difference within your community?
A couple of months ago, I was approached by Shawn Murphy of Achieved Strategies to see if I wanted to contribute a guest blog post. It was a blog series titled "Revive and Thrive" and its focus was for this new year of 2011. Of course, I was willing to participate and help add value to the cause. Being able to contribute alongside the many great members of the leadership community was a great privilege.
At the time, I focused on four key areas in which I found to be important based on discussions with leaders from several communities, such as Lead Change Group, Twitter's #CustServ chat which is focused on Customer Service and is held every Tuesday night at 9 PM Eastern Time, and those from the 2010 World Business Forum Blogger's Hub.
In a post titled "What's Next" – The four areas in which I felt were important for us to 'Revive and Thrive in 2011' were: Relationships, Following, Leading, and Experience.
I believe that each of the four, are key areas in which we need to focus on during the rest of this year. The relationships we have in our lives today are paving the way we choose to live our lives tomorrow. With positive communication, we are able to help others achieve their goals and dreams. If any of these become hindered, we need to recognize and respond to it immediately. Almost all problems stem from lack of and/or poor communication.
The next two key areas I feel go hand and hand, a 'yin and yang' of principals if you will. Following and Leading. This is always a great topic of discussion, as many times people will ask "What makes a great leader?" "How can somebody lead all the time and never follow?" "If somebody is following others, how are they able to lead?" – I think you get the idea.
The fact of the matter is that both are equally important and tend to feed each other. Who we follow today are those we will lead tomorrow. And, those who we lead today will help those we want to follow tomorrow. If we continue to follow the "Define, Learn, Do" model – we continue to keep things moving in the right direction. Forward.
Lastly, I touched on the importance of Experience. All of us are here for a very short period of time. When we are able to connect with others, we are opening the doors to new experiences. Whether it is personally, professionally, or spiritually – what we do today cannot be taken away from us. There is so much opportunity available to us, only we can make the decision to make our goals and dreams become realities.


Page 188 - Coralidea | Best Coloring Printable Design Beagle Coloring Pages. Sports Coloring Pages. Library Coloring Pages.
best home design ideas, like Beagle Coloring Pages. Sports Coloring Pages. Library Coloring Pages.


text:
All posts for the month April, 2001
By Gil Troy, The Montreal Gazette, 26 April 2001-B3
On this, the 53rd anniversary of Israel's independence, it is all too tempting for friend and foe alike to define Israel, and Zionism, solely by the Arab world's bloody hostility. To do so is to miss the normal miracles that occur in Israel daily, the millions who are able to live and learn, laugh and play, in the Middle East's only democracy. To do so is to underestimate the power of Zionism, a gutsy and visionary movement that outlasted the twentieth century's grander and seemingly permanent revolutions such as Bolshevism, Nazism, fascism and communism.
The sad truth is that over a century after its founding, Zionism seems to be losing its luster. Arabs have demonized Zionism as the modern bogeyman, and many have clumped Zionists, along with Americans and most Westerners, as the Great Satans. The violence of the last seven months has revived the United Nations libel equating Zionism with racism. In Israel, a small but influential group of intellectuals fancies themselves to be post-Zionists, while a negligible but voluble minority of Jews in the Diaspora please man-bite-dog opinion page editors by proudly proclaiming themselves Jewish anti-Zionists.
On this Israel Independence Day, Jews should reaffirm their faith and pride in Zionism, while the world should marvel at its achievements. Zionists must not allow their enemies to define and slander the movement. No nationalism is pure, no movement is perfect, no state ideal, but today Zionism remains legitimate, inspiring, relevant, to me and to most Jews. A century ago, Zionism revived pride in the label "Jew"; today, Jews must revive pride in the label "Zionist."
I am a Zionist because I am a Jew — and without recognizing a national component in Judaism I cannot explain its unique character, a world religion bound to one homeland, a people whose Holy Days are defined by the Israeli agricultural calendar, rooted in theological concepts, and linked with historic events.
I am a Zionist because I know my history — and after being exiled from their homeland 1931 years ago, the defenseless, wandering Jews endured repeated persecutions from both Christians and Muslims — centuries before culminating in the Holocaust.
I am a Zionist because Jews never forgot their ties to their homeland, their love for Jerusalem, and often established autonomous governing structures in Babylonia, in Europe, in North Africa, governments in exile yearning to return home.
I am a Zionist because those ideological ties nourished and were nurtured by the plucky minority of Jews who remained in the land of Israel, sustaining continued Jewish settlement throughout the exile.
I am a Zionist because in modern times, the promise of Emancipation and Enlightenment was a double-edged sword, often only offering acceptance for Jews in Europe after they assimilated, yet never fully respecting them if they did assimilate.
I am a Zionist because in establishing the sovereign state of Israel in 1948, the Jews were merely reconstituting in modern Western terms a relationship with a land they had been attached to for 4,000 years since Abraham — just as India did in establishing a modern state out of an ancient civilization.
I am a Zionist because in building that state, the Jews were returning to history, embracing normalcy, a condition which gave them power, with all its benefits, responsibilities, and dilemmas.
I am a Zionist because I celebrate the existence of Israel, and like any thoughtful patriot, though I might criticize particular governmental policies I may dislike — I do not delegitimize the state itself.
I am a Zionist because I live in the real world of nation-states, and I see that Zionism is no more or less "racist" than any other nationalism, be it American, Canadian, or Czech, all of which rely on some internal cohesion, some sense of solidarity among some historic grouping of individuals, and not others, some tribalism.
I am a Zionist because here in multicultural North America we have learned that pride in one's heritage as a Jew, an Italian, a Greek, can provide essential and time-tested anchors in a world overdosing on materialism, consumerism, and a sensationalism of the here-and-now.
I am a Zionist because in our world of post-modern identities, I know that we dont have to be "either-ors", we can be can "ands and buts" — a Zionist AND an American patriot; a secular and somewhat assimilated Jew BUT a Zionist.
I am a Zionist because I am a democrat, and for the last two centuries, the history of democracy has been intertwined with the history of nationalism, while for the last century democracy has been a central Zionist ideal, despite being tested under the most severe conditions.
I am a Zionist because I am an idealist, and just as a century ago, the notion of a strong, independent, viable, sovereign Jewish state was an impossible dream — yet absolutely worth fighting for — so, too, today, the notion of a strong, independent, viable, sovereign Jewish state living in true peace and harmony with its neighbors appears to be an impossible dream — yet absolutely worth striving for.
I am a Zionist because I am a romantic, and the vision of the Jews rebuilding their homeland, reclaiming the desert, renewing themselves, was one of the greatest stories of the twentieth century, just as the vision of the Jews maintaining their homeland, reconciling with the Arab world, renewing themselves, and serving as a light to others, a model nation state, could be one of the greatest stories of the twenty-first century.
Yes, it sounds far-fetched today. But, as Theodore Herzl, the father of modern Zionism said in an idle boast that has become a cliche: "If you will it, it is no dream."
by giltroy on April 26, 2001 • Permalink
Posted in Op-eds, Why I Am A Zionist, Zionism
Tagged Zionism
Posted by giltroy on April 26, 2001
https://giltroyzionism.wordpress.com/2001/04/26/why-i-am-a-zionist/


text:
Q: Automatic transfer data from the sql to R I get the data from the sql server to perform regression analysis, and then  the regression results i return back to another sql table.
library("RODBC")
library(sqldf)

dbHandle <- odbcDriverConnect("driver={SQL Server};server=MYSERVER;database=MYBASE;trusted_connection=true")

sql <-
  "select
Dt
,CustomerName
,ItemRelation
,SaleCount
,DocumentNum
,DocumentYear
,IsPromo

from dbo.mytable"

df <- sqlQuery(dbHandle, sql)

reg=lm(SaleCount~IsPromo,data=df)

#save to sql table
sqlSave(dbHandle, as.data.frame(reg), "dbo.mytableforecast", verbose = TRUE)  # use "append = TRUE" to add rows to an existing table

odbcClose(dbHandle)

The question:
The script works automatically, i.e. in the scheduler there is task that script in certain time was launched.
How to do that in the next time, when the script runs, it must work not with all table,  but only the data that was loaded in sql?
For example,  today was loaded 100 observations.
From 01.01.2017-10.04.2017
Script performed regression and returned data to sql table.
Tomorrow will loaded new 100 observations.
11.04.2017-20.07.2017
I.E. when tomorrow the data will loaded and the script will start at 10 pm, it must work only with data from 11.04.2017-20.07.2017, and not from 01.01.2017-20.07.2017
How can I do this?
data example from sql
df=structure(list(Dt = structure(c(1L, 2L, 3L, 4L, 5L, 6L, 7L, 8L,
8L, 9L, 9L, 10L, 10L, 11L, 11L, 12L, 12L, 13L, 13L, 14L, 14L,
15L, 15L, 16L, 16L, 16L, 16L, 17L, 17L, 17L, 17L, 18L, 18L, 18L,
18L, 19L), .Label = c("2017-10-12 00:00:00.000", "2017-10-13 00:00:00.000",
"2017-10-14 00:00:00.000", "2017-10-15 00:00:00.000", "2017-10-16 00:00:00.000",
"2017-10-17 00:00:00.000", "2017-10-18 00:00:00.000", "2017-10-19 00:00:00.000",
"2017-10-20 00:00:00.000", "2017-10-21 00:00:00.000", "2017-10-22 00:00:00.000",
"2017-10-23 00:00:00.000", "2017-10-24 00:00:00.000", "2017-10-25 00:00:00.000",
"2017-10-26 00:00:00.000", "2017-10-27 00:00:00.000", "2017-10-28 00:00:00.000",
"2017-10-29 00:00:00.000", "2017-10-30 00:00:00.000"), class = "factor"),
    CustomerName = structure(c(1L, 11L, 12L, 13L, 14L, 15L, 16L,
    17L, 18L, 2L, 3L, 4L, 5L, 6L, 7L, 8L, 9L, 10L, 1L, 11L, 12L,
    13L, 14L, 15L, 16L, 17L, 18L, 2L, 3L, 4L, 5L, 6L, 7L, 8L,
    9L, 10L), .Label = c("x1", "x10", "x11", "x12", "x13", "x14",
    "x15", "x16", "x17", "x18", "x2", "x3", "x4", "x5", "x6",
    "x7", "x8", "x9"), class = "factor"), ItemRelation = c(13322L,
    13322L, 13322L, 13322L, 13322L, 13322L, 13322L, 11706L, 13322L,
    11706L, 13322L, 11706L, 13322L, 11706L, 13322L, 11706L, 13322L,
    11706L, 13322L, 11706L, 13322L, 11706L, 13322L, 11706L, 13163L,
    13322L, 158010L, 11706L, 13163L, 13322L, 158010L, 11706L,
    13163L, 13322L, 158010L, 11706L), SaleCount = c(10L, 3L,
    1L, 0L, 9L, 5L, 5L, 11L, 7L, 0L, 5L, 11L, 1L, 0L, 0L, 19L,
    10L, 0L, 1L, 12L, 1L, 11L, 6L, 0L, 167L, 7L, 0L, 16L, 165L,
    1L, 0L, 0L, 29L, 0L, 0L, 11L), DocumentNum = c(36L, 36L,
    36L, 36L, 36L, 36L, 36L, 51L, 36L, 51L, 36L, 51L, 36L, 51L,
    36L, 51L, 36L, 51L, 36L, 51L, 36L, 51L, 36L, 51L, 131L, 36L,
    89L, 51L, 131L, 36L, 89L, 51L, 131L, 36L, 89L, 51L), DocumentYear = c(2017L,
    2017L, 2017L, 2017L, 2017L, 2017L, 2017L, 2017L, 2017L, 2017L,
    2017L, 2017L, 2017L, 2017L, 2017L, 2017L, 2017L, 2017L, 2017L,
    2017L, 2017L, 2017L, 2017L, 2017L, 2017L, 2017L, 2017L, 2017L,
    2017L, 2017L, 2017L, 2017L, 2017L, 2017L, 2017L, 2017L),
    IsPromo = c(0L, 0L, 0L, 0L, 0L, 0L, 0L, 0L, 0L, 0L, 0L, 0L,
    0L, 0L, 0L, 0L, 0L, 0L, 0L, 0L, 0L, 0L, 0L, 0L, 0L, 0L, 0L,
    0L, 0L, 0L, 0L, 0L, 0L, 0L, 0L, 0L)), .Names = c("Dt", "CustomerName",
"ItemRelation", "SaleCount", "DocumentNum", "DocumentYear", "IsPromo"
), class = "data.frame", row.names = c(NA, -36L))

A: Add a date to your result sql table dbo.mytableforecast
Change the select SQL statement such that it only selects data after
select
Dt
,CustomerName
,ItemRelation
,SaleCount
,DocumentNum
,DocumentYear
,IsPromo

from dbo.mytable

where Dt > (select max(Dt) from dbo.mytableforecast)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


In this ever-changing market, the decision to buy or sell a home can be one met with both excitement and trepidation. When you've decided that now is the time to change properties, the choice of an experienced agent to guide you through the process, help you make the right decisions and avoid common troubles along the way is one of the most important real estate decisions you can make. Craig Gaudry holds the distinguished Certified Residential Specialist designation (CRS), and he and his team are members of the National Association of Realtors and the Seattle-King County Association of Realtors. These designations are the mark of real estate agents who have committed themselves to the highest levels of professional, ethical, and educational standards.
Since 1987, Craig Gaudry and Associates has been helping people get the very most out of our local real estate market, whether buying or selling property. As a respected real estate team in Seattle's Eastside, Craig Gaudry and Associates have the track record, expertise and resources to make your real estate dreams come true.


To know wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding, 2014.
Performance by and with Pier Giorgio De Pinto and Karine Janjughazyan.
Venue: MAMY, Museum of Modern Art, Yerevan, Armenia.
Event: Come Closer, group exhibition.
This is the first Armenian sentence written by Mesrop Mashtots after he invented the Armenian Alphabet.
The Armenian Alphabet was 'invented' and used the first time in 405 AD by Mesrop Mashtots with the assistance of Sahak Partev, whose purpose was to translate the Bible into Armenian.


hard to tell what rdio's real objectives are wrt endgame for their investment. now with the entry of spotify, they now have some real competition. but i would not count out the Skype founders. they have deep connections and know what they are doing.
@gretchen, you're definitely right about the lala connection. the core group that i've seen here doing interesting things really came from lala. & myself from imeem before that (another interesting model) based on sharing playlists. they had a great following in the euro community and i discovered a lot of new music from that link.
@lacy, interesting you mentioned that you listened to woxy before bill n. @lala bought them. i recall that bill n bought woxy primarily to get into the so-called digital radio market. he was able to flip that into the 1st version of lala which was basically a cd trading service which he then flipped into the lala that many of us came to know and love. i definitely wouldn't count out bill n. despite his flop with color. he's a super bright guy and definitely looking at many interations down the road.
Turdish Burl Not sure that I can equate valet service with the creation of and access to metadata. rdio.com gets our money as well as our listening tastes, physical location(s) and access times, device details (browser, PC, phone, etc.), personal information (via the payment mechanism), etc. The API is obviously a step towards freeing up the metadata though it would be nice to see an export option on the user's control panel.


text:
layout: tag-blog
title: conference
slug: Conference
category: Review
menu: false
order: 2

---

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Home Eastern Europe HAVAL becomes the official partner of the Dota Pro Circuit tournament in...
HAVAL becomes the official partner of the Dota Pro Circuit tournament in Eastern Europe
The HAVAL automobile brand becomes the official partner of the first Dota Pro Circuit 2021/2022 tournament in Eastern Europe. The tournament is organized by Epic Esports Events with the support of the Russian Esports Federation. The broadcast and commentary will be conducted by RuHub Studio.
The first tournament of the Dota Pro Circuit 2021/2022 season starts on November 29 and will last until January 23. In addition to integrating the HAVAL identity into the broadcast, the companies are implementing joint interactive formats for esports fans.
Jerome Sego, Executive Director at Haval Motor Rus:
"HAVAL actively supports the esports industry development, because the brand and this sport have a lot in common: we adhere to an innovative approach, aim at high achievements and give bright emotions. We are glad to take part in the new Dota Pro Circuit season, which is fundamental in the world of Dota 2. We wish bright and memorable tournaments for fans and success to the teams of the CIS region!"
Mark Averbukh, Product Director at Epic Esports Events:
"We are pleased to help HAVAL expand its presence in the esports territory. This is quite an ambitious task because this brand has already firmly established itself in the field and is remembered by millions of computer sports fans. We thank our partners for their trust and will be happy to help make communication with the audience even more interesting and effective."
The second and third stages of Dota Pro Circuit 2021/2022 will be held from March 14 to April 24 and from June 6 to July 17, 2022, respectively. In the DPC 2021/2022 season, the number of rating points awarded at tournaments and in leagues will increase with each stage. In the first league, the teams will share 690 points, in the second — 920, and in the third — 1,150. At the majors, the total amounts of DPC points will be 1,900, 2,700, and 3,500, respectively. The total prize pool of the first stage will be $280.000: $205.000 for the first division and $75.000 for the second stage.
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The Middle Eastern egg dish "Shakshuka" is a popular breakfast with the perfect ingredients for a bright start of the day! Eggs, tomato sauce and several spices are cooked at the stovetop to a "mixture", like the Arabic meaning of the word Shakshuka translates. I enjoyed this wonderful vegetarian meal a couple of days ago in a café, which inspired me to make my breakfast eggs Israeli-style today and surely not the last time.
Note: The word Shakshuka is derived from Arabic meaning "mixture".
Start by heating some olive oil in a medium-size pan.
Sauté the onions & garlic until golden-brown, add the chopped chili pepper and the spices: Ground cumin, paprika and a pinch of cinnamon.
Add the canned tomatoes into the pan and stir in the tomato paste. Season with salt, pepper and a pinch of sugar. Let the tomato sauce cook for about 20 minutes.
Form 4 woles in the sauce an add the eggs, one into each whole. Use the stalk of a cooking spoon to stir the egg white into the sauce in circles.
Add more seasonings if needed and sprinkle some fresh parsley (or coriander) before serving.
Shakshuka is best enjoyed with warm bread that you can dip into the sauce!
Posted in Food and tagged breakfast, Breakfast eggs, Israel, Israeli cooking, Middle eastern breakfast, Shakshuka. Bookmark the permalink.


text:
Dalai Lama To Be Honored, Give Keynote Address On Campus
Amnesty International USA is honored to present the 14th Dalai Lama with the first-ever Shine a Light on Human Rights award in recognition of his lifelong commitment to social justice and human rights on Wednesday, May 4, at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center. The event begins at 9:45 a.m.
Following the award presentation by Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA, and a keynote address by the Dalai Lama, five Amnesty activists are scheduled to participate in a question-and-answer session with the Dalai Lama. This event will be streamed live from Amnesty International's event website.
The Dalai Lama is recognized universally as the voice of compassion, human rights and nonviolence. As the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people, he has worked tirelessly to spread awareness about the lack of human rights in Tibet and China. He has received numerous accolades including the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize and in 2007 the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honor the United States government can bestow on a civilian.
"His Holiness is a beacon of hope and peace for not just the Tibetan people but for all people fighting for human rights and dignity world-wide. Please join us on May 4 in Long Beach, to honor His Holiness the Dalai Lama for his tireless dedication to social justice and human rights," said Rini Chakraborty, regional director of Amnesty International USA.
Tickets for the event are $45 and are available through the online calendar (select May 4) at www.CarpenterArts.org, or by calling 562/985-7000. Seating is limited.
Amnesty International is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning grassroots activist organization with three million supporters, activists and volunteers in more than 150 countries campaigning for human rights worldwide. The organization investigates and exposes abuses, educates and mobilizes the public, and works to protect people wherever justice, freedom, truth and dignity are denied.
For more information, visit the Amnesty International's website.


text:
Women's Basketball Ranked First in the Region
Home » News » Women's Basketball Ranked First in the Region
San Antonio – The St. Mary's University women's basketball team received another honor this week when they were ranked first in the NCAA Division II South Central Region poll, which was released on Thursday. The rankings are determined by the NCAA Division II Women's Basketball Committee, which is made up of coaches and administrators in the South Central Region.
The Rattlers received the ranking after winning 16 of its first 18 games and winning 13 of 15 Division II In-Region games, which is the best mark in the region to this point in the season. West Texas A&M University, a member of the Lone Star Conference, is ranked second. They are 14-3 overall and 14-3 in the South Central Region. The Buffaloes are one of six Lone Star Conference schools in the rankings. The Rattlers are the only Heartland Conference school represented. The Mid-American Intercollegiate Athletic Association has three schools in the rankings.
The Rattlers are 16-2 overall and 5-0 in Heartland Conference play this season after a 60-38 win over the University of the Incarnate Word on Saturday at Bill Greehey Arena. The 16-2 start to the season is the second best 18-game record in school history. The Rattlers have won five straight games overall heading into this week's play. They have also won 19 straight Heartland Conference games, dating back to the start of the 2007-2008 season.
St. Mary's appeared in the regional rankings late last season, but moved up to fifth in the final rankings to earn a trip to the NCAA South Central Region Tournament. The top eight teams in the final regional rankings advance to the NCAA South Central Region Tournament on March 13-16 at a site to be selected by the NCAA. The winners of the three conferences in the region receive automatic berths, with five at-large selections.
St. Mary's will return to today when they travel to the University of Texas of the Permian Basin for a Heartland Conference matchup, starting at 5:30 p.m. The Rattlers next home game will be on Thursday, Feb. 12, when they host Oklahoma Panhandle State University at 5:30 p.m.
NCAA South Central Region Rankings
Team, Overall Record, In-Region Record
1. St. Mary's, 15-2, 13-2
2. West Texas A&M, 14-3, 14-3
3. Texas A&M-Kingsville, 12-5, 12-5
4. Emporia State, 12-2, 12-2
5. Central Oklahoma, 12-3, 12-3
6. Central Missouri, 12-3, 10-3
7. Missouri Southern, 11-4, 11-4
8. Northeastern State, 10-6, 10-6
9. Southeastern Okla. St., 8-6, 8-6
10. Texas A&M-Commerce, 10-6, 10-6


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The Rest of the Story
A Re-Telling of Known Tales
On Discovering a Body
Erika and Helmut loved climbing in the mountains. Germans have long been mountain climbers even before the pastime became a middle-class sporting activity. In mid-September, 1991, the couple were on a climbing vacation and hiking near a glacier along the Austrian/Italian border when they came upon the body.
The man was clearly dead, and, being in the Alps, the pair assumed that the man died of injuries sustained in pursing mountain climbing. After all, the hobby is not without its inherent dangers; rock and snowslides, sudden storms, altitude sickness, and more can overtake even the most experienced climbers. So, accidental death seemed to be obvious thing for Erika and Helmut to assume when they contacted the authorities and reported finding the body.
Their assumptions were wrong. First of all, the man had no ID on him. Forensic scientists believed he was around 45 years old, and he was fairly short (about 5'5″ or 1.7 meters tall) and thin. His clothes were simple and the things scattered near his body told of someone who was in the mountains for something other than sport. Moreover, the scientists could tell that this man had been healthy when he died. And then the mystery deepened. They found the wounds. The man had been shot through his shoulder, and the projectile had hit a major artery. They had found the cause of death, at least.
As to who shot him, well, there was no way to tell. The ice from the glacier had preserved him, luckily, but that did not help the doctors with what led him to be in that place at that time and receive the fatal wound he received. They were confident at the time that where he was found by Erika and Helmut was where the man had died; in other words, the body had not been moved there by the killer. However, it was later proven that the man had been killed elsewhere and the body was moved to the place where the German hiking tourists found him.
But who–or what–moved him?
We know that, most likely, the man's body was moved not by a human but rather by the ice that had preserved his body. In fact, the body may have been moved a considerable distance by the ice. And that wound, that shot, still perplexed the scientists. After some full body scans, they discovered that the projectile was still in the body. But this information brought them no closer to determining who killed this mystery man.
On the other hand, the finding of the projectile did help them date the killing of the man, at least generally. You see, the projectile lodged in the man's shoulder was an arrowhead. And the man found by Erika and Helmut, so well preserved by the ice that he looked like someone who had died recently and discovered in the Otztal Alps, probably died of his wound some 5,400 years ago.
He's known today as Otzi, the Iceman.
need4news Uncategorized Leave a comment January 19, 2023 January 19, 2023 2 Minutes
On a Boat Trip
Charles had always been a sailor and an officer for various companies in Britain. When he retired from the sea in the late 1920s, he and his Australian wife, Sylvia, purchased a decrepit 58 foot motor yacht for about $3000 in today's money. They named the vessel Sundowner. In Australia, a "sundowner" was a slang term for a bum or hobo. Charles thought the name was perfect, and the couple set about spending a considerable sum getting the old crate up to standards, and they added sails and completely remodeled the insides.
The couple used the vessel mostly to cruise the coasts of southern England and occasionally made the trip across the English Channel to skip along Europe's northwestern edge. A few years later, when he was in his 60s, Charles received a message that his help was desperately needed, and the message asked if he could aid in rescuing some stranded folks on a beach. Charles contacted his adult son, who brought along a teenaged Sea Scout (like a Boy Scout but for sailing), and the trio quickly set off to do what they could to aid in the rescue.
An odd thing happened enroute to the rescue. Sundowner encountered another ship that was on fire. Charles pulled alongside the stricken vessel, and he and his crew of two took aboard the crew of the ship. They then continued on the original rescue journey. When they arrived at the beach, they realized that the water was too shallow for them to pull near enough to shore to bring those there aboard. So, Charles sent word to have the people go onboard a ship that was tied up there, and from this other ship he took aboard all Sundowner could carry.
You've probably already guessed that Charles and his yacht were involved in the rescue of hundreds of thousands of men from the Dunkirk beaches at the beginning of World War 2. His boat and others like it managed to rescue 350,000 Allied soldiers over several days in 1940. Charles himself saved 130 that day. Yet, he never considered himself a hero. To him, it was simply doing his duty.
And he was used to doing his duty, even and especially in difficult situations. During World War 1, Charles had commanded vessels for the Royal Navy and received commendations for bravery. And back when Charles worked as a sailor and officer for private companies, he was assigned aboard some of the most famous luxury liners and ships in history. You know the most famous one.
You see, Charles Lightoller had been the Second Officer and most senior surviving crew member from the RMS Titanic.
On an Incorrigible Kid
The parents had no idea what to do with him. The boy stood before them as the dad read aloud the detention report from the teacher. "He refuses to do what he is told if he feels it is beneath him." The mom silently shook her head in disapproval as the sentence was read. All the while, the boy stood with his chin thrust out, his head tilted slightly backwards in defiance, the lips pursed in distain.
"Son…" the dad began, but he stopped. He looked over at his wife, back at the boy, and continued. "You've had everything a boy could want. The best of everything we could afford. We've tried to reason with you, bribe you, punish you. You've been impervious to it all." It was now the dad's turn to shake his head.
He began the speech that the boy had heard for the past several years: How the dad was tired of receiving the weekly detention reports from the various private schools he'd been sent to an removed from, how a litany of high priced summer camps, counselors, priests, and tutors had tried in vain to change the attitude and thus the behavior of the boy.
And, all through the speech that, by now, the boy could recite verbatim, he maintained the defiant stance. But that demeanor changed because the dad was ending the speech differently this time.
"…and, so, your mother and I have made the decision to send you to a military school upstate." This made the boy lower his chin and stare at his dad. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. "You will be leaving tomorrow. This is something you have forced on your mother and me by your behavior," the dad added.
So, at age 13, this boy was removed from the household and his family and the mansion and the chauffeur and was placed in a military boarding academy that specialized in dealing with incorrigible boys like him. There he was sometimes beaten and punished and hazed as never before. And it was there that he perfected the life-long ability to bully others.
The move to the military school changed him for the worse. Beside the defiance, which never left him, there was added resentment, embarrassment, and a strong feeling of abandonment that never left him. He would spend the rest of his life trying to prove he was beloved, accepted, and that his opinion was the right one above all.
By the way, at his last male prep school before the academy–a school which the boy had liked, actually–he had received so many detentions that the other boys began calling detention by the boy's initials: DT
You know him as Donald Trump.
On a Hitchhiker
The old man in his truck with the camper on the back slowed down when he saw the hitchhiker on the side of the road. In instances like this, both driver and hitchhiker must make a split-second decision on whether or not to stop and whether or not to accept the ride. Most of that choice is made from, to use a colloquialism that is not easily defined, the gut. In the U.S., we call this feeling a "gut instinct," which is, oddly, usually right.
The driver and his dog had been traveling around the United States simply because they could. It's a big country, the old man reasoned, and he had seen some of it but was curious as to the parts he didn't know. So, this being the early 1960s, he did what many Americans of the post-World War 2 era did–he decided to take a road trip. Much of what he and his dog had seen in the weeks they'd been on the road both pleased and surprised him. He never realized, for instance, how vastly different the rest of the nation felt about many political issues outside of his native California, for instance. Besides speaking to patrons and workers at roadside diners, the old man decided to pick up hitchhikers in order to get a taste of what they felt about societal issues.
Now, you must remember that hitchhiking was much more prevalent 60 years ago. Even in the 1980s, for example, I hitchhiked across several states, but such a thing would be almost impossible today. But, back then, it was an acceptable way to get from one place to another. And, in this instance, the old man pulled over when he saw the young man with his thumb out–the American sign for hitching.
The young man wore dirty clothes, and his longish blonde hair was tangled, his face pock-marked with acne scars. As the young man opened the door and climbed in, he thanked the older man in a deep southern drawl. The old man introduced himself and his dog, and the young man reciprocated. They continued down the road, and the conversation began. It started amicably enough as the pair exchanged pleasantries and brief biographies of themselves.
Then, the conversation changed. The older man told the young person about his journey, how he had been startled to find out that much of America (especially the middle and the south) was ultraconservative. He talked about how disappointed he was that America seemed to have learned nothing from the fight against Nazism in World War 2 when it came to race relations. He pointed out the way Native Americans were looked down on in the mid-west and south-west and how badly African-American minorities were treated in the south. This caused the young man to turn in the truck seat to almost face the older driver.
"Them folk outta be happy we let them even live in the south," the young man began. "They got no right to try to feel like they'se equal in any way to white people." He went on to say that groups that fought against desegregation, groups like the White Citizens' Council and others, were modern-day heroes for working hard to maintain the status quo. At this point, the older driver had heard enough. He stopped the young man. "Are you saying that these minority groups do not deserve equal protection under the law?" he asked. "Nossir!" the young man replied. "They sure don't. Why, have you seen 'em? They ain't even people, really!" And he began to loudly harangue the older man.
The old man braked sharply and jerked the truck to the side of the road. The dog began barking sharply as the driver ordered the young man out of the vehicle. Even as he quickly pulled the truck away from the racist younger man, the driver could still hear his curses and racist rhetoric being yelled at him.
The encounter proved to be a breaking point for the older man. He felt saddened that even the younger generation of a large swath of the American population perpetuated the racism he had hoped was dying out in the nation. His journey of discovery of his beloved nation was over, and, in his mind, was a failure.
"Charley," John Steinbeck said wearily to his dog, "let's go home."
On a Broken Promise
If you happen to ever travel through London Heathrow Airport, you'll literally see the world pass by you. People from all corners of the globe go through that international hub, and that traffic of world-wide guests is magnified by the fact that the British Empire used to be the world's largest. With colonies on every continent of the world at one time (yes, even Europe–check out Gibraltar), it's no wonder you can see a veritable United Nations pass through Heathrow.
In the 1800s, Britain still had a tight control over a sizeable amount of land in Africa. One of the colonies in Africa was what would become Rhodesia, now the independent nation of Zimbabwe. And in the late 1890s, the local people rose up to fight against the colonial power. Today, that largely forgotten and terribly violent war is known in the UK as the Second Matabele War. The name implies that there was a first Matabele War, and, of course, there was. Wars against colonial oppressors were fairly common across not only Africa but also Asia and other parts of the world where European, American, an other colonizing powers worked to subjugate people for monetary gain.
Into this Second Matabele War came a British officer whose wife would call him Robin, and, therefore, so shall we. Robin had risen from the rank of lieutenant and sometime scout/spy to becoming a major in the British Army by the time he arrived in Africa to help relieve the besieged British garrison in Bulawayo. In his short time there, Robin managed to work out an agreement with one of the leaders of the uprising for him to surrender peacefully. In return, Robin promised, the man would not be punished if he cooperated. So, acting on Robin's word, the man surrendered–and was promptly arrested.
The man turned out to be not only a miliary leader of the local people, but he also carried the distinction of being somewhat of a holy man as well. His name was Uwini. When Uwini was arrested, he was accused of taking part in the killing of some British settlers in the area. The facts of the situation were disputed, but that didn't seem to stop a military court from finding Uwini guilty of murder. They sentenced him to be executed by firing squad.
As one of the officers over the court martial board that sentenced Uwini, Robin had the verdict come across his desk. He had the option to commute the sentence, and, given that he had promised no harm would come to the man if he did surrender himself., probably should have commuted it. However, Robin did not do so. He signed off on the execution, and Uwnin was taken to the edge of a nearby jungle and executed for the killing of the settlers.
Well, even the British military knew this stank. They brought Robin before a military court of inquiry into his actions. However, the military court cleared him. After the verdict of innocence was announced, even the civil authorities in Bulawayo demanded an investigation and trial. This never happened, however, and the issue was dropped. Robin would later say at length that he had been completely exonerated of any wrongdoing. But people who knew him said that the incident dogged him inside.
Robin would go on to become a colonel and, finally, a general in the British Army. But that's not why you know him. This man, who had his integrity (understandably) questioned, would go on to become an example to millions of how to live ones life with character, forthrightness, moral fortitude, and clean living.
Interestingly, Robin would later write that if a young person says, "On my honor it is so," that means it exactly that, "just as if he had taken a most solemn oath." In fact, this concept was so important to him, that Robert "Robin" Baden-Powell made this the first law of the Boy Scouts.
On An Exodus Route
The 1930s could be seen as the most pivotable decade of the incredibly violent and paradigm shifting 20th Century. Hitler (and Roosevelt, too) came to power. Japan invaded China. Italy attacked Ethiopia. All of that sets up World War 2 that began in 1939. None of those events begins to look at the absolute disaster that the worldwide Great Depression brought upon everyone.
It's difficult to fathom 25% unemployment. We can't imagine not being able to use banks for our economies. A large segment of the population simply not being able to eat is beyond our ken in most of the western world today. Yet, all of that happened in the United States in the 1930s. We have since learned that the Great Depression didn't begin when the Stock Market crashed in 1929. The grim descent into economic collapse that bottomed out in early 1933 actually started for farmers a few years earlier.
Farmers began to feel extreme economic pressure in the 1920s due to several factors. First, small farmers were finding that they could not keep up with the emerging economy of scale as large, corporation-owned farms began to emerge and started to squeeze prices verses the costs of farming equipment. This forced many small farmers into bankruptcy. Secondly, the middle years of the 1920s saw extreme drought in much of the farm belt mid-west. Finally, outdated farming methods exhausted land and made it useless and unproductive. The result is known as the Dust Bowl, where farmers found that their land literally dried up and blew away.
One of the hardest hit areas was Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri. So, desperate for food and for ways to provide for their families, many of the farmers there simply abandoned their farms and moved to California. And the route these desperate people took to get to California was along a highway that was one of the first numbered roads in the United States when it was constructed in the early 1920s. It ran from Chicago to Santa Monica, almost 2,500 miles and through seven states.
When John Steinbeck wrote his epic novel, The Grapes of Wrath, he depicted the fate of these Dust Bowl farmers, and he used this same highway as a metaphor for what was happening to the people. He said it represented both despair (the place they were leaving) and hope (their destination), and he likened it to the route the Hebrews took in the Bible from slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land, a journey known as the Exodus. Steinbeck termed the route The Mother Road of America because it birthed a new way of living for these migrants who were so desperate for a start-over. Because they were united by the journey and, thus, the route, Steinbeck pointed out that the journey itself became a unifying experience, an shared moment in history, for these desperate farm families. Think of it as a poor, poverty-driven "on the road" story.
The highway, as you know, is labeled Route 66. Today, it is used by vacationers and tourists, cyclists and RV-ers, people who travel the route for fun and adventure. Most of these travelers probably do not realize that it was the road used by over 300,000 Americans in the 1930s who left behind a dry and barren land for the vision of a green and prosperous Promised Land during our version of the Exodus.
On a Nursery Rhyme
Scandinavian countries call it Lille Trille, the French Boule Boule. Germans have several names for it. During he Middle Ages, a phrase like it was often used to describe a clumsy person and also an ale and brandy concoction. And, like many children's tales and rhymes, it has a meaning far deeper than simply the amusement of children in the nursery.
For example, some folklore experts (and, like many children's stories and oral traditions, this is indeed folklore) say that the story retells the rise and fall of the humpbacked King Richard III of England who died in the Battle of Bosworth Field. His brutal death in that conflict as part of the War of the Roses entered the vernacular, these experts say, in the form of a simple rhyme that explained the terrible fate of what was the last English monarch to die in battle.
Or take the explanation by some military historians (as well as some local historians) regarding the depiction in the rhyme of a large cannon on the fortified wall of the English city of Colchester. When part of the wall beneath the cannon was destroyed in a siege during one of the many wars that came through that area in the 16th and 17th centuries, the large gun collapsed and was destroyed beyond repair.
Some religious historians in the UK argue that the poem describes the sad death and burial of Cardinal Wolsey, a contemporary and Catholic rival of sorts of English King Henry VIII. Wolsey died on the way to being arrested by Henry, and he was not buried in the tomb that had been prepared for him.
But you get the idea. The rhyme, no matter the origin story behind it, is about loss and the inability to make something the way it used to be. Thus, it could be said that we are dealing with the simple human emotion of regret, that we cannot change what has happened and must deal with the present reality, no matter how devastating it may be.
But nowhere, and I mean nowhere, in the rhyme does it state that Humpty Dumpty was an egg.
need4news Uncategorized Leave a comment January 13, 2023 January 9, 2023 1 Minute
On a Loan Request
Arnold bit his lip and looked at the floor. His brother in law stood before him, literally with his hat in his hand. "Well, Arnold? What do you think?" The question caused Arnold to grimace, and he looked up into the face of his wife's half-brother.
"Tell me again about the process," he said. "Tell me like I was an imbecile." So, for the fourth time, the brother in law told Arnold his grand scheme for a marvelous invention that would revolutionize the world. While the man told Arnold of his plans, he returned to staring at the floor.
"And you want how much again?" Arnold asked. And, again, the man told him. Arnold stroked his beard. "What I don't understand," he said, "is why you don't go back to polishing gems? That was a decent living. Why get into debt with me?"
The man was clearly frustrated that he hadn't been able to impress upon Arnold the importance of his idea. Arnold began the conversation with a flat "no" when the request for the loan was made. "Some people say you can't be trusted," he told the bother in law. "After all, you broke your promise to marry that girl in Strasbourg." It was the man's turn to study the floor. He tried to explain to Arnold that his heart told him that the marriage wasn't right for him.
"Well, in any case, some people still have a hard time trusting you after that mirror thing," Arnold reminded the man. It seems that, a few years earlier, Arnold's brother in law had been involved in an investment that produced mirrors that were sold to pilgrims who visited Aachen's cathedral. The mirrors, supposedly, could capture "holy light" from the sacred relics at the church. The man protested when Arnold brought this up. He explained that floods that year kept pilgrims away and that it was not his fault that the investors in that venture lost all their money.
Again, Arnold hesitated. Finally, he sighed. "I'm going to do this against my better judgement and only to keep peace in my own house, but you can have the funds." The man sighed deeply, and gratefully shook Arnold's hand. "You won't regret this," he promised.
"See that I don't," Arnold said.
So, what do you think Arnold's brother in law did with the money?
Why, Johannes Gutenberg's printing press did actually revolutionize the world.
need4news Uncategorized Leave a comment January 12, 2023 January 5, 2023 2 Minutes
On Making a Legend
Fabian Fournier, as his name suggests, was from Canada. After the American Civil War, he moved south of the border to the US to work in the lumberyards and the camps of the woods of the north county there. And Fabian was the stuff of legend. Across the northland, through Michigan, Wisconsin, and into Minnesota, his prowess with his fists, his drinking ability, and his axe became quite well known rather quickly.
It's not that Fabian was quarrelsome or picked his fights. It's that people–men, particularly–with chips on their shoulders or axes to grind (pardon the intended pun) saw the tall, muscular Canadian as someone they could take on and prove their manhood or mettle by having fought and beaten him. The problem was, Fabian almost never lost the fights that these low-ego lumbermen picked with him. The other reputation he earned was for how he would often hold back his temper and the hits to the opponents' faces when he had them beat. A lesser man would continue to fight even when the other person was done, but Fabian wasn't like that.
In an era when the average man was not quite 5 1/2 feet tall, Fabian was well over 6 feet (2 meters). It was rumored that he could hide an axe head in one fist. He could cut more trees than any two other men in a day's work, and he worked longer and harder than any of the others in the camp. His work ethic was so good that the lumber camp owner made him the foreman of the wood cutting operation.
And Fabian played as hard as he worked. His appetite for food and women was voracious. Sadly, it was this last predilection that would lead to Fabian's death. In a lumber camp in Michigan in the late 1870s, he met a woman who stole his heart. What she didn't tell him was that she was already married. This husband came home early and caught the couple in bed together. The man shot Fabian and killed him. The jury at the ensuing trial found the husband innocent, and nobody really mourned Fabian. However, his legend endured.
Some time in the ensuing years, the stories of Fabian got conflated with another French Canadian wood cutter, a man named Bon Jean, and the stories were complied and published in the early 1900s in newspapers in the Michigan and Wisconsin area. Somehow the name of the other Canadian lumberjack got changed from Bon John, but the stories were purely the legend of Fabian Fournier.
You know him as Paul Bunyan.
need4news Uncategorized Leave a comment January 11, 2023 December 30, 2022 2 Minutes
On a Utopia
The word utopia literally means "not place" or "nowhere" for a reason. Utopias sound great but are not practical, cannot exist, and usually fail because people are people. The perfect place cannot survive if it is controlled or inhabited by imperfect people. Thus, all utopias fail.
Take the story of a town that was built and promoted as a utopia in the jungle of Brazil in the 1920s. This place was set up to provide jobs, housing, food, healthcare, and education for a population of 10,000 Brazilians. The workers in the factories even had their meals provided in large cafeterias. The homes and workplaces were all prefabricated. Everything was to be provided for the people who lived and worked there. The town eventually boasted a golf course, a swimming pool, a large public library, and a first-rate hospital. It sounded too good to be true to the Brazilians who signed up to move there. And, as we all know, if something sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
For example, the town was designed to provide for everything except what people at that time would call vices. Drinking, smoking, sex outside of marriage, and even the playing of soccer were all forbidden. The town's police enforced these bans by conducting random raids on people's homes to insure compliance. So, because these things are part of human nature, a separate place outside of the town was surreptitiously set up to provide a place the residents could safely "debauch" themselves and pursue these distractions. The tension between the town's managers and the people who engaged in these activities were only part of the issues the utopia faced. For example, all residents were required to wear ID badges, and, as you can imagine, the people hated this concept.
Another issue pertained to the food provided to the inhabitants. You see, the town was set up by Americans, and, sadly, they did not take the traditions and food tastes of the Brazilians into account when they decided what the town's diet should be. So, the American managers provided American food to the Brazilians with predictable results. At the workers' cafeterias, American hamburgers were standard fare–a food the Brazilians found distasteful. In the company stores, canned goods lined the shelves, but the managers did not realize that the Brazilians did not know much about canned foods and did not trust food they could not see for themselves.
Interestingly, it was the food that provided the breaking point for this utopia. A revolt broke out among the town's inhabitants because they hated having to eat these American foods. The people rioted and chased the town's American managers out of the area. The Brazilian government did not do much to put down the revolt. Soon, it became apparent that the situation was not tenable anymore, that the Americans behind the project should cut their losses and abandon the project.
And so, they did.
Aldous Huxley, in creating his masterpiece, Brave New World, is said to have based his fictional utopia on this specific utopian failure. It's easy to see the comparison. The town was built to harvest and produce rubber for the burgeoning American automobile industry. However, by the 1930s, synthetic rubber was replacing natural rubber, and the need for the raw rubber produced by the town was going away. So, it made sense to stop financing what was obviously a futile and failed experiment. The main financial backer of the venture was perhaps the most famous of the American automobile manufacturers. He realized the folly of continuing to pour money into this fiasco of a utopia.
He's why the town was called Fordlandia.


My wife and I went into a lot of debt for education and related costs. We need a lot of work in the financial prepping part of our life. Even though we are still facing ongoing education costs for children and my wife, we can still work toward debt-free financial freedom in little ways.
My first concern financially is our ranch. We have an undeveloped 80-acre ranch that our entire family absolutely loves. I'm already planting and tending native trees on the ranch. I'm planning for a well, pastures, gardens, and orchards on seven acres of the property. Eventually, my wife and I want to build a home on it. For now it is a great weekend getaway, and a realistic bugout location if we ever needed one. Someday, we'd like to use it as a extended-family recreation spot, too.
In times of financial hardship, what good would our ranch do us, if someone else has a lien on it? During financial difficulties, we'd lose our ranch.
I've spent a lot of time considering how to pay off the remaining loan on our ranch. The main options when paying off any debt are to cut back on other expenses, get a second job (make more money), or sell something. Luckily, we got our land for a great price, so the outstanding loan has not been huge.
After weighing all my options, I realized that we have three cars and only two drivers that need vehicles at home. We've been playing musical cars all winter, making sure none are left idle or on the street for too long. It's actually been pretty annoying to keep track of whether each car is getting driven enough to prevent a dead battery.
I decided to sell one of my cars. We need the van, as it is the only vehicle our entire family can legally fit in. The trick was deciding which of the two cars to sell. I'm absolutely in love with my Sentra but our Altima looks like a beater, even though it probably has another 50,000 miles of life in it. I went back and forth for all of December. It was a very difficult decision.
I finally decided to sell the Sentra. It hurt to sell my favorite car, but I got over the pain pretty quickly, because I was able to sell it for almost exactly what I owed on the ranch.
Immediately after the cashiers check had cleared, I got a payoff quote for my land loan, and sent off the check. Now my wife and I own our ranch free-and-clear of any liens. We still have a lot of debt to deal with, but at least one little bit of our financial prep is finished.


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